Preliminary Felltower Flight rulings

Answwering my own questions from last week:

What happens when you fall?

You suffer a two yard fall - as if a standing person's head (up in hex 2 from the ground) went to the floor (up in hex 0 from the ground.)

What happens when you lose consciousness?

You fall. See above. If the spell is still on when you wake up, you're still capable of flight. Otherwise, you fall at 11 yards per second - aka 32 fpsps - and normally after that.

What movement effects actually change your Air Move?

Magical effects will work normally - Haste, Slow, Great Haste, Speed potions. I can't think of much else.

What happens when you're stunned and knocked down?

You fall. See above.

How does posture affect Air Move?

No posture matters, but if you want to change posture you must use Change Posture normally, and combat effects are as normal.

Flight questions to be answered

I haven't made rulings on all of these, but with 0 to maintain Flight on the way, I will need to.

What happens when you fall?

What happens when you lose consciousness?

What movement effects actually change your Air Move?

What happens when you're stunned and knocked down?

How does posture affect Air Move?



My players especially - any others I'm missing?

GURPS DF Session 225, Felltower 142 - Vat room battle - Part I

Game Date: 9/6/2026
Weather: Warm and partly cloudy.

Characters
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (382 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (367 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (391 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (343 points)

We started off in town, with the PCs buying some potions and Strengthen Will spellstones.

The PCs headed into the dungeon via the well entrance, and down to the first GFS (giant fantastic staircase), and into the so-called Gate Level. The air was close and stale. Vlad tried to push for going to burn off the gas they'd discovered in one area of caves on this level a few sessions back, but Hannari wanted to "stay on target."

They made it to the room with the "Will Wall." Hannari touched one of the mummified six-fingered "Gith" hands to the door, as he had with the GFS. It opened the door, but also got a bit ratty - the 1 injury inflicted when anything touches the door still seemed to apply. He wasn't hurt but it's not clear how much these hands can take - maybe a few more touches?

The Will Wall was more trouble, and in the end several of the PCs had to use Strengthen Will spellstones to get in. From there, it was down to the first landing of the second GFS. Hannari touched the door, it opened, and they went in, all using Walk on Air from Duncan. The chime went off as they advanced - a low gong-like ringing. It kept going, every five or six seconds, continuously. A Dispel Magic on the area did nothing.

They moved in "map south" and crossed the room, using Walk on Air. Thor cut down a whispy curtain of shadowy material and burned it away, and they headed down through a rectangular room and into a circular room with a passage out to their upper right. It had a whispy curtain partway down its length. They had Vlad mapping, the chime going low in the background, and then they had Hannari try to cut down the curtain with his best kama. It worked, but it took some cutting - the stuff cut like paper using bad scissors, but when cut away it whisped into nothing, defying Hannari's goal of keeping some for testing or use.

Beyond was a clearly large room. Only Vlad and Duncan could see - a giant vat, a dozen or so yards across, about 4' high, with a semi-circle of two-yard wide vats with equally tall sides. In the biggest of them was an off-white goo that moved and rippled a little without anything clearly stirring it. The room smelled of flesh and sweat, mixed with a bit of a formaldehyde smell as well. The other six couldn't be seen into from anyone's starting vantage point.

Beyond the vat were four Masters - two with greataxes, one taller one armed as a Lichtor, and one very tall one armed similarly.

Hannari opened by his usual routine by now - fast-sheath his weapon, fast-draw a spellstone from a potion slot, throw it to the limit of his sight, fast-draw his weapon back out (at a -0, -4, -0 to the throw, -8). He'd throw another to the limit of that one's light radius, too, a second later.

The other PCs moved in, Vlad launching arrows at the Masters in succession, only to have them all just miss - clearly Missile Shield. The PCs advanced, going towards and around the left side of the big vat. As they closed with the smallest vat, Thor went to engage an axeman . . . and up popped a ratman, hidden until the moment behind the vat and under some whispy shadowy material. It bit Thor, who didn't see it until it hit him, but a terrible damage roll meant even its armor-piercing phase bite didn't do anything. The ratman flicked and snapped and jolted around, and one of Vlad's two arrows just passed through it harmlessly, but it twitched into the path of the other and took an arrow to the face. Thor's counter swing a moment later - as he backed out of close combat - cut the ratman nearly in half and dropped him. Others popped up, one throwing corrosive slime at Percy, who dodged, but it left a nasty goo pile in the hex he'd been in.

The PCs moved up. Percy quickly became a terror to the skull-owning ratmen and axemen. He killed one axeman in a brief exchange, then a ratman, and then the licthor - all three knocked straight to -10xHP from skull smashes, not incidentally destroying the Mage Scale helmets from those two suits. In each of his three strikes he'd get one critical hit, which usually was enough to finish off his foes. Thor backed up slightly and cut off the leg of another axeman. But then, the Master leader they'd been ignoring had circled wide of the melee going on. For whatever reason, they didn't pay attention to him until he was just withing rushing distance of Duncan. He zipped up, running 8 yards on the air (they use magical flight abilities, too) to stab Duncan twice in the eyes. Duncan used Blink (we forgot to make him roll Body Sense, didn't we?) and blocked, barely fending off the two strikes. Hannari rushed the melee, trying to slam the Master but missing. Duncan retreated. The Master rushed Vlad, next, and stabbed him in the eye (after a blisteringly good Feint - IIRC Vlad was at -14 or so from the Feint), knocking him unconscious. He dropped a few yards and lay still. Meanwhile, the axeman crippled by Thor had levitated himself back up and into the fray, so Percy killed him.

Thor and Hannari pressed the Master, who stabbed at both of them. Thor barely blocked his attack (he had a 5!), and Hannari more easily delt with his attack. They Feinted back, but even with a +5 DX from the usual potion quaffed at the beginning of the fight, Hannari couldn't overmatch the Master. They don't know his skill, but for comparison, Thor is at 22 and Hannari 28 (I think.) Duncan helped out by putting Great Haste on Hannari and Percy.

Meanwhile, a half-dozen more ratmen joined the six who'd popped up near the PCs and rushed into the fray, closing in on the Master. Some threw crystals, to no effect as the PCs blocked or Dodged them.

Then Percy stepped up and took two swings at the Master, who dodged one and took the other to the skull thanks to a Critical Hit. He knocked his head back and wounded him, but he was still up.

He ended it there for time.

