Building Bhakashal - Session Report - One Shot Game

I ran a 1 shot adventure for the dads that play in our father/son game, there was a Seer (priest), a Warlock (magic-user) and two Mercenaries (fighters) ranging in level from 4^th to 6^th. Their task was a simple one. An up-and-coming Bhakashal Warlock (Kamerli the Ivory) from House Quannar had been collaborating with a Warlock from outside the city (Bhomar the Bronze), but Bhomar had stopped communicating recently, something was up.

This collaboration was outside of Kamerli’s Noble house, and he did not want it known, so he hired the PCs, who were not from his House, to travel to Bhomar’s tower and discover what had happened. The conceit was that their last successful venture had them talked about and Kamerli decided to recruit them for his own use.

They headed out on their giant lizards into the marshlands and the early morning heat. They took the road for the majority of the trip, travelling by the road is faster, and somewhat safer, as it’s patrolled, but it is still dangerous travelling anywhere in the marshlands. The only encounters they had were with a House patrol, which resulted in a bit of back and forth, a some palmed coins to get the patrol to move on, a small herd of giant lizards. An encounter reaction roll had the lizards ignoring them, so they continued on.

They then entered the Cairan Forest. There were a pair of Cifal in the forest that waited beside the trail to pick off unwary travelers. We rolled for surprise and the party surprised them. I interpreted this as the party hearing a strange buzzing noise ahead of them, the warlock sent his familiar, a blood hawk, ahead to investigate, and they discovered the creatures. They decided to set up a trap.

The party Seer cast Glyph of Warding on two trees then the party stood behind the trees and started to make noise. The Cifal came to investigate, and immediately moved to attack, triggering the two glyphs. The party wisely chose fire glyphs, the creatures were damaged, and a morale roll had them fleeing.

It was a clever plan; I’ve seen groups rush in with regular weapons to fight creatures like this and they get slaughtered. Cifal are stupid but dangerous, and they played on that.

They continued forward, using the blood hawk to scout ahead, and they discovered the tower, there were 4 armed Saan (lizard folk) on the roof of the tower playing cards, but that was all they could tell. After a discussion they came up with a plan, create a distraction to draw them out, then sneak in and find Bhomar, assuming they were holding him hostage.

One of the hardest things as a ref is to not say anything when they speculate and you know they are wrong, or for that matter right.

They waited until night, risking two more random encounter rolls, and a patrol from the tower, and after midnight the party warlock cast dancing lights in the forest to make it look like there was some sort of fire starting.

As a referee I know what is happening, but the NPCs don’t, in order to emulate that, I roll to see what they will do. In this case, the bandits who had taken over the tower were suspicious, they were really off the beaten path here, there had been no recent lightning strikes, so the odds of a fire starting up spontaneously were zero. This meant someone set the fire, and potentially as a distraction. I came up with a set of options, and the rolled result was to send out a group of bandits to investigate but post a bandit at all windows and doors just in case this is some sort of distraction and someone was going to try to gain entrance to the tower.

The PCs approached a 2^nd floor window, they were climbing in when they saw a bandit charging them with a scimitar! They dropped back down, and the party proceeded to hug the wall and move around to a first floor door. Rooftop crossbowmen shot at them, the bandit with the scimitar screamed “SOUTH SIDE”, to let everyone inside and outside the tower know there were intruders on the south side.

So at this point, things have went south, their advantage, surprise and stealth, was lost, and the whole bandit crew knew where they were. How players approach the situation when things go south is, quite frankly, a good measure of their skill at the table. I was keen to see how they were going to figure this out.

By this point the bandits had sent out a group of 5 and one sergeant to investigate the “fire” in the woods, when they got there they discovered that it gave off no heat, then they heard “SOUTH SIDE” and ran to join the others.

The jig was up.

The party moved to the east side door and started smashing it with a mace. The player running the mercenary smashing the door asked for a critical effect. In Bhakashal you can specify a critical effect for your attack that isn’t listed in the books, but everyone has to agree to it. They wanted to smash the door such that the critical blow would send splinters and wood dust flying towards those inside, temporarily distracting them. They asked for a segment of delay, I said sure.

They rolled the critical and were successful. 1 segment delay allowed the mace-wielding mercenary to drop and for the rest of the party to let loose without risking hitting him. We rolled for initiative, and I rolled absolutely terribly. There were two crossbowmen and a Thaumaturge inside. A Thaumaturge is a Bhakashal thief/magic-user that only uses scrolls. The Thaumaturge had a scroll out and was reading from it, the PCs shot one of the crossbowmen dead, then the other, and the party warlock’s Magic Missile struck the Thaumaturge in mid cast.

