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Player Characters:
Elias, Wood Elf Cleric, 403 pointsGarreth, Half-Orc Fighter, 464 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 464 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 458 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 469 points
Significant NPCs:
Ereluc, Drow male wizard
Liana, Drow female cleric
Illusory Drow female wizard
Faithful Hound (spell)
Xill Fighter
The Impresario, Duergar Arena Manager
We started in mid-combat again, with Zaber having just opened a trapped door and intruded on a drow family discussion. An invisible watchdog was barking away. Polly (who had See Invisible) asked whether the dog looked natural. I allowed a Perception + Magery check and told her it looked magical. Polly loosed 3 arrows at the dog, all of which missed or were dodged. (Actually it was immune to arrows, but I avoided making that too obvious.)
The dog charged Zaber and bit, but missed due to the skill cap of 9 on Move and Attack. The drow mom (who happened to be an illusion cast by the drow dad to double the number of parental voices yelling at his daughter in the family drama that the PCs so rudely interrupted), changed roles to combat decoy and started casting a (fake) missile spell. The younger drow female fast-drew a rapier and advanced cautiously. Her dad cast a buffing spell on her.
Zaber, still badly wounded from the trap, backed away from the magical dog. Polly tried putting three more arrows into the dog. The first two were dodged. The third time, the dog rolled a 17 on its dodge for an obvious critical failure, but the arrow went right through it, proving that something unusual was going on. Though Polly assumed ghost-dog rather than spell-dog, and started asking Elias for an Affect Spirits. Garreth fast-drew his katana and waited for a victim to come within range.
The dog resumed chasing Zaber, despite his invisibility. Its bit was accurate despite Move and Attack, but Zaber parried. I ruled that the parry didn't actually physically stop the force dog, just distracted it. This caused the dog to appear, and also to come in range of Garreth, who tried cutting it. He missed the dog, and also missed (invisible) Zaber in the same hex. Not knowing for sure where Zaber was, he tried a second strike, missed the hound again, and this time solidly connected with Zaber -- until Zaber's Bless decided that a Garreth-strength katana strike on top of the earlier trap damage would not be good, and caused him to dodge. Seépravir and Elias moved up.
The illusory mage kept growing some kind of illusory green missile spell. (She was never going to throw it, as that would ruin the illusion, just try to draw attacks away from the real drow.) The real drow wizard cast another buffing spell on his daughter, rolled a critical success, and gloated in Elvish. Seépravir cast Smoke to cut off visibility to and from the drow in the back, except for one clear corridor for Polly to shoot the male wizard.
Zaber fast-drew a potion of minor healing and drank it, but only healed a little bit. Polly loosed an arrow at the drow wizard, accurately, but he Blinked away and was no longer in her line of sight for subsequent shots. He then fired at Liana, the one with the rapier, but she had Reverse Missiles up, and the arrow came right back at Polly, who dodged it, as Liana whined to her dad about stealing her kills. Garreth readied the wineskin of healing potions, then dropped it on the floor, for later recovery by Zaber. The dog came after Garreth, who dodged. Elias tried casting Affect Spirits, but failed. Seépravir tried to Dispel Magic the dog, and used Luck when she didn't like the 12 she rolled, taking a 6 instead. That was enough to succeed, barely. (The wizard had good skill and Seépravir had a lot of spells on.) Zaber fast-drew and drank his second healing potion and got another unimpressive amount of healing, though it got him over 1/3 HP, so he was no longer slowed by his wounds.
Polly flew through the smoke until he found the illusory female drow with the glowing green missile spell on the end of her staff, and shot two arrows at her. The first one was "dodged", but the second was a critical hit, and caused the illusion to disappear. However, it's hard to tell a disappearing illusion from a successful Blink spell out of line of sight, so the players weren't really sure what happened. Garreth held his breath and flew through the smoke looking for enemies, but didn't find any. Zaber, behind the smoke, saw the younger female drow had run through the smoke and was heading south, away from the fight. Elias also ran through the smoke and failed to find any targets. Seépravir dropped the smoke, now that it was doing more harm than good. She then cast Great Haste on Zaber. (Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the players, the wizard had Blinked behind a door to another room of his apartment, and was back there casting more buff spells on himself.)
Zaber decided to fly to the drow female and eyestab her with the benefit of invisibility. Unfortunately for him, she heard him coming, and managed to parry. He thought he was in deep trouble. Polly came around the corner and fired an arrow at her, forgetting that she had Reverse Missile, and managed to dodge her own returning arrow. Garreth ran after the drow and tried Rapier Wit, yelling "your parents are dead!" This had no effect except to make her yell "good!" (It appears drow are horrible people.) With Garreth also on her tail, Liana the drow cleric yelled for help in Dwarvish ("Impresario, surface invaders to your northeast!") and then turned invisible. Elias ran in the general direction of the chase.