Notes:

- Duncan is a few points away from getting Flight 25. That's 0 to maintain. Essentially, I expect most fights to involve multiple flying PCs. People treat it as unlimited air move; I wish it specified "cannot hover" so Levitation still made some sense as a seperate spell once you have a high level of Flight. Also, I like how it expands out adventure possibilities, but I'm not looking forward to how it completely eliminates entire swathes of adventure challenges. The PCs will never need to worry more than a modicum about cliffs, floor traps, difficult to reach foes, ledges, etc. Open spaces become PCs killing zones and closed areas funnels for NPCs to be forced to fight one on one vs. PCs. Free to maintain flight is a significant game changer. I'm ready for the challenge but it does mean we're going to need to do 3-D range estimation and reach rulings and "how far can I fly and are level changes free while I move?" every single combat and time-based challenge around. I should start to make rulings about falling while flying, stunning while flying, etc. I expected the arguments will be made that it's like walking, only much, much better. Heh. Only NMZs are going to force some care and caution, here. You'd think, maybe, that Walk on Air already does this - but Flight is substantially better in most respects, and dramatically reduces the concerns that keep people from using it for flight-based adventuring. I do plan to put paid to the whole 1" off the ground b.s. that people do all the time. With flight, it'll be limited to whole yards.

This is why, by the way, one of my proposed rules for a future game using GURPS Magic is a minimum cost to cast and maintain of 1. No free spells on all the time for anyone. Most of my old hands don't like it, which tells me it's a good, workable rule.

- We had a bit of miscommunication. I always give directions relative to facing. They often had a predisposed idea of "map north" based on battle maps or whatever, and so it skewed a little bit of mapping until I put up a battle map. This kind of issue goes way back. I said "upper right" and the heard it as "over our right shoulders."

- I love the ratmen. Matt Riggsby thinks DF like I think DF, sometimes. I don't use the plain ones anymore . . . phase, crystal, slime, and electric ones for me, thank you.

- We would could have finished this fight in one go, but we had the usual VTT issues (especially because some modules I used to use for management were superceded by native changes to either GURPS Game Aid or Foundry), and everyone was slow. It's hard to be on the ball after a three month layoff. We'll pick up the battle next session in a couple of weeks and go from there. I don't blame anyone, we were just slow, and Hannari is complicated and his player had to be in and out due to a real world problem, which also slowed us down. Oh well.

- Quote of the session was Doug, who said, "I don't play games to do bookkeeping." Agreed. My current campaign is probably above the upper limit I'd set if we weren't already there.

- MVP was Percy for piles of foe-ending criticals, and a nasty one on the Master right at the end.

DF Felltower: Ornate resale value & armor refitting costs

Two rulings on armor, largely, for DF Felltower.

Ornate Item Resale

Ornate weapons and armor resale at base of 80%, not 40%, of purchase price.

Notes: This is a change. I'd ruled long ago Ornate sold at 100% of value. This has meant a few things - people essentially always take ornate, because it allows you to "rent" armor until you have money for a better set. There is no cost incurred for trading it in on a new set. It also doesn't make a lot of sense in the game world, because a merchant buying at 100% has no margin of profit, and loses on every transaction. At 80%, it's still a good deal for both sides. Finally, it made armor as good of a piece of loot as coins and jewelry, if not better, which is always not quite what I liked to see happen.

Refitting Armor

Refitting a suit of armor for a new wearer costs 10% of the all-in, final cost of the armor including all prefixes and enchantments. A normal suit of armor generally will fit another of the same general size and shape. Fine armor always needs a refit for a new wearer. Sufficiently unique armors (such as Magescale) cannot be refitted, due to a lack of materials, know-how, or the delicacy of the armor or the fragility of its enchantments.

Cost in this cast is always based on the cost to purchase, not the resale value - refitting Crude armor (resale value - none!) is not free.

Refitting armor takes 1d+1 weeks, as for any special order.

Revised GURPS Basic Set & DF Felltower

What newly featured rules in GURPS Basic Set will make it to Felltower?

Note this isn't automatic. We, by default, play with the DFRPG rules, adding in assorted extras from other sourcebooks. We don't automatically use all rules from Basic Set.

In no particular order, here are the ones I think we'll have to think about.

All-Out Defense (Mental Defense) - long requested, and I like it. This one is in. I don't see it getting used much, except everyone will start to ask if they can use it for a bonus on Will rolls outside of combat, to Will-based rolls outside of combat, to Will-based rolls in combat, etc. So no, it won't do that. It's a flat bonus to resist supernatural attacks if focus and concentration would matter in the GM's opinion.

All-Out Concentrate. Hmm. This is one I need to think about. Long requested, but it is basically a +1 to all spells outside of combat. Sure, sure, those don't matter too much, and failure is unusual . . . except this is a +1 to all Information spells. All of them. Always. No one casts Seek anything in combat. I may consider allowing this but say it does not affect Information spells. And you might need a Will roll to keep AOC going for the whole length of a long spell like Summon Demon or Zombie.

Simplified Range - we already do this most of the time.

Expanded hit locations - nope. Not that kind of a game.

Flat Cost Signature Gear - we already do this.

Retreat facing change - I'm okay with this, kind of. It's a bigger change than it looks - instead of facing the hex you left, you can face another hexside within limits. If it annoys us (me) in combat, it'll go.

Statistically Speaking - yes, if it seems like a good solution to large-group fights. My call when to use it or not.

Not much of anything else really changes anything for DFRPG.

What's new in the Revised GURPS Basic Set?

Wondering what's up with the revised GURPS Basic Set?

A guest post over on Ravens and Pennies looks at the changes.

GURPS 4th Edition Revised – Changes Review

Generally, the changes are fine. I'm mainly interested in the rules additions and the at-last fixes to say "damage" when "damage" is meant and "injury" when "injury" is meant. You can look at them all over at the link above.

I also like that some of the rules we use all of the time - Committed Attack, for example - shows up in Basic Set now. It will make future references to it easier since it's no longer text we'd need to repeat.


I did eventually get a comp copy of this revised Basic Set. I haven't written anything new for SJG in a number of years. But I did write a lot, and co-wrote GURPS Martial Arts - and that one early in the cycle. Sean and I got to writing it before Basic Set was out. So I'm down in the credits and that earned me a comp PDF.

VTT Wish List - Vision Options & Fully Ported Advantages

Here are a few things I wish Foundry VTT with the GURPS Games Aid did:

Limited Vision Option

Vision is 360 by default. It would be lovely - although probably wouldn't make the players happy - if you could only see in the arc you can actually observe based on your disadvantages/advantages. Have Peripheral Vision? Great, you can see a wider area. Have a helmet with No Peripheral Vision? Then you see what your character sees, and probably understand why most people would doff that helmet outside of a direct fight.

