Session III: Zombie Dance Party

Thaeryn the cleric, played by Aldarian [257 points]

Brock the fighter, played by Siobhan [256 points]

Tobias the swashbuckler, played by Jeremiah [255 points]

Jefe "The Honest," the wizard, played by Ian [259 points]

Wan the monk, played by Scott [255]

Henchmen:

Crog, loadbearer/mapmaker

Kevyn, locksmith.

The party dithered about in town for a while¹, wasting a bunch of time shopping. Wan got a nice DR enchant on his clothing, as well as buying a cestus for his fists. Thaeryn got more armor (and enchanted it) and a bigger shield (and enchanted it) for a total DB of +4. Brock enchanted all her armor with 1 DR, and stacked more plate over chain². Even Jefe got some DR enchants.

Wan and Brock also got the services of the town locksmith to come into the dungeon with them,  to open doors and disable traps. Jefe brought Crog in again to carry their things and draw their map.

Now absurdly armored, the party ventured forth into the dungeon.

After passing through the Goblin town without incident, the party started exploring the eastern part of the first floor. The layout of that area is mostly identical 10 foot rooms, laid out in a space-efficient pattern in sets of four rooms. The party dubbed these "dworms" (Dwarven Dorms) and went about clearing them.

The first dworm set was packed to the brim with zombies. The party quickly put people in each door, and managed to divide and conquer. Without the ability to swarm, the zombies weren't really a threat. However, the zombies dodged frakking everything³. There were a few scares, where Wan or Brock got multiple zombies grabbing them, but the fight ended with no casualties and only minor injuries. They searched the rooms, and Kevyn found a hidden bag of coins, with some gold and platinum coins⁴.

Exploring onwards, the party found some empty Dworms, finding some minor loot. During their search, they heard the sounds of many footsteps. Deciding on caution, they hid in the Dworms, cracking the doors so they could see what passed. A horde of 30-40 dinomen ran past, and the party decided not to ambush. Realizing an opportunity for easy loot, the party followed the dinomen. They sent the stealthy Wan and Tobias, along with Kevyn, to scout ahead while the rest of the group followed behind. The scouts and a group of orcs, also hiding from the dinomen, ambushed each other.

The orcs were unable to hit Wan or Tobias. The shaman in the back almost hit Tobias with a big fireball, but missed. The party looted the orcs, finding a magic ring on the shaman.

The party continued scouting, finding a group of the second floor orcs fighting the dinomen in a shield wall, and winning. The party predicted the dinomen would retreat, so they set up an ambush, and had Wan (their fastest runner) keep an eye on the fight.

Sure enough, the dinomen fled right into the party's ambush. Jefe tossed a pair of Concussion blasts into the horde, killing most of them, and stunning the two heroes. Tobias and Brock finished the heroes, and then they moved in on the chief. Tobias killed the chief from behind, and the party mopped up the remaining dinomen. They looted corpses, grabbing the chief's magic helmet.

Moving on to another dworm, they found a not somehow affixed to a wall, written in Orcish. Jefe investigated. It read, "I really wish there were a door here." At this, a slorn and its handler knocked down the wall and jumped the party.

Tobias' combat reflexes sprang into action, causing him to get the first strike. Now outnumbered, the slorn simply used its breath attack on them. Much to the party's surprise, this was not a regular slorn, but a frost slorn, and the breath weapon was cold damage with a stun effect. Everyone dodged the attack, and the fight was joined. Over the course of the fight, Tobias got caught out, and was unable to dodge the breath attack, stunning him for the rest of the fight. Brock murdered the orc and beat down the slorn. Thaeryn finished the fight with a powerful sunbolt to the vitals⁵. They looted the orc, finding two magic wands, and then looted the room.

In the dworm across the hall, Wan found a box, and immediately opened it. It prompty exploded in his face, as someone had rigged a frost slorn breath gland to it, hitting Wan with a frost blast. In the box was a Fine Dwarven axe. While searching, a goblin scouting group came up to the party and talked a bit, and were sufficiently impressed with the party's capacity for violence. They went back to the goblin town.

The party heard goblin screams, and went to investigate. An acid spider had ambushed the goblins. The party rushed in to help, and the spider fled into unexplored dungeon. The party did not follow.

The went to leave the dungeon, but the goblin leaders insisted that the party pay taxes this time. They added up all the coins, and gave the goblins 10% of their coins... entirely in copper pieces. The party had a mix of about 140 copper, silver, gold, and platinum, so 14 copper satisfied the exact terms of the contract. The goblins didn't seem to mind, and let the party go on their way.

They got back to town, and identified the magic gear. The ring granted DR 3 against cold attacks. The helmet had a Resist Pain enchant on it, but since nobody in the party had a small enough head for it, they just sold it. One wand was a prod with an exclusive powerstone that dealt 3 electrical damage. The other wand was a Wand of Passive-Aggressive Door Creation⁶, an in-joke from a previous campaign.

All in all, this was a profitable venture, with everyone getting about 500sp and 5xp each.

Footnotes:

1: The party spent an hour and a half of IRL time in town.

2: Brock has 12 DR on her torso, and 7-10 everywhere else.

3: They have a dodge of 8, but kept rolling 6's and 7's. The fight lasted twice as long as it should have because of that.

4: Kevyn critted his search, and then critted his loyalty roll, so he gave the party everything.

5: Sunbolt is tight-beam burning, meaning a vitals hit is x2 wounding. Aldarian rolled stupid high damage, hitting for a total of nearly 50 damage.

6: The WoPADC works by magically attaching a note to a surface with a passive-aggressive message asking for a door. And some point in the future, fate will conspire to make an opening in that surface, if one is possible. This operates entirely by GM fiat, making it very hard for the party to abuse.

Lessons learned:

Pre-crawl logistics need to be streamlined. We can't have 90-minute delays anymore.

Orcs are just not a threat to the party. Monsters are not only more interesting, but provide a better challenge.