Tag: D&D

Dungeons & Dragons

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Challenge-Based Gaming: Kicking The Dungeon Door Old School

Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by “Challenge-Based Gaming.”  After all, nearly anybody who plays an RPG can legitimately claim to be after some sort of challenge, whether it’s to cooperate with the other narrators to construct a satisfying story, to most accurately portray or experience the inner thoughts of their character, or just to carve through enough identical bags of hit-points with different skins to qualify for a level-up.  That’s not what I mean, though.  A challenge has to be something that can be failed.  Many, perhaps most, styles of RPG don’t and shouldn’t allow failure to accomplish the goal of the game as a real possibility; e.g. if you’re playing to construct a satisfying story then it’s a real problem if the game system will allow months of play to wind up in an unsatisfying story, and if the system is constructed to challenge you to complete a story despite it something is very wrong.

But Challenge-Based Games do exactly that: they are constructed to challenge you to accomplish your goal despite the system working against you.  This isn’t particularly uncommon for board games; Reiner Knizia’s Lord of the Rings game is a nice example, pitting the players cooperatively against the rules of the game, which will give Sauron the victory if they don’t destroy the ring before he corrupts the Ring-Bearer.

So when I talk about Challenge-Based Gaming, I’m talking about games where the Challenge of winning against the game is the whole (or at least biggest) point.  I’m talking about a style of gaming that pits the players against the game environment, with the GM acting as referee.  (As a historical aside, my crowd actually called the DM or GM “The Referee” for at least the first few years we were playing.)   The characters are tools that the players use to try to beat the scenario (almost always a dungeon, at least initially); the environment is a tool that the scenario-designer uses to try to beat the players; the GM is the scrupulously neutral referee between them.  There can be a bit of confusion here, because many GMs are their own scenario designers, but there really are two hats here: Referee and Designer.  When running the game the Referee is not supposed to be altering the environment or rules on the fly to thwart the players. Even if the players would put up with it, it’s just too easy.  On the other hand, the Designer is absolutely supposed to be creating an environment that’s going to be hard, but possible, for the players to defeat.  Again, even if the players would put up with it, making it impossible is too easy.  In a game system like D&D that has “save or die” as one of the central mechanics, TPK is never more than a few badly designed rooms away.

In fact, even perfectly fair fights (where fair is defined as 50-50 whether the PCs or the NPCs win) will inevitably crush the players as they’re repeated; that’s just the law of large numbers.   So the Designer’s real problem is to make PC victory both possible and the result of good play rather than chance.  It’s trivial to make challenges that the PCs could survive that are equivalent to spinning a roulette wheel; you can even control precisely how likely they are to “win.”

On the other hand, Challenge-Based games require the possibility that the players will lose.  In old school D&D it’s often said that there are no winners and losers, and that’s true in a sense.  Players can never lose the entire game–they can always roll up another character and have another go at it–but they can fail at a particular attempt and lose a character.  It’s a crucial part of Challenge-Based games that this is possible.  You could add a house rule to RK’s Lord of the Rings so that if Sauron ever overtakes the Ring Bearer on the corruption track, the players win, but would anyone ever want to play that?

There has been a fairly steady move away from Challenge-Based play in RPGs, for a lot of good reasons and some not-so-good ones, almost from the get-go.  I’m not sure that it’s even possible to reach the full potential of the RP part of an RPG in a Challenge-Based game; the challenge is perforce directed at the player, rather than the character…rolling to see if your 17 INT wizard solves the riddle just isn’t the same kind of experience as trying to solve the riddle yourself.  And a challenge-based game can’t reasonably demand that players firewall their knowledge from their character’s knowledge; it would be insane to expect players to get any enjoyment out of having character after character fall victim to the same trap just because the character can’t have any way of knowing it’s there.

But I do know that just because it’s rare and not the current fashion doesn’t make it an illegitimate approach to gaming.  The “problem” that players of RK’s Lord of the Rings have that Sauron sometimes wins if they don’t play well can’t be solved by having a discussion around the table so they can drop the Watcher in the Water and replace it with something “fun.”

