PREVIOUS EXCERPT: #17

Excerpt #18

After being rebuffed by the Celestials (because Balcoth refused to be suckered into a binding Geas to keep Omit out of trouble, something even Omit advised against), the players found themselves back in the streets of Sigil. Really stumped for options now, they reluctantly opt for wasting more of the Dom's valuable time - the Dom had refunded their 2000 gp bribe to the functionary (explaining this was simply a measure to prevent Dom Arod from being spammed dozens of times per day with requests that were clearly beneath him - the price of being famous), and had been as helpful as possible, but they saw little choice but to get his help in transporting them through some other means. Since that was the only convenient way he knew to get them to the Prime, so the players changed their destination: they decided to head to the Elemental Plane of Earth to return the Stone of Elemental Summoning to Garom-arush-arush-arom-arush, the Elemental Lord. He had told them that he would be very greatful when they did, and they had gotten the impression that once they reached his home plane, they could simply call his name and he would find them. So Dom Arod graciously cast Planeshift and took them to the Elemental Plane of Earth (only the Prime Material Plane was barred to all extradimensional teleportation).

The Elemental Plane of Earth has no sky. It is an endless underground - something difficult to understand for individuals inexperienced in planar transits. Amidst the Platonic "prototypes" for every kind of natural dirt and rock formation that exists elsewhere in the many planes, there were of course many networks of caverns and tunnels that could be navigated by those who knew the way. We of course, did not, and inconveniently, calling the name of the Elemental Lord drew no response that we could tell. Somewhat daunted, we used the powerful magic Stone to summon a local Earth Elemental of moderate stature, who warned that we were very far from our destination, but who knew of, and was able to describe our contact's home in sufficient detail for the unduly patient Dom Arod to teleport us there. Once we arrived in the colossal cavern and were assured that it was the right place, we gave the Dom our leave, assuring him that if we needed to get to another plane, Rhaek's deity could grant him the appropriate clerical spell (once again, we would have tried this right away, were the Prime Material Plane not protected from such modes of transportation).

We were in an EXTREMELY large underground space, but after walking for a few minutes we found the opening of a smaller very-large-cavern which was notable in that the walls were composed entirely of diamond. A mass of white diamond, not carved but simply grown in the desired form. And as the characters entered, feeling already very tiny, a form with two arms and a head (or at least a vertical protuberance featuring a mouthlike aperture) arose from the floor, 75 feet tall and with a voice the rumbled with even more jet-engine-like force and volume than when we had previously encountered the Earth Elemental Garom-arush-arom-arom-arush, which is of course who this massive being of diamond was.

We did spend a little time explaining our journey to the Elemental Lord (who it turned out was a being of local deity status, with extremely wide ranging powers on its home plane). That was actually the end of the week which I started at Excerpt #16. And so a new week dawned:

There is a sharp disagreement about this factoid, drawn down very predictable lines. GM feels that the players have too much wealth relative to the Dungeon Masters' Guide's suggested guidelines for characters of this level, and that he is teetering on the brink of turning into "Monty Haul" campaign, where the profluence of treasure makes it too easy for players to max-out their defenses or blow away challenging encounters with expensive charge-based items. On the other hand, the players see it as very few of their fights dropping treasure, including surprising amounts of Demons, whose equipment all disappears unless, like Bizmatorak's [now Balcoth's] Ring, it was procured here on the prime material plane, as well as treasureless undead and large monsters, and dragons which always carefully fight us far from their treasure hordes, and even retreating (in 100% unpreventable ways) before we can finish them off, allowing them to return and prevent us from resting later. Further, the players complain of the increased cost of various items that are considered essentials in most games (Cloak of Resistance), and the reduced sell values of items (50% of book value for most items, 80% for items for which there is a stronger market, such as ability-score-enhancements and enchanted weapons and armor), even though the book clearly states that masterwork and magic weapons sell for full value, and we have certainly never found any "Used Magic" shops selling discounted gear. Regardless, nobody was happy about the mummy's attempts to destroy Aaron Crash's gear (GM, because the players stopped it from reaching the furnace, which was the only plausible way for it to destroy the magic gear; and the players, because the mummy succeeded in destroying 2000 gp worth of the NON-magic gear, and also for the principle of the thing).

Moving on - albeit, not very far...

Honestly, there was probably much more argument than that, but by now even you readers must be polarized and growing tired of it, so I'll move this report along.

And so, eventually, we got down to the serious business of roleplaying. It was difficult to determine why, but Balcoth had noticed that both Dom Arod and now the Elemental Lord, Garom-arush-arush-arom eyed his hammer (the one he acquired from the tomb in the dwarven kingdom), and this seemed to be the time to learn why.

SCENE MISSING (something about all attackers focusing on Azheron, and allegations of malicious design behind the "Gauth room" where Verian's last character bought it)...

And so, GM took Balcoth aside into another room to privately discuss the old magic hammer and its secret important purpose. In this case, GM had drastically underestimated the impact that his warnings (about the risky nature of the knowledge) would have on Balcoth. Intended to be little more than flavor text - simply a small point the players could chose either to build upon (by roleplaying a little) or to ignore, depending on their mood, it unfortunately played upon Balcoth's concerns (which had been building for some time as a cumulative response to many small combat adjustments, annoying NPCs and other stimuli). After a relatively long period (where the other players entertained themselves by sitting around and rehashing old complaints without having to contend with GM's "guidance"), they returned.

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens.

And so, after MUCH argument and near-ZERO progress, we broke off for the week. Balcoth kept his information a carefully guarded secret (MUCH more carefully guarded than GM had hoped or in any way anticipated). In any case, GM strongly encouraged the players to decide where they want to go, or what they want to do now, reminding them again that he is open to all sorts of different things - he'll provide encounters and adventure hooks, all we have to do is TAKE one, or choose and objective of our own... as long as we decide to do SOMETHING.

Follow this link back to my Blog if you want to see or post comments on this post.
And if you like what you see, please VOTE for my site on the webcomics list button (on the navbar below).

Excerpt #19

This was a thrilling week where we accomplished so much! ...So much... Let's jump right into it: we left off in the parlor of Elemental Lord Garom-arush-arom-arom-arush, on the Elemental Plane of Earth.

Though nobody saw anything particularly wrong with this idea, neither were they too enthusiastic about it. The lack of a really concrete objective may have contributed, but the biggest hurdle was probably the fact that in order to gather information on such unsavory individuals, and to track them down, the party would likely have to operate out of Sigil. And dealing with NPCs in Sigil had (somehow) become about as popular as syphilis, as far as the players were concerned. After reminding Balcoth that Dom Arod had sworn to take care of any dwarves remaining in the old mines, there were no further specific agendas proposed, so the talk moved instead to destinations. The players all preferred to return to the Prime Material Plane (the M-class planet from which they originated), but could not agree on the destination.

With the note completed, and entrusted to the Elemental Lord to transmit, we were finally free of the last vestiges of our old obligations. Free to do whatever we wanted. To simply choose where we want to go, or what we want to do, whereupon GM would construct adventures in that direction.

Nothing happens.

