Post by gaptooth on Mar 15, 2010 12:29:04 GMT -5
My Little Nephew came over for the weekend a couple weeks ago, and he rolled up a couple delvers to join the game my wife and Junior are playing. In order to help him get acclimated to T&T, I pulled out Dungeon of the Rat from the 6e rulebook, which also gave the players a chance to burn down some of their loot from the Wyrm's Lair before meeting up with Rehnquist and getting involved in the river adventure my daughter asked for.
On paper, the party was pretty tough at this point, with all the survivors from their first adventure having reached level 3, and enough gold to buy the best of the best equipment for all. More importantly, they had the Wyrm's Curse, a dagger that does 10 dice of damage plus Adds (20 dice when fighting dragon kin). Adding up the party's total dice and adds, I decided to slightly adjust the Dungeon of the Rat's Monster Ratings to provide a slight challenge.
One of the first challenges they face is disposing of and storing all the gold they receive in exchange for the emeralds they brought back from the Wyrm's Lair, prompting them to buy a shop in town to use as a headquarters.
They also find out that the Dingy Haystack's proprieter is looking for exterminators to help him with his rat problem. Eager for adventure, they take the job without paying much attention to Mel's spiel. Heading down into the cellar, the delvers find Sniveler and quickly take him prisoner.
(At this point, I laid out some dungeon tiles that came with our 4e D&D Starter Kit, and let the players position their pop-out tokens from FDP4610. Little Nephew's eyes lit up, and he said something like "Wow, this game is a lot cooler than I thought!")
Somehow they manage to totally avoid Ombur, the dungeon's first "mini-boss", and make their way to the hallway with a bricked-up ascending staircase. Rushing in to the giant spider room, one of the delvers gets pinned under it right inside the doorway, allowing only two other delvers to fight the beast from the hallway. At MR 200, the spider is too tough for the players to battle in this fashion.
(This part was pretty stressful for Little Nephew, whose character was the one pinned under the spider.)
After two or three rounds of getting savaged by the spider's CPT, the delvers decide to pool their Strength for a massive saving roll to drag their companion out from under the spider, slam the door, and run back to safety! I roll for a random monster in every room they pass through, and they only find one ratling corpse on the way out. Woo! They spend some time healing up, and Little Nephew presciently decides to roll up another delver just in case something goes amiss.
Back at the shop, another party member has found a bricked-up hole in the cellar floor. Guess what the shopkeeper has on sale in limited supply: the Petard (bomb)! Time for some amateur demolitions! The players guess, correctly, that their shop once adjoined the rat temple complex by way of the bricked-up stairway they found. They don't seem to suspect that the shop may not be a great place to rest up and store loot if they re-open the dungeon!
At this point, Little Nephew had to go home, but he asked us to continue his characters in the party if the delvers go back down into the dungeon.
We got to play again this weekend. After the long break, Junior wanted to roll up a new character to join the party. She presented me with her own template for a new Kindred: Moogles, but her template included multipliers of two or three in every attribute! I told her she could play a Moogle, but she would have to use the multipliers for the 7.5 T&T Fairy.
Assessing her rolls, which included a TARO in Strength, she decided to play a Dwarf, choosing the Brute specialist class with an adjusted Strength score of 64!
"You're pal Sniveler is doing my dishes!" -- Skah, a Dwarf Warrior, taunts enraged Ratlings in their own nest.
Back into the dungeon, the delvers quickly happened upon the ratling nest, after making very quick work of the giant spider. The adventure text suggested that the ratlings would attack in four waves of increasing size, starting with eight MR 10 rats. With a party that included both a ST 64 Brute, and the 10d Wyrm's Curse, I decided this was too paltry. I started with a group of ten MR 20 rats (200 total), and graduated to eleven (220), and then twelve (240). Each time, the delvers battered down their attackers in a few rounds, taking only spite damage.
A turn of fortune...