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The Dire Rust Monster

In the comments on my Rust Monsters: Not For the Wuss of Heart post, several people claimed that they disliked Rust Monsters because they didn’t represent any real challenge: once you knew the trick of dealing with them, it was just a tedious process of beating them to death with non-metal weapons.  I think that betrays a lack of imagination on where and when they might meet Rust Monsters, but for them I have created:

Dire Rust Monster
Armor Class: 2
Hit Dice: 5*
Move: 120′ (40′)
Attacks: 2 Claws/1 Club Tail/1 pair antenna
Damage: 1-8/1-8/1-8/special
No. Appearing: 1-4 (1-4)
Save As: Fighter: 3
Morale: 7
Treasure Type: Nil
Alignment: Neutral
XP Value: 400

Looking more like an ankylosaur with antenna than an armadillo, the Dire Rust Monster share with its lesser cousin a voracious appetite for metal.

The special antenna attack is the same as a Rust Monster: non-magical metal armor or weapons crumble to dust; magical metal armor or weapons lose a plus (10% per plus chance of resisting the effect), once it loses all its pluses the next hit crumbles it.  A successful hit on the monster with any type of weapon means the body was hit, and there is no ill-effect on the weapon.

Now it’s just as challenging as an Owl Bear (since it’s statted like an Owl Bear, except for its AC, a lower Morale and a different special ability, and a whopping XP bonus) and those who were bored by the original Rust Monster should be all eager to go up against it, right?

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Rust Monsters: Not for the Wuss of Heart

  • Save the Rust Monster

    • Some people are really pissed that Wizards of the Coast cut the Rust Monster from the new 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. This creature was one of the original, classic creepy creatures from the old school pre-AD&D days.

While we’re on the subject of Fear in RPGs, the Rust Monster represents a particularly pure instance of Challenge Fear.  The only threat that the Rust Monster represents is to your character’s efficacy.  An encounter with a Rust Monster challenges you to avoid or defeat it without risking your precious equipment, or to face subsequent encounters at less than full strength.

Players who think that isn’t fun are wusses.  Or, to put it slightly less pejoratively, are either seeking the illusion of challenge without the actual possibility of significant set-backs or shouldn’t be playing a challenge-based game.  Players who are interested in interacting with the world will roll with the punches: if that’s what the setting says happens, that’s what happens.  Players who are interested in creating an exciting story might actually seek those situations out: if John McClane has to run through broken glass in his bare feet, putting him at a disadvantage for the rest of the story-line, that’s great, it ups the tension.  Players who are genuinely interested in challenge might curse their luck, or their lack of foresight, but those are the breaks that make the game worth playing.  But players who complain that it’ll leave them at less than their recommended wealth-and-equipment amounts for characters of their level, throwing off the challenge ratings for level-appropriate encounters until the GM throws in enough loot to restore the balance….  well, I can’t help feeling that they’re playing not just the wrong system, but the wrong kind of system.

There are plenty of systems out there that are explicitly built around the notion that the PCs will triumph and kick ass, and play is about giving them the mechanics to describe how they kick ass in really cool and awesome ways (Feng Shui and Exalted come to mind, or in a different vein something like Amber).  Taking a system that in its essence is about all kinds of ways that PCs can fail (poisoned, turned to stone, level-drained, killed, polymorphed, etc.) and putting foam padding on all the dangerous bits is…lame.  Go too far in that direction and even sword wounds will just seal themselves right up after a few moments… oh, wait, that’s 4e Healing Surges.

Really, I can understand and enjoy styles of gaming where the only setbacks are player imposed or player veto-able.  But if players want that, they shouldn’t fool themselves about what they’re doing.  If losing your +2 Flaming Broadsword is going to ruin the campaign for you, getting rid of the Rust Monster isn’t nearly enough–the GM’ll have to get rid of thieves, Dispell Magic, really any kind of situation where you could be knocked unconscious and stripped of your possessions… You’d all be much better off with a system where having that flaming broadsword is part of your character schtick, with explicit script immunity.

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Classic Dungeons & Dragons: Hit Points

I mentioned before the House Rule I was intending to use for D&D to cut down on trips out of the dungeon to spend a week resting up after each room, namely that after a combat you can spend 1 GP worth of bandages and salve to “bind your wounds” back up to the the maximum on your character’s hit die (or your actual roll, whichever was less).  That is, if you’re a Magic User with 2 HP at level 1, you can bind back up to two.  If by level 3 you have 6 HP, you could restore yourself to a maximum of 4 (the most you could have rolled at 1st level).

