OAWYM: Have Fun Storming The Castle

Game Date: 11/5/2016
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: OAWYM, Session 11
System: Shadow of the Demon Lord
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Byzun (Gary) - Human Sorcerer
Corbin (Daniel) - Human Wizard
Falling Leaf (Skye) - Pixie Sorcerer
Malcer (Graham) - Human Oracle
Val Ravensword (Matt) - Orc Paladin

NPC Companions:
Dene Ledford - Val's Companion
Robb - Corbin's Companion
Tatio - Malcer's Companion

The Session:
I missed one session, in which we escaped from prison and rescued the Baron Stockmer from his own keep.  Today we returned to the keep so we could confront the evil Lord Nazin Redthorn.  The pixie Falling Leaf joined our party, and we approached the keep after dark.  We considered several plans before finally sending in our invisible pixie friend.

Falling Leaf went in through one of the arrow slits, and saw several sleeping Iron Circle soldiers.  She explored several rooms of the keep, passing through the kitchen and going up two flights of stairs.  On the third floor she found a room full of enemies, including a clockwork dog.  The dog detected Falling Leaf, so she proceeded back down the stairs as fast as possible. 

She returned to the party and gave us the layout of the keep.  We decided to sneak in and take out the sleeping guards.  Falling Leaf used a shrink spell on the door, and we entered through the kitchen.  One of the guards was awake, and the fight was on.  After we took him out, we went into the adjoining room and killed the sleeping soldiers there.  Then we started up the stairs.

On the second floor we fought two more soldiers, one of which started knocking loudly on a side door.  We finished him off, but the door opened revealing a room full of foes, and more enemies started coming down the stairs from the third floor.  We faced several assorted baddies, including a Tiefling spellcaster, that mechanical dog, and Lord Nazin himself. 

The battle took a while, and it was difficult because of the layout of the room.  With the one doorway and the narrow stairs, we had to do a bit of repositioning to let all our melee fighters reach the enemies.  Falling Leaf had a plethora of healing spells and kept us on our feet.  Lord Nazin had a lot of hit points, but we managed to keep him prone and blinded for much of the battle.  Our most dangerous foe was the Tiefling, because she kept casting dangerous spells.

Eventually we finished off Nazin.  Corbin dealt the final blow.  But then the Tiefling cast a spell that made Corbin's eyeballs explode.  He is now permanently blind, at least until we find a way to regenerate his eyes.  When it was down to three enemies, one of them fled, provoking three OAs which killed him. The final two enemies surrendered.  We tied up the prisoners, took Nazin's head, and returned to town.

Afterthoughts:
So far this has been a D&D 5e campaign, but today we decided to play using Shadow of the Demon Lord rules.  I'm enjoying learning the new system.  I love D&D 5e, but I also like shiny new things and this one is pretty interesting.  I like the simplicity of it, and the variety of races.  I hope to play a pixie of my own at some point. 

The fact that it was so easy to make Corbin's eyes explode is a bit of a concern for me.  I'm not a very hardcore player, and at our level we shouldn't be facing a lot of "save or die" spells.  But SotL appears to be a more deadly system than D&D.  Officially I'm not fond of tough systems like that, but it fits the mood I've been in lately.  Only time will tell if I enjoy playing this as much as D&D, but for now I'm happy to give it a few months.