Friday, January 31, 2020

Ratpack – Session 11

[Day 6 continues…and finally concludes!]

[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game.  Game sessions happen once a week.  This session happened January 20, 2020.]

[SPOILERS!  If you are likely to adventure through the Shattered Star Adventure Path from Paizo, this campaign will contain a lot of spoilers.]


Player Characters
Marativy – female ratfolk 1st level Ninja
Templeton von Trapp – male ratfolk 2nd level Summoner (Synthesist)
Roscuro – male ratfolk 2nd level Monk
Zitch Grimreaper – male 2nd level Witch with a donkey rat (capybara) familiar
Winston – male 1st level Gunslinger


Day 6 (Still!)
Immediately after Session 10
As their opponents attacked, the Ratpack realized that only one of the four was an actual member of the Tower Girls, the leader.  The other three appeared to be hired goons as they wore nothing that identified them as belonging to the Tower Girls gang.  The leader jumped down to the street from the roof of the low building she was standing on and dropped a smokestick at her feet, obscuring our view of her.  Zitch put an Evil Eye on one of the goons [Goon 1, -2 to hit] and started cackling like a madman.  Winston shot a different goon [Goon 2 for 9 points of damage].  Marativy drank her potion of invisibility.  Roscuro noted and told her, “We’ll meet you at the lodge,” suspecting her plan was to leave with the red metal shard the Tower Girl wanted.  Templeton, merged with his eidolon, ran up the side of the building that Goons 1 and 2 were on top of, but it was too far to move and attack.

Zitch added another Evil Eye curse on Goon 1 [-2 AC this time] and continued to cackle, maintaining the Evil Eye effects.  Roscuro shot Goon 2 with a glancing blow [failed to confirm the crit and rolled 1 point of damage].  Goons 1 and 2 dropped their crossbows and drew maces to fight Templeton.  Winston reloaded and actively looked for the enemy leader, but could not locate her.  Marativy continued to slowly stealth away from the fight while invisible.  Natalia [who the GM suddenly remembered was there] cast a beneficial spell on Winston [granting him +2 on all his dice rolls next round – I missed the name of the spell].  Templeton made a five-foot step up the slope of the roof to get high ground on Goon 2 and managed to hit him with a claw attack that started the goon bleeding.

The Tower Girl boss reappeared in the fight, now on the opposite side of a building [cutting off our planned escape route] and getting a sneak attack on Winston [for 12 points of damage, leaving him with 1 hit point].  Zitch, Roscuro, Winston, and Natalia concentrated their attacks on the Tower Girl boss, putting an Evil Eye [-2 AC], 14 points of damage, and a Grease spell on her.  Goon 3 fired his crossbow at Roscuro who deflected the arrow away with his hand [first use of the feat in the campaign!].  Templeton and the two goons on the roof danced around and missed each other completely [Goon 1 bleeding heavily] while Marativy continued to stealth away [with a movement of only 20 feet, and having to move at half speed to maintain stealth, her escape took a while to effect].

The Tower Girl shot Winston again and knocked him unconscious.  Luckily, he auto-stabilized and did not bleed out any further.  Roscuro reloaded his light crossbow and shot her in return for a solid hit [6 hit points of damage].  Goons 1 and 2 both missed Templeton with their maces up on the roof, Goon 1 continuing to bleed heavily [6 points of bleed damage].  Templeton was able to get a bite on Goon 2 in return.  Goon 3, changed tactics and advanced on Roscuro with a mace, but missed.  Natalia pulled a hand-crossbow and missed the leader with it.

The Tower Girl advanced on Roscuro, flanking him with Goon 3, and hit him hard with her sword [11 points of damage].  Zitch put an Evil Eye on Goon 3 [-2 AC].  Roscuro stepped out of the flank and hit Goon 3 twice with a flurry of blows [for a total of 7 points of damage, but failed to drop him].  Goon 2 finally hit Templeton [10 points].  Goon 1 missed and finally died from blood loss.  Templeton bit Goon 2, which killed him.  Natalia administered a healing potion to Winston, which brought him back into the fight - he reloaded his musket.  Goon 3 stepped to put Roscuro back into being flanked, but missed with his attack.

The Tower Girl, with Roscuro flanked again, hit him with a sneak attack and dropped him to the ground [12 points of damage].  Zitch stepped up to Roscuro and fed him a healing potion with brought him back to the fight.  Roscuro acrobatically jumped to his feet without provoking an attack of opportunity from his flanking enemies and performed a flurry of [weak] blows on Goon 3 [for only 2 points of damage].  But, this allowed Natalia to move and flank Goon 3, killing him with her own sneak attack.  Winston shot the Tower Girl [for 9 points], allowing Templeton to come down off the roof next to her and claw and kill her.

With the hard fight completed, Zitch healed who he could and the Ratpack looted the bodies of their fallen foes.  Roscuro had Natalia cast Prestidigitation on each member of the group to clean the mud, blood, and shit off them so they could walk through the better parts of the city without drawing attention.  The bodies were dumped into the sewer inside the building the Ratpack had just exited [see Session 10].  The loot was stuffed into various sacks and the group fled the area, actively avoiding any city guard that might show up.

The Ratpack caught up with Marativy back at the Pathfinder Society lodge.  Marativy had located Sheila in the lodges library and was talking with her.  The group moved to Sheila’s office for a bit more privacy.  Roscuro flattered Marativy into showing Sheila the red metal shard.  Sheila’s face blanched when she saw it and she clearly recognized it.  Picking up on Roscuro’s unusual use of flattery when speaking to Marativy, she excused herself to get “something that would enhance the shard.”

Shelia returned with an Ioun stone and gave it to Marativy, pointing out that it would fit within a socket on the red metal shard.  Marativy slotted the stone into the socket and it clicked into place, turning the same shade as the shard, and suddenly Marativy was confused as to how she got to Sheila’s office.  The curse on Marativy from the shard was broken by the Ioun stone.

As the group was clearly still injured, Shelia provided enough healing potions to heal everyone in the group.  She promised to provide a full explanation for what the red shard was in the morning as it was quite late in the evening.  Tired, the Ratpack accepted this and promised to return.  Marativy held onto the red metal shard.

End of Session


Rat Whispers
[One of the reasons our characters agreed to come back was that it was late in the evening in the real world and some of us had work the next day.  The other reason was that Marativy and Winston had enough experience to level and needed to rest so they could do so.]

[This was a hard fight and definitely above the group’s weight class.  We estimated that the Tower Girl leader was level 4 and the goons level 3 based on abilities exhibited and damage it took to kill them.  I don’t remember the math exactly, but I believe that made this an EL 5 encounter and our average party level was 2.  And this is a scripted fight we could not avoid despite trying to by sneaking out a back wall.]

[Incidentally, the blog’s 10 year anniversary is coming up in March.  Haven’t decided what I’m going to do to observe its passing that yet.]


Ratpack
Session 01
Session 02
Session 03
Session 04
Session 05
Session 06
Session 07
Session 08
Session 09
Session 10


Session 12

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