Lunchbox D&D: The Zombie Juicer Caper

I have started a Friday afternoon D&D game (using my homebrew Ultra Bastard system) with 1 hour sessions. The idea is that folks who are working from home or have flexible schedules can join on their lunchbreak, explore a few rooms, and then get back to their workday. 

• Sessions are 1 - 2pm US Eastern time. 
• Discord for voice/video & Owlbear Rodeo for maps. 
• True open table, no expectations that players will be able to join for all (or even most) sessions
• If you're interested in joining, please reach out!

Art of my own making

Session 1: The Zombie Juicer

Summary:

After finding some big paintings, the players squashed a bunch of zombies and recovered two gold busts.

PCs:

• Thomas the Crusader 
• Nameless Viking 
• Nameless Chaos Adept

Events:

Lacking the resources to maintain a proper Inquisitor, the local Arch Cleric, hired a band of ruffians (the PCs) to bring frontier justice down on a necromancer, believed to be hiding out in a tomb in the hillside overlooking town. 

Upon entering the tomb, the doughty adventurers came under archery fire from assailants beyond their torchlight in a cavernous hall. Rushing forward, they discovered that they were being assailed by animate skeletons, a fact that seemed to confirm the presence of necromancy. 

Map by Dyson Logos

Though the skeletons tried to retreat into the dark corners of the tomb, they were no match for the quick-acting Thomas & the Viking who ferociously pursued and crushed them. One skeleton was encased in amber by the sorcerous powers of the Chaos Adept.

With the skeletons cleared, the party had respite to examine the room, and discovered that two large capstans could be turned to lift heavy stone doors that gave entry further into the tomb. They also found 8 large paintings, covered by heavy curtains lined the chamber. 

• The southern capstan lifted a door to the south, revealing a chamber filled with zombies and the glint of large gold objects.
• The northern capstan lifted a pair of doors to the east.

The Chaos Adept, lifted the heavy stone door, waited for zombies to flood out and then dropped the door to crush them, methodically repeating the procedure until they were all mashed. Thomas and the Viking stood by and chopped up any zombies that managed to get out. Two gold busts worth 500 GP each were recovered.

Returning to the hall, Thomas the Crusader peaked through the Northeast door and glimpsed a mirror that paralyzed him as soon as he saw his own reflection. His companions rescued him and threw a cloth over the mirror to prevent further accidents. Deeper into the room, they saw humanoid shadows, without any figures to cast them.

The shadows seemed threatening so they retreated to regroup and bring their gold busts back to town. 

Commentary

I was a bit disappointed in how the monster fights came out. I was using the session as a chance to test some altered stats for basic undead and the way things played out, the "special" character of each failed to come into play. 

Skeleton Archers: Skeletons are effectively immune to regular missiles and can see further than players torchlight. I had hoped that they'd be able to harass characters from beyond their light but the chamber was small enough that the heavy-melee PCs were able to charge in the direction the arrows had come from and easily dispatch them. In the future, to make things interesting, it will be important for skeletons to have obstacles between them and the PCs.

Zombies: I give them significant damage reduction (-4 per hit) so only very heavy hits make any progress against them. Letting the Zombies be kited out of the room was a mistake. I should have left them to mill about until the PCs actually followed into the confined quarters of the crypt-chamber.

The PCs were fortunate that no wandering monsters came through during their time-consuming, zombie-juicing routine. Attacks from another direction at the right point in their routine would have given some dynamism and time pressure.

Finally, the players were VERY lucky and none of them got hit by the zombies (despite taking ~12 attacks). Zombies are weak attackers but if they hit they inflict Grave Rot, a terrible disease that the PCs have no resources to cure yet and is thus certain death. Because they got so lucky, the players don't know that they should be very scared of zombies.