Rappan Athuk #8 - The Alternates

This session was another 2 player only game, Aaron and Justin, because missing a D&D game on Good Friday would be horrible family & social faux pas for the Catholics in our group.

Therefore only we heathens and Protestants played.

We’re starting to discuss how we’re going to deal with 4E. The books are due out in a little over 2 months, so it’s time to start planning who’s going to run it and when we’re going to start playing it. I have some money set aside for the PHB, DMG, and MM1, but not everyone in the group may have the money immediately.

But anyway…

To make sure that we had a TPK, I went ahead and told the two of them to go ahead and make a second PC.

Justin brought in Squee, (another) deep halfling sorcerer/favored soul of Ehlonna.

Aaron brought back a previous PC who was killed on his first night - Dargo, a scout/sorcerer.
Aaron: “Let’s hope he’s not a 1-night character again.”

On this evening we found out how much rougher the new crit rules can be. When a normal weapon hits it’s no big deal, but when a big weapon or spell hits it leaves a scar.

An ogre’s great club goes from 2d8+7 (average 16) to an automatic 23.
A sorcerer’s Scorching Ray goes from 4d6 (average 14) to an automatic 24.

Granted, using the normal 3E crit rules can cause a lot more damage, it happens a lot less often thanks to the required confirmation rule. Therefore I think the new rule increases average damage because it happens more often.

The proof for the above conclusion was determined during this session, when the party had a good beating on.

We stopped last session with the party of 2 PC’s, Spotted Dragon (Spot) and Gehei (GI), having just run away from the ogre boss.

Lo and behold they’re about to climb back to level 1 of the dungeon when they meet two more adventurer’s with the familiar “PC stamp” are about to descend those same stairs.

Grouped together we have four level 4-5 PC’s ready to take on the remainder of this level. First on their list is the ogre leader.

Well it wasn’t going to be that easy. Ambro, the ogre leader, may not be an astrophysicist, but he’s learned a thing or two about adventurers; if you don’t kill them, they’ll come back.

So while the party was healing and buffing up, he grabbed his last available ogre and they set up an ambush.

When I rolled for a couple of wererats for a random encounter, I decided that 2 wererats would get slaughtered by the party, but if I added them to Ambro’s ambush it could make the fight a bit more interesting.

Without realizing it, the party was surrounded when the fight started.
Ambro was in his room, waiting.
Ogre buddy was in the “broom closet” across the hall, a little to the west.
Both wererats were in the “coffin supplies” room across the hall, a little to the east.

Round 1:
Ambro attacks GI (and hurts him nicely) while shouting a battle cry. The party does not realize that the battle cry is the signal.
Squee, Spot, GI, and Dargo use melee attacks and Scorching Ray spells to deal nearly 60 damage in that one round.
Obviously they’re feeling pretty happy right now.

Round 2:
Squee hears the door behind him open a little, but entirely. The ogre behind is just peeking at the moment.
Ambro attacks GI twice, hitting for 21 damage and then critting for an automatic 28. GI is still standing, but in very bad shape and can’t take another hit.
Wererat #1 opens the door. Dargo is right next to it, but doesn’t hear or see it.
Squee heals GI enough to take one more hit from Ambro, but not two.
Wererat #2 attacks the unsuspecting Dargo, but misses.
The party realizes they’re surrounded now and discuss retreating, but always seem to “wait one more round”
Spot uses his monk flurry of blows and stunning attack on Ambro. Ambro is stunned, hit by both of Spot’s attacks, hit by GI’s attack, and then finally killed by Dargo’s Scorching Ray (who gets a skirmish bonus to damage thanks to him running away from the wererats).

Round 3:
The ogre buddy throws open the door, swing at GI and misses.
Both wererats go after Spot and one hits. Spot fails two Fort saves, with no obvious effects like poison. He’s not feeling to hopeful at that point.
Spot flurries back at the wererat who hit him, hitting twice, but only deals 4 total damage. That damage resistance 10 to non-silver attacks sucks for him.

The rest of the combat is funny to the DM, as I know the wererats only have a dozen hit points but the group is very concerned about the DR10/silver

Eventually the party wins, but after about 6 more rounds.

