DM Chronicles: Session 8, Hey! That’s actually fun! Part 2

See part 1 here.

When I described to Rocco the Rogue that his recon mission had turned sour and that he was now at the bottom of a pit surrounded by gnashing mandibles and bladed claws I found myself stumped.   I had put the player in trouble without giving him the benefit of a die roll against any of his skills or defense.  I had assumed that whatever score he would have rolled on his stealth skill, the monsters in the area, a brood of Kruthiks, would detect him with their tremorsense ability.

So before Stef (Rocco’s player) could react to my use of DM fiat to establish a dramatic scene (that’s what it was!  Honest!), I told him that he was surrounded with small tunnels that he could try to run into to get rid of the kruthiks.

He said he’d go for that and I told him that he lost them (without having to roll any dice) and managed to come out of a tunnel that lead somewhere in the cave, about 10 feet over the cave’s floor  away from the whole brood made up of 6 hatchlings, 3 adults and a large Hive Lord (of which I had a mini for, that thing looks great!).

With things stabilized on the Rogue’s front, I returned to the rest of the party. They got ready to go join the rogue who never came  back from its recon mission.  Players spent a long time trying to decide what to do with the wagons and the prisoners and decided to leave them where they were and go by foot, leaving the duergars tied up and gagged.

The PCs almost walked right into the Kruthik ambush, Rocco’s warning prevented a surprise round.  As had happened to Rocco, the cave’s floor opened under 3 of the PCs (Masaru, Takeo and Naquist).  This was done by the hatchlings burrowing underneath the group.

I ruled it as a 3X3 square 10′ deep pit trap (+10 vs Dex, 1d10 dmg).  Only Naquist (Elven cleric) fell into it and had to deal with all the hatchlings.

I had set up the fight on one of Paizo’s incredibly useful Flip Maps, in that case one featuring a large cave with a Chasm and a stone bridge. I Set the players near the water pool and put Rocco on the other side of the bridge .

So the fight started with the 6 PCs divided in 4 groups: Rocco alone on the other side of the Bridge with a Kruthik adult in the way, Bjerm (fighter), Masaru (Warlock) and Takeo (warlord) near the lake facing 2 adults and a Hive Lord, Naquist (Cleric) alone in the pit against 6 hatchling and Fizban (Wizard) cut off from the rest of the group by the open pit.

As can be guessed with such a setup, each player focused on the nearest threats.  It didn’t take long for the players to notice that the fighter and warlords were being torn to shreds while the other PCs were busy.  Seeing what I felt was a going to end in a PC death, I pointed out the tactical situation to the players and that maintaining the ‘3 groups fighting separately’ strategy would likely lead to PC deaths.

As it turns out, the fighter was savagely damaged on the next round, much more than the warlord could deal with.  That’s when players went into team work overdrive and things shifted back!   The Wizard had a cloak that allowed someone to teleport when damaged by an enemy.  He threw it on the cleric in the pit.  The cleric put it on and moved besides the hatchling (which damages anyone that ends its turn beside it) and promptly teleported outside of the pit and was able to heal the melee fighter on the following rounds.

(Awesome!)

During that time, Masaru went to help the rogue and dispatched the adult kruthik that was making his friend’s life miserable.

A short while later, the Hive lord died and the sole remaining Kruthik fled.  Hurray for teamwork!

Looking around the cave, they found a half buried statue of an apparently half-fey/half-Elemental humanoid bearing glowing disks at key point on its body (head, neck, arms, torso, etc).  An inscription on it (in proto Eladrin and Abyssal) said ‘give sacrifice to receive my bounty’.

After some experimentation, Bjerm took out his old +1 Delver’s Scale mail and put it on the statue. It started glowing and the armour became +2 (that a treasure trick given in Adventurer’s vault).  Players found the idea neat and it added some lore to our game about some past alliance between the fey and the forces of the elemental chaos.

It was 8h30 PM and already I could see that the group was tiring fast.  I checked if they wanted to go on and they all said that they were able to go on.  Good thing we did, as the energy level rose somewhat after that.

After recovering from that semi-successful reversed ambush, the PCs decided to chuck the wagon and leave the duergars to fend for themselves.  They walked on to the Grey dwarf forteress.

Said fortress consisted of three buildings spanning a 300′ deep chasm.  Upon arriving the PCs saw that anything else short of a full frontal assault on an orc guarded portcullis was too dangerous to attempt.

At this point, the players discussed their options. Being none too interested in going the ‘Hulk smash’ way, the players asked me if there could be a way back.

Now here’s the thing, the duergar hold did indeed feature a back entry.  One sitting only one encounter away from the hold’s boss.  However, the adventure doesn’t have a full map of Thunderspire labyrinth, but it does have a section about players exploring blindly.  So, inspired by the rules given in the adventure,  I told the players that we’d play a dungeoneering  skill roll to see if they would be able to navigate around the hold and look for an alternate way in.

We discussed about assisting and other skills that could be used.  In fact, players discussed long enough for Eric (Fizban’s player) to reach his breaking point and unleash his slumbering instigator.  While people were discussing, he picked up his dice, rolled and said “Look guys, stop arguing, I rolled a 24, we made it”

He he he!  Teamwork hath its limits.

So I described how they managed to find one path with some signs of wagon traffic leading to a huge 10′ iron portal.

Players:” Ha!  The way to the ambush was actually the way to that back entry!  So if we had proven our worth by defeating the Kruthik, the duergars would have accepted to see us after all”

Phil: “Hmmm, yeah… yeah, that’s what I was planning all along!  Damn you guys are good”

Players: “Yeah right, we bet you’re going to write THAT in your blog”

Phil: “Who me?”

Long story short, the PCs got to use the Knock ritual to unbar the gate, surprised a group of orcs and one Ogre (Hey, isn’t this supposed to be a Duegar hold?) and won that fight in a 2 or 3 rounds.  The wizard’s timely use of Icy Ray froze the ogre in place for one round and allowed the group to attain inevitability easily.

One orc managed to open a door and run away, banging on the door to the dungeon’s boss room crying for help.  Alas, the leader decided to stay in the room and the poor orc fell to the blades of our heroes (there’s a whole article just there about adventures that clumsily bow to the ‘let the PCs rest’ trope… heck, I’m guilty of having done just that in my own “to be published” adventure).

As expected, our heroes took 5 and bashed in the boss’ door.

Duergar #1: “I call this 5 minutes and 18 seconds”

Duergar #2: “Damn, you win the pool again!”

Lessons Learned

• Don’t judge a 4e adventure by just reading it. If you are willing to let players get creative and go outside of what’s written, it can become very entertaining.  That’s why all 3 of my last game reports have the word “Fun” in the title.  I expected that adventure to be dull because it looks so on paper… and so far my players have proven this wrong.

• My idea of using skill challenges to make an abstract combat worked exactly as I had envisioned it.  Expect to read more about this soon.

• Saying “yes” and winging it is really the way to go.

What players liked

• Kicking butt with superior tactical advantage once again
• Planning the counter ambush (pity it backfired)
• Playing the skill challenge

What player disliked

• Being responsible for a failure in a skill challenge.  Franky thought that it was a heavy burden to bear.
• Some players found the inter-player deliberations of the various planning phase too long… that prompted some repressed Instigators to act out.

All right! See you later this week!