Well everyone was present this session, and we're probably going to do 1 more session for the year. Everyone's mood was subdued in the same manner as last week. Combination Xmas money crunch mixed with the winter blues. Plus the action was pretty much not around for the first half of the night.
But at least Dale was happy. He was rolling dice all night. Others napped. Mental note: keep ketchup packets and croutons around for people foolish enough to fall asleep within arms reach of me.
I also tossed in a new mechanic to this campaign. It's not a true new mechanic. It's been used before. The higher in levels you go into D&D, the more and more you come into the possibility where a single die roll can kill a character, even a fully rested and prepared one.
And I told the group that once they leave Region A, the "kid gloves" are off. Meaning that the DM will allow the dice rolls stand. Twice in the past 7 sessions I have had to adjust the game in some way simply to allow a character to live (they did have an XP penalty though). So now, every level the PC's get a single "re-roll point". If a roll will directly kill a PC, the player of that can choose to re-roll one die or can choose to have the DM re-roll one die. The points are not accumulative and you only get 1 when you level.
One PC had to use his point. One guess as to who that PC was. (Anyone who's read this blog probably knows.) :)
Day 7, 7AM.
We last stopped with the PC's in room A113. From there the PC's move on to investigate more of Region A. And, as always, the group is very paranoid and they investigate every door for traps, listen for noises, and detect for evil behind it. Also, on a similar note, whenever they find equipment they almost always cast Detect Magic spells to make sure they aren't letting any magic slip through their fingers.
Room A111: This room has 2 pillars that had rusty blades jutting from out of them. In between the 2 pillars are the bones of some unspecified victim. Dalron investigates the pillars. He determines that the blades can be pushed up into the pillars, and then pillars can be pushed up into the ceiling. But the resetting mechanism failed to work the last time it was triggered, so all the exposed mechanisms began to rust. Although Dalron believed he could reset the trap, he wisely chose not to.
Room A112: This room was hot. The group peered into the room and found a door out and a bronze plate with a rune upon it. The group does not enter the room at first. Dalron cautiously moved into the room to investigate the door and the rune. The door was locked, but the mechanism was on this side, so no big deal. He then attempted to decipher the rune. But nothing seemed to jump out at him. He returned to the group and downed a full waterskin. Dugan (or Krieg - I've forgotten) then decided to investigate the rune, with the same results. He returned to the group and also chugged a full waterskin.
The players wanted to know more about this room. So upon the players promising to not return to the room, the DM told them. If you stepped on the metal plate, a fire erupted from it for a full minute. If you were lawful or good, you were healed 2d8+3 hit points and you were healed of all poisons and ability damage. If you were chaotic or evil, you were damaged for 2d8+3. If you were lawful good and stayed on the plate for the full minute, you gained a permanent fire resistance 5.
The group then started discussing where to go next. Do they investigate region A more, or move on to another region. The DM then told them that when the portal became unstable after increasing in size, a lot more fiendish critters poured out into the region. The result was a lot more of the rooms being empty.
So now a discussion began about where to go. The DM said that region B was a goblin dominated area and region E was "odd". As he had not read much of either zone, that's all he could guide them on. A vote was held, 3 to 2 to go into region B.
So let me introduce Region B...
Room B1: An old dusty hallway. The party travels north along the left path of it. Dugan, upon going up to the door, gets by a scything blade trap for some minor damage. Dalron then removes the trap.
Room B2: An empty, abandoned guard post with graffiti written in goblin. Thunderclease (being both literate and knowledgeable in goblin) determines it to say something about "the big stinky ones" & "G'rrrd'" with diagram referring to "He who growls" and "victory". Dugan finds the secret door to room B4 that is stuck. After some difficulty, the door is opened with the aid of the battering ram that Krieg had forgotten that he was carrying.
Room B4: Armory. The group finds several slings, spears, clubs, and 2 barrels full of sling stones. But all of the weapons are of poor workmanship and some would do less damage. The group finds little of value here.
They return to room B1 and go through the right hallway. Dalron goes up to check the door, on his way up there, a pit opens up beneath him and he plummets into it. The pit is only 20' deep but has spikes as well. He takes some minor damage and with some difficulty he is able to get out of the pit. He then attempts to disarm the trap, but fails to do so. So the party grabs all of the weapons from room B4,including the barrels of sling stones and dumps them into the pit. Since the pit is only 5' across, then group is able to jump across after some equipment juggling.
Room B5: This room is a room full of traps and a nice bit of bait. Across the room is a golden idol with emerald eyes and a pearl belly button. The group smells a rat but can't let the idol just sit there. So Dalron goes to work once again. Just about every square in the room is trapped. And the doorway itself is trapped to collapse onto the group's heads. The first set of traps drops shards of metal onto its victim and then the shards stay on the floor to act as caltrops. The second sets tosses poisoned parts at the unlucky target. Dalron triggers one of each trap on the way up to the idol, and upon return trip to the door, triggers a 2nd dart trap when he fails to jump over a known trigger that he couldn't remove.
And to add insult to injury, the idol, which Dalron estimated to be worth 5000gp, turned to dust when he crossed the threshold to the door and reappeared in its original spot.
