Sellswords & Spellslingers- another CQB AAR (Apr 21 2025 - Act 4)

[Burgundavia]

Like 6mmfan, our group is playing through the new Close Quarters Battles campaign in Sellswords. We're up to game 6 - the campaign is a set of main battles plus some side quests.

Today we played Sidequest 3 - Lady Delamoon. The PCs have to escort Lady Delamoon to a ball through a park and the local cultists have hired some street gang thugs to capture her and make her into the main star of their future evil activities.

This fight ended up being a near run thing - we started with 9 PCs (3 per player) and ended with 2 dead and 3 Out of Action (unconscious). If you haven't played Sellswords, PCs generally have 3 HP and when they lose their last HP, you roll an OOA roll. Less than 6 and PC is dead, less than 10 and they are unconscious. We have 5 sub-10 rolls. And all the standing PCs were wounded- 2 w 2 sounds and 2 with 1.

Three photos from various points in the game.  The giant pile of coin near the fountain was largely the work of my spellcaster, whose fireball did for at least 30 foes.

[Spinal Tap]

That looks brutal.

I'm going to have to get this supplement, it's the only one I don't have.

I find that having to go check a downed PC often leads to the checker ending up downed as well; it's a realistic mechanic compared to games like Frostgrave but really put a dent in your party very quickly.

[Burgundavia]

That looks brutal.

I'm going to have to get this supplement, it's the only one I don't have.

It was brutal. I recommend it - there are a few games that play quite differently, like the market one that 6mm fan just did and we did a few weeks ago

[Sunjester]

That looks brutal.

I'm going to have to get this supplement, it's the only one I don't have.

It's well worth it and a lot of fun. I'll be lifting some ideas, like the magic items Bazzar, for my own future campaigns.

[Burgundavia]

After almost a year's delay, we finally got back to Close Quarters Battles and played Sidequest 5 - Night of Long Fangs. The scenario finds the PCs needing to clear out some vampire half-breeds. We decided to have it in a park rather than the streets due to terrain issues (not yet done my fantasy cityscape).

The scenario as written is for 1 player and 3 PCs, so we needed to do some modification to make it work for our 3 players and 10 PCs. We kept the same number of civilians (who we needed to save), but halved the number of vampire halfbreeds. We also had some minor werewolves spawn for wandering monster and ambush gave us a vampire halfbreed (technically not a minion).

The fight ended up being painful but not deadly. We mostly lacked the ability to move quickly enough to save the civilians. Two of the initial 3 minor werewolves fell quickly to natural 20s (one ranged, one melee). My spellcaster spent more time fighting with his knife after being spawned. And Igor, my coffin- carrying henchman managed to get many vampire halfbreeds "back in their coffin" as it were.

[Burgundavia]

I didn't realize until yesterday that we started this campaign 2 years ago, but here we are finally onto Act 4. This act finds our heroes in the middle of a city gone mad as cultists attempt to finish their evil act. Act 4 has three parts- the first of which requires the players to secure a bridge. This was the reason for the delay in playing - I lacked a bridge built. I've documented that over on my Million Foam pieces thread in Workbench - https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=141488.msg1912628#msg1912628

Close Quarters Battles is written for a single player, so we've had to do some adjustments to the number of foes as we go along. This adventure was the first where we didn't pull back the number of foes and followed the rules mostly as written, which meant we had 9 cultists and 9 Sammu gladiators (I proxied snakemen in their place), plus 8 raging mobs. I did  only place 5 of each cultist/gladiator on the table at the beginning, letting the rest spawn via the Wandering Monster card. One thing the foes did lack was anybranges weaponry, which made this scenario less deadly than it could be, given the barricade.

We also played on the stock 2'x2' board, which meant I could do a dense, tight board given my amount of fantasy city board I know own.

The rules didn't specifically state anything about how to clear the barricade, so I ruled it was 2 DL 10 strength checks to clear the stuff in front of the wagon and 2 DL 15 checks for the wagon itself, with other PCs in base to with the stuff providing a +1 (or +2 if Strong).

We started on the board and due to luck, not many foes were around us initially - it certainly could have been worse and some Sellswords games you get mobbed on the baseline. What made this fight fairly straightforward was our wizard having fireball, which is the only area effect spell and very deadly (only DL 10 get off, no chance of missing and +4 and 2 damage to everybody hit). Many raging mobs met their end in a fiery inferno. This got so bad we ruled the bridge was difficult terrain by the end, as the corpses made footing difficult.

There were a few fun vignettes in the game, including
* One stubborn raging mob nearly taking down my healer
* The guard NPCs consistently failing to roll well against the mob, meaning we lost 4 of them over the course of the game (they spawned on Scenario Event cards and acted as PCs)
* The wizard casting knockdown on a cultist on the bridge, leading them to fall into the canal.

After a tough fight but no lost PCs, we cleared the board of cultists and moved onto Act 2