Light is also 360 by default. Wearing a light stone on your chest on a strap? It lights up 360 degrees with no blank spots, as it was shining from directly above your head, and went through any and all obstacles. Nothing short of a wall or door obstructs vision. That's too bad, because it means you can't hide small monsters behind big ones, or get a sense of what is hard to see. You get the illusion of total vision yet the GM isn't going to play it that way.

Complete Monster Actors

Monsters are in the VTT, but they aren't wholly there. Advantages don't all port over. Damage Reduction doesn't come into play unless you manually check the box off on each and every hit. Given PCs that hit 2-3 times per PC per turn, this is a slowdown. It also means no monster in the system is to be played with a thorough review of everything they should be able to do, and careful checking to make sure it's implemented correctly on each attack, defense, or damage result. You have to check yourself for weaknesses, follow-up attacks, and so on. It gives the illusion of being good to go but you don't really know if you're doing it right.

Rules & Rulings from Session 224

A few things came up in Session 224.

- He probably wasn't seriously fishing for this* but a player asked if the Gorilla Gloves from DFT3 give him any affinity towards apes . . . sense their former presence in the "Apetrium" (a player-named room in the dungeon where they fought killer apes a decade or so back.) No, they may have an affinity towards you from the gloves but it's one way.

- Step for Move 11-20 is 2, for 21-30 is 3. How does that mesh with Committed Attack done for an extra step? I consider all of this additive, not multiplicative. So you get +1 step for CA if you choose the extra step. It's already a lot; it gets out of hand fast if each "step" gets doubled. This lines up with extra attacks from AOA, for example, which gives +1, not a doubling.

- The magical shield bracelet the PCs found gives DB 3. It doesn't create a magical translucent forcefield. Or an opaque one. Or whatever crappy sci-fi/Marvel movie image you're considering. It's a bracelet which gives DB 3 and acts like a shield. It doesn't gain any extra "width" any more than a DB 1 shield with Deflect 2 gains any. It's just magic, take your 3 DB without needing a shield in hand and be happy about it. The hand still needs to be able to block, so no, you can't be holding a bow or a two-handed weapon or whatever and block with it. That hand is effectively occupied, barring the Third Hand perk's benefits.

- It's $100 per item for a mage in town to check if it's magical. You can wait for your mage buddy to ID it when he's around, but he damn well should be charging you $100 per item per guild regulations. Not charging for it in the dungeon is fine, of course, because that's extralegal territory per established Felltower law.

* Although I assume most joking suggestions are more like hopeful suggestions with plausible deniability.

GURPS DF Session 224, Felltower 141 - Second GFS exploration

Game Date: 6/14/2026
Weather: Hot and partly cloudy.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 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 town, with the PCs gathering rumors and sorting out a lot of purchases.

The PCs headed down into the dungeons, and made their way to the gate level, using the taxidermied six-fingered hands to open doors. That worked, but didn't mitigate any downsides (like the one door that inflicts injury when touched.) On the gate level, they noted the Lost City gate was open. They found that the black hemisphere in the room where they'd fought the slorn was back, so Vlad shot it apart with Cornucopia Quiver arrows.

They found their way towards the "will wall," but stumbled into a huge pudding - three yards across and a yard high! They lit it up with a lightstone, briefly, as it was tossed too far. Then Hannari lit it on fire with a splash from a close miss from an alchemist's fire. It charged them. Rogar charged back. He blocked its slam but was still overrun and smothered down to the floor. Chop but Resist Acid on the front line before contact, so he was more-or-less fine. The pudding got chopped into submission by Percy (with an axe), Hannari (with two axes), and Thor (with his flaming sword). Thor dealt a crazy amount of damage to it, and soon it was motionless. They pushed it up enough to get to Rogar and drag him out, and then climbed over it to safety. First, of course, they gave it a once-over to see if any loot was stuck to or in it. I blame D&D for making everything thing slimes and such have treasure in them.

They pressed on, and soon to the first landing. They used Walk on Air spellstones to cross the floor, but they soon expired. Hannari downed two Speed potions and Thor two Strength potions (since the first turned up a "1") and they got to exploring, ready to fight at any time. Eventually it fell to just exploring.

Several times, they found small rooms with floor that inflicted damage (Deathtouch, they believe), mostly on Vlad before they swapped scouts. They found a room with some meditation mats, well-worn yellow ones, of no clear value. Chop had See Secrets on to help explore.

They found a stone chest with a 4 x 4 grid of buttons, and despite some clever investigation they couldn't figure out how to puzzle out the puzzle. So Hannari tried his dwarven lockpicks to directly spring the lock. He rolled a 6 on an effective skill of 25 or so. It was enough - a critical, assuming a penalty of -9 or less, but either way, it was enough to work.

Inside was 10,000 sp (40 pounds . . . ) in coins, four gold necklaces, and three potions (they eventually turned out to be Giant Strength and two Oil of Puissance.

In another room they found an iron chest with a different puzzle lock. Thor tried to force it, hear a noise, and found he'd jammed the lock. Hannari found it was never going to open for his lockpicks, and a try with the crowby by Thor was a disaster. He jammed it tn and rolled an 18 . . . oops. So he decided to carry the chest by the handle. Coins shifted inside, but something also made tinkling noises. Hannari used an alkahest on it to dissolve the lock entirely. Inside was 1000 gp ($20k, and 4 pounds) and the broken bits of a semi-corporeal ruby dagger. Oops. Was it magical? Was it one of the "glass monsters" recent rumor had pointed to? Was it a magical key? Who knows? Thor likes to think it was a cursed item of great danger and clearly already broken when he did his thing.

Next, they found a room with four levers. They managed to convince Thor not to play around with them, but it took some work.

After this, they found an armoury of sorts, and recovered three suits of magescale, a few grenades (nothing special, just normal stuff), two pieces of star-shaped soapstone, and a bracelet of silver with golden D'Aboan horses on it.

Then they found a room with a damaging floor, again, so Thor drank a flight potion and flew over. And kept going. And going. He's Impulsive and Curious, and it showed. Eventually Hannari jumped the floor's length to catch up to Thor, who'd found a scenic overlook, and then another room overlooking a large cavern that smelled of ammonia and something gone sour.

They regrouped, spotting three rooms with gemstone-patterend walls along the way, and did a little mapping before they headed out.

Back to town.

Notes:

- Puddings are fun, but it's pretty much all or nothing for them as monsters. Against a high-damage-output squad, it's nothing. I was interested to note the PCs never even tried to back off, see if it would move on, tried to lure it away - they just stood to fight it. Rogar will rush into a fight, always, but that doesn't mean before one starts they can't find another option. Who am I kidding? They were curious if any of the rocks embedded in the pudding were valuable. If you regard monsters as something you must kill on the off chance they may have loot, well . . . you'll fight everything.

