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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6066381" data-attributes="member: 1465">THE CASTThey chose to play a Fighter, a Rogue and a Wizard. Let's call them Noah, Thrush and Sylvie. No Cleric... was I scared? Not at all!Noah was a Strength-based, sword-and-board tank with the Protector fighting style. A Knight in the background. Everyone's best friend, really.Thrush was very rogueish and as thief as can be, i.e. Thief rogue scheme + Guild Thief background. This choice caused the first small headache because of the overlapping skills, but I knew you can just replace them (chose Climb and Spot as replacements).Sylvie was a generalist with the Sage background, so all her skills were Knowledge subskills. Academic Traditions in theory, but the player was so confused and undecided when choosing her known spells, that I stepped in and made a bold, very very generous decision, and told her she could just assume she knew all cantrips and all 1st level spells (she still needed to choose which ones to prepare today of course). I was not going to need to regret this decision later. I told her however that I was not going to give her any suggestion during the game, and in fact she missed some spells she could have used like Read Magic and Identify (as a ritual).THE STORYJust a summary, because there really was not much story at all...The 3 adventurers had acquired a map of a dungeon (half a map actually, only the lower level) belonging to a long-time MIA Wizard, and decided to loot it.To my surprise, the players were very good at moving in a dungeon. They took a lot of important precautions against dangers, they moved with care, they drew a map, they played the combats very tactically and creatively. They didn't however do so by exploiting the rules... they did all by narrative clever ideas that I was happy not to spoil or ruin. And just so that you know, I didn't fudge a single dice! The only thing I fudged was the actual layout of the dungeon, because it was way too big and tortuous, and after more than an hour of gameplay they hadn't had any combat (they were also very much trying to avoid all of them).In the first evening of play, they explored half of the upper level, found/disarmed/avoided a bunch of traps, sneaked past a couple of groups of monster (something requiring a good plan, not just a base Stealth check), then almost stumbled upon a group of wandering cultists but managed to quickly arrange a great ambush by hiding in the perfect dark spot, distract the cultists with a Minor Illusion, sneak at their back and slaughter them all before they had a chance to act. They tried (unsuccesfully) interrogating one of them and examining their stuff, but only managed to get a hint that a cult had taken over the dungeon and was preparing a summoning ritual (I know, cheap story, I warned you...). Then continued to explore the level and had a couple more fights with giant centipedes living in the rubble, and a giant snake guarding some treasure, until finally finding the entrance to the lower level. We stopped here because it was already late at night.On the second and last evening, they scouted the caves below, but the map was not particularly useful since it had no markings. Stumbled again into a few random encounters, always trying (successfully, at least partly - see below) to avoid actual combat, until they found a cave full of webs, set them on fire causing the giant spider (Aranea) to attack them and weaken them, then the smoke and the battle noise caused the cultists' hobgoblin guards to arrive and they won. As promised, the TPK was turned into a TP-capture. They woke up in a prison cell with vista over the hall where the cultists were summoning a demon (Marilith), and they started discussing how they could stop them from the prison cell. No workable idea was brought up, so they just watched the show. As the Marilith appeared, the cultist Leader made the usual useless speech/praise and asked her for service, at which point the Marilith pointed out that she wanted payment first... the cult leader mentioned about having a bunch of humans ready to be sacrificed. He shouldn't have. Before I could speak the demon's response, Sylvie from the prison cell cast Minor Illusion to replicate the cult leader's voice coming from the cult leader himself... offering himself and all the rest of the cultists in the same room for self-sacrifice! I liked the twisted mind in such a beginner player, and I let it be <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> It also allowed me to put my theatrical side at work and give a pretty good description of the extremely pleased response of the Marilith and the screams of the panicking cultists as she raised up her coil and displayed her six arms fully equipped (it was a nice wow! moment, apparently none of the 3 players have heard of this monster before and I had only described her as a beautiful but at the same time horrific large female figure until this moment... they didn't expect her to be half-snake and six-armed!).At this point we were very late at night, so we decided to call it finished. We rolled a few dice to let the rogue unlock the prison (once the demon had finished her job and went beck to wherever it came from, obviously), and the whole party looted the cultists bodies or spare body parts scattered in the hall, and left the dungeon from a secret exit found.</blockquote>

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