Goodman Games

Hello everyone,

Here I’m going to post our gangs night of playing Sellswords of Punjar. I run my game using the Troll Lord’s Castle and Crusades rule set. This is the first 4th edition module I’ve read and I don’t have any of the fourth edition rule books. I just got the module on Friday, October 31, Halloween, and had only read through it twice quickly. We started this module sometime around 11:30am on Saturday, Nov. 1st and finished it around 9:30 pm the same day.

If you want to see how the party came to be at the gate to the Beggar-King’s lair you’ll need to following the link back to our previous adventure:

http://necromancergames.yuku.com/topic/10079

The make up of the party is as follows:

Nightwing’s ranger, Greyson, is 4th level and he carries Whisker, a magical blade with a background,

Ragnar1965’s 4th cleric/magic-user or witch, Madriel,

Trevor’s elven figher/magic-user/thief, level 2/2/2 named Occulus,

And JediWife’s 5th level elven fighter who specialized in the bow.

Next post will start the telling.

The party arrives at the Gate of Shade. Occulus’ time and money was well spent. Now keep in mind the party is in the city of Majoor, not Punjar. [The city of Majoor has become moot since the game went dormant for two years. ed. 9/2010] This module is being used as a side quest for the module Coils of Set.

They look over this slum and the gate. Trevor has his elf look over the gate very carefully. Sure enough, it’s trapped. The elf uses an iron spike (one of Trevor’s specialties by the way) to wedge the devilish maw open and the die roll supports Trevor’s actions. The lock is successfully picked as well and the adventure begins.

(As an aside, I was hoping to get Trevor’s PC with the shadowstuff venom. Knowing Trevor’s luck, he would have made his save on one of the cool side effects. The player’s had no idea how dangerous this gate was.)

The slowly travel down the alleyway as I attempted to describe how vile the smell was and how the mist seemed to cling to them. Sadly, I didn’t have time to do what I tell others to do—read, read, and re-read the module so you can visualize the experience. So I missed the fine details of the mist and as will be seen, missed several other things about this module. Sorry Harley.

The players all want to examine the door instead of continuing along the alleyway. As they are discussing if the door might be booby-trapped or locked, I had the sentries from the nearby rooftop spring into action. I don’t to this day know why I switched them from the net and long spears to crossbows, but I think I did a wise move for my group. Five light crossbowmen begin causing pain right away!

Both JediWife and Trevor asked why these guys went undetected. Something about their characters know full well they are in a dangerous part of Majoor and they would be scanning all around. I told them none of them saw the men for I did something I don’t often do, and that was to roll their search checks behind the screen for them. Our group is very firm on rolling their own saves and such and gets real sticky about me making or breaking their luck with my dice. I agree with them, I hate having someone roll saves and such for me unless it is an unusual circumstance. So the evil DM, er CK, promised to keep such rolls to a minimum.

Anyway, I scored several hits right away on Alura, JediWife’s elven archer, and got a shot into the elven figher/magic-user/thief, Occulus. Since Occulus only has 14 hit points I put him in range of death with one bolt.

Initiative was rolled, and the melee began. Nightwing asked if his ranger could climb up the wall to get at the crossbow men and I told him not likely. Meanwhile, Ragnar1965 had his PC fire magic missiles and both the elves fired their bow. It was a complete missile combat for several rounds until Nightwing had enough. He had his ranger, Greyson, throw his grappling hook up and at one of the crossbowmen. I had him roll with a penalty, but he got a good roll. So I stated the hook caught one of the sentries’ leg at which point Nightwing called out his PC pulled the man down. The villain landed square on his head and broke his neck from the damage. And the fight ended as the elven archer of JediWife scored hit after hit.

Concerning the widely inflated hit points of the Forth Edition opponents, I had to do a lot of quick thinking about what to do. In essence, I looked at the part of the stat block that said, for example, “Level 1 Skr.” Figuring that meant these Sentries were the equivalent of first level fighters or 0-lvl men-at-arms from AD&D, I ruled each of these Sentries had 6 or 8 hit points instead of 29. I’m still in amazement about just how many hit points so many of the opponents had, and then, on occasion, to find opponents with but one hit point. Interesting to say the least since I don’t have the Fourth edition rules.

