Kobalds and Rats

Friday we had another session, a week after the first... the next won't be for two weeks. The situation had been set up by the previous running, in which the players had seen three kobalds above ground engaged in making charcoal. One of these was killed at the end of the running on Feb. 6th, so we picked up Friday last's game with the party on one side of a swirl of smoke and, uncertainly, two kobalds on the other.

After the usual uncertainty about who should do what and how, which always seems to accompany these things (I have lately come to the conclusion that no one wants to force the other players into something not agreed upon, which is why the military assigns that responsibility to a leader), the party braved the smoke. Two kobalds were encountered, a bunch of missing happened and then both were dispatched easily.

Revealed also was a pathway down into a subterranean lair, pictured here:

Once entering the anti-chamber to 1., the party fought a running battle against 7 kobalds into room 2.  These generally had 1d4 for hit points, except the leader which was a "first-level" by my system, my having no trouble with the training that can be applied to humans being learnable by kobalds. This gave one kobald, armed with a dagger and shield instead of a club like the others, an AC of 6 and 12 h.p.; he proved to be quite durable and managed to land a triple-damage hit on Matyas for 12 damage. The hit demonstrated the no-helmet rule perfectly: I rolled a 20-crit, then a 19; Matyas didn't have a helmet. So it goes.

One kobald escaped, the party looted the body for a little copper and silver, found nothing else of worth and decided to press on. They met a second levelled kobald at the top of the stairs at 3.; as I remember, and I might be wrong (I'm old and doddering), it was the cleric Zoltan who managed to thump him twice and short order, leaving him dead at the bottom of the stairs. At that point the earlier escaped kobald released all the pet giant rats down below, 12 of them, so that these surged up and attacked the party.

Overall, they went down quickly... but in one particular round, I rolled two 20-crits against Ti out of three rats; then I rolled another 20 on one of these so that one of the rat hits would cause double, and the other triple damage. Rats do 1-3 damage on a hit; I use a six-sided counting 1-2 = 1, 3-4 = 2, 5-6 = 3 in the usual manner. I grabbed two d6 of different colours and rolled boxcars. Ti took 15 total that round, survived it but was knocked into negative hit points. As the damage was 6 and 9, there were no wounds (Matyas had suffered a wound earlier), so Ti was able to just stagger to the back of the group and let them finish off the rats.

At this point, the party were ready to quit. However, I taunted them into checking the bottom of the stairs (they hadn't gone down) as they counted their resources and hesitated, until I succeeded in getting Orsos to look. There he found the sprite princess in a cage, a sack beside her and scrawled across the door that would have led them nearer the mage purportedly at the bottom of the small dungeon, "Take her and GO!"

The party took the deal; the sack had a hundred gold, they returned the sprite princess to her people, got themselves healed... but unfortunately Matyas picked up a disease from the rats and was set to be laid up for perhaps as long as four weeks.

Joey, player managing Matyas, had participated in my Juvenis campaign once upon a time, when he ran a gnome cleric named Lexent. This being a character from my campaign, I offered an arrangement for Lexent to step into Matyas' place (just 4 x.p. shy of 4th level) and then, upon achieving 5th level, take Matyas as henchfolk. The party were given a veto on this and chose not to take it, so the next running will begin with the party again in Ozd, having met Lexent, while Matyas remains with the sprites to recover. He'll then remain in limbo until Lexent reaches 5th.

There you have it. Basically, a straight-up combat session. We'll see how the next one goes.