- the loot total was $32,350 per person. That didn't include any of the jewelry because they didn't want to sell them without having a PC evaluate them. Duncan is currently the only person who has the skills to evaluate magic items, gems, jewelry, and assorted luxuries. They're really cleaning up, which is the reward for the heavy fighting that it took to open up these areas. Megadungeon play is both immediate and cumulative.

- I'll reveal it here - the puzzle lock was solvable either of two ways - the players figure out either of the codes, or someone makes an IQ-based Lockpicking at a steep penalty. Or, you know, brute force. I doubled the penalty for the complexity of the lock to swap to DX, and that made that 6 not nearly a critical . . . but still enough to pop the lock.

- MVP was Hannari for his lockpicking. XP was 4 each for loot, 1 each for exploration. Thor really should have gotten extra for exploration but he didn't quite get enough extra places. But he really leans into his disadvantages and it makes for a better game. That's a pretty good reward.

GURPS Ring of Fire

There is a new GURPS book in the offing over on BackerKit. GURPS Ring of Fire. Sadly, it's not about the Johnny Cash song or the Wall of Voodoo cover of said song.

It's not my kind of setting, I'm not a big alternate-history kind of gamer. But it might be yours!

It also is a chance to get the new GURPS 4th Edition Revised - a combined volume of the two Basic Set books plus some additional material. I don't really feel a need for it, as I'm not planning on doing any GURPS writing at this point. But it might be worth getting in just to get that.

Felltower House Rules Examined

As promised in the comments, I decided to take a look at some house rules/ways we run the rules in Felltower. Our base rules set is DFRPG, but with specific add-ons from Basic Set, Martial Arts, and some other DF supplements.

The format here is a quick look at what the rule is, the slant towards PCs or NPCs, and why I think so. I'd be curious to hear comments on the ratings from both players and readers, but obviously play experience is critical for determining how they actually work.

My ratings are:

Pro-PC: This generally makes the game easier on PCs, usually by making it easier to accomplish tasks that save their lives or inflict damage.

Neutral: A toss-up. Helps NPCs and PCs equally. Probably exists in the game to make everyone's lives easier but that's not always the case.

Pro-NPC: Turns up the difficulty on PCs.

This is probably definitely not a complete list, but let's try.

Missile Spell Casting/Explosion Rules

Missile Spells in DF Felltower get a cost reduction every second of buildup, contrary to the rules as written. They also do damage at 1, 2/3, and 1/3 of the roll in a 3-hex area blast for explosive spells, there are explosive variants of every missile spell, and explosive spells are not a different spell, just a different cost.

Favorability: Pro-PC. These make casters much more effective at a lower costs in character points, energy costs, and skill. Sure, NPCs also use these spells, but NPCs don't have the same issues - they aren't working with a point budget (not a fixed one, anyway), and don't have to worry about FP recovery and Paut costs as much.

Potion Drinking Speed

The rules as written require you to draw a potion (Ready), open it (Ready), then quaff it (Ready.) The effects take place the following turn.

As we run them?

Draw a potion (Ready), Open and Drink (Ready), effects are instant.

Favorability to the PCs: Pro-PC.

It's quite rare for enemies to use potions. They'll use grenades, some quite liberally, but not as drinkable potions. The speed is so quick that a major wound can be dealt with very quickly and efficiently, and any special-purpose attack (like, say, Magebane grenades) can be undone in a single second with a good Fast-Draw roll. NPCs can deal an attack in the order at A, the PC can go on B and undo it, and then we move on before anyone can take advantage. This happens so frequently that if we switched back to the rules as written it would significantly alter the balance of power against the PCs in resource-heavy fights.

Item Enchantment Speed

The rules as written don't have any enchantment speed.

Our rules are 1 day per $100. $30,000 items take 300 days.

Favorability to the PCs: Neutral.

NPCs don't ever order magic items, so this doesn't affect them. But the PCs get access to on-demand enchantment, which isn't actually what the rules as written say - they specifically say the GM decides what the shop has, not that the PCs can order whatever they like. Those two changes I feel cancel each other out and make this neutral. You can order from a list but you have to wait vs. you have to just have cash in hand and luck into the shop selling what you want.

Bypassing Missile Shield with a 3-4

The rules as written makes this spell absolute defense, just like any other immunity-type spell.

Favorability to PCs: Pro-PC.

PCs dominate the higher-skill and damage missile role, and often have missile types - Scouts, wizards - in the back of heavy front line fighters. Monsters don't always have the luxury of this in encounters that come off as believable - you can't have archer-types and ranged spellcaster variants of every monster to mix in, or at least Felltower does not. The house rule allows for missile-heavy characters - let's face it, basically Scouts - to put 1-2 shots per second at a magic-using foe out of their inevitable twin Cornucopia Quivers until they get a lucky hit. That hit is a critical, so it also means the foe cannot defend . . . although the original ruling states they could. It does not spell out how to square "3-4 always a critical" and criticals bypassing defenses with the issue of two defenses. I have ideas, but they add a lot of complication and can and will get rules lawyer arguments about expanding them to Sacrificial defenses or All-Out Defense (Double) in ways I don't want to deal with.

No special effects on most criticals

Rules as written? Roll on the Critical Hit Table.

Our rules? 3 is max damage. Any other critical hit just bypasses defenses. (This is taken from the abstract combat system in Basic Set.)

Favorability to PCs: Pro-PC.

The PCs are on the receiving end of more criticals than they deal out, and also generally have high-damage attacks. Foes with lower damage attacks simply can't get a lucky double or triple damage hit, or force a funny bone cripple, or reduce or bypass DR, get a fluke disarm or eye shot. You have 1d+1 cutting damage and the PCs have DR 7+? Oh well. PCs never have to adjust for an unexpected case - their DR really does decide if they can be hurt or crippled and no roll can bypass that unless it's a random hit on a lightly armored or unarmored location.

Unconsciousness Roll Timing

Rules as written have you roll to fall unconcious at the end of a turn where you do something other than Do Nothing.

Felltower has them rolled at the start of a turn in which you decide to do something other than Do Nothing.

Favorability to the PCs: Pro-NPC.

This would be neutral, but look at the potion rules. Allowing a full turn to act before needing to roll means you can get out and drink a potion to heal yourself, which, with a good enough potion and roll, potentially takes you out of the range of injury that forces a roll. Or you can move close to your cleric and let the chips fall where they may, knowing Major Healing and Awaken - also boosted in speed of casting time by potion recovery timing with Paut - will undo a poor roll.



