Its "A" Dungeon, Too: The Second Chance (Inactive)

Game Master Terquem

Tofutee grabs at the line and attempts to help
str: 1d20 ⇒ 9
But finds she isnt really doing much beside looking silly.

it's funny, if misty weren't aiding, that'd have been a success.

Praink sniffs in disgust at the necessity of manual labor, but he tries to help lift the portcullis.
Heave! Ho!: 1d20 - 1 ⇒ (18) - 1 = 17

"think.. we almost. .. have it!" Tofutee grunts while listening to the groaning of the steel gate.

with a primary check of 21 and two successful aid another checks I believe that'll pop this gate. And absolutely will be blocking this with something, we would be so screwed if we had to lift this thing on a time limit.

Static trap: Rolling boulder trap. GG.

"I guess I'll see if I can be of any help." Bud picks up the rope and pulls with all his might

Str Aid: 1d20 ⇒ 7

and nothing happens.

Day 6, turn 111, approximate time of day 6:20 (turn 4 of 6)

Maybe I haven’t mentioned this, I thought I did, but here we go. Opening Stuck Doors – the party can take 20 on opening stuck doors, using tolls, and assists, and applying all the relevant modifiers, and then in this case I will roll a d6, this is the number of “rounds” it takes to get that door open. On any roll other that a “1” there is no chance to surprise a monster that might be on the other side of the door. If the party wants to try a Strength Check to open a stuck door, they can make the roll and hope to open it in the first try. Does this make sense?

Working as a team, the group raises the Metal Portcullis high enough to pass under it. Once it is raised a spike is driven into the channel and wedges the Portcullis in the open position

I hope someone has a spike to use here, and deducts it from their inventory

The Party of Monster-heroes now find themselves in a narrow Passageway, only five feet wide running east and west.

[ooc]The Portcullis will remain up, just high enough for everyone to get under, until you are away from this level for 24 hours, and then the Maintenance crew will have fixed the problem[/oo]
What direction do you want to explore?

1 of tofutees 3 iron spikes is now marked as in use. The pulley only works on gates like this I think but I will ensure that I provide a crowbar when we open doors. Well at least until I save enough money for an adamantine weapon. Then we will be dungeon wizards making doors wherever we please!

"Huh, well I pick that way." the sneaky one states pointing as she begins moving down the west passage.
"Huh, that looks like a door. Wonder if its trapped." The pale one asks as she pulls down her fantastically ugly goggles and peers at the door cautiously.
Find traps: 1d20 + 12 ⇒ (15) + 12 = 27

Day 6, turn 111, approximate time of day 6:20(turn 4 of 6)

A short distanced to the west the party discovers another door on the south wall. It is recessed, allowing Tofutee to get in close to it, but also making it difficult to force open should it be stuck.

Almost immediately the little rogue notices the faint marks built into the frame of this door that give away the presence of a magical trap. Being careful not to touch anything that might be a trigger, Tofutee peers closely around the space near the door until she finds a few small thorns embedded in the wood, and something about them kind is not altogether natural.

Tofutee cautiously steps away from the door and turns to the group
"There is a magical trap on the door, I know from experience that those are the worst kind to try and disarm. So before I attempt it do one of you cast-y types think you could figure out what it does?" Anyone who does so is shown where the thorns are and the faint marks.

"I can help, if I understand the swirly bits and stuff. Might be able to figure out more about it if I..."
Spellcraft Aid: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (3) + 4 = 7 Woooh! Failed to -assist-.

"Is that a dragon..?" she asks as she cants her head to the side, looking at a shape in the grain on the door, rather than paying any attention to the thorns themselves.

What school of magic am I picking up with my detect magic?

Praink tries to figure out what the trap does.

Knowledge (arcana): 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (3) + 11 = 14
Spellcraft: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (13) + 11 = 24

Tofutee cocks her head to the side and attempts to see what the water lady is talking about.
"dont know what you're seeing but all I can see is a one armed troglodyte. " she pauses for a beat before speaking again "Guess that would make this the 'Trogdoor', I hope it doesn't burninate me."

#IUnderstoodThatReference DM needs to make us fight a doppelganger and its 8 pet badgers... at some point. That way it can pretend to be Tofutee.

Bud casts detect magic and then examines the auras from the trap.

