Summary
They ascend the bell tower and fight a spider on the stairs. Mim almost dies, but they manage to defeat the spider. They climb the tower, surprising the bat in the belfry (sorry, I had to). They recover significant gear, and descend to defeat a ghoul in the priest’s chambers. They open the secret door in the main chapel, prepared to descend into the catacombs beyond.
***
Actual Play
There is one area left to explore (at least so far as Garek knows…), the bell tower. The group enters the dusty and weather-beaten tower, starting to climb the stairs (Garek had successfully healed himself to full). The spider hiding under the stairs attempts to sneak. It is successful. The dice decide that it waits until they pass, and then it attacks from behind.
Round 1
The spider bites with an 11, dealing 7 hits. Mim would not have activated vestments, so he’s at armor 0. He’s down to 1 hit. He has to check might to withstand the poison. He fails. Uh oh. He falls on the stairs, but has to make a reflex check from falling over the edge… he makes it with an 11, so he collapses on the stair he’s on, but suffers no further damage. He’s at -3.
Brand turns around to see his best friend fall, and a huge spider flashing its mandibles at him. He attacks with his spear, but he misses.
Garek cannot get to the spider (Brand is in the way), but he uses a healing word spell to revive Mim. He succeeds, and Mim wakes up, now at 3 hits. Garek also lights one of the candles of blessing.
Round 2
The spider bites at Brand, hitting for 6-1=5 damage. Brand is at 9 hits. Brand makes his poison resist with a natural 12. Go Brand.
The spider has stepped over Mim, so he’s behind it and can attack it. He uses one of his 3 edges on his eldritch arrow casting. He succeeds with an 8, dealing 8 hits. The spider makes its reflex check, and is down to 16 hits.
Brand attacks with his spear, missing. He claims one of his 3 edges, but still misses (the third die was a 2. Ick)
Garek throws his dirk, using a +1 edge. He rolls a pair of 3s and also misses, as his dirk clatters to the floor 20’ below. He holds on to his final healing word spell in case someone else really needs it.
Round 3
The spider bites at Brand again (although it is not happy with Mim at all. It hits him for 6-1=5, leaving Brand at 4. Brand makes his might check to ignore the poison.
Mim casts another eldritch arrow, hitting with a 4. He deals 8, and the spider fails its reflex check this time. It’s down to 8 hits.
Brand attacks (using his second edge from the candle) and gets a 10, dealing 8 damage (the spider has no armor). This kills the spider, and it falls off the side.
Garek attempts to heal Brand (using his +1 edge from the candle) and is successful. Brand is up to 10. After blowing out the candle and waiting a minute, he successfully heals both Brand and Mim. Both are now at full health. They tie a rope around Mim and hold the end, letting him go over the side to investigate the spider’s nest… He finds 34 gp! Garek tells them that they have been valiant allies thus far, and lets them split it (he already got the candles and holy water, anyway). They are both richer than they have ever been. Mim wants to go gambling soooo bad. He challenges Brand - 1 gp on a coin flip. Brand accepts. Mim calls heads. It’s tails. He hands Brand the coin and frowns. They continue up the stairs.
Despite wearing chainmail, Garek is able to sneak up to the bell tower, where he finds a giant bat hanging near the bell. The team gets a free attack at +1 edge, as they move into position around the bat. I’m going to say that if the bat gets an 11 or 12 on an attack, it tries to drag the target off the edge of the tower… and a might check is required to prevent that from happening (because a 60’ fall kills any of them).
Round 1
Mim casts eldritch arrow, and succeeds with a 7. The bat botches its evade (it is asleep after all), suffering 8 hits. It’s already down to 8.
