"Pathfinder Campaign - A Call to Arms - S43" Topic

SESSION 43: YOUTHFUL AGGRESSION

"Let's go for it" confirms Trone.

"So first let's get the ears and loot off those little kobolds and the rats we've killed" murmurs Lothar. "Here take your time and I'll help you over."

[So in this scenario Trone has effectively Taken 10, ie 10 x 6 seconds or one minute, and carefully crossed over to the where the kobolds are to loot them and cut off their ears.]

Whilst there Trone does a quick search. He rolls a Perception check of 7 + 1 Wis = 8 against a DC 10 fails to notice that the kobolds have a series of short planks to help them cross the pit. [And I sigh a little DM sigh as I realise that one party cannot boom a door and the other cannot find as simple an item as a stick to help them. Anyways….]

He cuts the ears from the bodies and finds only 2gp of gold. The arms and armour are worthless given the quality and diminutive size of the kobolds.

He comes back to Lothar and together they carefully cross over to the western side, bringing Luther with them.

Forming back up, Lothar takes the time to instruct Luther again to guard Trone. Lothar's grown to love Luther but wonders at his ability to retain a command for more than a few minutes.

None the less the party start down the western corridor.

Rounding the corner they see the 16 remaining rats, still cowered in the northwestern corner of a 30 x 20 room.

ROUND 1A – THE CURSE OF ASMODEUS

• The party automatically win initiative as the rats are still cowering.
• Lothar Channels Negative Energy. The rats need to make a roll of 12 to pass their save and roll a 6, 6, 3, 17, 17, 7, 20, 17, 18, 18, 7, 9, 15, 17, 18, 5 for 4pts or 2pts of damage respectively depending on whether or not they made their save. Three of the rats die in the process but there are 13 left. Lothar 5ft steps back to the east.
• Trone and Luther 5ft step to the east to keep formation.

ROUND 1B – COUNTER ATTACK

• Shocked by the suddenness of the attack the rats counter.
• The first rat advances on Trone and tries to nip at the faithful warrior but it misses.
• The next rat also closes on Trone and attacks and also misses.
• The third front line rat closes on Luther and nips him on the right leg for 2pts of damage. Luther yelps and is possibly diseased. It is a Fort DC 11 save to avoid being diseased. Luther rolls a 6 + 5 for save = 11 and he saves, just.
• The rest of the rats swarm up to wards their opponents.

ROUND 2A – TRONE THE CLEAVER

• Lothar 5ft steps to the south and Channels Negative Energy. It's the last time he can do it for the day and so hopes that it's effective. The effected rats in line of sight need to roll a 12 to save and roll 20, 13, 16, 4, 18, 10, 4, 18, 16, 2, 16 for 2pts and 1pt respectively. Another three rats are dropped but there are still 11 left.
• Trone slashes at the nearest rat with his long sword and hits it in the groin (let us call this one ‘mwindsorfw' just for a little fun) for 11pts of damage, killing it instantly. Trone Cleaves the rat to the north west and hits it for 8pts of damage, killing it also.
• Luther attacks the rat to his front but misses.

ROUND 2B – SWARM

• The rats have taken 50% casualties and must take another morale check. They roll 5 on 2d6 against a morale of 8 and will continue to fight.
• The first rat attacks Luther again but just misses.
• The next rat 5ft steps to the east and attacks Trone and misses.
• The next rat also 5ft steps to the east and attacks Trone and almost hits Trone but he is able to push it aside with his shield.
• The rest of the rats swarm around their brethren.
• The King Rat sulks to the back of his pack, waiting to get revenge.

ROUND 3A – FEEL THE BURN

• Trone attacks the rat to the front of Luther and hits it for 12pts of damage, killing it instantly. He 5ft steps to the east to form a defensive position with Lothar.
• Lothar casts Burning Hands catching 4 rats under the flames of Asmodeus. They need to make a DC 12 Reflex save for ½ damage The rats have a Reflex save of +5 and thus need to roll a 7 or more. They roll 15, 11, 16 and 4 and take 1d4 damage or 3pts or 1pts depending on whether they saved or not. Three rats are incinerated in the inferno.
• Luther looks around and barks at the enemy. He cannot advance because the is on a Guard order and must stay close to Trone.

ROUND 3B – PENETRATING THE RANKS

• The southern most rat advances 5ft to the east and attacks Luther and hits him for 4pts of damage. Luther needs to make a DC 11 Fort save against disease. He rolls a 13 + 5 = 18 and saves.
• The next rat also advances 5ft and attacks Luther but this time misses the faithful hound.
• The next rat advances 10ft to the south east and attacks 1-2 Luther, 3-4 Trone, 5-6 Lothar and rolls a 3. Biting at Trone he misses the warrior.
• The King Rat advances 5ft.

ROUND 4A – REDEEMING QUALITIES

• Luther is starting to look bad. Lothar shouts to Trone to take out the rat to his front. Trone stabs at it with his long sword and hits it, cutting it in two and dealing 8pts of damage. Trone then 5ft steps to the west.
• Luther attacks the rat directly to his front but he misses.
• Lothar casts Cure Light Wounds upon Luther and heals back his faithful hound by 7pts.

ROUND 4B – THE KING RAT

• The rat opposite Trone tries to take a nip out of him but misses.
• The rat opposite Luther also misses.
• The King Rat 5ft steps to the north east, bears its evil, diseased fangs and tries to bury them into Trone but he cannot penetrate Trones' scale mail armour and he also misses.

