In this latest session of my “The Rotten Labyrinth” Dungeons and Dragons campaign, we kept things pretty short. My players tried to revisit a magical source of treasure, one of the player characters sulked instead, the party continued to roll horribly enough that they blundered into a few traps, they found two new sources of treasure, decided that chopping through a wall was a better idea than looking for secret doors in a move that would eventually be revealed to be much less expedient than they thought it would be, and discovered that sometimes the dungeon giveth danger disguised as magic items. One of my players also joked about keeping track of how much damage they’ve taken after chugging what turned out to be a potion of poison rather than a potion of healing and having their character knocked unconscious for the second time that hour despite starting the hour at full hp. All of which happened in just about two real hours because one of the players had to leave early and, following the interrupted night’s rest (the encounter with the strange memory-stealing ooze), the rest of the party decided to just call it a day after their trapfinder and healer got knocked out twice in maybe an hour of exploration. Which gave me the opportunity to give them their next level-up, courtesy of surviving so many nasty encounters, and now we’re primed to start the next session fully rested and with an unknown group approaching from outside the labyrinth.

We started the session by catching up one of the players who hadn’t been able to attend a session in a couple months. Their character’s name had been hidden in our discord as a joke because their character was the only one who hadn’t been a part of the fight with the strange ooze creature that stole poeple’s memories, so everyone present had been joking that no one could remember what thid character’s name had been, a thing that became canon due to how long the joke carried on and then, after being explained, went entirely unremarked for the rest of the session. No one remembers this character’s name though they all know that they should know it, but it’s a small detail and most of the party, player and player character alike, seem mostly concerned with exploring every inch of the labyrinth they’re inside rather than, I don’t know, trying to find a path forward. I mean, I thought it was possible that they’d explore every possible path (which is why the overly complicated map exists at all), but I didn’t expect them to be so exactingly thorough. Especially with rolls as bad as they’ve been getting. It’s been a very painful adventure for those in the front of this group as they’ve run face-first into a number of traps, spreading a bit of blood all through the various halls of this labyrinth and doing their level best to avoid stepping on the prayer tiles they encounter.

All of this was after they tried to return to the magical treasure chest some of them had found the session previous in an attempt to get a reward from it for the characters who hadn’t been there the first time. Unfortunately for them, this chest’s magic was activated by their approach to it and deactivated by their departure from it, which meant that it’s once-daily ability had ended by the time the rest of the party showed up to try for some interesting treasure. One of the player characters, the one whose name had been forgotten by the rest of the party, refused to approach it since he felt he had already bled enough while exploring the labyrinth and didn’t want to volunteerily hand over what the labyrinth had already been doing its best to steal from him. Once that was done and the party realized the magical treasure chest wouldn’t activate for them again, they carried on down the last remaining unexplored path in that section, walked face-first in a few traps, and discovered that their path looped back around to an area they’d approached once, with a few new branches for them to explore.

From there, they chased down a dead end that had a small chest for them with, no joke, the perfect magic weapon for the character who’d been sulking and finding traps via his hit points. I randomly rolled it and everything and it was still exactly the perfect thing for him, which I’d considered putting in there just to give him something nice and reward his player for putting up with being the trap magnet. I always enjoy a moment where the dice conspire to deliver the exact perfect thing. Unfortunately for them, the dice conspired against them after that, aided (as they often are) by impatient player characters and the brute-force approach to exploration. They eventually found a section of the labyrnith that was clearly concealing a hidden room of some kinda and, as the party’s rogue started to talk about looking for hidden doors, traps, or mechanisms, the barbarian swung her ax at the wall instead, determined to hack her way in through walls she’d already busted through once before. This time, though, she didn’t roll a natural twenty and had chosen to hack through the trap-protected hidden door that wound up gassing the entire party. The poor rogue, who still hadn’t been renamed and had spent most of the session poisoned due to a bad roll on both a constitution saving throw and a medicine skill check, got a face full of it and was immediately knocked out.

The rest of the party didn’t have an ounce of healing abilities between them, so they rolled a medicine check to stablize the rogue and carried on chipping their way through a stone wall. Due to yet more poor rolls, it took a long time but they were eventually rewarded with a crate containing a set of six healing potions. As part of illustrating the image, I showed them an image of a gatorade bottle carrier, the kind you’d see people carrying around in sports matches, and labeled the the gatorade-bottle-stand-ins for the healing potions so I could ask my players which one they pulled out to deliver to the unconscious rogue. After all, unbeknownst to them, when I rolled for what the hidden room would contain, I rolled a dangerous prize. So, when I rolled random treasure and got healing potions, it made sense that at least one of them would be a potion of poison, which notoriously look and taste just like healing potions until you’ve delivered a decent amount of damage to yourself by drinking one. So I rolled to determine how many there were and which of the six potions where actually poison and, once again unlucky, the rogue who responded to being awake and rolling poorly on an herbalism check to examine the potions by drinking another one of them immediately, plucked a potion of poison out of the carrier and knocked themselves out with it immediately.

After that, the party stabilized the rogue again and decided they’d done enough for the day. The rogue’s player also had to leave in half an hour, so I walked them through killing a full day so they could take another long rest and we went through the process of leveling them up. Every single one of them had to pick their subclasses at that point, so it took a bit longer than usual but not so long that the player who had to leave was late. Then, as we resolved the leveling up, I revealed that they’d rolled a random encounter that was walking up to the hole out of the labyrinth as the party was gathering their packs and equipment following the end of their long rest. They’ve yet to determine if this group is a threat, a neutral party, or perhaps a beneficial group, but I’m sure they all feel confident thanks to their new subclasses and additional powers. It remains to be seen if they have anything to feel confident about, considering they’re still in the dangerous part of the labyrinth, but at least they’ve all got a bunch more hit points they can use to find traps and survive whatever the labyrinth throws at them.