Adventures in Questing – Second expedition, Endgame

We return to our heroes as they steel themselves to face the final swarm of skaven, lead by the the warlord of the entire clan.

As the rats surged forward, Croaker quickly retreated into the small room where the rest of the party had taken position. Hans then muttered an incantation to surround Croaker with a band of gleaming dragon scales, boosting the warriors already formidable defenses.

Taking up position immediately behind a door in order to bottleneck the monsters is basically the signature “boring dick-move” of AHQ, but I was very much outnumbered at this point, and Allum was already teetering at death’s door, so I didn’t want to take too many chances.

I’ll probably dedicate a post to this topic at some point, but not now.

As the mass of ratmen closed, Hans summoned up another blast of fire, taking out a chunk of the formation.

Undeterred, the rest of the skaven charged through the doorway.

Meanwhile, the two sentries continued exploring, but, to the very great relief of the heroes, they found nothing but closed off corridors.

[picture + map]

 Back at the melee, the skaven force had been unable to make headway against the heroes. Each time one of them pressed through the door, it was cut down before it could raise its weapons.

I kept rolling “Attack and move” on the tactics-table, which meant that as long as I could kill one skaven each turn, none of them could attack my party. “Boring dick-move” indeed – though I was quite lucky to pull it off as well as I did. A roll if “1” (reinforcement + “move and attack”) might have made a bit of a mess of my plans.

As soon as the warlord came within sight, Hans used the last of his Fire Dust to blast it with a fireball, wounding the creature.

Ellandiel also acquitted himself very well (once again defying his decidedly average stat-line) by shooting over Croaker’s shoulder and killing several skaven.

Eventually the group of skaven had been whittled sufficiently down, that the heroes risked attacking into the large room to get to grips with the remaining stragglers.

After that it was all just a matter of cleaning up. The heroes quickly cornered and slew the two sentries and proceeded to loot the rooms. As they found more gold than they could carry, they pooled the remains (235 gc to be precise) in the first large room and then headed back to town.

Safely back, it was upkeep-time.

The heroes regained all wounds and fate, and received another point of fate because they’d completed the quest in two expeditions.

As they’d found a jewel worth 150 gc, they had a total of 1150 gc to spend, 100 of which went towards living expenses. They then rolled “Risk pay” on the random event table (again), which had no effect.

Finally, it was shopping time.

First of all, Allum and Croaker hit the gym. The dwarf got +1 wound since his low wound-score had proven to be a severe liability and Croaker got +1 strength, truly making him a force to be reckoned with (six damage dice baby!).

Hans also got some training, learning “Still Air” (useful for making those d*mn sentries stay in one place”) and 10 spell components. 

Meanwhile, Ellandiel bought 12 arrows to replace those he’d used.

Finally, it was time to attract or hire henchmen. Since all four heroes had gotten a point of fate, I could theoretically attract four henchmen at reduced cost, but I figured two would be enough to begin with (which had nothing at all to do with the fact that I only had two painted up – oh no sir!)

All in all a very successful quest.

Epilogue

I wasn’t entirely finished though. There was still a bit of gold in one of the rooms near the final set of stairs, so the party once again ventured down into the dungeon (completely forgetting to bring their two henchmen along).

The door to the room in question had been closed, so the drew their weapons and kicked it open, finding a skaven warlord and its bodyguards on the other side.

The rules are somewhat vague on this matter, but by most interpretations, any room that hasn’t been completely emptied of treasure will contain a new (random) group of monsters it the party leaves the dungeon and returns at a later time.

The heroes made quick work of the ratmen, picked up the remaining treasure (as well as the 115 gc the new monsters had been carrying) and returned to town, where they paid 170 gc in living expenses (the extra 70 gc went towards retaining the henchmen) and promptly got robbed! (by rolling “pickpocket” on the random events table). Fortunately, they had already spent most of their cash, so they only lost 23 gc.

To wrap things up, Ellandiel got some archery training (+1 BS), and the remaining 175 gc were divided amongst the heroes.

And that’s the end to a complete game of Advanced Heroquest. Hope you’ve enjoyed it – I certainly have.

Croaker

Adventures in Questing – Second expedition, Hitting rock bottom

We return to our party of adventurers as they come face to face with the guardians of the stairs to the third, and final, level of the dungeon.

