Welcome back to part three of my Basic Fantasy RPG play through with my party of adventurers! As before I will detail what we did and where we deviated and played house rules.
As a recap the avid party had ended the last session battered and bruised having smashed open a door.
For this session the party had a new member, a human fighter. He was introduced as the parties fighter, who had drunk himself into a stupor in the pub where they learnt of the caves. Waking up the next morning under a table he found the party had left! He hot footed it across country to catch them up!
Our adventure picks up with the Fighter running into the caves, not lighting a torch and running straight off the edge that caused the rest of the party trouble! His legs wheeled in mid air for a few seconds before he plummeted straight down and took 1 point of damage as he hit the ground.
Picking himself up the fighter worked his way along the corridor a short way; as he edges round a bend the Dwarf Cleric comes sprinting past him (having taken a run up) and smashes through a door to the fighters left revealing 3 Kobolds. After a quick brutal fight of 3 turns the adventurers had finished off the Kobolds and were ready to explore some more of the caves.
Using the map they got in the pub they headed South along the passageway to a door that was marked as having a chest inside. The door, to their surprise was not locked and turning the large round black handle the door opened into a small room with a chest on one side. Suspecting a trap ... or a mimic ... the cleric smashed the chest with his mace, squeezing his eyes shut as he did so ... which turned out to be fortuitous as a flash trap blinded all the other party members for 5 rounds (they all failed their saves except the cleric who I narrated as having closed his eyes as he hit the chest).
While the others were blind the Cleric opened the chest and examined the contents (I won't say what was there as they may read this!) and whether he told them the truth or purloined anything is a matter of party debate!
After 3 turns with the majority of the party being blind I rolled to see if any random monster would appear....... a 6! .... the Cleric spotted the face of a goblin sneaking a peek around the door frame. Thinking on his feet the Cleric pretended to be blinded like the other party members. Falling for his excellent acting the goblin sneaked into the room around the adventurers. The Cleric pulled back his mace and took a mighty swing at the back of the goblins head ... just as the goblin bent down to look what was in the chest! (A quick ad hoc roll on behalf of the goblin had him miss the swooshing noise as the mace went over head by millimetres!), the return swing by the Cleric caught the goblin soundly and felled him in one go. The rest of the party recovered their vision slowly and were a little perturbed by the goblin corpse who the Cleric assured them had come from the chest.
The party decided that after getting battered and bruised they should probably block the doorway and rest in the small room.
(As GM this was a great opportunity to roll a d6 and see if anything else might come along!)
1 6 later ........
The party were woken by the sound of scratching at the doorway, and a knocking. The mage knocked back on the door and all went silent. After giving the mage time to cast Shield on himself the party opened the door and the Thief poked out his head for a sneaky look. The Giant Crab Spider totally failed to surprise the thief (I rolled another 6) who saw it out of the corner of his eye and retreated back into the room as it scuttled towards him.
A single round of combat was all it took for the party to dispatch the spider with the Fighter and the Thief hitting simultaneously. The Thief pinned it to the ground with an arrow dealing 9 HP damage, as the Fighter cleaved it with a two handed sword blow for 11 HP! Suffice to say the spider was dead, and the fighter, being standard fighter type got whatever meat he could off the spiders body and cooked it.
The night was worth a second roll to see if anything random happened .... another 6 .... the party had certainly stirred up a hornets nest of random monsters!
Hearing a noise from around the bend at the north end of the corridor the Thief put a lit torch on the floor and retreated slightly. Slowly a skeleton shuffled around the bend, stopping to gaze with black empty eye sockets at the torch on the floor. It then looked up, saw the adventurers and with a dusty cough attacked. A single round of combat saw the Mage cleaved down the front by the Skeleton before the Thief could smash it with his sword causing it to explode into dust, the clothes crumpling to the ground.
Note in the first session we had decided that hitting 0 then starts a counter. -1 HP per round (more if you get hit) and if you hit -10 then you are dead. The cleric managed to stabilise the Mage and they returned to their "safe room" (It hadn't helped much so far!) to recuperate a little.
After a little cave dwelling R&R the adventurers left the room to explore further north in the cave system to another section that seemed to indicate another chest. Entering the cavern the centre seemed to be solid stone. After searching for hidden doors the Thief managed to find the hidden door! He then said he wanted to search for traps.