This is mostly motivated by meta-game considerations, since it’s really boring to have a fight, retreat, rest a week, rinse and repeat all the way through the first couple of levels of a dungeon, but it prompted me once again to think about Hit Points in D&D (and similar games) and what they really represent, and I think I had a minor epiphany.  It’s well known that you can’t really interpret Hit Points as being your ability to withstand physical damage, for all kinds of reasons, but most of the proposed alternatives, no matter how hand-wavey (luck, favor of the gods, etc) aren’t very satisfactory since they don’t really match the game mechanics.  If it’s favor of the gods, for instance, why do fighters get more of it than clerics?  And why would sleeping or being tied up completely negate your destiny and allow you to be taken out with a single hit?  If it’s reflexes, why do Thieves get so little, and why is it that high Constitution helps but high Dexterity doesn’t?

Then it occurred to me: you can’t explain it as a single ability or quality, because it’s an abstraction of how hard you are to kill for all kinds of reasons based on your long combat experience.  This isn’t as silly as it may sound at first.  It happens to be true that for as far back as we have records of warfare, experienced soldiers survive longer, and one of the best predictors of success in combat is how seasoned the troops are.  It’s also not a winnowing process, where all the clumsy, slow and unlucky soldiers die, leaving only the hardy and tough ones.  Troops definitely can go through a process where they go from being green, to seasoned, then veteran.   On the other hand, you can’t keep troops in the field indefinitely or they’ll lose their edge.

So, at least in my game, in general Hit Points represent that state of combat readiness that makes the veteran soldier able to react almost instinctively to avoid all the hazards that kill the green soldiers so easily, including not just reflexes, but awareness of surrounding, mental toughness so as not to hesitate in the slightest, physical conditioning, economy of motion, and so forth.  Damage, in this view, is primarily not actual wounds but the kind of accumulated fatigue and minor injuries and strains that require not just a night’s sleep to restore but days or weeks of R&R.   Only that very first hit die represents real, sustained damage to your body, which is why almost anyone at first level can be taken out by a solid blow from almost any weapon, and anyone, no matter how experienced, can be slain instantly if they’re rendered helpless.  This also, to my mind, satisfactorily resolves why it’s Fighters and Dwarves that can improve their Hit Points the most, with Clerics, Elves, and Halflings somewhat less able, and Thieves and Magic Users, even if they’ve gone through all the same combats, lag behind.  It also fits with Constitution being the attribute that modifies Hit Points.

This fits reasonably well with my house rule on binding wounds.  On the one hand, I am letting people just patch up actual tears and holes in their flesh with a few bandages and maybe some stitches, which is a bit generous.  On the other hand, it fairly clearly establishes why it’s only that first hit die that can be restored (bandages are just no substitute for R&R).  I think it also makes for a sense that, at least for the first couple levels, all the characters are improving their physical conditioning (unless they were lucky enough to roll max HP at the start).

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D&D 4e

Apparently Hasbro has just released a skirmish-level fantasy miniatures war game that they’ve named after the old fantasy role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons. Confusingly, some of the fans say that it still is a role playing game, just stripped of all the boring stuff like anything that occurs outside of combat.

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Is that a dagger in your pocket, or are you Happy to see me?

Dear Knights of the Dinner Table,

I’d always read the stories from your readers, but I never thought they would happen to me….

Sunday we returned to the Old Skool stylings of the Basic D&D game, to finish up the adventure of The Haunted Keep, and things took a fairly grim turn.

The party found another room of bandits, these busy racing cockroaches, and managed to dispatch them, losing Obediah the Elf (Dan’s character) in the process. During the fight, Steve the Magic User (played by Mike) Charmed one of the bandits, and after the fight their new best buddy explained the layout of the half of the keep they were in, and how to bypass Sir Reonald and the room with the stirges by going outside and re-entering through a different exterior door.

