Hi folks. As you may have noticed, I missed yesterdays’
post. While inexcusable, I am still
looking for a commitment to writing that I can live with, and yesterday was …
uh … an experiment. It has nothing what
so ever with me falling off the wagon and playing Xenoblade all day. Road to recovery, man, road to recovery. Anyway, I’m coming up short for blogging
ideas again, so I thought I would ruminate on the events of today’s 3.5 game.
First the background. The DM is running a custom 3.5 world, one
that draws heavily from internet sources like Giant In the Playground Forums
among others. For the most part it has
worked, but today a terrible and tragic event happened. One of the PCs died. I will tell you all what happened, but
remember: it was tragic, so try hard not to laugh (*snicker*).
We’d taken on a mission to help
an apprentice Druid get into his circle.
He has to scout, and potentially stop, a Sorcerer who is creating
Spellwarped Spiders. They are not
intensely dangerous, but the strength draining poison is a bitch. Needless to say, we approached the old
abandoned church with extreme, perhaps overmuch, caution.
We approached the windows on the
side, finding them much too narrow even for the gnome wizard in the group to
squeeze through, but we couldn’t see into them easily. They were high off the ground and we spent
way too long working out how to look inside, pyramid the weight, and so
on. Then we remembered that the Druid we
were helping, who was here with us, was an elf, or more accurately
half-elf. Devil is in the details. I’m the burly 17 strength warblade; sure I’ll
boost him up, as he weighs next to nothing.
He looks inside.
“Dur! I can’t see much. Cast Light!”
Everything within is now aware of
us being there. Did I mention that the
DM was NPC playing the Druid? We’re
rethinking helping him now.
The sorcerer (she) had stakes
with dead Kobold bodies breeding the spiders, and as we approached the stakes
they burst out into swarms of baby spellwarp spiders. Ew! Excessive
use of fire cleared the stakes for us, and we advanced on the front door,
knowing full well that many more dangerous things could be waiting for us
within.
Getting inside was no big
challenge on the first day. There are
only two front doors and no other means of entrance, with a stone roof and no
cellar of any sort. We pushed on the
doors, but found them webbed. Use of
torches lit from the still burning stakes cleared that obstacle. We entered the church, with all but me
looking at the ceiling for Webspinners attack.
I was the only one looking forward.
They attacked, but from the sides.
Curses! Although we had a bit of
fear here, we destroyed the spiders with just a minor application of my
Warblade skills. It pays to make your
saves versus webs!
Then we were left with a
challenge. All prepared light spells
were used, and we saw a shadow flit up into the rafters, but no means to put
light up there. We argued for a while,
batting about ideas while the shadow watched.
No one had any great interest in walking forward into a very obvious
trap. After a great deal of debate, we
left to rememorize spells. With four
casters and a warrior in the group, this was a highly desired response.
We returned the next day, finding
that church doors were closed again, but the stakes were merely
extinguished. Breeding the baby spiders
was going to take time. Forcing the door
was again no great feat, but no sooner did the Gnome wizard pass within than he
triggered a glyph of necromantic paralysis.
It would have worn off in four rounds, but the sorcerer had called a
large Spellwarped spider in to the guard the interior. Knowing he was seconds from death, I charged,
falling victim to the sickness aura that was now around him. Though the allies crowded in to help, let’s
be fair, I’m the only effective warrior in the group. The battle only took so long because I kept
missing, but I got him in the end. But
not before he poisoned me.
The poison, which we knew of going
in but had yet to find a countermeasure for, forces two saving throws per bite,
one immediately, and one a minute later.
Every failed saving throw risks 1d6 points of strength damage. Needless to say, with no means to defeating
the poison, I wasn’t staying around in a hostile church. I ran, moving now at 4 times normal
movement. Two of the saving throws
succeeded, but the other two cleared off 10 from my effective strength, causing
me to near face plant. Mending that strength
damage required 5 days of bedrest/travel, as we didn’t know what would be
safest with the warrior incapacitated.
We didn’t have a cleric, but we
had a witch, a part arcane divine character derived from a supplement that I
think is optimised for d20 modern. She
brought her own guide to game called Complete Witch. Anyway, in all of this she was doing healing
and summoning odd monsters (level 1) that disappeared in a round. Her healing skill was instrumental to
restoring my effective strength. When I
had recovered, we discussed again our options of leaving this place. We were only to scout, and stop if possible,
the experiments. We knew for certain of
the caster now because of the glyph; we decided to try out luck for a third time,
knowing that the sorcerer had had time to prepare.
Returning for one more look
around, we again discussed outside the church the safest way forward. The gnome, now kicking himself for not
thinking of it before, cast detect magic.
He found glyphs all around him, some up to 3rd spell level
and of what he could see arcane. This
was scary for 2nd level adventurers.
The warblade was unwilling to trigger those glyphs; I’m willing to die
in combat, but not from a paralysis glyph!
The Essentia caster was debating how he could rearrange his essentia to
keep him safe while triggering them. The
gnome despaired of his lack of dispel, which he couldn’t have dispelled faster
than the sorcerer could cast glyphs anyway.
The witch said we need to simply
charge in, and she argued that the DM wasn’t going to throw something
deliberately lethal at us. The DM
admonished her, and said that is called metagaming. We argued some more; I wanted the gnome to
try again the window and see about finding a stealthy way in. We debated again about the use of the local
trees to form a battering ram and form a new way in. The druid vacantly said “Dur!”
The witch has had enough, and was
sick of us arguing. We charged the
door. Feverish to avoid a stupid death
from her determination, and remembering the paralysis glyph that got the gnome,
I convinced her to tie her waist up and held the other end, waiting to pull her
back before she got eaten. She charged
the first glyph – paralyze. She waited
the 4 combat rounds for it to wear off, then without missing a beat, charged
the next glyph – paralyze again. She charges
forward again, taking a fire glyph full in the face. Undeterred, she gets to
the door, shaking off an unseen magical effect (which turns out to have been
Suggestion).
She gets to the door and gives it
a good wrench. It begins to move,
haltingly. She shakes off another unseen
magical effect. She takes another round
at the door, and the door begins to move.
Another magical trap (we thought) went off in her face, blinding her
with glitter dust. Still walking, I didn’t
want to simply wrench her back and shouted at her to follow the rope back to
us. The gnome and the Incarnate were
just laughing.
With the door now slightly ajar,
an Insectoid Kobold charged out. She was
the sorcerer, and with a couple of rounds casting spells common and obscure,
she attacked the witch with a solid 29 hit point punch. Shocking grasp was involved, as was a strange
spell that “merged arms;” apparently insectoids are a template that adds two
extra arms and they can have a spell fusing them together for extra
strength. Before anyone could react, the
sorcerer killed the witch in one shot.
The next round saw the Incarnate
fire his cross bow, the Gnome wizard cast his long prepare Buzzing Bees spell
to prevent her from casting spells (+10 to Concentration check DCs) while the Druid
did little else, and the Warblade did what he did so often – charge! The injuries that I sustained were a little
scary, but again I killed the enemy. Next
session we find out what we will do about the fallen ally.
Okay, so that is all of the
backstory. Now to the question, which I
suppose I have to visit tomorrow. Was it
my fault? Was there more I could do?
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