Dungeon 9 Turn 7
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Rather than unpack what they just witnessed, Ricki, Kamau, and Lara join Botanya in the rightmost room thus far. Kamau steps forward and defends against the zombie bat, the arrow from Coccyx overhead, and the ghast that charges after Lara provokes it with a (completely ineffectual) Venomous Sting.
The ghast walks across the barely-perceptible dip in the floor, but nothing appears to happen. Other than it wailing on Kamau with its greataxe. Kamau takes no damage, but the zombie bat’s infectious nature gets to him. He begins to feel ill and becomes Infected. If this happens many more times, he’ll be lost for good. And also he’ll rise as a nigh-invincible zombie that will probably wipe the rest of the party. But for now he’s merely paralyzed.
Ricki, with help from the mushrooms, swipes the zombie bat out of the air. Once again Botanya’s music doesn’t seem to help. Maybe next time!
The flytrap sits this turn out. It just burned most of the way to death, after all.
Now we now ghoul’s still paralyze with weapons. And floor won’t break from character movement
Sooo infection works through defense?
It’s official.
This is ‘we should have kept the pope hat’ the dungeon.
A priority on Ranged combat, darkness, undead…
Ranged combat doesn’t work in this game unless you have a sniper nest.
Plan: save the party
Kamau: stay paralyzed
Ricki: move left. Talk to lara about zombie infections and undead. Did the spider gods ever do that?
Lara: move left. Snipe the pot where Cyx was.
Botania: move left. Smash pots and pickup whatever’s inside. And arrow as well if you can.
Plant: attack ghast from Kamau’s side
Ghast + cyx can really do some damage and possibly remorse kamau if they both pick a bad target.
Idea is to have the plant attack ghast to get the focus on it and sacrifice itself for the greater good.
Plat will probably take both hits so it’s guaranteed dead, but we can replace it later. If we are lucky, plant will break the plate.
Next turn everyone comes back and we interpose stake this ghast.
Lara and Ricki actions are mainly filler.
You might want to specify that the plant attacks from the right…
You know, “bringing everyone back to fight the ghast next turn” will only work if the ghast does not keep on attacking and paralyzing Kamau. (It could be dumb enough not to switch targets, after locking onto the first one. We’ve seen this behaviour before, with the drunks in the tavern, and I daresay death can weigh heavier on minds than alcohol. Doesn’t have to – see the lich lord of the manor – but can.)
So far we don’t know if paralyzing is a % or “it happens every turn” thing. (Although, to be fair, with the way LSNs dice roll, there usually isn’t much difference between these two options… 😛 )
Edit: added “next turn” to my first line to be more clear.
Ghast would attack plant. So kamau could act next turn
Plan keep ghast distracted with flytrap while we send it crashing down
Flytrap: Move to Kamau’s right side, right up to the ghast to attack it
Ricki: Point out the weak floor under ghast and flytrap to Lara, then avoid it to unlock the locked chest, then explore up the ladder.
Lara: Use pickaxe to dig the weak floor while standing next to it
Botania: Move a room left, loot the floor pots by smashing them as needed
Kamau: Think about what you know about ghasts(how do they compare to ghouls?) or giant two-handed swords with an ellipse-shaped blade that such a creature could wield.
Explanation:
With the ghast distracted by the flytrap attacking it, there’s no other major active damage source so we can get things done.
(If it has intelligent optimal targeting instead of normal targeting, then leaving is useless anyway because it can attack before we leave)
With the extra weight of the flytrap plus Lara pickaxing the weak floor, we can send the ghast crashing down instead of wasting time fighting it next turn.
(Even if that doesn’t work, we can still fight it normaly next turn)
Still only opening a safe chest and some pots with spare actions, because I don’t want to risk creating more threats(by trying the coffin or trapped chest) until the ghast is gone.
heh. You beat me to it.
This plan works as well but I think it sacrifices possible damage and remorse on a player if the ghast doesn’t go for the flytrap. He might go after Ricki instead and if Cocyx and the ghast gang up on her it could be bad news bears. Still, it definitely gets to the result I want faster and is ballsier and could still work. So I’m kinda okay with this plan if it gets voted for – even despite the increased butt clench I’ll be feeling.
Great minds thinks alike 😀
(I totally took the flytrap sacrifice idea from Claudious plan though, really thought we were in trouble for a moment!)
but as per my explanation:
Leaving doesn’t prevent enemies from the current room to get their attacks off first, so any risk you mentioned applies to ALL plans.
Fair nuff. LIke I said I’m good with it. It’s cool as shit. I wanna see it work.
I will say this, will the ghast stay put if ricki moves over to the chest it was guarding? Would it be safer for the plan to have her stay put?
I think the key word here is “was”, as in I believe he’d stay put if everyone vanished, guarding the area he’s currently in instead of moving back to the chest.
But feel free to make a variant with an alternative Ricki action.
Only potential issue (or pitfall?) I see with this plan is that ricky might also end up in the trapdoor if it activates automatically when two people stand on it
I’ve specifically said he avoids it. We can avoid such floor traps(ex: pressure traps, glass shards traps, etc) by pointing them out.
You said Ricki (she btw) should point it out, this generally means to avoid, but only if she can. There were (i.e. in the tavern) traps/dangerous areas to wide for her to cross safely and this may very well to wide for her to ‘jump over’.
I am very unsure that the flytrap can attack while Kamau is paralyzed. It’s not a separate character, per se, more of a buff, as per LSN. What are the consequences if it doesn’t attack?
Plan Save the Party and Set Up Operation Mega Ghast Drop
Kamau: Stay Paralyzed. Try to contain your horror at what’s unfolding.
Flytrap: go right of the ghast and attack to repay Kamau for saving you. Maybe you’ll break his armor. Mewl and look lovingly at Kamau as you photosynthesize your last.
Ricki: Freak out and move left into the other room. Break a pot on the ground out of frustration to see what’s in it but you have an idea.
Lara: Move left into the other room and hand the pickaxe to Botanya.
Botanya: Move left and Take the pickaxe.
Golly and mushroom gang: Chill.
Similar to Claudious’s plan except we’re giving the pickaexe to Botanya for possibly taking the floor out from under the ghast when we go back in next turn. She can’t attack, but it says nothing about lifting tools and using them on objects. Next turn we have Lara and Ricki move back and attack the ghast with Kamau interposing again. We want Lara to attack with Ricki and every pet because we want any fall damage (if any) to compound with the most damage we can do.
Possible problems: Cocyx can shoot the flytrap and the ghast can walk past Kamau to attack us. But if that were the case, we’d be eating that remorse/damage either way.
I’m vaguely more worried about cutting off our access to the right, but we can maybe mitigate that by moving our team to the right or web wall. Either way, this plan will triage our party and get us set up for multiple options next turn.
Some observation I made:
With the bats gone, there are not going to be a lot of “living things” in the dungen, where Botanya could use her mulch ability on. In the areas we have seen so far, there’s the 5 plague rats and the big spider (but that one is gated behind a small tunnel or a mound of earth, so Botanya can’t reach it) to the left, and atm the Flytrap (it is a living thing!). I guess Golly and the Mushrooms would count, too, but I’d rather not lose those, if it can be helped. So we need to keep that in mind and plan to use the mulch ability, when we can (dunno if anyone would like to create a plan where Botanya uses it this turn, when the Flytrap expires).
Flytrap wouldn’t count, I think, because it is a summon.
Zombies definitely do, as per intermission.
In the future, I suggest that we not aggro minibosses just because we’re curious if they’ll set off a trap.
Just a thought.