Slain by Elf

We headed down in to the basement and started checking things out. Our Rogue went close to a pile of debris and was asked to make and failed a Spot check, in typical Rogue fashion. He called over to me, on the other side of the room doing my own investigating, and got me to come over to look for myself, as I have a better Spot check than he. 'Can you see anything?', asks the Rogue.

I make the roll and reply, 'Nope. Looks clear.' It's then that a Mummy jumps out of the debris, catching me by Surprise, as it hits and damages me. THANKS, BUDDY. Anything else you want me to look at? Does that ornate coffin in the corner look suspicious to you but you need a second opinion?

With being hit, I also got to make two saving throws, one to avoid being a-feared and the other to avoid the inevitable Mummy Rot it's carrying. Well, I write that I got to 'make' the saving rolls, what I mean is I got to roll them, as I end up paralysed with fear, and who knows about the disease? So there I am, paralysed in front of a Mummy. Probably feeling a bit guilty, the Rogue decides to pull me out the way of danger, but this let the Mummy get an Attack of Opportunity against me, as well as giving me the chance to fail another saving throw. Oh boy! Luckily, our Mage was on hand with a Scorching Ray or two to take quick care of the Mummy, so no one else need worry about becoming diseased.

Later on, a Wraith popped its head out of a wall to have an attack at us. He spotted five of us right next to him, which was odd as there were only three of the party there, the others being quite separate from us in another part of the room. Upon seeing this apparent cofusion in the monster, someone quipped that the Wraith must have been drinking to be seeing almost double. 'Yes', said the Cleric, 'spirits'. Ha bloody ha.

Our Rogue was having a tough time in combat. No, he wasn't being beaten up a lot, more the opposite. We were in a fight with some Mephits whilst crossing a 5-ft wide ice bridge, and the Mephits landed on either side of the bridge to each of us, making things difficult. Our Rogue tried to shoot them, and then stab them with his Rapier, and between shoddy dice rolling and the miss chance for concealment he managed to miss, miss, miss. The Mephits weren't hitting him back either. After a little while of this foppish dancing around, the Rogue decided to get his act together and actually do some damage to one of the critters, at which point he failed his balance check and slipped off the ice bridge in to the water. Duh.

I didn't have much luck in that fight either, as they shrugged off my fire attack (oops) and then I rolled a natural 1 on a concentration check to cast on the defensive, wasting the spell Shout that would have destroyed three of the wee monsters. Ah well. I had my fun later on, when we were in the final room and had an idea that the boss-man was following us on the way in. While the Barbarian was busy hacking away at an ice coffin and the Rogue was looting a long-dead body, I, with the worst Spot and Listen checks in the party, decided somebody should look back up the corridor to see if big bad guy was coming after us. After making a lucky high Listen check and thinking that whatever it was was just around the corner of the winding passageway, I cast a speculative Empowered Fireball down there. Hey, I had three Fireballs learnt, so I may as well use them when I can. One wail of intense pain later, and the Barbarian and Rogue hustled down the passageway to find a scorched boss-man to finish off in a couple of rounds. Huzzah for me!

Our reduced party ended up as three Humans: me as the Melvin the Wizard along with a Fighter(2)/Rogue(7) and a Barbarian mixed up with some prestige classes from a new splat book. I was looking forward to smacking some sense in to monsters with an empowered Fireball or two. No such luck in the first, introductory encounter, though. There were peasants intermingled with the monsters, and the others in my party thought it would be a faux-pas to kill any of them a few minutes after arriving in the village. Ah well.

However, one thing I wanted was a chance to try the Necromantic spell Magic Jar, and I got it. Magic Jar lets the caster leave his body and enter a 'magic jar', whereafter he can try to possess another creature, although the choice of creature is pretty much random. Nevertheless, it seemed like it could be useful (well, it should be for a 5th level spell). I didn't think it would be much good in a big fight with lots of enemies, but I thought it would be interesting to use as an infiltration spell, and in this case when we couldn't initially see what we were fighting.