The party did so, and easily found the merchant’s daughter they’d been searching for, Lemunda the Lovely. Before they could declare victory and go home, she inquired whether they had rescued her maid, Relda, and two man-servants. The maid was merely in the kitchen opposite, but there things took an ugly turn. When the party showed up, she called for help from Reonald, whereupon Happy Brandybuck the Halfling (suspicious that she was being allowed to cook for the bandits) stabbed her, killing her instantly. This caused Lemunda to start screaming, so they grabbed her and ran, abandoning the missing man-servants. Surprisingly to the GM, Happy didn’t bother to loot the body of the maid, who actually was carrying a gem worth 500 gp that she was planning to use to bribe them to let Reonald escape. They returned Lemunda to the town, where she promptly sought refuge with the town authorities and far away from the homicidal rescue party.

Although the end of the adventure was a bit of a downer, there was much hilarity…partially over how the Bumblers lived up to their reputation, partially over the homicidal hobbit’s pre-murder slip of the tongue (something about raking the maid with his “steely Halfling glaze”) and what this might imply about hobbit culture and culinary habits in this setting.

It was interesting, and somewhat bizarre, running an adventure from a module. Believe it or not it’s something that I haven’t really done before; unlike just about everybody I know who played D&D most of my actual D&D experience was before there was even such a thing as a published Module. The module I was using was a free one, created as a cooperative effort by people in the Dragonsfoot.org forums, and I have to say strikes me as an extremely half-baked effort. At least, I have a hard time believing that the people who created the content of the rooms actually looked at the map they were keying, since Leomunda and her maid are separated from the bandit guards by a series of rooms with only one entrance or exit, including one that the bandits have spiked shut because they’re afraid of the stirges in it, while the rooms that these captives are in have no guards and an exterior door. I decided that the door was locked and couldn’t be opened from either side without a key possessed by Reonald (or by a thief), but that still leaves twenty or so bandits guarding essentially nothing.

I don’t really know whether the group is going to want to continue these Basic D&D forays after the latest fiasco; it still has the advantage that it’s really quick to generate characters and eminently suited to days when the players present and the prepared GMs don’t line up, but I think that I might have to pour a bit more effort into prepping a better dungeon.

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Convalescing is not Awesome

After playing some more D&D with my friend Russell over the weekend (using the introductory dungeon from Basic D&D), what struck us is just how much time 1st level characters spend resting up to go back into the dungeon. The pace is basically: fight a monster, retreat into town to rest a week, go back in and fight another monster, rinse and repeat. When even the strongest party member (the fighter with 9 HP) can be reduced to 1 or 2 HP by a single blow, and the MU can cast 1 spell a day, not resting up completely after each battle is just asking for Total Party Kill. But even if you hand-wave getting out of the dungeon, resting, and coming back to the same room, it’s a real buzz-kill. At least in 3e, the cleric will have one or two Cure Light Wounds spells that will let the party press on, and after the first adventure the party casters can easily create several scrolls (basically a 1st level scroll costs 37.5 gp and 1 xp and takes one day to make).

To address this, I propose the following House Rules:

Binding Wounds
After any combat, you can take time to bind up the wounds of the injured, which involves cleaning them, sewing them up, applying bandages, etc. Binding a character’s wounds will restore up to 1 Hit Die (maximum roll on a die for that class including any con bonuses or penalties), not to exceed the character’s full HP. It requires 1 turn (10 minutes) per HP restored, and a First Aid Kit (cost 1 gp, bandages for 10 uses). If you don’t have a First Aid Kit, a the DM’s discretion you may improvise, but the DM may rule that it’s less effective (fewer than a full HD restored) or risks disease. You may not rebind already bound wounds to get even more HP back if you are down by more than 1 HD worth of Hit Points.
example: Forrest, a 2nd level thief with a +1 Con bonus has 7 HP. During a battle he takes 6 HP, leaving him with one. After the battle he can perform First Aid on himself and heal up 5 HP (4 for Thief HD +1 for Con), so that he’s back up to 6 HP. In a subsequent battle he takes another 2 HP, down to 4. When he binds his wounds after that battle, he can only get back the 2 he just took (putting him back at 6), not a full 5. If the DM finds it too much bookkeeping to track how many hits a character has taken in a battle (qualifying them for a full HD restored by Bind Wounds), he can wave this restriction, but if he finds the players abusing it (e.g. by seeking to take a single point of damage so they can get another HD back), he should rein them in.