Balcoth recounted a brief history of our campaign. In truth, we have done so much over time, and been accosted by SO MANY bounty hunters from across the universe that nobody (except probably GM) can pinpoint exactly when we pissed off whatever powerful demon placed the bounty on our party (and has been increasing it to the point that Balcoth's head alone is worth 25000 gold). In fact, Balcoth is the only remaining party member from that time, since Omit's (the player's) character from the time of the bounty retired, to be replaced by Omit (the character, except that his pre-nerf, pre-respecification abilities, numbers and even base stats were completely different from the way he is now).

Obviously, GM was doing a fine job at encouraging trust amongst the party. Meanwhile, Balcoth had no intention of sharing any more than whatever he had already shared with Omit.

Having finally given out this one piece of information, Balcoth clammed up about it, but at least now his insistance on brevity regarding the note made far more sense. Since we were STILL lacking in direction, with nobody willing to suggest any course of action (or at least, not seriously enough to try and convince or coerce the others into going along with it) we packed up for this week, with GM again beseeching us to put thought into where we would go, so as not to waste ANOTHER week sitting around and talking (or not talking, as far as in-character dialogue was concerned).

But before we left, Azheron made reference to an old comic or story, reminding us that we were at least trying to roleplay such concepts as in-character knowledge and trust.

Follow this link back to my Blog if you want to see or post comments on this post.
And if you like what you see, please VOTE for my site on the webcomics list button (on the navbar below).

Excerpt #20

The usual moans from all around. The same reception GM gets everytime he announces a new idea for, or actually anything about the Interrogation phase.

While GM doesn't really have an answer for that (he probably hates those Spell-Reflection buffs as much as or more than anybody else), he also feels that he doesn't need an answer; after all, it was a level 18 module, in the not-so-balanced 3.0 D&D rules, and he is sure that the players were far too reliant on magic spells and magic equipment, despite the fact that NO character of that level with their equipment dispelled had a chance against ORDINARY encounters of that level, and the compounding factor that half the encounters in those modules were utterly ludicrous by normal standards of difficulty.

Instantly, the session loses all direction for half-an-hour as the players crack open arcane tomes and start selling off what little loot they had attained and converting it into loot that is useful, losing 20-50% of the value of each item they sell, whilst all equipment of any dead character has already vaporized (unless somebody wanted a specific item enough to trade their own stuff for it, in which case their old stuff would poof instead). One comment did stand out, towards the end of the marketeering when, trying to get us back on track, GM asked Balcoth a question and got an altogether unexpected answer:

That particular statement strikes pretty much everyone as oddly funny. What Balcoth meant, of course, was that he needed the money to finance a series of equipment upgrades. He had made the judgement that he couldn't make himself any tougher (or that any further increase in armor class would be exponentially more expensive, and that there was no way to further improve his damage reduction via equipment), and thus he had changed directions and invested in rounding out his character with improved killing ability. With his new Strength enhancing gear and after increasing the power of his magic Adamantine dwarven waraxe, enemies were no less likely to run away from him and attack the weaker party members, but at least it would be harder for them to ignore him completely. A LOT harder. Anyhow, the elephant-related laughter soon died down.

Azheron had zipped out to the kitchen to get something to drink, and GM had surreptitiously followed along while the others debated the politics of revenge. Nobody liked the guards in the port city of Fang (who all acquainted Balcoth with the local custom of calling all Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings "shorties", and two of whom tried to extort the party for illegal bribes), and on top of that, a local crime-boss who was supposed to help us in our investigations had BUTT USELESS moron goons who tried to charge us retarded fees to enter his club to meet with him. And when stupid bouncer tried to PHYSICALLY stop us (particularly the "shorty" in full Adamantine Plate armor and armed to the teeth), Balcoth generously knocked him out with non-lethal damage instead of flaying him. Well, asshole crime-boss actually sided with his moron minion, withdrew his help (even though he knew we were there at the behest of King Grandular, whom he had many dealings with), and we ended up having to leave town. For all that, some might still think Omit's diabolical schemes and machinations were a little extreme. Anyhow, Azheron returned to his seat (and GM soon after).

Since Omit's plan to overthrow the rulers of Fang (and to exact retribution on some dicks who annoyed us about a year ago in real time) was somewhat far-fetched, and more importantly, would require a fundamental shift in campaign style towards more of a political intrigue, serious roleplaying (and thus less demon-smashing), and since Balcoth deemed the information he had received to be too dangerous to share, the only other option that had been put forward was Verian's suggestion to hunt down some of the many bounty hunters which were after Balcoth. We still wanted to return to the Prime Material Plane, but we decided that on our way, we should set our sights on the only famous evil bounty hunter we knew of: Redbeard.

The penetent Djinn transported us to the Astral Plane, where we stood in the subjective gravity of a three-dimensional field of nothingness, the others on lookout as Verian's character, Rhaek, worked his magic. Sadly, being a Mystic Theurge, Rhaek was a very flexible but not very potent spellcaster, and his lack of focus on any single casting stat meant that his save DCs were not very tough, and not having detailed knowledge of Redbeard, let alone any personal item of his, the Scrying attempts both failed. He cast Divination once more to determine where Redbeard would be the next day, but the answer was still the Astral Plane, so the players gave up the search and commanded the Dao to take them to the City of Doors: Sigil. Everybody's favorite extraplanar metropolis. Now, it should be noted that Planeshift is... well, it is not the most accurate of spells. In fact, it may literally be the least accurate spell in the PHB, since it always misses the target area of a given plane of existence by a random distance ranging from a few miles to some 300 miles away. This time, however, it caused a somewhat heated debate on planar geography (and yes, there is actually a Planar Handbook which describes (in varying degrees of detail the "standard" D&D cosmos.)

After a lot of puzzling over a rather bizarre artist's conception of the plane, then abandoning that in favor of the text description (which was thankfully far more precise), it was decided that the disk was in fact infinite in area, and although we had no way to determine the thickness of the infinite platter atop the infinite pillar, and thus whether or not it fell within the error radius of the Planeshift spell, GM agreed that it was a little TOO asinine (in other words, a vastly larger inconvenience even than that he had originally intended) to be able to arrive beneath the disk via Planeshift, and that if such a thing were possible, Sigil would probably be a far less popular nexus for interplanar trade. And so a mild retraction occured, and we instead arrived in a much more convenient location and were able to reach the city.

Whether intentionally or not, GM rapidly forgot to tell Verian the number of "buffs" and the highest level spell or spell-like ability available to each NPC who spoke, as he unleashed his usual "roleplaying" assaults, targetted, as always, on the most vulnerable target - Balcoth.

To make a short story of an interesting encounter that would be much less interesting to readers who don't know the full campaign history, we met a Hound Archon in the streets of Sigil who recognized Balcoth. It turned out that it was the same being that we rescued in one of our first adventures - then it had been a Lantern Archon, but it had since been "promoted" in the Celestial order, and was now much more capable of repaying us for the help. Unfortunately, there was one predictable stumbling block:

This question answers itself instantly in everyone's mind. Everyone sort of looks at GM... because is there's one person who Omit would try to screw over (in the game) it would be GM. And by extension, there is no possibility in anyone's mind that Omit would help GM in any way to screw over the rest of the party. That solves that problem pretty much.

