[Fighting Fantasy] Bloodsword v1

[Jfdlsjfd]

Yeah, I'd have been better off moving Silvia and Esmeralda to the North on round 1, especially with the surprise round, they wouldn't have been targetted by an AoO and E. would have been able to cast a consistent White Fire each round since the Barbarians would have run to the closest ennemy.

I quickly ran the fight again using this tactic and ended it in 4 rounds, despite abysmally bad dice rolls, with the warrior at HP6 and the Trickster at HP1 -- close call as well, but the rolls were really terrible.

I guess it was supposed to be a tough fight.

With the healing, I think it's intended by the rule of the edition I have. With the food they explicitely say you can use a portion once after a successful fight. WIth the Snuff-Box, they explicitely said it can be used once after each fight. With the Sage's magical healing, the wording is: "You can use this ability at any time except during a combat". I might have thought it was an oversight if they hadn't explicitely mentionned the limitation of using a healing ability only once in similar situations. And the wording is consistently repeated through the books.

However, I found by googling that in the newer edition they changed the rules so the Sage can only use Healing once per paragraph -- the poster concluding that the series had become much, much harder. Maybe we could try using this rule? We'd have made Salvia eat a portion of food to get to HP3, then spend 2 HP, generating 8 HP so she can get back to 10, then in the next paragraph, we'd have spend 5 HP to create a pool of 10, resulting in a net 5. That would make our encounter with the assassin with

W9, T12 S10 E7 instead of being fully healed. It would have required the use of 3 healing rations.

Inventory is now... GOSH, I had forgotten that Winny switched to wield Blutgetranker in close combat. The +1 to FP applies against all foes, only the +1d6 damage is against Giants, so one roll of 9 earlier would have hit.

Winny
Armour
Bludgetranker (+1 FP, +1d6 damage vs Giants)
Obsolete Sword of Uselessness +0
An opal medallion to be tracked by magus Balhazar
An octogonal prism of no Discernable Use
Dagger of Vislet
Golden Snuff-Box
3 empty spots

Trixie
Sword
Armour
Money pouch with 105 gp
Bow
Quiver (6 arrows)
5 healing meals

Salvia
Quarterstaff
Armour
Bow
Quiver (6 arrows)
6 healing meals

Esmeralda
Sword
Armour
8 healing meals.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

OK, since fight might not be the most interesting part to narrate, I'll do it right now. I am adopting the "one healing per paragraph", since it will remember the old vibe of getting the Kai discipline of Curing, then Healing.

Right now, off with the Assassins!

Round 1:

Trixie goes first, and position herself between the Assassins at the left side of the room. Since we're not guaranteed to regenerate entirely between fight, she intends to adopt a fully defensive position while pinning the foes in place.

Then the Assassins act. The North one throws a Shuriken at the Enchanter (7) and does maximum damage, reduced to 3. The two close to Trixie attack her. The first misses (10), the second hits (4) inflicting 2 damage... reduced to nil by our armour!

We focus fire on the northern assassin.
Winny misses (11) and loses her Dagger of Vislet until the end of the fight.
Salvia hits (3) for 4 damage.
Esmeralda throws a White Fire (or is it a Green Fire?) (5) for 9 damage, killing the Assassin.

Then Trixie activates her extra action to attack "her" northern assassin. Since she'll act at the start of the round, she'll have time to enter defensive stance. She misses on a 8, though.

Round 2:

Trixie defends, the two adjacent assassins attacks, with 3d6+1 against their FP of 7. Good luck. 14 and 11, both misses.
Winny doesn't think it's necessary to act and does nothing.
Salvia shoots an arrow at the northern assassin. She hits (3) for 6 damage. The Assassin dies.
Esmeralda fails to cast her White Fire (10).

Round 3:

Trixie defends. Assassin misses her (11).
Winny stalls. Salvia shoots and misses (8).
Esmeralda can substact two to her spellcasting roll since she tried last round already, and gets a modified 2. The spell toasts the remaining assassin for 10 damage.

HP at the end of fight : W9, T12 S10 E3.

That's more the kind of fights I like.

We can loot the body at paragraph 127. We start by trying healing, 4 HP. We roll a 6, so we get 16 HP to distribute, healing Esme fully (7 points), getting our Salvia back to strength (4 points) and finishing healing Winny (3 points).

We're back at full strength. Our sage can now identify the black potion the assassins were carrying... a deadly poison, that kills anyone who drinks it, with no hope of cure. Salvia crushes the phial under her high heel. That's the second instant-death weapon we lose in this adventure!

Now that we have the time to examine our surrounding, we notice that there are several alcoves in the room, with very lifelike statues pointing to them, as if a real person had tried to enter the alcove and was turned to stone. Do we want to enter an alcove, have Trixie search the alcove, or do we just want to get back and take the dark-tiled corridor ? (354).

We do. There is no reason to take some undue risk.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Haha, I bet those statues are actually all set up to give you +1 to each ability score and FREE STEW. They just look like Medusa’s victims.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

You're tempting me...

 

[Joshua Randall]

As a player trying to beat the game book? Definitely don’t mess with the statues! Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes and obvious trap is an obvious trap.

As a reader riffing on past books? I’m curious….

—

It strikes me that the characters’ destruction of poison instant-kill weapons could be read as some level of virtue: poison is used only by evil people and/or poison cheats the rules of what is supposed to be a “clean” competition. (Sure, we’re all in this arena planning to kill each other, but only the FAIR way.)

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

OK, I'll bite, because the option is to investigate, or investigate with the Trickster. These options are generally safe, as the book will generally ask for confirmation before doing something dangerous in the specialized sections, as far as I can remember, unless you're acting in an obvious emergency situation.

