Oh the Dratted 17.. The system we use is a counting down style 20's are bad, 1's are great. The average players right now have skills or spells in the 13's 14s or 15s, minus the opponents makes an average roll of 7 or less for most hits. Progressively the players will always be looking at 7's or less as the range to determine what is hard and what is easy, 10 or less is a fairly easy combat, anything above that is a walk in the park, 5 or less is hard and below that is exponentially impossible.

Combined with a 20's = fumbles/damaged weapons/self inflicted wounds...

and 1's are auto Armour ignores (the blade finds the weak spot and slips deep into the opponent)

Its a clever enough system and makes for great game play... But NOT when the players are always failing, and the creatures keep rolling ones.

Todays session involved the hughest number of 17's I've ever seen, just kept coming up 17, two seperate dice, too often to consider random...

In the end, I had to fudge the gaming session, I rolled for random encounters and came up higher than normal.. I thought, that the players should be able to handle it, but forgot that it was end of a session, low magic, wounded party.. and should have allowed some escape route before the combat..

Actually, had the rolls been opposite, They would have likely won the fight.. but those serrated halberds were killer.

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Lady Mary, Rid and Ang had just left for provisions trip, as the group arrived back from their last foray, they had no goblin heads to transport to the bounty hunters, so they were forced to use some of the stored money instead.

Preparing to rest, a knock sounded on the main door to the fort,

"hello" called a young mans voice, "hello, can I enter?"

"hello" yelled down from the battlements, "I am sir Draco, welcome young man, to this fort of rest, how may we be of help?"

The young mans name was Victor, he had returned a few days back to his village after a decent hunt, and found the place to be deserted, ransacked, and goblin prints everywhere.. He followed the path to another village and found the same there, but at a distance, spotted the party travelling away. he could have caught up, but watched from a distance to make sure that they were in deed friends, after seeing it was the rumoured group of adventurers in the area, he picked up pace to meet them here.

Victor was welcomed to the fort, fed, then asked if he was interested to join them. As his family was indeed killed by goblins, he swore revenge and joined the group.

An Argument broke out between Harvey and Draco, about where to go next, Harvey siding with safety, and Draco more interested in finding goblins for cash, The group travelled West to the second known location of goblins.

Upon circling around a hill, they came across a strange entrance, It was shaped as a square set of stairs, descending into the depths, but two conical pillars rose above each side, like the base of a broken archway.

Sensing some kind of danger, the group dug some shallow pits, like scady had done before, and hid themselves. packing their sides with plants and grasses, after several minutes all of them were hidden.

Two Goblins emerged and approached the cones, incanting and waving their arms. They finished at last, and the cones were engulfed in an eerie blue light, which revealed all sorts of goblins hiding around the landscape. Luckily none emerged near them, but they counted over 20 goblins enter the tunnel.

Since it was night, and they had travelled all day, Ospy and victor had fallen asleep, so Scady stayed up to watch, while the others got a good nights rest. but about midnight, the blue fires burnt themselves out, and scady was insistant on checking the place out.

Some quick steps, and some amazing blind luck, scady managed to get himself all the way up to the door of the place, and peer through a gap in the door slot. he immediately pulled back, as the slot revealed an eye peering right back at him, but it must have been the luck of the gods that the creature inside had blinked that very second and not seen him.

Retreating as quickly as possible, Scady revealed to the rest what he had seen, they decided it would be best to pull back further and set up camp far back from the doors.

The following morning, they spied two soldiers at the stone door, but not before they too noticed the smoke from the morning fire, and came to investigate. short work was taken of these two guards, light armour and spears were not enough against out group, but then a further group was noticed later, then again 4 hours after them.. this last group.. notcing that darkness was approaching, singlely left the stairs and went into the surrounds. Scady approached once again, snuck right up to the goblin guard and slit its throat. cutting off its head and burying the body, they started back to their own camp as the sun began to set.. but a Horn had sounded, someone had found a body or spotted the group.

A quick grab for their backpacks, they began to sprint away, then doubled back, to put any followers off their tracks, but this was to prove unlucky, as the direction of all goblin bands was east..

Rounding a bend, they stood almost face to face with a goblin band. 4 hardened warriors, one, obviously a goblin leader, who charged almost instantly.

The goblin warband were merciless, fearless fighters, sharp serrated halberds began to cut through the clothes and flesh of the party, finding gaps in Dracos armour, ripping apart scadies leathers and finding no resistance, rendered deep deadly wounds into harvey. One of the goblins spun attack after attack down on poor victor, tearing the flesh open from his chest and spilling his guts out onto the ground. The end seemed near for the group.

Draco called for Harvey to pass him a potion, Harvey faltered distracting poor Draco who didn;t see the scimitar of the Goblin leader, it cut deep, deeper than any blade should, but quickly Draco grabbed the vial and drank its contents fast.. the healing potion combatting the shock and pain of the wound, caused Draco to drop his guard, but he managed to defend the raining blows of the goblin while the potion did its work.

All seemed lost, Potions drunk, spells used, bows dropped and swords drawn, the arty was facing odds like they had never faced before, these snotty nosed goblins were far too powerful, they would lose this day, had the tide not turned....

RID the barbarian burst from the bushes, slamming his axe into the ground, barely missing the goblin, Lady Mary emerged from the other side, her blade slashing the air, and ANG drew out his arrows and got a few shots into one of the greenskins. The renewed courage, the support of their friends, the party managed to drive back the pounding blows, and strike some telling blows themselves. one by one the goblins fell, until the warband leader found on, two or three great blows which should have felled him, seemed to heal, they noticed the leader pounding his thighs every now and then, somehow renewing his energy, but at last DRACO's great sword fell into place and cleaved a great chunk of goblin flesh onto the ground.

The battle was won.. or was it...

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NOTE ON BLOGGING:

I'm going to clean up my blogging style a little, its my first so I'm not very stylistic..

Not that I expect many people are actually reading.. wish there was some kind of counter on these things.

Tags: Bane_Star Russian Roleplay Group Fudged Dice

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