Even the other players are in shock this time; the polite Celestial who owed his freedom to Balcoth had to be to best (and least likely to screw us) contact we were ever likely to find in Sigil, and apart from the usual anti-Omit biggotry, he wasn't even being an annoying ass. GM decided there was nothing else he could do to smooth this along, and so in the interest of us EVER getting back to our own world, the Hound Archon (who had at least seemed a little uncertain about his biggotry) relented, and led us to a portal. This was not the one in the Celestial-controlled part of the city, but another one, which he assured us led to the Kingdom of Grandular. Balcoth was on the verge of balking at this - he really didn't want to go to those lands for some reason, but the rest of the party prevailed upon him because they wanted so overwhelmingly to get out of this roleplaying hellhole and back to the Prime Material plane, where most NPCs could still be made to respect them out of fear, and where the inns weren't run by mentally retarded musically-inclined ogres.

We arrived in what turned out to be a major trading city (primarily because it featured a portal to Sigil). We were also confronted immediately by some guards (although they may have been tipped off by a lookout), who told us that we were needed for questioning, though we were assured that we were not accused of any crime. As you must expect by now we were EXTREMELY resistant to tis stupidity, and thus allowed Balcoth to do most of the talking while we looked for options, but eventually we went with them rather than start killing guards. We had just gotten back, and didn't want to start out by being kicked out of a city.

Apparently Balcoth has discovered a third category of comparison; the simile (using "like" or "as"), the metaphor, and now the accusation.

Follow this link back to my Blog if you want to see or post comments on this post.
And if you like what you see, please VOTE for my site on the webcomics list button (on the navbar below).

Excerpt #21

Although Azheron had doubtless intended this question to have a bit of a punitive edge (forcing GM to do what he had forced us, and by us I mean mostly Balcoth, to do many many times), GM approached with great relish the opportunity to demonstrate a good retelling (with his own spin). The following is just the short version from my notes - his account was somewhat better and more detailed:

GM ran through some changes that Balcoth proposed the previous week which didn't make the last report. He had suggested that two new magic items be made available on the market: a Scabbard which bestowed the power to deal +1d3 fire or cold damage per strike on the weapon upon drawing for 10 rounds, and a Helm that would grant a +1 Insight Bonus to armor class. GM liked the Scabbard, though he'd have to consider what to price it at, but he did not like the Helm idea, because Insight bonuses are rare for non-psionic characters (which was sort of the point of it) and the "Head" magic item slot was not typically an location for Armor Class items. Balcoth's other suggestion was actually several possible ways of calculating the maximum extent to which a character could use the Power Attack feat. Somewhat confusingly, GM accepted the entire array of possibilities, even though it was somewhat contradictory and Balcoth had only intended for him to choose a single method. In essence, this lifted all restrictions that GM had placed on the use of Power Attack, without addressing the nerf to damage when Power Attacking with two-handed weapons.

As the traveller flags down the players, the rolling of their eyes is nearly audible. Verian's character, Rhaek (who, based on his prestige class is not only a wizard, but also a cleric worshipping the god Olidamara), carries in his backpack a box of different holy symbols so that he can pretend to be a priest of the most popular religion wherever he goes) is wearing a holy symbol of Pelor at the moment. Olidamara is God of Trickery, Mischief and Luck, and surely takes no offense at such good-hearted chicanery (in fact, the deity probably finds it amusing).

By assuring the rider that Rhaek, a "humble servent of Pelor" was indeed tirelessly trying to convert his fellows to the "true faith", Verian got rid of him, making some unflattering comment about the sungod when the guy was out of earshot. After a day of travel, and not too many NPCs, all the rest being not too annoying, the party turned off the road, moved some distance from it and camped out. The area was a fairly barren flat plains, so there was no good cover available. We figured out the watch order, but an attack was quite inevitable, since we hadn't had a fight in weeks of real-time NOR had we had a fight since Verian's new character was introduced (normally GM baptises any new character with an immediate "random" encounter).

Everyone passes. But everyone but Balcoth (who was one guard, and is thus armed, armored and standing) was still prone after being so rudely awakened, and everyone but Omit (who has evasion and was thus unscathed by the breath-weapon attack) was already down a bunch of hit points from the blast of acid. Just, not down as many hit points as GM wanted... [Mean Avg. value for 12d6 = 42]

In actuality, there was some confusion relating to that last breath-weapon attack; originally GM thought he could target Azheron and still hit another character because he momentarily forgot to take Azheron's altitude into account. He had already determined the damage when we realized the error, and he was forced to decide who he wanted to hurt more. In the end, he chose Balcoth because then he could move wherever he wanted afterwards, whereas to hit Azheron the Dragon would have to use up its move action just to position itself for the attack.

Its a straightforward question; if the sturdy dwarf wishes to wield his +2 Adamantine Waraxe in both hands (allowing him to put his full strength into every blow), the shortsword (which he uses for two-weapon fighting to shred lower-AC foes, and for the Luckblade's reroll and saving throw bonuses) has to go somewhere... But something very subtle in the way GM had asked disquieted Balcoth.

Balcoth is really torn now, because as much as he is worried that GM will somehow try to F*** him over if he leaves his 22060 gp sword unprotected for a second, he knows for certain (from his point of view) that whatever he does GM will screw him over with the dragon's movement, kiting him like there's no tomorrow, and with the way he hears Azheron complaining about the Spell Resistance, and with Verian's new character having cast approximately ZERO damage spells (Balcoth notices things like that), he made the difficult choice that killing the dragon was the priority. Balcoth chose to move up to the dragon first, THEN dropped the sword and made ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that he was standing with his foot on the blade. By his math, his attack missed, but GM surprised him by notifying him that he had hit it; apparently all those "Oh SH**" earlier were some Armor Class buffs being Dispelled. That inflicted some damage, but then Azheron got another Scorching Ray spell past the SR.

Anyhow, after a lot of hard work, the players did enough damage that the dragon decided its hit points were too low, and escaped. It simply took off, flying away at top non-combat speed (which is about twice as fast as combat speed, but must be in a straight line and allows no dodge-based defenses), moving far faster than the party could hope to match. Now, when I say "the players" in this case, I mean mostly Azheron and Omit, although Balcoth had gotten in a couple of decent hits, and Verian had run around the entire fight like a chicken with his head cut off trying to keep everyone alive without, say, the ability to do any decent combat healing. Now Verian started casting slow-acting but very efficient Vigor-heals (from the Complete Divine handbook).

GM compares his noted with Omits on what single-use and charge-based items he used during the fight, which tends to annoy Omit a little, even though he keeps pretty good records. In this case, he used very little (except for those expensive Fire-arrows).

Follow this link back to my Blog if you want to see or post comments on this post.
And if you like what you see, please VOTE for my site on the webcomics list button (on the navbar below).

