Great Pathfinder 2E session last night. In the graveyard the party had been investigating, I had a crypt basement which I though was a little boring. So I had added an obvious trap there for them to deal with. A foul smell of rotten eggs met them as they entered the place, which contained three parallel corridors, the entrance to each was covered by ancient, tattered curtains. Set in each corridor's walls were a few lion's head statues with a fist-sized hole in their mouths. All walls in the area were also covered with stacked niches containing skeletal or embalmed remains.
Taking a closer look at each corridor revealed the tiles within were more polished than those outside. The human rogue determined it looked like every single tile was a trigger of some sort. She tried pressing one with weak force, which was not enough to trigger the trap. For some reason, she decided to step on one, which did cause it to depress. Poison gas was immediately released from the lion heads. She sustained some damage while the rest fled upstairs. As the gas disippated they went down again.
The wood elf druid turned into a rat and tested out the tiles, discovering she could safely traverse them, not weighing enough to trigger them. In one of the corridors she found a a magic staff and a backpack with scrolls and coins - the gear belonging to their high elf wizard, who had been slain by vampires the day before.
The group's next goal was to open a set of double doors set in the western hallway without triggering the trap there. While the druid, in rat shape, took a look at the door, the dwarf ranger decided to investigate the tiles more closely, rolling a natural 1 and triggering it once again. The gas dealt a fair amount of damage to both the druid (I rolled 6, 6, 6 and 5 with 4d6). They ran back upstairs and healed up somewhat. (Two random encounter checks during the whole ordeal, but no shows - would have been zombies shambling out through the double doors, triggering the trap a third time, though out of range of the party)
They debated options. One was somehow stuffing the holes with the tattered (would have worked if they found a way to reach the lion heads without stepping on the tiles - too high up for a rat to reach). The rogue contemplated using a climbing kit to reach the double doors, using the niches (could have worked with some relatively easy Acrobatics or Athletics checks - and could have been combined with the previous idea).
In the end, the druid decided to use a scroll of shape wood to warp a large, wooden door bolt stolen from a previous adventure to create a balancing beam between a niche from near the corridor entrance to another near the double doors. Easy to traverse for a rat, but requiring Acrobatics rolls, if easy ones, for the rest.
The druid opened the door, but was spotted by a specter within the crypt behind it. The crypt had a pile of dismembered corpse parts, and the specter was busy assembling them into bodies. Several assembled bodies lay neatly spread about the room. The specter demanded who dared disturb its work. The druid tried trickery, saying she was sent by the vampire who ruled the graveyard. She failed her Deception check, so the specter attacked.
During the battle, the rest of the party made their Acrobatics checks to safely navigate the wooden beam across the trigger tiles, although the high elf witch had to spent a Hero Point to re-roll a dangerous failure. I asked one of the players to control their NPC companion (a human nomad princess they rescued from kobolds a while back - she's filling in as the paladin player couldn't make it. She's essentially fighter type character using reskinned cave bear stats).
They'd defeated similar spectres before (one assembling skeletons and another wights) in the graveyard pretty handidly, but this time did not go well. The specter could spend 1 action each turn to animate an assembled zombie (up to 8 in total). To their horror, the first zombie that rose was their former wizard friend. Unfortunately, the specter critically hit the nomad princess, who failed her will save to avoid being controlled by the specter. And since it was a crit failure, she would need to attempt a save after each turns to regain control (on a normal failure, you are controlled only 1 turn). Madness and chaos ensued as this hard-hitting NPC lays into the party and quickly dropping the rogue. Her stat sheet was bounced around between players as they hoped to find SOMEONE who could roll well on her Will saves or at least not roll high on her attacks, but to no avail. They kept rolling high when she attacked her friends and rolling low on her Will saves.
Things were looking quite dire, until a player asked if they could grant 1 of their hero points to the possessed nomad princess (as an NPC, I don't give her hero points). Another player made a good case for why she in particular might receive one, so I allowed it, and it was immediately spent to re-roll a failed Will save - into a success! Now focusing her damage on the specter instead of her friends, they quickly dealt with the monster, cleaned up the remaining zombies (mostly done by the high elf witch who now finally rolled high on her spell attacks), looted the valuables hidden in the tomb and cheered up the distraught nomad princess by complimenting the brawny woman on how hard she had hit them.
In one of the sarcophagi they found the vampire lord. They had previously defeated him, but he escaped as a cloud of mist while the party fled his minions. The party had earlier destroyed his comfortable, pillow-lined coffin, so they found the vampire lord awkardly resting on hard stonee, in the last undisturbed crypt besides one beyond a secret room (unknown to the vampire). They staked him, and as he was about to object, bathed him in holy water and religious symbols supplied to them by the Temple of Tyr, destroying him for good.
Returning to town to mend their wounds and obtain their reward from the city council, they went back to the graveyard the following day. A puzzle in the secret room had eluded them for now. They were stumped by a pillar in room's center, containing three niches stacked vertically, each labeled with a small plaque. The plaques read "Rock", "Scroll" and "Sword." They had tried putting a rock, a scroll and a sword in the corresponding niche, but it did nothing to open the two heavy, stone doors within the room. (I stole the puzzle idea from the CPRG, Legend of Grimrock 2)
But they'd found a clue in the vampire's library. One of his old books spoke of a renowned merchant who, through trade with the barbarian tribes, had learned a barbaric game known as "Rock, scroll, sword." The druid asked the nomad princess if she knew anything about this barbaric game. She laughed and told them it was the children's version of a game called "Rock, scroll, sword, beholder, xorn." Asked about how the game was played, she, without dropping a beat, told them "sword cuts scroll, scroll covers rock, rock squashes beholder, beholder disintegrates xorn, xorn resists sword, sword slays beholder, beholder neutralizes scroll, scroll banishes xorn, xorn eats rock, and as it always has, rock crushes sword." (Stolen from "rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock" and reworked for a fantasy setting).
They didn't quite remember that, but asked for each of the niches, what countered the object written on the corresponding plaque. After informing the nomad princess they did not possess a xorn, they settled for a scroll, a sword and a rock, at last opening the stone doors.
Out slinked four angry shadows who failed their Stealth checks. I placed my shadow miniatures on the table, as well as two gargoyles miniatures I had brought. (Two gargoyles had been flanking the door since the party had arrived - seemingly just statues, as far as they had been able to determine). The gargoyle miniatures unnerved the players notably, but the shadows were quickly dealt with, though they did manage to reduce the druid's panther companion's HP a good deal. Fortunately, the gargoyles were just statues, and the party were able to loot the tomb (belonging to aforementioned merchant) for riches and several magic items.
Lots of fun seeing the players work out how to deal with the trap, the puzzle, and the chaos caused by the NPC, as they desperately switched between which of them had to roll her attacks and saves.