Before the heroes had a chance to act, the skaven charged but were unable to push past Croaker who had taken up position in the doorway.

Chanting an incantation, Hans summoned a scorching ball of fire over the ratman, killing one and severely wounding three others

Ellandiel shot an arrow at one of them, killing it, and the party as a whole backed up a step, preparing to receive another charge.

Just then, the elf heard the tiniest noise from behind. Too late he spun around to see two skaven (a warrior and a champion) who had managed to sneak up on the adventurer during the battle (When playing by the solo AHQ rules, you roll a die each turn to see how the monsters behave. A roll of one means that a group of “wandering monsters” appears, which is what happened here).

The newly arrived rats threw themselves at Ellandiel and Hans. The poorly armored elf and wizard only dodged the onslaught by a hair’s breadth (having to spend a point of fate each).

The warriors to the front were alerted by their companions' cry for help. Allum ran (for a certain value of “running”, considering his movement value of two) to their aid, but Croaker had more than enough on his hands as the skaven warlord attacked him in hand-to-hand combat. The two traded blows but were unable to find a gap in each other’s defenses.

The warlord tried to circle around Croaker, to attack him in the back, but was cut down before it could get there. Meanwhile, Allum killed a skaven champion as Hans and Ellandiel engaged the remaining warrior and took it down over two rounds of furious mêlée.

 At his point, it was mostly a matter of cleaning up. Ellandiel shot the wounded champion while Croaker took the Night Runner down. As it lay on the floor, he noticed that it had been wielding a strangely glowing sword – but not the evil looking sort he’d come to associate with the skaven. This seemed to be of dwarven make. Carefully, the warrior picked it up, and sensing no evil presence he decided to keep it (it was, in fact, a magic sword, +1 Ws. Quite a find!).

 The heroes quickly looted the room, finding some more gold, and descended the stairs.

The final map of the second level

At the bottom, they found another set of very dark and very empty corridors. Warily, the heroes wandered off, away from the stairs, initially finding nothing but more corridors.

I ran out of space on the Heroscribe-map, so the map will continue from the "A" marking

Eventually, they rounded a corner and came up against another skaven patrol. Emboldened by their previous success Croak and Allum charged. 

These skaven, however, proved to be a bigger challenge than usual. Perhaps aided by confidence from fighting so deep underground, the ratmen stood their ground and then counter-attacked aggressively. Allum was beaten to the ground and only escaped being skewered by rolling away from a wild stab at the last second. Visibly shaken, the dwarf regained his feet just as Croaker and Ellandiel slew the last member of the patrol.

Up to this point things had gone so well that I must admit I’d almost gotten a bit bored. That certainly changes when my heroes not only initially failed to take down a small group of wandering skaven, but those skaven then caused two wounds on Allum – in two consecutive rounds. This meant that I had to use both the dwarf’s fate points to save him, so the next time this happened, he’d be dead.

I was now faced with the choice of whether to play it safe, and go back to town, or to press on. In the end, I decided to risk moving forward – at least until I’d found some d*amn rooms!

With new-found care the party moved on. As they rounded the next corner, their tenacity was rewarded as they not only found a door (finally), but also a flight of stairs leading out of the dungeon. How lucky can you be!

Encouraged, they opened the door to a small room containing nothing except for another door which they opened to find a large group of skaven on the other side.

Before they could act, a small ratman at the back of the group disappeared through a door, screeching: “Come-come quick-quick! Man-things here-here!”

There was nothing the heroes could do, as the rest of the skaven surged forward to block the path forward.

Hans summoned a magic fireball to blast the rats while Croaker and Allum engaged them in hand-to-hand combat and Ellandiel fired arrows over the warriors’ shoulders.

While the heroes fought the first group, the sentry opened a door – and found another lair filled with skaven, as well as a second sentry!

The two sentries then ran to a second door, which opened to reveal the Quest room, along with the warlord and its attending bodyguards!!

These two new groups of skaven surged forward, threatening to drown the heroes in a tide of fur and teeth...

We’ll leave things here while I ponder whether to leg it (boring but safe) or try to end things now and risk losing my entire party.