I cast the spell and sensed a few strong characters and about a dozen weaker ones, and guessed that our party were the former and the enemies the weaker, so tried to possess a weaker one. By the end of the next round I found myself in the body of a water elemental, which had just jumped on to the deck of the ship we were on with some of its chums. Of course, they didn't know I wasn't their ally, so I smacked them up a bit while my party helped dispose of the others. Woo!

Mind you, our enraged Barbarian killed my host body in an attack of opportunity as I went to see what was attacking the underside of our boat, but that's okay; I returned to the magic jar and took over another enemy in the next round. There I found myself as a Triton, surrounded by three others, all beating the boat's bottom to shreds. I started to attack, and this weirdness was enough for them to decide they'd had enough, although they were sure that the boat was doomed anyway, and they nicked off. I returned to my body, happy with the first use of the Magic Jar spell. It was more helpful than casting fireball in a cramped space, at least.

When the DM's away, the players will, uh, play. Or something. We're missing our DM for a couple of weeks so we'll be playing a mini-adventure in the meantime. This calls for new characters; new 9th level characters, in fact.

I have chosen to play a Wizard, and so have created Melvin. It can be tricky building a high level character from scratch, so don't expect there to be much subtlety or originality in the design, particularly as I have made him an Evoker, as specialist in Evocation magic. Yes, this includes Fireballs and Lightning Bolts. Woo!

However, I have been keen to play a Necromancer at some point, so most of the spells that aren't Evocation spells are from the school of Necromancy, so that I can see how they play. I selected his feats to make his Evocation and Necromantic spells harder to avoid, and included the Empower Spell feat as the bonus wizard spell so that I could beef up my Fireballs instead of using Cone of Cold, seeing as we will be adventuring in Winter climates.

The equipment is mostly to increase his Intelligence, to make spells more potent, and Armour Class. The Metamagic Rod of Lesser Empowerment should give 3rd level or lower spells (i.e. Fireball and Lightning Bolt) a nice boost up to three times each day, as it lets me cast them as empowered without having to learn them as such.

Melvin the Wizard. Let's hope he lasts the first encounter.

Our party were outside of a mill, in the midst of defeating some ghouls and a couple of ghasts, along with a mage. We had peeked inside the mill and knew that there were more ghouls inside, and I had seen another mage hiding under a table near the back. One of the main front doors had opened, but the side door remained closed. The ghasts were defeated, the ghouls were defeated, and I had taken out the mage. Monks are good against mages, as monks have high saves across the board, and my monk has the Improved Grapple and Trip feats, which can help to prevent mages from casting effectively.

Nothing had come out of the open door, though. Now, I knew there was another mage inside, and my monk's high base speed, combined with a stupidly-high jump modifier, could get me to the other side of the room to combat him while the others took out the ghouls lying in wait. My plan, therefore, was to get to the mage quickly and let the others worry about everything else. Of course, I maybe should have paid more attention to what the group was talking about rather than thinking by myself. Apparently, they had decided to go to the side door and all go in at the same time. Ah well.

I hustled in through the door, hopped up on to a table that I was going to run across to avoid an attack of opportunity, and started heading down. At that point, I was stopped by the DM as some ghouls hiding on the high ceiling were readied to jump on whoever moved underneath them. Four ghouls jumped down on me, somewhat scuppering my plans. Luckily, all their attacks missed, but I was still surrounded. Plan B! Plan B! I tumbled through them, to avoid attacks of opportunity, and then launched myself upwards with a huge jump to plant my feet, which are comfy in some slippers of spider climb, on the wall some 20 feet up, or so. I also called out to the others to check the ceiling.

And then things started to go a little more wrong. A hidden ghast made itself known and tried to jump up to grab me. It didn't quite manage that, so it took damage when falling back down, but it got close enough to make me smell its stench. And, boy, do they smell. I failed my saving throw and ended up with -2 applied to just about all rolls I made, including attacks, damage, saves and skill checks. Great. The mage had also scurried from under the table and moved further to the back of the mill, whence he cast hailstorm at me. Ouch. He will pay for that.

