Diary of a Gamer 7/31/2009

We got the game started pretty late last night, about 8:30 or so, and immediately sought to return the cave we had been exploring. It didn't take long to get to the night's first battle, as there was a group of kobolds lying in wait just inside the cave entrance.

This wasn't a really tough fight, and I was pleased to see that our game returned to more of a fast fluid pace. We dispatched the kobolds without much trouble and continued deeper into the cavern. We explored the entire complex battling both kobolds and a few goblins along the way. Despite being sure we had explored every nook and cranny of the place we still did not have any answers. We did, however, have a TON of wounds. Even with the ever useful first aid skill Gorman still had accumulated wounds amounting to 25 of his 33 hit points. For those of you unfamiliar with HMB I should point out that Hackmaster has a much more gritty and realistic approach than modern versions of D&D. There is no going into negatives and coming back to tell the tale. If you hit zero or go below you are simply dead, end of story.

With that reality in mind we decided to head back to town to heal up for a few days. Natural healing is realistically slow. You won't progress from being near death to in full fighting condition in a few days without the aid of magical healing. To give you an idea of just how long it takes to recover Gorman's most grievous wound was 9 points when the group returned to town. It takes 9 days for the wound to progress from being a 9 point wound to an 8 point wound. So basically for the wound to fully heal it would take 9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1= 45 Days. That is the kind of brutal realism this game goes for. I love it.

I also love that we have 2 clerics. My group (mostly) follows The True. All of us save Christian's elf Kaliban are anointed followers of the True. In HMB this has a very tangible benefit. Non-followers of the clerics deity receive a lesser die than anointed followers. The first level healing spell (cure trifling injury) heals 1d3p for non-followers and 1d4p for followers. It may not seem like much, but in Hackmaster learn to take what you can get. Even with two clerics it took a few days of healing to get us back in prime fighting condition.

When we re-entered the cave we set about exploring again and still could find nothing. Fortunately we had picked up a map last week and it showed a passage where only a wall stood. We investigated the wall and found it to be a false one concealing a passage behind. We moved down the corridor and battled a few Goblin sentries that were posted there. Gorman and Bryan's theif Lyell took some damage in that fight but we moved on down the corridor hoping to find some answers.

What we found was the murderer and the rest of his minions. To be exact there was five kobolds, four goblins, and an evil murder mage. I rolled max on my initiative. This wasn't all that surprising as my dice were again failing me big time. I had to swap out signatures on my Dice Cradle to Gary Gygax's sig. Yeah it was that serious. Knowing that numbers were against us we decided to let the enemy come to us, causing a bottleneck in the narrow passage and negating their numbers advantage. This worked well enough until Tojamo (Josh's second mage in three weeks) caught an arcane projectile to the face. This very nearly killed him outright and he was forced to burn through half his honor just to survive. The rest of the group was going fine. With my Gygax's help my dice rolling turned around big time and Goman was slicing though kobolds and goblins alike. Lyell fed Tojamo (Yeah, I know that is a ridiculous name, but really it's just par for the course for Josh!) a healing potion and the Mage was back in the fight. He made an immediate impact by loosing a Scotch spell on a group of goblins setting them aflame and even killing two of them outright.

With that the tide of battle seem to wholly in our favor. Soon only one goblin and two kobolds stood in the way of us getting to that mage. I made an aggressive attack against the goblin who was in my way and he gave ground. I was thinking to keep pushing him, so when he aggressively attack me I refused to give ground. This turned out to be a mistake because he critically hit me. Unlike many of the other enemies in this fight this goblin was armed with a quality short sword and he teed off on me for 18 points of damage. Even after the damage reduction from my armor the hit exceeded my threshold of pain and I failed my check. I went down like a sack of hot taters, but that was fine by me... I only had 2 hitpoints left. Fortunately the rest of the group was able to finish the battle in the 35 seconds I was on the ground.

Finishing up was a breeze. We looted the bodies and the wizard's treasure chest. Not only did we get the answers to who committed the murders (the Wizard who's name was Foster) and why (So he could seem to solve them and be a hero) but we got plenty of money in the process.

Maybe I should take that money and invest in better armor...

We leveled at the end of the night (Yay!) So hopefully I'll get some more hitpoints, but that isn't a guarantee in HMB. I'll explain why next week and talk about what Gorman spent his loot and new BP on.