AD&D 2e Play Report: Session 5

We played the fifth session of our ongoing AD&D 2e game last night. The summary of our last session is here. To recap briefly: The party had mostly cleared out the Warlord's Tower and freed the stonemasons they'd been sent to find. They searched the rest of the tower, found the remaining cultists and their leader, and retreated to rest. The cultists attacked them in the night and the party defeated them. The party spent a day resting to regain hit points, fought some giant rats of no consequence, and looted the tower, finding a magic greatsword in the process.

We began the session with the party's journey back to Spiritbrook. The journey would take roughly three and half days, and the party would follow the river so as to avoid getting lost. They would descend forested mountains and hills and cross some farmland before arriving back in town.

More on Encounter Checks

I've written about how I check for random encounters in the past, but wanted to expand on it here. On page 138 of the AD&D 2e DMG, there's a table like this:

I think this one is actually from the 1e DMG, but I can't find an image of the 2e one online (and don't have a PDF of the 2e DMG). This table largely the same as the 2e version, except that the 2e one includes jungle, ocean, and arctic, as well as the encounter chance for each type of terrain (expressed as an X-in-10 chance).

I like using this table for two reasons:

1. The day is broken up into six four-hour windows, which is how long my wilderness travel turns are. Usually, two turns are spent traveling, two are spent making camp and foraging, and two are spent resting/keeping watch.
2. The table doesn't require a check every single turn (except in forests and marshes), which speeds things up a bit. I'm not going to claim it's "realistic", but there's some element of realism to it - the party won't encounter monsters in the desert during the hottest and coldest periods of the day, for example.

When terrain types mix (i.e. forested mountains and hills), I use the least advantageous of the terrain types, so although no encounter checks are called for in the mountains during the noon, evening, midnight, and pre-dawn turns, I still check for forest encounters if the party is traveling through forested mountains. 

When I roll an encounter, I use the result on the d10 to determine if I should use the forest (2-in-10 chance) or mountain (3-in-10 chance) encounter tables. If the result is 3, I know to use the mountain encounter table. On a result of 1 or 2, I roll d2 to determine which table to consult.

The Hanged Men

I rolled an encounter on the party's very first travel turn. I had decided ahead of time what the first encounter of the session would be. The party was just a few hours out from the tower when they found the mercenaries whose lives they had spared, riddled with arrows and strung up in the trees.

The party had no great fondness for the mercenaries, and concluded (correctly) that they had run afoul of the forest people which the party had encountered on their original ascent. The players remembered that the forest people had mistaken them for mercenaries and nearly attacked them because of it. I felt like I had done a great job of illustrating the enmity between the two groups and felt validated that my players had been paying attention. Not wanting to meet a similar fate, the party proceeded cautiously.

They didn't go far before the forest people emerged to confront them. There were ten warriors, led by a 2nd-level fighter and a 4th-level druid (one bit of information which AD&D's Monstrous Manuals included and which has been lost to time is detailed information about what types of leaders are found among large groups of monsters - I would consider this mandatory were I ever to make my own monster manual).

No image or flavor text has ever made me want to play a druid as much as this guy.

The forest people were, again, unfriendly (reaction roll: 4). They had surrounded the party, and were ready to attack. Haymond Baler, cluelessly amicable, exclaimed "Oh hey guys!" The druid stepped forward, eyeing the greatsword carried by Bernhardt Dalton. He introduced himself as Valdemar, of the Burned Earth Tribe, and suggested that the party relinquish the sword to him.

A tense negotiation followed, with the party asking questions about the sword's nature and history. The druid told them that the sword, Infamy, had been wielded by an evil tyrant in the past to slaughter their people (true), that they had been seeking it so as to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands (true), and that they planned to destroy it (false).

Rozidien Stoneskull used his ability to detect evil, detecting evil from the sword and a more subtle evil intent in the forest people (the kind of evil that resides in the hearts of most mortals). Since the druid didn't register as evil (druids are by nature True Neutral in AD&D), Rozidien was okay with handing over the sword.

There was some protest from Terris, who used a greatsword as his preferred weapon, and had no qualms about wielding an evil sword - perhaps he had already begun to fall under its sway? The party put their hireling in place, asked the forest people for information about the surrounding area (they were reminded to avoid strange lights in the woods at night, which could be signs of an evil spirit nearby), and went on their way.

Greetings, Fellow Adventurers!