I launched myself from the wall, tumbling to avoid some falling damage, and got to the mage. I then tried to trip him, as I get a free attack if I succeed, and opponents on the ground are easier to hit and provoke attacks when standing up. Except I was in a weakened state, I didn't manage it. Not only that, but he tripped me up in return. Blast. And then he had the audacity to cast Enervation on me, and I managed to fail my saving throw again. Now I have two negative levels, giving me -2 on some rolls and -10 hit points. Woo! And these negatives were cumulative with the ghast's stink, so I had -4 on most rolls. Still, I managed to trip him on my next turn, from prone even, and then I jumped up and finished him off, with a little help.

Ah yes, a little help. Just where were the others during this? Let me explain. Two of the other four had made their way around to the side door and tried to open it. But, no, it was firmly shut. Our fighter tried to barge it open and rolled really high on his strength check. But, no, the door didn't give way. I heard this bump from the inside, checked the door, and shouted that it was barred and nailed shut from the inside. Ah. So they started back around to the front door. But, being dwarves, didn't really move very quickly.

The cleric was near the front door and waited for the cautious mage to come up from the rear, and they encountered the four ghouls that jumped down from me. The cleric turned them, in to dust actually, and then the mage moved to the door to try to find me, having seen me dash in earlier. He couldn't see me, so cast Improved Invisibility to come and hunt for me. He found me at the back standing over the mage, and cast Magic Missile to finish the mage off.

It was about now that the others had got around to the front door. About time, really. The ghouls saw them and advanced, but this put them in a nice line for our mage to cast Lightning Bolt on them, which they didn't know because they couldn't see where he was. After that, there was one ghoul left and the ghast that had jumped at me earlier. The fighter and cleric took care of him, just as our Rogue got in to range to attack something. The rogue was not impressed. He had missed all of the fighting, spending it moving to the side door and then back around to the front. He was desperate to fight something. So he headed off to finish off the ghoul that was running away, down a spiral staircase.

You know when they say you should be careful what you wish for? Yeah, that applied to our rogue. As he moved forwards, four ghouls and a ghast, hidden in the ceiling and readied for someone to move under them, dropped down and surrounded him. Of course, I had been ambushed by the others and they hadn't seen the invisible mage, so the rogue was the first person to enter the room for them. Things had turned from the rogue being pissed off at not having anything to attack to being separated from everyone and threatened by five monsters. And still being pissed off. Some people are never happy.

Ah well, we finished them off and managed to heal everyone up, including all the negatives I was getting to my dice rolls. We lived to fight another day.

Just another day. We were being attacked by some zombies that were led by some boss man or other. It looked intimidating, as there was almost two dozen of them, but looks can be deceiving. Once we started attacking them we were relieved to find out that they were relatively low-level and easy to kill, although the numbers still required some sort of tactics to avoid being surrounded. The boss man was standing back to start with, but at some point he disappeared. Huh? I made a decent spot check and saw he changed in to something and flew up to the first floor of an adjacent building in the village we were in.

I kept an eye on him. I didn't really need to, as he flew closer and appeared quite close to us on the side of a building to cast a close-range spell on our group. Flying, eh? I noticed that he was wearing quite a nice cloak, which I thought may be the origin of his flying abilities, as he didn't seem the type to fly by himself. Yeah, that was going to be mine. I just needed to get it. But he was close, and I have good base speed as a monk and a stupidly-high jump check modifier, thanks in part to a Ring of Jumping +10. I sprang forward and leapt up! I managed to grab hold of him and started a grapple.

This chap wasn't too impressed by this, particularly as the rest of my group were dealing so effectively with his zombie troops. He wanted to escape. Bah, I was having none of that. I wanted to make sure that he wouldn't use the cloak to escape so, in the grapple, I pinned him and, in the pin, tried to get the cloak off him. It would be mighty difficult to use the cloak if he wasn't wearing it. Using my monk-fu, I managed to unsling it from his neck. Hurrah!