Croaker (I’ll probably stay, since I’m not really playing this game to be “boring but safe”)

Adventures in Questing – Second expedition, Delving deeper

After gearing up, the four heroes finally returned to the dungeon.

Note: Just like last time, I’ll keep the general description fairly narrative and add my own commentary in red text.

They descended into the dungeon and hurried towards the stairs to the second level, keen to avoid running into any Skaven patrols that might still be wandering around.

The map of the, already explored, first level of the three-level dungeon. An “E” indicates that the room is empty.

Those hopes were quickly dashed, as, rounding the very first corner, the party ran into a couple of very surprised Skaven warriors.

Fortunately, the Skaven patrol didn’t include a sentry, and the two ratmen were unceremoniously cut down by Croaker and Allum before they had a chance to act.

The heroes quickly looted the corpses and hurried to the downward stairs without encountering further problems.

The second level of the dungeon was quiet and dusty. The first room proved to be empty and so the party followed the winding corridors deeper into the darkness

Eventually, signs of habitation became more frequent and the heroes tightened the grip on their weapons. Then, upon turning a corner, they nearly ran into three Skaven warriors. Behind the Skaven was a closed door and at the end of the corridor a set of stairs appeared to lead upwards and out.

I rolled a “stairs down” on the “passage end”-table but followed the convention from most of the published quests that the stairs to the next level would only be found in a quest room and that any “stairs down” in a corridor would be treated as “stairs out” instead.

This was actually really useful for the heroes, as they’d now have a shortcut to this part of the dungeon.

The ratmen were quickly dispatched and the party carefully opened the door. On the other side was an empty room (boring) with two (less boring) doors leading out.

The first door opened out to an empty corridor that ended in a rockslide, so the heroes instead gathered around the second. From the other side came muffled screams which were suddenly cut off.

Croaker threw open the door and the party came face to face with the biggest and meanest-looking Skaven they had ever encountered (a warlord in fact). The thing turned from the grizzly remains of a prisoner that still lay on a rack in the room, picked up an evilly glowing polearm and screeched:

“Ahhhh… luck-luck. More-more playthings. You die-die”

Before Croaker could act, the thing had charged him and almost smashed his skull in. The warrior lashed out at the Skaven, but the blow simply glanced off its armor. He then took a step back to give the others some room.

Before anyone else could act, however, Ellandiel had calmly nocked and fired an arrow. It hit the Skaven in the middle of the forehead and continued right through. The ratman stood wobbling for a second and then silently toppled backwards.

This might require a bit of explanation. A Skaven warlord has a toughness of eight and four wounds. Ellandiel rolls four damage dice with his bow, and the he rolled 12, 12, 8 and 6. Since 12’s give you an extra damage die he then rolled twice more and got 9 and 3. The Skaven died instantly - not bad for the absolutely most useless member of the party.

After some relieved celebration, the heroes looted the body and the chest in the room, finding some arrows and gold coins, and gathered in front for the door at the back. Shuffling feet could be heard on the other side.

The heroes kicked the door open and came face to face with a group of formidable looking Skaven (A warlord, three champions and a night runner) who were guarding the stairs to the third level!

I rolled a 12 on the room table, which gave me the quest room at the earliest possible moment (I’m using the updated tables from Terror in the Dark, which modify the chance of finding the Quest Room based on the number of other rooms you’ve found – at this point it was a 1/12 chance). Lucky me!

With a cry of “Holy s*it!”, the heroes charged…

To be continued.

Croaker

Adventures in Questing – Second expedition, Gearing up

Aaaaaand we’re back. After barely escaping their first foray into the underworld (mostly due to some bad decisions, caused by lack of experience), my AHQ heroes are finally ready to brave the darkness once again.

This time, instead of playing an entire expedition and doing a long write-up when I’m finished (a process that might take weeks, depending on circumstances and the whims of the tiny human being that’s now in charge of my schedule), I’ll post updates as I play along.

But before the party could continue their quest, they had to return to town to rest and restock. You can see the relevant page of the rulebook here:

The heroes recovered all wounds and fate points but didn’t gain any more as they hadn’t completed the quest yet. You’ll notice that they’ve already missed the chance to gain two fate points in one go, but as long as they get the job done in no more than three expeditions, they at least get one.

