AD&D 2e Play Report: Session 9

Last night, we played the ninth session of our ongoing AD&D 2e campaign. The play report for session 8 is here.

To recap, the party was attempting to remove some bones from a haunted ruin when they were confronted by an angry apparition. Despite the spirit's initial hostile intent, the party managed to convince it not to attack them. They quickly exited the ruin and returned to town with the bones, which their current patron, a priest, used to conduct a ceremony which he hoped would put the spirit to rest.

The party took some time in town to figure out how they might identify the properties of a magical alien helmet. I've since reflected on the difficulty of identifying magic item in AD&D 2e and have written about my own approach to identifying magical items. Ultimately, the price of identification was too rich for them, so they held onto the helmet for now.

The party then embarked on a long journey to the south, intending to investigate a series of attacks by barbarians on logging camps near the town of Houndrun. 

In the town of Mythshire, they encountered a group of adventurers called the Pit Fighters of Self-Restraint, who had killed some pegasi and stolen their eggs on behalf of the town's evil wizard overlord, and were parading around with a pegasus corpse for the townspeople to see. While the party did not appreciate the gruesome display, they didn't want to start a fight in town, and so they moved on as quickly as possible. 

At the gates of Southreach, the party encountered a group of merchants from a faraway coastal nation, selling exotic crabs, ivory, and pearls. 

From the city they moved onto Houndrun, where they met with the foreman of the logging company and learned more about the barbarian attacks. The town had an uneasy truce with the local tribe, but recently the barbarians were believed to have adopted a new leader, who had launched several attacks on the town's mills, going so far as to destroy the newest of the facilities.

The party departed town to locate the barbarian camp, encountering a mounted patrol from Houndrun along the way. They passed by the recently-raided lumber mill before coming upon the camp. They were able to get very close without being detected. Karven Stone, the thief, sneakily climbed a hill leading to what the party believed would be the chieftain's tent. Karven assassinated the lookout and lowered a rope so that the rest of the party could climb up.

Player Absence

Karven's player was late to this session, so we started without him. My general rule is that we'll begin play so long as we have a quorum - so if the group consists of four or five players, we'll start once we have three; with six or seven players, we'll start once we have four (this is as many players as I've had in a single game since I started DMing again around six years ago).

Normally, if a player isn't present, their character doesn't do anything - they're just hanging around in the background. I don't want to make decisions on a player's behalf that might put their character in jeopardy, and I certainly don't want to be controlling a player character in a combat scenario on top of everything else I've got going on. However, since the players were hesitant to take any action until they had gathered more information, Karven was the only one capable of sneaking around, and I wanted to get on with the game, I decided to let the players decide what they wanted Karven to do in the player's absence.

Reconnaissance 

The party listened at the tent for a moment and overheard a heated discussion between two people. One person was congratulating the other on recent victories, but cautioning that the tribe quit while it was ahead - they had made their point by destroying the new lumber mill, which was in breach of the town's agreement with the tribe. The other person seemed elated by the tribe's conquest and wanted to push the issue, hoping to put the remaining mills - and eventually, the town itself - to the torch.

Karven snuck around the sides of the tent and discovered a pair of guards out front, as well as at least another half dozen warriors milling about the camp below them. There was also a horse-sized statue of a wolf by the gates. The statue had marks on it as if it had been in battle, and its mouth and claws were stained with what looked like blood.

The party discussed their options, and concluded that if they could eliminate the tribe's bloodthirsty leader, then they might be able to convince the more levelheaded person in the tent to pursue a peaceful solution.

Surprise!

The party positioned themselves outside the tent, and Ash and Haymond Baler, the two fighters, slashed a hole in the canvas and leapt through. There they found what looked like the barbarian chieftain, clad in a fine set of plate mail, and what looked to be a druid.

I made surprise checks for the barbarian leaders, with a -4 penalty because the party was until now unseen and unheard (DMG, page 139). Both rolled 9s, with a modified roll of 5 - surprise occurs on a roll of 1, 2, or 3 on a d10 (PHB, page 147). The barbarian leaders were not surprised. 

