BSSS - Session 2

 Today we had session 2 of my campaign, and here is a quick recap and observations on it. 

Summary

The PCs head back to the dungeon from last session to try and retrieve the treasure and gear from the dead. It goes very poorly and they manage to all come back alive only through sheer force of luck.

Characters

• Esho - Sorcerer
• Apsu - Fighter
• Athra - Fighter

A Very Quick Recap

The party this time consisted only of 3 player characters (2 fighters and a sorcerer) who  had a good number of hirelings along. They decided to investigate the ruined house they just passed by last time, before going into the main dungeon.

After some random encounters they did get to the house, meeting a Chriot Nomad warrior who was there, in her own words, "looking for Chaos." They split amicably with her and she left, with them exploring the ruins, fighting a seven headed serpent (although it only had 5 heads as they managed to kill off 2 of them which had separated from the main body). They got some very nice loot and went off to the dungeon.

There they beelined directly towards the room with the statue in order to retrieve the gem and possessions of the people who died last session. They found neither, however, and when they tried to leave the room saw a floating orb slowly heading towards them. They closed the door in front of it, then went through the now revealed secret door in the corner of the room, and down some stairs.

Unfortunately for them, there was a slime creature of some kind waiting for them on the bottom of those stairs, and worse still - it had the big gemstone from last session inside it! They tried slashing at it, smacking it with a magically charged copper rod that had a trapped lighting inside it - nothing seemed to do much beyond simply splitting the thing into smaller sections of itself. Luckily for them I managed to roll a 1 five time in a row when rolling its damage! They gave up and just left it down there and ran back upstairs.

From there, once they tried to exit the room, again, they were confronted by the orb which now had two middle-aged men keeping it company. The orb grew and opened a myriad of eyes and through a rather unfortunate roll paralyzed everyone except for 2 hirelings and one of the fighters who was in the opposite side of the room, guarding against the slime. Once he saw things were going badly he ran over...and gat paralyzed as well for his trouble.

Luckily for them the slime-covered priests were in a good mood, and offered them a choice - join the services of their Lord or be killed. The party, once allowed to move and talk again, lulled them that they would join, then a fight broke out in which the party overwhelmed the priests (3 more had come at that point, but it was still not enough) and after looking a whole bunch of magic scrolls from their bodies decided to just head back home.

Due to the small number of player counts and their shockingly good luck TWO people actually got to level 2 - one of them the sorcerer who was in the last session and the other a new character, who's player got an extra boost from the party throwing a feast in his processor's honor and also just getting extra experience for player-roles (you can see what that is like in the Player's Handbook )

Observations

The theme of this session was the luck of the dice. It was the luck of the dice that the slime, despite hitting the players five times, only managed to do 5 points of damage spread over two characters, instead of simply killing them on the spot. 

It was the luck of the dice that the floating orb of many eyes managed to paralyze the entire group, save two people. Normally this would have just been a TPK - in my game a character who is helpless does not have the benefit of any defense or their Hit Points. If you choose to kill a defenseless person they simply die. However, the luck of the dice is also what saved the players - the priests rolled a shockingly high reaction roll, apparently unaware that the group had been here before, and decided to try and recruit/press them into service! 

The party should have died at least twice in this session, and yet luck was clearly on their side and instead they prevailed! They returned with all limbs intact, with a good amount of money and a magical gemstone that one of the players has plans for.