Previously in this World of Warcraft: the RPG campaign:
- My preparations, and summary of the first few chapters
- Chapter six: Trigger-Happy Ogre
- Chapter seven: Everyone Hates Elves, Apparently
- Chapter eight: Rats and Revenants
- Chapter nine: Kaboom, Baby!
- My rule cheat sheet
My players got blown up again. But it wasn’t actually my fault this time!
Before the start of this session I went over the quick-and-dirty combat rules I’d written up, as detailed in my post here. They are honestly still a lot slower and… er… cleaner than I’d prefer, but at least they’re something like a comprehensible amount to keep in your head at once. Anyway, I think the summary worked out well, the players were a lot more tactical in their movements this time than they usually are.
Likewise, they are starting to develop some proper dungeon-crawling paranoia… not that it necessarily helps them when the dice fail to cooperate. This time, they made their second foray into the supposedly-haunted Bashboulder Mine, and explored a cavern that I described as very stinky and with a draft coming from somewhere. They promptly investigated the draft and cast Detect Magic and Detect Evil, which is to be commended… but the problem was that the inhabitant of the cave was a dire bat, who are True Neutral non-magical animals. I meant for them to get a hint of that by giving the Druid a Knowledge (Nature) check to realise just what the smell was about, but sadly she rolled improbably poorly, so the dire bat got the drop on them.
The battle that followed was kind of dramatic, with a lot of blood spilled and a surprising amount of crits. After the dire bat was down to a third of its HP, I made a morale save for it – not a thing that’s in the actual rules as far as I know, but something that really should be there – and it failed and flapped over to a crack in the ceiling to escape.
This was when the Tinker decided to fling a grenade after it. Now, I want to make it very clear that I told him precisely how I’d rule – what the DC would be, and what the consequences would be on a failure. The players took a quick OOC vote, and the motion passed 2 to 1, with the Druid having reservations. So he flung the grenade. And it missed. And dropped down in the middle of the group.
After precious spell slots were burned for much-needed healing, a new group rule was implemented: From Now On, Let’s Listen To The Druid. Malfurion Stormrage would be pleased to hear it, I’m sure.
They also got a lot more cautious and sent the Mage’s rat familiar and the Druid’s wolf animal companion to scout, instructed by the Druid through her Speak With Animals daily spell-like ability. Technically I don’t think that spell works on familiars since they’re not classed as animals but as magical creatures, but honestly, I feel like I must be missing something about familiars because they seem absolutely useless until level five. There’s got to be some way to make an animal with human-level intelligence useful, I feel, so letting the Druid Speak With Animals to it is my band-aid solution to the puzzle. Anyway, the rat came back from her direction reporting an empty chamber, and the wolf from his reporting a single kobold that ran away.
The players went in the direction of the kobold and found three confused kobolds milling about. I didn’t explain to them what was going on, but what had actually happened was that the first kobold was meant to lure the party into an ambush, but that didn’t work since the wolf was just scouting – and when time passed and no one walked into the trap, the kobolds went to check what was going on. Now their plan is unraveling less because of any complex counter-strategy from the players and more because the kobolds aren’t very smart and the players haven’t been careless enough for the plan to work. Which I feel is about how it should work; no plan survives contact with the enemy, and all that, so what it really comes down to is who can improvise the fastest.
Still, next time should be the final battle against the kobolds, and the time after that might be actual resolution to the mystery. So far, so dungeony… but after this I think I’ll go back to open-air adventures for a bit.
Also, I’m somewhat amused at the fact that WordPress’ image generator renders “female Night Elf Druid” and “female High Elf Mage” the same every time, but the “male Gnome Tinker” gets a new look in every image. I guess there’s more room for interpretation with a character type who looks a bit eccentric per definition?