As a side note, Magic Missile as a spell casting disruptor is one of my absolute favorite applications of the spell, huge range, auto-hit, no save, and it disrupts spell casting for any spell of any level.

That’s boss.

Then the party Seer (priest) cast Hold Person on the Thaumaturge, and that was it. They ran in and tied her up so she couldn’t cast when the spell wore off. At this point, all of the bandits had left the tower, knowing the party was coming around to the side door. They were hoping that the Thaumaturge (one “Maglane the Malachite”) would have stopped them in their tracks. Now, the bandit leader, a Saan named Rojmi Yin, announced that he had them surrounded, and they should surrender

The party shot back that they had his warlock and that they would kill her if he didn’t back off. I rolled to see how he would react.

He replied, “She knew the risks, I’ll kill you all if I have to”. 

So, at this point they kind of panicked. They were trapped, potentially outnumbered, and felt they had no bargaining power. People make a lot of noise about “no win scenarios”, but I’m neutral on this. The PCs maneuvered themselves into this situation, they had to figure out a solution. I’m not helping them out, I’ll talk out stuff and answer rules questions, but they have to do something.

They were in the tower kitchen, they decided to bolt to the next room.

There was a life-sized stone statue of a warrior in this room, that was obviously a sitting area, and on the far side a door that led to the outside, there were two bandits there, when the party emerged they threw oil flasks to the ground that shattered, spreading oil all over the floor.

Then they tossed in a lit torch.

The bandit’s plan was to start a fire in a wizards tower, since it was made of stone they had a bit of time, the party would either be flushed out, or the smoke would take them down. They would then throw water on the fire to put it out, pulling out the bodies. The players were all looking at each other. They had a few options, they could travel up the tower to escape the fire and most of the smoke, but eventually the bandits would come in. They could burst out the other door fighting, hoping to get lucky. They could cast a spell on the way out the door.

Then the player running the party Seer (priest) noted that he had a Resist Fire spell, he read the description and realized a Resist Fire would make the fire harmless for them.

Watching the look on his face as he realized he had a workable idea was priceless.

He was 6^th level, with his wisdom spell bonus he could cast Resist Fire enough times to cover the whole party (in Bhakashal you don’t pre-memorize or pray for your spells each day, you just have a limitation on how many you can cast). So first he cast it on himself.

They heard the bandits outside laughing about how the party was going to die in the fire, betting on whether any of them would run out and be slaughtered, and taunting the PCs, “Come out little pigs”, “Die by fire or by iron”, the Seer then cast it on another PC.

At this point I told them it was getting hard to breathe with all the smoke in the room, so when the Seer went to cast again, I made him roll a saving throw, which he failed, so he got into a coughing fit while casting and had to stop. The other PCs also had to roll, but they made their saves. The Seer tried to cast again, and successfully protected all the party members. The paralyzed NPC Thaumaturge did not have protection.

At this point, the smoke was thick.

They used the cover to run up the stairs to the third level, carrying the NPC Thaumaturge with them. The bandits were now bringing up buckets of water (the tower was on an island in a small river), to throw on the fire so they could enter and extract the bodies or find the hiding PCs.

The party talked to the paralyzed NPC, offering to end the paralysis and reminding her that they saved her, they could have left her in the fire, paralyzed, to die. The Seer broke the spell, freeing her. I had to see what she would do. She could have attacked, feigned turning to their side while intending to betray them at first opportunity, in situations like this I use encounter reaction rolls. Her’s was VERY positive, which I interpreted as a reaction to being told she was expendable, combined with her reasons for being there, I decided she had fallen out of favor with her employers and had fled to join the bandits until things blew over, they hadn’t struck it big yet, and she wanted out. She spilled the beans on everything.

She told them that a basilisk had entered into Bhomar’s secret chambers in the cave complex beneath the tower and petrified Bhomar. The creature then came into the tower and petrified Bhomar’s henchman Hagal Sevenwinds (the stone statue in the front room).

