Monday 28 May 2012

Something Different – Ruminations on Character Death

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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