Rappan Athuk #6 - The Lair of Dungie
Now that WotC is actually releasing more information about the rules of 4E, I’m once again getting hopeful.
There has been mention that it’s possible to have entire parties without spellcasters being required. That is something the game has long needed. The crutch of needing a cleric has long been a problem for D&D, especially for 3E.
Dale has told us a story of a campaign he once played in where the only healing they had came from a 2E paladin. That paladin was treated like royalty by the group.
If that happens in our group, we just make a rule – first player to lose a PC makes a healer.
Then there are the changes to the death and dying rules, which I believe we’ll be adding at our next session.
The rules are simple enough, and they’ve listed modifications for use with 3E.
If you’re knocked to 0 hp or less, you’re unconscious and dying.
Each round after that on your action, roll 1d20.
20 = you’re regained a third of your hp and are ready to fight some more.
11-19 = you stabilize and are done rolling, unconscious but stable.
1-10 = you get slightly worse. If you get three of these, you’re dead.
If at any point in time someone heals you, you heal as if you were at 0hp, not -7hp or something.
That is a great improvement to the mechanics at higher level when you can be smacked for more than 20 points of damage in a single hit. There are plenty of times where being at unconscious at -1hp is much more desirable to being left standing with 1hp.
So my rating for D&D this week is:
Crunch = +3. I’m getting very hopeful for this new edition’s setup to make things both simple yet elegant enough to handle most situations.
Fluff = -3. I’ve seen no change to the debacle that is the new Forgotten Realms, but being able to run Dragonlance in pre-cataclysm is much more possible without the need for a healing cleric any longer.
So the net is a 0. Another new high.
As for the game session, it was a bit disappointing.
I killed 3 PC’s that night, only one can I solely attribute to players.
There was no Justin or Joy this week. So their dwarf and elf PC’s (Bash & Saeri) got a room together at the inn and we shall tease them mercilessly about what went on in that room.
Last week the party had very little money and was not willing to waste it at the inn by getting in a bidding war for a room.
So at a late time of 5pm, the party left the village for the ruined tower to sleep there.
But, as expected, they had a random encounter.
Once again a pair of forest trolls jumped down out of the trees and attacked the party.
And once again, the party took a great deal of poison damage, much more than the last time they fought this species of troll.
The DM and the party each made some mistakes for this encounter.
The DM’s mistake was realizing too late that these trolls are a tough CR4 or an easy CR5. They are listed as CR4, but their constitution poison makes them tougher than they appear.
The party’s mistake was not concentrating all of their attacks on one target. That is something you must do when dealing with regenerating or fast healing creatures.
The end result - the trolls were defeated, but everyone in the party had been poisoned multiple times.
Lars died when his constitution dropped to 0.
Mouse had a positive con and was stable, but had -8 hit points when the poison fully kicked in.
Saver had a similar problem, but was only at -3hp.
I actually had to look up the unattended rules in the death and dying section. The results, every hour the PC’s had a 10% chance to stabilize to 0hp, failure meant they lost another hit point.
Now Dale claims that he would had just considered this a TPK and started off with a new group. But I thought that would be a waste. And how often do you have a fight were everyone dies or falls unconscious on both sides? I looked at this as an opportunity.
One hour went by with no random encounter and a hit point lost by Mouse and Saver.
A second hour went by with another hit point lost by each, with Mouse dying as a result. A random encounter is rolled, and now the opportunity comes in.
Ryan and Javier (Aaron’s and Brian’s new PC’s – a half-orc fighter/rogue & an elf fighter/favored soul) were on their way through the woods to find the fabled dungeon of Rappan Athuk until they ran across a group of bugbears.
Luckily they hadn’t been seen and used the opportunity to take out a few bugbears. When one or two would break away from the main group of bugbears, Ryan and Javier would follow them and take them down.
They were following a group of four this time around when the situation to turned from a game of sport to a rescue operation.
The bugbears had happened across a field of battle with 5 bodies, 3 human and 2 troll.
Neither Ryan nor Javier could make out what was being said, but it was obvious it had something to do with dinner and loot until one of the bugbears noticed that Saver wasn’t dead (yet).
Two of the bugbears scouted in different directions to search for something (no one spoke the language) and the party saw that as their sign.
When Javier cast Magic Weapon on Ryan’s guisarme, one of the bugbear’s keen ears heard the words of the spell and combat began.