Just then, the male drow re-emerged from his apartment and fired some kind of force missile at Polly, which did some damage unaffected by DR. Trying to draw fire away from his daughter, he yelled various insults. Seépravir cast Great Haste on Elias. Zaber went for another stab on Liana, but she defended. Polly loosed an arrow at the male wizard, who Blinked away out of sight. She launched more arrows at no particular target, hoping to get lucky, to no avail. Garreth used his Blind Fighting ability to try to find an enemy, and heard that Liana was two hexes south. She managed to retreat and dodge his first attack, and then his second attack missed by a mile. (Clearly her retreat threw him off.)
Though invisible, Liana chose to keep yelling, choosing the hope of reinforcement over pure stealth. She yelled "Impresario great sir, invaders, come repel with your martial excellence. Show them duergar fury please. I think they killed my dad. So I speak with full authority of my House when I say we need them scourged." (Showing that not only PCs can ridiculously abuse the amount of speech you can fit into a free action during a one-second round.)
Zaber broke off pursuit and flew back to the wineskin of healing potions, grabbing it. Garreth stopped chasing and all-out defended. Liana kept running away invisibly, while yelling "Impressario you're our only hope. Without you the Bleak Theater is doomed. You must hold it for the glory of your Thane!" Elias cast Major Healing on Polly. Seépravir cast See Invisible on Garreth. Zaber drank some healing potion, then moved toward the fight, still carrying the wineskin of healing. Garreth hurled a sai in the general direction of the fleeing drow, and missed. Seépravir cast Invisibility on Zaber.
Garreth threw another sai at Liana, while flying two stories above the arena floor. This time, he hit, meaning the sai came back at him accurately. And he failed to dodge. This caused Liana to taunt "Impresario, you're missing the hilarity. Maybe your bouncers killed the smart ones." Then she cast Dispel Magic at Garreth, trying to remove his Flight, inflict serious falling damage, and take him out of the fight. Unfortunately for her, Seépravir's spells are hard to dispel, and Flight survived. (See Invisible, which was cast later with more other spells on and so a lower net skill level, went away.) But Liana appeared as she cast the spell, making that not matter. Meanwhile, a four-armed human-shaped insect holding four swords came out the door. Polly asked if that was The Impresario, but as far as she knew, The Impresario was a duergar not a bug-man.
Elias tried shield-rushing Liana, but she dodged. Seépravir Great Hasted Polly. Zaber tried the old invisible eyestab on Liana the drow for the second time. This time, she didn't hear him coming, which cost her a crippled eye and some brain damage, which knocked her unconscious. Zaber then backed away, not wanting to get chopped up by the bug man. Polly flew toward the bug, then asked if he had a shield. No shield, just four shortswords. She loosed an arrow, and the bug man decided he needed to be in a different plane of existence, and disappeared.
Garreth backed against a wall and tried to use his Blind Fighting to detect enemies. He failed to find any. The drow wizard came running around the corner and fired a missile at Zaber, doing some damage that DR didn't help against. He also delivered a brief monologue "Now you die you little surfacer human sneak thief scum. Nobody stabs my daughter and lives!" Zaber responded by putting on his Ring of Invisibility. Whispered to Polly to wait until after he did something before attacking. Polly waited. Garreth fast-drew the Magebane potion that he'd been carrying forever, deciding it was finally a good use for it. He threw it at the hex in front of the wizard. The wizard Blinked away, smugly getting out of the potion's area of effect, but failed to get out of Polly's line of sight. Polly then launched an arrow at his vitals. The wizard realized that the one-blocking-spell-per-turn limit meant that he had to dodge with his feet, like a farmer. Not really being the athletic type, he failed, and was stunned. The second arrow hit him right in the heart, fatally.
Zaber flew south, looking for more targets, and saw a huge invisible duergar right behind Garreth, preparing to backstab. Polly flew back and shot some arrows at the duergar, but he dodged and blocked them. Then he tried stabbing Garreth in the back, with a magic knife that would have bypassed all of Garreth's armor, except that Garreth's Bless spell decided that Garreth didn't need to be backstabbed right then, and caused the duergar to stumble and miss. With his cover blown, The Impresario stopped holding his tongue, and yelled "Get back here you Xill coward! This is why I don't hire extraplanar wussbags! You son of a lesser mushroom fertilizer!" in Undercommon. He then lowered his voice and said "I don't know how you dodged that, orc, but you die now." in Common.
Garreth spun around, tried Rapier Wit to call the Impresario an incapable weakling (which the Impresario just ignored, not even bothering to roll dice and pretend he might be affected), then launched a rapid strike. As he attacked he noticed the duergar was really blurry and hard to see. The duergar parried the first blow with the hilt of his knife, then dodged the second.
Elias charged forward. Zaber did too, and tried a (possibly suicidal) all-out attack to the eye. He rolled a 17, used Luck, and rolled a 5. The Impresario heard Zaber coming, but chose to dodge without retreating, saving his retreat for Garreth. He rolled a 15, failed to dodge, lost an eye, dropped his knife, and was stunned. His Blur effect went away, making him easier to hit. Polly shot him in the other eye, which still failed to kill him, but which broke his morale. The Impresario, now blind, yelled "Parley, I know everything!" Somehow both Garreth and Polly made their checks to resist Bloodlust, and let him live for interrogation.
