Friday, October 21, 2011

The Resurrected Mage and The One-Eyed Fighter

Wanted to capture what happened last Friday before we play again tonight.

G - F
    La Bouche - hireling
    Janis - hireling
Z - F
    Pita - hireling
    Mika - hireling
    Fabrino - hireling
Spike - F
Darkyo - F
Athydas - MU

The lineup keeps changing, and Z and Spike's players coming late, so information sharing has been a problem.  So, not too much accomplished.  Some poking around the outbuildings of the villa at the top of the terraced island they were shipwrecked on.  Then the party decided to mess with the animal hybridization machine some more.  G decided he wanted a little dog.

The machine is upstairs, the animals appear in a large room downstairs.  So G tells Athydas, to go downstairs an wait for it to appear.  It appears, I roll dice and it streaks off into the jungle.  Athydas yells up "your dog ran away."  I rolled for wandering monsters and sure enough got one.  Now I had rolled earlier that some Headless tribesmen had been encountered and gotten complete surprise on the party, but that they were 70 feet away.  So I ruled that they were going to watch, wait and look for an opportunity to strike.  Apparently this was that time.

Three headless with spears entered the front door of the villa's main building.  Athydas saw them, got initiative and took off running for the stairs.  The headless all threw their spears miss, miss, hit.  Roll damage.  Max at 6.  Athydas has 3 hitpoints.  I looked at that roll and was sorely tempted to fudge it-- here was the only mage back to play and he was dead in one blow.  But they had sent him foolishly off on his own, he was hollering foolishly in an unsafe place, and he had chosen to memorize magic missile instead of sleep which might have saved him here.  So I let it stand, but I remembered musing on mortal wounds to make death less anti-climactic.  So I told Athydas' player: "you have a spear through your gut and you are dying, you'll be dead in a few rounds.  What do you want to do?"  He asked if he could cast magic missile at his killer.  I said sure, he did and killed that headless.

At this point the rest of the party is rushing down the stairs and engaging the remaining two headless.  Everyone is rolling bad and Fabrino, Z's long-time hireling is killed.  The other headless are finally dispatched.  I ask Athydas' player, if there is anything he wants to say this round.  He says "Can I cast The Fortunate Punishment?"  Aha, I realized the genius of this.  This was a scroll the party had found in his absence and given to him this session.  He actually has this spell in his book but had not memorized it.  The spell allows the casted upon, instead of dying, to lose 1d6 points from a stat of their choice permanently.  So, I ruled that with his dying breaths he could cast this spell.  He chose strength and rolled a 2, (can't remember if that leaves him with 7 or 5 now).  He saved himself in a completely badass and unexpected way.

Later, G who has had to lead Darkyo around everywhere because she was permanently blinded by a spitting cobra, decided to try something drastic to help her.  He has an Obsidian Blade, that will heal someone for as many hp as you bleed out of yourself.  He decided to try and cut out his own eye for Darkyo.  I though this is crazy, it wasn't meant to be used that way, but I liked his boldness.  I rolled to see if it worked and the dice said no.  But even the very next day, I decided it was too cool to not let work.  So tonight I will tell them them both have vision in a single eye.

7 comments:

  1. I love how your games encourage self-sacrifice - something I've hardly ever managed to get out of a player. It seems there's a strong theme of exchange going on in your campaign (life for life; danger for treasure; limbs for information).

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  2. For situations like the eyeball trick, always go with what you think is cool. It's always the better option. The dice don't know what they're talking about.

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  3. Yup, the "Cool Rule" is well... cool.

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  4. I like the cut of your jib, sir.

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  5. @Richard: Thanks, self-sacrifice does seem to be a sure winner as far as drama and balance go. Tough but interesting choices.

    @John, Zanazaz: Thanks, I tend to go with the dice if I'm hesitating or uncertain so I don't hold things up or bias the world too much one way or another, but while retaining the right to revise my rulings.

    @fictivefantasies: Thank you, I appreciate that.

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  6. Aside from that comment in the linked post, is there a write-up of The Fortunate Punishment? Can I steal it?

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  7. Sorry for late response, widderslainte. No other write up. The name is from a fairy tale and thus public domain and a game rule can't be copyrighted so you could use either of those anyway. I'd only have an issue if you took my words verbatim and used them in a product for sale. Otherwise please use it, that's why I'm blogging, to share these things.

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