The chieftain drew a gleaming longsword and called for his guards, ordering them to subdue the party and "feed them to the stone wolf." Haymond declared that the party was here to broker a peace, which gave the druid pause - I rolled a 10 on his reaction roll (8 on 2d6, with -4 because the druid's initial disposition was hostile, and +6 for Haymond's reaction modifier from Charisma). However, the chieftain's initial disposition roll of -1 was such that he would not listen to reason - he leapt into battle immediately, and so we rolled initiative.

To Have and to Hold

Both Bernhardt Dalton, the cleric, and the barbarian druid began casting spells. Bernhardt's spell went off first - hold person (PHB, page 261)! The spell targets 1d4 individuals, and Bernhardt rolled a 1, so he chose to target just the chieftain. If one person is targeted, they save at -2. The chieftain failed his save, and so would be completely immobilized for six rounds (two rounds per level, and Bernhardt is 3rd-level)!

Karven was next, and threw a dagger at each of the guards who had entered the tent from outside to aid their chieftain. He hit both of them and killed them instantly. Ash and Haymond closed into melee with the chieftain. Melee attacks against a held opponent are automatic hits (PHB, page 120), so they started wailing on him. 

It's pretty crazy how good hold person is, especially when compared to the 5e version. The players were delighted by it. We'll see how they feel about it when that same spell eventually is turned on them!

The druid finished casting his spell - flame blade! He took one look at the situation unfolding before him, then struck down the chieftain with his own fiery sword (if there is no other opposition in a melee, a held opponent can be instantly slain, which I felt applied here).

Restoring the Balance

The party was pretty shocked by how easy this all was, but they fully anticipated that the druid would be willing to play ball. He introduced himself as Feli, and explained that he was ready to make peace. The chieftain, Redford, had been the strong leader which the tribe needed in order to make a statement, but the wrong done by the lumber company had been righted, and Feli wished to see the balance restored. 

Feli regretted that it had to come to this, but told the party that he could convince the rest of the tribe to cease its aggression towards the town, if the party could convince the lumber company not to build any more mills. This seemed reasonable, so the party agreed.

Unfortunately, Noa, the subchief who would rightfully take Redford's place as leader, shared the chieftain's bloodthirstiness. He would have to be eliminated so that Feli could install a more malleable leader. With the druid's help, the party came up with a plan for Karven to sneak into Noa's tent at night and slay him. The tribe would be incensed by the assassinations as first, but they would look to Feli for guidance, and he would steer them towards going on the defensive, rather than retaliating.

This whole series of events might read as odd, but 2e portrays druids as mystical balance-keepers who are True Neutral by necessity. Chief Redford, on the other hand, was Chaotic Evil. I had determined ahead of time that there was a power struggle within the tribe, which the party could exploit in order to resolve the quest without necessarily killing everyone. If things had gone another way, they could have ended up battling the entire camp, but that isn't how the dice fell.

Skullduggery

The party waited until late in the evening, after most of the camp had passed out from drinking too much grog. Feli managed to keep any other members of the tribe from entering the camp to find their leader slain. Karven snuck out under cover of darkness, creeping silently past two groups of drunken, sleeping warriors. He slipped into Noa's tent undetected and cut his throat. Before leaving, he plundered the subchief's magical scale mail armor and war hammer.

Karven and the rest of the party made a swift exit from the camp, promising Feli that they would put in a good word for the tribe's new leadership. They slinked off into the woods, back to their donkey and dogs, and made a hasty camp for what was left of the evening.

Beetle Battle

The next day, the party set off back to Houndrun. On the edge of the forest, they heard a great racket, as if huge beasts were doing battle in the forest just ahead. They came upon a pair of giant male stag beetles, ten feet long, engaged in a territorial battle, with two females looking on. Giant stag beetles are worth 975 XP - a 6th-level monster. They have three attacks, two of which do 1d10 damage each, and the third is a crushing mandible attack which deals 4d4 damage. Luckily, the beetles were indifferent to the party, so they wisely decided to steer clear of the display.

One of these days, one of these random encounters is going to kill them. Today was not that day!

Back to Town (and City)

The party returned to Houndrun and met with the logging foreman, Bradyn. I hadn't taken note of the name I had randomly generated for the foreman last session, and neither had any of the players, so I generated a new one and made sure to record it this time. His name has always been Bradyn.

