Session II: Crit Party

Slorta the archer, played by Dan [250]
Wan the monk, played by Scott [250]
Brock the fighter, played by Siobhan [251]
Jefe the wizard, played by Ian [255]
Thaeryn the cleric, played by Aldarian [252]

Henchmen
Crog, load bearer/map maker.  He's a foreigner, who doesn't speak the language very well.

Slorta is a very accurate archer¹ and is also the first non-human character.  Slorta is an Elf, with bonuses to archery and survival skills.  He is especially dangerous when aiming for the eyes or vitals.  His Elven Longbow is Signature Gear, and as such comes with the guarantee of replacement if when I throw an equipment destroying monster at the party.

Wan is a monk with a varied repertoire of combat abilities.  He is skilled in Karate and Judo, as well as having several Ki-powered abilities.  He has some Ki armor, protecting his otherwise unarmored flesh.  He can get an extra attack, and can use Power Blow for more damage, Push for battlefield control, and Kiai for some crowd control.  Wan is a versatile agile fighter.

On a side note, Brock named her sword "Natural Causes."
Also, we learned that Thaeryn is a little bit racist toward goblins.

The group started in town, wasting only a little time with rumors and shopping.  They heard that a wizard lives in a tower on the other side of the mountain, that there's a necromancer in the dungeon creating undead, and that some of the dwarven vaults are in fact tombs for their kings.

They grabbed somebody to carry their loot, and carried on into the dungeon.

However, the party did not inform the new members of previous dealing with the goblins.  Jefe conjured up a new illusion of the old slorn, frightening Slorta and Crog into fleeing into the dungeon.  Not recognizing the new guys, the goblin gate guards opened fire on the archer.

As the illusory slorn came into view of the goblins, Slorta attacked it, disrupting the illusion.  The goblins saw the party, presumed dead, and fled into a panic at the "zombie invasion."  Jefe, thinking quickly, illusioned up zombie heads that the party could carry in.  When confronted with the goblin "welcoming party," (every armed goblin in the area) Jefe announced that the gods brought the party back to life after the battle with the slorn to solve the goblin's zombie problem².

The party passed through the goblin town with no further incident, straight into a war zone.  The orcs from the lower levels were trying to invade the goblin level.  Barricades had been set up, with a no-man's-land in the middle.  Slorta hopped the barricade, and promptly got shot in the groin for his trouble.  His armor soaked most of the damage, but he was later mocked for it.  The party pushed down the hallway, to get a better shot on the orcs taking cover behind their own barricade.

The party split in half, with Slorta and Thaeryn on the left side, and everyone else on the right.  They took cover in side passages, with uncleared doors all around.  For some reason, the party stopped shooting at the orcs and started opening doors³.  Wan opened his door right into an incoming Orc ambush, surprising both parties.  At the same time, Slorta and Thaeryn opened their door, finding themselves face-to-face with another slorn and its orc handler⁴.

Two separate simultaneous combats broke out.  The fight against the orcs was a knock-out-drag-out brawl.  The monk used his Push to play dominoes with a few orcs, and the massive damage from Brock's greatsword, while blocked, was enough to stagger and knock back orcs several times.  The orcs did eventually slip through the front line, surrounding Wan, Jefe, and Brock.  Wan tried to use his acrobatic skills to jump over the orcs, but got tripped up and fell on his face.  Due to the orc's good block skills, Brock was less able to wreck everything like usual.  Jefe took up the slack, dealing a surprising amount of damage with a 1-point flame jet, striking over ally's shoulders with his staff.
Wan started a grapple, removing an orc from the fight.  When that orc was the only one left, Brock risked an attack into the grapple.  With a crit fail, she managed to hit Wan instead, tearing into the poor monk's back.  It didn't cost them the battle though, and they beat the Orcs down with no real casualties.

On the other side of the hallway, the fight went much differently.  Slorta shot down the slorn with a single shot to the eye⁵.  Thaeryn managed to get behind the handler, wrecking him with a mace to the back of the head.  After that fight, Thaeryn offered to "apply ointment" to Slorta's groin injury, which Slorta vehemently rejected.  Thaeryn settled on a casting of Minor Healing, and the issue was uncomfortably settled.

After a long rest, and some looting, the party continued along, taking an alternate route to the orc barricades.  The first thing the party noticed was that these orcs were much better equipped than the previous ones.

The opened a door near the barricades, and Brock and Wan bursted across the hall where the orc archers couldn't see them.  Jefe and Slorta took cover behind Thaeryn.  This left the poor cleric as the orc's only viable target.  He blocked the first hit, but the next one hit him in the arm, and the next landed high-damage blow to the skull, seriously wounding Thaeryn. (Who medics the medic?)  Slorta critted (again) killing an orc with a face shot.

Realizing these weren't puny goblins, the orcs called for reinforcements.  Brock and Wan had a harder time dealing with these heavily armored and more skilled orcs.  Brock was forced to only attack the neck, where the armor was thinnest.  Wan tried grappling.  The orc was too strong to be completely disabled by Wan's Judo, but wasn't strong enough to completely break free, either.  Eventually, the orc got knocked down, and Wan let go.  The crazy monk the critted the standing orc in the face, hitting with a terrifying penetration blow to the eye, instantly killing the orc.

At this point, an orc shaman and a pack of dogs teleported in behind the party, and tried to hit the party in their squishy flank.  This backfired horribly, as the dogs ran into the fairly tanky Thaeryn, and attacked fruitlessly.  Jefe Great Hasted Slorta, who then proceeded to Arrow Hell the shaman, ruining whatever spell he had prepared.  The shaman died before being even remotely dangerous.

Back behind the barricades, the knocked down orc tried to acrobatically get up by rolling backward down the stairs.  He succeeded in rolling down the stairs, but failed to get up. Brock waltzed town the stairs and wrecked the poor knocked down orc.

With the fight finished, the party looted the orcs, getting some gold and silver, and their plate armour. From the shaman, they looted some potions and some spell stones.

On the way out of the dungeon, the party traded slorn meat instead of paying the goblin's tax on the way out. I suspect this will be the beginning of a long string of ever more creative tax evasion methods.

With all the loot tallied up, the plate armor was worth more than everything else combined, making this trip very profitable indeed.

The whole party got 5xp, and Crog spread the news of their success.

Footnotes:

1: Weapon Master (Bow), Heroic Archer, and Bow 21.

2: Realizing he was the de facto face of the party, Ian actually gave Jefe points in Fast Talk.

3: Opening a bunch of doors should get the party wrecked. I must remember to punish this more harshly in the future.

4: Due to the previous illusion shenanigans, Slorta was convinced this new slorn was an illusion.

5: The shot was just short of actually putting the slorn into the death range, but it crit failed the "stay concious" roll, and passed out from the damage. Slorta finished him shortly.

Lessons learned:

Combats are taking too long. I have to find some way to streamline them. Possibly having tough enemies just die at -1xHP, with only very strong enemies and bosses make HT to survive.

I must be careful with enemies' equipped gear. The orcs' plate armors were really valuable. I don't want to overburden the party with money.

More enemies need eye armor. I don't want to make the precision attacker useless, but the eye shots are looking like they will wreck even very tough enemies. I have to find a good balance.  Possibly sending enemies that don't have eyes, such as undead.