There are more, but this is a good start. I'll have to get to Size Modifier poison rules, our grappling rules, effects of PI and Magery levels on spell limits, etc. some other time. But at a quick glance, it seems like the rules generally slant pro-PC . . . and that the potion rules really skew other rules hard.

Defense trumps offense in GURPS DF?

My players have some recently discovered the whole "amulets" section of the magic item list. So, naturally, with a big windfall, there are a lot of Ironskin Amulets getting ordered. They'll take 288 days to arrive, but it's +3 DR for, almost everyone. Oh, and at least one is looking at Defending Weapon, for a bonus to block or parry. Salamander and Serpent's Amulets are getting ordered as well.

So pretty soon everyone will be immune to fire and poison, and have +3 DR. Given that 8 DR is low for this group, it's likely this will be DR 11 being the bottom end of basic armor. Foes with 2d attacks are going to have a hard time being a threat. Those with 1d attacks will be harmless barring a max-damage hit on an eye. I already expect to be asked about the Armor spell stacking with this - no, it does not. It probably should by a strict reading of the rules, but do I really want people chucking +3-6 DR on top of their "soft" characters to give them DR 15+?

No, I do not.

I regret not putting in a limit ala every video game - one ring on each hand maximum, one necklace. Even if I did, people would be asking about nipple rings, bracelets, anklets, pocket lucky charms they could sew into a pouch in their under-armor clothes, whatever. So I'm not sure it's worth the effort. But cash is becoming a route to flat-out immunities. It's my own fault for selling the things, true, but 15 years into the game is a bit late for deciding to restrict magic item purchases even further.

What I find interesting is that the first, second, and third priorities of most people with money is improved defense. Better armor, enchanted with Fortify and Lighten, layered with other, better armor whenever possible (Knights always do this, thanks to Armor Mastery). Better shields, with DB boosted up quite high and further enchanted with Lighten and, of course, made Balanced. Defensive-oriented magic - the above-mentioned amulets - also factor in. Thank goodness I'm not allowing people to buy Bless items or they'd all have those as a matter of course.

Offense is harder to come by. You can spend tens of thousands of dollars to get better and better defensive gear - those amulets, more armor, lighter armor, better shields. Getting a primo weapon is hard . . . and even if I allow for much more powerful weapon enchantments, people generally would rather have +1 DR than +1 or +2 damage . . . and you can buy nearly "end-game" armor - say, Fortify +2 Lighten 50% Fine Epic Plate - but the best you can get weapon-wise is just a few more points of damage. Or a specialty weapon, such as a meteoric weapon to bypass enemy defenses.

Even then, defense outsells offense.

I get the logic - this is my only guy, I don't want him to die, it's a dangerous dungeon. But from my side of the screen, if everyone has defenses that fail on 17-18 only, DR that shrugs off anything that isn't armor-bypassing or armor-dividing or very, very high damage, and immunities to very broad types of special attacks . . . what do you think comes along as a challenge? I think the answer is obvious. The arms race is real. And obviously I'll need to make foes that require more offense . . . which probably will just lead to "we need EVEN MORE DEFENSE to keep up!"

As I say, I can't blame them - it's the best use of the money in the system - but it leads to an arms race in which fun probably isn't the winner.

GURPS DF Session 223, Felltower 140 - Second GFS Assault, Part III

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.

GURPS DF Session 222, Felltower 140 - Second GFS Assault, Part II

Real World Date: 4/26/2026

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 picked up with Hannari, who tops the speed order, drawing a spellstone (it would turn out to be Blur 5) as golden swordsmen approached him slowly.

Some foe threw a smoke nageteppo to the front edge of the fight, right in front of the PCs, covering up the hallway between Rogar, Percy, the blinded Thor, and the wave of "Gith" and trorkers.

Percy kept smacking trorkers, but lacking Affect Spirits he wasn't managing much. Thor was blind and unable to find a foe, and wasn't willing to swing wildly to hope to hit one. Rogar was getting swamped in close combat by more trorkers but thanks to Enraged he wasn't backing off to make space. He tried to check one down with his shield but his foe rolled a 17 and fell - good enough.

Meanwhile Vlad spent a few arrows on the golden swordsmen, wounding one with a critical hit but otherwise watching them bat his arrows aside like swordsmen in a Zhang Yimou movie. Hannari was hit with a spell by the lead Gith. A second later, it was clear what it was - Levitation. The Gith moved the slightly-elevated (Walk on Air) Hannari three yards back, leaving only a hovering Vlad (Walk on Air) in the hallway. Five of the six golden swordsmen ran in and filled in the gaps between both sides of the fight - Thor, Percy, Rogar, Chop on one side, Vlad and Hannari on the other.

Hannari tried to move out of sight and into a good fighting spot, but the Gith spun him around and out of the way. The golden swordsmen rushed in, but the one right behind him took a shot at Vlad instead of Hannari's back (see below for a note on this.) Chop used Restore Sight on Thor, and Duncan cast Soul Rider on Chop so he could see without fixing his own vision.

Meanwhile Chop tried Command on the golden swordsmen but wasn't able to get it off the first time and failed to overcome resistance the second time. More foes piled in. Trokers went down under Thor's blade. Then gith moved in to back them. One golden swordsman hacked Rogar in the arm. Hannari took out a kama and did swing/impale to a golden swordsman, and used his grip on his all-metal meteoric iron kama to keep himself anchored to the ground to avoid the Levitation of the Gith. He inflicted 19 control points in the process with a hard hit - he's amped up on a strength potion as well as a dexterity potion, so he's ST 20+ and IIRC DX 26. The swordsman tried to pull himself off and managed to get a few CP off, but then tried to chop the kama to break it. It was parried (ugh, rules issue here). A few seconds later, after Hannari lopped off his left arm, a golden swordsman crippled Hannari's arm on a lucky critical hit. Naturally, a second later Chop healed him completely, but the weapon in that hand was released all the same.

As this happened, Vlad wounded one gith in the eye with an arrow, and Percey smashed one down with a skull-shattering hit.

Duncan started to rip off Great Haste spells, our newer version, on Thor and Hannari . . . and they began to roll.

We left it there.

Notes:

- I dislike how often my NPCs have issues from the VTT. DR 0 when they clearly have DR, especially common when I use the Mook Generator to create foes. Torso DR but nothing else when they're imported from GCS. Oh, and it ran like a slug today for a couple of hours - and basically made the first two runs through the turn order take 50 minutes or so each until I figured out the techical problem.* Aargh, VTTs.

