D&D2E Age of Wormsish Playtest Campaign, Session 2

Since the fighter was still recovering in town, the rogue and wizard approached the observatory on their own. This proved to be a nearly fatal mistake when the rogue opened the front door and took two crossbow bolts to the chest. The wizard was able to stabilize him, and they staggered back to town so he could take his turn healing over the course of several days.

Once everyone was back on their feet, the trio hired another warrior before returning to the observatory. This time the fighter took point, and her shield managed to deflect a few bolts, though one founds its mark and severely injured her. The rogue and other warrior returned fire, picking off a few skeletons with their own crossbows before the wizard incinerated the rest with a Fireblast.

After extinguishing the flames, the party continued exploring the observatory. Much of the first floor was of little interest, though the rogue discovered a few coins here and there. They had nearly finished when they came across a dining area, with a large table surrounded by corpses in various stages of decay. Though none of them moved they safely assumed it was some sort of trap, so the fighter began hacking them apart one by one.

She was nearly done with one side of the table when one of the "corpses" leapt up and shouted for his minions to attack. This prompted four of them to produce polearms from beneath the table and begin hacking at the fighter (she was the closest). Fortunately, they were clumsy and slow, but unfortunately one still managed to land a successful blow.

The rogue and other fighter loosed crossbow bolts, though both shots missed. The wizard expended the last of her Willpower and a bit of Wound Points in order to unleash another Fireblast, destroying most of the zombies and severely injuring the "corpse", which turned out to be a necroturgist named Filge. With all of his minions destroyed, Filge opted to at least offer up the pretense of surrender, and during their conversation, the party learned that he was engaged in some secretive research for Balabar Smenk.

When the party attempted to capture him he fled, sprinting all the way up to the uppermost level. Filge then produced a bottle, which contained a small, green worm suspended within a sickly green fluid, and threatened to pour on a corpse he had been operating on prior to their arrival. He claimed that it would create an unstoppable undead horror, and 

The party wasn't sure whether to believe him, but while trying to convince him to stop the rogue managed to reload his crossbow without Filge noticing. The other fighter had lagged behind a bit during the chase, stopping to reload his as well: he managed to sneak up the stairs, and when he had a clear shot both him and the rogue loosed bolts, killing Filge. The bottle clattered to the floor, but fortunately remained intact.

Realizing that they had neglected to extinguish the flames in the dining area, the party quickly looted both the operating room and Filge's bedroom, and collecting the skeletal remains before leaving (Filge confirmed that those were the remains taken from the farm, which was really what they had come here for in the first place).

BEHIND THE SCREEN

Combat begins and ends pretty quickly. With the skeletons, they got their shots off during the second encounter but were almost immediately taken out. Which I'm fine with given that they did 7 damage to the fighter, who "only" has 11 WP at her best. Really at 2d6 damage (AP 2) it would only take two shots on average to Critically Injure her.

The extended healing is great, and with a lack of adventuring clerics this actually means something (unlike older editions where he can just spam healing, pray the next day, and everyone is good to go). The party has a reason to eat well and go to a decent inn, as it gives them a considerable bonus to their Wound Recovery check: couple that with resting all day and the rogue and fighter were regaining around 4 WP at a time.

I think I mentioned this before, but mending potions now trigger a Wound Recovery check, and the standard ones grant a +5 bonus. This might seem like a lot but you don't get the benefit of healing supplies and such, and it ends up equaling around an additional WP recovered. But it also only takes a minute instead of multiple hours of rest.

Poor Filge didn't have time to cast any of his spells, and I think this makes the case for keeping Sustain spells in the game: the encounter would have been more memorable if he'd had Ectoplasmic Armor and Ectoplasmic Weapon active. The party announced their presence ahead of time, but even if he cast them in advance depending on how long they spent exploring the first set of rooms the spells could have worn off by the time they got there.

But they got his spellbook, so now I get to see what they'll do with some of the necroturgy spells. Our son wants to at least learn some, and might multiclass into wizard. Melissa is of course going to multiclass into ranger again in order to pick up Animal Companion for the owlbear cub.

The adventure is almost concluded--they just need to bury the bodies and return to the tomb--and then it's on to a heavily modified Three Face of Evil, by which I mean almost none of it is retained except for the basic concept of exploring an underground temple.

I'd created a table for randomized WP and VP generation, but since we're dropping VP it's no longer needed. The other upside was that for determining random monster WP and VP it was a bit complicated. However we're also removing randomized WP, and sticking with 1E's static amounts each level. Also Constitution only applies to the total, so the fighter went from 11 WP to 16, the wizard went from 5 to 8, and the rogue from 7 to 11. 

Our daughter doesn't like not being able to move at all in order to cast a spell, so for her 2nd-level Talent will probably go with Walkantation, which lets you suffer more Drain in order to move while casting spells. It's not a big deal given how many Talents wizards get (nearly twice as many as everyone else). She also gets to Master a spell she has Learned, and is taking Fire Trap in order to drastically reduce the casting time and Drain cost.