Excerpt #22

GM made clear that he never intended his ruling (which we probably shouldn't be debating since he backed down in the face of protest... and yet the very fact that he contemplated it still bothers Omit) to affect those things - that it was intended more to counteract the speed-related benefits of various spells and magic items. After several rounds of the usual back-and-forth, comparing Hasted movement of players against the speed of high-level monsters, and in particular, debating the percentage of monsters the party might face which (under the ruling) could NEVER be escaped under any circumstances even in our current teleportation-free environment. One problem with this is that, apparently, this percentage varies greatly based on whether you are considering ALL enemies of appropriate Challenge Rating, or only the more effective ones, and is affected greatly by whether or not you accept the assumption that a GM (or more specifically our GM) would use anything other the most "effective" monsters - in other words, layer upon layer of subjectives and assumptions colliding.

[You will forgive a little *SNIP*]

There is general laughter, not shared by GM.

Anyhow, I can't record all the arguments we have, and though I often leave out the most petty of them, I do try to include a good cross-section to give the readers some insight into things. So however it happened, just before we really got down to business, GM "accidentally" referred to Azheron's small blue-skinned, winged female character as a faerie. Again.

Nobody rolls.

Regardless, Omit shoots off two images.

Azheron Fireballs the dragon, but fails to penetrate it's Spell Resistance (which is high enough to give all Azheron's and Verian's spells about a 50% failure chance against it).

At this point, the dragon fly/leaps over to Omit, trips him, and using Improved Trip for the free attack, scores a critical hit on him for 45 damage. Acting next, Omit stands up, which causes him to suffer another 35 damage from its attack of opportunity, then he moves away and uses a healing potion. Azheron fires off a casting of Scorching Ray, and his roll penetrates the dragon's Spell Resistance, but then...

Which in fact, he does. Azheron's warmage, Rikkon, is a 'non-memorizing' caster, and can thus use any spell on her spell-list (which in the warmage's case is exclusively damage-dealing spells, but a massive variety thereof) in any of her available daily spell slots, decided at the time of casting. Verian's character Rhaek, by contrast, memorizes few damage-spells, and most of them are Scorching Ray...

And so, as Balcoth tries to grab the dragon's attention, Verian casts Greater Blinking on himself (since it appears that having a 4th level or higher defensive buff is a prerequisite for him to do anything useful), and it's back to the dragon's turn already. Dragon moves one square past Omit on the battlemap, making it less convenient for Balcoth to charge it. Although it is already looking ahead to plan its next move, it would be quite happy to stay put and let Balcoth attack it properly next turn if its chosen victim, Omit, were to remain within its own full-attack range. For now though, it attempts to trip Omit, who (using his prodigious Dexterity for his side of the opposed roll) managed to keep his footing.

Unfortunately, while one can defend against a Trip using Str OR Dex, whichever is higher, offensive trips can only use Strength, and so Omit's attempt to counter-trip a larger, quadrupedal monster with far-greater strength predictably failed - which is why he had initially passed on the idea.

[Another friend, not part of the game, has swung by to watch for a bit, and observes: ]

Normally under these circumstances, somebody would respond "Honor equals Dumb", but every once in a while the players decide to err on the side of caution, rather than further antagonizing GM.

But getting back on track, Balcoth charges the dragon, though he suffers an attack of opportunity for 22 damage because he must pass through squares threatened by its long reach.

Instead of the Orb, Azheron opts for a spell with no to-hit roll (thus, not affected by the illusions of the Mirror Image spell), and hits the dragon with an Empowered Magic Missile for 27 damage.

Omit, finding himself NOT-tripped at the beginning of his turn, uses his superior speed to move very far and fast away from the dragon, landing (coincidentally) on the far side of Balcoth for [relative] safety. The dragon (paying little heed to the other adventurers along the way) dutifuly pursues, an Balcoth strikes it for 11 damage in passing, with his own attack-of-opportunity.

Verian, who only carries his Luckblade for the saving throw bonuses and NOT for the +2 pointy-end, normally doesn't like to dirty his hands thusly (knowing how utterly feeble his attacks are) but after goading Omit into the free-but-doomed counter-trip attempt, it would be hypocritical not to try. Rather than targetting the real dragon (which he couldn't possibly hit), he lucked out and got the last remaining image (which would have been difficult, but not impossible, for him to miss). Omit, who actually could not make an attack of opportunity since he is holding a bow and not a melee weapon, was then tripped and subsequently hit on the ground for 23 damage. On his action, he gets up, provoking ANOTHER attack of opportunity from the dragon but this time he lucks out and it misses.

Omit's level tone and poker face portray nothing; of course, double digits could mean 50 hit points (which is not doing too badly at all) as easily as it could 11 (which would be literally death's door with a dragon pursuing you back and forth across the map, going for the kill). This does bring up the rather delicate topic of hit points and disclosure...

But, with all my notes, I need to speed this up a bit, with a brief...

Everyone is too shocked to be relieved.

[Verian had put on all the speed he could, hoping that if the Lightning Bolt failed he would be able to chase on his next action and at least get in range for a parting Magic Missile (a spell with a range of 400+40/caster level), but after the Dragon moved its 600 feet, he finally succombed to the "law of averages" and failed the Spell Resistance check. There was now ABSOLUTELY no way the players could do any more as the Green monster flew into the pre-dawn darkness. In fact that last long-range spell was an extremely dubious affair, if we were to take vision range into account...]

[For a couple weeks now, Balcoth had been flipping through arcane tomes, looking for an appropriate mount for a warrior of his abilities. Most of this research involved the monstrous manual; for a time, he was focused on a relatively gruesome (but the book specifically said it was trainable) flying creature called a Spider-Eater. Much of its attraction (other than being a fast flying mount and not quite as easily slain as a horse) was that its terrifying appearance would frighten away "townspeople"-type NPCs, who would otherwise be engaged in a combination of begging and unwanted solicitation whenever we entered town (often mixed with ill-advised blackmail, where they grossly misjudged our fear of their threats, and where the only thing that actually prevented their immediate and inescapable deaths was our Good alignment). Balcoth was rather fond of the fact that Spider-Eaters would gladly lay their eggs in peoples heads, and became a little wistful when he envisioned using that as a threat. However, his ambition turned away from that particular monster because, firstly, he was concerned that the wrong kind of NPCs (guards mostly) would take undue issue with his mount, despite any assurances on his part that it was "house-trained" only to lay eggs in people if he commanded it to. Secondly, he found something else which appeared much less uncivilized, and...]

Now truth be told, it is unlikely that Balcoth can match GM’s own degree of loathing for many commercials, and when new ones come on he can’t help but note (almost daily) that “girls get really crappy toys [compared to boys’]”. It isn’t our fault that Mattel advertises both their male and female product lines during clearly masculine programming such as Justice League Unlimited. However, GM found it hard to pass up this opportunity to share that loathing.

The party had an interesting problem now. Although Azheron had a great deal of blasting power left, Verian (who of course, is not a full cleric) having used all his efficient Vigor-type heal spells between combats, AND cast a number of less efficient Cure spells due to the rigors of combat, was abysmally low on healing magic after repairing the damage from this second dragon attack. The party, therefore, still needed an uninterrupted rest before being ready for any more serious battles, but the dragon had established a pattern, and none of the heroes had any doubt of its swift return that same night, after it healed up once more in its lair. So the party’s choices were (as they saw things) either to camp out and await another dragon attack, including another surprise-round-breath-weapon attack (which was actually quite dangerous for the party’s fragile spellcasters), or to attempt to hunt down the dragon and confront it on their own terms (which would both deny it the surprise round, and hopefully allow the players to “buff” a little beforehand to give them the edge they so sorely needed). After discussing various alternatives (Balcoth had an abundance of plans to lay a trap using unoccupied tents as bait - unfortunately, we have had little success with such plans in the past, and eventually we all agreed that against a dragon’s superior senses it would fare no better), the party began heading in the direction of the dragon’s flight to try and catch it in its lair. Verian cast an Alarm spell on the clearing before we set out, so that if it was disturbed (say by the dragon’s return) he would know. A dragon’s range is quite impressive, so some discussion arose as to what we would more than likely encounter along the way.

