Here we are in the
raepmoathouse.
The first thing we find is a large group of brigands. Much more intimidating then the level 1 and 2 archers we encountered outside.
Strangelove casts sleep, affecting one brigand.
Since this battle appears to be Serious Business™ what with the raging high level barbarian, Yeesh casts Bless to improve our attack bonus by 1.
Dolores manages to trip the first brigand.
Spugnoir casts Grease, tripping several enemies.
In either a facepalm inducing display of AI stupidity or an excellent display of irrationally aggressive raged barbarians, the enemy leader decides to run straight at our mages through the front lines. AoO's absolutely fuck him up and Yeesh finishes him off just as he nears Spugnoir.
With him down and the rest of the weaker brigands lying on their asses, the battle is pretty much over. Of note is that Chzr scores a whopping 28 damage critical hit on a Brigand that only has 3 HP left. Why can't arrows gib targets?
Next room over we find some big snakes and big bats. Neither are much of a problem.
We rest up a bit and move down to the next level.
Here we are at the bottom of the stairs. For some reason this area reminds me of Dorn's Deep from IWD. It's really atmospheric, good at giving that impression of adventuring into a cavernous dungeon carved out from the earth.
We find a nice stash of these Eye of the Flame cloaks behind the stairway. Maybe this is some kind of disguise system where you can pass off as a member in the Eye of the Flame (which sounds like some kind of faction that might be related to the Temple of
Elemental Evil), but mostly I put them on because matching black cloaks looks cool.
As we explore we find a bunch of zombies. Should be simple.
As we attack, two slimes drop down from the ceiling behind us. A Slime/Zombie ambush? Seems that these two creatures shouldn't be intelligent enough to work together in any meaningful way like this, but we don't have time to debate the point.
Furnok and Yeesh run back to try and hold the slimes away from the mages, while Serious and Dolores try to contend with a veritable horde of zombies in the front. Unfortunately we aren't getting good attack rolls and keep either missing or doing almost nothing due to damage reduction. The only one able to reliably smack the zombies around is Serious who is hitting air.
Spugnoir lays down another grease, thankfully zombies are not the most nimble of foes.
Somehow Chzr manages to put a hurting on the slimes with arrows. Seems to me that they should be resisting the arrows mostly since they would just pass straight through, but I won't complain.
Eventually the first and second slimes fall to a barrage of arrows and Furnok's blade. Yeesh plays the part of cheerleader.
Unfortunately, Strangelove goes down in the process, the victim of a zombie that ran around the front lines.
Yeesh gets Strangelove back on his feet with a few healing spells. The zombie numbers are whittled down enough that the cleanup is effortless.
We win, Spugnoir gains a level.
I find some kind of hidden compartment in this area behind the zombies. I'm not sure what its for. Anyone know?
We find a Magic Miniature Chest. No idea what its for.
Spugnoir takes his level. My decision is between Craft Wondrous item or Brew potion. I decide to go with Craft Wondrous item.
We retreat to the safe area of the moathouse to rest, then continue onward.
Here be Ogres. He is not a talkative fellow.
Furnok takes the initiative to run behind the Ogre and score a nice sneak attack.
Serious delivers a solid blow to the face.
The ogre turns around and dispatches Furnok with a single blow. Spugnoir goes ahead and uses one of his scrolls to cast Grease, which trips the ogre.
The party beats the ogre around, then when it tries to stand up the AoO rape puts him down again. Thankfully Furnok was only at -2 health so Yeesh was able to get him back up again.
A magic cloak is found. Can't determine its properties at the moment, we will identify it when we are next in town.
We find some gnome captives. The plan was to question them and then leave them to die, but apparently if you don't leave them immediately you have no choice but to let them go.
Of interest is the fact that they mention that others come through the area wearing the eye of the flame cloaks, and the ogre ignores them. Was the ogre attacking my party a bug? We also get a ring signifying we are a friend of the gnomes.
We continue further downward into the depths of the moathouse.
We have a choice of 3 paths. We take the westward one.
The next room is gnolls.
I send Furnok in first, assuming that he can win initiative and run back to safety quickly if they attack. Through some odd gameplay mechanic, they won't react though. Apparently the have to say something to us and NPCs aren't allowed to talk, so Serious has to go inside.
Predictably they are less then friendly. They offer to leave for 100 Gold and to tell us about their master for 200 gold. Pay money to not get experience? They clearly don't know much about how to handle parties of adventurers.
After we decline a battle breaks out. Of course, Serious loses initiative even though he was the one who started the fight.
. He takes a lot of damage
Spugnoir lays down his new Web spell. Its super effective! Actually a bit too effective, it goes through the wall and hits Furnok even though I swear he wasn't in the radius when I cast it.
Strangelove puts some enemies to sleep as well.
At this point we have a pretty damn good funnel and only 1 or 2 of the Gnolls are able to attack.
One of the stronger Gnolls hits VERY hard though. Furnok is taken to near death and Yeesh gets wiped out in a single critical, though Furnok quickly uses a potion on Yeesh to get him walking again.
After the leader Gnoll is taken out the rest fall without too much trouble.
As we venture forward I notice that this 'Master' appears to be casting some kind of spell. Dunno what it is, but its probably important.
Here is another split in the dungeon paths. I keep with my strategy of taking the one on the right.
A few Ghouls are encountered. A few slightly higher leveled zombies should be no big deal, right?
They aren't exactly tough enemies but apparently they paralyze anything they hit. Quite deadly. Thankfully, its the kind of paralysis that you can just wait off.
Furnok finds a chest. When he goes to disable the trap it springs, but he dodges the effects. Apparently the whole party gets 25 XP for such an occurrence.
Annoyingly enough, when Serious goes to open the chest afterwords the trap springs again and incapacitates him. What gives? Auto re-arming traps?
I don't have a screenshot of the loot, but the most important item was a scroll of Cat's Grace. Any long term stat buff spell is a good spell in my book, especially to such an important stat as Dexterity. Spugnoir scribes it into his scrollbook.
We return to the 2nd crossroad and head southwest.
We find a Giant Grayfish in a pool of water, along with another chest.
Serious takes a good whack at it. Its a strong enemy with multiple attacks per turn and lots of HP, but goes down fairly easily.
Here's a nice action shot of Strangelove finishing off the crayfish with a magic missile
The next chest is trapped as well. I discover that you can set off the trap while attempting to detrap it infinite times and continue to get 25 XP each time. Really, Troika? You let stuff like this slip through?
Inside we find a scroll of Stinking Cloud (Nice!), Knock (OK), and some potions. Spugnoir scribes both spells into his spell book. I'm not ashamed to say that I savescum to make sure the spells are copied correctly. Failing to copy spells into the wizard spellbook is among the dumbest of D&D rules. Fuck that shit.
Checking the inventory at this point I see that Chzr only has 1 arrow left. I decide to head back to town to stock up on more supplies, identify some stuff, and make use of our crafting abilities.
On the way out, though, I notice I didn't fully explore the first level. A few worthless enemies are taken out and our PCs all gain a level.
We also find a masterwork crossbow (+1 AB) and an enchanted shield.
Outside the moathouse, we level our party up. Serious gets Cleave (after killing an enemy get an extra attack that round) and Weapon Focus (+1 AB with greatswords). No messing around here, his job is to hit shit repeatedly until it doesn't need to be hit anymore.
Dolores takes combat reflexes. This allows her to make AoO's while flatfooted (ie the first round of combat before her first action), as well as let her take 3 AoO's per turn instead of 1 because of her +2 dexterity bonus. I figure this should work really well with her range advantage over enemies.
Chzr takes rapid shot (-2 AB to take an extra shot per round) and Weapon Focus (+1 AB with longbows). She's basically the ranged version of Serious.
Strangelove takes Spell Focus: Conjuration. I can never remember all the spell schools and which are the best (it also changes with pretty much every implementation of D&D). I know I won't be getting super high level spells like Finger of Death and Wail of the Banshee, so my normal choice of Necromancy is out. I decide to just focus on a spell that is already working well for me. Grease is Conjuration. I can't argue with a stronger Grease.
Yeesh takes Craft Wondrous Item. I noticed that a lot of Spugnoir's Wizard spells didn't cover all the available item possibilities, so this should keep all my crafting options open. Brew potion should probably be our next feat, we could use some extra buff or healing potions.
After this, we return to Hommlet. The magic cloak is identified to be a cloak of Elvenkind, giving +10 to hide checks. Obviously Furnok gets this. The magic shield is a simple Shield +1, Yeesh takes this. After looking through our options, instead of crafting numerous smaller items I decide to go big or go home. Spugnoir crafts a Brooch of Shielding for 750 GP, nearly all of our cash. Shield will give +4 shield AC bonus and immunity to magic missiles. Its normally only a spell that a wizard would cast on himself for self defense, but non-wizards can wear the item to take advantage of the effects as well. This works perfectly to give Serious an AC bonus equal to a very strong shield (Yeesh's +1 shield only gives 3 AC) while still letting him deal full 2-handed weapon damage. Once we acquire enough gold I'll be crafting another for Dolores.
After our business in town is concluded we return to the moathouse. We're motherfucking Level 3. Nothing is gonna stop us now.