If you’re using the optional Skill rules, Binding Wounds is subsumed under the Healing skill; just substitute Max Hit Die for 1d3 points healed (the penalty for a natural 20 still remains 1d3).

Spell Re-Memorization
At any point, a spell-caster (MU, Elf, or Cleric) may spend an hour to memorize (or meditate for) a single First Level spell, even if they’ve already cast all their daily First Level spells. If they haven’t already cast a First Level Spell, then one spell is forgotten to make room for the new one. Because of the complexity of spells higher than First Level, those can only be prepared when the spell-caster is fresh after eight hours of rest.

Justification
Basically, this is just providing an alternate way of accomplishing what first level characters have to do anyway, which is start each encounter fresh. It shouldn’t unbalance higher level characters, since by the time characters reach higher levels they’ll almost always have magical means of recuperating and/or extra spells in the form of wands, scrolls, and potions. In addition, at higher levels a single HD or one more 1st level spell is hardly anything. It also helps a bit with the “oops, I memorized the wrong spell, guess we’ll turtle until tomorrow” problem; it won’t change the course of a battle, and if the characters don’t have anyplace in the dungeon safe to hole up they run the risk of additional random monster encounters, but it should keep the game moving forward.

There’s certainly a possible draw-back that a party might choose to try and rest for an hour after each battle, even if they haven’t taken any damage, just so the spell-caster can get back a spell, but since they still have to deal with random encounters and that’s not so different from what they are tempted to do anyway, I think it won’t be that bad. And I see the spell-caster’s, particularly magic-users, being more ready to cast a spell and more able to take advantage of utility spells as a plus. A low-level MU would be crazy to memorize Analyze or Read Languages as one of his two or three spells for the day, but spell-casters have much more chance to shine (and pull their weight as something other than user-of-mu-only-devices) if you don’t make it a death-sentence to take full advantage of their spell lists.

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What AD&D Character Am I?

I Am A: True Neutral Human Wizard (5th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-10
Dexterity-12
Constitution-11
Intelligence-17
Wisdom-13
Charisma-14

Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard’s strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

I’m pretty puzzled by being True Neutral, actually. I would have expected Lawful Neutral, Neutral Good or even Lawful Good; I suspect the test conflates respect for authority and parents with respect for the law. By the detailed scores, it appears I was pretty close. And I only have one evil bone in my body (I know which question it was, too…. the one about if the elders in your family strongly disapprove of your actions, what do you do. Ignoring them wasn’t an option.)

Continue reading “What AD&D Character Am I?”

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D&D House Rules

I’m going to call the Basic/Expert/etc line “D&D”, distinguishing it from O(riginal)D&D (the white box), and A(dvanced)D&D. D&D is therefor the game we played last Sunday.

Demihumans and character classes

Demihumans can choose to be a different character class, so you are allowed, e.g. Elven Fighters or Halfling Thieves, and are treated exactly as any human of that class (including for level maxima) but:

1) You still must meet all the racial minima to be of that race
2) You get none of the special abilities of your race, which are assumed to come from training that you’re neglecting in order to learn the abilities of your new class, except:
a) Dwarves and Elves retain their infra-vision
c) Halflings retain their Save vs. Death Ray/Poison, and Halfling Thieves retain their racial Hide abilities.

Sharing Spells
The D&D rules forbid Magic Users letting other magic users copy spells from their books, but don’t really explain it except as a cultural prohibition (nobody wants to risk their spell-book); to make this more concrete, copying a spell from a Magic User’s book into another book erases the spell, the same way copying a spell from a scroll uses up the scroll. Magic Users teach their apprentices spells by creating a scroll with the appropriate spell, which the apprentice can then copy into their spell book per the usual rules.