Anyhow, as we followed along the side of the road which was heading in roughly the same direction as the dragon, when we spotted a caravan approaching from the other direction, our first thought was thus “how could we avoid it.”

GM said nothing, but he seemed so enthusiastic about this plan that we just had to go with it. And so it started off just as Verian said (although Azheron was using his Invisibility Ring as usual). The response was a little bit different than expected. A well-dressed but rather burly individual (and by burly, I mean a 9 foot tall ogre, who was muscular even for an ogre) rode up to answer Omit. We always make Omit do the talking whenever possible because of his high Charisma (double-digit!) and more importantly his mountain of diplomatic and social skills.

At this point we roll initiative. Omit, (who usually automatically wins the initiative unless we are fighting an Air Elemental or a being of similar agility) shouting to the innocent people in the caravan to get clear, fires a volley of arrows into the Ogre, who shrugs off the damage. GM, in laying out the caravan on the battlemap, has gone with his usual adage “More scenery is always better”, in this case placing non-combat NPCs all over the bleedin’ place. A more cynical person might think they were there to prevent Azheron from using Area-of-effect spells... Another enemy hidden amidst the carts acted, a wizard firing some low-grade damage spell at Verian.

Verian Hastes the party, then Balcoth looses his hovering shield, uses a little expertise to up his armor class, and begins to battle the Ogre. It rapidly becomes apparent that this enemy, while perhaps a formidable warrior in its own right, but being giant-kin, Balcoth gets +4 AC against it, and so it has little chance against Balcoth’s already impressive defensive style. But it does activate its Cloak of Displacement, giving it a powerful defense of his own (50% miss chance) against most attacks. From another cart, a cleric casts some buff on the ogre, who appears to be the leader of their little group. Omit readies against spellcasting. For the enemy wizard’s turn, GM begins lining up spells...

Perhaps soured by that comment, GM finally has the wizard cast Cloudkill (possibly from a scroll). Azheron is well above its range, and Verian with his feet 20’ off the ground, is precariously skirting the edge (the cloud is 20 feet high, but the description specifically states that it sinks, clinging to the ground), but Omit had descended to line up his Fear cone and is caught, with Balcoth, in the nasty green Constitution-draining cloud.

They each make their saves for half, but still suffer a little Constitution damage, and of course they need to move out of the cloud or suffer its effects again next turn. For his part, Azheron descends at an angle, away from the enemies, and using distance to narrow the angle he is able to get the cart-obscured wizard into view without himself entering the noxious cloud. His character, Rikkon, summons her most powerful air-magic to draw upon and magnify the bioelectricity of the Ogre and the wizard, creating a powerful Arc of Lightning between them. The hulking Ogre is seared, but gritting his teeth he hardly slows down, where by contrast, the wagon is filled with smoke from the blackened corpse within.

The fight is over reasonably quickly, despite Omit's vociferous complaints that GM's "random" movement of the Feared non-combattants had them wandering back into the middle of the fray, which Omit felt was wholly inapropriate behavior for magically panicked peasants. Verian, though hovering safely above the Cloudkill spell, is effectively immobilized, because he doesn’t want to go down, and his Boots of Levitation provide no horizontal movement at all, only vertical. Low on divine spells anyway, he contents himself with hurling Magic Missiles at the cleric. Azheron as well has decided that these foes are beneath our notice, and divides some of his lower level castings amongst the ogre (which really did have a lot of hit points) and the cleric. Omit and Balcoth took got themselves out of the cloud and took care of the rest easily. The cleric did at one point cast Command, trying to enchant Azheron to briefly attack his allies. He easily shrugged off the will save though, as the cleric was also something of a bargain-bin spellcaster. Azheron: What did he say?
Omit: [Who had heard perfectly well] He said “Please hit me harder! ...NO! Don’t shove your axe in there!”

He died soon after, leaving the ogre alone, and knowing it was outmatched.

GM looks a little stunned, as one can imagine the Ogre would look hearing this revelation. His surrender ploy sounds as though it has been thwarted simply by a little out-of-the-box thinking (or in this case, the outside of the box itself). But the next thing stunned him (and nearly everybody else) far far more...

And so the Ogre headed back to the city, presumably never again to return to this backwards world. We’d look for the chest next session; for now, going throw the Ogre’s gear, we identified the potions as basic healing stuff, which Balcoth used...

And that is the tale of how Balcoth got his Bonus Roleplaying XP.

Follow this link back to my Blog if you want to see or post comments on this post.
And if you like what you see, please VOTE for my site on the webcomics list button (on the navbar below).

Excerpt #23

After a period of expansive blow-by-blow accounts, I think everyone has got the idea, so I'm going to try something a little different. I'm going to try and get back to the essence; just the good stuff (and less damage rolls), which should result in less work for me, but should also give you almost as many laughs in a lot less reading. At least, that's the plan.

[Balcoth, as we were getting ready to pack up at the end of last session, rather forcefully negotiated the purchase of two horses from the stunned merchants of the caravan. Although Balcoth's offer was more than fair (double book price), the caravan was unwilling to part with the mounts for their outriders, but eventually he managed to "guilt" them into selling, pointing again and again to how we had saved them from the violent rogues in their midst, and mentioning at least once the efforts that "our side" had gone to in the battle to avoid collateral damage. Though surely it was not the good dwarf's intention, the caravan master may have felt bullied into the transaction.]

[GM, able to see the situation from a different perspective is infinitely frustrated by the degree to which the players have taken their guesses and assumptions from a week ago and mentally converted them into facts. At this point, though, he just plain gives up on correcting the players' impressions.]

And that was probably the last use of THAT convention. Within minutes the players were back to debating courses of action, heavily couched in game terms. After a little discussion and much to GM's exasperation, the players decided that although there were other pressing concerns (mostly imminent dragon ambushes), the players were carrying a 50,000 gp Cloak of Displacement(Greater) from the ogre bounty hunter, plus some other saleable gear, and so they decided to head back to Synetra and go on a shopping spree. Not at all put off by the fact that they had so recently been kicked out of that same city, Verian got out his various wardrobe cases and switched from his usual 'roguish' clothes to his loose grey-hooded "generic cleric" robes, which fit overtop his usual ostentatiously patterned Cloak of the Arachnida. Azheron, of course, triggered his Ring of Invisibility with a simple act of will, allowing him to fly amongst us unnoticed (and making him a VERY nasty surprise for anyone fool enough to attack the party). Balcoth (as he has done many times before) borrowed Omit's Hat of Disguise: at first he thought he'd become an elf (NOBODY would suspect the gruff and mighty Balcoth of disguising himself as an elf), but that prospect rapidly grew unappealing to him, and so he went with a human "old man" appearance instead.

