Why Thieves Should Stick to Daggers

Posted by Shaft on August 07, 2015

This is the story of a man named Dan, and his level 1 thief, Shaftillion (or Shaft).

Our campaign was run by a very "the dice are the dice" kind of DM. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even own a DM screen. The dice fall where they fall for everyone to see, no matter how fortuitous or disastrous.

We were playing a campaign that centered around the exploration of an ancient necropolis, hidden underneath a haunted bog, and dotted with barrows (or burial mounds). It was during an ill-fated excursion to one of these barrows that the event happened. The party, which included Shaft, had just had a pretty successful run of the necropolis. Feeling confident, they decided to raid just one more barrow and call it a night.

The barrow was sealed by a huge stone slab, so our Fighter, Cleric and Ranger bashed it open with some elbow grease and sledge hammers.

The entrance revealed a set of steps lowering into the maw of the pitch black earth. The party slowly descended, torches in hand, and came to the threshold of a circular underground chamber. Along the walls of the room were burial alcoves like in a mausoleum or tomb, but those did not concern the party as much as the brilliant gemmed and gleaming broadsword resting in a pedestal at the center of the chamber, like Excalibur.

Now Dan was ever-notorious for being somewhat inattentive at the table, especially near the ends of sessions when the players were tiring, but here is how our plan went:

Sol, the Fighter: "We can't just walk in there and grab it, it's clearly a trap"

Locke, the Ranger: "Yeah, we need a plan. There's probably a pressure plate in there or some magic thing."

Sol: "Alright, who’s got rope? We'll simply lasso it around the sword from the door, and pull it to us without ever setting foot in the room. If something bad happens we can just run."

Lo

Shaft: "No problem. I got this."

What happened next was forever recorded in the chronicles of our long campaigning history.

Shaft tied the rope in a perfect lasso, walked directly up to the pedestal in the center of the room, and gently draped the lasso over the sword. Immediately, six skeletal knights wearing armor and wielding weapons became animated, and crawled from their resting places in the walls.

Now Shaft was surrounded by four skeletons.

Locke, who was standing at the bottom of the stairs, was attacked by two. Shaft, in his fear and panic, thought of a valiant idea.

Shaft decided to draw the sword from its altar, which he did. The part that happened next was discussed over many a mug of ale at The Brazen Strumpet, the local tavern in our campaign.

Some who were there submit the sword was cursed, others say it was possessed by the spirit of its angry former owner, others believe that Shaft was just a horrible, horrible swordsman. But whatever the case, this is what happened: Shaft drew the sword and immediately killed himself - a critical miss followed by a ‘hit yourself on the random critical miss table’, followed by an unlikely fail to his dexterity check for half damage, followed by a full damage roll against himself.

Gotta love D&D!

At any rate, because this happened in the first round, the Cleric did not have time to step in and Turn the skeletons before the mishap, which he promptly did after the Thief killed himself, and the skeletons were easily dispatched.

The party collected the magical blade and burned Shaft's body on a funeral pyre, singing songs of his heroic (and not so heroic) tales.