Slain by Elf

The party heads off to Undead Central, where we believe barely-alive bodies are being taken to have nefarious deeds performed upon their souls. We get to a waypoint and while we are deciding what to do next we notice a wagon heading our way. This wagon is in the middle of nowhere and looks just like the ones we have seen that are involved in this human trafficking, so we decide to ambush it. The first part went well: when the wagon stopped at the edge of a swamp I leapt down from a tree and subdued the driver without injury, asking questions first before killing anyone. That made a pleasant change. The next bit looked like it would be just as smooth. From what we were told by a frightened driver, there was only one foe in the back, with the load of paralysed bodies. Easy! Open the door, deal with chummy, and we can save the peasants and are also ready to infiltrate this operation.

We position ourselves around the back of the wagon, knowing that the fellow inside cannot open the door himself, and all point threatening weapons in that direction. Our Rogue opens the door and, as soon as he does, a point of light comes out, exploding in to a Fireball! On seeing that the Fireball's explosion misses our Mage he exclaims, 'Thank goodness for that!', apparently happy that it merely engulfed our Fighter, Rogue, Cleric—all standing outside the wagon—and me on top of the wagon. Cheers, buddy! Nevertheless, our Mage was certainly helpful: after he saw this Fireball, his keen instincts kicked in and he announced, 'I sniff a wizard'. Huh, do you think so?

The enemy Mage was right at the back of the open wagon, hiding behind the piles of just-alive, captive peasants, although he had just vaporised about half of them with his own Fireball that bled back in to the wagon a little. Our Cleric was not happy with this and wanted to start helping the poor chaps who were paralysed and in danger of losing their lives. Stay your hand, we urged him, for first we must dispose of the threat of this enemy Mage. Our Fighter bravely drew back his bow-string and let loose an arrow, fiercely confident in his ability to hit the enemy Mage, even though he had a lot of cover behind what were effectively human shields. His magical, flaming arrow shot in to the wagon, and hit with a deadly thunk! It was a shame that he hit one of the peasants instead of the wizard. Still, at least he managed to kill something in this fight. We must be thankful for the small things.

And, yes, we managed to defeat the enemy Mage without further loss of innocent life, and we also found on his body the Pearl of Power that we had lost the previous night. No sign of our Rings, though.

We went to a circus! Okay, so we were investigating something and were poking around a bit, but we also got time to watch a show and even bluffed our way behind the scenes, letting us sniff around inside to see if we could spot anything amiss. It was all jolly good fun.

Well, until we got back to our inn for the evening and found that we were collectively missing a Pearl of Power and two Rings of Protection. I thought circuses had enough rings already! Thieving bastards. The clowns scared the crap out of me as well.

I was playing Wise Greebo the Cleric, whom I have mentioned before, and was camping with the rest of my party overnight out in the wilderness. When I was sleeping happily, probably dreaming of being at one with Garl Glittergold, an Ankheg or two attacked. Everyone was woken by whoever happened to be on watch at the time and the Ankhegs were battled. It was a fairly straightfoward fight, and the one Ankheg who wasn't defeated was routed instead. Oh, but this was not enough for me, who obviously didn't want the threat to remain to the party. Or maybe I just didn't like being woken up. No, the Ankheg mustn't escape! So off I ran, in hot pursuit of the monster, the rest of the party still at the camp wondering what the Gnome was up to this time.

The problem with running off during a night-time encounter when one is awoken is that there is not really enough time to don one's full-plate armour. This meant I was quite vulnerable in just my undergarments and no armour out in the wilderness, chasing a creature quite a bit bigger and meaner than I was. Did I mention how wise Greebo was? I caught up with the monster and started fighting it, the others in the party now trying to catch up with me so that I didn't get myself killed, mostly because it's a pain trying to get someone resurrected. It turned out that the Ankheg was more of a fighter than me, the Cleric, which took me somewhat by surprise. Particularly when it grappled me and started to pull me under the ground.

What luck! The Barbarian, with traces of sorcery in her blood, had arrived at that moment. I was saved! One deft blow from the Barbarian's Greatsword would put that monster in its place and I would be the hero! Or something. However, the Barbarian had something else on her mind. Rather than attacking a creature in a Grapple, which therefore threatened no spaces nor had a Dexterity bonus to its Armour Class, she got worried that she might get attacked. Uh, okay. So instead of attacking the Ankheg, which was just about to submerge me, she stepped back and cast Shield. GUH. Yeah, this is the same person who later got my Monk killed by doing the same thing. At least he's consistent.

That wasn't the end of it, though. After finally thinking she was safe enough, the Barbarian attacked the Ankheg in a terribly, terribly brave effort to free me. And it was a critical hit! I was saved for sure. Now, the DM pointed out that as I was in a Grapple with the monster there was a 50% chance that the melee attack would hit the wrong person. Erk! Of course, it turned out that the attack hit me, killing me and making my little Gnome body easier for the Ankheg to swallow without all that struggling once it got underground. It took someone to point out to the DM that this miss chance only applied to ranged attacks, and that a melee attack can be directed at either party in the Grapple. Thinking about it for just a little bit too long, the Barbarian said that the attack was directed at the Ankheg and not me, thus killing the monster and allowing me to crawl out of its mandibles of doom. It was good to be alive! Again.

Stopping at a village for the night, on our travels to a town, our Mage, he of the great Intelligence, looks for an Inn. He pops in to one and asks, 'Do you serve alcohol?'

It takes a keen intellect to think of these things.

Our Fighter failed his crucial saving throw against Mummy Rot again, rolling a natural 1. Meeting a Harpy later on, on our travels, gave him another chance to fail some saving throws, as he rolled below 4 for both his own saving throw and that for his mount against the Harpy's Charming singing. We went in to Initiative at that point, and the Fighter stared Fate right in the eye by rolling a D4 alongside his D20 roll for Initiative. The D4 came up with a 4, the D20 a 3.

