Date: 8/24/2025
Weather: Warm, dry.
Characters
Chop, human cleric (362 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (332 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (358 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (318 points)
The PCs started out in town, gathering rumors and taking delivery of some items ordered way back when.
The goal was to take out the iron golems, as they called them, first encountered years ago.
The armed up, with a lot of blunt weapons to potentially avoid breakage, and headed down.
Long story short, this did not work out.
The PCs found the room alright, and forced the door. Beyond it were three golems - with the appearance of knights. They were made of dull steel, two with sword and shield and one with a poleaxe. The PCs let loose with a Stone Missile and Thor and Percy moved in. The Stone Missile hit one square and dented it, but didn't stop it. Vald pinged arrows off of the golems to no visible effect. Neither did Percy - he smacked one three times, two hits, one block. His flail almost broke on the first hit, averted by Luck, and the second hit broke his flail. A Fireball didn't do much better, and the golems breathed poison gas - averted by everyone having Resist Poison, and one breathed fire and set Thor alight and wounded him badly. Resist Fire saved him.
The PCs pulled back, and the golems closed the door on them.
The PCs tried again - buffed Thor, readied Lightning, and opened the door - why? To retrieve the broken flail that Percy had dropped when it snapped in half.
Lightning didn't do much better, inflicting damage but not stunning. But the golems rushed forward, and engaged. Thor rushed them back. In a tough and short brawl, while Duncan used Apportation to get the ball and chain portion of the flail, Thor held off the golems. But then suddenly, after lots of critical successes by the PCs and none by the golems . . . they got a few. Whack. Off came Thor's leg. Then he fell, and his left arm was lopped off.
The PCs desperately managed to snag Thor's limbs - he grabbed his own leg, Percy his arm and shield - and beat a hasty retreat, chased by the golems that suddenly seemed willing to pursue. They were chased to a nearby intersection, and left the dungeon directly.
Notes:
It was a funny session more than a fun one - it cost $3200 to fix Thor's lost limbs . . . all to rescue half of a nicely made but no longer enchanted broken morningstar. Heh.
Percy broke his morningstar on his first swing at a golem. He used Luck, and rolled twice more. The next two didn't cause breakage. I said, just keep the last roll for the second swing that he hit with. The players argued that Luck needs three rolls. Okay, I said, nevermind, I was being generous, but fine, roll for the second breakage roll. 1. The flail broke. Insistance on the rules overcoming GM generosity . . . heh.
MVP was Percy for Leadership. Otherwise XP was 0.
Next game . . . TBD.
Do you have a rule for telling the players when an attack causes damage?
ReplyDeleteI imagine lightning damage must be hard to see on an unstunned iron golem.
I just describe how it looks - and while lightning as we run it has an armor divisor, that means more damage penetrate but it doesn't necessarily show up by more visible surface damage.
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