GURPS DF Session 199, Brotherhood Complex 6 - Gnolls & Doors, Part II

This is a continuation of the previous session.

Real Date: 10/20/2024
Game Date: 9/18/2024

Weather: Sunny, warm.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (301 points)
     Harold, human guard
     Samual, human guard
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (300 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (316 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (306 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf martial artist (266 points)

We started off in the middle of a fight, with the PCs attempting to get out of a dead-end corridor and move to the exit of the dungeon, without being 100% agreed on where that was.

Thor moved forward down the hallway, engaging gnolls and cultist guards - the gnolls with shields, morningstars, and leather armor, the guards cheap broadswords and shields and leather armor. The guards were quite skilled, but with suspect morale and no leaders on hand; the gnolls tough and hard to kill but not terribly skilled warriors. Behind them were a handful of burgendy-robed wizard cultists hurling missiles spells.

Hanari opened up the fight with a Magebane grenade targeting two cultist wizards a yard apart from one another, but he missed by 1 (probably because he was partly on fire, for -2 DX) and only caught one in the radius, making him unable to cast wizardly spells for an hour. He let out some incoherent yelling and ran off.

Meanwhile, Chop began to move up to the fray, slowly (he's slow), and Duncan charged up an Explosive Lightning upon hearing what was being faced. Vlad continued to shoot arrows into the fray, pretty much trying to kill anything next to Thor. That lead to a scolding from Thor, who felt he could kill everything next to him, but Vlad was choosing his best target and trying to clear Thor's running route to the wizards.

The enemy, meanwhile, had pretty much no plan except to charge. They did that, with even more gnolls and cultist guards rushing up. The gnolls poured around the northern part of the hallway, the guards moved up southern part of the same hall. The wizards in the back readied more spells. The two hirelings with the PCs rolled out their burning clothes and stood up, but one and then the other fell unconscious.

Duncan hurled an large Explosive Lightning spell into the oncoming mass of gnolls and guards, stunning a number of them and wounding a few very badly. Hanari continued hurling consumables; he threw a smoke nageteppo to block off the line of sight of one of the wizards - he can throw pretty far with Throwing Art. He followed it soon after with a second nageteppo, and a Dragonstooth Warrior (from the Olympus adventurers) right next to one of the wizards, just as Thor burst into their main line. Vlad kept shooting.

The opposing wizards fled back through the smoke as Thor and the Dragonstooth Warrior (DW from now on) engaged. A few seconds later, one of them hurled a large Explosive Acid Ball through the smoke and - to his luck but not his allies - smacked a guard in front of Thor in the back. Boom. 19 Corrosion damage later, the field was in much worse shape, as was Thor's poor armor (now -3 DR on the front, -1 DR on the back). The cultists and gnolls were mauled, though, and the DW was disintigrated. Hanari helped with a Demon's Brew grenade. Vlad clipped Chop with a broadhead while shooting past him.

As the PCs moved up a little, and Vlad backed off even further, a wizard and a few cultist guards came around the side from a corridor leading to the north. Hananri threw down a couple of DWs to cover that flank, and then hurled a full-metal meteoric kama into the wizard, wounding him despite his Missile Shield. Then suddenly an unseen door the south opened up and two plate-clad culists stepped out.

Vlad immediately began to pincushion one of them, who carried a maul, wounding him over and over again. The other rushed north to engage the DWs, and to stay out of the line of shot.

Duncan turned invisible again, as Chop moved up and started to use Command to get his foes to do things like Drop Prone and Attack Yourself (it's a very powerful spell, as written in DFRPG Spells). That slowed them down. Hanari threw a few more DWs to the north, but the other plate-armored guy had a dueling halberd and just chopped them down as the other cultists helped. The DWs were just too overwhelmed as they appeared one after another, and where immediately engaged from multiple sides. They did wound two of the cultists and slow them down from reaching the casters.

Meanwhile, Thor chopped up a bunch of the enemy with his long knife - he had that out instead of his magical longsword (I think it's a longsword). Hanari spiked a Liquid Ice grenade into the halberdier, hurting him a bit, and then engaged in melee. Unfortunately he crippled his own arm on a critical miss.

By now, a few of the less enthusiastic cultists began to back off. The gnolls kept fighting, and mostly died, here and there hitting Thor but his armor was too much (IIRC it was base 12 or 14, depending on the spot). The PCs mostly were mopping up the enemy around now - Vlad and Chop, with bow and Command spells, kept the halberdier from getting anything done before he was down. Same with a cultist who tried to back off - Chop and Vlad and Hanari finished him.

As the smoke cleared from the nageteppo, Thor chased down the fleeing enemy (Impulsive and Overconfident) and plowed one cultist down from behind, knocking him down and cold. Sadly, as he moved after a wizard cultist, he was clipped by a nearby Explosive Stone Missile spell, wounded despite diving prone, and fell unconscious.

The enemy still ran, though, as the PCs mopped up the last of the guys who'd come around the sides. Duncan had moved the long way around the flank by another corridor and clipped the kama-wounded cultist with an Explosive Lightning spell and wounded him, before heading back. Hanari would eventually spike that cultist in the back, finding him motionless on the floor, while recovering his thrown kama.