So adorned, the party got the rest of the way back to town without trouble, and they talked themselves in: a "priest of Pelor", an "old man", a gust of wind (which flew unseen and which would only start launching fireballs if negotiations failed, or if it were referred to as a faerie or pixie), and Omit (who was too skilled at the manipulation of truth and men to even bother with a disguise). When the guards focused some basic questions (surprise surprise) on Balcoth, he gave terse but acceptable replies. However, GM knew how "skilled" Balcoth was at the deceptive arts, such as changing his voice, and therefore did not want to let his disguise get off quite so easily.

GM: [Guard] "Perhaps it is just my ears, but I could swear your voice speaks of youth..."
Balcoth: [Strongly feels that GM is missing the mark here] GM, I'm a dwarf.
Verian: The average dwarf sounds like an old man.
Balcoth: I'm like 80 years old.

Finding it difficult to argue that point, GM let it go. Just once more we were stopped; this time by some peasants seeking Pelor's blessing for a sick old woman. And Verian, in his modest robes and wearing Pelor's symbol prominently on his amulet (his real holy symbol hung down his back on the very same chain) dismounted and followed them back to their hut, where he used the divine magic of his prayer-beads to cure her of disease, and used his multifaceted knowledge of religions to bluff his way through the appropriate Pelorite mumbo-jumbo to ease their minds. Then he got back on one of Balcoth's new horses and headed out with the others to the market, in order to sell off our blood-spattered loot.

[And so our loot-pawning-and-upgrading rampage is itself delayed by the prospect of possible safe rest. While GM steamed (silently cursing how, in his eyes, his campaign had degenerated into the "rest-every-five-feet" rhythm of an old SSI game), we found a good upscale inn with nightly fees in silver, and only a few copper per horse for stabling, and Balcoth, appreciating the service and reasonable prices, gave the stable boy a massive 2 silver-piece tip. This time, what shocked GM was not the generosity, but rather the disparity: the character Balcoth wouldn't give the slime off his boots to a beggar, and all the players complained no end at the converted dollar values of the fees demanded by outgoing enterprising poor people as would-be city guides... and yet here he was, tipping between $10 and $100 (depending on you assumptions in silver-to-dollar conversions) to some kid with food, shelter, and an easy job (by medieval standards).]

[GM attempted to highlight this percieved discrepancy and to play devil's advocate for the plight of the chronically poor (despite GM's own slightly more fiscally conservative leanings), while Balcoth espoused the perspective that he would rather reward useful members of society than the ones who have annoyed us so much in the past. But somehow, somewhere amongst these points, Balcoth was reminded of another action of the chronically downtrodden, leading to a highly unexpected tangent, as he proclaimed... ]

Anyhow, after spending a night of game time resting unmolested to replenish our spells, we headed out towards the market to cash in our spoils. GM allows us to purchase any standard DMG magic items as long as we are in a city with access to the interplanar marketplace of Sigil, and so he was mostly ignored as the players flipped through pages and tossed books around looking for upgrades. Balcoth quietly mathed out his upgrades, while Verian and Azheron borrowed money from Omit (who himself was always replacing scrolls and potions that he used, but always had cash left because he rarely purchased any permanent items for himself). Azheron (with a 5000 gp loan) upgraded Rikkon's Cloak of Charisma from a +4 to a +6, increasing her spells' save DCs and her number of daily castings, while Verian used his own share of the proceeds to add the Parrying property to his Masterwork Silver Spiked Gauntlet (which is technically a weapon), claiming that it had nothing to do with concerns GM had raised about that same power at the beginning of the session, and that Rhaek had purchased the gauntlet at character creation with this very upgrade in mind. He then borrowed 500 so that he could afford a scroll of Detect Scrying to add to his wizard spell list. This might have been a good investment, had he ever subsequently memorized it...

Balcoth quizzed Omit about extradimensional storage items, as he looked for a way to store large quantities of equipment and/or loot:

And no discussion of magical storage items would be complete without Azheron brining up another book or module which corroborates the existance of the mystical "beer-hat for potions item."

But soon enough we were back on the road, ditching out "disguises" and preparing for endless nights of multiple dragon attacks. After a day of travel, we camp out a ways from the road, but the first encounter (during Balcoth's watch) isn't quite the same. A lone horseman hails us.

Although his relaxed position and closed eyes indicated otherwise, there was enough life left in Azheron to give Verian the finger. Then the rider shed his illusory disguise, and revealed as a massive pincer-clawed Glabrezu demon (we fought one before), it cast a Quickened Mirror-Image spell and Powerword Stunned Rikkon, who was flying 20 feet up at the time.

And so Azheron might as well have gone back to sleep (not that he was asleep in the first place) as he was unable to act and defenseless for 5 rounds, which is a lot like 5 years in combat. Omit started mowing through the Glabrezu's protective illusions with a barrage of arrows, and Balcoth enlarged himself with a potion, stepping up to the muscular dog-faced bipedal demon which loomed over him with two bulky fists and two additional arms with massive crab-like pincers - more than 4 times his normal non-enlarged height and well-exceeding twenty times his usual dwarfy mass. Much as it would like to slaughter the hapless Mephling, the demon's bloodlust and pride could not resist the brazen foe who challenged it thusly. While Verian heroically spent one of his level 5 spells on personal protection, the Glabrezu (after a couple tries) tripped Balcoth and tried to stab him on the ground (with VERY limited success).

For the next four rounds, the battle continued as such: Balcoth stood up to the hulking monstrosity and they traded blows, neither inflicting all that much damage on the other (the Glabrezu, because of Balcoth's high armor class, and Balcoth because of the Glabrezu's okay AC, it's formidable damage reduction, and it's 3 daily Quickened castings of Mirror Image... actually Balcoth's own Dwarven Defender+Adamantite Damage Reduction was not too shabby either), while Omit's arm pumped furiously as he shredded the false images with arrows as fast as he could, trying to keep them down so that Balcoth could do damage, and Verian would occasionally cast Haste or Dispel some of the demon's non-Mirror Image buffs or something, none of which was impressing Balcoth much as he was effectively soloing a powerful melee opponent. That isn't to say that it was boring:

With Azheron back up and Omit's bow treated with the proper magical ointment allowing him to penetrate the demonic Damage-Reduction, the party's damage output doubled or tripled, and the Glabrezu was vainquished in relatively short order. It was already getting late, so after a brief round of traditional "ambushed at night" complaints from the players, we finished up for the week.

Follow this link back to my Blog if you want to see or post comments on this post.
And if you like what you see, please VOTE for my site on the webcomics list button (on the navbar below).

Excerpt #24

Soon, we got started...

[Backtracking a little; the previous session, the Glabrezu initially appeared in the guise of a lone rider. Rider implying a horse. Initially, it dismounted before dropping the illusion (and popping a Quickened Mirror Image), however, GM soon realized that, being a Huge creature (as opposed to large), even a particularly massive horse would be insufficient to survive the demon's crushing weight. So the horse was retroactively deleted; it wasn't a rider, more of a walker... There were some frivolous complaints at the time, but we really had more important things to worry about (like Powerword Stun, Reverse Gravity, and a four big powerful demon arms).]

