I took a little break for a couple weeks there for all the expected reasons: holidays, fatigue, resurgence of my usually-under-control anxiety, processing the probably-still-ongoing fascist uprising…
So we’re going to talk about the gang’s adventure exploring the academy in the abandoned Imperial town of Harzgard. They had been exploring deep into the center of Harzgard’s Military District, until they came upon a large stone building on a hill: Meritas Academy.
This served as a fairly traditional dungeon crawl, so lets just skip to the notable scenes.
The gang entered a room that looked to be a fencing gym, with seating around the room and fencing tracks painted on the floor for matches. There was equipment littering the floor: foils, masks and jackets. The foils looked intact, so Lendel approached to grab one.
The foil, and five of its friends, flew up into the air and pointed itself at Lendel (with the others seeking out different targets).
“En garde!” the foils might have said, had they been creatures with mouths and not just enchanted sporting equipment.
So the group fearlessly fought the flying foils, and that’s all the alliteration I am able to allow.
This was a clever little fight, if I can brag a bit. They weren’t in much danger, really. The swords attacked twice per moment, but dealt low damage. They were hard to hit, because of their size and speed, and because I chose to treat the guard as a piece of armor for the sword. They could parry-riposte, blocking a strike and immediately counterstriking. {To do this, the sword had to withhold one of their strikes for the moment. When attacked, the sword rolled its own attack and if it rolled better than the attacker, the attacker’s strike missed and the sword could then strike with a +5 bonus.}
Lendel is a cannonball, basically. He’s a little gnome in very heavy armor, with a hammer and shield. The flying swords’ attacks mostly bounced off of him. His hammer can break plate armor, meaning he actually smashed through one of the swords’ guards, making it easier to hit. That was a fun exchange.
Agorak and his follower Jana had a different idea. They wanted to grab the swords out of the air and hold them down. And this is something I hadn’t really thought about. I expected it to be a mostly normal fight, honestly. So I had them make unarmed strikes against the swords. When they hit, they grabbed the swords, restraining them. In the next moment, I had the swords make a Resist save to break free. If they succeeded, the sword escaped to fight again. If they failed, the character got a grip on the sword’s handle, canceling the enchantment. It was just a normal sword, then, that they could wield in battle.
So our heroes smashed four of the swords and grabbed two of them. Agorak’s clever solution netted the group a couple of cool new weapons to use or sell.
The academy overall wasn’t really a “puzzles and traps” dungeon. There were some monsters here and there and areas to explore that provided more insight into what happened to this town. The living areas were fully evacuated, while some other rooms were barricaded. In one room, they found huge spiderwebs with cocoons filled with odd objects. This put them on edge, waiting for a spider attack.
They were not ready for the spider.
When they reached the top of the academy (the headmaster’s office), they heard a man yelling. The room was covered in webs, with several cocoons laying about. The cocoons seemed to only have bones in them, except for two: A big, standing cocoon by the windows, and one on the floor where the cries came from. He kept yelling, “Please! Someone help!”
Tony approached the cocoon and cut it open, to free the man. Tony saw an old man inside the cocoon, looking back at him. The old man opened his mouth, letting his jaw hang slack, and the words kept repeating, as if broadcasting from his unmoving mouth.
Tony stepped back, and the man stood up. Long, sharp spider legs extended from his torso, ripping open the rest of the cocoon. The man cried out, and the skeletons in the other cocoons animated, standing up and wearing their cocoons like armor. Then, he transformed into an enormous spider and prepared to lunge at Tony.
Boss fight time.
The group split into two groups, one fighting the ten skeletons, and the other facing spider-headmaster.
This was a decent fight. This game is decidedly not a tactical combat game, but fights are part of the concept. Fights need to be interesting enough to justify the time they take (which is also a reason to keep combat fast). I’m definitely still learning how to make important fights exciting, without adding any rules bloat. Basic fights need to stay basic.
In this case, the skeletons were mostly a roadblock. They were there to give the group multiple threats to focus on, but they’re not too dangerous. They had a weakness to fire (the idea being that fire would burn up their cocoons, doing a bunch of extra damage to them). I assumed that once our heroes realized that, they’d exploit it to destroy the skeletons. This didn’t happen. The skeletons were a lasting nuisance to them, and though they killed a few with fire, it wasn’t a big turning point like I thought it would be.
The spider kicked Tony’s ass.
It was obviously not a normal spider. It was over ten feet wide, and it could transform into a man at will. In its human form, it was a powerful magician; and in its spider form is was strong, fast and venomous. The magic allowed it to engage the larger group, but first it bit Tony.
This put the new “difficulty” rules to the test. Each player can choose their own difficulty setting (and change it at will). This choice simply determines how easy it is for your character to be killed. Tony had chosen the easiest setting, meaning that his character could not actually die, just get knocked out.
Lucky Tony.
The spider bit the hell out of him, dealing a bunch of damage and poisoning him. Tony would likely have died on a higher difficulty.
The fight took a lot out of everybody (which is my favorite type of fight), but they eventually won.
After the fight, they cautiously checked out the large, unopened cocoon, and found that there was a stone statue of a gnome inside. Once freed, the “statue” revealed itself as an actual gnome made of rock, who introduced himself as Nasser of the Mount, a student of Eldora (an ancient ettin they met earlier). They agreed to bring him to Eldora.
Next time, we’ll talk about an aspect of the rules that I have not yet decided! Then, after that, we’ll talk about a flop of a dungeon and a new player joining the gang.