The bandits found the tower, it appeared recently abandoned so they moved in, the basilisk was in the cellar when they arrived, they saw it and blocked the doorway to the cellar and it’s still there. She also spilled that the bandits were working for someone who wanted to disrupt the holdings of House Rostus, all of the territory in the marshlands is the responsibility of a particular noble house, this hex was under the management of House Rostus, and the bandits were harrying caravans in this area to make House Rostus look bad

This was all backroom campaign faction stuff, totally over their heads, but they quickly glommed on to the fact that this information was GOLD to their patron. In a factionalized setting, knowledge is power. So, they knew they had something important.

I was running a clock timer for that conversation, I rolled to see how long it would be before the bandits put out the fire, let the smoke disperse a bit and realized the party wasn’t there in the burnt room and came into the upper levels of the tower looking for them.

After their talk, Maglane took out a scroll. Thaumaturges in Bhakashal cast spells from scrolls, so it’s one and done, and using a powerful scroll is a big deal. She had Binnatav's Sudden Viscosity, a fun 7^th level spell that makes the air thick, it gives big penalties to combat and movement, and makes it difficult to breathe. The longer you are in it, the greater the chances you will pass out. The caster, and up to 1 target per level of experience, are immune to the effects. It was her most powerful spell. Maglane took the scroll, walked down the stairs until she could see the room, and started casting the spell.

To determine if she was spotted or not I called for a surprise roll, attempting casting from concealment is a great use of the surprise mechanic. She achieved surprise, they went past the bandits and fled the tower. There were 6 bandits waiting outside. However, they saw Maglane leaving with them, and they did not see Rojmi Yin with them, so they figured something just went down. They backed off and the party fled. When the blood hawk circled the tower earlier they saw a stable with mounts.

They ran to that stable and released all the bandit’s mounts to flee into the marshes. They then found their mounts, tied up nearby, and headed back to the city. They were not pursued by Rojmi Yin, it took days to get the mounts gathered up. He will exact his revenge later; I will add him to the random encounter table for the marshlands and the city…

They traveled three days to get back to the city, meeting a caravan and a poison snake on the way back, both encounters went favorably. They went to their employer, reported on what they knew, and were rewarded for their success with gems and a new patron. Kamerli the Ivory has schemes he doesn’t want to share with others in his House, so the PCs, as outsiders, are perfect agents for him. My players asked me, “What does Kamerli think of House Rostus, are they an aligned house, or an enemy House?” Bhakashal gives all institutions and groups alignments, and institutions with the same alignment tend towards being allies

It ended up (and I didn’t plan it), that House Quannar and House Rostus were both LN, so this intel about someone wanting to undermine House Rostus was particularly valuable. This is also why all areas in the marshland are designated as territories of the various Houses, so when stuff happens there the referee has a potential connection to make. The PCs discovered the fate of Bhomar as tasked, and they revealed the location of a trapped basilisk, something that Kamerli was quite delighted to hear, “I’ll either kill it and dissect it to make spells, or I’ll put it in my garden and send tedious guests to be turned into art.”

The adventure was more than a success.

They had a new patron. And all the players wanted to play again, regularly. They clearly had a blast, and none of us expected what actually happened. Most of all, they had to think their way out of things, and it feels good when a plan comes together.

That’s the stuff.

Building Bhakashal – Session Report

I’ve often been asked, “how much do you get done in a session with your playstyle”, the following session lasted 2 hours.

My Wednesday group finishes up at the end of June, and the PCs have just finished exploring the Forgotten City. They spent three days in the desert city of Esham waiting for their caravan to leave and are now heading back to Bhakashal. The journey (depending on weather) is around 16 days.

After a few sessions exploring an ancient city, they were up for some travel with random encounters. In particular they were up for a trip with the caravan they had travelled with to get to the Forgotten City. One thing about long distance travel is that you form bonds with NPCs, you fight together, spend time talking, socializing, and NPCs take on a life of their own.

The caravan leader, Craight the Swift, is a 7^th level Mercenary (Bhakashal fighter). He’s bold and clear headed, making decisive decisions when needed to protect his cargo and his people. He has three magic items (Boots of Striding and Springing, Borghental’s Razor Sword and a Ring of Fire Resistance) and has learned to spring on to enemies and cleave them with his sword (x2 damage). He’s saved PCs and been saved by PCs now several times and is a favorite of the party. I play him as taciturn in battle but jovial in between, he likes fresh game, knows curse words in five languages, and he never starts arguments.