Kn: Arcana: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (13) + 9 = 22

Spellcraft: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (10) + 9 = 19

"And that is clearly a 3 legged dog trying to pee into the wind."

But where are the thatched-roof cottages?

Not sure its the same reference but my mind made the link that the Fungal creature template can apply to pretty much anything.
So say four fungal badgers and a snake of proper Cr. They'd also be mushrooms.
Perhaps this is a 'Post-burninating' image.

"Clearly your aged eyes rotted out of your pickled skull if you think thats a dog. Defintiely a Troglodyte."Tofutee says clicking her tongue

"I see how you'd think it's a Trog, given the big beefy arm. But look. It's an S, with a slightly different S. Clearly snaky. And all those consumate v's..."

"Well yes, it is pretty snake-y. Although I almost feel those v's are too consummate, almost makes me angry. I'm pretty sure that it's code for being at least a half-dragon trog, which is already a lizard dragon-man thing so its gotta be like eighty percent dragon by now. Little bit of man tossed in for spice, hence the beefy arm. Which is why I'm betting if I touch the door it's gonna burninate me. Or perhaps punch me with its beefy arm, not sure which would be worse."

Day 6, turn 111, approximate time of day 6:20(turn 4 of 6)

With the oor recessed, and the Passageway being narrow, it is not altogether possible for Praink to tell exactly what is going on ahead, but he senses a faint magical aura emanating from something in the recessed area, and when he concentrates on the nature of the aura it tells him something about itself

Something about the way Praink is scrunching up his already tiny face, alerts Bud to the possibility that something peculiar is ahead, and he too casts Detect magic, and quickly he can also see the aura

Praink walks up behind Tofutee. "I do not think it will burninate you; the aura looks wrong. It looks more like the kind of aura associated with magic that alters properties of things. Let me take a look." Praink studies the aura closer, trading places with Tofutee if necessary.

Tofutee nods and steps back. "Kay, watch out for the thorns on the door, I'm pretty sure that's the trigger mechanism. Don't look natural" Tofutee says pointing to the described objects.

" Huh, now that I think of it those unnatural looking spikes could also be the trap if the magic changes something. Could it change the size of the spikes so as to stab the schmuck that opens the door?" tofutee asks as she waits for one of the casters to come over and inform her of the horrible death she faces is she cant disarm the trap.

"Wait. Changing magic!? What if the Trog-door turns others into Trog-doors!?"

"If that turns out to be the case we I could always try and take its off its hinges and have Horns smack stuff with it. Turning monsters into doors could be useful. Once he who carries bat crap tells me if triggering this will kill all of us or just myself we can see if all this effort was worth it."

Day 6, turn 111, approximate time of day 6:20(turn 4 of 6)

I sort of thought Bud and Praink would get into a shoving match to see who got to examine the door first, but looks like it’s just Praink.

Praink waits for Tofutee to step back and then he zooms in on the door to study it closely.

As Praink examines the door, he strokes his chin. After a moment, he lets out a short bark of what seems to be laughter. "Devious...beautifully devious. This door incorporates both arcane and divine magical components. The trigger is arcane, but the trap itself is divine. As you surmised, oh bai--I mean expert--the spikes will grow and impale the person who opens the door and quite possibly the entire area. You will not have the ability to disable the trap itself, but there remains a possibility of you managing to disable the trigger. The magnitude of the probability of successful implementation of this course of action remains unknown due to the indeterminate nature of the various impinging variables--not the least of which is your skill at trap nullification. The consequences of failure being catastrophic--not only for you, but potentially all of us--the prudent course of action appears to be ascertaining another path of travel."

"Or we could all back up and let her have a go at it. Just saying." Bud then smiles at Tofutee.

Bud had posted after Praink started his examination but apparently the web gremlins ate it. That's ok he was just asking Praink if he wanted him to look at it too for a second opinion. Bud's in no hurry to accidentally set off a trap while trying to identify it. He'll leave that to the small big headed one.

"The difficulty with your proposed alternative is that we are unaware of the power of the individual who set this trap. Assuming the trap works like the spell upon which it is based, the spikes will reach 100 ft. or more; the determinative factor in this case is the expertise of the trap-setter which is still an indeterminate variable, resulting in us not being able to ascertain how far we should back up."

