No Sterling for this session again; I've decided I will be retiring Seamus if I don't have some sort of idea if Sterling will be playing more regularly again, and Nirreh will also be retiring in mid-January, so we may be back down to 4-5 players again. On to the recap.
The party, not wanting to return the treasure they'd recovered, fought Gregor and his soldiers - or, tried, at least, but Seamus fell quickly and, when Gregor threatened to execute him, the party relented, handing over the treasure. Gregor left, laughing all the way, leaving the party extremely frustrated.
They returned to Amberforge and slept in an inn (making a point NOT to sleep at the Amberforge Inn), then went about resurrecting Vorgym. With the party back together, they decided to figure out their next move - after some deliberation and exploration of their options, they decided to break into Amberforge Manor and steal the stuff they'd recovered back from Gregor. They decided to use a menagerie entrance to the manor that was left unguarded; we had to stop here because it took a very long time for us to load the next map. We'll pick up next time with the party's infiltration into Amberforge Manor.
Probably going to figure out some way of getting map information to you guys in advance so we don't have this problem again; stay tuned. Session for next week should be on as normal.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Session #32: The Big Bad
No Sterling for this session, so Andrew played Seamus. Sal was an hour late. On to the recap.
A large part of tonight's session was taken up by a puzzle involving the two doors leaving the room the party found themselves in at the end of last session. They found 4 inscriptions in this room - 1 each in front of the gray & yellow stone doors leading out of the room, and 2 on the back of the largest throne in the room. They were as follows:
After dealing with the rust monsters, the party set about solving the other puzzle. Eventually (with a lot of hint-dropping from me), they worked out that the first inscription referenced the famous Riddle of the Sphinx: the person represented the riddle's answer. The riddle itself was, of course, "What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at night?" This led them to be able to figure out that the numbers they needed to work with were 4, 2, and 3. From here they performed the necessary operations: 4 + 2 + 3 = 9 coins for the first door. The second door had a dash with a slash through it, meant to indicate that they should remove the negative symbol from the result they would get from 4 - 2 - 3, which would be -1; however they figured this out by dropping the 2 out of the equation, a conclusion which I'm not sure how Traver reached, but he did reach it. The final door was 4 x 2 x 3 = 24, which they figured out rather easily (despite some silliness about not using "x" for multiplication - fuck algebra, honestly.)
Within the vault they found a great wealth of treasure - along with a very large troglodyte. This was the boss encounter, and it proved to be a difficult one - Seamus was brought into dying, and the party's dailies were depleted by this encounter. However, the party triumphed in the end, and the massive troglodyte was felled. They gathered all the loot they could carry (about 2500 gold pieces in valuables, the Silver Mask of Kas they'd been sent for, an Amulet of Vigor +2, a set of Magic Chainmail +3, and a rare item, the Helm of Seven Deaths) and left the vault - where they were immediately stopped by a smug Gregor Amberforge and his large force of guards, including a young white dragon, "requesting" the return of his family's treasure from the vault they'd just cleared for him.
With this cliffhanger in place, we should be set up for a good session next week. Hope to see everyone there!
A large part of tonight's session was taken up by a puzzle involving the two doors leaving the room the party found themselves in at the end of last session. They found 4 inscriptions in this room - 1 each in front of the gray & yellow stone doors leading out of the room, and 2 on the back of the largest throne in the room. They were as follows:
- In front of the gray stone door, there was a cross inscribed, followed by a dash, and then an X, like so: "+ - X"
- In front of the yellow stone door, there was a dash and a cross, like so: "- +"
- On the back of the throne were two inscriptions. The first showed a semicircle with lines coming out from it laid on a horizontal plane, with a "_" next to it, indicating a blank space meant to be filled in, followed by a circle with lines coming out from it with another "_" next to that, then a crescent with yet another "_" next to it, and finished off with a stick figure-like pictograph of a person.
- The other inscription showed a pictograph of a spider, then a pictograph of a horse.