- The GURPS module is doing a good job of adding in the effects of Status Effects. Yay, VTTs.

- Because someone asked, no, you don't get any kind of sense or cue to what effect a spell has on you when you fail to resist, if it has no otherwise visible effect. That's what Identify Spell is for.

- Vlad wondered if these Gith/Masters/Bales/whatever have anything written, so he can learn more about them. You know, they never talk about themselves. They fight and fight and fight and he doesn't really know them. Heh. Anyway, I know all about them. How much is something the PCs can find out? Probably a fraction, but the secret to good characters is to understand things about them not everyone can see, in my experience. We'll see how much they learn.

- MVP was Duncan for his two Great Haste spells that are turning the fight.

- We had a rules disagreement about that turn-Hannari-with-Levitation move and what constitutes a back shot. More another day. But related rulings:

1) You can Wait and use your step to undo some of the movement of a Levitation spell. If you want to attack as part of that triggered Wait, you need to specify what you'll do ahead of time. If you want to use a ranged attack and you want to cover multiple possible targets, it's Opportunity Fire.

2) Immovable Stance doesn't affect Levitation. Immovable Stance just does what it says - and nothing additional. Keep this in mind when someone asks about using this to resist getting picked up after a grapple.

3) Levitation has ST 0 for purposes of moving through resistance. A handhold is sufficient to keep you from being moved around. A hand against a wall will keep someone from moving you up or down while you have contact with that wall; it wouldn't stop them moving you away from the wall. Giving it ST or making it a Quick Contest suddenly makes it a potent grappling spell. No thanks.


* I run in Chrome, which seems to handle Forge best. I eventually logged off, cleared my cache, turned off hardware acceleration, restarted, cleared my cache, turned hardware acceleration back on, and restarted Forge. That worked. No, I don't know why, but I do know I've had the occasional issue with hardware acceleration doing weird crap like this so I just suddenly realized I hadn't tried that. Thank goodness I did. I wish I'd remembered immediately and gotten a few more seconds of combat done.

GURPS DF Session 221, Felltower 140 - Second GFS Assault, Part I

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)

The PCs gathered in town, swapped rumors, and commiserated over Thor's new shield being delivered tomorrow. They suggested wait a day or two before going into the dungeon, but decided not to [when the GM said, "Okay, see you guys on Tuesday, then!"].

The group used the well entrance, and made their way down to the "gate level." They noted the air was fresh, not the stale air they're used to.

A few rooms later, they opened up a door to a chamber with a black hemisphere on the ceiling. Inside the room, guarding a nest, where a pair of horse-sized eight-legged lizards, with bright blue hides tinged with white. Shock slorn! The slorn hissed, the PCs attacked, and a short fight erupted. Rogar and Thor rushed in, along with Percy, and Vlad and Hannari contributed ranged attacks. Chop and Duncan whipped Resist Lightning spells on themselves and likely targets. The slorn didn't last that long. A zap of lightning apiece and they got shredded. Percy and Rogar bashed one's skull apart, and Thor stabbed the other to ensure it was dead. A quick (and cheap) pair of Prepare Game spells left them a pile of hides, bones, and meat. They took the hides and a pair of eggs they found in the nest. The room was especially breezy, and the air felt light and fresh, if a bit ionized.

They noted the black hemisphere didn't shoot them, so they left it alone and headed to the "Will Wall" - an illusiary that required a Will roll to pass through. After a few tries and some Strenthen Will spells, they all made it through. There they deposited the shock slorn hides and eggs.

Next they headed down the second GFS, and into the door beyond the first landing. They were hit with two spaced out Dispel Magic spells which wiped out a lot of ligthstones, but they managed to get off their Walk on Air spellstones and moved into the rooms. The exits were blocked with a gossamer, smoke-colored but opaque material hanging directly from the walls and ceiling. Thor cut the first and second down with his sword as they moved to their left, a faint and low chime going off the whole time.

It was here they first encountered the enemy. From behind, four norker brutes charged up, yelling loudly. Vlad wounded one and the others continued on, as the party revered to face them. As they did, trorkers backed (way back) with a few "Gith" moved up to join them, coming from the corridor opposite the stairs. Then a half-dozen golden swordsmen appeared from the direction the party had headed originally.

They melee'd a few norkers and trokers down, right after Hannari put down five of them with a sleep grenade. Duncun put up a wall of earth, 1' thick, to cut the "rear" area down to a single hex width. Hannari rushed into the gap. But then a Gith tossed a blinding dust grenade and blinded Thor and Duncan, each for 1d minutes - Percy made his HT roll by enough to resist it.

Blinded Duncan turned his wall to stone, Vlad shot a golden swordsman only to have it parry his arrow with ease (the other missed with a 17, a rare normal failure.) Hannari deployed a flash nageteppo but it didn't bother the golden swordsman. The whole fight had gone earily quiet except for the sounds of metal hitting flesh or shields, as the norkers quieted down.

We ended there as it was 6 pm, our preferred cutoff time.

Notes:

- We knew this would be a multi-session delve. The new rules for multi-session delves, with a +1 XP per session after the first, has really taken the sting out of longer fights.

- Good rolling on a DX potion and high stats has put Hannari at DX 26. Yeah. Ironically, Chop was maneuvering so Hannari could fight Trokers - with Affect Spirits on one of his weapons - and Persistance could fight the golden swordsmen - with their swords, weak defensively against his flail, which currently lacks Affect Spirits. Oh well. His his DX will certainly help.

- Prepare Game is ridiculously fast and cheap, especially for a spell which completely eliminates the utility of a bunch of skills. Typical.

- MVP was Hannari for suggesting they stash the shock slorn hides and eggs "beyond the Will Wall" to ensure nothing bothered them that couldn't pass that. Good thinking, honestly. It could have been Duncan's player, for suggesting that "Sword of Slorn" is a great band name. I suggested that "Beyond the Will Wall" - their second album - was clearly SoS's best work, if a real departure from the standard death metal of their first album and a more lyrical, psychadelic rock opera approach. And yes, someone AI'ed up a logo for them and we all kind of want t-shirts for them. "Name three songs!" should be a fun exercise for that shirt.

GURPS DF Session 220, Felltower 139 - A brief foray

Date: 3/1/2026
Weather: Mildly cold and wet.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

We started off in town, with the PCs hoping for Percy and Rogar but neither could be found - Percy was way and Rogar was sick.

They decided to head down to the beholder's cave area, and explore the humanoid-filled nearby tunnels.

That's what they did - they headed down, first checking to see if the Lost City gate was open, and then heading down past the fire gate.

