Tenth Session (11 page pdf), “Death in Riddleport, Part III” – Samaritha’s gone missing, and the PCs track her to – yes, you guessed it – the serpent temple. Along with a new friend, they hit the place hard, and there’s no retreating this time.
Sadly, Bruce (Ox), our usual session scribe, moved to Dallas and no one else brought a laptop, so this isn’t one of our traditional session summaries. I took some notes while running the session and have written it up in a more short story kind of format. I think it turned out pretty well, and hope you all enjoy it.
As a bonus, I’ve started a “Monsters and NPCs” page where you can check out the full character sheets for Salvadora Beckett and Milos the cultist. Salvadora was an example of a new class, the Inquisitor, that Paizo is having an open playtest for as part of their upcoming Advanced Player’s Guide. There’s also updated character sheets for many of the PCs on the Characters page.
The session went really well. We finally finished Death in Freeport! Now that they’re third level, the serpentfolk weren’t an insurmountable obstacle, though even when the PCs prepared with antitoxins they definitely took some damage at their hands.
There were a bunch of really great moments this session. My favorites:
- When Lixy asked Wogan, the chaste cleric of Gozreh, “exactly” what his religion prohibits as she cozied up to him. I could virtually see the word balloon with “Gulp!” in it appear over Patrick’s head.
- When Wogan went to pull his pistol in the ensuing combat and it wasn’t there. That’s one of those moments GMs live for. “What do you mean it’s not… Oh… Crap.” <sound of weapon cocking behind him> I wanted to giggle and hop up and down clapping my hands like a little girl. Then her tossing it towards the latrine as a diversion rather than trying to shoot him – what can I say, I was very proud of myself. The possibility of getting shot didn’t scare the player, but the thought of his 500 gp masterwork pistol getting flushed- that got to him. That whole scene was totally movie-worthy.
- When Milos created his fast zombies! I was reading the new Bestiary and it not only detailed some variant zombies but was specific about how to create them – in this case, remove paralysis as part of the animate dead makes “28 Days Later” style fast zombies. Wogan was actually using Spellcraft to figure out what was being cast and the remove paralysis really confused him, he figured he had some big paralyzed monster he was letting loose or something.
- When Sindawe broke through all the undead blockers and dealt out double crits to Milos. We are using the Paizo “Critical Hit Cards” and they said he busted his kneecap and then spun him around, rendering him flat-footed. It let Tommy get in a sneak attack sling stone shot that put him down (while standing upside down on the ceiling, thanks to spider climb) – a three hit boss kill!
- When Sindawe hugged Salvadora unexpectedly after they cleared the serpent temple. The rest of the players really did give him the hairy eyeball, and he really did say “What?!? She saved my life like twice!”
There were fun little bits besides that, like trying to convince the apothecary they really needed something to counteract snake poison and not VD, and carrying out that big teak desk past the crowd of gendarmes. I think the party started to really fire on all cylinders this session, and everyone got a chance to really pitch in.
Geek Related 