Trixie confirms that the statues are previous, petrified adventurers. But she notices they were lured into the alcove, so there must be a reason. She notices a secret door that could maybe be reached by sommersaulting over the floor. The book then offer the opportunity to try, warning that the penalty for failure is death.

Since Trixie majored in Statistics, she nows that taking every 50% chance of dying the book offers will end up badly... I think we got enough warning that trying this stunt will prove too dangerous.

We move back to the black corridor. We continue walking, until we pass by a door marcked with ancient script that Salvia can read: it's a room of Knowledge and Power. Of course we'll enter it. It's too good an opportunity for Esmeralda to pass. (OK, it sounds as much as a trap as the statue...)

We enter a room with nothing outstanding except a dais with a black skull on it. We're offered the opportunity to take it, without the opportunity to have the Trickster check for traps: I guess there is no hidden trap. Speaking with dead for knowledge, what could possibly go wrong?

Esmeralda is teleported, as soon as she touches the skull. We're teleported... to an ancient library!

We can take as many spells as we wish. We can't cast them inside the room. We are limited by normal encumberance rule and we must keep one slot free to pick up the transportation skull again. The spells available, in multiple copies, are:

Invisibility: allows the party to flee without risking AoO.
Healing: restores 2d6 HP.
Adjust: take one point from one the attributes (HP, FP, Awareness or PA) and redistribute to one of the others. The effect is permanent.
Time Blink: can rewind time to the beginning of a fight.
Precognition: allows one to read a random section of the gamebook

Esmeralda immediately dumps all of her food on the floor to make room for scrolls. She remembers that Winny carries her Obsolete Sword of Uselessness, so she dumps her sword, too.

Should she dump her silver armour? Armours that allows spellcasting like this are rare, so it's a really tough choice.
But she can take 8 or 9 scrolls.

Time blink can save us in case a boss fight turns badly due to dice rollls. Adjust is beyond powerful. Trading your own life force for power? What could possibly go wrong? Precog is useless, and Invisibilty and Healing are situational, especially since we have Salvia with us.

My default choice would be to keep the armour, take 6 adjust scrolls and 2 Time Blink scrolls. While I admit that a 4 HP wizard is really a glass cannon, think of the possibilities of having +6 to Psychic ability. That's a 14. It means auto-success a difficulty 1 spell memorized. Or a good chance of success for a difficulty 5 spell. Like Sheet Lightning, difficulty 4 spell, that deals 2d6+2 to every enemy in sight. We've the opportunity to BECOME PALPATINE. Or we could share with the other players. Like our damage dealer, Winny. Because we love to share absolute power, don't we?

With which scrolls will we leave section 38?

 

[Joshua Randall]

I'd go 1 Invisibility (because there is usually at least one fight where actually fighting it is pointless and you just need to get past), 1 Time Blink (because boss fight), and 5 Adjust.

I would also like to note that with a liberal interpretation of this section (A/K/A: what actual D&D players would do), everyone could enter the room one by one, dump all their useless stuff, and take a bunch of scrolls. In other words, the limiting factor wouldn't be (one PC's inventory) it would be (all PCs' inventory).

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

We leave section 38 with an Invisibility scroll, a Time Blink scroll and 6 Adjust scrolls. We use them to reduce Esmeralda's HP to 4, and transfer those 6 points to Psychic Ability. She now has 14. There is now way we'd roll over 13 with 2d6+1, accounting for keeping this spell memorized, so she basically auto-hit on the spell.

While it is questionable that PA can go over 12, no rules prevent it, there are other opportunities in later books to exceed this value and we will meet enemies with values like 18 later. So there is no reason not to go all the way.

On the other hand, there are better spell. Nemesis Bolt will do 7d6+7 damage, enough to one-shot boss level opponents easily. It's a complexity 5 spell, so we'd need to roll 13 or less on 2d6+5, a 72% chance of success. And a 90% chance of success at the next round should we miss. There is also an interesting area damage spell (Sheet Lightning) at complexity 4. But memorizing both would lower our chance of success.

Let's swap White Fire with Nemesis Bolt.

We leave the scriptorium, and continue our journey through the bowel of this dungeon. On the way, we enjoy looking at paintings of gladiators fighting to the death -- something we've already done with the Barbarians and Assassins. I should have paid more attention to the other groups earlier. I remember a high-level guy, though.

As we advance, we reach an arena. Hence the gladiators, I guess. In the middle we can see someone dressed as a sorceror. He challenges us to beat him to a game.

Honestly, I'd prefer to lob his head off, but we're told to go to section 26 without this opportunity. We're not people who randomly kill people we just met, says Winny, choosing not to remember that they just jumped onto Barbarians and then killed assassins without exchanging a word.

The sorceror introduces himself as Kief, and explains the game as the Spiral of the God. It is played with 7 gold coins and a six-sided die. Each side select a number between 1 and 6 (materialized by the die), then we compare. As far as I understand, whoever chose the lowest number loses the amount coin that amount to the difference between the chosen numbers. The winner flips as many of his coins as he chose as a number. Then we start another round, by flipping back one coin each if needed, and then the game continues, but you cannot choose a number that exceeds or equals your number of unflipped coins.

In case of a draw, we play again, the round has no effect. Lost coins come from the unflipped coins.

We reply we're ready for his game and he proceeds to select a number.

But are we ready? Time for some math I guess.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Math is for blockers! No wait that’s a Magic the Gathering reference.

Umm. So I don’t understand: do we roll a die to “choose” number, and thus it’s essentially random?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

No, I have explained it wrong, the die is just used as a marker for the value we chose.