GM Breakdown, Episode 34 - Dylan almost ends the podcast

Not really, but man oh man, have we all been there!

Everyone makes mistakes, we were just lucky it was caught during the actual encounter, or we would have been toast for sure. I think I've talked about this, but back when I first started playing pathfinder, the group came up against an elite ochre jelly. Same situation as we were in, level 4 with an enemy sitting at level 6, which is no joke. I was a new gm, and I did not fully understand the grab rules, so as I had listened to some 1E games, I assumed the grab was a free action, which severely favoured the ochre jelly. The jelly having immunities and other very horrific effects on most types of damage is already bad enough.

The result was 3 out of 4 PC deaths, with the last one running for his life out of the dungeon. And then there's the other question of what happens after. You have been adventuring with people that you have grown close to for 4 levels at this point, maybe you've started to view them as your friends. Granted, the timeline was a lot faster than ours is, but still. Finding the motivation for that character to locate three new team members and head back down towards certain death is hard, if you are really roleplaying here.

Sure, vengeance is an easy motivator, but so is fear of death. It takes a lot of willpower to go down there, but if you do, then there will be new bonds forged in fire moving forward.

Getting back to the episode, we finally defeat the terracotta soldier, thanks to Dylan's very generous retconning of the damage we did and the help of the Anadis that, luckily, was not in the zone of fire this time.

The Hababe building apparently is calling out to them, drawing them towards this place. All I'm envisioning at this point is either a room filled with magic symbols or some sort of super high tech machine responsible for this psychic call, but I may be overestimating the importance of this place.

That's it! Next week we see what the rest of the building holds!

Ejnar