So then the frustrated group decides that some stupid room won't get the best of them so they go to the wall behind the idol and try to hammer and chisel their way through it. All they succeed in doing is hurt their equipment.
Then the group travels to the hallway that is connected to room B6. They discover a passage to region F (the DM always warns them about this kind of situation). Zorak hears some growling from the door across the hall. But first the group investigates...
Room B6: Empty big room. Note: This was not originally an empty room, but the room was a mirror room that is just irritating and tends to eat up time while the party tries to find out where they just were. So, I dumped it. And the group was starting to grumble about there being "no action".
The group then checks out the door to the room that had growling. No evil is detected. Dalron finds that the door is designed to swing shut if no one holds it open. They open the door to find that they can't see anything more than 5' in front of them. Although this is their chance for some action, they wuss out the door close before even entering the room.
Room B7: The party opens this door and finds that room's floor is about 6" lower than the last room. And from this door to the next are circular slabs (2' diameter) of stone that seem to be mounted on springs. AND "the walls are pitted and uneven, as if acid smoke eroded the finish". Krieg tosses a couple of sling stones onto one of the disks and nothing happens. Then he tosses one onto the floor and the door slams shut in his face (causing some knuckle-scrape damage). They try to open the door to no avail. So they listen to the door and hear some water-splashing sounds. So the group lets this room go and moves on.
Room B11: The hall to this room gets cold. Inside this room are 3 chain links that seem to move about the center of the room of their own accord. When Thunderclease enters the room the door slams shut behind and the room gets even colder. After about 2 minutes, he is able to solve the puzzle of the 3 rings and the door opens. Because he is so hardy, he suffers only 6 points of damage from the biting cold.
Room B12: This room opens up to a ledge and a pit with writhing snakes at the bottom of the pit.
This is the last straw for the group. They head on to Region E.
So let me introduce Region E...
The group travels to this room from the 3rd entry from region A to Region E.
Room E17: This hallway was more of a room with big alcoves. It was full of old empty weapon racks and blood stains. Hiding amongst the shadows were 3 undead shadows. Two of them retained enough knowledge to be able to recognize a cleric. So the fighters had 1 to fight and the rear of the group had 2. Round 1 involved Krieg being attacked by two shadows and being drained of some strength, but on his action he got rid of 2 of them by using his Greater Turning (a domain ability granted by Lathander). The last one didn't light much longer, mostly because it ran for the hills.
Room E16: This room was once a hall of portraits. But a resetting fireball trap ruined them long ago. Dalron stumbled upon the trap. But he lucked out and made his save. And being a 4th level rogue, he took no damage from it...this time. He investigated the door at the other end of the room to make sure it was worth sending the whole party through the room. But on his way back he thought he had determined where the trap was triggered. But what he didn't know was that whole center of the room was trapped (and he had failed disarming the trap before). And this time he failed his save and would have gone to -11 hp had he not used his "re-roll" point to get a new save roll.
After that, the party travelled in another direction.
Room E18: This room had 2 doorways. One the party entered through, and another that was boarded up, but let nowhere. Lying next to the doorway was a door off of its hinges. Krieg came up with the idea to use the door to set it on top of the trigger for the fireball trap in room E16. But this was not done because the group chose to head in a different direction.
Room E20: The secret door to this room had an invisible Glyph of Warding (sonic blast version). While investigating the door, Dalron was able to dodge the trap. But later while Thunderclease was succussfully bashing in the door, he took a last blast from the trap.
Inside the room was a pedestal with a staff laid upon it. Next to the staff was a corpse dressed in battered platemail holding a flail and shield. Detect magic showed that the staff was very magical, there was a magic field around the pedestal, and the corpse's shield was magical.
When Thunderclease tried to grab the staff, he once again was blasted by a sonic spell trap. He was able to hold on to the staff while the rest of the group was investigating the corpse. Then a minute later the spell on the staff reset and hit Thunderclease again. And then once more before he placed the staff back on the pedestal.
The group's investigation of the determined that it was an aasimar who died of old age. So taking a chance, Dugan grabbed the staff, with no ill effects.
The group rested in this room and moved on after paying respects to the aasimar.
Room E21: The Hell's Swarm. The group heard some loud angry buzzing sounds coming from the door to this room. The group decided to move on, until the DM made some comment about the group whining about no real combat and then running everytime they found something to fight. Well that did the trick and was nearly a TPK.
This combat lasted probably 7 or 8 rounds, and forced the group to use nearly every resource they had to fight it.
Shortly after the combat began, the DM realized that there was no way the party would survive this combat. Even if they ran, someone would have to be sacrificed.
Here is the critter:
Hellwasp Swarm: CR8, 12d10+27 (90hp), Init +10, Speed 40', AC20/20/14, Attack +12 (swarm), damage (3d6+poison) + swarm, Damage reduction 10/magic, darkvision 60', hive mind, swarm traits
Modifications: changed CR to 6, removed: immunity to weapon damage, nausea, fire resistance 10
Swarm traits mean that if the swarm starts its turn in the same square as someone, it automatically does damage.
Even with all the changes, Dugan was put into negative hp, Thunderclease was put into negative hp, and both Krieg and Zorak used nearly every single offensive spell at their disposal (all Dalron could do was to pull unconscious party members from the swarm). But eventually they were able to defeat it.
More next week :)
