The little d30 that couldn't

So a few notes on Wednesday night's session:

a. There was a certain amount of fear around the Malignant Spheres, which I had worried would be lame in practice.  Just being an unknown monster was enough to put the fear into the party

b. When they found the locked door to the healing-potion-room, the guys decided they wanted in.  I had them pointlessly rolling d6's, just to make themselves feel better, as they hammered away on it - "force door" rolls are for jammed-up doors, heavy-duty locked doors aren't budging without some serious damage.  Finally Mongo's player asked, "So what do I need to roll?"  "An 8."  So, one by one they tried using the d30 house rule to force it - 8 or higher and it's open.  Three failures in a row, total flubs - nothing beats rolling a "1" with your only d30 roll for the day. Finally Mongo's d30 rolled true - and that was that, no more d30 rolls left for anybody.

c. Anything aerial is a much bigger challenge for the party.  The dogs couldn't get at the floating Malignant Spheres, and the screechmen were able to surround the party by dropping from the ceiling.  They were forced to retreat to more defensible ground, which was nice - they had been steamrolling over a lot of stuff lately, with all the sleep spells and the dogs.

d. Sadly, I wasn't able to whittle down the henchmen, but I arbitrarily gave the unconscious dog a 50% chance of catching a terrible disease.  One less hound to worry about, and the party didn't want to hoof it back to the city to try to find another.

e. The party mistook their own footprints (with mostly different characters) from the near-TPK a few sessions ago, for the Scientists traipsing through the dungeon.  There was a reason so many bootprints proudly walked forth, and only 2 returned...  short memories!  I had to keep that bit of unholy DM glee to myself

f. The looks I get from the mapper when I describe the shapes of rooms in the dungeon is priceless.  When they're already bitching about the clipped corners and triangular rooms, try dropping a "rhombus" on them - endless fun.

g. So the next day, the guy who maps for the party and I are walking back from lunch (we work for the same company) - he says "man that's a big dungeon you've got".  I told him he didn't know the half of it - they still don't know it's a "megadungeon," or even what a megadungeon is.  Gutboy's player is convinced they're three or four levels down - ha!  It's all been the first level!  I'll announce "WELCOME TO LEVEL TWO" just to see the annoyed looks on their faces when they finally stumble across one of the ways down.