The caravan’s Warlock (a 7^th level Bhakashal magic-user) is Mahl Unoss the Puissant. Mahl owes a debt to the party for helping him to retrieve a powerful crystal ball that was stolen from him on the way there. Mahl has a penchant for gambling, a fascination with swords, and I play him as clever, somewhat sarcastic and generous with his friends (though he is slow to make them).

The caravan also has a 5^th level Seer (Bhakashal Cleric) of Omagh, Bhakashal god of Death, Hurna Gamelin. She likes to use augury and other divination magic for the other members of the caravan in their down time and has made converts of a number of the animal handlers in the caravan, who she gambles with daily. She’s a bit of a card shark.

When we travel like this I get the players to roll for random encounters and decide each day if they want to do any social role play. They left under clear skies in the desert, for three days of travel to get to the mountains.

Day 1 – Despite the fact that we have done this many times before, they LOVE to roll for encounters. There is something about rolling dice that creates excitement. The odds of getting an encounter at some point in the day (there are 4 checks a day) are about 40%. On day 1 they rolled no encounters. On a day when they get no encounters, they cheer and hoot about their luck. And it’s entirely luck at this point, no skill, but they don’t care, that just makes it even more exciting. They also have superstitions about the dice. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again, getting the players to roll dice is almost instant, guaranteed excitement.

Day 2 they rolled no encounters but decided to spend some role playing time with Craight. Bhakashal has personality tables you can use to assign personality traits to NPCs, sometimes I roll on it for an NPC, sometimes I just make up stuff. In an earlier session I described one of the bags on Craight’s mount as being “filled with scroll cases”, a totally throwaway point that I then needed to explain, so I decided that Craigt had a fascination with maps, particularly treasure maps. As it happens, one of the players (and by osmosis, his PC - the party Thaumaturge - Bhakashal thief/magic-user), also loves maps, so they talked maps for a while. Craight has a collection of treasure maps (I worked up a few between sessions), and the PC tried to convince him to part with one. A positive reaction roll was interpreted as gratitude on Craight’s part for the party fighting off fire giants several weeks ago, and eventually they settled on a map from near Bhakashal, on the condition that Craight accompany them if they pursued the treasure.

So that is an adventure-in-your-back-pocket for next year.

Day 3  they rolled… no encounters.

At that point they were shrieking, three days without a roll! It never fails, even though they KNOW that, statistically, there will be runs of “hits” and runs of “misses”, every time you get a run they freak out, scream, jump around and lose the plot over their good/bad luck.

You can’t buy that kind of enthusiasm, it’s the power of sharing the odds and rolling in the open.

Though the caravan carries food and water, they still detour to water sources (the route is known to Craight so he steers them so they can find water sources as they travel), gather edible plants and hunt for game. A large caravan needs lots of food. On the morning of Day 4 the party Slayer (Bhakashal Ranger) traveled with a few of the guards to hunt as they had reached the hills before the mountains.

In this case other players took over the guards and rolled for them, it’s important to keep the other players engaged when one leaves the party. After an hour they found some deer in the hills and managed to bag two, bringing them back to the caravan. Also, the Slayer was so impressed with one guard, Toma Brait, a Kutya (dog-folk) crossbowman for shooting a deer, that he convinced Toma to become his henchman when they got back to the city. The players really get invested in the NPCs, and not just the powerful ones.

Finally, on the evening of day 4 as they moved into the mountains they rolled their first encounter, with a pack of 15 dire wolves.

Now, the caravan consists of 30 giant lizards, 50 guards, 30 animal handlers, two sergeants and one captain. It’s a BIG caravan. When animals appear and see such a large group they don’t just automatically attack. I roll to see what they will do. At first they followed from a distance and howled at the party, which kind of freaked them out a bit.

I rolled to see if they would attack, I had planned on having them try to swarm and pull down isolated mounted guards, dragging them off to devour them. Alas, the dice didn’t cooperate and the wolves gave up, deciding the caravan was too big.

True to form, now the encounters came fast and furious. Day 5 in the night they rolled an encounter with a group of Togmu (frog folk) pilgrims, worshippers of Eddea, Bhakashal god of love and desire. As the caravan was camped, the pilgrims asked to stay with them for the night, and to collect alms to pay for their spiritual journey. They took up a collection, and in exchange performed for the caravan, singing moving hymnals and playing the nophera late into the night. The Togmu nophera is set of “pan pipes” where the pipes themselves have intricate carvings on the inside of the pipe that produce varied tones, and the tubes and are connected to rollers so they can be spun while they are blown into, muting, magnifying or reverberating the sound.

