What Wand of Fireballs?
After the shenanigans of the Mage stealing some spellbooks from the Rogue, which the Rogue was going to give him anyway, the magic item power struggle was escalated. Our Rogue was heard to mumble something about wanting to take some ranks in Use Magical Device so that he could then use wands and scrolls, thus giving him a good reason to keep some of these items himself as 'back-ups', should something terrible happen to our Mage. And most of us are fairly sure that that last bit wasn't said in hope.
It was fortuitous then that we fought the self-destructing wizard, as the Rogue and I found ourselves out of sight of our Mage, with a Wand of Fireballs tantalisingly in front of us, held in a charred hand. With a playful wink, the Rogue deftly plucked the Wand out of the dead wizard's hand and tucked it in to his clothing, claiming it as his own. It was only fair that he take the spoils of battle, as he had survived the explosion.
How could we have possibly forseen that, within an hour, the whole party would find ourselves in a fairly large room, facing Trolls who numbered double that of our party; Trolls who can only be killed with fire damage, regenerating otherwise. At this point our Rogue was, naturally, the furthest away from our Mage, and I could see he was having an internal ethical dilemma about whether he should have given up the Wand earlier.
Luckily, however, he didn't have to wrestle with his conscience too much, as an enemy spell caster took him out of the battle. Casting Maze on him, the Rogue was trapped in an extra-dimensional labyrinth, far from any harm that almost a dozen Trolls could pose. Well, it may have been lucky for him, but the rest of us were still surrounded by all of those Trolls, now with fewer targets to choose from.
If only we'd had a Wand of Fireballs to help us defeat them.
20th December 2004 at 8.22 pm
Its funny you should mention "that" wand. I had completely forgotten about it after the fight with the mage, that fireball explosion must have played havoc with my memory.
Sitting here in my little maze, I wonder just how I could have forgotten to give the mage the wand, oh yes I remember I was going to wait till night time and just let the mage take it anyway, that way he feels mighty clever about "tricking" me and I dont have to go through the tedious chore of saying "No it's not trapped, honest it's not" as I voluntarily hand over the wand.....