Can Dwarves Detect Unhidden Doors?
Further exploring a cave system in the Blasted Lands, looking for a victim of a kidnapping, our party climbs up an inclined corridor that ends in a closed door. Our Rogue decides that caution is the better part of valour, and urges us to stop so that he can listen at the door. 'I can hear some sort of regular, scraping sound on the other side', he advises us in a hushed tone.
'It could be someone sharpening a blade', another party member suggests, before another whispers 'have you checked the door for traps?'
'Naw, there's no time. I say we rush in to gain the upper-hand through surprise!' And with that, he quickly turns the handle of the door. Before the door opens more than a fraction, a dart shoots out from somewhere hidden and sticks in to his body. With the mechanism's noise, and Wendel's yelp of pain, the orc behind the door notices something is amiss. He jumps up from sharpening his weapon and gets ready for an attack. Well, so much for surprise.
Even without surprise, our attack on the brute starts off relatively well. Until he calls for reinforcements, at which point I decide to retreat from the room, guessing that his allies will appear from the door opposite the entrance. I then cast an illusion that I hope will confuse them just long enough for us to get the jump on them when they appear.
It doesn't quite work as planned, as the reinforcements come from behind us, from the direction we had approached the room ourselves. This places me in a direct line between them and the rest of the party, and no doubt first to be attacked. Being but a squishy elf in no armour, I had to reposition myself again, this time casting another defensive spell, hopefully to protect myself and gain a better position. Without my area-of-effect spell, which was lost when I was killed and raised, I stood little chance of surviving against multiple fighters.
Meanwhile, the orc brute we had disturbed was taking a rough beating from our front-line fighters, Metrius the multi-classed and Wendel the Rogue-Warrior. Even after the first, savage hit from the orc, the fight was going better than expected. Of course, that was before his allies appear, bringing the fight to a second front. Some focussed fire brings down the main orc, and then some nifty footwork gets the fighters to bear on the reinforcements.
It is quite a bloody battle, with Wendel and Metrius being knocked out at least once, and Wendel several times drops to the floor. Scintilla the priest does a great job in keeping them alive, even if it is impossible to keep them standing against such odds, and we eventually survive the fight, shooting the fleeing spellcaster in the back to kill the last of the enemies.
With this big battle over, our resources are much depleted, particularly the spells of myself and Scintilla. We decide to rest in the orc's room. It is an uneventful period, and we restart our explorations after recovering our spell slots once more. 'Which way shall we venture back down the corridor?', asks Wendel.
'Why don't we go through the other door?', we ask.
'What door?' The door opposite the entrance to the orc's chamber is pointed out to our ever-observant rogue. 'Oh, I never noticed that.'
On hearing this, the priest sighs 'I'm glad nothing came along during his watch'.
She made a good point, 'but' I enquire, 'how would we have known?'
After checking to make sure no leprechauns had made off with any of our equipment whilst the rogue was on watch, and with the mystery of the suddenly-appearing door solved, we continue with our exploration.