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larsdangly · 04-12-2019, 11:19 PM

The party in my current campaign had its first encounter with a gnarly troll in our last session, and it was one of the funner encounters I've experienced at the table in some time.

The group was feeling pretty cocky because they've reached the plateau in stat totals where you feel like a grown-up (~37 points, total). And, I think they got a bit caught up in the fun of moving the chits around an extended MH tile map. In any event, they let themselves get a bit spread out and the party's thief separated from the party and wandered down a tunnel without a torch, drifting toward a nook that had a ST 45 troll tucked away in a back corner. Just then the dice turned against him, yielding a fumbled sneak roll (I decided he tripped and fell to his knees in the dark), followed by an uncharacteristic failed listen roll. He found himself face to face with a 3-hex monster that could murder him in 1 turn...

I can't really reconstruct how he got out of that in one piece, but he ended up sprinting through the dark back to the party with a troll hot on his heels, leading to a confused engagement where the party's wizard threw up a curtain of fire, only to have two party members shoved into it, and then one of the fighters fumbled his DX save when shoved and ended up falling into a stream and getting stomped almost to death. The whole thing was going pear shaped when one of the characters got off a shot with a horse pistol (a house ruled weapon in my campaign) that caught the thing's attention and sent it skittering back into the darkness. The party decided discretion was the better part of valor and legged it for the dungeon entrance.

Strangely, no one died on either side, but the players came away as rattled as I've seen them in this campaign, and at a loss as to how they should go about another foray into this place. My bet is that they move on, looking for easier pickings somewhere else.

04-12-2019, 11:19 PM	#53
larsdangly Join Date: Dec 2017	Re: Current play? The party in my current campaign had its first encounter with a gnarly troll in our last session, and it was one of the funner encounters I've experienced at the table in some time. The group was feeling pretty cocky because they've reached the plateau in stat totals where you feel like a grown-up (~37 points, total). And, I think they got a bit caught up in the fun of moving the chits around an extended MH tile map. In any event, they let themselves get a bit spread out and the party's thief separated from the party and wandered down a tunnel without a torch, drifting toward a nook that had a ST 45 troll tucked away in a back corner. Just then the dice turned against him, yielding a fumbled sneak roll (I decided he tripped and fell to his knees in the dark), followed by an uncharacteristic failed listen roll. He found himself face to face with a 3-hex monster that could murder him in 1 turn... I can't really reconstruct how he got out of that in one piece, but he ended up sprinting through the dark back to the party with a troll hot on his heels, leading to a confused engagement where the party's wizard threw up a curtain of fire, only to have two party members shoved into it, and then one of the fighters fumbled his DX save when shoved and ended up falling into a stream and getting stomped almost to death. The whole thing was going pear shaped when one of the characters got off a shot with a horse pistol (a house ruled weapon in my campaign) that caught the thing's attention and sent it skittering back into the darkness. The party decided discretion was the better part of valor and legged it for the dungeon entrance. Strangely, no one died on either side, but the players came away as rattled as I've seen them in this campaign, and at a loss as to how they should go about another foray into this place. My bet is that they move on, looking for easier pickings somewhere else.