For those of you who've played a Dark Sun dungeon you'll know how rough it is. Both of my characters will now forever HATE the desert.
So, my husband, Sir Jex of the Shifting Hand, found a level 1-3 Dark Sun campaign in one of the Dungeon Magazines online. We've never done a preconstruct so in the spirit of trying new things we started what will be known as the Desert Crawl. It was tough but fun, especially once we leveled up to 2 and a second defender rolled into the group, courtesy of my brother in law Sir Will the Blockade.
The Final Battle rolls around and we know, almost for a fact, that we are going to die. Jex gave our group a 5% chance of living through it; not winning, just surviving. It went something like this:
We're only a few hours out from the trade city of Tir. All the skiffs are intact, no crew has been lost yet. Even with getting by some of the battles by the skin of our teeth, we've done well. Only one last crest to climb over and we're home free.
Over that hill comes three bad ass looking assassins riding beaked and clawed 10 foot tall dinosaurs that Jex nicknamed 'riding crocks'.
There's a big speech about how he's going to take all our hard earned treasure for himself and crush us into the sand. You know the kind of monologue Dr. Doom would be proud of. Then they charge.
Verdant, Will's big bad scottsman brawler, runs in like Leroy Jenkins and takes on the assassin who seems to be the leader. The riding crock claws the crap out of him. The lead assassin leaps from his dino to a nearby 10foot tall rock and shoots the crap out of Verdant with his crossbow.
Gino, Jex's character that Will plays during battle, runs in behind him to try and keep him from getting owned. All the assassins start leaping from their dinos and letting them run around to eat us!
It's at this point I think that we're going to die.
Tacit, my little teeny bopper chaos sorceress, gets cornered by a dino. We've encountered these things before. Tacit is scared of them. So I play true to the role and have her screaming and flailing like the little 16 year old she is. Jex is really great about roleplay mid-battle. "Tacit's screaming scares the riding crock so it attacks her instead of Zii. It's also screaming in terror back at Tacit."
Kragen, Jex's dragon man, helps the girls out of the corner they get pinned into with the riding crock-dino and between the three of them the dino dies.
Jex thought: okay this is good, a little reward for their effort before their slaughtered.
Verdant is dead, Gino is nearly dead, Kragon who's the only one who can heal is finally free to go help, Zii is going to die soon, Tacit is on top of a rock screaming at the top of her lungs while the assassins run around like whirlwinds slicking the crap out of the boys and Zii gets half eaten by a dino-crock.
In a last ditch effort to survive the conscious members of the party formulate a plan to strike a blow at the well oiled killing machine that is the trio of assassins. Kragon is going to use is acid breath on them to 'soften them up' so that Tacit can blast them to hell and Zii can keep what's left from hitting them back.
Okay. No one thought it would work as beautifully at it did. Kragon hit everyone, including the dying Gino, with the dragon breath which gave the girls an extra 5 damage to all their attacks. Tacit rolled a 20, and criticaled with her daily power (that we call the Glitter Blaster because that how I first described it) that did six D6 (six sided Dice) +6 damage, and she had feats that brought the +6 up to a +10. She then spent her action point and hit with another power, made of multicolored bolts of lightning, that she can keep attacking with as long as she keeps rolling evens and hitting. And hit, and rolled the highest number on the dice that she could. LUCKY! +10 and +10 more because of Kragon's acid attack. In one turn Tacit dealt out over 60 points of damage, even bosses don't just walk away from that. And with the power that let her keep hitting she hit the other two assassins and the riding dino for at least 10 points of damage each. It was a beautiful thing.
The Lead assassin died before he started a turn with less than half his hit points. Zii then hit the other assassin and riding crock that had ripped into Gino despite his Jacky Chan dodging. The assassin died, Kragen brought back Verdant who went running off after the other dino. Then he brought back Gino who killed the remaining riding crock and assassin.
Between all the boys the battle ended like this: "Verdant sticks his sword deep into the riding crock's thigh, keeping it from moving any closer to Zii, who for some reason is pulsing purple in rhythm with her heartbeat. A flash of lighting zips by him for an instant as Gino tries to lightning lure the beast and fails. Kragen runs toward Gino and jumps off the gith and goes sailing through the air beside Verdant. 'This end's now!!!' He roars as he sticks the creature in the neck, slides down, guts the riding crock and slices off a leg as he wobbles to the ground. With a screech the dino goes down nearly landing on top of the dragonborne. 'Alright... I'm done.' Kragon groans. Verdant sticks his sword into the sand as he takes a knee, blood is still leaking from his many wounds. Gino sighs gratefully and sits in the sand with a huff. Zii doesn't bother with formality and falls like a toppled statue into the dunes beside the muddy water. Tacit is the only one with energy enough to celebrate their unlikely victory."
In metagame terms: Kragen had nothing but his at-will powers and 6 hit points, Verdant the same with 8 hit points, Gino lucked out with one utility power and 7 hit points plus 5 bubble points (what we call temporary hit points). Zii had spent everything and had 2 hit points. Tacit had 13 hit points.
For all of that Jex said we earned Brass Monkeys (Sprite and Sherbet) and all kinds of gold. Will demanded I play the Final Fantasy victory sound I have on my phone because "damnit we deserve fan fair!"
These are the moments in playing table top games that make them fun and feel worthwhile.