Spot’s wounds don’t look good and Justin makes note that the campaign has been running for about 25 game days. He’s a bit concerned that the full moon might be in a few days.

The mention of possible treasure breaks him out of it as the party finds around 3500gp worth of stuff, including a keg of wine, a bottle of brandy, and bottle labeled with a crude skull (but it does radiate magic).

While searching the ogres’ lair they find a large room with two exits, one tunnel leading nearly straight up, and one tunnel leading straight down, and both are big enough for a normal sized person.

Dargo and Squee both try to climb up the 30-40’ needed, bringing a rope with them, but a natural 1 for them both tells them that they’re going to try later. Maybe after they level and put some points into climb.

No one wanted to climb down.

Since the fight with Ambro was a bit rough, the party decides to hole up in the broom closet and waste away 20 hours of time. They figure the brandy and wine will help a little with that though.

Well the module has me roll for random encounters quite often. Even if I ignore the ogre and wererat results, there are still a lot of encounter potentials.

Three hours into their resting, and not yet into their alcohol, the party hears something out in the hallway speaking in a crude language.

They open the door to see a goblin scout searching the ogre, with the rest of the goblins just around the corner.

The goblin angrily declares the find to be his. The party disagrees.

Six dead, one captured, and eleven running goblins later, the party wins.

They’ve got themselves a tied up goblin now, and promise him freedom for some information.

When it comes to surviving, goblins are savants, so this goblin talked, answering every question the party had for him as best he could. But he was still a goblin though.

- There’s a goblin city either named Gresnek, or the goblin king’s name is Gresnek.
- You get to the goblin city by going through the right tunnels and sneaking passed a hydra, a temple of Orcus, and some blood-sucking things.
- The goblin city is near to where some dark elves live
- Surviving in this place requires being smart. Sometimes you have to work with others and sometimes you have to work for others who are stronger.

The party admits to the goblin that they overreacted, and ask for a truce while giving him a platinum piece, a ration, and untying him.

They try to hire him as a guide for 1gp a day. He demands 1pp an hour. Anything less isn’t worth it to him because adventurers are nothing but trouble, which goes against surviving.

The goblin runs after his run fellows when the party lets him go.

After that they spike the door to the room closed, and get into the brandy and wine. They don’t even set up guards.

I should have added some shadows, but I wasn’t up for killing them just yet.

Several times throughout their 17 hours of rest, they heard some thing or things trying to open the door. Occasionally they could hear the rattling of bones or pained moaning.

The next morning was a minor hangover and no brandy left.

Note: hangover = -2 to attack rolls and skills, but you don’t drop until you’re at -5hp.

They discussed their options, but without a good map of the area, they had to work by memory and that left them the ghoul/ghast room and the stairs down.

They head to the ghoul/ghast room, finding a new door on the way. When Dargo listens to the door he hears dozens and dozens of high-pitched squeaks. Since they don’t want to face rat swarms, they leave the door be.

Squee chose Remove Paralysis as a 2nd level spell rather than Lesser Restoration. This decision turned out to be a good one for this fight anyway.

As with the last time they took on the undead in this room, they set up a Conga-line-of-death out in the main hallway.

The party makes some noise, making sure they are heard.

The ambient noise seems to quiet down and after a minute they see the shadow of the door at the end of the bone covered hallway opens, then a stream of ghouls charge out.

The party proceeds to tear through each and every ghoul and ghast that charges at them.

Only Spot is paralyzed, but that is quickly removed with Squee’s Remove Paralysis Spell.

What’s the difference between this time and last? The players acted a bit more intelligently, and they didn’t have a catastrophic series of bad rolls that cascaded into a huge pile of failure.

With every last one of the undead put to rest, they party searched the star-shaped room the ghouls and ghasts “lived” in.

They found a small hoard of gold, silver, and copper, several usable suits of armor (mostly chainmail) and shields, several masterwork weapons, even some magical arrows and other magical weapons, and finally three potions.

Added to that pile would be any equipment the original Dargo and Bash had before they died in the last time the party took this room on.

Rappan Athuk #7.5 - The White Death

My wife called me a freak, kind of.

