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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flynn" data-source="post: 4130907" data-attributes="member: 1836">Session Notes - 03/26/08Good Morning, All:Another week has gone by, and it's time for another update on my Savage Worlds fantasy campaign. Yesterday, we were down one player, as he had been involved in a car accident yesterday afternoon and couldn't make it. (He's okay, just on some pain killers and doing light duty at his job for the rest of the week. The company van was totalled, though.)The Synopsis:The party settled down for the night as they discussed plans on their next course of action: hit the Sundered still in Moonwell and hurt their position in the township. They had learned from Calyt's recon that the Sundered Emperor and about half his forces were gone elsewhere.Before long, however, the more attentive of the band heard the distant drums of the Sundered revelling in the streets of Moonwell, and the Magus Chrysander detected the occasional high pitched feminine scream among the drums and chants. Thinking back to his lore regarding cabalists, he felt that this could be a sacrifice, either in the death of a virgin or perhaps the implantation of a "Dark Seed", which would allow a Half-Demon to enter into the world.Calyt the Shade proposed a plan: if the party would cause a distraction, he could slip over the walls and into Moonwell again (for he did not have the Essence to transform once again into a bird's form), and find out what may be going on. Yngvar Stonewall readily agreed, and led the rest of the band to the western side of the village, where the walking tower had broken through the walls. Meanwhile, Calyt snuck across the open fields to the city wall, and fortunately was not noticed by the guards.When Calyt was in position, he waved over to the rest of the party, who then began to move across the field. The Magus Chrysander began to herald to the guards at the breeched wall about the coming of the Thane of Thanes, and Yngvar added to the accolades with a challenge of his own. As four crossbowmen began to rain bolts upon the party, twelve Sundered warriors poured forth from the breech to face the party, led by Lord Orath, a commander of the Sundered forces. From behind them, an infernal cabalist began casting spells.It was a fierce fight, for the Sundered, being dwarves, did not suffer from the poor lighting of the moonlit night, and so the crossbow bolts struck more often than not. Yngvar Stonewall, Anzjin the elven priest and the Magus Chrysander moved forward to meet the first wave of dwarven warriors, the Magus throwing sonic blasts into the midst of the warriors at the breech and taking out almost half of the second wave. The cabalist returned the effort with three massive bolts of hellfire that nearly felled the elven priest and wounded the human magus. As Anzjin began using magic to heal himself and his comrades, Chrysander used the Hand of Joven upon himself and moved to back Yngvar up, who stood as a stone wall drawing the attentions of Lord Orath and his Sundered warriors.It was then that Yngvar drew forth the blade Tiwazbrandr, that legendary dwarven greatsword that marked him as the Thane of Thanes, the very sword that the Sundered Emperor sought. Several of the charging warriors immediately called out for the Thane's pardons, and surrounded Yngvar and Lord Orath as they engaged in a battle of strength and warskill, trading blows and insults. At that moment, the Lord Orath landed a well-placed blow upon Thane Yngvar, stunning him into silence. It was some time before the Thane became unshaken and called to his new supporters, and only his stalwart nature provided him protection from Lord Orath's continued onslaught. As he recovered, Yngvar accepted the aid and redemption of the Sundered warriors and dealt a vicious blow to Lord Orath. A well-placed strike from the Magus Chrysander's polearm against the enemy Lord was enough to fell the dwarf, and the Thane finished him off with a flourish.Meanwhile, Calyt the Shade had been stealthily moving along the wall of the village towards the battle, for this confrontation had turned into much more than a distraction. Knowing that the remainder of the forces in town were rushing towards the breeched wall to fight off what was assumed to be a "massive invading force",  Calyt felt the need to rush to his comrades' aid, using his accomplished skills with the bow to aid his friends when possible. Given the darkness, many of the Shade's bow shots missed, but the dwarves, once they knew of his presence, easily struck him with several bolts. Heavily wounded, Calyt dropped to the landing beneath him, feigning death.Now victorious against the Lord Orath, Yngvar Stonewall brandished the sword overhead and called for the surrender of the crossbowmen. (Somewhere during the assault, the cabalist slipped away into the night, for he was as out of Essence as Calyt had been). Two of them turned on their fellows for the chance to gain redemption at the hand of the new dwarven emperor, and the fight was shortly over. Even as the group slowly reunited, the newly pardoned Sundered at their side, more reinforcements emerged at the breech to face these would-be attackers.And that's where we ended the session...The Commentary:Due to the late arrival of one of the players, we started a little late this time around, and so we only got in about two and a half hours of gaming. Still, it was a lot of fun. I had other plans set up for the evening, but a simple background detail (the sounds of drumming and possible torture or sacrifice of a female villager) spurred the party into an action I was not quite expecting.With that, there was no further hemming and hawing, and they quickly moved into action. The confrontation became much more direct, with four Wild Cards facing off essentially against two Wild Cards and sixteen extras. To top it off, Calyt had only one Power Point available, so he was effectively without spells for the duration of the combat.Aside from the fun flavor of having a few of the warriors turn to Yngvar for pardons, this was a fine combat that accentuated the impact of lighting penalties on the good guys (both Chrysander and Calyt are human and thus suffered a -2 on all attacks due to the poor lighting), as well as the effectiveness of ranged attacks (most of the damage dealt to the player-characters came from the crossbow bolts and the hellfire bolts). Ranged combat attacks against a TN of 4, instead of the higher Parry values that melee combatants must face. It's basically easier to hit with ranged, so as a Savage Worlds GM, I know that mixing in some ranged attackers with my mixed encounters is a good thing, if I want to present a good challenge. (That, and it gives Calyt an area to shine, as he's becoming a ranged specialist. Better die rolls on his part would be helpful, too.)This combat also brought home the point that a Toughness of 9 or higher makes it very hard to do damage. Both Yngvar and the Lord Orath had a Toughness of 9, and even though both hit with a certain regularity, usually they would simply render one another Shaken. It was only after Yngvar's bennies were gone that the Shaken started converting Shaken hits to Wounds. That, and a few lucky damage rolls that aced (on both sides) were what took down the big guys and what pulled at the party's healing resources.With twenty-two active combatants, the combat lasted between one-and-a-half hours and two hours, with somewhere in the neighborhood of ten or twelve rounds of combat. While the combat still took about as long as a mid-level D20 combat, we got more actions and there were many, many more combatants on the field than I would have seen otherwise in a D20 campaign. I loved the flavor of this particular combat, too, because we saw a variety of opponents and attacks taken, the battlefield was bigger than normal, and it had some great moments in it. Still, no one tried any Tricks or Tests of Will last night. Just imagine what it would have been like had they done so.On the down side, I am also seeing that the group is capable of wading through Extras pretty easily, when they set their minds to do so. This is in fitting with the direction they've built their characters, but I am looking forward to seeing how Savage Worlds deals with this phenomenon as the game progresses.Next week, we hope that the Warlord Andrus can return to the group, and apply some of his Leadership Edges to the new recruits in a more massive battle against the rest of the Sundered that are rushing to fight off the invading party. Oh, the legends that will be written of this night in the dwarven courts in years to come...Enjoy,Flynn</blockquote>

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