As GM I did the roll for the search for traps behind the GM screen after a spectacular pass the Thief found a needle trap attached to the door. He then made his roll to try and disable the trap ... unfortunately in identifying the switch that would trigger the trap the Thief pressed it. After then failing his save spectacularly the party found they had a thief lying on the floor with a needle in his eye and turning green.
Technically failing the save vs poison would normally be death. However this is an RPG and not all poisons are deadly immediately. I allowed the party the opportunity to try and save their Thief. He dropped immediately to 0 HP and I asked what they wanted to do.
The Cleric came up with the brilliant idea of removing the needle and trying to suck out the poison from the Thiefs eyeball. Removing the needle was a simple enough task, I then had the Cleric roll to see whether he would manage to suck out the poison. Unfortunately he was a little over enthusiastic and managed to suck the thief's eyeball out into his mouth. (The Thief got dropped to -1 HP). The Cleric then executed his next idea which was to just cut the eyeball free to stop further poison spreading. He successfully cut the eyeball free (which the fighter pocketed for lord only knows what purpose!). At this point the Thief is now at -2 HP. The Cleric then made several attempts to tie off the fleshy bit that was pumping blood ... several turns later the Thief was on -4 and heading quickly towards their -10 permanent death. Finally the Mage stepped in and using their dexterous mage hands managed to tie off the flappy eye bits and stabilised the Thief.
After these shenanigans I gave the Thief a change to their attack bonus making it -1 to account for the loss in depth perception. I made this up on the spot as a reflection of the dire circumstances that had occurred.
After all this (and the party barely alive) they decide they are going to try and open the door. The parties one eyed thief picked the lock with what was a stunning display of lock picking ability, and then proceeded to temporarily blind himself by touching the chest and setting off another flash trap. The rest of the party had steadfastly shut their eyes before he got near the chest so they were all ok.
The party decided to cram into the tiny room the chest was in to rest up ... the Mage and Cleric however thought to check the door and found no obvious way to open it from the inside. Based on their luck so far they decided to err on the side of caution and retreat to the original rest up room to recover a little.
The night progressed and near morning (as near as you can tell in a cave system) the party could hear noises from the corridor ... yes I rolled ANOTHER 6 for random monster time!
Most of the party really wanted to roll over and try to go back to sleep in the hope this was all a bad dream. However the Fighter felt he hadn't hit enough things, so insisted on opening the door. The party felt they couldn't leave 1 character to go it alone so all piled out to find 4 Stirges flapping around the corridor.
As GM I had already decided if they didn't open the door the Stirges would fly off by morning. However once there was fresh blood in sight the outcome was never in any doubt and another fight ensued!
In the first turn the Mage, Fighter and Thief all had Stirges attach to them and start draining blood. The Mage missed his Stirge hitting himself in the face with his staff for 4 HP. The Fighter also managed to smash himself for damage, and the Thief managed to kill his Stirge. The Cleric took an almighty swing and nearly crushed the poor Mages head in. Several wild blows later the party had nearly killed themselves, with the Mage and Fighter both on 0 HP and quickly dying. The Cleric tried to stop the Stirges by hitting them and quickly accelerated the impending death of the Mage and Fighter putting them on -8 and -5 respectively. I rolled against the morale of the final Stirge getting higher than its morale, and narrated this as the Stirge having fed heartily and trying to flee before it died like its fellows. As it detached from the Fighter with a full belly the Cleric took a final swing and squashed it against the wall spraying blood everywhere.
The Cleric then set about trying to stem the blood on the Mage. I gave him a 50% chance which he passed first time. He then tried to help the Fighter failing on his first attempt and pushing the Fighter to -9 .... one last attempt ..... under 50% ... he just managed to stem the flow of blood and stabilise him!
The Cleric and Thief dragged the Fighter and Mage back to the "safe" room and wedged the door shut. The Cleric also suggested he may seriously hurt someone if they tried to open the door in the night ... or before a good long rest. The Thief thought this was a bit rich seeing as his "helping him" had resulted in the loss of an eye ... mind you he was still alive!
So there you have it. They are battered. They are bruised. They are minus an eye ... well technically the Fighter has it in his pocket but that doesn't help the Thief!
The next session is next week ... I really can't wait to see what turns up in the dungeon and whether they make it alive ... or even if they accidentally off each other!
--Edit - I was re-reading the rules and realised that random monsters appear on a d6 roll of a 1. I had however used a d6 roll of 6. Only realised that last night. They still were running on a 1 in 6 chance but wanted to point it out in-case it caused any confusion.
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