Whenever a measurable amount of snow (an inch is sufficient) is reported to be on its way to this city, screams of “the white death is coming!” can be heard from everywhere.

Note: white death = snow in Cincinnati, while it probably means something entirely different in areas where the white man has come to “help”. I can’t help but wonder why missionaries aren’t killed on sight anymore. Or I’ve watched the Marklar episode of South Park one too many times.

But anyway, I don’t see 3” of snow as doom. It’s just another obstacle on the roadways (ice is another story). Therefore my wife has called me a freak, because I’m not like everyone else around here.

Dale is like everyone else around here when it comes to snow. He called off on game night the day before, when the “blizzard” was just a chance. He was probably right to though, his driving on a good weather day is scary enough.

Brian wasn’t going to make it anyway; he had work-related things to take care of.

Joy was out of town and somewhere in Texas. I assume she called her dad and teased him about how warm and sunny it was.

I was in no mood to cancel again, for the same reason. Justin had the same thought. Since we currently play at Aaron’s, so it’s not like it’s big problem for him.

So just the three of us played a toned down game session, hence the Session #7.5.

Both players had new characters to bring in, which made it easy for the DM to get the new PC’s involved.

Justin’s new PC – Spotted Dragon (nickname Spot), a half-orc fighter/monk

Aaron’s new PC – Gehei (nickname GI), a human knight/favored soul (of Nerull)

For this campaign I am sick and tired of killing PC’s, and so is Aaron since half of them are his PC’s. So I’ve decided to give new PC’s a little extra equipment than I have been; which was 200gp and maybe 600gp in bonus items like scrolls, masterwork items, potions, and wands.

I will probably keep doing this until the PC’s no longer need it, or when the players start treating each new PC as a potential source of money and equipment rather than a replacement PC.

Gehei had been given a diary which roughly stated the same things Aaron knew from the dungeon at the time. In other words, Aaron and Justin were able to metagame without feeling like they were cheating.

This allowed the game to get going with no need for introductions.

There was only one random encounter, a pair of giant bees, along the way. The bees were no match for these two.

Inside, thanks to the diary, they made it through the mausoleum and the half the first level of Rappan Athuk before half a dozen ghouls charged them.

The two of them cut down the ghouls with very little difficulty.

All was looking good so far.

They made it to level 2 and took the same route that Saver and Javier did last session, clockwise around the level. Spot and GI went on a tour of the mad-barbarian’s room, and the store rooms.

When the two of them came across 3 dead ogres in a store room, a pair of ogres caught them red-handed.

Oddly enough, they had a much rougher time dealing with these two ogres than Saver and Javier did with their three, but they did still win.

Continuing their path around the level, they found a room that Javier and Saver did not get to just yet; another pair of ogres in a room barely big enough to fit them.

Then there was the tiny detail that the leader of the ogres had a few levels in fighter.

Add another issue for the players, they couldn’t roll for squat but the DM started rolling good.

Due to small room size, the leader-ogre didn’t even get into melee; he just threw a few javelins at the two PC’s while the normal ogre beat the living daylights out of Spot and GI.

After they dropped the peon ogre, they ran for it.

The leader ogre followed, but couldn’t catch up, so the party got away.

After that we stopped. The two PC’s couldn’t get into another fight without having to make another couple of new PC’s, so even though it was an earlier stopping time than usual, I called it a night.

Rappan Athuk #7 - The Power of Web Compels You

Ernest Gary Gygax
R.I.P. 1938-2008

Let’s just jump right into the game shall we?

We last stopped with Javier (Brian’s PC) & Saver (Dale’s PC) alone on the second level of Rappan Athuk with Javier about to search a dead body.

(We had to stop because it took me forever to find the entry for the Rot Grub monster in the module’s appendix. Rappan Athuk is an awesome dungeon, but its organization of information leaves much to be desired.)

Javier was about to search the corpse when he spotted some 3” long maggot-like creatures crawling towards his hand. Taking no chances, the two PC’s stepped back and killed the grubs with Javier’s mace and Saver’s spells.

It was a good thing too because rot grubs are particularly nasty in this module, pretty much just as nasty as they were in AD&D 1E. Had Javier failed his spot check, they would have automatically dug into his skin and started burrowing to his heart, dealing constitution damage every round until he died and saving throws only delay the damage by a round.