After dealing with the rust monsters, the party set about solving the other puzzle. Eventually (with a lot of hint-dropping from me), they worked out that the first inscription referenced the famous Riddle of the Sphinx: the person represented the riddle's answer. The riddle itself was, of course, "What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at night?" This led them to be able to figure out that the numbers they needed to work with were 4, 2, and 3. From here they performed the necessary operations: 4 + 2 + 3 = 9 coins for the first door. The second door had a dash with a slash through it, meant to indicate that they should remove the negative symbol from the result they would get from 4 - 2 - 3, which would be -1; however they figured this out by dropping the 2 out of the equation, a conclusion which I'm not sure how Traver reached, but he did reach it. The final door was 4 x 2 x 3 = 24, which they figured out rather easily (despite some silliness about not using "x" for multiplication - fuck algebra, honestly.)
Within the vault they found a great wealth of treasure - along with a very large troglodyte. This was the boss encounter, and it proved to be a difficult one - Seamus was brought into dying, and the party's dailies were depleted by this encounter. However, the party triumphed in the end, and the massive troglodyte was felled. They gathered all the loot they could carry (about 2500 gold pieces in valuables, the Silver Mask of Kas they'd been sent for, an Amulet of Vigor +2, a set of Magic Chainmail +3, and a rare item, the Helm of Seven Deaths) and left the vault - where they were immediately stopped by a smug Gregor Amberforge and his large force of guards, including a young white dragon, "requesting" the return of his family's treasure from the vault they'd just cleared for him.
With this cliffhanger in place, we should be set up for a good session next week. Hope to see everyone there!
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Session #31: When Dice Attack
Sterling said he would be able to make it for this one, albeit 2 hours late - never showed up, so we NPCed his character for the duration. Had a lot of lag problems as well. To the recap...
The party got into combat pretty quickly, finding themselves facing a number of troglodytes at the end of the gray stone door wing of the vault. The room also contained a platinum-embossed pouch on a pedestal. The party fought the troglodytes, and things went rather well at first - until Vorgym was struck with the troglodyte curse chanter's dead-eye gaze, and fell unconscious, leaving him open to coup de grace attacks from the troglodyte thrashers. This was the first in a series of horrible dice rolling incidents: Vorgym failed multiple attempts at saving against the unconscious effect, and despite the party's efforts to keep him alive, he nonetheless went into dying and only managed to escape the unconscious effect by being revived after going into negative health. The rest of the party wasn't too severely injured, but a number of saving throw failures painted a foreboding picture of what was to come...
With Vorgym's healing surges depleted and not enough time having passed since their last extended rest, the party soldiered on - I gave them a break, due to lag concerns, and moved them past the trap room without incident this time. They used the pouch, which turned out to be a Pouch of Platinum, a magical item allowing the party to convert any amount of gems or coins placed into it into an equal value of platinum pieces, to get past the steel door they'd found last session. On the other side of the steel door, they found a great hall with a number of dwarven statues carved into the walls, and a number of stone thrones guarding another pair of smaller gray & yellow stone doors. In this room were more troglodytes: a temple champion, two deepscourges, a number of grunt minions, and an otyugh which emerged from a hole in the center of the room - likely the entry point the troglodytes had used, though no one knows what exactly made the hole. The encounter began immediately.
This encounter, unlike the previous one, was designed to be brutal, and normally it would've been rough, but not a party-killer - unfortunately, a combination of the party's bad luck on the previous encounter, and continued bad luck in this encounter, led to what probably would've been a TPK without a healthy bit of "divine intervention". More saving throws were failed, particularly death saves - I gave Vorgym an extra chance, and he still managed to die. The rest of the party probably would have joined him, had it not been for my decision to relent and stack the odds in the party's favor, to the point of turning a critical failure on an attack into a successful attack. It's something I will likely not do again, and I'm not proud of having to do it this time, but with how horrible the dice were in this session something had to give - either we were going to have our third TPK or I was going to have to pull a number of life-saving DM decisions out of my ass. I opted to go with the latter this time.
So this is where we stand: I've allowed the party to extended rest under the pretense that they were so utterly beaten up last encounter that they more or less passed out, and Vorgym is dead, though the intention is to resurrect him. Our session for next week is still scheduled to happen as normal, though this may be subject to change as holiday plans are made - keep me posted on your availability please, everyone. Either then or the next week we have people available, I have a few ideas for how to approach keeping Andrew involved:
1) If Sterling does not show, Andrew will play Seamus.