Everyone looked for the Xill a bit longer, but he didn't come back. Zaber took the magic knife, and became blurry. The Impresario asked if the cleric could restore his eyes, pointing out that he was more useful if he could read and find things. Garreth said that wouldn't be needed in Cillamar, and he might even stand trial. The Impresario said that a fair trial by combat would require his eyes. Garreth explained the concept of surfacer trial. Trying again, The Impresario said "And you're going to steal the thrice-cursed blade?" Garreth explained that it was spoils of war, not stealing, but hearing the weapon's name, Zaber was suddenly less enthusiastic about playing with it. The duergar passed out, and his Enlarge went away. Elias cast Major Healing and Stop Bleeding to keep him from bleeding to death.
Zaber started looting The Impresario's office. He found arena ledgers. Mostly boring financial data, but they showed that Gora (the hobgoblin vampire who escaped them twice) was champion last year. Garreth finished off Liana, who'd annoyed him too much.
Elias cast Awaken on The Impresario, and then Seépravir cast Possession, to speed the interrogation process. He revealed that the arena was out of fighters, with most having being pulled back to Narborg and The Impresario being told by the Thane that he could defend against lowly surfacers with what troops he had left. Also that he would be executed if he failed to defend it. Gora's coffin was down in Narborg somewhere. The Impresario didn't know where Koborth's sword Scalemar was. The Xill had probably retreated to its plane, as extraplanar cowards tend to do when battle turns against them.
Returning to the drow apartment, Zaber found a fancy-looking rug, and a secret compartment in a bed, containing some gems and coins and a bearer note in Dwarven, payable by the Hall of the Mountain King. Polly started asking The Impresario about trivia like favorite arena fights. At some point he revealed that there was a surface dwarf prisoner in the Thane's apartment on this level. (This confused Polly, who thought all dwarves live underground, but it turns out that duergar consider anything less than 500' deep the surface.)
The group headed northwest to the Thane's arena apartment. It was unguarded, but there was an unconscious, chained, very thin dwarf on the floor. Garreth woke him up and gave him food and water. Elias followed that up with Major Healing, which was enough to get the dwarf talking while he ate. His name was Urgus, he was a cartographer, some drow stole his map, and he had been captured trying to recover it. He was also an enchanter, or had been before they put a ring on him that disabled his Magery. This piqued Garreth's interest. Garreth pulled the map out of the Bag of Holding and asked Urgus if that was the right one. He took it back and thanked them. Urgus mentioned that the Thane had some fancy clothes in this apartment.
Before leaving, Seépravir cast Seek Magic, then Seek Earth for gold, platinum, and silver. Seek Magic found a magic belt in the Thane's closet. There was other treasure there as well, like goblets with rubies, a snifter of booze, a couple of royal outfits, an iron box with etchings, and a ring. The other seek spells didn't find any other examples of those metals nearby; the nearest was southwest, presumably in Narborg. The PCs gathered up their treasure. Seépravir Entombed The Impresario in case they needed him again in the future. Then they returned to Cillamar, bringing Urgus along.
GM's Comments:
Giving Perception + Magery checks to detect that the drow dog was a magical spell rather than a real dog may have been a bit generous; Magery clearly says magic items only, not spells. On the other hand, the D&D Faithful Hound spell is pretty overpowered (you can't hurt it, except by dispelling it, but it can hurt you, badly), so it feels unfair to also make its nature too hard to detect.
Similarly, I allowed the Hound to be parried, even though an un-hurtable enemy might well be unblockable and un-parryable, because the spell didn't specifically say (well, there aren't exactly parries in D&D, but it didn't have any kind of "always hit" or "defender's AC is penalized" powers), and I didn't want to make it even more overpowered. And I decided it became visible when it attacked, like most invisible things, for the same reasons. (Though that also made it a better decoy, since those without See Invisible are less likely to attack invisible enemies.)
Both Polly and Garreth attacked Liana with ranged weapons, a total of 3 more times, after the first time Reverse Missiles sent one of Polly's arrows back at Polly. Both players are usually good at paying attention and tactics, so I found this hilarious. Of course Garreth has so much DR and so many HP that it didn't matter much.
What counts as an attack for invisibility purposes is always subject to GM judgement. I ruled that casting Dispel Magic with the intent of making a flying person crash to the ground was an attack. Other uses of the same spell would not be. It's magic; it doesn't have to make a whole lot of sense.
The Xill was a pretty lame opponent, because he had four shortswords and no shield. Three swords and one shield, or two swords and two shields, would have been better. However, his ability to flee to the ethereal plane and stay there kept him from being skewered by Polly for not having a shield.
Did you use Create Animal for Faithful Hound?
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