With the zombies defeated, Trixalix and Kevin started searching the cells along the western wall. In the last cell, behind a loose brick in the wall, Trix located an aquamarine gemstone worth 500 gp. The party then entered the torture chamber and looked around. They spent so much of their time searching the walls for secret passages that they missed the important clues in the center of the room by the pillars. I even tried to work up the mood by explaining all the torture devices and the remains of "unfortunate victims" therein. Even though I mentioned the faint blood trail on the ground, no one investigated the columns. They wasted about 3 turns of time here (and 3 encounter rolls) before leaving and heading to the piles of debris at the cellar doors to the west of the staircase.
They began clearing away the southern doorway when they encountered two bugbears (wandering monsters emerging from the ogre's door). Surprise was rolled, but Spugnoir, on watch duty behind the party, noticed them emerging from the doorway in time to warn the others (no surprise on either side). The bugbears crossed and Spugnoir cast a sleep spell at them. Unfortunately he only managed to affect one. The other circled around the staircase to the north where Gort waited in ambush. Gort actually surprised the bugbear and hit him for 10 points! Trixalix headed over to Spugnoir to help him kill off the sleeping bugbear while Elmo headed north to help Gort. The next round, Gort feinted a withdrawal and then cleaved the bugbear, dropping him dead at his feet.
The party looted the bugbears and recovered 24 gp and two morningstars. They cut off the flaming eye symbol from one of the bugbears' tabards to show someone in the village. They then returned to clearing the door. Unfortunately, the door was locked and they had no means of opening it. Before more combatants emerged, Gort cast his last cure light wounds on himself, recovering 3 hp. They decided to clear away the other door, spending some time doing so. In order to light up the eastern side of the chamber (and prevent more ambushes) Elana cast light on a piece of wood from the debris pile and set it in an empty sconce by the mule. After spending another half hour clearing debris, the party was faced with another stout, locked door. Trixalix listened at both doors and poked the lock to see if there was a key set in the locks on the inside. He heard nothing and the locks were empty. They then started searching the walls for secret doors, but found none. Elmo attempted to track, but since he saw no one prior, he could not locate any tracks at the doors. Mort picked up the bugbears' trail and led the party back into the ogre room where the stench from the ogre corpse fouled the trail. Elmo then picked up the trail and found it led to the southeastern corner.
Before the party could locate the secret door, I rolled another wandering monster (wouldn't you know it, more giant rats!). Bursting from the corpse of the ogre, 8 giant rats converged on the party, gaining surprise! Luckily, the closest rats missed their attacks during the surprise segment. There was a lot of missing on both sides, but Elmo managed to kill off quite a few, as did Gort and Mort. Elana was bitten for 1 hp of damage (but was not diseased).
Once the rats were slain, the party returned to the southeast corner to locate secret doors. It took some time but they finally located the opening, and then Elana found the stone block that activated it. However, instead of proceeding on, the party opted to head back to town. They were injured and tired, and nearly out of spells. They returned to the mule, retrieved the fallen men, and left the moathouse without any further encounters. They made it back to Hommlet around 3 pm and we ended here.
* * * * *
Wandering monsters in a small dungeon are hard to adjudicate. Where are these creature coming from? Obviously, with the giant rats, it's easy enough to just have them appear as scavengers that were hiding or eating the dead things left behind by adventurers. However, humanoids are another story. Were it not for the roll of the bugbears, the party would NEVER have found the secret door leading down to the lower dungeons. In fact, the adventure would have ended here. Perhaps my players simply aren't savvy enough, or perhaps the late hour at the end of the session clouded everyone's judgment. Either way, the location of the secret door due to the wandering monsters was the ONLY way to justify the existence of these humanoids here (especially since the monsters were obviously aware of the green slime trap in the stairs and would not have descended that way).
Ranger tracking indoors sucks. There has to be SOME way to follow a trail on a dirty floor if you have not previously seen the creature that made the tracks! Searching for secret doors, I found, is a two-part process. The first part is locating the door itself - this takes 1 round of searching per person per 10' section of wall. Next, the means of opening said secret door must be detected - this takes 1 turn per person searching the same 10' wall. Devious DMs would place the activation trigger away from the door, but in this case I opted to allow the players to find it nearby. Their dogged determination was wasting lantern oil - and that seems to be the only cost in searching (time). If they had a continual light source then that cost would be minimal (although each turn requires a wandering monster roll).
I find that giant rats are not much of a threat to the party, especially with Elmo involved. Most hits slay a rat, unless the damage roll was poor. The biggest threat with the rats is their numbers, which can easily overwhelm a small party. I found that the rats bursting from the corpse was a clear winner of a description since it put the players off-balance and gave a more evil disposition to the encounter (blood-soaked black rats with gleaming, beady eyes and yellowed teeth).
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