So, that’s how my first combat went using the Castles & Crusades rules coverting the new D&D on the fly. I hope I got better as this module progressed.

More to come.

Minions are so fun, though! Nothing like having a herd of 20 orcs charge at your party in waves! Just when you think the encounter is done, 5 more come running down the hall... (Hybban is an evil, evil DM.)

Having waves of low-hit dice monsters like orcs and goblins are certainly old-school.

Geeksdreamgirl, just how many hit points does a 1st level fighter have in 4th edition? How about first level clerics, magic-users, and thieves? I'm very curious after my experience with Harley's latest [well, at least latest to me!] outstanding module.

Here ya go:

Wizard 10+Con
Cleric, Ranger, Rogue, Warlock, Warlord 12+Con
Fighter, Paladin 15+Con

Thanks!

The party regrouped and entered into the “Bazaar of the Bizarre.” Harley, your “strings of silverware” strung from nails on the walls attracted attention from several. I don’t know why that intrigued Nightwing and Ragnar1965, but it did.

The fight between the party and the two toughs didn’t last but two or three rounds. I made them 2nd level fighters with, if I recall, 12 or 15 hp each. These early encounters were fairly weak. I knew this was going to be a straight shot with no “retreat and rest” breaks for the PCs. At this point I was not at all sure how to best to gauge what the PCs would look like at the end encounters, so I didn’t want to run the cleric out of cure spells too early!

As the players all wanted to search the room I had each of them roll their 12-sided die to see what treasure their respective PC found.

Trevor rolled a seven which netted his elf, Occulus, “A pair of leather shoes. Hidden in the sole of the right shoe is a set of masterwork thieves’ tools (in C&C rules I declared it gives a +1 bonus). Hidden in the sole of the left shoe is a single worn platinum piece [an unusual specimen worth 100gp].”

Nightwing rolled a four. His ranger, Greyson, thus found “the haft of a broken greatsword. The blade bears elvish runes that mark the blade as the heirloom of a fae-lord.” This blade later proved to have remnants of fae-magic clinging to it. Although the sword haft only does the damage of a short sword, the blade will strike creatures that can be hit by +1 weapons. Perhaps if the remainder of the blade could be found and reforged, a powerful fae-blade would be reformed!

JediWife rolled a five and her elven archer, Alura, located “a dusty waterskin containing one quaff of a potion of healing.”

Ragnar1965, by this point, was excited about the possibilities for his cleric/magic-user, Madriel. Since he rolled a one, I held off on telling him his prize because with me telling each of the others their cool find, I kept watching the “glee factor” in Ragnar’s face grow. I can’t help but grin even as I type this. When I told him his witch found “an orc skull with gold teeth” Ragnar1965 stared at me with a blank face of incredulous disbelief for about a second before he said “WHAT?!” I tried to comfort him by explaining the skull was worth 3 g.p.!! LOL!!!

With that, the party opted to go behind the curtain towards the horrible smell. But that is a post for another day.

Awesome posts, as always, Jedi. Sorry for Ragnar, but we *knew* that was coming down the line. The bazaar of many things can't be weal without some woe.

Re: Strings of Silverware. I think I saw something like this in a production of A Christmas Carol, maybe when Scroogs is seeing his possessions pawned. Dunno --- could be my imagination. But I'm glad it stuck w/ your group.
//H

Harley, thanks for the comments.

If you didn't see my thoughts on the overall module (as well as that of the players) on another thread, here they are for your inspection:

"Well, we finished it tonight. I'll work on posting how it went soon.

But I'll say this, I had to work on the fly adjudicating the monster's hit points and such to Castles & Crusades. I don't think I did too bad. What is with monsters having over one hundred hit points in a first level module! Has WotC made the 4th edition adventures super heroes?

