OAWYM: Battle Chess

Game Date: 7/9/2016
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: OAWYM, Session 2
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Addamon (Gary) - Human Druid
Malcer (Graham) - Human Warlock
Marcella (Lanessa) - Human Bard
Tamir (Other Matt) - Human Fighter Archer
Thokk (Daniel) - Half-Orc Barbarian
Val Ravensword (Matt) - Half-Orc Paladin

The Session:
Last session our employer asked us to retrieve a box stolen by goblins.  We fought several battles against goblins and kobolds, while exploring the twisting halls of an old temple.  After one intense battle we took a long rest.  Today began with two more of our companions joining the party.  Our employer, Traevus, had sent Marcella and Tamir to check up on us.

We started by looking into an unopened door on the opposite end of the map.  We encountered a (relatively) small dragon, but we managed to avoid a fight, and continued our explorations.  In another room we discovered a giant chessboard, containing several life-sized chess pieces.  It took us a while to figure out, but we were supposed to move like specific chess pieces, using the pattern assigned by which square we started from. 

If we moved incorrectly, we took some psychic damage.  After a couple of failures, the chess pieces on the other side of the board came to life and approached.  We faced four pawns, a queen, a knight, and a rook.  It was a rough fight - several of our party members went down more than once.  Tamir stayed outside the room, firing arrows from a distance.  Eventually he was the only one still standing... at which point, since no conscious party members were on the chessboard, the enemies retreated to their starting positions.

Tamir managed to reach Val and drag her out of the room.  Once she was on her feet again, Val lassoed each of her allies one by one, dragging them out of the room as well.  We healed up as well as we could, but Addamon was beyond saving.  Malcer destroyed the remaining chess pieces with ranged attacks.  Then we made our way across the board again, using proper chess moves this time. 

The next room contained a couple of statues, and four human guards.  We tried talking to them first, but they were committed to following their orders.  This battle wasn't as difficult as the previous one, but we still had trouble staying on our feet.  Once our enemies realized they weren't going to win, one of them turned against the others.  We saved that one for last, and made a truce with him.

We kept our defeated foes alive this time, and tied them up.  The one that helped us turned out to be a doppelganger rogue named Jinx.  We asked him why he helped us, and he said he wasn't getting paid enough for this.  He gave us an extra healing potion, told us what to expect in the rest of the rooms, and joined our party for a bit.  We headed for a storage room next, where Jinx told us to expect some goblins and a bugbear.

The goblins were a breeze, going down in one hit each.  Then the bugbear charged into the room, taking Val down to zero in one hit.  Jinx turned out to be a worthy ally, and a few rounds later the bugbear was no more.  We healed up again and searched the room.  We found some minor loot, considered resting, and (stupidly) decided to go through the next door instead.

It turned out to be the room of final boss, the necromancer Malareth.  He was guarded by three skeletons and a zombie ogre.  Barely looking up from his work, he nonchalantly ordered his followers to kill us.  Jinx changed to look like the bugbear we'd killed earlier, and tried bluffing Malareth.  Jinx told the necromancer that we were prisoners, and Malareth told the bugbear to kill us.  We closed the door again, and made sounds like we were getting killed.

Of course the ruse didn't work, and the skeletons opened the door to attack us.  This battle might have gone better if we'd been at full health, but it still would have been pretty difficult.  We killed two of the skeletons pretty quickly, Jinx finishing off one and Marcella insulting the other to death.  Then the ogre zombie reached us, and things got tough.  Jinx finally took the zombie down, but that's when Malareth decided we'd been a nuisance long enough.  His Shatter spell hit all of us, and taking four of us down to zero.

Of the two remaining party members, Jinx fled and Marcella closed the doors.  Jinx continued to run all the way out of the dungeon, untying his former allies on the way out.  Those guards took a different hallway to check up on Malareth.  Marcella used some ropes to tie the doors shut, keeping her safe while she tried reviving her teammates.  She used the party's final healing potion to bring us to our feet, and we used up whatever healing powers we had left.

We're using a house rule where we don't start rolling death saves until someone checks on you, at which point you roll all the death saves at once.  All of us survived except for Tamir, who failed too many saves.  Feeling it was our darkest hour, Malcer said a prayer to Pelor.  He rolled a 1 on his prayer roll, which was the best he could have rolled.  The light of Pelor gave all of us some major healing, and brought Tamir back to life (as well as Addamon, who we had left back near the chessboard). 

Take two!  We reopened the doors, still having to face Malareth, the third skeleton, and the guards Jinx had freed.  The guards were still low on health, so they went back down pretty quickly, and Malcer took out the final skeleton.  Val and Marcella both went down during the fight.  Thokk faced Malareth in melee, while Malcer and Tamir each made ranged attacks from the safety of the hallway.  Malcer made the final hit, bringing down the evil necromancer.

We searched the room, found lots of wizard stuff, and made sure none of us were still dying.  We ended the session there.