3/3/24-3/3/24, rest 3/4, active 3/5
PC: gwendolyn, flynn, legany, galt
Hench: amadayo, mahin, madrof, godfried, chase, thomas, mike, freddy, po
ACKS II is still in the final stages of development but there’s enough of a game there that we’ve swapped over. This was our first session after the conversion and it was a little slow getting off the ground mostly due to chit chat and last minute questions. Eventually, they settled on a team and a target. It was time to return to Ornaron’s Spear, lovingly referred to as “The Black Shaft”.
They’d done the infiltration into the underwater dungeon enough times that I didn’t require a roll. They had all the proper resources and safety measures to make it trivial. The place was humid and oppressive and they determined that today was the day they were going to clear Level 4 but the dungeon decided to fight back.
First, the abstract vaguely humanoid statue on Level 2 had 4 ghoulish creatures genuflecting around it when the adventurers stumbled into them. Armed with many Crusaders (artists previously known as Clerics), the party made short work of that encounter. The ghouls were branded with crossed thunderbolts, the same as the brass medallions that were pulled off of the troglodytes in a previous session.
The party continued to descend, arriving at the disgusting room filled with disgustingly placed statues that made up what their mapper was calling “the lobby” for each floor. They had locked some giant bug things behind a door to the west by stacking statues in front of it and those remained in place. To the east was the fireball trap room that did such damage during their last trip.
The replacement thief Thomas got to work searching the area for a trap that he knew was there based on description. With some bonuses due to foreknowledge and the new mechanic of “methodical” searching, he easily found it. They chose not to disarm it and so he continued to the door beyond and investigated it. No traps and it was stuck so he dipped out and let others take a look.
First was Gwendolyn, the new and improved Bard. The ACKS II conversion for the Bard class is pretty cool, making them quite a bit more martial and gaining some abilities at the cost of HD. She Listened at the door, hearing the sounds of chicken scratching and some clucking. Chickens?
Some of the players had seen this show before and suspected a cockatrice. I smugly flipped over to the new Monstrous Manual to dig up the revised stats for the classic little monster but what’s this? Cockatrice didn’t make the cut? Oh no. Good thing ACKS is mostly backwards compatible so I ran with it anyway.
Next, one of the mages cast Summon Berserkers, but no no, now it’s Summon Manes. For this mage’s level it equated to about the same thing except the manes would last an entire day. Neat. He threw a few of them at the door to bash it down and failed, certainly alerting whatever was inside. At this point Legany the Barbarian offered to bash it in and bash it in he did, stumbling into the waiting beaks of three cockatrices.
The new ACKS surprise rules are pretty cool, basing chances of being surprised on foreknowledge and line of sight to the enemy. In this case, both sides had foreknowledge and both sides had LOS since bam they were all right there. Surprise chart says no surprise for anyone and the heat was on.
Legany was able to win initiative and withdraw away from the creatures, who pursued and pecked away at the party. They were literal birdbrains so I decided to randomly assign targets, most of which targeted Flynn the Crusader and his ridiculously high AC. Only scoring one hit of significance before being slain, the cockatrices didn’t even get to turn anyone to stone. Bummer.
Certain of treasure beyond, the party rushed in to find naught but chicken shit and some exits to the room. They spent some time searching and listening, hearing a “sticky waterfall” to the north. On investigation there was a curtain of blood flowing down the northern wall in a gross viscous wave. There were angry faces protruding from it periodically and though it pooled, it did not flood the room. There was a brief conversation about how to destroy it but eventually they left off and retreated to the cockatrice room.
The next chamber had hundreds of different humanoid skulls bleached and hanging from large deep sea fishing hooks in the ceiling. The party was confused a bit by this but insisted that there must be treasure, so they sent the 3 remaining manes in to pull on every skull. Ok fine, it was thorough but it was gonna take a while.
Time is a resource, especially in a dungeon with random encounters, but alas there was no deadly enemy to assail them. One of the manes released a hidden cache of loot that crushed it beneath the weight of the treasure. 2 manes remained but they had a modest stack of loot. I made them roll it live off of the random table so I couldn’t be blamed. Good thing too because they missed a solid opportunity for a big payout.
The adventurers policed up the gear into sacks and beat feet back to the boat to store it in case the worst happened. I equate this to the regular advice given to establish a forward position as a base of sorts to store treasure and rest if needed. This dungeon requires something like that, but it’s good advice in other situations as well.
Anyway, back in the dungeon after a decent score, back to the blood curtain room, and on to the next where they discovered an abandoned camp used by 3 or 4 humans. There were bedrolls and supplies and WHO WOULD CHOOSE TO LIVE IN THIS PLACE ugh. No one was home and they didn’t find any treasure so onward the party went.
An obsidian sculpture of a giant coiled snake dominated the next room and the mapper declared that this had to be the last room before the big bugs that they had locked away. Despite there being two open passages leading that way, no effort was made to guard or scout. Instead, they sent the manes to investigate for them.
Possessing no proficiencies and indeed being compromised by their state of undeath, one of the manes poked the snake in the head while they other climbed over and into the interior of the coils. The mage immediately lost contact with this one and the party was sure there was a sekrit to uncover. When they sent Legany to throw a torch down the hole within the center of the snake, we finally hit on a random encounter roll!
I didn’t even look at the chart, this was a no brainer. The encounter was the giant bugs from the next room over scrabbling up to see what the hubbub was. I rolled this dungeon a while back and while cockatrices had been removed, ankhegs had been replaced and upgraded by assassin bugs that carried the corpses of their victims as temporary hit points. What a badass monster, let’s fucking go.
Galt panicked, swearing they should have never come here and insisting everyone flee for their lives. Flynn went the other way, casting a protective spell that made him immune to normal attacks from “evil” creatures, defined as hostile creatures of an opposing alignment or explicitly evil creatures like undead, and standing in the breach.
Most of the party fled while a few stayed to hold the line to give those in the room a chance to retreat. I had to endure a lot of whining and bitching about how deadly the dungeon was until someone offered a solution instead of a complaint. One of the mages cast a hypnotic sigil spell, similar to the old hypnotic pattern except it was a cone now instead of an AOE. This made it much more of a precision weapon and due to some poor saves by the monsters’ had them all hemmed up. It was really a matter of time now until they could defeat them, which given the AC and hps took a while. Unfortunately no other random encounters hit and after a long battle, the adventurers emerged victorious.
The bone pile lair of the assassin bugs had the chance for a real solid score in it, but again the players rolled poorly for random treasure and came out with something much more modest. They took their loot and bounced back to the boat, leaving a mystery with the snake hole behind.
Musings:
ACKS II is cool. We didn’t get a chance to use the revamped wilderness encounter tables, but we did spend a lot of time confirming new mechanics. The game doesn’t play that much differently in practice. It’s really about getting the small details like conditions and action economy down. Spells changed a lot but it’s reasonably intuitive and didn’t bog us down too bad. Practice makes perfect and I’m excited to keep at it.
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