Yeah, you really shouldn't challenge Fate like that.

The party woke up in the morning with the Fighter gaining one point back to his Con from the mysterious disease (as we know nothing in-game about Mummies and Mummy Rot), only to fail his Saving Throw, rolling a natural 1, to lose 3 Con and 3 Cha. Oops. As such, we decide to hurry to the big town we are due to visit, so that we can find a temple that can cure him before he risks any abilities dropping any further, particularly as he was then on 3 Cha total. Gah! We rush past some deserted farms, not having time to investigate, knowing that the journey itself will take all day, and get to within an hour of the town.

It's then that our Cleric asks whether he would have cast Cure Disease and Restoration on the Fighter in the morning, as it would be in-character, not knowing about Mummy Rot, &c. Hmm, good point. We head back in time briefly to the morning, cast the spells, and the Fighter perks up back to normal. Huzzah! Right, time jumps back to being an hour away from the big town and we start to head on. 'Uh, hang on', says I, 'if the Fighter is okay now, we wouldn't have hurried to the town, as we think he is cured, right?' Right. Okay, so now we skip from early evening again back to mid-morning, and we investigate the farms. It could only have been more like an episode of Star Trek if we had met Joan Collins.

Writing of high Wisdom characters inevitably reminds me my Gnome Cleric, Greebo (character sheet), as a Cleric's main ability score is Wisdom, for spellcasting, and so are normally the wisest members of a party. In particular, I am reminded of the time when Greebo the Wise happened upon a block of stones set in to a wall.

Most of the party didn't want to mess around with them, as the stones were about ten-feet off the ground, albeit with some scaffolding around them for access, and had indecipherable markings on them. 'Fie on you', said I as Greebo, or something like that, and climbed up to take a closer look, with another member of the party as chaperone. On inspection, it appeared that the stones could be pushed in to the wall, where they would then slide back out to the normal position. I found this to be interesting, so tried pushing various stones to see what would happen. In pushing one of the stones, I found myself having to dodge some darts that shot out of holes from the each side of the set of stones. Being incredibly wise, I decided that if bad things could happen when stones were pushed then they must be protecting something good from happening if the right stones were pushed. Genius.

I pushed another stone, and the water of the small stream running out from a hole beneath the stones, which I haven't mentioned yet because it was inconsequential up to that point, began gushing out and the water level in the cave system rose quickly. Being ever so wise I realised the threat this caused to the party (but not, for example, the threat that I caused to the party), so I tried to stop the water from drowning everyone by pushing more stones. This had me dodging fire that shot out from the sides and hanging on as a strong wind tried to blow myself and my companion off the scaffolding. Not panicking at all, I thought that maybe it needed two stones to be pushed at once to get a good effect, so I did that.

I turned to stone.

Oh well. Did I mention how wise Greebo was? Luckily, my party killed a monster sporting a stone-to-flesh wand not too far from where what was now a commemorative statue to Greebo could be found. Even more luckily, they decided to come back and use it on me.

As you may know, Monks generally are very wise, as their Wisdom affects some of their Monk abilities. Unfortunately, I don't play high-Wisdom characters very well. You see, we found the villagers that had been missing, and they were sadly all paralysed and not well-looked after and all piled up on top of each other in a room full of decaying mess. In the corner of the room was a keg with a tap. I wondered what was in the keg, so decanted a little in to my hand, where it appeared to be a thick, black liquid without much of an odour. When asked to identify it with Spellcraft our mage refused, saying 'No bleeding way', as he didn't want to taste it. The Rogue and Cleric both said I would be stupid to taste it, as it was sitting in a room of paralysed people, with the Rogue being particularly outspoken about it. But I wanted to know what it was! So I tasted just a tiny bit of it.

And became paralysed.

Luckily, it was only for a few rounds, so I didn't have to hear the Rogue say 'I told you so' for too long while I was rigid and motionless. Still, at least we worked out what was in the keg.

My Monk was on form last night, able to do anything he wanted! Unfortunately, it didn't include any fighting. Instead, I rolled a natural 20 on a Spot check to see something that was probably DC 15 (and I have a +19 Spot Check), and then another natural 20 on a Gather Information check to find out that the Bard who gave us some useful information probably doesn't exist. Just when I thought my Monk was trying his hardest for too menial tasks, I rolled another natural 20 when trying to get some vital plot information from a main character, which has helped us out. I guess my Monk was psyched up from reaching 9th level after getting Mummy Rot last week. However, I won't be the least bit surprised when we next go in to battle and I roll a 1 on Initiative. And all my attack rolls.

(This one goes back several years, when we were still playing AD&D. My character was an Elf Fighter.)

Our party was infiltrating an underground lair and was trying to get through without being killed too much. One of the rooms we blundered in to was a cloakroom of sorts, although it did actually have quite a few cloaks hanging up. As the bad guys obviously wore these cloaks, my character had the clever idea of plucking some of the cloaks off the rack and wearing them, so that we could sneak around without being spotted as intruders so easily. Well, even if it didn't happen to be an idea worthy of genius, at least it wouldn't do any harm to wear some black cloaks, right? Right?

My Elf went over to the rack to get herself a cloak to wear. Unfortunately, she didn't so much wear a cloak as get one forcibly worn on her, as a Cloaker was hiding in the rack. My Elf was enveloped and incapacitated, and the only thing the others in the party could do was try to kill the Cloaker, but this just had half the damage being done bleed through to to my Elf. Yeah, she died just before the cloaker did. I'm not sure, but just as my spirit was rising above my body I think I saw the others in the party take a nervous look at the cloak rack before deciding that my idea wasn't clever enough to warrant another try.