After totaling up their treasure, they had 535 gold crowns (GC) combined, which I didn’t bother dividing up yet. As they didn’t have any henchmen, living expenses ran up at 80 GC, leaving them with 455 to spend.

I then rolled a “19” on the random events table (Risk Pay) – one of the few results that didn’t actively hurt, since, once again, there are no henchmen to demand the extra salary.

Which meant that I’d finally gotten to the good part, i.e. buying stuff.

Croaker seems to be doing all right. I might buy a set of plate armor for him eventually, but not now. Allum, on the other hand, got a chainmail. This makes him damn near immobile in combat, with an effective movement of two, but he could really use the extra protection. I may have to increase his speed at some point, but I didn’t feel like shelling out the 200 GC right now.

I couldn’t find the rules about selling stuff (I’m almost certain I’ve seen something about it somewhere…), so he’s keeping the leather armor in his backpack for now. Don’t know if it’s technically legal, but who cares.

Finally, Allum got two flasks of Greek Fire, which can be used to clear away a variety of obstacles, but are also illegal, so I just hope he doesn’t get caught by the city watch!

I bought six spell components for Hans – four Fire dust (for casting Fireball), one dose of Red Dragon Dust and a Phoenix Feather (magical armor and healing respectively).

Last up was Ellandiel. He’d given me the most headaches during the last expedition by running out of arrows and only then realizing that he’d forgotten to bring a back-up weapon (what are you looking at? It was obviously a tiny plastic elf, and not I, who made such a dumb mistake!), so I bought him a plentiful supply of arrows (12) and a spear. A sword would give him an extra damage die, but I really don’t want him (and his rubbish statline) up front, where he can get hurt, and a spear allows him to attack diagonally, which provides him with a bit more protection since most monsters can’t then hit back.

After all this shopping, I was left with 175 GC, which I distributed amongst the heroes. Their updated character-sheets look like this:

And now it’s back to the dungeon (right after I go to a wedding this weekend that is…).

Croaker

Adventures in Questing – Prologue

Last time on Adventures in Questing (odd name, I know – it just stuck with me for some reason) I introduced my AHQ party, along with the first quest I’m going to be running solo. I also mentioned that I’d actually already played through the first expedition (and that everyone survived), which means that this post will function as a sort of prologue to the rest of the play-through.

Also, since it’s now been about three months, I’m slightly fuzzy about the details, so you should take everything with a grain of salt – there’s a fair chance I’ve gotten the exact number of Skaven warriors wrong and maybe even missed an ambush or trap somewhere along the way.

I’ll try to keep the general description fairly narrative and add commentary in red. 

The party entered the dungeon, encountering the usual stretch of hallway with a T-section at the end. 

Carefully, Croaker advanced towards the junction – where the party was attacked by a wandering Skaven patrol lead by a champion. But that wasn’t the main problem; Standing behind his larger brethren was a Skaven sentry who immediately darted towards the door further down the corridor to find reinforcement.

Swarmed as they were, the heroes were unable to stop it from getting away and instead had to concentrate on the problem at hand.

At this point Hans panicked slightly and summoned a fireball to blast the comparatively small group of Skaven.

This was stupid. The party wasn’t in any real danger at this point so using a fireball was actually just a waste of money. It’s one of the things about AHQ you really have to adjust to – casting spells (and shooting arrows) cost money, so you really have to weigh the benefit of doing so against the possible treasure you might get out of it.

It did the job though and the fighters were quickly able to finish the few survivors off before readying themselves to face whatever would be arriving next. They didn’t have to wait long, as the very first room to be revealed by the sentry contained an even larger group of Skaven, including two champions, along with door leading further into the dungeon.

The new group surged towards the heroes only to be met by another fireball. This felled several of the ratmen and wounded one of the champions. The survivors charged the  invaders, only to be met by a wall of steel as Croaker and Allum slew one after another.

In the middle of the battle, a new Skaven patrol suddenly emerged from the corridor behind the party, forcing them into a fighting retreat towards the stairs they’d recently descended from. Things looked grim indeed.

A feature of the solo rules is that each turn (including combat turns) there’s a 1-in-12 chance of reinforcements appearing (it can happen when playing with a GM as well, but there’s a limit to how often) which really forces you to try to end combat quickly.