They found the tunnel, hidden by a curtain of hide. A quick Glasswall spell at the curtain revealed noisemakers on the far side. They put Silence over it and Thor tore it down. Vlad moved past the rest of the group and into the narrow tunnel beyond. He moved around a tight bend sideways to fit through and saw and stepped over a cord at ankle height covered with noisemakers. Beyond was a small group - a pair of gnolls with bows, a pair of norkers with stone axes, and a distorted-looking orc with warped features. Vlad put two arrows into one of the gnolls, dropping it, and the norkers closed in. The other gnoll loosed an arrow at Vlad but he dodged, hemmed into place by the ankle-height cord he'd stepped over. He stepped over it and backed up as the norkers swung at him. A critical hit by one sliced him badly, and then a normal hit he failed to dodge crippled his left leg. He fell just in view of the other PCs, still standing in the Silence zone. They launched into action.

Hannari tossed a hatchet at the norker he could see but it deflected the toss with its off hand. Thor rushed forward. Chop healed Vlad from the back ranks. And Vlad, prone, shot the norker with a pair of arrows (Heroic Archer allows a lot.) One hit and the norker dropped back, onto the tripwire, and a deadfall fell on Vlad. He rolled away, just as the stones fell.

They gave up on the humanoids, also fearing the noise would bring the beholder and gargoyles. Not wanting to be boxed in, they fled to the stairs and back up to the level above.

They headed back to the gate level and around the level, lit with light stones but also - critically - Thor's flaming sword. They took a shortcut through a cave marked as having an "acrid smell." Vlad went in, Thor followed with his flaming sword, and FWOOOOOOSH! The "air" burned, inflicting 14 burn on Vlad and setting him on fire. A quick Resist Fire saved him, they had a big laugh, and headed on . . .

After that, they headed to the second GFS, and down to the level where they fought their last big battle with the Gith and Trorkers. They did a brief exploration and headed back (see below.)

Notes:

The raid on the 2nd GFS first landing wasn't supposed to be short. But the headed off the edge of the battlemap, and I tried to expand it . . . and this frelled up the whole map. The walls got moved off, the PCs dumped in a corner, ugh. I had to delete the whole map and re-do it. I couldn't do that during the session, so we ended early. I gave the players a choice - take a re-do, undo the expended potions and so on, and get back to town . . . or stay in the dungeon and do the whole "roll to see if people can join in" approach of a split session. They went with the leave and come back, since they can arm up and if we're delayed enough, get some ordered equipment. Fair enough. I shouldn't have been trying to play with the scene during play.

MVP was Thor for setting Vlad on fire.

Year in Gaming 2025

Here we are in 2026, recapping 2025. How was it for gaming for me?

Running Dungeon Fantasy

I GMed 17 sessions of DF Felltower this year.

Session 203, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part III - War of the Robots
Session 204, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part IV - Mechanical Knights, Gnolls, and Cultists
Session 205, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part V - Mopping Up & Pursuit
Session 206, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part VI - Exploring & Looting
Session 207, Felltower 134 - Exploring the Gate Level
Session 208, Felltower 135 - Exploring the Air Gate, Part I
Session 209, Felltower 135 - Exploring the Air Gate, Part II
Session 210, Felltower 135 - Exploring the Air Gate, Part III
Session 211, Brotherhood Complex 9 - Chop & Hannari's Excellent Adventure
Session 212, Felltower 136 - Steel Knights
Session 213, Felltower 137 - Looking for Evil Temples in All the Wrong Places
Session 214, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS
Session 215, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part II
Session 216, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part III
Session 217, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part IV
Session 218, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part V
Session 219, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part VI - Walls or Death

We started off finishing a multi-session epic fight that ran over from 2024 and finished with a multi-session epic fight that almost ran into 2026. Good stuff!

Same crew of gamers as last year, plus we added my friend Freddie. Long story short, he used to play in my games back in high school and early into college. We always stayed in contact even if not closely. He was out for a family visit, we did some BJJ together (he's a black belt, I'm not), and he mentioned wanting to drop in on a game session as a visitor. Lo and behold, we play online these days . . . and now so does he. He's a good match for the group.

I'm also well pleased that Felltower has been seen as a lost cause recently, due to lots of dead ends and "can't win" encounters. So what did the players do? This is going to sound crazy, but they put their big boy pants on and got to work on a couple of the thornier problems - a visit to the Air Gate (profitable!), a run at the steel knights (not profitable), and an epic run at the first landing on the second GFS and the maw of the "Gith" area (profitable, but less than hoped.) That really made me happy as a GM. Yes, these are hard problems to solve, and tough battles to win. But edging around the problem didn't help . . . and a straight-on assault of all three made headway. The Air Gate is an active place with a lot to do - even if only "raid more giant's castles." The knights are a problem but they have a better idea of how big of one. And the Gith are a serious, potentially existential threat when engaged, but rich as can be (even just from their arms and armor - nevermind whatever cash they have.) It suddenly looks target rich instead of an empty hole.

Playing RPGs

None. Not one session. Again. Hmm.

Other Gaming

I played a lot of Battle Brothers this year, after finally pulling the trigger on it. I really like it. I eventually added the Warriors of the North DLC and it's fine but I haven't enjoyed it as much since I added it. We'll see. Maybe I'm just getting used to the new backgrounds.

Writing

None. I might be done writing, basically. The opportunity cost in time is high, and the payoff is not great. A sizeable project can net me less than a week's pay at my day job and take many more weeks to do, and a small project isn't an option without Pyramid around any more.

We'll see. I do enjoy the finished projects, so maybe if I get an opportunity for something special I'll take advantage.




Overall, a pretty good year for gaming.

But, not a good year overall for our game group. We lost one of my former gamers. I still don't feel up to writing a post about that, yet. She'll be missed. She hadn't rolled dice in anger since before I started this blog, but she was one of my old game's regulars. I didn't want to say nothing, but maybe that's enough for the moment.

Notes & Oopsies from the big fight

- A clarification on our XP system - multi-session delves get +1 XP per extra session, not a base 1 per session.

Honestly, a base 1 xp per session wouldn't harm anything, but I'd rather have 0 be a real risk so people don't do bored "let's just check level 1 again" delves for 1 xp when no one's around.

- Big Oopsie. That whole area of the big fight is a Low Sanctity zone. Chop should have been at -5 for all of those divine spells he was casting.