Saver dumped some oil on the body and torched it (and they killed more grubs fleeing the body). After that, they very warily “rescue” 120gp from the body.

Then they notice the flames don’t seem to be warming to them too much, and see a patch of brown mold on the ceiling growing as it leeches heat from the fire. After they take some subdual cold damage, they leave the room and head back to the entry room of this level.

There they meet up with Slam (Justin’s PC) and Dargo (Aaron’s new PC – a deep halfling sorcerer/scout) and resume adventuring together.

(I sure am glad I’m not worrying about how adventurers meet up in this campaign. I’d be out of ideas already.)

There are two exits from this room the party has not yet taken, one to the north and one to the south. Since the north locked door has an axe embedded in it, they head through the south locked door.

After walking about 60’, they come to a T-intersection. To the east, the passage continues out of sight. To the west, the passage dead-ends after 20’ with no door.

Since dead-ends scream secret door, their new scout searches the area and finds a secret and the familiar smell of decaying flesh coming from behind it.

(I was really hoping they didn’t find this room so quickly, but oh well.)

After setting themselves up in a defensive formation, Dargo opens the door to find a natural passageway whose floor is cluttered with broken bones, some with rotting flesh still attached.

After 20’ the passageway ends in a door, so Slam and Dargo move up, search the door and open it when they find no traps and hear no noise.

In the star-shaped room are nearly 3 dozen ghouls and ghasts, and initiative is immediately rolled with no surprise for either side.

Dargo and Slam immediately back up into the main hallway where the party can set up a Conga-line-of-death, giving the ghouls rushing through it limited targeting while everyone in the party can attack if needed.

Javier hurts one ghoul, and then Slam kills it and cleaves to the next one hanging out in the mouth of the passageway. All this time Dargo and Saver are delaying actions with spells to blast any that aren’t dropped in order to hopefully prevent the front line from being overwhelmed.

This works for several rounds until the first ghast come through. The ghasts have better a higher AC, more hit points, and a higher paralysis DC. A moment after the first ghast paralyzes Slam; Javier botches a saving throw and is paralyzed by a ghoul. This allows other ghouls to get into the room and go after Saver and Dargo.

Saver then casts Web, filling the passageway up to prevent more ghouls from coming into the hallway. Amazingly the two of them hold off, and kill some of the three ghouls and one ghast for a few rounds before the paralysis wore off their front-line and mopped up the remaining two ghouls.

While the party spent a few moments healing up and prepped a new plan, the undead did the same. Take a look at the intelligence and wisdom of ghasts (14 and 13). Those buggers are smart enough to plan and counter-plan. Some of them have fought adventurers for awhile. Heck most of them probably were adventurers.

The ghouls trapped in the Web had fled back into their star-shaped lair, so after Saver dismisses the web, Slam and Dargo inch their way down the passageway.

They hoped to lure the ghouls back to the conga-line-of-death, but instead they were lured in themselves.

The ghouls never moved to attack either Dargo or Slam until the two of them moved about 10’ into the room. Then the undead swarmed them.

Even though the DM rolls poorly throughout the evening, the party’s luck didn’t do so well for this fight.

Within moments Dargo and Slam were paralyzed, surrounded, and then torn to shreds. Javier and Saver attempt to save them, but that is quickly seen as impossible.

Javier and Saver are quickly chased by ghouls back to the entry room of this level. Saver casts Web once again to block their pursuit long enough for them to get back to that room and lock the door.

End results:
13 of 21 ghouls dead, 2 to be replaced
2 of 6 ghasts dead, none to be replaced
2 PC’s dead, both to be replaced

Note: Aaron and Justin took so long to make their new characters that they didn’t get to make an appearance this night. It’s not like I didn’t warn them to have a lot of backup PC’s.

Once again, Javier and Saver are alone in the dungeon and have no way to get out. But that doesn’t stop them from trying.

They snuck all the way back to the mausoleum and tried to pry open the large green-stone mausoleum doors with a crowbar. That obviously failed, but they did notice that the small scratch the crowbar put in the door regenerated quickly.