Bradyn was True Neutral himself, so he understood when the party communicated to him the importance of avoiding any further antagonism towards the Wolfkin Tribe (had I randomly determined that his alignment was Evil, it would have been more difficult to convince him). The party received the reward for their services, spent the night in town, and set out back towards the city of Southreach in the morning.

Along the way, the party had another encounter with merchants. I thought it'd be funny if they encountered the crab merchants from before, so that's what happened. The party bought some more crabs and continued on their way.

Rumor Fatigue

The players decided to spend a week in the city collecting more rumors. The party learned of two new quests:

• Near Evertide, a nearby coastal town to the north, the Dragon Beacon had become illuminated. The Dragon Beacon is an old tower that, when illuminated, burns with an eerie purple light, and releases magical pheromones which attract dragons. A band of piratical kobolds has been raiding fishing boats and cargo ships off the coast, and it's believed that they're somehow responsible for the Beacon reactivating. Worse yet, a flight of small drakes has been spotted flying around the tower's summit, which means bigger dragons will be on their way soon. The town is looking for adventurers to go investigate the tower and figure out how to turn it off.
• Near Grimerun, a village farther to the north, hobgoblin raiders have been attacking foresters and taking them prisoner. The hobgoblins are believed to be based out of the City of Oni, a ruined city which was long ago the seat of an ogre mage king.

At this point, I'm becoming fatigued by the players' gluttony for rumors. They're already aware of three other quests - a band of troublesome ogres, a mysterious forest beast, and a bug hunt. Unfortunately, they're afraid of the ogres (thinking that they're too strong for the party to confront, which I estimate they are not), and Haymond's player is convinced that the bug hunt involves ankhegs, which he is personally afraid of (it's not ankhegs). If it were me, I'd jump at the chance to battle iconic D&D monsters and possibly die, but it's not up to me.

At a certain point, I'll just have to tell the players that there are no more new rumors, and they simply have to pick a quest and do one, even if it scares them, because they're adventurers, and we're here to play the game, not not-play the game because we're scared.

Since one of the rumors they already had (the mysterious forest beast) and one of the rumors they just got (hobgoblin raiders) both originated in Grimerun, the party decided to go there next. 

Uninteresting Fantastical Items

In the meantime, Haymond and Karven visited the university in the upper city to see if someone could tell them anything about the armor and hammer they had plundered from Noa. Hilariously, the DMG suggests that consulting a sage should also cost at least 1,000 gp per day (page 146). Since this seemed high, I instead consulted 5e's rule for hireling expenses (PHB, page 159), with is 2 gp/day for a skilled hireling. Since the party was consulting an expert sage, I doubled it to 4 gp/day. Since the question was specific, it would take 1d6 days for the sage to come back with an answer, and success would not be automatic.

Unfortunately, in this scenario I did not practice what I preached in my recent post on item identification. I didn't have anything interesting about the items to share with the party, such as their origins or appearance, so I simply said that the items were of expert make and probably had a minor enchantment. The players remarked that this seemed like a much better alternative to paying 1,000 gp for an identify spell, and I can't help but agree with them. It's an adjudication I made on the fly, and not one I'd make again, since it undermines the expectations of the setting which I'm trying to establish.

For contrast, if the party had asked a sage about the strange helmet they recovered from the Whispering Tomb, for example, the sage would have told them that it had the makings of an alien device, likely used for neural enhancement by psionics-wielding creatures - this gives them clues about the item without directly divulging its properties, encouraging informed experimentation. Something to keep in mind for the future.

Bernhardt felt comfortable enough to test the items out, and at this point I informed the players that the items were scale mail +1 and a war hammer +1 - funny, didn't I just write a post saying a DM should never give their players an ordinary war hammer +1 specifically? Oh well. Sometimes we don't always live up to our own ideals.

This is where we wrapped the session. Next time, the players will head all the way back to Spiritbrook, then continue north to Grimerun. From there, they plan to hunt for the forest beast, then pursue the hobgoblin lead.

Bernhardt leveled up, and is now 4th-level. He gains some hit points, a 1st-level and 2nd-level spell slot, and a weapon proficiency (he is now proficient with the war hammer). His THAC0 improves by two (now 18), and his saving throws improve as well.