I can chalk that up to a benefice from the Good God, but honestly, it was because I knew I had an electronic map of the area and didn't look at my paper map. My paper map clearly denotes that whole area - yes, including the entrance hallway, and the GFS - as a Low Sanctity Zone. So we'll call it a one-off +5 to Chop's spells because of a special, one-time only, NON-REPEATABLE set of circumstances that allowed him to be so effective in his healing and Lend Energy casting. I will double-emphasize the NON-REPEATABLE statement. My players (okay, Hannari's player) will want to figure out some way to have that effect come up again. GM error is bad enough, I'm not going to make something solvable either with an in-town action ("We pray a lot") or bribe/donative ($1776 to the troops, er, $5000 to the Good God) or in-dungeon whatever when it shouldn't be solvable without a much, much bigger in-dungeon action. And that's if it's solvable at all.

- There isn't a Wall of Stone spell. I'd discussed it as a possibility a while back, but no, we never created one. I don't intend to, either.

- I'm well pleased with our new version of Great Haste. It really does make it worth casting, but not a required spell you need to cast because of its overwhelming effectiveness.

GURPS DF Session 219, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part VI - Walls or Death

Will the fight ever end?

Date: 12/21/2025
Game Date: 10/5/2025
Weather: Warm and mild.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (362 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (250 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (368 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

We picked up where we left off, at around second 52 of the fight.

Rogar was down, Hannari chasing down some escaping Gith, Thor cornering an axeman, Percy bashing thorkers, and Chop dodging thorkers. Duncan began to move to put up a wall to seal off the room from the "south" (screen down) entrance.

Things went sideways immediately. A number of thorkers rushed out to assist the Gith that Hannari was after. Others stood up from where they'd fallen, healed up enough to get back into the fray.

The PCs pulled back a bit, as Thor finished off the axeman and Percy downed a couple of thorkers. Duncan put up a wall of earth and then immediately tried another, to seal another corridor into the room, but failed. Chop followed, feeding him energy with Lend Energy and drinking paut as fast as he could.

The PCs fought the advancing new thorkers off for a couple of seconds and Duncan sealed off that side, too. Meanwhile, thorkers retreated back, in response to some unhead command, and dragged off some fallen Gith. Hannari and Percy and Thor rushed over, with Vlad providing arrow support, to try and stop them. A tossed sleep grenade by Hannari put one down, but another escaped with two bodies dragged behind.

Duncan turned two of the earthen walls to stone, and then rushed over - still fed energy by a trailing Chop - and sealed the last one off.

They rapidly began dragging corpses of the Gith to the hallway, rescued the fallen Rogar and began to heal him, and prepped to get out. As they did, a few thorkers stood up, and needed Percy to put them back down. Hannari dragged one to the GFS and threw him off the landing and down the deep, deep, deep put to the "domed city" level far below.

As they dragged corpses, though, the "west" wall disappeared - the Gith leader had dispelled or dissolved it, somehow. Thorkers rushed in just as Thor was dragging two bodies. He quickly let them go and ran back to the party, grumping the whole way but knowing the plan was grab and go. They fought briefly in the entranceway before walling it off - Hannari dive-rolling into the safe area and grabbing a sleeping thorker - put to sleep in Part I - to keep him on their side of the earth wall.

Duncan got the wall off, turned it to stone, and they fled with their loot - four dead Gith, and one sleeping thorker. Left behind was probably a dozen fallen Gith, easily a score of fallen thorkers and norkers, and everything they dropped during the fight (like a Wand of Fireballs, Rogar's axe, and some thrown weaponry.)

From there, it was a quick trip back to town . . . no wandering monsters turned up (yes, I roll, Felltower is DF on hard mode.)

Notes:

Short crew today - no players for Rogar, Chop, or Percy, but Vlad and Duncan's players, respectively, stepped in for the last two. Rogar was unconcious until the very end. Normally we don't allow PCs to come along without the player, but we do cover for players who can't make all of a multi-session delve.

Finally, this grindy, epic fight ended. It was a grind but not a slog - it really felt like every turn was a decision point . . . and we ended on the 70th turn for most of the PCs.

The PCs didn't nearly get the loot they "earned" but they did get a lot. Four suits of magescale, a magical Gith longsword, chameleon clocks and stealthy boots, and a live thorker to hand over to a "sage" - vivisectionist - for research. The cost was high - a lot of consumables, a dropped Wand of Fireballs with 14 charges, a number of weapons - but no PCs were killed or maimed. They almost certainly killed a number of enemies - a few decapitated or skull-smashed Gith and norkers, for sure, and maybe some of the thorkers. The enemy will be more ready, but have they taken such heavy losses - dozens of their number down - that they can't muster such a hard-crust defense again? We'll see. The PCs will be back, eventually.

MVP was Duncan for the walls.

XP was 4 xp for loot, +5 XP for 5 extra sessions, for 9 xp each. Not bad, oh, and $22K or so in cash, each, after Duncan took the suit of Magescale in best repair.

Fun stuff! Like I said, this was long, but man, I enjoyed every session. I think my players agree, but they'll be happy to do one-session delves if they can pull them off.

GURPS DF Session 218, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part V

Short session today - all we had time for.

Date: 11/30/2025
Game Date: 10/5/2025
Weather: Warm and mild.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (362 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (250 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (368 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)


Bullet points to cover the action in the continuing big brawl:

- before Duncan could put up a wall to block them, a bunch of Gith rushed into the room.

- Percy managed to beat back a few Gith and a thorker with aid from Agar's Wand and Vlad.

- Thor and Hannari killed a Gith or two and pushed back the Gith leader and two of his allies, with Thor crippling the leader's sword arm.

- Lots of nageteppo countered by Purify Air dominated the magical fight for the day.

- the PCs are back to Operation Build a Wall.

Notes:

We had a short session budgeted for today but even so, we couldn't finish the fight. It's a good one, but the PCs have to contend with high-damage-soaking thorkers and high-defense Gith mixed together. Honestly, it's the kind of fight where boths sides don't like how it's been going and don't like where it ends up, but there is no clear way out.

The players seem concerned that the Gith leader, who was driven out of sight, is getting reinforcements, and that even with 3 walls up (they'll do that next time) they'll have scant time to gather some loot, gather up their fallen brother, and get the hell out before foes come upstairs after them. They can't block that off entirely, or even tactically, given so many airmobile foes at this depth of the dungeon.

Speaking of which, one thing that makes delving deeper hard isn't always more lethal foes, but ones that have abilities that counter the usual "win buttons" of early play - foes who can move through the air, see invisible, see in the dark, or ignore or recover from status effects quickly make for a very tough delve. But the loot is better . . .

MVP was Thor for his critical hit that crippled the sword arm of the toughest foe of the bunch.