Unless Tofutee can use the well examined nature of this door for a weighty bonus to her trap detection shes looking at needing a 17. Having played many a druid and knowing precisely the level of damage a spell can cause in terrain that makes something walk over it this is a very bad idea.

"Alrighty Lexicon, I perhaps understood perhaps every third word in that little piece but the important bits are 100 foot wide trap, Spikes, and very difficult to disable."
Tofutee adjusts her gear, sucks in a breath and nods with tools at the ready.
She then abruptly turns to the right and proceeds further down the hallway chanting as she walks at a quick pace. "Nope, nope nope nope. I am not getting stuck in cartoon garden rake world. I've had dreams about that place and we are not going to the land of 'Absolutely everything is trapped'. So shovel some coal into this matronly engine and buckle your Adventure pants The Nope Train is leaving the station!" The vegetative female states as she continues to walk away from the door muttering 'nope' under her breath occasionally.

Larg, as per usual, silently watches the exchange.

All this talk of magic and spells makes me uneasy. Can we not just set the trap off from a distance? Use some of your fancy magic hands or a summoning.

" Horns, I'd be partial to just leaving it alone and not turning a 100ft portion of this passage into a dirt wizard's art project. No telling how long something like that could last, for all we know it fills this hallway and the one we just entered from with horrible death to boot. My vote is to leave it alone but if you want to mess with that door be my guest. Im just going to be way over here." tofutee states as she marches away from the door once she gets a small amount of distance she turns and looks at them all hands over her chest. " So anyone have a desire and ability to safely trigger the deathtrap? If not we should go down one of these corridors. I don't really care which one but avoiding horrible spike death would be great."

I can think of a few ways to trigger this thing if you guys really want to see the otherside of that door. I really want to open it as well However knowing precisely what that spell can do to a group in a confined stone area like a dungeon I can also say we have a high chance of dying in a highly embarrassing way from this. If we want to go with the highly rediculous a mission impossible style suspended disarm attempt would let us avoid a big chunk of the dangers involved with this. Just activating it means we cant get to the door anyway. As the surround each 5ft square suddenly becomes a magic trap of equal DC to this door from the casting. Then the party dies slowly from the 12 invisible spike in a row they couldnt see nor disarm.

Day 6, turn 112, approximate time of day 6:30 pm (turn 5 of 6)

After a few moments of time are spent discussing the trapped door...

Tofutee wanders away from the rest of the group, muttering, then turns and addresses Larg. The rogue taps one foot, waiting impatiently thirty feet to the east.

A peculiar trick is in store for the group, once they get moving again. However, I am a bit puzzled. Tofutee has two options, east or west, and was not specific about what direction she was exploring, so right now, going by the turning “right” when walking “away from” the door (thus going north) would put her toward the east, while if she turned right while facing the door, she would be off to the west.

Is the group going to move on?

"Well, if our trap soaker isn't gonna work on the trap cause she thinks it will kill us all, and the brainy guy said a bunch of stuff to make her think that... Then I figure we might as well go on. Or at least I am. And I'm going to give whoever tries to open it anyway enough space to activate it alone. So... walking walking walking..." Misty follows after Tofutee.

"I already stated that I was in favor of leaving it alone. My magical hands are not long enough." Praink follows Tofutee and Misty.

"Looks like we are heading west then. Onward and ummm, onward!", Bud sighs and shakes his head muttering, "What I wouldn't give for a good beer now"

Day 6, turn 112, approximate time of day 6:30 pm (turn 5 of 6)

Tofutee marches westward, not quite in that much of a hurry to be alone, and too far ahead of the party, and eventually the rest of the group shrugs, and follow.

And suddenly the long narrow Passageway the party is in begins to shift, slowly turning to the right. Ahead, Tofutee can see what appears to be asset of stairs going down.

The openings to the passageways behind them and ahead of them are closing fast. Who can say what they will find when the Passageway stops moving, but one thing is certain the way back will be permanently blocked off!

Okay each of you must make a decision what direction to make a run for if you want to escape this trick, or you can decide to ride it out, and take your chances. If you run for either end, it is a DC 12 Reflex Save to get through the opening successfully. If you ride it out, you will still be on level 2, and a new periodic check will be needed to the north and to the south. You will not be able to exit the Dungeon until you find a way back to level 1, and even then it might take a while to find a connection back to areas you have mapped.

