Oh no, that didn't go well
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
Good news everybody! I’ve survived a week of camping with the family. I hope everyone is doing well and been enjoying the series so far. Catching up where I left off it looks like the (rolls a die - sorry Nate) ACKSgrinders have just opened up the kitchen and began to explore it as surprise of all surprises an explosion of winged death bursts forth from the old oven.
We’ll start off with checking for surprise, but looking back over the previous segment it looks like I had already checked for that and determined that neither side is surprised. No reaction roll seems appropriate here as the party is full of delicious blood, and our little stirge nest is hungry (even so I still rolled and ended up with a neutral result, which I will interpret as “you are full of food, we want food” here).
Now the ACKSgrinders must decide if they are going to attempt to evade. Seeing only half a dozen or so shapes initially funneling out of the oven they brace themselves and prepare for a fight (oh how poorly they have chosen). Nobody has any spells left to declare and nobody is yet engaged to declare a retreat, so on we go to the initiative dice and take a look at how the stage is set as the first round of combat kicks off.
In a flash the bloodsucking fiends zip out and swarm Carl and Davedor the Doomed. In the initiative rules combatants with long reach weapons may attack a closing opponent on its number (thus simultaneous resolution) even if they have a lower initiative result. In addition, combatants with a missile weapon readied and not engaged in melee may also fire at a closing opponent on their number as well. Davedor’s spear sounds like it would absolutely count, I am on the fence about Carl’s battleaxe, but comparing it to the length of the stirge’s proboscis I think I’m going to count it for the simultaneous swing here.
Elvis will take a pot shot at one of the buggers and rolls a natural 1. What a fantastic start to this slaughter! Next up Dave & Carl will take their last swings. A 4 and a 5, yup. I swear I’m rolling d20s. However this awful luck continues in both directions with a 3, 5, & 8 against Davedor. Even with the +2 for the stirge attack, they are not even close to the 17 needed to hit. Carl is not so fortunate, while two of the attacks are clear misses, the final roll is a natural 20 (oh no) automatically hitting Carl. Much like B/X & AD&D there do not appear to be critical hits in ACKS by default. Unfortunately for Carl he is hit for 3 damage, and even worse, the fiend is now attached to him draining him of blood.
Andrew the Acolyte heroically (foolishly) runs forth and tries to smash the bug off of Carl before it is too late. And misses completely. Briggy, while friendly to Bill, is not suicidal and demands that they close the door now before they all die. Bill voices agreement along with Elvis. Frank calls out the order to run having already shot his bow this round. This was about as bad as it could have gone for them and I’m pretty sure it’s about to get a whole lot worse. Before the start of round two Carl & Dave both declare a fighting withdrawal. Let’s see how things shape up this time around.
Surprisingly well on the initiative rolls. At 5 Carl, Andrew, and Davedor are able to execute their movement along with Bill and Elvis moving out of the way to make space for them. Davedor heroically closes the door behind him once everyone is out. Elvis will then take a swing to dislodge the stirge from Carl, followed by Briggy at initiative 4. Both of which fail to hit, only Briggy comes close with an 11, but he’s gonna need a 12 to hit that little monster. On the stirges turn most of them angrily fly around the kitchen agitated at the disturbance, and another rule decision must be made regarding Carl’s Fighting Withdrawl and his passenger. On its initiative the stirge will automatically drain 1d3 HP from Carl, and is not technically pursuing or attacking him. I’m going to be generous here and allow Carl to make one last futile attempt (rolled an 8, needed an 11) to kill this thing before he gets taken out himself. Failing to do so, he loses another 2 HP and is dropped to 0 HP!
This means we get to head on over to a fun new section of rules! Having dropped to 0 HP, Carl is unconscious and possibly dead. We’ll actually get to check this once an ally tends to his wounds. So now we move on to the start of round three.
Not bad, lethargic with Carl’s stolen blood the stirge will not act until after everyone (except for Bill) gets to take a swing at it. I’m sure this is the round where something good will happen, yes? Elvis connects with his dual weapon strike dealing a massive 2 damage (did I mention this Stirge had 8 HP), Briggy also connects dealing 3 damage with his short sword, and finally Frank finishes it off with another 3 damage attack. Hearing buzzing start to come from outside as well as the kitchen the ACKSgrinders regroup in the foyer and close the outsid… oh no, that’s right. Those doors were chopped open by Carl earlier in the day. Right, they scoop up their comatose dwarf and retreat back to the “safety” of the upstairs bath room.
Now we get to head to the Mortal Wounds table. In order to check to see how Carl is doing. A d20 (15) and a d6 (1) are rolled and modifiers applied to the d20 to determine the severity of the injury. To determine the modifiers to the d20 the following are checked; Carl was at exactly 0 HP (+5), he is being treated by Andrew who has the healing proficiency (+2) (note: the table uses the word specialization, but I was not able to locate this term elsewhere in the text so I am assuming it is referring to the healing proficiency), I’m on the fence but will go with him being treated immediately after the fight even though the party did book it back upstairs to a safe area to do so (-3), and then his own Con modifier of (+1) for a final result of 20 and 1, so referencing the table… he suffers gruesome scarring from the attack (impossible to impersonate others; +2 to intimidation, but -4 to all other reaction rolls).
One thing I rather like about this system is that it walks a fine middle ground between old school death at 0 HP and modern yo-yo systems where negative HP is merely a setback to be completely overcome with the next healing word. You could still try to get away with that here, but it’s gonna get gruesome pretty quickly. Having suffered a defeat and with nothing to show for their efforts today (except a new friend) the party retreats from the manse and makes camp out in the wilderness nearby. A check for WM would be made daily while stationary, so tonight is a 5+ and we get a 4, so the ACKSgrinders live another day.
As October 8th, they have consumed two of their seven rations each, and don’t feel much pressure to hunt or forage to try to find more and hunker down trying to avoid detection as much as possible while Andrew continues to tend to Carl’s wounds. No encounter is rolled on the 8th and the hills are relatively sanitary. Carl will recover 1d3 (2) HP from his own natural healing, improved by 1d3 (2) for Andrew’s healing proficiency. By dawn on the 9th, Carl is back up to 4 HP and up for adventuring again. Scarred, but not dead the party has a difficult decision to make.
That decision, however, will be for me to make tomorrow. A week into this experiment so far and I’m really liking what I’m seeing here. Much of the simplicity and resolution speed of B/X design with a decent level of crunch on the character side of things. Hopefully we’ll get up to some more Conqueror and King level shenanigans later on in the month. Until then though, I wish you well and hope to see you tomorrow for more.