Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Iron Spikes for the Win!

For some time now I been playing a GURPS game with Tim (of Gothridge Manor) and Dwayne (of Gamers Closet) using a combination of Skype and the GURPS toolkit for Fantasy Grounds. He plays Torrun the Red Hand a Paladin of the Maiden and I play Ambrose a Scholar in the service of the Maiden. Torrun is the brute fighter of the group while I can heal and cast body control spells like Pain, Rooted Feet and Stun. Also I have high skill in Occultism and Natural Philosophy (low tech version of Biology, Geology, etc)

The campaign is based around a Castle of the Order of the Maiden transported to a world dominated by demons and other bad guys.

Currently we are exploring the B4 The Lost City. We were in a desert region in pursuit of demons that kidnapped one of our own, Celene an acolyte of the Maiden. We successfully rescued Celene although she is badly injured and in the frantic escape we stumbled onto the Lost City. We encountered the Brothers of Grom and convinced them to give us shelter and heal Celene. However the price was that we had to deal with the factions they were at war with.

This week we encountered the Maidens of Madara (sp?) We really thought we are going to die as we were outnumbered 11 to 2. But Torrun rushed the door of the room we were in and was able to hold them off with spell and magic item support from me. However we saw several break off and we deduced they knew of another way around to the door we entered from.

Torrun yelled at me to deal with the door. Looking at my inventory I noted I still had two iron spike left and ran like a bat out of hell at the other door. I reached it in time and started pounding in spikes. Since GURPS has 1 second combat rounds things can get real tense when doing things blow by blow. The first spike I pounded into the crack between the door and the wall where it swing opens. Since the door opens into the room, I figured it would make the door difficult to open. My rolls were successful (DEX and STR) and I got it in in two seconds.

I knew that it would not be sufficient so I knelled on the floor and started pounding on under the door on the opposite side of the first spike. This time I was no so lucky and it took me 7 seconds (7 rounds) before I had damn thing jammed in there.

By then two archers and a fighter moved into the room. Torrun was dealing with the fighter and the archers moved on me. Bobbing and weaving I managed not to get hit when I successfully unleashed a stun spell on one and then attacked the other with my wand of steam jet. I put 3 points of energy into it so I was able to roll for max damage (3d-3) , I hit, and the second archer failed to defend! I rolled damage which was a 2,2, an 1 for a measly 2 points of damage. My "big" moment sputtered out. The next round I got shot in the shoulder by an arrow and got floored.

However thanks to the spiked door Torrun and Ambrose were able to take down the remaining fighters in the room . By then the spiked door was smashed open. But Torrun was able to hack down two of the remaining four fighters and they surrendered.

It was the first time that I ever used Iron Spikes in a dungeon crawl. I heard about it, read about it, but never actually used Iron Spikes.

So today it was Iron Spikes for the Win!

2 comments:

Gothridge Manor said...

Iron spikes. Got to love them. They are like the Swiss Army knife of fantasy RPGing.

Unknown said...

That was some fast thinking on both yours parts. Way to really come out of the Box.