Unless they figure out how to open those doors, or one of them is able to shrink enough to crawl out of the rat holes, those two are stuck until someone else opens the door.

Next on their agenda: find a place to rest. First they search for the secret door on level 1 to the room they slept in there. Not only could they not find the door, Dungie came wandering down the hallway and ran the two of them back down to level 2.

They have no option but to try the locked northern door with the axe embedded in it.

The hallway leads north about 30’ before it T’s to the east and west. To the east the hallway goes out of sight, but with doors along the corridor. To the west the hallway opens up after 30’.

(Once again the DM shudders. I had hoped they wouldn’t go this way either.)

This room has no door and reeks of body odor. Inside is the floor is strewn with straw and various animal pelts.

Oh and then there’s the crazed human barbarian with more muscles the most juiced up steroid freak. The barbarian yells out his rage and combat begins.

Saver wins initiative and Webs the part of the room the barbarian is in, who fails to save against it. The next round Saver follows it up with a Sound Burst, stunning the barbarian for a round.

Over the next few rounds while the Barbarian is pulling his way through the webs straight to the party the two PC’s nickel and dime him with arrows, rocks from sling stones, and the last charges from Saver’s Wand of Magic Missiles.

By the time the barbarian finally makes it through the webs, his rage has ended. At that point he effectively has a strength score of around 14, about half his original strength.

A couple of rounds later he is killed by Javier, having only dealt 9 points of damage when he could have done an average of 20 per round.

The two PC’s do what comes naturally, they loot the place. They find several arcane scrolls, a magic greatclub, some usable pelts and other treasure totaling over 500gp, and three ceramic jars holding green slime. They take it all.

Everyone at the table was surprised they had beaten him. Perhaps the power of gestalt PC’s is finally kicking in.

Then they started quibbling over the magic greatclub

Aaron: “Hmmm. My next character will be using a great club.”
Brian: “No my next character will be wielding a greatclub.”
Sean: “Now now, you’ll all get a chance to use that greatclub.”

After using the last of their healing spells they resumed searching for a place to rest (and now they really needed it).

The first few rooms were interesting, but not usable as a place of rest.

The first room was locked, but the barbarian had a key to it. Inside were over a dozen starving dire rats that fled once the door was opened. It’s where the barbarian kept his food.

The next room they had to break open the door, and it stank of rotted meat and another exit that lead down to another level.

The room after that was also locked. Once they broke into it, they found a room full of destroyed boxes and other containers. Since the room didn’t stink, they barricaded the door and attempted to rest the night.

Amazingly they were able to rest until morning (random encounters didn’t pan out) and soon got back on their way.

They continued east down the hallway, and then south when it turned.

The first door they came across was a very nicely crafted one of ebony wood with gold bindings and runes that make them feel uneasy.

Having no rogues they couldn’t search the door for traps. As a reward Javier was stuck with a poison needle when he tried, and failed, to open the door, and took a point of Str damage (and another 4 later when they forgot about the poison).

Properly disconcerted they skipped that door for now.

A little further south and the hallway turned west, leading presumably where the ghoul/ghast lair was.

They searched a couple more storage rooms along the hallway. One room was full of debris that had been swept into a tidy pile by a magical broom (which they took) and another room was full of materials for building coffins.

In a fit of metagaming (and the need for healing and stat restoration) the two of them decided to head back to the storage room they had just left, hoping to give Aaron and Justin enough time to finish their characters. It wasn’t.

As a reward for trying to rest they got a random encounter.

A trio of ogres had been walking the hallway when one of them noticed that the door to the storage room had been damage.

They pushed open the barricade on the door and saw some “food” in the shape of Javier and Saver.

Once again, Saver won initiative and cast Web in the hallway. The combined effects of Web and the ogres trying to fit into a medium-sized doorway put the ogres at a tactical disadvantage.

Javier was still low on hit points, so he was first to have to deal with the new hp rules when the ogre in the doorway was able to smash him (even through the webs).

But somehow Saver was able to heal Javier up and the two of them took down one ogre, then a second, and then the last one. Each one was taken down one at a time with spells and a mace.

The two PC’s once again looted bodies and we stopped there.