...It may take many incarnations.
I'm actually going to pause a moment, to talk about a technique I've been using to keep track of the group's movement through the castle.
Curse of Strahd comes with an beautiful full color poster map. On one side is Barovia. On the other is a map of Castle Ravenloft, still in full isometric glory. Now with full color. It seemed a waste to keep that map on my side of the screen, plus, I didn't want to constantly re-draw maps on board every few minutes as the party moved around. So I cut some pieces of construction paper, laid the whole map out of the table, and used the construction paper as a "fog of war," covering up areas of the castle they had yet to visit, and removing it as they visited new areas.
And they visited new areas.
Alec's friend Ron was able to return, and he once again played Simon. Since he's a character named Simon with a flail, fighting vampires, we decided that his weakness should be that he can't swim.
First they took a short rest inside a rope trick. It was good that they did, since some flying swords were called for on the random encounter table. Instead they entered the room, found no one there to attack, and left.
The characters followed the swords down main stairs leading down from the throne room to a landing decorated with a pair of suits of armor in alcoves. The party were wisely wary of the armor and avoided a minor trap attached to them, then went down the grand staircase leading down from the landing back to the great entry hall. There, they found that the gargoyles decorating the arches were more than just statues: the animated and attacked.
Since their thoughts were still on Strahd (whom Lop was tracking with locate creature), they avoided using spell slots. Gargoyles are resistant to non-magical damage and have plenty of hit points. They don't hit very hard, but when there are 8 of them, they can swarm and cause a problem. At one point Damien Martikov was on the front lines and drew several attacks. We all had a case of the "derp" and forgot that as a wereraven Damien is immune to non-magical damage from non-silver weapons, and gargoyles' attacks do no count as magic. We caught it quick enough, and the crusty old wereraven lived to fight another day. Here's the key to high level parties: even if their casters are conserving resources, fights merely last longer than they might otherwise. The only one who did use spell slots was Tathora and Van Richten, casting cure wounds on squishier team members that had taken too many hits.
Since Lop knew Strahd was below them and to the southeast, they took the spiral stairs across from the entry to the dining hall down. The stopped at one ten-foot wide, ten-foot tall corridor, but opted not to go down it, because Strahd was still below them.
They arrived in the dungeons, where they were more or less even with Strahd. Lop and Cugel were discussing a plan to get over Strahd's location and then use stone shape to open their own passage. I pointed out that there was 50 feet of stone, well beyond the spell's reach.
Ravenloft's dungeons are flooded with cold, dark water. Blake was scared of alligators. It turns out he should have been scared of something else.
A voice called out for help. Tathora, being lawful good, decided to call back. The speaker identified himself as Emil Toranescu, a citizen of Vallaki chased into the castle by a pack of dire wolves. Since Kyla bothered to take notes, she recognized this character as a quest goal. Specifically for Zuleika Toranescu, the werewolf they made a truce with. After revealing that Zuleika had sent them, Emil said he'd be grateful for the help. Tathora moved towards the sound of his voice, then disappeared in a fountain of rushing water in air. She had been teleported by a deviously hidden trap into a cell to the north.
The corridor is laced with these teleport traps. They teleport whoever steps onto it into one of the northern cells of the dungeon. There, the water is about five feet deep. Eventually Lop, riding on Ap's shoulders, and Sarra got teleported into cells. Lop and Ap tried using thermodynamics to weaken the bars of their cell, granting Simon advantage on a Strength check to pry them off. He still failed.
At this point Emil pointed out that his confidence in the party was somewhat lessened. Because spending an entire night rolling the same check over and over would have been boring, I rolled a d20 and had Amrus successfully pick all the locks in that many minutes. It was 16, so Lop had burned through about a half hour of his hour duration on locate creature.
In the process, Amrus found a glowing +1 shortsword that also happened to be sentient. It quickly attuned to any lawful good creature and provided added benefits to such a wielder. Unfortunately, the only lawful good party member was Tathora, who isn't proficient with shortswords. They ended up giving it to Amrus, who could still benefit from the +1 without attunement.
They freed Emil, who was mostly interested in leaving the castle and returning to his mate. Since the PCs didn't want to stop him, he left.
Next they found themselves in a torture chamber being overlooked by a balcony. They moved toward the balcony to climb up, when six Strahd Zombies emerged from the water and attacked.
Strahd zombies are bit different from garden variety zombies. First, they have one more hit die and commensurately more hit points. They also have a claw and bite attack and the multi-attack feature, as opposed to the basic zombie's slam.
Those of you who remember way back in the day to Elemental Evil, will recall that zombies have a feature called Undead Fortitude, making them remarkably hard to put down. Strahd zombies have a different feature: Loathsome Limbs, that causes a random limb to separate after the zombie is hit with a slashing or bludgeoning weapon. This changes the way the zombie can fight, sort of. Of course, all the limbs die as soon as the main torso dies. Simon managed to sever an arm, a leg, and head. Still, the zombies were an easy encounter, but it was time to call it a night.
Next time they'll be reaching the Crypts. That should be fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment