Have fun storming the castle!
During the 11th hour of getting ready for D&D tonight – I came up with some interesting traps.
There are currently 8 characters in the girl group:
Marwen (elf ranger) Level 4 as of the end of tonight’s adventure – Marlo
Sarah (human cleric) Level 4 – Kelly
Zo (human wizard) 4 as of tonight’s adventure – Paul (not a girl)
Jeffrey (wendigo druid) 1 – Deanna
Anansi (aranea) 3 – Anghold
Olga (halfling rogue) 1 – Aili
Jazzad (human druid NPC) 3
Fairfax (elf bard NPC) 3
Michelle is working on a new character since her dwarf fighter died last session.
They arrived at a fort where they hoped to meet the refugees from their town. Instead they found giants having taken over the fort – hill giants. All but one of the giants, an adolescent, were blind. First the giants, who were holed up in the tower, tried to bluff the players out of their food and horses (horses also being food), but the players wouldn’t go for it. They tried to take the giants on, a very bold move especially considering they had no idea the giants were blind. They didn’t really know they were giants (as far as they knew they could have been ogres or ettins or trolls), but still, for level 3 characters, taking on more than one giant-like creature is pretty rash. An adult hill giant has 102 hit points and is a challenge rating 7. Add to this the fact that the giants were extremely well protected in a fort, I really didn’t expect the players to storm the castle. But they did, so I was glad I took the time to scrounge up some maps beforehand. As they tried to smash in the doors to the keep, the giants threw rocks down on them, even the blind ones. This is how they (well, Marlo) figured out that some of them might be blind – because they were dreadful shots. But they managed to hack through the doors and ascend the stairs – enter my traps.
I looked through published books on traps but it just wasn’t helpful, so I used my noggin. Being blind, for the most part, the giants had to rely on sound to tell them where the adventurers were, so they had set up a series of alarms in the form of wires tied to buckets full of jingly jangly rocks and trinkets. Pretty basic stuff but with the cleric in the front, this turned out effective for them. The players were lined up all single file as she tripped the first jingly, cuing a giant to push a big boulder down the stairs. That softened them up.
Secondly, they arrived at a room full of detritus and waste. The floor was covered with it. Underneath the leaves etc the giants were clever enough to leave shards of pottery strewn about, so that when the PCs walked over it there would be a scrunch scrunch sound, which would cue that giant to pull on the rope that would drag the PCs up the stairs in a net. Luckily Marwen was the only one who might have been caught up, and she managed to jump away in time.
The last and most devious trap were stairs that were covered in poo and other gross liquids. In fact, the scat was only spread over the stairs to cover the oil. When Marwen got halfway up the stairs, she saw a giant head peek around the corner, and he lit the stairs on fire, burning her tootsies something fierce.
So by the time they got to the top, they were all rather beaten up. It’s very lucky that the only competent (i.e. sighted) foe was a juvenile – with only 60 hit points and less strength (and therefor damage) than a regular giant. The blind giants did nothing except hover around, keeping the PCs from gaining ground.
All of the player characters who were present went down in that fight, and were it not for the NPCs they might have fared a lot worse – maybe even died! “And for what? For what I say?” asks Jazzad….
Theft sucks. And I don’t condone it.
Three band’s worth (Secret Three, Video Tokyo, Mimi’s Ami) of really excellent guitars were stolen on Easter Monday. None of us had insurance on the dear things. If you wouldn’t mind passing the word along to any music types so they can pass the word along and so on, maybe we’ll track down where the guitars end up. These are the goods: 79 Fender Precision Bass S910203 active pick-ups natural colour missing knobs on the volume and tone controls; Fender Squire Telecaster SV13564 sunburst; Fender Thinline Telecaster Z1027736 white; Fender Telecaster N503774 black; Fender Telecaster light yellow Made in Japan; Epiphone Les Paul Jr.; Mackie Microseries Mixer. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks & best to you all, miko c/o Diane Kadota Arts Management 604 683 8240
