Sunday, January 17, 2021

[Petals & Thrones] Session 21: Death of the Stabsman

Session XXI
Deciding things were getting pretty heavy, our heroes retreat to the surface to take an extra long short rest, including Thoradin doing a 10min healing spell. This gives Tarmont time to reorganize the remaining undead, but since they don't find the PCs, they don't congregate.

Taking out a couple patrols on the way, they manage to get the attention of Tarmont's scout due to Ribbles's familiar. Alerting the entire dungeon, ghouls & zombies begin to swarm upon them. Their combat is pretty decent, but several critical hits along with poor saves against ghoulish paralysis (Tarmont's fireball didn't help either) leads to a very poor situation. It's when Morluck falls to Tarmont's magic missile that they decide to flee, but not before Thoradin is ripped to shreds by ghouls.

It's at this point we have a conversation as to the trajectory of the campaign due to half of the party dying in the sewers. Ultimately, they decided to put the campaign on hiatus. We'll be playing Ars Magica in the interim, maybe returning to this module sometime in the future.

Commentary
While it wasn't an issue in this dungeon, the players largely felt that the module's five-minute short rest mechanic was a trap, as it tempted them to use it at risk (which really hurt them in the goblin cave & the Great Hive).

Sunday, January 10, 2021

[Petals & Thrones] Session 20: Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun

Session XX
The Heroes of Ramshorn help direct the forces of Hillsreach into Karis for defense, redistribute the Order of the Third Eye (sending fifteen patrols to reinforce Karis), and proceed to be attacked by 70 patrols of the Order of the Lion. It's not a great result, as the heroes are outflanked in the first round and only have 45 patrols to defend Karis, but they proceed to engage in a maneuver to upgrade it to a bloody mêlée, increasing the kill count by five patrols. They debate heavily whether to continue the mass combat into the next round, but decide to cut their losses and retreat; the Lions losing 9 patrols and them losing 7.

Regrouping in Valence, the players walk around the Great Forest to pick up Wesker from Rivermet. Once that's done, they return to Karis under the cover of darkness to evade Lion patrols, entering the sewers from the river. Once inside, they quickly encounter ghouls, and equally quickly take them out. Ribbles uses dancing lights to provide sight for Wesker, as he's the only person in the team that doesn't have darkvision. They're taken by surprise when Morluck awakens the bloat zombies in the cesspool by getting too close. This surprise is taken even further when Ribbles discovers that they're healed by toll the dead, though they're not as surprised when they explode in acid due to their collective history of video games.

Taking out the bloat zombies involved the use of shatter, which alerts the burning ghoul nearby. This fight makes them a bit concerned as they see the numbers appear, especially as Ribbles ends up healing the burning ghoul with toll the dead. They take a round breather when the last of the undead, and then we end the session.