The combat was difficult and took a while, but the two PC’s took the bugbears down with no small thanks to half of the bugbears being 3 rounds away.
While Ryan looted the bugbears, Javier helped Saver. After some chatting they decided to join up and head to town.
Read that as: “They saw the PC stamp on each other’s forehead, so they joined up.”
It was 10pm at least by this time, and none of the PC’s had tracking. Saver barely had an idea of where the tower was (to the east) or where the village was (to the north). He had always had people do that for him.
The roughly followed the trail to the north, but quickly got lost. What should have been a 4 hour long trek at the most turned out to be an 8 hour random walk through the forest (all while carting Saver’s two dead comrades).
Twice did they come across a grove of grey trees that whispered to them, and not in a good way and once they had heard the pained sounds of a large bird. Each time they either paused or backed away.
Eventually they did find a road, and were going to rest, but a patrol came along and escorted the exhausted group to town.
They spent the next two days resting up and improving their equipment with the treasure they got off the bugbears and the previous 2 PC’s, who were both given a proper burning by Saver.
Trake, the weaponsmith, was quite sad to hear of Vars’s death when they sold back to him the bastard sword he had just forged.
After two days and Saver buying a new map to the dungeon, the party once again left for Rappan Athuk.
Somehow they made it all the way to the dungeon with no encounters.
With only a party of 3 they decided upon finishing searching the first level of the dungeon while avoiding Dungie.
First things first, Saver had to fill the new PC’s in on what has been found so far. Unfortunately for everyone, Dale forgot to mention some details.
They made it through the graveyard and mausoleum safely, and even found the partially-cleared rubble room with nothing bad happening to them.
Until they got to some of the traps in that series of rooms, each with a trap that Saver (Dale) partially remembered some of them, but he wasn’t paying attention very closely the first time around. So when they came across the 20’ deep pit trap, Ryan fell into it, with a ghast there to cushion his fall.
Then they were at the T-intersection that leads south, to the rat cavern, and north, to unexplored areas and the probable home of Dungie.
Being semi-brave adventurers, north was their direction of choice.
Shortly up the hallway, 50’ or so, the came to an open doorway with some arrows sticking out of the frame and a badly corroded humanoid skeleton.
Beyond the doorway was a cavernous room with just a single table and chair. With extreme caution they checked room out, finding some vials in the table’s drawer, and an open secret door.
With just as much caution they checked out the area behind the secret door finding another hallway that led to another natural cavern.
This cavern was used solely as a latrine, with several holes lined up in the ground and an actual toilet on top of one of them.
They turned tail and got out of there, feeling that nothing good can come from searching this place. I would guess they believed Dungie to be waiting in there for them.
As of that moment, as far as they know they had searched out the entire first level of the dungeon except what is behind the rubble in the rubble room. So they headed there and got back to digging.
They believed that the pit trap would keep Dungie away. They were horribly wrong.
After a couple of hours of digging Dungie showed up and blocked their only exit.
They thought that maybe Dungie was just here to watch so they kept on working. (I have no idea why they would think that.)
The next reality show on Fox – When Excrementals Attack.
Dungie moved into the room, giving an opening for them to get past him. But to do so, one of them would have to take an attack of opportunity. Ryan volunteered for that job.
Shortly after Javier and Saver made it out of the room and escaped down the hallway, but Ryan did not. He was successfully grabbed by Dungie and was not able to break free. Eventually he was strangled or suffocated to death. I don’t think anyone wants to know the specifics.
Thus Aaron’s second PC died for the night.
Saver and Javier chose to go down to the next level of the dungeon rather than play an infinite game of cat and mouse with Dungie.
At the bottom of the stairs to level 2 they found piles of torn apart rat skins and an intense enough smell of ogre urine that could actually overpower the stench floating down from the level above.
There were also 4 locked doors, 1 to the north, 1 to the south, and 2 to the east. The north door had a key sitting in the lock and a handaxe embedded in it. They grabbed the key and chose to explore beyond the northernmost east door.
That path led them to a door with a large spiked ball, rolling into this room from a hallway to the south, then the ball would roll south again under its own power, only to repeat this shortly thereafter.
The two of them smelled a killer trap, so they returned to the first room and chose the southernmost east door.
That door’s path led them to a room at the other end of the spiked ball’s run. The room also contained a stone coffin and a decaying corpse next to it.
Javier stopped to check the corpse.
It was late and time to stop before we could start the combat resulting from that.
