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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9863659" data-attributes="member: 70468">Commentary for <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/describe-your-last-rpg-session-in-5-words.679952/post-9863657" target="_blank">post #5263</a>.We started the second session with the PCs arriving at the outpost (a stone tower ~20m tall) with monsters besieging it. They saw several thornfish as well as some alraunes outside. The entrance was open, and it was hinted that there were more monsters inside. They could see people up top driving back thornfish that flew up too close. The PCs moved in to rescue the crew.For our first session, I went easy on the PCs because I wasn’t quite sure of the combat system and because I was winging the encounter. This time I prepped a few things. I went with two thornfish (level 10) and two alraunes (level 5). This gave them a slight action economy advantage, which should make for a hard encounter, but the alrarunes were easy monsters, which I had hoped would balance things out. Inside the tower was another thornfish, a dreadmoth (level 5), and a couple of chaos shards (also level 5). These two encounters were meant to be separate.Unlike the first time session, this fight went a lot longer. There was a lot of back and forth, and status effects were flying everywhere. Pretty much everyone had one or two. I did run the flying skill wrong. I should have had them stay out of melee range instead of putting them in melee range during their dive attack. I pointed this out after the fight, and I fixed it for next time. We also agreed to try the initiative-less rules, which seemed to go okay. They allowed the PCs to roll right into the fight instead of having to stop and make a fairly meaningless roll.The second fight ended up harder than expected. While it was initially planned with only one thornfish, one of the fish from the first fight retreated inside. It was in Crisis (and thus couldn’t fly), but it was still able to do damage. One of the PCs got down to 1 HP (i.e., the best HP). Everyone was beat up pretty good. Since this tower was pretty tall, I indicated that you would need to take an encounter action to move up top, but anyone with ranged weapons could fire up (or down) without problem. Gan (the guardian/spiritist) did a lot of protecting in both fights.Between the fights, the PCs spent some time healing up. IP were used on potions and elixirs. Gan also did some cleansing. After the fights, they decided they wanted to rest, but first they needed to talk to the people up top. Captain Flynn was grateful for their help. They were allowed to rest at the tower at no cost. When they talked to him about the ruins they were after, he asked if they were with the Royal Archaeologist. Cut to a Villain scene of bespectacled woman with brown hair and her crew trying to open warehouse doors in the Ancient Ruins.Since Lorenzo (elementalist/loremaster) is an archaelogist, I asked him if he knew her. He did! She was came from a minor noble family and written an influential paper on using ancient relics as weapons. Huzzah! I was aiming for Lara Croft, and the player obliged me. (They were thinking Indiana Jones, but that was perfect.) Naturally, I couldn’t be too obvious, and her name is Celeste.During the rest scene, the PCs talked to each other and established bonds. One of them had rolled a critical during one of the fights and spent the opportunity on a bond, but they all decided to create new bonds with each other. Gan talked about his duty towards Lorenzo, and Bez and Lorenzo talked about how they’d helped each other. After the rest, I did another GM scene to establish a clock for getting the warehouse door open. I wasn’t sure whether this should count as an extension of the previous scene or not, but I gave them the Fabula Point anyway.The next day, they set out towards the ruins. I treated it as a Very High risk travel roll, but I didn’t get a discovery or danger. I rolled a 3 on a d20. Along the way, I asked Lorenzo if he’d been in any ancient ruins before. He said he had. The walls tend to be decorated with ancient script and glowing. They’re metallic. (The ancients were high tech. Yay!) I had prepped some details for the ruins, but I kept them light. Like there’s an elevator, but the mechanism is non-specific. Ropes? Technology? Well, I guess it’s technology.For the ruins themselves, I ran them as dungeon scenes. It wasn’t really worth breaking it down into detailed exploration, and I didn’t really have the energy to build out a dungeon like that anyway. The first obstacle was dealing with the elevator. The ruins themselves were set up as a tall shaft with water at the bottom. There were three sub-levels with various rooms. Naturally, there were chests with treasure too. (This proved to be a problem when I realized I gave out cool items no one could use because no one in the party has classes that can use martial weapons. Whoops.)Lorenzo went to work on the controls. They were deactivated. The party wanted to take the elevator down instead of using the stairs. This was going to chew up time, so I ticked the clock for the progress opening the door. While Lorenzo worked, Gan kept an eye out for the thornshark I showed in a GM scene in the prior session. This was a good idea because now it was time for an elevator fight.As the party took the elevator down, the thornshark flew down and started attacking them on the elevator. I gave it a routine that it would disable the elevator and then try to ocean jet and thorn dive them. (In retrospect, I should have made the dive bite conditional on a successful ocean jet). Since the thornshark was flying, this was a problem because most of the party do not have ranged weapons. They can’t hit it! However, flying creatures have a weakeness. If they take damage of a type with a Vulnerable affinity, it grounds them until the end of the turn. Lorenzo used Scan and his loremaster abilities to figure out that the thornshark was vulnerable to bolt damage. No one has bolt, but that’s okay because you can spend 2 IP to produce an Elemental Shard that deals elemental damage. Bez used that knock the thornshark out of the air, and Gan wailed on it. Also, Lorenzo’s flare ignores Resistance, so he blew it up good.After a few rounds, the thornshark was in Crisis. It spent its second Ultima Point (the first being on a reroll) to dive off the platform into the water to make an escape.The party got off after that and started looking around. They saw Celeste’s crew getting a submersible ready, but they also saw a dangerous patrol on one of the lower levels. This was a pair of Magitech Troopers and an Iron Soldier (from the Bestiary Vol. I). Celeste must have snuck her crew past it because they were still patrolling. They found another treasure chest. The first had some IP in it. This one had IP and a Revolver Artisan’s Mallet. (They may be fighting constructs, so at least it may come in handy.)The floor below them has a crane for moving cargo. They are tempted to use it, but they decide to sneak down the stairs and past the patrol instead of risking a fight. This is going to add another tick to the warehouse clock with the consequence on failure being a choice between staying to fight (burning another tick and filling the clock) or potentially pulling both into a really dangerous situation. Fortunately, they succeeded in a group check with Bez leading. They made their way down to the last sublevel by taking the stairs. The looted the last chest (some IP and zenit), and that’s where we stopped.They’ve got a few ideas of what to do with Celeste and her crew. There are some assistances a several mercenaries guarding things and carrying a case out of the warehouse. They’ve contemplated just stealing the submersible as well as starting a big fight with everyone and the patrol as well. I think they’ve even pondered whether they can get the thornshark involved again.</blockquote>

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