Harley, the module is excellent! Great mood and good setting.

I do HIGHLY recommend for future release not making dark, reduced copies of the large maps for DMs to use in lieu of the color poster map. Please translate these fancy maps into the traditional blue color simple maps for ease of use. Also, the illustrations are good, but do not reflect the feel of Goodman Games in my opinion. The drawings inside the module really made me feel I was running a Necromancer Games product.

Here is how the players scored your adventure Harley:

Ragnar1965: 7 out of 10
JediWife: 8 out of 10
Nightwing: Got ill and had to leave right after the battle with the captain of the dogmen so didn't stay to finish. No score from him.
Trevor: 8 out of 10
Alex (Trevor's 13-year old son who pinch-hit for Nightwing and ran Greyson): 6 out of 10.

For any undecided, we had $14.99 worth of fun and then some!"

What, me an evil DM...?
That is not nice, I'll remember that when we'll continue the CW campaign
And, if you think I'm evil, you haven't seen what I've done in my Sunday campaign (I'm wondering how many month I can play with Into the Wilds).

To return on the subject, nice to see this module run with C&C. I'll be reading your reports avidly.

I have to start a new C&C campaign (Night Below or the trio T/A/GDQ...?)

Hyb'

Thanks! If you have a new crew who did not cut their teeth on Gygax, the Temple of Elemental Evil and following can't be beat!

Honestly, I don't like much ToEE. The first part (Hommlet and Moathouse) is really nice, the temple by itself, I'm not a big fan. I would probably fill the missing levels with something like Points of Light or Wilderlands of High Fantasy. But the Slaves Lord and the Giant/Descent series are really great.

Hyb'

Half the fun for me, when I DMed T1-4, was watching my players trying to figure out what was going on with the Temple. Why four elements? What did the eye have to do with it? Exactly WHO is behind this massive undertaking?

That really made the module for me.

Sure, the backstory is great, but the Temple is just a enormous amount of rooms filled with traps and monsters. I'd prefer smaller levels with more personality. But I must admit that this is a good module, but when you know the depth of the Slaves/Giants/Underdark/Spider arcs...

But I'm still tempted by running such a classic module.

Hyb'

On the other side of the curtain was a sewer pit. The players had their PCs edge close to the pit, with the exception of Ragnar1965. He had his spellcaster remain near the entrance. Ragnar didn’t like the idea of a sewer one bit.

The foul beast attacked by lashing out with disease-encrusted, barbed tentacles. I rolled well and both Greyson and Occulus found themselves in danger of being pulled into the pit and into the maul of what I described as a living mass of dung. Occulus only has 14 hp so almost every time I hit him; the multi-class elf is in jeopardy. Initiative is rolled, I lose, and the melee begins.

As an aside, this is how I’ve come to do combat in C&C. The basic rule is roll a d10, winning side goes first. I’ve blended this with the way I used to do it back in my AD&D days. Winning side gets to use instant or prepared events, then the losing side. Next missile weapons, breath weapons, and magic items. Next the winners can cast spells followed by the losers. Then, lastly, physical actions like melee weapons and running end the combat round. This really seems to work well. I’ve enjoyed it and haven’t heard any complaints from the players. It’s not as cumbersome as giving everyone individual initiatives, but it adds a bit more “spice” than just winning side does all their actions then the losing side.

Anyway, both Occulus and Alura fire arrows while Madriel shoots her wand of magic missiles. All attacks score hits. Greyson’s magic blade severs the tentacle wrapped about his leg. The monster pulls Occulus down into the pit and misses in its attempt to bite. On the following round an arrow from JediWife’s elf and two more magic missiles from Ragnar1965’s PC’s wand finish off the beastie.

Harley, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I didn’t get a chance to give your module a thorough reading. Sadly, because of this I neglected to sic the grubs on Occulus as he poked about the cesspit finding the ruby pendant belonging to “the famed countess Lady Tianass” who is related to the mayor of Majoor by blood.