At this point, it seemed clear that the PCs needed to drag Thor out of danger and take advantage of the lull. But it took a while for them to get near Thor, and multiple castings of Awaken to get him awake and Major Healing to keep him up. Vlad provided some covering arrows at the cultist wizards way down the hallway, crouching in the dark - behind a row of five plate-armored figures with hammers and shields. They could see the PCs from their lightstones, and Vlad could see them with Dark Vision. The PCs zig-zagged to avoid a few more missile spells, and Vlad rolled a 4 on one shot and knocked down a wizard cultist despite his Missile Shield . . . and knocked him out. He dropped an acid ball and it exploded all over his buddies and him, and a few of the plate-armored guys. But then Vlad decided that the plate-armored guys were a good target, and put two arrows into one.

It blocked them both, and then all five of them charged. And fast - faster than any PC except Vlad and Hanari. The PCs frantically started to get up to run. Hanari couldn't resist his dwarven greed and went to grab some swords as loot. Meanwhile, the plate guys ran up - they were mechanical knights. The PCs started to leave. Hanari gave Chop a Haste spellstone, and they all headed to the exit. Duncan tossed Explosive Lightning and hit a few of the knights, but it didn't stop them. A few started to make loud grinding noises and periodically halt. Thor got his sword out and put one down to one knee, but then backed off. Eventually the PCs got Flight cast on enough of them to fly faster than the knights could run, and ran and flew for it.

They managed to get to the surface, grab their stashed food and triger pelt, and run out of the dungoen. The knights didn't pursue.

After a brief rest, they immediately headed for Stericskburg, three days away.


Notes:

Well, that ended pretty well given how it looked last session. Just goes to show that high-powered delvers (and don't tell me 300 point guys aren't) vs. mooks and worthy foes back by wizards isn't as lopsided as it can look. That's especially true when both sides had very suspect tactical coordination. The enemy lacked any real plan others than "Charge!" (Aka, "Get her, Ray?") and the PCs can match that level of tactical subtlety.

I'm missing some details, especially at the end - it was a confused escape. But I did my best to remember what happened in what order.

Hannari used Throwing Art like crazy this session - throwing summonables, Demon's Brew, Liquid Ice, Magebane, Nageteppo, and more. Oddly, he wasn't using his Wand of Fireballs because 4d isn't sufficient damage, but used a few 1d and 2d throwables instead. I understand the circumstances that made them a good choice, but I'd have thought the wand - average damage enough to ignite a clothing-wearing foe completely - would have seen more use.

The Dragonstooth Warriors didn't do quite as well, despite this being a potentially good fight for them. Their problems were threefold. One, they take a full second to generate and act, so if they're next to an enemy, they can get hammered before they can put in any offense. Second, Hannari threw them right next to the enemy, so they disrupted the enemy advance but let them vulnerable to the first bit. Third, they were mostly fighting one by one each time against multiple foes. They're very effective fighters, but they're vulnerable to being swamped like any other fighters, and don't have the DR to tough it out. They still had a very positive effect. Note for myself for next time - I may have to make summonable things work like a spellstone, instead - activate it, and then the being appears in an open hex next to you that you designate. Throwable seems fine, but from a tactical perspective, they tend to work like paratroops - disruptive and surprising, but extremely vulnerable to immediate counterattack, and cost more than they get you. This isn't a rule change - I just am thinking of putting in less grenade-like, hurlable ally-summoning items.

Don't Poke the Bear - I honestly expected, having chased off the wizards and some of the cultists, the PCs would have time to do some quick looting (or at least to drag some bodies away for later looting, going the longer way around) But I didn't factor in on Vlad. The cultist wizards were depleted but not empty, and wanted to try to snipe at the PCs as they advanced (or fled, in this case) . . . but the mechanical knights weren't going to advance. You know, until Vlad started to shoot at them because - and I can't stress this enough - he wanted to make sure they weren't going to do anything. They weren't doing anything, and then he shot one, and then they did. Oops. I think he shot his way out of MVP right there.

The players did float the idea of staying nearby - fight the enemy, give them 2 weeks to recover, and then come back? Bad idea. But I put it very simply - if you camp nearby, we resume play next time as soon as they're ready to go back in or when the cultists rally up and find their camp and attack. If you go back to town, you're safe. They chose safe; probably a wise move. They'll likely go back again soon, since they have a better idea of what to do here than in Felltower at the moment.

The PCs did leave behind two fallen NPCs - Harold and Samual. They both fell after rolling out the flames on them and then standing up . . . but neither was able to stay concious after that. They fell. Since the VTT marks the fallen with blood splatters or skulls, everyone assumed they were dead. I'm not sure why - it's very hard in GURPS to go from concious to dead without using the bleeding rules, so if they just dropped on their own they're probably alive at the moment. I guess the players used the same logic that they use for a fraction-of-a-second battlefield analysis of "Is that guy over there dead or unconscious?", which I never answer straight. "He's decapitated." or "He's not moving." Because how do you tell at a glance that fast? In any case, they left two fallen behind.

XP was 2 xp each for everyone but Vlad for 20% of their loot threshold, and Vlad 4 xp for full loot, and MVP was Hannari IIRC for throwing stuff around like a maniac.

I have a whole complaint post about the VTT for tomorro or the day after. I won't muddy this one with it, but I was genuinely angry a few times at effect of some changes and some ongoing issues.