The rest of the day passed without incident, and the party made camp. I rolled another random encounter on the first watch of the evening. At first I rolled something very unexpected - a sphinx. On the sphinx subtable, I rolled something very bad - a hieracosphinx, the only Chaotic Evil sphinx, and a 7th-level monster. TPK, here we come! Looking at the monster's entry in the MM (page 324), I found that it dwells only in deserts. Crisis averted.

Rerolling, I got men. On the men subtable, I rolled characters, meaning an adventuring party. The section on humans in the MM (pages 196-7) divides adventurers into low level (1-3), mid level (4-7), high level (7-12), and very high level (9-20). Rolling d100, I got a result of 98 - very high level adventurers!

Quickly referencing Appendix III: NPCs (which should be titled "NPC Parties", page 379), I quickly generated a party of four very high level adventurers with four henchmen of 3rd- to 11th-level. They were mostly elves and halflings, with four fighters, three clerics, and led by a Chaotic Good half-elf ranger. They were friendly (reaction roll: 9).

In the future, I'll probably take some time to generate a handful of adventuring parties ahead of time (one low level, one mid level, one high level, and this one, albeit more fleshed-out) for this sort of situation. Generating a party on the fly is easy enough if I just want to determine general power level and race and class composition, but takes considerably longer if I want to factor in specifics like magic items, spells, and the like.

In my last campaign, my players had a hated rival adventuring party, the Gladiators of Patience. The Gladiators betrayed and nearly TPK'd the party, and from then on the party would stop at nothing to hunt them down and kill them. For a laugh, I decided that the first party of adventurers the group encountered in this campaign would also be the Gladiators of Patience. Little did I know they would be this world's Avengers!

I decided that the Gladiators had come from Spiritbrook after hearing about some missing stonemasons and a party of inexperienced adventurers who had gone looking for them about a week ago. They were delighted to see that the party was alright and that they had rescued the masons. 

"Only...you didn't happen to find an evil sword, did you? Oh, alright then. At least you didn't run into that evil Burned Earth Tribe and give them the sword. You did? Ah well, you'll learn. Yeah, they're going to reunite the sword with the evil spirit they worship, which unbeknownst to them is actually the spirit of the evil warlord who once ruled here. If the spirit is reunited with the sword, the warlord will return to the world, and he'll bring back the Bone Lord. That's fine, we've fought the Bone Lord before. Damn Bone Lord cult. We should have gone to his divine realm and finished him when we had the chance. Don't worry about it. There's a harpy nesting at the tower? We'll take care of that too. Thanks for the tip!"

This was a delight to run. The Gladiators recognized Haymond as a farmer-turned-adventurer and told him what a great career path it was - half of them were former farmers themselves! They warned the party that the farmers near Spiritbrook must be feeding the giant toad in the river, because it followed them for some time before they gave it some food to leave them alone. They recommended always carrying a dagger in case they get swallowed by a monster, since only daggers can be used effectively when swallowed. The Gladiators have a guildhall in the city, called the Fighting Pit, which they invited the party to come visit some time. The Gladiators throw legendary parties.

Terris, hearing that the Gladiators intended to go after the sword, wanted to go with them. The party reminded him that he was still on their payroll. The Gladiators said they didn't mind if he tagged along, but didn't want to get in the middle of hireling business. 

Don't Feed the Wildlife

The following day's travel passed without incident, with Terris grumbling about how he should have gone with the Gladiators. The party heard a pack of wolves howling somewhere in the distance, but they were indifferent (reaction roll: 6) and left the party alone. The party had a similar encounter with a pack of wild dogs on their way up to the tower in our first session, so they dubbed the area "the Wolfhowl Hills".

While setting camp, the party spied a mated pair of adult owlbears with two cubs, foraging for food. The owlbears smelled the party, and started heading in their direction - the owlbears were friendly (reaction roll: 9), so similar to the brown bear the party encountered on their ascent, I decided that they were looking for food. 

The party quickly broke down their camp and made an effort to evade the owlbears, leaving some food to distract them. They made camp again somewhere far away, but still in earshot of the river so that they could find their way back.

My girlfriend gets so mad whenever I relate these encounters to her. Don't the players realize that they're teaching these dangerous animals to associate people with food?

Gumbo's Kobolds

The party was on the edge of the hills, entering into flatland forest, when they were attacked. I rolled an encounter, got 18 kobolds, and determined that they were hostile, attacking on sight (reaction roll: 3). The kobolds were 120 feet away, so at medium range with their javelins. Bernhardt and the hirelings were surprised as a cry of "Bree-yark!" erupted from the forest, and missiles rained down on them from bushes lining the rocky outcroppings above the path. The stonemasons, though armed, were noncombatants by nature, and failed their morale check. They took cover and cowered as the fight began.

