I'm a few weeks behind on game reports. My daughter graduated high school this spring, and I've been consumed the past few weeks with preparing for her epic graduation party, the gradpalooza. But gradpalooza is over, the relatives have all gone home, the house is back to normal and I can return to the trivial pursuits of life, like writing about roleplaying game sessions.
My players have had a rough couple of weeks.
For several weeks now they've been grinding their way through the Earth Temple flunkies on level 1 of the Temple of Elemental Evil. They've had to deal with typical "Gygaxian defenses" - layers of foot soldiers with swordsmen backed up by polearms backed up by archers, with a few guys willing to throw flaming oil here and there. You know deal, we've all seen Gary's style. Gary was a war gamer at heart and his designs don't make it easy for folks whose only strategy is hack and slash. (Me personally, I love the care he put into helping game masters with tactics). However, a few well-placed Sleep spells can sure help tilt the playing field towards the players.
The player's fought their way through a literal gauntlet of human mooks, eventually penetrating a chamber with a few higher level lieutenants. "Protect the clerics", one of them said, "Hold the line here". The players knew they were on the verge of getting through to the bosses.
When the captain and lieutenant fell, the players warily eyed the barred door, beyond which presumably waited "the clerics". Would they be high priests or skittish under clerics, unable to mount a serious defense? A fierce table top discussion ensued. The loudest voice was the one that said, "Let's retreat and rest, get all of our spells back, heal, and pick back up here when we're ready - on our time table".
Yeah, this is not a video game or a 5E dungeon. The opponents are intelligent and are going to respond to incursions (or in this case their small army of mooks being slaughtered by invaders). When the players returned after resting and healing outside of the dungeon, the cleric quarters were stripped clean - all their treasures and magic items taken away with the fleeing priests. All that XP from gold escaped as well, making the mook battles even more pointless.
There was a gnashing of teeth and wailing. Some recriminations amongst the players may have been spoken, and they had the taste of ashes in their mouths. Large yawning chests mocked them with their emptiness, other than a few stray coins left behind in the hasty retreat. A hard lesson was learned.
On a succeeding night, they cleared a large swath of the eastern portion of dungeon level 1. The most interesting "encounter" involved a tomb door warded by glyphs. Their NPC magic user was willing to knock the door (from a safe distance) but had no answer for the glyphs. Shakti, the war priestess, convinced one of her NPC mooks to open the door, and he was blasted by cold magic and knocked unconscious. They were able to stabilize him but his face and jaw were messed up. (Since we're using ACKS for this one, there is a table of 'mortal wounds' to consider any time a character is rendered below zero hit points).
The tomb was full of niches with moldering, infected looking corpses. Their paladin mused, "Hmmm - would a spore infection be a disease or a poison? I haven't gotten to use my immunity to disease ability, so I'm going in…" The corpses ended up being inanimate, not monsters lying in wait, although they were all diseased and would infect characters with a virulent respiratory illness. The paladin was quite satisfied he was able to search the niches safely (protected by St Cuthbert's grace) while everyone else stayed safely away.
Game reports are caught up, at least until this weekend's game session, and next up we'll be taking a look at James Raggi's "Just a Stupid Dungeon" as I continue reviewing the LOTFP catalog.
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