They get Occulus out of the pit and have no real way of cleaning him, except to step back outside into the pouring rain. They use this as a respite to heal.

Back in they go, down the hallway. Greyson narrowly avoids a thrown dagger, its blade has streaks of magic flowing about it. The blade quivers into the wall and the party races into a room to see the scandral scoop up a satchel filled with coins and retreating towards a “ratty, moth-eaten blanket” hanging over a “hole cut in the back of the tiny study.”

Nightwing has his ranger leapt over the desk, making his DEX check, to impale the man with Whisker. A follow up by an elven arrow kills the man. The body is searched as is the room. They find among the papers records, presumable written by this man, but none of the PCs can make heads nor tails of them. All are interested in the magical dagger. It has streaks of magical frost that play along the blade and the blade itself is cold to the touch while the handle is not.

I’ll end the post here as the party pulls aside the ratty blanket to view the lair of the dead fence beyond.

More to come.

Sorry to everyone for such a long wait between posts.

As the party went into the fence’s sleeping quarters the looked about the room. Nightwing called it a night at this point; he had been feeling ill most of the day. We placed Greyson into a NPC category after this for a while, but Trevor’s son, Alex, soon took control of the wily ranger in Nightwing’s absence.

One of Alex’s first official acts was to have the ranger examine the cot, and had a spear trap nearly impaled Greyson. The lady elf found the secret door and the amazing seven-drawer chest. That was an interesting piece that intrigued the players. Between Trevor’s multi-classed thief and Ragnar1965’s spellcaster’s knock spell, they avoided the worst parts of the traps. The magical cloak of protection (dark green w/a jeweled spider pendant) was cool.

The party left the room and returned to the corridor and stared up the staircase with a “curtain, stained black with mold.” As the party started up the stairs, Ragnar1965 told everyone to stop. He really had a bad feeling about the staircase and especially the curtain. I don’t know why he suspected the stairs, and sadly it’s been several months so I doubt Ragnar1965 even remembers, but he wanted the elven PCs and the ranger to carefully look over the staircase without putting a foot on them. It was like he read the module! They rolled well enough to find the “small cords threaded beneath each wooden step.”

That was that, no one was going near the stairs. They looked over the map and decided it was worthwhile backing out of this building and continue to explore the alleyway.

And that is what they did.

I just finished running this myself, this past Friday, in my online C&C "One Shot Fridays" game.

We had a lot of fun, enjoyed the mix of creatures and challenges, as well as combat scenarios. I mixed and changed up some things, and totally removed the Drake, but I loved how easy it was to adapt 4E to C&C.

Hey Treebore, I agree with how easy it was to convert on the fly from 4E to C&C.

I kept the drake, but changed it to something else that will be discussed when I get there. The hit points for the thing was, to this old school gamer's eyes, so over the top the whole concept behind 4E is, er, well, a bit silly.

Yes, I typically cut HP in half, in a couple of cases by 40%. In the case of minions I upped their HP to 6 or 7. It worked pretty well.

I took out the Drake because in my remixing everything the last encounter not only had the beggar king, but a well with something black in it, working with him. I thought that would be enough, however they rolled so well and I rolled so bad I wished I had kept the drake after all.

Hey Harley, if you read this and have time, how did your players handle this first part of your adventure?

I'm always interested in how my gang stacks up to other veterns. How about you Treebore.

I'll get around to another post hopefully soon.

My group will be tackling this adventure this Saturday. I'll post our experiences here after that!