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In Honor Of Gary Gygax, 1938-2008

It was thanks to Gary Gygax that I have most of my current friends, so in his honor we played Basic D&D last night, kicking it truly old skool. The group rolled up the following party (3d6, in order):

Happy Brandybucke Halfling N (Paul)
S:12 I:6 W:10 D:16 C:12 CH:16 Lvl 1 HP3 AC2 Short Sword

Obediah Elf N (Dan)
S:17 I:10 W:10 D:11 C:8 CH:12 Lvl 1 HP5 AC4 Battle-Axe

Steve Magic-User N (Mike)
S:9 I:11 W:9 D:11 C:11 CH:11 Lvl 1 HP4 AC9

Cleric of Doom C (Wendy)
S:12 I:10 W:16 D:5 C:6 CH:14 Lvl 1 HP4 AC5 Mace

Joe Shakyhand C (Doug)
S:12 I:10 W:11 D:13 C:14 CH:14 Lvl 1 HP 2 AC9 Bow

As is traditional, the group met in an inn: The White Cow, in the town of Stonebridge. After inquiring as to the entertainment available in the viscinity (greased-pig wrestling, goat racing, drinking, dicing, and fornication), the party was approached by a loquacious local wanting to know if such a (relatively) heavily armed group was planning on trying to rescue the missing heiress, Lemunda the Lovely, rumored to have been kidnapped by bandits and worth a pretty penny in ransom. Local folk have speculated that the bandits that have been preying on the caravans that pass through town may be holed-up in the… dun Dun DUN! Haunted Keep, though opinion is that they’d be pretty crazy to do so since it’s well-known that the ruins are….dun Dun DUN! Haunted!

The group, recognizing a plot-hook when it hits them in the head (all except Mike who kept blathering something about “evidence”) agreed that they would go take a look, particularly when they found out that the keep was easy to find, being visible from the road through the hills to the South. In the morning they set out.

A fine mist descended as they approached the ruins, concealing their approach, and they beheld the ruins of a keep. Two towers and a gate-house between remained standing, the rest was a burnt-out over-grown rubble. After reconnoitering the vicinity, but seeing no signs of habitation, they decided to approach the West Tower entrance. Joe Shakeyhand found no traps, and heard nothing… not that he had much chance of either as a 1st level Thief, and so they entered. Spookily, the door didn’t creak when they opened it, indicating it had been recently oiled or at least well used. After a short corridor, there was another door, which they opened after the Thief did his stuff, and gained surprise on five bandits, standing around the room and arguing with each other.

Noticing that there was an alarm horn on the wall, the intrepid adventurers made good use of their surprise round. The Cleric of Doom charged into the room and crushed the skull of an unsuspecting bandit; and Obediah the Elf hacked another into two pieces with his mighty battle-axe. Happy Brandybucke missed, and Joe–after determining that there were no rules to prevent him from firing into melee past his companions crowding the door–let fly with an arrow and also missed.

In the first actual round, the party won the initiative, and dispatched another bandit, and on their action one of bandits ran to grab the alarm horn from the wall, while the other–cursing his luck that the morale check wouldn’t happen until the end of the turn–attempted to stab the Cleric of DOoooom… coming up with a roll that wouldn’t have succeeded even if she were naked as the day she was born. He then failed his morale check, and booked it down the corridor.

Once again the party won the initiative, and before the hapless bandit could draw a breath to sound the alarm, the party descended upon him like wolves. A quick mace to the skull followed by an arrow to the throat, and he breathed his last. The final bandit, running away down the corridor, had the misfortune to run straight into Steve’s dagger, and expired.

A search of the room revealed a pair of statues (noticed but unexamined as they charged in for battle) of a man and a woman, both rather buck-toothed, and three exits doors besides the one they came in, one on each wall. The party decided to take the large brass-bound horn, both as a precaution and as loot, and examined the remaining doors. The North door opened onto an East-West corridor, with an alcove on the far side and an open door, through which Joe glimpsed a goblin. Nothing was audible at the West door, but they heard laughter and jeering of three or four people through the East door, and proceeded through, happening on a group of three bandits engaged in tormenting a large (fist-sized) spider in a wooden cage. The fight was brief and bloody, as Obediah smote one so hard (getting 5 times the damage needed to dispatch him) that the DM ruled he got an attack on the guy standing right behind–who he also hit and dispatched instantly. A quick mace to the head followed by an angry Hobbit to the groin, and that was it for the bandits. That bandit had a gold earring, which the party pocketed. After some arguing with the cleric, she decided not to release the fist-sized spider.

At this point we decided to break for the night.

XP for the session: 10/bandit = 80 xp / 5 PCs = 16 xp each.
Treasure for the session: 1 brass-bound horn (10 gp), 1 gold earring (20 gp)