Off course, to Bud, nothing unusual is going on at all, this sort of feeling is common for him...

Ref: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (12) + 4 = 16
Misty will stay, or go, as the party seems to dictate. She -is- the designated Refresher after all.

Bud reaches out and puts a hand on the wall, "Everyone else feels this too right? I'm not drunk all the sudden am I? I don't want over 200 years of drinking to come back and haunt me all at once."

Misty looks to their trap-spotter to see if she's making a bee-line of some kind.

"By all that is evil and multi-eyed!" Tofutee swears as the room begins to spin.
"Ok everyone unless you fancy the idea of losing our trail back to the surface, We should run back to the spikey doom door!"
reflex: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (17) + 8 = 25+1 from trap sense, which I assume counts in this case as this is a 'trap' type event.

Unsure if below even has a chance to work, but lets see what the boss has to say right?

"You raise an excellent point. Proposed course of action intitiated." With these words, Praink attempts a roll through the door...and promptly falls on his face in front of it.

Reflex: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (6) + 3 = 9

As the Passageway continues to shift and slide, spinning on some unseen axis, the party rushes back the way they came, but Praink, floating as he does, miscalculates the trajectory, and at the last minute Tofutee stops the pivoting passageway by jamming her super tool in the space where the two Passageways come together.

The Passageway is now jammed, with barely enough room for Praink to slip through the opening, and Tofutee is without her tool, unless there is someway to overcome the mechanism?

I would take that to mean that until Tofutee finds another method to keep the door open our medium sized companions are SOL on getting out this way?
" Ok so I don't know how long this will hold, if any of you have something that can help keep this thing in place let me know. I'm going to start looking for a trigger for this thing, see if I can find a way to reverse its motion. One of you take these spikes I have and hammer them into the seam of the floor, I don't know if it will help but its something at least. It looks like our pickled wizard and Horns won't be able to get past with me stopping the passage like this so we are either going to need to find a different way to stop this thing so I can clear the path or all of us agree to go for a ride."
With that the bacon scented one sets about seeking where the trap triggered to start with and works backwards from there to possibly assertain how it might work. If she could discover that then she'd have a good chance of knowing how to keep the thing from moving.
don't suppose any of our casty types have Knowledge engineering?
Perception: 1d20 + 9 + 1 + 2 ⇒ (13) + 9 + 1 + 2 = 25
Knowledge (dungeoneering): 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (15) + 9 = 24
Disable device: 1d20 + 10 + 1 ⇒ (4) + 10 + 1 = 15
Assuming in order that I need to find how it started, how it works and then use those two things to obtain how to stop it rather than just delaying it like I am.

Misty grabs her bag, and tosses it open. "I have ummm..." She starts to stick her head in the bag, then draws it back quickly. "Javelins..." she breathes a sigh of relief, "Forgot those. Shiny rocks. A 'cleric's' kit. Whatever that is. I've never opened it, they just handed it to me at orientation. I can cast Obscuring Mist, and Custard... err, Bull's Strength. Other than that..." She looks up with a shrug. "I've got my shield and my mace, and my armor. But I don't think those'd be helpful."

Reflex: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (1) + 3 = 4 Oh shit

Oh dren! Give them to me. I'll wedge them apart

He takes out his hammer and drives the spike in the seem, hoping that it helps.

Strength: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (3) + 4 = 7

Misty starts shoving Javelins through the hole towards the Minotaur.

"Nope. Sorry I have nothing useful here other than maybe my long spear."

"If you don't have something useful to do keep an eye out for the trigger for this place. It's gotta be in here somewhere."

Day 6, turn 112, approximate time of day 6:30 pm (turn 5 of 6)

The Passageway grinds to a stop, blocked from completing its movement by Tofutee’s tool, with Larg and Bud trapped on the other side!

The opening is small, Bud and Larg could squeeze through, but will have to remove armor and gear, and it will take time, if you decide on this course of action I’ll add one turn to the clock and then everyone will be together again

Larg manages to hammer in a spike at the floor in the joint where the moving part of the passageway and the stationary part are nearly touching, and that seems to hold the Passageway in place

A Strength Check, DC 30 would be required to force the passageway to move back toward the open position

Once the immediate danger is gone, Praink notices that the moving Passageway has a faint magic aura