D&D General Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 53): Valhingen Graveyard (Part 3)

Having wandered around the zombie area for awhile, we start to head towards the exit. As you can see, the party just walking around to ensure there are no more random encounters results in a much more well-explored map than usual.

We head out the gates.

And head to the boat.

Since we haven't cleared the area, there's no need to go to the City Clerk, so we go right to the inn to heal up and memorize spells.

Two fireballs. A lovely sight to see.

And our magic-users' new spell lists:

Off to the store to get rid of some of the loot.

As I've said before, we just have way too many restoration scrolls by this point. Even though we're going into a section of the graveyard with a particularly large amount of level-draining undead, it's useless to carry around so many. This is what Brother Baltor's inventory looks like - and a couple of other characters are carrying some spare scrolls for him!

Time to sell a few - Bragir doesn't need to be carrying all these extras!

After we've cleared out our inventory a bit like this, here are our current funds.

Weird, we had a lot more PP the last time we looked - maybe I hit an overflow and it got knocked down to 0 or something? It's no big deal since everyone has fine longbows by now, and I've got plenty gems and jewelry, but it's a bit odd.

Back to the boat we go...

We re-enter the graveyard.

Despite clearing well over half of the zone, it's apparently as creepy as ever.

A quick check of the zombie-making spectre room shows that it hasn't respawned, so we're definitely good to go to the wight zone.

The wight zone is in two separate sections leading from different areas of the zombie zone. We'll go to the smaller area in the east of the graveyard first.

Our first goal is to go around that corner and get to the entrance to the building to the right.

Only a few steps in, and we're already meeting some wights. Luckily we've surprised them.

Only four wights, thankfully, but they have some zombie friends, apparently. Brother Baltor is, thankfully, first in initiative.

He gets quite a few zombies, but the wights remain unmoved, and unturned.

But the wights remain lined up. Time to get a bit risky. I'll move Brin out to their side...

And equip a fun, but so far unused, item.

It's aimed at the first wight, continues on, bounces off the wall, and starts going back through them again, although only one of wights actually got hit twice (which did take it out). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a good shot of the lightning animation.

Well, that certainly is annoying. Couldn't the lightning have done just 1 more point of damage?

Since my ranged weapons won't damage the wights, time to break out the melee weapon for Bragir!

Buffy, on the other hand, just uses her bow to take out the remaining zombies. Oh, and look, there are a couple of ghouls hanging out in the back to get rid of as well. Sneaky them, having the same 10 HP as zombies on the GBC map so I didn't notice them at first! We'll need to get rid of them quickly, as they can paralyze, which can lead to insta-kills if we're not careful. As Bant takes out a wight, you can see one of the ghouls in the upper left corner.

And since Bant has two attacks every other round, he follows up by taking out the last wight immediately afterwards.

Wights gone, we now concentrate on the ghouls.

Luckily, they aren't immune to non-magical weapons.

Soon all that is left are a few zombies...

And then the battle is over.

We continue to head north, to get to the entrance of the building to our east. But right before we get to the door...

Well, at least they are surprised again. And, again, they have a lot of zombies with them, and a couple of ghoul friends.

Time to turn again...

He gets a fair number of the zombies. But again, the wights and ghouls aren't affected.

But again, our wight foes are nicely lined up. Bragir has one of those nifty wands too, so it's his turn to give it a try.

(The screenshot cut it off before it got all of "electricity" on screen)

Only the wounded one went down, so Brin goes up and repeats the wand strategy...

(Again, poor screenhsot timing as the first wight has just been zapped to death)

Now it's just the ghouls and the remaining zombies to deal with. Let's get rid of those ghouls first!

And then the zombies...

And then the battle is over.

The door is just ahead to the right, but the party maneuvers a bit so they come upon the door straight on. The undead here have had a habit of coming out of doors as we approach, so this positioning will put us in a better tactical advantage.

Sure enough, as we get to the door...

We run out of upload space! To be continued in my next post, coming right up!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Pool of Radiance (Part 54): Valhingen Graveyard (Part 4)

Picking up right at the cliffhanger of the last post...

We'll take the third option, where you die. Again.

As we said, no.

What a surprise! Being in the wight zone and all.

(The reason I moved in from the north as I mentioned last post should be clear here - if I had moved in from the west, they would have been all lined up against the wall, spread out far to each side. They're much more compact and manageable this way).

Four wights again, with their typical zombie friends. But wait, what are those 24 HP creatures in the back?