Garek misses! (rolled 1, 4, 5)
Brand hits for 11, dealing 9-1=8… which is just enough to kill the bat. Drat. I wanted to see what it could do… I roll just to see. It would have hit Brand with a 10, so some damage and no might check required. They would have been okay going into round 2… as it is, the bat is dead. It has both monetary treasure (4 instances!) and magical treasure (2 instances). Wow. It killed an adventurer who had come up here… the body is lying nearby, and it has on it…
Bat’s Treasure:
90 sp
A ring worth 8 gp
A suit of ring mail armor 2
An enchanted bastard sword 5/1 (wow)
A crossbow 3
A potion of mana 1
Well… Garek and Brand flip a coin for the sword. Brand wins. Dang. He now deals 10 hits with each successful attack. That’s impressive. Brand also gets the armor (which makes sense). Garek gets the crossbow (which would have helped against the spider). Mim gets the potion of mana and the ring. Each takes 30 sp. Garek recognizes the tunic as belonging to another order of paladins.
They have one more area to explore… the priests’ quarters. I accidentally missed that when I was moving them around the map. Oops.
The door to the priest’s quarters is locked. Mim fails to pick the lock, so Brand will try to force it open with a might check. He fails. Sir Garek tries… he succeeds with an 11. By this point, the ghoul is near the door and ready to fight… but it’s initiative. The ghoul rolls 12 and the team rolls 1, so I’m giving the ghoul +1 edge to its attacks in round 1. By the way - Mim cast Vestments on himself as they were breaking open the door.
Round 1
The ghoul attacks Brand (since he was first one through the door). The ghoul hits with a 12 and a 9. Dang. It deals 8-3=5 with the first claw, 6-3=3 with the second claw, 4 with the bite (ignores armor), and forces a might check or Garek is paralyzed. Garek is down to 8 hits, and fails his might check with a 2. He’s paralyzed for two rounds (he’ll be back in round 3).
Brand swings his new sword, hitting for 10-2=8, leaving the ghoul at 8 hits.
Mim casts an eldritch arrow, getting a 12 for 10 damage. The ghoul makes it reflex check, suffering 5 and down to 3.
Round 2
The ghoul attempts to claw at Brand. It hits with 1 claw for 6-2=4, leaving Brand at 10 hits.
Brand attacks again with his sword, hitting with a 10. This deals 10-2=8 hits, and slices the ghoul’s stomach open, dropping it. For good measure, Brand chops its head off.
After Garek’s paralysis wears off, the group searches the room. They find 80 sp in a drawer and a potion of healing. Mim and Rand split the 80 sp, and the potion goes to Garek.
Now that they have cleared the temple proper, I’ll divvy up experience. They have defeated a gibbering mouther 2 (5 xp), 3 zombies 1 (6 xp), a ghoul 2 (5 xp), a spider 2 (5 xp), a bat 2 (5 xp). This is a total of 26 xp. Garek takes none of this, and the two friends split it (13 xp each).
Mim found a secret door (5 xp) and disarmed a trap (5 xp). He gets a 10 xp bonus.
I’m going to give everyone a 10 xp bonus for clearing the temple, getting past the hobgoblins, and just making it this far. So, 10 xp to Garek, 23 to Brand, and 33 to Mim. Nobody is close to leveling… considering his options, Mim suggests that they search around the main temple again. Garek manages to find the secret door this time, and opens it to reveal stairs leading down into the darkness…
Notes
Putting the spider fight on the narrow stairs made it a much more interesting encounter. The bat encounter was quick, but that’s what happens when you have surprise sometimes. The ghoul fight was decent, and it did some major damage to Garek. I like how I have the bite linked to the claws, and that only the bite causes paralysis.
FWIW, my changes to the rules have slowed to a trickle. I made some major changes over the last few days, but now things seem to be pretty stable. I added a rule for finesse-type weapons today and I'm very happy with. Brand deals a lot of damage for a level 1 character, but he got very lucky with the dice rolling and weapons (that's a level 3 weapon easily). XP progression feels a little slow, but the reality is that the game only has six levels, so progression has to be a little slow. I'm only 2 sessions in and the characters are about 25% of the way to level 2 (33% in Mim's case). This means they should be in range of level 2 around session 6 or 7. That's about how long it took the twins to get near level 2, so that seems pretty good. However, if they were dividing xp four ways, it would be half as fast. I'm thinking of increasing the XP values of monsters a bit... I'll play with it.
Updated Stat Blocks...
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