I decided that three kobolds were attacking each party member. Rozidien charged towards the nearest group. Haymond closed distance while firing with his sling. Karven Stone started Dark Souls rolling towards the nearest source of cover. 

We argued for about 20 minutes over whether or not Karven's tumbling proficiency (which grants +4 to his AC) allows him to move at full speed, which I ruled it doesn't. The description of the proficiency (PHB, page 87), isn't clear on this point, the way many mechanics in AD&D lack clarity, so I explained that the group is going to have to get used to my making rulings like this. The description specifies that the character must forego attacking, and attacking normally only allows the character to move at half speed, so I ruled that tumbling is done at half speed as well, or else the character would simply tumble everywhere if they weren't otherwise able to attack. This is certainly 20 minutes of game time I wish I could get back.

Yinvalur Sparkguard went down during the first round, while still surprised, and Bernhardt moved in to cure him with cure light wounds. Bernhardt was struck by a javelin before the casting was finished, and so the spell fizzled. This came as a shock to Bernhardt's player, who with each session is learning more and more about the restrictions placed on spellcasters in AD&D, such as needing to remain completely still during any round that a spell is cast.

The fight was a bit of mess, as we use theater of the mind combat for random encounters, rather than a grid. I had to keep track of all 18 kobolds, approximately where everyone was, who had cover or concealment, the degree of cover or concealment, and attack roll modifiers due to cover, concealment, and range. I'm not afraid to admit that I often forgot about attack roll penalties, and that at times made the fight more difficult for the players. All of this definitely made the fight more difficult to run, but I also found it more engaging and interesting, so I'm hoping I just get used to tracking the modifiers with more experience.

The kobolds were critting like crazy - almost every player took at least one or two critical hits. It was brutal. In the end, Haymond, Karven, and Rozidien were all unconscious, along with Yinvalur. Terris's morale broke and he ran off into the forest, yelling about how he should have joined the Gladiators when he had the chance. Bernhardt did his best to tend to the wounded, but eventually he was alone against the eight surviving kobolds, who time after time succeeded on their increasingly difficult morale checks.

As a last ditch effort, Bernhardt, in cover, beseeched the stonemasons to take up arms against the kobolds. Bernhardt has a -2 to reaction rolls due to his low Charisma, but this was cancelled out by the masons' +2 due to their friendly disposition towards the party. I made a reaction roll, and for once luck was on the party's side - I rolled a 9. The masons, inspired by Bernhardt's words and the dire straits their saviors were in, rattled their sabers and broke cover to charge the remaining kobolds.

I don't have a great procedure for mass combat, so I made one up on the fly. The masons and kobolds were each approximately level 1 creatures, so I rolled one die for each fighter on each side. The masons have a d6 hit die, and the kobolds have d4, so I rolled 8d6 (for eight masons) against 8d4 (for eight kobolds) and compared the results. A success of one die versus another meant that individual was killed, and a tie indicated an ongoing struggle. Bernhardt brought up the rear, tending the wounds of any injured masons.

The first round, five kobolds and one mason were killed. The following round, another mason and the remaining kobolds were killed. Another TPK averted, and it didn't require DM fiat or a deus ex machina, just quick thinking from the players and a lucky roll! 

Despite the difficulties, this might be my favorite combat encounter I've run so far. The kobolds had 18 hit dice worth of combatants on their side, whereas the party had just 10 (four 2nd-level characters plus two 1 HD hirelings). They were at a disadvantage due to the terrain, and had some terrible rolls working against them, but they persevered. 

Bernhardt used a few spell slots to cast cure light wounds and revive those who remained unconscious, and that's where we wrapped. The party earned experience for the encounters with the forest people and with the kobolds, and both Bernhardt and Karven leveled up again - they're now 3rd-level. They both gain some hit points, Bernhardt gains a nonweapon proficiency and access to 2nd-level priest spells, and Karven's THAC0 improves to 19.

With luck, next session the party will finally arrive back in town. They'll get a nice chunk of experience and gold for completing their quest. There, they can decide if they want to take on the other 1st-level quest they've heard about, or if they'd like to spend downtime gathering information about 2nd- or even 3rd-level adventures to try their hands at.