We head on down the road, but (due to our rest being interrupted and resuming) we are now travelling late at night, and the patrol of highway guards we encounter treats us quite suspiciously, starting their questioning (as always) with Balcoth.

GM rewards Balcoth's good sense in using the pseudonym (Timo) which Omit generally reserves for people he doesn't want to deal with - not so much an XP reward, as the reward of forcing Omit to do the talking instead of him. The guards quiz Omit, who fakes his way through using his Knowledge[Nobility] skill to claim we work for a local Lord (but not local enough to easily check up on us). Because its a sad fact that simply explaining that we are dragon hunting (the truth) would be less likely to succeed.

We head off the road to find the ogre's treasure box. It is where he said, sitting on the bottom of a river (running water to throw off divinations and such); a small lead cubic box, containing 2000 gold and some cheap potions (as promised), although the "magic scrolls" he promised were just a bunch of junk manuscript. GM pointed out that the Ogre (though a good fighter) probably didn't know a scroll from a hole, and we could hardly say we were cheated. Then we set out upriver towards the fortress where the dragon was reputed to have moved in.

[Omit and Verian got into a strategy argument, Verian preferring the possibility of finding the dragon before it found us, allowing us to buff first and maybe even get a surprise round. Then all the player began debating with GM, about what constitutes "light" woods, since GM was currently populating the battle map with a very high concentration of trees in preparation for an ambush. He gave us some more DC 40-ish spot and listen checks so we could fail to detect our assailants, and then we rolled initiative.]

With a surprise round, a Gelugon and a Hamatula (there's lots to describe, but if you don't have the monstruous manual handy, just think "Ice Devil" and "Fire Devil") decloaked from what we can only presume were Potions of Invisibility. The Ice devil hit us with a Cone of Cold for 54 damage, and the Fire devil cast a 2-ray Scorching Ray at Verian, dealing another 29.5 damage to him... then we started the first round.

Omit fired off a couple arrows, rolling very good damage against the Fire devil, but still not penetrating its Damage Reduction by much. His bonuses are so high, we should probably let Omit attack WHILE the rest of us are rolling for initiative. But knowing that Verian had a hard time keeping his Demons and Devils straight, after attacking Omit (in character) shouted out:

In response to his arrows the Fire demon charged Omit but missed, and with a mere sidelong glance it fired a Quickened Scorching Ray spell, hitting Verian for the better part of 30 damage again. When Verian's turn came up, the Xeph Mystic Theurge cast Greater Invisibility, activated his racial burst-of-speed power, and ran 60 feet away, taking him clean off the map...

Azheron fires off an Acid Orb, inflicting some 30 damage on one of them, less their acid resistance (which translated to about 1/3). He was rewarded with another Cone of Cold. We often get into these pythagorean geometry debates about area spells and targets at different elevations, and as often happens, there is some confusion and/or disagreement about how many of the targets can be hit (which is further muddled by the difference between the mathmatical/true geometry of, say, a 60-foot cone which is defined as a cone 60 feet in length and 60 feet wide at the widest point, and the diagrams in the back of the book which map AoE areas onto battlemap squares, which often appear to leave inconvenient diagonal holes, and which don't take into account 3-dimensional target arrays).

Balcoth advances, drinking a potion of Enlarge Person (if you haven't noticed yet, these have worked their way into his repertoire as a necessity - not for all situations, but he buys enough at every town to ensure that he always has the option). Omit hits two more times, but after rolling max damage last time, he rolls minimum this round, and neither arrow inflicts a point of real damage. The Fire devil then Scorching Rays Azheron for twenty-some damage, and the Mephling (who was fortunate enough to have passed both Cone of Cold saves) activates the Ring of Invisibility and FLIES the HELL away.

So after the other players convince Balcoth to hang in there (or more accurately, they sway him just enough to keep him from immediately running, and let momentum take him the rest of the way), he tells Azheron:

[Azheron responds with frequent (and slightly heated) references to a lot of his previous characters, and to the ways in which they came to be "previous" characters.]

Omit uses a potion to Good-Align Balcoth's weapon so that he can inflict full damage on the devils, and he begins beating on them (and continues to do so from this point on). Then the Fire devil Scorching Rays him, with the two rays dealing 14 and 20 damage, respectively.

GM and Balcoth debate the point, which seems quite silly to Balcoth in this instance, though admittedly it is our normal convention that casters are aware of the relative success whenever they cast a spell (whether each target passed or failed their save, Spell Resistance, energy resistance etc...), and then there is the issue of "hit points as an abstract concept" and such. Omit and Balcoth keep battling the devils, though Balcoth is getting very concerned about his health levels, and Verian finally comes back, getting close enough to cass Mass Resist Elements[Cold] on them (and himself), largely negating the usefulness of the Ice Demon's Cone of Cold spell and several of its other powers. As soon as Verian does something at all useful, Balcoth attention falls back to Azheron, who has officially run so far off the board as to be considered out of combat.

Omit gets out a big potion and heals Balcoth for 33, and suddenly GM realizes that Balcoth had been very stressed, concealing how injured he was while trying to secretly signal Omit.

Had he been able to Cone of Cold just once more (another 50 damage, save for half) there was a good chance (in his eyes) that Balcoth could have been knocked down to negative hit points, allowing the devils to stomp over the other players, or at least force them to flee (abandoning Balcoth to die). But GM now realized that the cold resistance from Verian's spell had thwarted him, leaving the Ice Devil to fight the old fashion way, and thus having to deal with all Balcoth's considerable melee defenses. The players took this opportunity to complain about how "focused" and "engineered" the two devils were. As soon as GM let slip that he had swapped out one or more of the monsters' feats (trading the Fire devil's butt-useless Alertness feat for the one that let it cast Scorching Ray as a Quickened spell 3 times per day), accusations started flying wild.

From this point, the Devils had lost or used up their greatest weapons (Cone of Cold and Quickened Scorching Ray) and although their melee abilities were reasonable, the Ice devil even formidable, they had a difficult time dealing with Balcoth. Omit, as usual, deftly avoided any significant hand to hand attacks, with his armor class more than sufficient to deal with ranged attacks (even ranged TOUCH attacks) - and it helped that his Evasion ability and his high Reflex saves insured that he had taken no damage from the area attacks. And although Verian was forced to play "round-and-round-the-mulbery-bush" with the Fire devil, keeping a large ridge inbetween them as it tried to spot the tiny distorshions from invisible movement to pinpoint where he was, he was finally able to start casting "useful" spells such as haste. As such, they were able to bring the situation slowly under control, and once Balcoth slew the Fire devil, even though it was the weaker of the two, Verian started casting slower (but more efficient) heal-over-time spells, declaring:

Soon after, the Ice Devil tried to flee, but with our Hasted movement (and Verian even started using his minor attack spells) it was hunted down and finished.

And how could a gaming night be without the old standby, the "pegasus" discussion. I don't remember just how we got here, but I believe GM asked what provoked Balcoth's recent fascination with acquiring the mythical winged horse as a mount:

Follow this link back to my Blog if you want to see or post comments on this post.
And if you like what you see, please VOTE for my site on the webcomics list button (on the navbar below).

