(MunchkinQuest before the D&D session)
After meeting up in town and picking up a jovial dwarven battle priest named Valen (or meat shield as he would later become known as) the three adventurous heroines made their way back to the goblin cave. Lilith decided that she was not that amazing with the two-handed sword, her near-death experience made her not so happy to be in the front taking all the hits, so she decided to embrace her true calling and become a Ranger. (she has ten level 25 hunters in WoW. Yes, she can’t stick with one…her attention span is non-existent) Moonstar changed a few of her abilities around after reading over the Rogue class in the essentials book and we fleshed out Nightengaile a bit more basically copying the current Mage from Encounters. Valen is the female cleric from Encounters only with more testosterone, more facial hair and less boobs.
The four adventurers were making their way back to the goblin caves when suddenly they were attacked by a couple of wolves and the same number of Goblin Cuttthroats. Low initiative rolls for most of the PCs meant that all the bad guys save Moonstar got to attack first. The goblins were too far to engage the group in melee but they moved in and both threw daggers at the dwarf. One missed one crit. Ow! Moonstar tumbled right into the middle of the two goblins, attacked one and hit, was able to damage the second one for two additional points (which elicited a squeal of delight from my precious baby girl) and was then able to move away out of direct harm. The wolves circled around and flanked Lilith, biting at her legs, one scoring a hit. She moved away, shifting one spot before doing so, (We read her aspect wrong. I though it let her shift then move but it actually lets you shift at the end of your turn. She was so proud that she figured out how to shift without taking an opportunity attack from the wolves that I just let her play that way for the rest of the night. We will correct it before the next session) and got some distance and used Rapid Fire to hit both of the wolves. Valen healed himself and stayed near the mage to protect her since her companions decided to just leave her there all alone. (This would be a theme for the night. Both my girls chose self-preservation over protecting their mom in both encounters) Nightengaile used Arc Lightning on the two goblins and decided to stay near the dwarf. Round one was done.
The rest of the battle was much of the same. The goblins decided to change targets, switching to the rogue that injured them both.
I learned something about my youngest daughter at this point. She gets so mad when monsters attack her. Not mad like, “I want to take revenge on those evil monsters” but more of the “daddy, I blame you for them attacking me!” She would give me the evil eye every time one decided to attack her. I tried to reason with her later on in the night. “Honey, the monsters are just like you. They have abilities that they want to use to protect themselves. Don’t you want them to protect themselves?”
“No. I don’t want them hitting me at all.” I smiled, amused that she just wanted to kill stuff but not get killed back. I tried not to laugh at her angriness every time she got hit but my wife said I failed miserably at that when we talked about it later on that night. I couldn’t help it…it was just cracking me up so much.
Fast forward to one wolf left and Valen bloodied and being attacked.
“Hurry honey! The wolf looks like he is about to gnaw off one of Valen’s hands!” Lilith looks down at her abilities, thinks for a second and screams, “What if I use trick shot and knock it prone?!?!?” I smile, so freaking happy and tell her that it’s an excellent idea! She rolls, hits, knocks the wolf down and it spends its next action getting up, giving Valen some breathing room. The wolf decides that it had had enough and starts to run away. The party chases it down and kills it.
They recover, rest and decide to press on. Valen boasts on how well he did in the fight. “Well at what? Getting eaten by wolves?” my wife chides. Ahem. Anyway. Using a Dungeoneering and Perception check, they ascertain that the path leading through the double doors to the room with the horse tied up is the better direction to take. Looking at the two rooms from my perspective, it seemed like the path leading up to the room with the rat people probably had more tracks so I told them the other one seemed less likely to have a ton of creatures to fight. Moonstar listens at the door, tells the party that she hears a single set of foot falls and maybe a fire. They decide a marching order and burst through the doors. The scene erupts into chaos. Poor initiative rolls save Lilith means that the monsters act first. There are three visible targets, both goblin cutthroats and a tied-up horse. They are fixated on the horse and keep asking me about it. I have Nightengaile make an Insight check, she passes and I tell them it looks an awful lot like the horse the masked rider was riding.
"Maybe the masked rider is good, the merchant was bad and they captured the masked rider. Ooow the horse is pretty." That was Katlyn.
"Goblins are attacking!!!" I scream.
