Session 6 had 4 players and we met to play on as seems typical on a Thursday.
We also had a new player.

This week's players:
Valcarius (new recruit, current player)
Tarkus
Corra (new recruit)
Gerg
Shamos (forcibly recruited)
Tiny Tracey (forcibly recruited)

As with all sessions, this adventure began at the gates of Castle Torrog.
The party descended down into the valley below, whereupon they spied the old damaged tower.

• .....For the 6th time. What will they do.

The party decided that they wanted to explore the ruins, but this meant sneaking past the tower...

• Once again I rolled to see if the goblin lookout was alert... and got a natural 20 again!
• Then I made a perception roll for the goblin, only an 18 this time.

So the goblin spotted the sneaking party, blew his horn and ran down the tower, alerting his companions as he did so.
The party thought about just running into the dungeon, but past experience has taught them that this can cause problems later on.*

• ​*See journal 5.

So instead the party decide to confront the goblins instead.

• Tarkus did his typical grandstanding and stepped forward to lure the goblins.

The goblins advance at a standard pace in 2 ranks.
The 1st rank is armed with short swords ans shield and the 2nd rank are armed with short bows that they use to try and pepper the party with arrows during the advance.
The fight goes reasonably well for the party, only Cora is reduced to 0 HP.
After the fight, the party go back to the old damaged tower yet again.

• Once again the party revert to murderhobo mode and Tarkus decides to smash the steps of the tower and skewer the goblin bodies - blah, blah blah.
• What they haven't seemed to realise is that every time they spend time doing something like this I make an encounter roll. Eventually something bad will happen.

Next, the party decided to take a rest in the old damaged tower themselves.

• During the long rest, my encounter roll comes up with an encounter. A ogre to be precise.

During the party's rest, an ogre came onto the scene to have a look around. The ogre headed into the old damaged tower and a fight ensued between the party and the ogre.
Despite its strength, the ogre is both slow and clumsy and the party defeated it without suffering any damage.

• The party were pretty lucky, even a single blow from the ogre would likely cause serious damage.

So after their rest. the party decided to head into the ruins once more. The party headed towards the room where they encountered the shadows previously.

• In session 4 in fact.

• When the party re-entered the dungeon, I rolled to see if the shadows went back to their room.
• The roll indicated, they were not back in their original room, so I rolled to put them in a different room.
• I don't want this to be like some sort of static setting, the players should never take anything for granted in a west marches game.

So the party advanced through the dungeon, little realising that after running away from the shadows, that the shadows relocated themselves somewhere else. The party went right past the spot where the shadows now were.

As the party moved past the shadows, it gave the shadows an opportunity to ambush the party. Luckily, they were able to spot the shadows just as they closed in.

• This was a mistake on my part.
• I allowed the players to make PERCEPTIONs roll versus the shadows STEALTH roll.
• Instead I should have used the characters' PASSIVE PERCEPTION scores.
• If you're unaware of how stealth works in 5e, it goes like this.
• Whoever is trying to sneak makes a STEALTH roll.
• If someone is actively looking for the sneaking character, then the searcher makes a PERCEPTION roll and must beat the STEALTH roll.
• If no one is searching for the sneaking character, then the result of the STEALTH roll is simply compared to the PASSIVE PERCEPTION of any character that might have a chance of spotting the sneaking character. If it's higher, then they are not spotted.
• Thus, PASSIVE PERCEPTION is a static value and not an opposed roll.

Combat ensued, even though shadows are resistant to many types of damage, Shamos' Chromatic orb spell was used to great effect here.

• Critical hit for 6d8 damage!

By the time the battle had been won, 2 characters had been put to 0 HP. Shamos was nearly 'insta-killed' by a critical hit from a shadow.

• Karma I guess.
• In 5e, there is no tracking of negative HP, when a character is reduced to lower than 0 HP, they simply stay on 0.
• However, if a character takes enough damage in a single blow to that would have put their HP at a negative value that is equal to or greater than their maximum HP; then they are instantly killed!
• Shamos has a maximum of 9 HP, he took 16 points of damage in a single blow, reducing him to 0 HP. It would have put him on a negative value of '-7', 2 points shy of killing him. 18 points of damage would have killed him.
• It's also worth noting that characters on low HP have a greater chance of being 'insta-killed'.
• If Shamos had been on 1 HP, it would only take 10 points of damage in single blow to reduce him to -9, thus killing him.

After the battle, the PCs went into the final room and collected the loot.

• Did I say final room? The PC's have done a pretty poor job of looking for secret doors and the like.
• One player even commented on the fact that there's a gaping space in the middle of the map. Did they do any further investigation? No, of course not.
• The party now seem to think there's no further levels to this dungeon...

What the players found on level 2.

Map of level 2.

After having collected their rewards, the party having explored the level, chose to leave.
Once the party were on the surface, they decided to head north. Back to the trail that they were told leads to the goblin camp. They knew that the 2 magical lion figurines had been abandoned here and hoped to retrieve them.

• The journey north was a few miles and required a couple of encounter rolls.
• This led to the 2nd random encounter of the session. A patrol of 10 goblins.

The party followed the trail northwards for a while and spotted a goblin patrol (that has also spotted them).
The 2 groups headed directly towards each other. A battle ensued.

• The party had already fought 10 goblins in this session and been victorious.
• This was also a straight-up fight, no ambushes or anything unusual.

The party were victorious.

• What happened next surprised me a little.

After the battle, the party debated on their next actions. It was decided that instead of pressing on to try and find the lost items, that they would return to Castle Torrog.

• I guess they felt more apprehensive in the area than I thought.
• As the party returned, I made some encounter rolls.
• I got a 20, this means the encounter is twice as large.

As the party headed back into the mountains, they spotted a large patrol of goblins, 17 to be precise.
Considering this was the end of the evening and that there were 17 goblins, the party decided that discretion was the better of valour and fled.

• The characters all had to make ATHLETICS checks to successfully flee, which more or less they managed to do.
• This is where I made a mistake. I forgot to give the goblins a volley of ranged fire as the party fled.

After fleeing the goblin encounter, the party made it back to Castle Torrog.

• And that was that! A pretty straightforward session.
• But busy, 3 random encounters!

​End of session six.