Dungeon Puzzle (28 Jan 24)

Message:

Boca or Bust Went on second week of hiatus and instead went back to Dungeon Crawl. We should have more players for Battle Born (next week).

Dungeon Five was finished, not much there left. Yet we had two new characters. Rusty decided to start over, after rolling meager +1 on three levels of advancement. He gained a level post Dungeon Five and added three points. Back to where he was minus the investment along the way. Greg made level two.

Climax Monster #5 -- Bane of Steel (Bone-Break, Arcane, Horrible Pain) – Creature that destroys metal that it contacts. These creatures often excrete a strong acid that will also damage flesh, after first dissolving a good suit of chain. If the party collectively has too many magic items, feel free to dissolve a few. Otherwise, after the first encounter, the party has experimented with counters to reduce the harm caused by the monster. e.g., Wrap hammer in cheese-cloth soaked in vinegar (as any party of true delvers has on hand).

We did not face the Undead as a party of two level ones and a level three miner forty-niner.

In Dungeon Six we had to guess the monster was slain by injury to the Ears/Skull (only). After that we killed five sets of them. We also looted two delver burial sites and rolled a sixteen when needing a fifteen to get the Teleportation Orb.

The worst moment came when we battered down a door—what’s the worst that can happen—attracting surprise attack by Mutations of Mind w/o Immunity to any Attacks. But only if the players guess to aim for Throat. At end of round use Survive Onslaught, to avoid five points of Mob Retaliation in each listed damage type: Mutations of Mind (Bone-Break, Elemental, Arcane, Profane) – Regular animals of superior mental or magical ability. These usually have enslaved weaker minds, even human thralls, to give them the hands, arms and legs they lack. The person met will be the grinning cat, not the expressionless holder, even as the words are also spoken by the human. Attempt Preliminary Test: 4-3: Ruminate*; until the Preliminary Test is made successfully (by someone, anyone), the Mobs gain additional immunity to 1-1: Crushing Knockback. Fight D8 Mobs (per player), so twenty in number doing four sets of five damage.

We managed to Survive Onslaught x3 and only take five points of damage on Greg and I. We then went to battle and discovered the Throat vulnerability after Greg’s rolls. We eliminated the last three monsters via fireball (The Immolator was called).

Lots of places we could not cross, but we are snaking our way to the endgame. This version of Dungeon Crawl is fun. We’ll come back to it as we have no-shows and for a good campaign in the Spring.




Yours,