2) If Sterling does show, Vorgym may become a "ghost" for the time being, and be allowed to help the party in a limited fashion.
3) Keeping with the ghost theme, I may have Vorgym possess Misha, if Deckard finds this permissible.
4) Alternatively, if Andrew would be interested in playing a new character instead of resurrecting his old one, I may be able to figure out a way for this to be worked in.
Those are the possibilities I'm currently considering, let me know what you think guys. See you all next Wednesday (hopefully)!
The party got into combat pretty quickly, finding themselves facing a number of troglodytes at the end of the gray stone door wing of the vault. The room also contained a platinum-embossed pouch on a pedestal. The party fought the troglodytes, and things went rather well at first - until Vorgym was struck with the troglodyte curse chanter's dead-eye gaze, and fell unconscious, leaving him open to coup de grace attacks from the troglodyte thrashers. This was the first in a series of horrible dice rolling incidents: Vorgym failed multiple attempts at saving against the unconscious effect, and despite the party's efforts to keep him alive, he nonetheless went into dying and only managed to escape the unconscious effect by being revived after going into negative health. The rest of the party wasn't too severely injured, but a number of saving throw failures painted a foreboding picture of what was to come...
With Vorgym's healing surges depleted and not enough time having passed since their last extended rest, the party soldiered on - I gave them a break, due to lag concerns, and moved them past the trap room without incident this time. They used the pouch, which turned out to be a Pouch of Platinum, a magical item allowing the party to convert any amount of gems or coins placed into it into an equal value of platinum pieces, to get past the steel door they'd found last session. On the other side of the steel door, they found a great hall with a number of dwarven statues carved into the walls, and a number of stone thrones guarding another pair of smaller gray & yellow stone doors. In this room were more troglodytes: a temple champion, two deepscourges, a number of grunt minions, and an otyugh which emerged from a hole in the center of the room - likely the entry point the troglodytes had used, though no one knows what exactly made the hole. The encounter began immediately.
This encounter, unlike the previous one, was designed to be brutal, and normally it would've been rough, but not a party-killer - unfortunately, a combination of the party's bad luck on the previous encounter, and continued bad luck in this encounter, led to what probably would've been a TPK without a healthy bit of "divine intervention". More saving throws were failed, particularly death saves - I gave Vorgym an extra chance, and he still managed to die. The rest of the party probably would have joined him, had it not been for my decision to relent and stack the odds in the party's favor, to the point of turning a critical failure on an attack into a successful attack. It's something I will likely not do again, and I'm not proud of having to do it this time, but with how horrible the dice were in this session something had to give - either we were going to have our third TPK or I was going to have to pull a number of life-saving DM decisions out of my ass. I opted to go with the latter this time.
So this is where we stand: I've allowed the party to extended rest under the pretense that they were so utterly beaten up last encounter that they more or less passed out, and Vorgym is dead, though the intention is to resurrect him. Our session for next week is still scheduled to happen as normal, though this may be subject to change as holiday plans are made - keep me posted on your availability please, everyone. Either then or the next week we have people available, I have a few ideas for how to approach keeping Andrew involved:
1) If Sterling does not show, Andrew will play Seamus.
2) If Sterling does show, Vorgym may become a "ghost" for the time being, and be allowed to help the party in a limited fashion.
3) Keeping with the ghost theme, I may have Vorgym possess Misha, if Deckard finds this permissible.
4) Alternatively, if Andrew would be interested in playing a new character instead of resurrecting his old one, I may be able to figure out a way for this to be worked in.
Those are the possibilities I'm currently considering, let me know what you think guys. See you all next Wednesday (hopefully)!
Monday, December 12, 2011
Session #30: The Time We NPCed Two Characters
Sterling did not make it to this session - in addition, Jordan got sick before we started and had to leave, so I NPCed Deckard and Sal NPCed Seamus. On to the recap.