How to actually place the reinforcements is one of the places where the rules get a bit fuzzy. The solo rules state that the first monster should be placed as close to the heroes as possible, preferably a square from which it can make an attack. On the other hand, the normal rules for placing wandering monsters (including ambushes after the first round of combat) state that they have to be set up as far away as possible while still being within line of sight.

I’m still somewhat torn over the issue but I’m currently using the solo rules as written (even though it means that monsters are essentially “teleporting” into combat with my guys). I might change my stance if it proves to be too unbalancing.

In a stroke of good fortune, the sentry quickly ran into a dead end, and so couldn’t bring even more Skaven to the fight.

Another area where the rules are mighty unclear is sentries – especially what happens to them when they are out of sight of the heroes. The way I read the rules, the sentry will continue to move away from the heroes as long as the heroes are within sight of any monster (doesn’t have to be the sentry itself).

After a grueling melee, the heroes finally emerged victorious, though wounded and low on arrows and spell components. They quickly finished off the lone sentry and looted the lair.

I just realized that there wasn't a chest in that room. Oh well…

Now, what happens should the heroes finish off any monsters in sight while the sentry is somewhere else in the dungeon is a whole other issue. Does the sentry stay where it ended up, keep running off or something else entirely? I’m not sure, but currently I’ve ruled that it stays where it is until the heroes get within LOS, at which point they roll for initiative and resume combat.

Also, since the heroes technically “escaped” (even though they didn’t actually run away), they shouldn’t be allowed to loot any of the bodies. This is another area where you’ll have to use common sense.

Then, after totaling their gains so far, a look of worry passed between them. At this point they’d barely be able to cover living expenses and used arrows and spell components – and after exploring no more than two rooms in the dungeon, they were in bad shape. To make the expedition worthwhile they had to venture further, but Hans was out of Fire Dust for casting Flames of Death (his fireball) and Ellandiel was down to his last two arrows. To make matters worse, the party had been unable to afford a sword for Ellandiel, which meant that the elf would have to fight unarmed once they were gone. Gritting their teeth, the heroes returned to the first T-junction and continued down the only unexplored corridor.

The first room turned out to be empty, but after a couple of turns (there may have been a short combat against a patrol somewhere along the way – I’m not sure), they found themselves in front of another door. Sounds from the other side revealed a large group of Skaven.

Croaker kicked the door open and sure enough; a veritable horde of ratmen awaited them, along with a set of stairs leading down – this was the quest room.

 I won’t lie; at this point I seriously considered slamming the door and making a run for it. But, as previously mentioned, I really needed to find more treasure, so I thought “what the hell” and attacked.

At the back of the pack was a particularly evil looking ratman – a Night Runner.

 The following melee was long and grueling. Hans used his last spell component to cast Dragon Armor (+1 toughness) on Allum, to keep the dwarf in the fight as long as possible, but the sheer number of Skaven seemed totally overwhelming none the less.

Those numbers were further bolstered as another patrol (no doubt alerted by sounds of fighting) came charging from an unexplored passage.

The heroes adopted a strategy of slowly retreating while slaying any Skaven that came within reach. This proved to be very effective, but never the less the heroes were quickly bleeding from multiple cuts were a Skaven had landed a lucky blow.

This may be “gaming the system”, but by making sure that none of my heroes were in contact with an enemy at the end of their turn, I could keep them alive a lot longer. The trick is, since you roll a die to see if the monsters move-attack or attack-move when using the solo rules, there’d be about a 50/50 chance of them not being able to attack. I also staggered my fighters (see the pictures), so both Skaven in contact would attack Croaker (because he has a lower WS than Allum) if they did move-attack.

This tactic only really made sense because Ellandiel didn’t contribute to the fight until the very end, so it’s not a silver bullet.

Finally the throng of ratmen had been whittled down to a few individuals. The Night Runner made a last desperate attack, but was wounded by one of Ellandiel’s remaining arrows and then unceremoniously cut down by the warriors.

  The victorious, but gravely wounded heroes quickly looted the bodies and treasure chest, and legged it for the stairs out as quickly as their legs could carry them as they couldn’t risk meeting another group of Skaven.

They'd made some mistakes, but at least the heroes had found the stairs down and made a bit of money – and next time they’d be better prepared.

The finished map of the level looked like this:

Croaker