The next morning, they parted ways and encounters were rolled for day 6, again, the encounter came at night when the party was camped down. This time the encounter was with 15 Pteranodons. Fortunately, they did not get surprise, and the one awake PC and the awake guards got to respond. The Pteranodons dove to try and pick up targets and take them away to eat (historical Pteranodons eat fish, Bhakashal Pteranodons eat flesh!). This time the fact the majority of the party was asleep meant they weren’t targeted. Guards took out their spears and crossbows.

For those with spears, longest weapon strikes first, so we waited. For those firing missiles, they had to decide at what range they would fire. At long range they take a -5 penalty to hit, but a diving target takes a 2 point AC penalty, so that adds to a -3 to hit. In exchange for shooting at the longest range, they can switch weapons and dive for cover after shooting. At med range they take a -2 penalty to hit that is cancelled out by the diving AC adjustment, and they can shoot and EITHER dive for cover or switch weapons before they arrive. At short range they can’t do either of these but take no range penalty. I rolled to see what the guards would do and most took out spears, a few crossbows.

The party Spartan (Bhakashal Monk) had a javelin of piercing, he opted to use it at long range as the Javelin treats all ranges as short, and then to dive for cover and take out a glaive in case he was attacked. The Javelin hit true and did more than ¾ the beast’s HP in damage, indicating an uncontrolled dive and crash, which was great, but the Spartan had to make a saving throw or the creature would crash into him on the way down! He made his save, and the beast crashed and died.

ONE SHOT KILL!!!!

I can’t really overstate how LOUD the players got after this happened, they LOVE it when they take out a monster in one shot. They danced around the table, trash talked the other 14 Pteranodons, and were generally obnoxious about it. The guards did moderately well, the Pteranodons were diving, so they did double damage on an attack automatically if they hit, and if they rolled a critical, they could opt instead to snatch the target up ad fly them away. Two of the beasts tore the guards to pieces on their dive, three of the guards did enough damage impaling the beasts their spears to bring them down (any attack that does more than half of their total HP makes it impossible for them to fly, in this case causing a crash, and any attack with a spear planted against a diving target does double damage).

 

There were 5 mutual misses, 1 was killed by the party Spartan, and 3 mutual hits, this brought down two more beasts, and killed three guards, diving doubles damage!. Toma Brait took down his flying fiend by splitting his belly with a broadsword. That got a big cheer. Because I roll in the open when an NPC does well in combat it feels real, not something I made happen to make them look cool, they ACTUALLY ARE COOL. Rolling in the open was the best decision I ever made. Players become really invested in NPCs, in this case as Toma was going to sign on as a henchman at the end of the trip, they hung on his every encounter, waiting to see if he would live or die, and zero level warriors have 1-6 hp, so death is a VERY real concern.

 

The Pteranodons came around for another run, at this point the other party members woke up and joined in, the party tank shot two arrows and took out one beast, the party warlock used magic missile and took out another. The party Thaumaturge decided to get creative, and waiting until the diving beast was in short range, and used three throwing stars, the first missed, the second hit for minor damage, but the third was a critical, he chose to blind the beast, giving it a -4 to hit against him. As a result, the beast missed as it passed, flying of blind in terror. The party Slayer fired and missed, but he was also missed. The party Spartan attended to a wounded guard and protected him.

 

The party Seer of Nesig (god of Revenge, Loyalty), has paired magic items called a beak and claw (short sword and dagger) that have the magical property that a hit by the beak means an automatic hit by the claw. The Seer waited until the beast was almost upon him to strike. Longest weapon strikes first on charge/dive, so he went first. He missed with the beak, but hit and got a critical with the claw. He chose “knock back into surface”, but asked that this be interpreted as dodging to the side and stabbing the beast in the neck as it passed, it’s momentum taking it forward and crashing into the ground.

 

BADASS.

 

You are welcome to make up critical effects in Bhakashal, use weapon specific criticals or general combat criticals for any critical hit. So interpreting an existing critical hit is perfectly acceptable.

 

Another one down.

 

At this point a morale role was made and the beasts fled. They had slain several guards and flown off with a few. The party Slayer, a Garudin (bird folk) fled after one of the captured guards and tried a crazy stunt. He maneuvered below the pair, rolled a critical with a crossbow shot, and chose to have it strike the creature in a way as to make it drop his cargo, then he had to make an additional saving throw to catch the plummeting guard, which he did! He then flew after the other guard, but found him dead on the ground with a bloody dagger in his hand, he had stabbed the pteranadon and plummeted to his death. It was one of the guards that they played cards with regularly, so that made them sad.

