Real World Date: 5/31/2026
Game Date: 4/11/2026
Weather: Mild and sunny.
Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (259 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)
We started off in battle, with Hannari getting up after being healed from crippling injuries by Chop. The Gith "Master" and several of the other Gith tried to overwhelm him with attack after attack. The master, Hannari's peer in (DX-potion-boosted) skill, traded Feint-and-Attack combinations with him while the others and a few golden swordsman just launched as many attacks as they could. Hannari had Blur 5 on but it didn't seem to make a big difference against the Gith, and to a lesser extent the golden swordsmen. Chop's curses stopped at least one critical from bypassing Hannari's defenses and getting to his "low" DR (only 8 . . .).
Meanwhile, Thor, Percy, and Rogar finished off the remaining non-sleeping trokers. It took a bit of work but with all three of them having Affect Spirits on their weapons. It took a few seconds but they butchered the rest of them and moved on to help Hannari.
The Gith were pushed back, as Hannari took out two of the wounded, downed golden swordsmen as they fought from seated. Another gith fell, and the remainder moved back past the 2-yard wall Duncan made to cut the battlefield in two. The enemy set up on the other side, so the PCs could come through one after another but they could double-team the PC lead fighter. It worked, sort of.
Hannari rushed the gap, throwing a sleep grenade at the rear of the group to take out the trokers. But a waiting golden swordsman cut the grenade out of the air as it passed through his hex, shrugged off the sleep effect, and then struck twice. This was the one who'd been injured by Vlad's arrows earlier and then relegated to the back ranks by the flow of combat. He hit. Hannari rolled two 17s, with a net defenses in the low 20s. 17-18 always fails. Both hit, and random location but them both at the legs. The first did 20 cutting past DR, and lopped off Hannari's right leg. The other did 15 past DR, which is 1 point less than enough to dismember, and just crippled Hannari's leg. He dropped to the ground.
Rogar pushed up behind, eager to get into the fight. Thor snaked out a few sword blows. And then Percy waded into the fray. He critically hit the Master, stunning him with a skull shot. Over his next two turns he rolled one more, and then two more critical hits, downing another gith, a goldem swordsman, and a thorker. The enemy was left with a handful of trokers, the Master, and a wounded Gith. Hannari crawled back to Duncan. Duncan let loose with an Explosive Lightning spell, using Chop's eyes to aim (see the notes) but it only clipped a few for minor injuries.
Duncan shifted to putting Flight on Hannari, which got him back into the action. Thor remembered he had Flight on and moved further into the fray. But they found the Master was gone - he'd briefly gotten out of sight and then was gone. They simply swarmed the wounded gith in the hallway and the half-dozen or so trokers and made short work of them.
With that, the field was theirs. Thor and Rogar butchered the trokers, cutting off their heads to ensure they were dead. There was some talk of burning them, or throwing them all down the staircase opening to the depths below, but in the end they did not. They took the axes off of the couple of norkers, and every one of the fallen gith, with them. They also looted the fallen golden swordsmen of their various jewelry, magical force bracelets, and bone swords. They beheaded them, too.
They then headed back to town, gathering their slorn hides and eggs.
Notes:
- The PCs would have delved deeper, except that Hannari missing a leg made that difficult. They're concerned that they can whip up a bunch more mooks and re-set the level's defenses, but pushing on didn't make much sense.
- I ruled for Duncan's lightning attack as follows: He's blind, and Invisible, and airborne, and he's shooting at a target that he's seeing through a third-party's eyes. So he can't see from the launch point, and can't see the launch point but knows where it is. I gave him the -10 for shooting blind but not the skill cap of 9. It seemed fine.
- I kind of wish we didn't use that long, long ago house rule about 3-4 bypassing Missile Shield. Mostly because it ends up with a lot of "well, I guess I'll just shoot at the guy and hope" turns, which take time and rarely matter, plus resolving Hitting the Wrong Target, usually at an angle as the PCs exclusively shoot from height these days. And it's out of line with how all the other immunities work. Imagine if I said that Resist Poison worked except on a 17-18, or Resist Fire except on a 17-18, or that you could ignore the Armor spell with a 3-4 . . . it would make perfect sense. I doubt anyone would like this, but it's a genuine idea. It would take the logic ("a perfect hit can bypass magic") and extend it to all defenses magic and all offensive effects. It's an odd exception - you can literally make yourself immune to fire, poison, lightning, acid, and more yet worry that your perfect defense against arrows doesn't always do it . . . and only fails against the most lethal shots.
- I ruled that you can hold your breath and ignore a breath-based attack like a Sleep grenade, but it's not a free, defensive action. They can Dodge out of the area effect with Retreat, of course, but that's always been true.
- MVP was Duncan's player, as he ran Percy during most of the session. It was heavily luck dependent, but his run of 4 criticals in 3 turns shifted what could have been a disaster (Hannari being crippled) into a minor problem.
- Speaking of Hannari being crippled, air-movement spells make a mockery of crippled legs, floor traps, bad footing, and combat ranks. Hannari had a leg amputated and a leg crippled and it took him out of the fight only for a couple of seconds. Once Flight kicked it, he was good as new, or actually better. Walk on Air makes for very crowded fights, as people tend to cluster in tight and walk "over" their friends. It encourages people to clump up and fight in tight as they have vertical space to fight in. Meanwhile, they're effectively immune to mobility kills. This is to say nothing of the effects on travel.
- The PCs took home 6 xp each: 4 for loot, 2 for the additional two sessions it took to resolve the fight. The take-home of loot, minus a few magic items they kept, was around $48K each. Rogar has joined at a very good time . . .
- They also took all twelve hands from the gith and had them taxidermied, at $100 each. They kept them to use to touch doors that won't open to their own hands.