Excerpt #25

Predictably, as we started a new session, the players were still complaining about "AoE ambushes", and GM was complaining about the players' continuous complaining.

GM was already not thrilled with this portrayal. He was well know for making arcane casters who avoid the Evocation school of magic (which features virtually all the most common and generally best damage dealing spells) in favor of the more subtle arts. Typically, no matter what he does, his party members remain stuck on the fact that "That could have been a Fireball..."

By this point, GM was reeling after the continuous and repeated insinuations. Not only does he hate us using the 9th level spell "Time Stop" as a metaphor for the frequent enemy surprise rounds, but Balcoth defames the last fight in a manner which simultaneously implies that we have similarly 'ridiculous' fights all the time.

As usual, there was little chance of reaching an accord between GM and the players on the subject, so eventually we moved on.

And so the party (with the new substitution) progresses onward. As we approach the old fortress, it does indeed appear abandoned, though its outer walls are still fairly secure. Rikkon flies up high, invisible, to get the lay of the land.

Suddenly GM is overwhelmed by a strong urge to look up Otiluke's Resilient Sphere in the PhB, and he recognizes it instantly by the first line of text...

But after all our preparations, when we venture into the fort, we approach the tower and find that the dragon nestled below is not asleep...

Omit obviously doesn't think much of this method (as opposed to just telling GM his result), but he rolls, adds his level as normal, and shows GM the result.

In any case, Azheron and Verian (and thus their characters, Rikkon and Rhaek) now know that their opponent is a powerful one... relatively few things have spell resistance greater than 26, and that meant that Verian should avoid wasting his actions on offensive spells (Azheron doesn't have much choice - that's all his character does, and besides, it is vital to the war effort despite the fact that he is facing an effective spell failure chance of greater than 50% against this opponent).

Unfortunately, Umit lacked Omit's incredible dexterity (and additional stacking initiative bonuses), so the enemy easily went first, targetting Balcoth with a Silent Quickened Dispel Magic, and then blasting him and Omit with a Lightening Bolt, fired from the dark space beneath its hood.

Verian Hasted the party, which meant that both he and Azheron had cast spells, and thus the entire party was now visible. Balcoth used another potion (since the first had been dispelled), Omit cast Align Weapon on Balcoth's axe (fairly certain that the enemy was a powerful evil being), and the aforementioned evil being area-dispelled Balcoth and Omit (purging them of the Haste spell) and retreated around a large statue.

Balcoth hits it for 26 with his Good-Aligned Adamantine axe, but roughly 1/3 is warded away. It appeared that the opponent had demonic or devilish DR requiring silver or cold iron weapons... unfortunately, we had no way to tell which. The robed enemy regenerated a little and used a healing potion, which heals double on regenerating creatures (assuming they have suffered both real damage - in this case the Holy Smite - and subdual damage, such as from anything they DO regenerate from, such as the axe). Then Azheron hit him with a barrage from the Scorching Ray spell, which failed to penetrate his SR (leading Verian to remind Azheron of the spell Melf's Acid arrow, which is normally pretty weak, but which ignores Spell Resistance). We all agreed (including GM) that because it was such an excessive and flammable disguise, and also because it was cool, that although no damage was done, the fiery bolts would blast away the fabric in flaming tatters. What it revealed was in many ways the quintessential devil; although its body was roughly ogre-sized, it unfurled its huge wings, like a bipedal horned dragon. Balcoth switched weapons to his Urgosh (a double-weapon; Balcoth's has one end silver-plated, and the other end made of Cold-iron), leading Omit to cast Align Weapon once more. The Cornugon (the proper name for such a devil, though only Omit instantly recognized the genus at the time) struggled further through the magic web, which actually reduced moverment to a more significant degree than you would think, and being blind it wasn't able to do much except to down another potion. Soon enough it was Azheron's turn again.

Omit Holy Smites it, again, and it fails its save and is blinded, again, much to GM's delight. It chooses to use another healing potion. And although the side of the Urgosh Balcoth tried first (Cold Iron) didn't pan out against it's damage reduction, by this time the devil had to be getting pissed off... it had hardly done anything to anyone for the whole battle so far... So now that its disguise had been blown away, as soon as it un-blinded, it made a conscious decision to change the course of the battle.

Umit starts healing, Balcoth keeps beating on it (which starts working better, since by process of elimination he's now hitting it with the Silvered head of his Urgosh and inflicting full damage), and Verian and Azheron begin pumping the target full of Magic Missiles. But the fight has gotten serious for both sides, as the Cornugon responds with another powerful Fireball and a Quickened Lightning Bolt. Omit cast Heal on Balcoth, who was impressed by the Level 6 spell's healing power, even though GM had "nerfed" it from 10 HP/caster level down to 7 per level, WITHOUT most of its auxiliary status removal powers (if we want to remove Exhaustion or other such things, we could cast Heal for that purpose and NOT gain the HP).

Right about then, two other major changes occurred. First, Balcoth (who was used to hitting a blinded and entangled Cornugon) was now attacking it with its full armor class (that is, WITH its dexterity bonus, WITHOUT the +2 to hit for "attacking a foe who can't see you" and the -2 AC from being Entangled in the web). When he realized that a to-hit roll of 35 still missed, he considered alternative approaches, such as tripping the devil, or shouting obscenities as forcefully as he could manage. GM warned him that the former approach was "unlikely to succeed". The second point was that Verian (who had been failing a few too many of his spell saves) would have been significantly dead (not slightly dead) if not for the strong AoE protection offered by his Greater Blinking spell, and he felt the need to run about 14 map squares in a Hasted Burst of Speed (and that's WITH the 25% speed penalty from Blinking), which unfortunately put him well out of even Umit's prodigious healing range, but fortunately screwed the devil out of any possibility of finishing him off with its next action, thanks to a helpful terrain piece. Even flying, it couldn't get far enough or high enough to see a human-sized opponent hiding right behind the 20-foot wide, 20-foot high wall.

There were still some close calls to go around, but Azheron began trying to Disintegrate the enemy (literally), and though the first attempt failed, Umit healed Verian (who ran back into range) just in time for Azheron to Disintegrate the devil successfully for 86 damage, and for Balcoth to charge and stab it hard with the biting silver tip of his "anti-evil-outsider" custom Urgosh. Just as the Cornugon realized it was in true danger, it used a potion of invisibility, and Verian got his revenge by casting Invisibility Purge and using the last round of his burst of speed to chase it down, effectively operating as a laser-designator, revealing it to Azheron's arcane air-strikes.

The one thing that never changes; no matter what happens, everyone feels like they got the short end.

Follow this link back to my Blog if you want to see or post comments on this post.
And if you like what you see, please VOTE for my site on the webcomics list button (on the navbar below).

NEXT EXCERPT: #26

If you like this stuff and want to link to it, by all means, grab one of these buttons:

Please feel free to email me, I love feedback. Compliments inflate my ego. Criticism gives me something to think about. If you are offended, I will personally laugh at your message! Who knows, if you message me I might even respond.