Juju zombies! Well, their immunity to non-magical damage will be annoying, but not as worrisome as the ghouls' paralyzation attacks.

Well, with them all grouped up like this, it's time for fire to rain down on them...

Meh, just 16 HP, pretty under-strength for a 6d6 fireball.

(For those who don't know, you didn't need to cast a spell with a higher spell slot to get it to do more damage in 1e - the spells leveled up with you. So fireball (and lightning bolt) will do 1d6 damage per level of the caster; so it does 6d6 damage here. And unlike in 2e, where this damage was capped at, usually, 10 dice, 1e let it go up as high as the caster had levels. So in Pools of Darkness, be prepared to see Brin and Bragir lobbing 25d6 fireballs around. Or maybe 30d6 if we manage to get enough XP - magic-user XP, especially multiclassed, will unfortunately slow to a crawl at high levels. Although in reality, they'll be lobbing around 30d6+30 delayed blast fireballs more often at that point.)

In any case, with the sub-par damage, one of the zombies even makes its saving throw and stays up. And the wights and juju zombies in the radius definitely are taken out.

Well, Brother Baltor can deal with any remaining standing zombies...

Well, a disappointing two of them.

With his fireball being not as effective as he would have wanted, Bragir tries a different tactic.

(Since magic missiles then, as now, gain extra dice every other level, it's going to do 3d4+3 damage. And for some reason in the Gold Box games, you can't divide missiles between different targets, even though that was possible in 1e rules, like it is now - so they will all go to just one target. Spells like hold person can choose multiple targets in these games, so I'm not sure why magic missile was unable to be designed to do so as well).

Bragir targets the last wight standing, and gets an excellent damage roll on the spell, taking it down.

With just the juju zombies left, the battle is soon over.

The guardians cleared out of the way, we enter the door to the building. There's nothing much in the first room, but as we go through the next door...

Again, we'll take the third option of this wraith doing the suffering. Although we probably shouldn't be so flippant - wraiths can do some pretty nasty damage!

With wraiths immune to non-magical attacks, Brin decides to shoot off some magic missiles of her own...

Brother Baltor gives turning a try, although it will be tough to succeed at his level.

He doesn't succeed, but our firepower is enough to take it down before it does any damage to anyone. Baroness Bella gets in the killing blow...

I wonder what was the deal with this paladin it was blathering on about?

Well, that answers that question. And yes we do!

Weird items for a paladin. (Some guides suggest that a different treasure with more appropriate items that we'll encounter soon was supposed to be here).

We all know by now what's on that cleric scroll. I'll have my magic-users look over that scroll. As nice as a +3 weapon is, a hammer, with its 1d4 damage, is basically useless in 1e, and I don't think I'll have much use for that sling.

Wow, pretty useful scroll, as Bragir has none of those spells and Brin only the last. There will be some scribing soon!

Having cleared this building, we've finished up in this section of the wight zone. We backtrack and head to the other area of the wight zone, in the north central portion of the graveyard.

We move forward, and shortly afterwards, we're under attack by a random patrol

Except... this group has a mummy with them. And I have two characters fail their fear save.

Two insta-kills later, I reload from my last save (which is only a few steps back since I'm saving liberally in this section).

We head back in, and meet with another wight group one step before the failed encounter.

This group, too, has a mummy with them. But thankfully, everyone makes their save this time.

Since they've conveniently decided to group up...

Sucks that I'll miss the mummy and only get two of the wights in the radius, but it will still clear things out considerably, I hope.

19 points is better than before, but still not ideal. 6d6 fireballs should do 21 points average...

That's a truly annoying amount of zombies that made their saves.

Well, my ranged will pick them off easily. After a few go down, Brother Baltor does his thing...

Oh wow! He must have rolled very well! Even though I didn't get a screenshot of it, even the mummy was turned! In fact, he turned all remaining undead left on the board! Brother Baltor will get an extra mug of ale on me when we get back to the inn!

The fun part is that all those wights next to my melee will turn and run, causing the characters next to them to get free automatic attacks from behind...

This murders them quite effectively, and, suddenly, the only remaining foe left is the mummy, which being turned has fled to a corner in the upper left.

So as to not waste more spells, let's break out the other wands...

And Baroness Bella runs up there to finish it off.

With the battle over, the characters receive a very nice XP award...

And Buffy is able to gain a level.

We turn the corner in order to get to the door of the building to our right. When we reach the door, inevitably, it has some guardians...

That's a lot of wights, but at least they don't have any surprise friends this time.

But... we've reached the image upload limit once again. We'll pick up here in the next post.