The group I play with did this adventure at first lvl (4E not C&C) and this first encounter after the gate went tragically, if not quite excitingly and on an epic level. As we confronted the few beggars in the alley at the start who are up on a ledge we began to get shot at by the Dog Brothers Chief. My character, an Eladrin Rogue, was on the roofs at this point trying to get a good shot at the beggars on the ledge. As the Dog Brothers Chief began shooting at us I used Fey Step to get the jump on the Chief (as I had line of sight via the window) not realizing he had more goons in there w/ him. Our Defender (human fighter) decided to scale the wall and enter the room w/ me and the Chief to help my chances of survival. He ends up being taken down (due to marking, he was taking more hits and being the target) and I'm left alone. Meanwhile our Dwarven Cleric is in the alley and kills the last of the Beggars... and now has to go through the bazaar to get to us as we're blocking the windows while fighting (no room there to shift around really, small maps). It basically ended up w/ us stringing the beggars in the alley, the two goons in the bazaar, and all the Dog Brothers together into one long battle resulting in two of our three main characters in the negatives. Thankfully we had an NPC Wizard with us to help the Dwarven Cleric get to us and kill the others. Also, our DM took out Arturus The Fence (spelling) as a villain and turned him into an NPC (no lvls, no items). That was much too bold a start for our characters careers and all has gone fairly smoothly since than. Completed Sellswords, Dragora's Dungeon (scaled to up higher lvl) and now onto The Black Pearl quest (again scaled to lvl, as we're now lvl five). Was a rocky start, but memorable. Sounds like you guys went a little smoother.

So the party trips through the rain down the alleyway hoping to find another way into the building and avoid what Ragnar1965 assumes are a trapped stairwell. Now keep in mind that Nightwing has retired for the night due to illness and his ranger, Greyson, is a nebulous NPC for the time being. However, Trevor’s son Alex, who is now a young teenager, has been orbiting the gaming table for some time and, make no mistake about it, sees an opportunity to get into the game. Before much longer, Alex is running Nightwing’s ranger with his own sense of flare. It was amazing to see the difference in Alex now verses Alex of a couple of years ago. This young man was putting forth his A-game!

They take a passing glance at the decaying fountain that seems to have been the source of the filth oozing its way out of the ally and duck into the door at the ally’s end. The party was well aware of the windows on the second floor and the concern that they were being watched. Therefore they kept to the wall opposite the fountain and hurried to the doorway. Since I ruled the Dog Brothers at the top of the trapped stairs were deep in gambling (after all it was a miserable night out, who would be messing around the Beggar King’s lair?), the guards did not spot the players outside. Shoot, they didn’t even hear the fight that went on downstairs in their own building due to the thunder and their gaming!

Once inside the second building, the PCs climbed the stairs to a large room filled with “flea-ridden cots, bedrolls, and pallets.” The PCs’ noses confirmed what their eyes told them: this was a beggar’s flop house. They had no interest in exploring the room and moved towards the north door in hopes of connecting up with the trapped stairs. The elven thief carefully opened the door and they party entered into a store room filled with boxes and the sounds of many, many rats. Quickly, all four of the party light torches to keep the rats at bay and, while the ranger and the spellcaster warded off the rats, the elves scanned the walls for anything that might stand out to their eyes. Sure enough, a secret door was discovered on the north wall. It was decided that things had been to quit and there would most likely be opponents on the other side of the room. I wish Nightwing could have been there for what came next! Therefore, the multi-class elf would open the door while Greyson the ranger would charge into the room with Whisker drawn ready to do battle. Alura the elven archeress would move in immediately behind the ranger to fire an arrow upon the foe while the lady spellcaster held two torches to fend off the rats until they could all enter through the secret door.

With the plan prepped, the secret door was swung open and into a small, smoky loft came Greyson ready for a fight. And a fight is what he got! A large, “imposing foe, over seven feet n height and clad in a blackened suit of plate and chain” rose from the cot where the man was burnishing his armor. Melee was at hand. This man, War-Captain Irocar, and Greyson went head to head, one relying on his quicker weapon and speed and the other his armor and a large bastard sword. JediWife’s elf popped an arrow into Irocar before Alex asked if he could attempt to take the War-Captain in single combat. JediWife was fine with that and had her elf head towards the ladder’s top at the edge of the loft they were in.