ROUND 5A – SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL

• Trone lashes out at the King Rat but misses the wily old master.
• Luther grabs the nearest rat in his jaws and viscously shakes it doing 7pts of damage and killing it.

ROUND 5B – CLOSE

• The King Rat jumps up and bites Trone on the right forearm dealing 3pts of damage. Trone must make a DC 11 Fortitude save against becoming diseased. His Fortitude save is +4 so he'll need to roll a 7 or more on a d20. He rolls a 16 and doesn't become diseased.
• The remaining rat attacks Trone but misses.

ROUND 6A – DISPLAY OF WRATH

• Calling on the strength of Asmodeus, Trone stabs down at the filthy King Rat and hits it for 7pts of damage, instantly killing it. He immediately Cleaves at the last remaining rat but misses it.
• Luther bites the last remaining rat and deals 4pts of damage which is enough to kill it.

Trone and Lothar search the room but cannot find any secret doors. They get to business cutting the ears off the grubby rats. In the process Trone finds a small silver chain with 5 gems attached to it.

Lothar attempts to appraise the chain with Trones' assistance. Trone rolls an 11 against a DC 10 and provides valuable assistance. Lothar attempts to appraise the item which is a DC 20 test. Lothar rolls a 3 +2 for assistance and fails by more than 5 meaning that he's got no idea. Trone pockets the chain and they'll deal with that later.

Searching the room further all that they see is that its filthy. The rats have been living in the garbage of the kobolds and are probably their pets.

"What now?" Trone asks.

"I'm getting low on spells, only got the one left."

"With only two of us in here it's pretty risky to keep going. Let's go back to the Keep, get the bounty for the rats and kobolds and see what we can get for this necklace. Maybe get some better equipment."

The find their way back to the intersection and Take 10 to get across the corner of the pit.

Leaving the cave they reunite with Luki and start off back to the Keep. Along the way they don't' encounter any resistance and a few hours later they can smell the sweet smell of roasting pork. "Smells like something good is being prepared for us by Eldred" surmises Lothar.

DEW

Team we need to get us one of those negative energy thing.

Are those really big rats? If not, should they be allowed to stack, even as a house rule? It seems that overwhelming numbers aren't all they are cracked up to be if only 2-3 rats at a time can attack two members of the party.

Questions aside, I really look forward to reading these.

Giant rats, about the size of a medium dog.

Limited frontage is just one of the "features" of a dungeon corridor.

DEW just choose stacking instead of having some cross over the PC's, getting behind them also.

Mechanically, the rats would need to make a Acrobatics check vs the PC's CMD to avoid an Attack of Opportunity while crossing over the PC's… but rats do not think tactically, so just as likely they would stack up. If they had crossed over, the PC's would each be allowed one AoO against one rat one time and that's it… unless you have a Feat that allows more, you only get one AoO per turn.

Mmmmm, I loves me some pulled pork!

Trone seriously thinks he and Lothar are a bit too few to take on the caves, and that they should use some of the proceeds to hire a loyal henchman or 2 if possible.

Our experience has been that henchmen are invaluable … they distract the enemy from focussing on us, and add extra combat power to every fight! You might want to think about hiring a corpse, ahem, scout as well …..

Glad you're liking it mwindsortw.

Ahh yeah good idea. I guess I could have gotten the rats to kinda run through, accept the attacks of opportunity, and try to surround the party. Didn't really think of it.

I did though check the rules and they are small and small does occupy a 5ft by 5ft square. I thought originally they might occupy 3ft by 3ft or something but I guess Piazo just standardised stuff that like that to a 5ft grid. Fair enough. Makes things simple.

So as you guys would know from time to time players drop out for whatever reason, which by the way I'm completely cool with, afterall life's busy and all that and this is only a game so there are other priorities etc.

And that leaves me to play some of the characters as NPC's.

At the moment there are two that have gone silent, one being Ansic and the other Lothar.

So if anyone who isn't currently a player would like to take control over one of them just let me know.

So Darkest Star Games / Trone you should have strategic control over the evil party for the moment and set the tone of their tactics. If you want to hire some henchmen no drama. Just know this though that with the Channel Negative Energy, Lothar has a chr of 14 and hence when he Selectively Channels he can only miss two of his buddies, hence why he has two dogs and hence why he left on out the front.

Anyway the weekend is almost upon us and I've gotten just about all the feedback from the guys on how to level up the good/neutral party so I'll get that done over the weekend and get a bit of focus back into that side of things.

DEW

Oh wow, I had no idea selective channel worked like that! yikes, that'd make a larger party a little more difficult if he HAD to blast away. But, I think more warm bodies might be a good thing in a larger brawl. The Neg Channel would be an excellent backup weapon. Can he also do the positive channel heal, or only neg?

Clerics that are evil have to chose Negative Channel that can harm living or Negative Channel that can heal undead. They do not get a Positive "heal living" channel option.

BUT – any cleric (regardless of alignment) can choose at their creation (and never switch) to spontaneously convert any spell into the appropriate level Cure or Harm spell. So it depends on what he chose.

EDIT – Did some reading, and I am wrong – if he channels to harm, he can only spontaneously convert a spell to harm.

But, that does not stop him from being able to have/cast Cure spells in those allowed spells per day, or craft a bunch of curing scrolls to stock up.

Ah, I see. That makes a huge difference in the healing dept.