In two weeks tune in for Javier’s probable death.
There has been mention that it’s possible to have entire parties without spellcasters being required. That is something the game has long needed. The crutch of needing a cleric has long been a problem for D&D, especially for 3E.
Dale has told us a story of a campaign he once played in where the only healing they had came from a 2E paladin. That paladin was treated like royalty by the group.
If that happens in our group, we just make a rule – first player to lose a PC makes a healer.
Then there are the changes to the death and dying rules, which I believe we’ll be adding at our next session.
The rules are simple enough, and they’ve listed modifications for use with 3E.
If you’re knocked to 0 hp or less, you’re unconscious and dying.
Each round after that on your action, roll 1d20.
20 = you’re regained a third of your hp and are ready to fight some more.
11-19 = you stabilize and are done rolling, unconscious but stable.
1-10 = you get slightly worse. If you get three of these, you’re dead.
If at any point in time someone heals you, you heal as if you were at 0hp, not -7hp or something.
That is a great improvement to the mechanics at higher level when you can be smacked for more than 20 points of damage in a single hit. There are plenty of times where being at unconscious at -1hp is much more desirable to being left standing with 1hp.
So my rating for D&D this week is:
Crunch = +3. I’m getting very hopeful for this new edition’s setup to make things both simple yet elegant enough to handle most situations.
Fluff = -3. I’ve seen no change to the debacle that is the new Forgotten Realms, but being able to run Dragonlance in pre-cataclysm is much more possible without the need for a healing cleric any longer.
So the net is a 0. Another new high.
As for the game session, it was a bit disappointing.
I killed 3 PC’s that night, only one can I solely attribute to players.
There was no Justin or Joy this week. So their dwarf and elf PC’s (Bash & Saeri) got a room together at the inn and we shall tease them mercilessly about what went on in that room.
Last week the party had very little money and was not willing to waste it at the inn by getting in a bidding war for a room.
So at a late time of 5pm, the party left the village for the ruined tower to sleep there.
But, as expected, they had a random encounter.
Once again a pair of forest trolls jumped down out of the trees and attacked the party.
And once again, the party took a great deal of poison damage, much more than the last time they fought this species of troll.
The DM and the party each made some mistakes for this encounter.
The DM’s mistake was realizing too late that these trolls are a tough CR4 or an easy CR5. They are listed as CR4, but their constitution poison makes them tougher than they appear.
The party’s mistake was not concentrating all of their attacks on one target. That is something you must do when dealing with regenerating or fast healing creatures.
The end result - the trolls were defeated, but everyone in the party had been poisoned multiple times.
Lars died when his constitution dropped to 0.
Mouse had a positive con and was stable, but had -8 hit points when the poison fully kicked in.
Saver had a similar problem, but was only at -3hp.
I actually had to look up the unattended rules in the death and dying section. The results, every hour the PC’s had a 10% chance to stabilize to 0hp, failure meant they lost another hit point.
Now Dale claims that he would had just considered this a TPK and started off with a new group. But I thought that would be a waste. And how often do you have a fight were everyone dies or falls unconscious on both sides? I looked at this as an opportunity.
One hour went by with no random encounter and a hit point lost by Mouse and Saver.
A second hour went by with another hit point lost by each, with Mouse dying as a result. A random encounter is rolled, and now the opportunity comes in.
Ryan and Javier (Aaron’s and Brian’s new PC’s – a half-orc fighter/rogue & an elf fighter/favored soul) were on their way through the woods to find the fabled dungeon of Rappan Athuk until they ran across a group of bugbears.
Luckily they hadn’t been seen and used the opportunity to take out a few bugbears. When one or two would break away from the main group of bugbears, Ryan and Javier would follow them and take them down.
They were following a group of four this time around when the situation to turned from a game of sport to a rescue operation.
The bugbears had happened across a field of battle with 5 bodies, 3 human and 2 troll.
Neither Ryan nor Javier could make out what was being said, but it was obvious it had something to do with dinner and loot until one of the bugbears noticed that Saver wasn’t dead (yet).
Two of the bugbears scouted in different directions to search for something (no one spoke the language) and the party saw that as their sign.
When Javier cast Magic Weapon on Ryan’s guisarme, one of the bugbear’s keen ears heard the words of the spell and combat began.
The combat was difficult and took a while, but the two PC’s took the bugbears down with no small thanks to half of the bugbears being 3 rounds away.