"But what about the horse?"
"It's not moving at all. It's just giving you a horsey look. GOBLINS!!!"
"Oh right."
One goblin attacks and the other races to a door, looking to escape. Or so they thought. Lilith moves away from the group to put some space between her and her attacker. She puts an arrow in his side and then focuses on the goblin running to the door. She screams, “ Stop him before he gets away!” but it is too late. He opens the door, but instead of running through, he turns and throws a dagger at Valen. The group hears a loud roar, and suddenly a Drake barrels through the door, knocking the goblin aside. My youngest daughter looks at the monster token and asks, “Daddy is that a dragon?” fear in her little eyes. I smile. She is so cute. “No honey, maybe a baby, baby dragon. But he looks like he wants to grow up to be one so he needs to eat. He is charging at you because you look like a tasty little snack.”
She rolls her eyes, “Of course he is attacking me” and gives me an evil look again. The drake misses and Valen knocks him on his head. Moonstar tumbles into range to hit the goblin Lilith attacked, hits and then moves over by her the ranger. Nightengaile looks at the dwarf, he nods for her to go so she moves over by the rogue and ranger and lets fly an Arc bolt that hits a goblin (it’s now bloodied) and the drake. Hearing all of this commotion, the goblin hexmage from the other room sneaks in, moves and sees the group of females in the corner and drops a green cloud on them, making it hard for them to see and to attack effectively.
Round two starts, and Valen almost dies from three separate attacks (see, meat shield). Lilith Rapid Fires two targets and succeeds, nearly killing one goblin. Moonstar dances in and out of combat attacking the goblin that let the drake into the room, critting it. Valen heals himself, uses an action point and heals himself again and moves to put himself between the monsters and the girls. Nightengaile sees an opportunity to burst three targets with some ice cold pain and kills one goblin, angering the drake and bloodying the other cutthroat. The hexmage fires a blast at the rogue, hits and when she asks “how much damage?” I inform her that it is zero but she feels really strange and should probably stay put for a bit. She gives me that look again.
Round three sees Valen hit again from the goblin, a blow he shrugs off. Oddly he begins singing and the girls laugh at his funny rhyming gibberish. Lilith trick shots the hexmage, hitting and knocking it back into a flaming brazier and catching it on fire. It curses and drops the hex cloud it had cast round one. Katlyn is excited that Lilith was able to take the hexmage out of combat for a turn as he has to spend his turn putting himself out. Valen heals himself yet again, Moonstar starts to tumble into an attack but when she takes damage for doing so, she is furious. I remind her that she felt strange and that she probably shouldn’t have moved around too much. “What happened to me?”
“The hexmage put a stinging hex on you. When you moved, it went off.” Luckily the damage wasn’t severe and she was able to continue her attack, a miss on the remaining cutthroat. She probably screwed her roll up because she was so mad about Moonstar taking damage again. The drake attacks and crits Valen nearly killing him. The hexmage uses his action to douse the flame and then moves behind the drake, trying to get out of sight of the adventurers. Nightengaile fires a lightning bolt at the cutthroat, missing, but it bounced off and hit the drake, critting and killing it!
The last round starts and Lilith uses her encounter power to hit the hexmage and daze him. Valen holds his action (both the hexmage and the remaining cutthroat were near death and I wanted the girls to have the killing blows) saying he was ready to heal if needed. Moonstar danced in behind the cutthroat, killing him with a backstab. The hexmage, dazed couldn’t move but he fired a blinding hex at Valen. “Arrgh, my eyes are gone, I can’t see, someone toast that mage for me!!” Nightengaile fired a shot at the mage, hit and the now dead goblin slumped to the floor.
We decided to end there because it was Kristina’s bed time. We all had fun. Even Kristina despite getting beat on. Katlyn asked if they were getting XP and I told them how much. “Woot! We are half way to level two!” (Yes, we say woot in my household.)
We will probably start playing every Tuesday night. My wife laughs at me later telling me how silly I looked as I was beaming with pride every time one of the girls did something cool. She admitted that she had a lot of fun. Not WoW fun (we love leveling characters on there) but we are getting there. At one point during the fight, on her turn she says, “Finally, I have been waiting for those dorks to get grouped together so I could Ice Burst them!” That was so hot hearing her say that. She is awesome.
