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.
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.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 10:54 PM
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