We had our third session of our AD&D 2e game last night. There were some technical issues with the internet on my end, so we ended up getting off to a rocky start.
The party continued their exploration of the Warlord's Tower, confronting a group of Bone Lord cultists in the tower's second sublevel.
I had originally planned that the cultists here (who had a reaction roll of unfriendly) would mistake the party for mercenaries, who were forbidden in the lower levels, and would order them to leave at once. Since some of the mercenaries from the ground level had escaped in the previous session and made their way down here, I decided instead that the cultists here were well aware of the party's intentions.
The party met with continued resistance from the cultists, who refused to divulge the location of the missing stonemasons. Not wanting to back down, the party initiated a fight.
The combat was pretty straightforward, with the PCs taking only very minor wounds. I haven't yet made any adjustments to the initiative system, which was a pain point in our last session, but worked fine here.
We learned that Karven Stone, the thief, is quite good at two-weapon fighting - normally, the first attack has a -2 penalty to hit and the second has a -4, but Karven has a +2 adjustment from Dexterity, which makes the first attack a normal roll and the second a roll at -2.
I also learned between sessions that nonlethal attacks have a -4 penalty to hit and do 50% damage. Previously, I was running it like D&D 5e, where the character attacks and does damage as normal and simply declares whether they're attacking nonlethally.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, as it disincentivizes subduing enemies - which can lead to more interesting social interaction, assuming the players aren't prone to torture, which mine luckily are not - but also makes it harder to play a "good" character, which I like. Doing the "right" thing should be hard - the reward is for the player to feel good about their character's decisions and morals, not optimal tactics. Being merciless and greedy is more expedient and beneficial, which is often its own reward.
The cleric player randomly asked which god upholds the values of healing and greed, which stumped me. I said maybe Tymora, the D&D goddess of fortune - living and acquiring gold could be seen as the best of luck in an adventuring scenario, after all - but also suggested that the player could come up with something themselves. We'll see where it goes.
The party captured the last of the cultists, who at this point had lost morale and were beginning to flee - the cleric, Bernhardt Dalton, wields a mancatcher, which has proven to be a very useful weapon. The captive offered to lead them to the stonemasons in exchange for his life, but warned the party that there were more devout, magic-wielding acolytes in that direction.
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| The chosen weapon of life-loving clerics around the world! |
The acolytes of the Bone Lord were in the tower's third sublevel, scrubbing bloodstains from the floor of a ritual chamber. They were indifferent to the party, not wanting a fight but also not readily sharing information, either. Once they saw that the party had a cultist hostage, they demanded his release. Well past the point of parleying, the party released the hostage as a distraction and launched an attack.
The acolytes were all spellcasters, so I had to take some time to review their spellcasting options before proceeding. Only a few of them had line of sight when initiative was rolled (and a character cannot move and cast a spell on the same turn in AD&D), so those acolytes began casting while the others closed in to bludgeon the party with clubs.
Cause fear - the reversed, evil version of remove fear (PHB, page 256) - is a hell of a spell. It has a casting time of 1, meaning the caster's initiative is modified by 1, which allows it to go off before most weapon attacks are made. Bernhardt Dalton, the cleric, with his 16 Wisdom, has a +2 saving throw bonus versus mind-affecting spells like fear effects, so he was able to resist multiple cause fear spells. Haymond Baler, the fighter, Rozidien Stoneskull, the paladin (also with a +2 to all saves, due to being a paladin), and the party's human hireling, Terris, were not so lucky. All of them were forced to flee the scene at top speed, and the effect lasts for 1d4 rounds! No saving throw at the end of every turn like in 5e.
Their retreat allowed acolytes who had already gotten into melee range to make free attacks at their backs with their clubs (+4 to hit!), which wounded them significantly. The party's elf hireling, Yinvalur Sparkguard, was a blessing in this fight. He took down the acolytes' leader with a pair of arrows in the first round, and averaged another kill pretty much every round thereafter.
Bernhardt and Karven managed to hold the line until the rest of the party shook off their fear and returned to the fight. By that time, both Bernhardt and Karven had succumbed to their wounds, but Haymond, Rozidien, Terris, and Yinvalur were able to clean up the rest of the enemies.
At the start of the campaign, we decided that characters would die at -10 hit points, rather than 0. The players were divided on this. Ultimately I had the tie-breaking vote, so I decided to err on the side of less lethality. Bernhardt and Karven were both at 0 hp, while Haymond and Rozidien were below half hp, and the hirelings were unharmed.
Characters in AD&D regain just a hit point per day (3 hit point with bed rest, and they can add their bonus hit points from Constitution with a week of bed rest), so it may take them some time to recover from this fight (although Bernhardt can speed the process with cure wounds, which he can cast four times per day once he regains consciousness).
Haymond and Rozidien told the hirelings to take Bernhardt and Karven to the mercenaries' barracks in the tower's upper levels while they poked around a bit more. They found a locked door and heard scurrying on the other side, and something sniffing under the door from the other side. They decided they wanted nothing to with the "cultist rats" and moved on.
In what looked like a torture chamber, they found a door with an arcane sigil of a skeletal hand etched into the surface. They heard voices on the other side, which they took to be the stonemasons. When they tried opening the door, the sigil began to glow and a commanding voice issued from the door, warning them to "Wrap thyself in the Bone Lord's embrace, or feel the chill of his grasp." This was a clue that they should disguise themselves in the vestments of the cultists before proceeding. There was another clue in a note in the personal belongings of the lead acolyte, but they didn't find it.
They attempted to open the door anyway, and a spectral, skeletal hand emerged, wreathed in icy necrotic energy. Haymond and Rozidien did battle with the spectral hand. It landed a few hits on Rozidien, doing minor damage and sapping his Strength. This was something of a comical, slapstick scene as the players flailed ineffectively against the hand's -2 armor class for six rounds before it disappeared.
Finally, the characters opened the door and found the surviving stonemasons, worse for wear but glad to be rescued (they mistook the party for cultists and were planning to jump them when they opened the door, but Haymond convinced them otherwise).
At the end of the session, the party gained a good chunk of experience from the tough fight, and Karven leveled up. He gains a bit of hit points and 30 points to spend on his thieving skills.
Next session, the players plan to recuperate in the tower, and I have to decide if I'm going to let them. They did not find the secret room where the leader of the cultists sits in drug-addled contemplation. However, I don't view this NPC as proactive, so they may be content to simply allow the PCs to think that they vanquished the evil and go on their way. There's also the matter of the forest people the party encountered on their way to the tower, who want to seize the tower for themselves, and might launch an attack against the party if they think they can win.
Overall, I felt this was a less interesting session than the last two. The social interactions mostly fell flat and game time was spent primarily in combat. On the other hand, the second combat was tense and felt satisfyingly deadly, and the players accomplished their main goal in the dungeon. It will be interesting to see if they try to explore the rest of the tower once they've recovered, or if they decide to cut their losses and make the long trek back to town.
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