The delvers are fighting the third wave of ratlings, and I have this wizard Little Nephew rolled up that I'm playing as an NPC. Wanting to give the Magical Calamities table a go, I let him crack out a TTYF every round or so, until his Mana Pool (WIZ) goes negative, triggering the first calamity check. The result is 00, which emboldens him to do one final TTYF, bringing his Mana Debt to 10.
Needless to say, the second calamity check doesn't go so well-- it's result 02, and the wizard is racked with nausea along with a -4 penalty to DX, IQ, and ST. He decides to prop himself up in the doorway while the party explores the ratling nest.
The final horde of ratlings attacks, MR 280, when the delvers seize the Rat Paw relic. Considering the previously defeated hordes, this seems like just enough to challenge the delvers to do something creative with the fight, without just mopping the floor with their buckets of dice as they had previously. I realize now that their previous victories led them to misunderestimate the threat posed by 14 ratlings.
At the same time, Peggy the Peg-leg Ratling (MR 15) attacks the wizard on the other side of the room, doing only stun damage to ST, since Peggy doesn't have teeth and can only kick with his wooden leg. This presents the other delvers with a choice which leads to deadly consequences-- they decid to split their party, sending Little Nephew's other character back to protect the wizard.
That round the party soaks up a lot of damage, but they decide to stay and fight. Junior's Brute grabs a ratling and uses it as a weapon against another ratling, killing them both with a single saving roll. Another spellcaster uses "Oh Go Away" on Peggy, forcing him to flee in panic, while contributing nothing to the party's HPT. When the dice hit the deck, everyone fighting the horde is dead, leaving only Little Nephew's characters to bring tragic news back to the shop.
A moment of silence...
My wife was especially mournful about losing the two characters she had groomed to level 3. Junior, on the other hand, was pretty excited to roll up the Moogle she wanted, along with another character. The second character she rolled up got a TARO in WIZ. The other day we were leafing through the Pathfinder rulebook, and she was drawn to the Druid class template, so I told her that she could make this character a Druid using the Specialist Mage class in T&T, which she was glad about. I wasn't sure exactly how to do a Druid-- I wound up giving her all the Conjuring and Metabolic magic.
Finally, my wife came out mourning and rolled up some new characters too, and the party returned to the ratling nest for revenge.
On paper, the party was pretty tough at this point, with all the survivors from their first adventure having reached level 3, and enough gold to buy the best of the best equipment for all. More importantly, they had the Wyrm's Curse, a dagger that does 10 dice of damage plus Adds (20 dice when fighting dragon kin). Adding up the party's total dice and adds, I decided to slightly adjust the Dungeon of the Rat's Monster Ratings to provide a slight challenge.
One of the first challenges they face is disposing of and storing all the gold they receive in exchange for the emeralds they brought back from the Wyrm's Lair, prompting them to buy a shop in town to use as a headquarters.
They also find out that the Dingy Haystack's proprieter is looking for exterminators to help him with his rat problem. Eager for adventure, they take the job without paying much attention to Mel's spiel. Heading down into the cellar, the delvers find Sniveler and quickly take him prisoner.
(At this point, I laid out some dungeon tiles that came with our 4e D&D Starter Kit, and let the players position their pop-out tokens from FDP4610. Little Nephew's eyes lit up, and he said something like "Wow, this game is a lot cooler than I thought!")
Somehow they manage to totally avoid Ombur, the dungeon's first "mini-boss", and make their way to the hallway with a bricked-up ascending staircase. Rushing in to the giant spider room, one of the delvers gets pinned under it right inside the doorway, allowing only two other delvers to fight the beast from the hallway. At MR 200, the spider is too tough for the players to battle in this fashion.
(This part was pretty stressful for Little Nephew, whose character was the one pinned under the spider.)
After two or three rounds of getting savaged by the spider's CPT, the delvers decide to pool their Strength for a massive saving roll to drag their companion out from under the spider, slam the door, and run back to safety! I roll for a random monster in every room they pass through, and they only find one ratling corpse on the way out. Woo! They spend some time healing up, and Little Nephew presciently decides to roll up another delver just in case something goes amiss.