After escaping the pit with the otyughs, the party continued to navigate the room - due to a bad Perception roll, they failed to find any other pit traps, and ended up falling down into the pit. This time, they decided to just kill the otyughs. After killing them, they found a secret passage in the pit, and took it up to another room. Beyond this room, they found a room which seemed harmless enough at first - until they stepped inside, which immediately set off a number of deadly traps - the room was filled with poison darts firing from the walls, scythes began swinging across the chamber, and Vorgym, who had managed to avoid all of this, fell into a pit filled to ankle height with acid. To make things worse, the door was trapped with a number of kissing maidens, hidden pillars that swing up from under a panel in the floor and knock back anyone in front of them - right into the pit.
The party had a hell of a time in this room, and Vorgym was left with no surges; many others were left at low health, with low surge reserves, but the party managed to enter the next room. This room was not trapped aside from the standard traps around the coin-operated doors, but this room had a steel door as opposed to a stone door. The party, through somewhat painful trial-and-error, eventually figured that the door took platinum coins - as a result, they decided to head back through the trap room and explore the other wing of the vault after an extended rest.
Their second journey through the trap room proved to show the dangers of the scythe traps, which connected with a number of targets, namely Amnon & Vorgym. After finally escaping the dastardly trap room a second time, the party opened the remainder of the golden doors after heading back through the pit, as the doors only open from one side, and headed back to the wing with the gray stone doors. There they returned to the room with the pit, and attempted to cross - they ended up having Amnon fall into the pit, where he took damage from a 20-foot drop and a set of poisonous spikes. He also encountered a trio of green slimes waiting to feast on anything that fell in.
This encounter proved simple enough, as the party had already eluded the most diabolical part of it - a gelatinous cube on the northern end of the thin hallway they were in was supposed to drop down from the ceiling, and push the party into the pit along with the gelatinous cube at the southern end. However, they disabled the trap trigger for dropping the cube, and as such they only had to deal with the pit, the slimes and the southern cube. After this encounter, the party took a short rest and we ended the session there.
Andrew says he may not be around; so long as we've got at least 5 players around we will be going ahead with the session as usual, I'd like to stay away from having to NPC more than one character though. See everyone Wednesday, sorry for the late recap!
After escaping the pit with the otyughs, the party continued to navigate the room - due to a bad Perception roll, they failed to find any other pit traps, and ended up falling down into the pit. This time, they decided to just kill the otyughs. After killing them, they found a secret passage in the pit, and took it up to another room. Beyond this room, they found a room which seemed harmless enough at first - until they stepped inside, which immediately set off a number of deadly traps - the room was filled with poison darts firing from the walls, scythes began swinging across the chamber, and Vorgym, who had managed to avoid all of this, fell into a pit filled to ankle height with acid. To make things worse, the door was trapped with a number of kissing maidens, hidden pillars that swing up from under a panel in the floor and knock back anyone in front of them - right into the pit.
The party had a hell of a time in this room, and Vorgym was left with no surges; many others were left at low health, with low surge reserves, but the party managed to enter the next room. This room was not trapped aside from the standard traps around the coin-operated doors, but this room had a steel door as opposed to a stone door. The party, through somewhat painful trial-and-error, eventually figured that the door took platinum coins - as a result, they decided to head back through the trap room and explore the other wing of the vault after an extended rest.
Their second journey through the trap room proved to show the dangers of the scythe traps, which connected with a number of targets, namely Amnon & Vorgym. After finally escaping the dastardly trap room a second time, the party opened the remainder of the golden doors after heading back through the pit, as the doors only open from one side, and headed back to the wing with the gray stone doors. There they returned to the room with the pit, and attempted to cross - they ended up having Amnon fall into the pit, where he took damage from a 20-foot drop and a set of poisonous spikes. He also encountered a trio of green slimes waiting to feast on anything that fell in.
This encounter proved simple enough, as the party had already eluded the most diabolical part of it - a gelatinous cube on the northern end of the thin hallway they were in was supposed to drop down from the ceiling, and push the party into the pit along with the gelatinous cube at the southern end. However, they disabled the trap trigger for dropping the cube, and as such they only had to deal with the pit, the slimes and the southern cube. After this encounter, the party took a short rest and we ended the session there.
Andrew says he may not be around; so long as we've got at least 5 players around we will be going ahead with the session as usual, I'd like to stay away from having to NPC more than one character though. See everyone Wednesday, sorry for the late recap!
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