 

The caravan Seer carried out last rights on the dead, burning them to release their souls. The party sang funeral dirges along with the guards to send them off.

On day 7, while still in the mountains, they encountered another caravan, they exchanged greetings and passed uneventfully. Many encounters end this way, an encounter reaction roll for NPCs determining that they aren’t interested in fighting.

I will add that I had two “special” encounters on my tables, in this case when I rolled a regular encounter I would roll a 1 in 12 chance of a special. Special encounter 1 was with the warlock, Haegemal the Heliotrope, who the party abandoned in his fight with a pit fiend. I reckoned he might show up, pissed, and let the party know his feelings. Special encounter 2 was with the adventuring party they met in the desert, who may or may not be travelling back to Bhakashal as well.

So far neither came up.

On day 8 on a morning travel break the party Slayer and Thaumaturge gambled with the guards. They played a complicated Bhakashal dice game called Minotaur’s curse, and the Thaumaturge managed to cheat on two turns without being noticed. Gambling with adventurers, who generally had purses overflowing with gold, was a popular pastime in the caravan, and the party enjoyed the conversations, gathering of intel, and both winning and losing.

In the afternoon of day 8, while on the plains, they had a weird encounter, reminding me that you never really plumb the depths of the 1e DMG. I was switching between the DMG tables and the Fiend Folio tables for variety, and rolled on the dinosaur tables in the DMG. I got,  “Miscellaneous, small-medium reptiles*” as a result, curious about the asterisk, it led to the following passage:

“Basically small or inoffensive creatures which can not be immediately distinguished as such by onlookers”

What the hell? I decided that a swarm of large (1’ long) beetles were crossing the trail ahead of them, so many that it appeared to be a black, shiny stream crossing their path. They sent out the party Slayer to investigate, and he figured out it was THOUSANDS of these beetles. I decided that as long as they didn’t attack the swarm, it would eventually pass, if they did it would divert towards them, and swarm over them like a river. They waited it out and continued, not aware of how lucky they were!

Day 9 arrived. The party Seer decided to try to convert some of the guards and animal handlers to Nesig. In Bhakashal you pray to all gods for blessings in their domain, but you pick one god whose domain most resonates with you as your primary god of worship. The Seer preached to the caravan guards and animal handlers about Nesig, how worshipping the dark blue skinned, six armed, dragon headed god, who rides a panther, would bring balance and harmony to their lives

“For Nesig”, he told them, “revenge means justice and balance, as the god guides you to gain revenge for wrongs against you, that will bring balance to your soul, and with that comes peace and contentedness.”

Joy through revenge, what a concept!

He managed to make 5 converts in the caravan crew, glory to Nesig!

The players then rolled out the next random encounters and we hit in the evening again. This time I rolled bandits, and rather than generate them on my own, I took out my trusty copy of the 1e AD&D Rogues gallery. There was no surprise indicated, and the groups were separated by 300 feet at night, so both groups saw the torches from the other encampment. Craight sent out one of his men to scout, there was the sound of clashing blades and he returned to tell them he was attacked and slayed his opponent.

Craight put two and two together and decided (after a reaction roll) to act decisively. He ordered Mahl Unoss, Hurna Gamelin and a group of 10 guards to delay the bandits as long as possible while he led the caravan away. He asked the party to help as well. Mahl Unoss took out his Wand of Conjuration and conjured a pair of wyverns, sending them to harass the bandits, Hurna cast a Prayer spell on all of them in anticipation of the impending fight. The party split, half going with the caravan, the other staying behind with Hurna and Mahl.

We stopped there.

The bandits have a high level fighter with mid-level lieutenants, a Seer and a Warlock, as well as 100 zero level soldiers.

It’s going to be an epic fight.

When I describe the process for travel encounters I often hear people suggesting it will be boring or repetitive, or that rolling rather than choosing means that things won’t work out. As you can see here, that’s not the case. The travel rules allow for social role play, faction building, alliance formation and engaging combat opportunities. Also, combat doesn’t take up so much time that we didn’t get through 6 encounters and numerous social role play moments in 2 hours. Combat is fast and deadly in Bhakashal, so you can get a lot done.