The Offensive Mage, and his Ninja Understudy
We're not exactly a Good-aligned party, and we tend to shoot first and ask questions later; I'm okay with this, for the most part, but every now and again I have to wonder about my companions.
We continue our investigations in to missing people and missing cargo, knowing that Ogres are behind some of it, at least, and press onwards. We follow one of the paths that are marked on the map we found on the ogres, leading us through the woods and towards the mountain where we believe the source of the problems lie. Breaking through the woods on the far side, at the foot of the mountain, we see a little way ahead of us what looks like a statue, standing in a ring of bones. Gimp, our Mage, casts Detect Magic, and senses several sources of magic coming from the ring and statue. As curious as we are, we cannot simply pass this by, but what dangers might we be facing?
Our Ninja has an idea. He pulls out his Bag of Tricks and delves in to it. Out comes a black bear, loyal to its master and ready to do what he commands. Elrohir commands it to 'stay', and then he walks carefully around the statue, taking care not to go near the ring, until he is on the opposite side of the statue to his bear. He then calls the bear to him, with a 'heel' command. Yes, that was his plan: let's walk an innocent animal through the potentially deadly area and see what happens. What happens is that the statue reveals itself to be a Clay Golem and the bear feels its berserk wrath, being squished almost as soon as it enters the ring of bones. The Ninja seems neither particularly surprised nor regretful about this, but simply happy that it was not him mashed to a pulp. I swear, he's been hanging around with a bad influence too long.
Nevertheless, we find ourselves facing a Clay Golem. Gimp recognises it and remembers from his studies that Clay Golems only feel the full force of weapons that are both made of adamantine and do bludgeoning damage, and that it was immune to nearly every offensive spell. This was good information to know. Even though we had no such weapons we were sure our Fighters could still damage the brute. Grot leapt in to attack and started trying to carve the Golem down to size. Our Archer fired arrow after arrow at it. Gimp conjured up yet another monster that would be slain within seconds of appearing. Even with all of this effort, the Golem was not quick to drop, and Grot's health was diminishing. Even worse, his wounds could not be healed normally, for reasons unknown. We needed some extra firepower, and quickly.
'I could easily add some more damage to this beast were it not immune to just about anything I could feasibly throw at it', Gimp opined. 'But wait! There is one spell that is in my repertoire and prepared for use that will never fail against spell-resistant creatures, and it has the added advantage of doing damage over a period of time, not just instantly. Perhaps you have heard of it, Golem of Clay? It goes by the name of Melf's Acid Arrow!' And with that, Gimp casts the spell, seeing the acidic arrow fly towards our enemy. 'A hit! A palpable hit! My only regret is that I failed to cast it to do maximum damage, a feat I can perform once a day. How do you like acid, Golem? Ha ha ha!'
'Um, Gimp? It doesn't seem to mind acid at all. In fact, some of the cracks that Grot has made are clearing up, almost as if it is being healed by the acid.'
'It... it can't be! But it seems you are right. And the acid will continue to heal it for for a little more time to come, such is the effect of the spell. It is a good thing I had the foresight not to maximise the spell.'
Nevertheless, despite Gimp finding another offensive spell that was detrimental to his allies we prevail over the Golem, with Grot's mighty blows splintering it in to smithereens. We rest for a while, wondering how to heal Grot's cursed wounds.
13th January 2006 at 11.10 am
Elrohir the Ninja tried to work out how to damage the Golem, once we found out it had DR 10/adamantine+bludgeoning. Even with drinking a potion of Bull's Strength his maximum damage output was 10 points of damage, as the construct was immune to critical hits or sneak attack damage. When he announced this mighty figure, the DM diplomatically choked on his drink in amusement.
13th January 2006 at 2.47 pm
So as I see it, not only was I screwed by fighting this thing... Gimp our most intelligent and powerful mage actually decided to heal the damned thing as well...
Cheers Gimp.
13th January 2006 at 5.28 pm
Well, he's only our 'most intelligent and powerful mage' in that he's our only mage. A 1st level kobold with a wand of Mage Hand would be more powerful and intelligent than Gimp.
But, yes, you have got the gist of how the fight went. And who said Barbarians are stupid?