Back at the shop, another party member has found a bricked-up hole in the cellar floor. Guess what the shopkeeper has on sale in limited supply: the Petard (bomb)! Time for some amateur demolitions! The players guess, correctly, that their shop once adjoined the rat temple complex by way of the bricked-up stairway they found. They don't seem to suspect that the shop may not be a great place to rest up and store loot if they re-open the dungeon!
At this point, Little Nephew had to go home, but he asked us to continue his characters in the party if the delvers go back down into the dungeon.
We got to play again this weekend. After the long break, Junior wanted to roll up a new character to join the party. She presented me with her own template for a new Kindred: Moogles, but her template included multipliers of two or three in every attribute! I told her she could play a Moogle, but she would have to use the multipliers for the 7.5 T&T Fairy.
Assessing her rolls, which included a TARO in Strength, she decided to play a Dwarf, choosing the Brute specialist class with an adjusted Strength score of 64!
"You're pal Sniveler is doing my dishes!" -- Skah, a Dwarf Warrior, taunts enraged Ratlings in their own nest.
Back into the dungeon, the delvers quickly happened upon the ratling nest, after making very quick work of the giant spider. The adventure text suggested that the ratlings would attack in four waves of increasing size, starting with eight MR 10 rats. With a party that included both a ST 64 Brute, and the 10d Wyrm's Curse, I decided this was too paltry. I started with a group of ten MR 20 rats (200 total), and graduated to eleven (220), and then twelve (240). Each time, the delvers battered down their attackers in a few rounds, taking only spite damage.
A turn of fortune...
The delvers are fighting the third wave of ratlings, and I have this wizard Little Nephew rolled up that I'm playing as an NPC. Wanting to give the Magical Calamities table a go, I let him crack out a TTYF every round or so, until his Mana Pool (WIZ) goes negative, triggering the first calamity check. The result is 00, which emboldens him to do one final TTYF, bringing his Mana Debt to 10.
Needless to say, the second calamity check doesn't go so well-- it's result 02, and the wizard is racked with nausea along with a -4 penalty to DX, IQ, and ST. He decides to prop himself up in the doorway while the party explores the ratling nest.
The final horde of ratlings attacks, MR 280, when the delvers seize the Rat Paw relic. Considering the previously defeated hordes, this seems like just enough to challenge the delvers to do something creative with the fight, without just mopping the floor with their buckets of dice as they had previously. I realize now that their previous victories led them to misunderestimate the threat posed by 14 ratlings.
At the same time, Peggy the Peg-leg Ratling (MR 15) attacks the wizard on the other side of the room, doing only stun damage to ST, since Peggy doesn't have teeth and can only kick with his wooden leg. This presents the other delvers with a choice which leads to deadly consequences-- they decid to split their party, sending Little Nephew's other character back to protect the wizard.
That round the party soaks up a lot of damage, but they decide to stay and fight. Junior's Brute grabs a ratling and uses it as a weapon against another ratling, killing them both with a single saving roll. Another spellcaster uses "Oh Go Away" on Peggy, forcing him to flee in panic, while contributing nothing to the party's HPT. When the dice hit the deck, everyone fighting the horde is dead, leaving only Little Nephew's characters to bring tragic news back to the shop.
A moment of silence...
My wife was especially mournful about losing the two characters she had groomed to level 3. Junior, on the other hand, was pretty excited to roll up the Moogle she wanted, along with another character. The second character she rolled up got a TARO in WIZ. The other day we were leafing through the Pathfinder rulebook, and she was drawn to the Druid class template, so I told her that she could make this character a Druid using the Specialist Mage class in T&T, which she was glad about. I wasn't sure exactly how to do a Druid-- I wound up giving her all the Conjuring and Metabolic magic.
Finally, my wife came out mourning and rolled up some new characters too, and the party returned to the ratling nest for revenge.