While Ryan looted the bugbears, Javier helped Saver. After some chatting they decided to join up and head to town.
Read that as: “They saw the PC stamp on each other’s forehead, so they joined up.”
It was 10pm at least by this time, and none of the PC’s had tracking. Saver barely had an idea of where the tower was (to the east) or where the village was (to the north). He had always had people do that for him.
The roughly followed the trail to the north, but quickly got lost. What should have been a 4 hour long trek at the most turned out to be an 8 hour random walk through the forest (all while carting Saver’s two dead comrades).
Twice did they come across a grove of grey trees that whispered to them, and not in a good way and once they had heard the pained sounds of a large bird. Each time they either paused or backed away.
Eventually they did find a road, and were going to rest, but a patrol came along and escorted the exhausted group to town.
They spent the next two days resting up and improving their equipment with the treasure they got off the bugbears and the previous 2 PC’s, who were both given a proper burning by Saver.
Trake, the weaponsmith, was quite sad to hear of Vars’s death when they sold back to him the bastard sword he had just forged.
After two days and Saver buying a new map to the dungeon, the party once again left for Rappan Athuk.
Somehow they made it all the way to the dungeon with no encounters.
With only a party of 3 they decided upon finishing searching the first level of the dungeon while avoiding Dungie.
First things first, Saver had to fill the new PC’s in on what has been found so far. Unfortunately for everyone, Dale forgot to mention some details.
They made it through the graveyard and mausoleum safely, and even found the partially-cleared rubble room with nothing bad happening to them.
Until they got to some of the traps in that series of rooms, each with a trap that Saver (Dale) partially remembered some of them, but he wasn’t paying attention very closely the first time around. So when they came across the 20’ deep pit trap, Ryan fell into it, with a ghast there to cushion his fall.
Then they were at the T-intersection that leads south, to the rat cavern, and north, to unexplored areas and the probable home of Dungie.
Being semi-brave adventurers, north was their direction of choice.
Shortly up the hallway, 50’ or so, the came to an open doorway with some arrows sticking out of the frame and a badly corroded humanoid skeleton.
Beyond the doorway was a cavernous room with just a single table and chair. With extreme caution they checked room out, finding some vials in the table’s drawer, and an open secret door.
With just as much caution they checked out the area behind the secret door finding another hallway that led to another natural cavern.
This cavern was used solely as a latrine, with several holes lined up in the ground and an actual toilet on top of one of them.
They turned tail and got out of there, feeling that nothing good can come from searching this place. I would guess they believed Dungie to be waiting in there for them.
As of that moment, as far as they know they had searched out the entire first level of the dungeon except what is behind the rubble in the rubble room. So they headed there and got back to digging.
They believed that the pit trap would keep Dungie away. They were horribly wrong.
After a couple of hours of digging Dungie showed up and blocked their only exit.
They thought that maybe Dungie was just here to watch so they kept on working. (I have no idea why they would think that.)
The next reality show on Fox – When Excrementals Attack.
Dungie moved into the room, giving an opening for them to get past him. But to do so, one of them would have to take an attack of opportunity. Ryan volunteered for that job.
Shortly after Javier and Saver made it out of the room and escaped down the hallway, but Ryan did not. He was successfully grabbed by Dungie and was not able to break free. Eventually he was strangled or suffocated to death. I don’t think anyone wants to know the specifics.
Thus Aaron’s second PC died for the night.
Saver and Javier chose to go down to the next level of the dungeon rather than play an infinite game of cat and mouse with Dungie.
At the bottom of the stairs to level 2 they found piles of torn apart rat skins and an intense enough smell of ogre urine that could actually overpower the stench floating down from the level above.
There were also 4 locked doors, 1 to the north, 1 to the south, and 2 to the east. The north door had a key sitting in the lock and a handaxe embedded in it. They grabbed the key and chose to explore beyond the northernmost east door.
That path led them to a door with a large spiked ball, rolling into this room from a hallway to the south, then the ball would roll south again under its own power, only to repeat this shortly thereafter.
The two of them smelled a killer trap, so they returned to the first room and chose the southernmost east door.
That door’s path led them to a room at the other end of the spiked ball’s run. The room also contained a stone coffin and a decaying corpse next to it.
Javier stopped to check the corpse.
It was late and time to stop before we could start the combat resulting from that.
In two weeks tune in for Javier’s probable death.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 10:37 PM
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