Meanwhile Occulus the elf and Madriel the witch exited the secret door, closing it behind them. Irocar is bellowing for his troops to bestir themselves and aid him. Both JediWife and Trevor grinned in malice glee when they realized their PCs were above a group of mercenaries, the Dog Brothers, and the only way for them to get to the PCs was by the ladder. Both players had their elves string their bows and hunker down. They proceeded to pick off the Dog Brothers while the main event went on behind them between a massive fighter and a clever ranger. I explained to Alex that Nightwing’s ranger, after a couple rounds of combat, concluded this fighter was a more experienced opponent than the ranger was. Although Greyson was good, and with Whisker quite good, the War-Captain rained blow after blow upon the ranger and he was bleeding pretty badly. Finally, Ragnar1965 asked JediWife to leave the “fish in a barrel” to Trevor’s elf and help out Alex. Greyson did a fine job, but in the end it took two more arrows from the lady elf’s bow to finish the War-Captain. The only spells that needed to be cast were several cure spells to get the ranger back up to speed. The War-Captain’s massive longbow, cut from the horn of a black dragon dang near made my wife drool. She’s a silly one she is!

The party returns to the beggar’s flophouse and head down the southern flight of steps out the door and into a “dark courtyard . . . muddy from the pouring rain.” Almost as if they knew this was a place for an ambush, Trevor, JediWife, and Ragnar1965, had their PCs race through the rain and into the warehouse. I had each of them roll a 20-sided for a spot and Trevor rolled very well. I ruled his elf PC’s sharp eyes noticed slight movement behind a hole cut in the warehouse door so he had Oculus draw his blade and plunge it full force into the hole while the others threw their combined body weight against the door. My players were no longer being methodical. I think they most have realized more than begging was going on and they wanted to take the fight to the enemy in a big way. One of the warehouse doors gave way under the combined assault of four adults slamming into it together. I figured these beggars did not do a good job of keeping the warehouse maintained, so the doors were not in the best of shape.

The fight in the warehouse was brutal—for the ten beggars! Ragnar1965’s PC immediately cast light on a stone and lobbed it into the room while the ranger charged forward against a wave of thrown daggers. Both JediWife and Trevor actually had their characters attempt to prop up the broken warehouse door to disguise what had happened hoping the ten villains would be no match for Greyson and a few magic missiles from the lady spellcaster. The beggars died as they attempted to charge against the party. So the long and short of it was Zeb’oltha and her eunuch bodyguards never knew that an assault had occurred under their noses since I continued to evoke the peals of thunder drowned out much of the noise, and the quick antics of the players covered their tracks to someone who might only give a cursorily glance at the courtyard or warehouse. The players never encountered her.

More to come!

Awesome. Love it, Jedi.

Re: 2009 Gen Con playtests: Check in w/ Taco. He'll have what you're looking for.

//H

Thanks Harley. Your module lends to a fun time.

With the players seemingly safe in the warehouse, they examined the room carefully. I altered the map a bit, making the warehouse slightly deeper, allowing it to encompass the ladder leading up to what I described as a loft above the warehouse. They pondered about which character should go up the ladder first. Because Nightwing was absent, his ranger Greyson lost out; Alex’s dad, Trevor, overruled his son and pushed for his multi-class elf to be the one to ascend. Trevor’s reasoning was good enough to persuade Ragnar1965 (JediWife was away attending the Jedi younglings at the time) because as part thief, the elf had a better chance of climbing the ladder quietly.

Up went Occulus the elven fighter/magic-user/thief. I had him role for a quiet climb but did not reveal to Trevor if the elf was completely silent. The other PCs didn’t hear him and they took it as a good sign. Alex was ready to have his temporary PC climb but the others ordered patience until Occulus could take a look about with his keen eyes. When the elf made it to the top, he was greeted with the Court of the Beggar-King! And lo & behold, there was the fat pig himself asleep in a drunken stupor with three motionless guards. All my players were both excited and puzzled. This looks like the adventure is wrapping up; they just needed to figure out how to end the king’s life in short order.

