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.