But something was bugging Trevor. He could not put his finger on it, but he knew something was “out of sorts.” Ragnar1965 urged Trevor to get his elf down and send the ranger and the lady elf up. Trevor disagreed with that. He had his elf ease up and off the ladder onto the loft and ready his bow. Then he encouraged the others to climb up while his elf scanned the scene and especially watch the guards. Trevor informed me if anything made a move he was going to put an arrow into it. If anything made a sound, the same applied. Trevor was ready for a fight. Meanwhile up came the ranger, followed by the elven archeress, and lastly Ragnar1965’s lady spellcaster. Trevor was certain, whatever the danger might be, it would not rush them, they would have to ferret it out. And in my group, the best way to do that is with missile weapons! Both JediWife and Trevor’s elves readied their bows. Greyson cocked his crossbow, and Ragnar1965 had his PC ready with magic missile. They talked about how best to approach the Beggar-King. I reported to Trevor his PC had seen no movement in any of the guards and slight movement of the king’s head which may be expected if he were asleep. At this time, none of them knew they were being watched by unseen eyes.

Alex suggests the ranger could charge across the loft shooting the crossbow, then draw Whisker and be in amongst the guards. He also suggested that the other PCs could fire at the guards before the ranger arrived thus giving him cover. Not at all a bad plan for a thirteen year old! One of the other three, and I just can’t recall who, nixed the idea for fear of the whole thing being a trap. Trevor suggested they skirt the room, edging along the wall while remaining on alert with missiles at ready. As they start to do just that, a crossbow bolt whisks out of the darkness above their heads and sinks into Trevor’s elf. JediWife turns immediately to Ragnar1965 and tells him to have Madriel cast light on the fletching of the elf’s arrow. As soon as the spell is cast the lady elf fires up into the darkness, sticking the arrow into a rafter and illuminating a man, Black Shet by name, who is reloading and briskly walking along the beams. The man started on the north-western side of the room and was moving east, seemingly attempting to get above the Beggar-King I don’t think ol’ Black Shet was ready for the onslaught that came for him. He got off one more shot while retreating among the rafters. Even with partial cover, the three missile wielding PCs were far too accurate- all rolled well, but it was Ragnar1965’s spellcaster and her magic missiles that really made things dangerous for him. Black Shet died before the third round. Two magic missiles, a crossbow bolt and two arrows did him in. Since he got hit with the bolt and one of the arrows followed up by the magic missile all in one round I ruled he would need to make a dexterity check to avoid falling from the overhead rafters. I rolled a single digit and he plummeted to his doom, but as an added bonus to the players, he did not die when he hit the floor. I gave Black Shet a 10% chance that he would fall forward into the room, towards the PCs, otherwise he would fall backwards and crash among the Beggar-King’s strangely unresponsive guards. Well, I rolled my percentage dice and Shet clutched the arrow and fell forwards. Sadly the floor he landed on was part of the trap door so Black Shet expired when he crashed into the cage beneath the trapped floor.

The players loved this encounter. Now they were separated from the Beggar-King by a large pit in the wooden floor of the loft. They debated about how they were going to get at Black Shet’s body. Rule number one for Trevor is: Always loot the body! But the three guards of the king had remanded motionless through out the combat so the ranger fired a bolt into one of the guards which drew anger down upon young Alex since he did it without consulting the others first. I explained the bolt gave a nice thud and the guard seemed to rock back and forth a bit, but that was all. The trap became even more mysterious to the players at this point. They then looked to JediWife and her elf’s precise shot feature. Both Ragnar1965 and Trevor urged her to fire an arrow into the reposed form of the king. JediWife reminded them both of a previous adventure with different characters and Trevor’s now famous line:

“Shoot the falling mummy with your bow. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN?”

With a resigned look, JediWife asked me to describe the figure. I mentioned he appeared bald and his head seemed to be moving slightly. She did a called shot and rolled her d20, firing the arrow at the king.

I’ll conclude this encounter later. Too tired to continue, but the adventure continued to get better as the day went on!