Now this bloke was getting mad, so he just let go of the building. I have to give him his dues though, as he managed to hold on up until then, even while being grappled and pinned. Still, the ground was heading up to me, but I wasn't worried. We hit the ground, just as I was able to twist myself, with a successful dexterity check, so that the bloke didn't crush me, which was nice. I was able to maintain the grapple and, as the rest of my party had killed off the zombies, they came to finish off this chap while he couldn't escape. A couple of them had to resist hitting me, but I was told that's because of the way grapples work. Hmm, there must be a misprint in my edition of the PHB.

All that was left to do was to see who would get the cloak. After whining and complaining and threatening to cry, I managed to get my grubby little mits on it. Hurrah! The cloak was mine. An identify spell by our mage in the morning let us now it was a Cloak of the Bat, which allows the user to hang from the ceiling, fly, and turn in to a bat, the last two abilities usable only for short periods of time at a go and only underground or at night. Woo-hoo!

While the rest of the party were busy try to get away from a giant spider or two, as well as avoiding their webs, my monk, with his super-spot skills, noticed something up in the trees. I'm guessing the DM made a Wisdom check for me so that I also knew it wasn't another spider. Whether he did or not, it didn't stop me from leaping up in to the trees to see what it was.

It turned out to be a body cocooned in webbing, a bit like some others we had rescued minutes beforehand. I was able to tell that this chap was much older, and deader, than the fellows we'd rescued, but that he was carrying a small chest with him. Hmm, and no one else knows about this, you say? He he he! Lots of loot for me. I was about to snag the chest away when I found myself surprised and surrounded by some giant spiders. Argh! Who would have thought there would be more of them? Not me, obviously.

I managed to avoid enough spider bites to escape death, but still had to take the evasive action of falling out of the tree. I had the presence of mind, and reflexes, to pull the chest with me, though. As luck would have it, the rest of my party had just about caught up with me and manged to see me plummet from about 30 feet up, as well as seeing a chest hit the ground near to me. Even luckier, they grabbed hold of me, and the chest, and dragged me through a weakened area of the web. Yes, this was lucky, because I was now under the effects of several spider bites, all sapping my much-needed Strength down to an ability score of 1. Oops.

Anyway, once at a safe distance we rested for a while, healing my Strength as best as our Cleric could with the spells he had at the time, and we checked out what was in the chest. One of the objects turned out to be a Daern's Instant Fortress, which our Cleric managed to find the words to activate and use. Once the fortress had sprung up, the DM explained the size and nature of the fortress, and told us that it was made of adamantium. Most of us reflected on how that meant it gave us a nice resting place at night, and no longer would badgers be able to surprise us without armour on and give us a good kicking.

But not our mage. Oh no. He exclaimed excitedly, 'Adamantium?! This stuff is really hard. We should chip bits off and make weapons out of it!'

The party stayed overnight at an inn somewhere along our travels. In the morning, we were approached by a lone sorcerer. She wanted to join our party, for reasons I forget, but our suspicious mage wasn't too keen on this idea. In order to change his mind, the sorcerer cast some sample spells she could do to show how she could aid the party.

One of the spells she cast seemed to be Tongues, whereupon the sorcerer spoke to us in fluent Dwarvish. Hearing this, our mage was quite taken aback, as he is not high enough level yet to cast that spell (which serves him right for multiclassing to a couple of levels of fighter, really). He blurted out, 'She can speak Dwarvish! I can't do that!'

Yes, that's our Dwarf Mage, in an all-Dwarf party, letting us know his limits.

Touched By Death, my monk, was originally called something else. What it was I forget now, which shows how long it lasted, but why did it change? Well, in the first couple of weeks our group was returning to town after a fight and encountered an old woman on the road. Sat on our horses some distance away, we quizzed who she was and what she wanted. I was sceptical about her and told her to begone, at which point two things happened: she started to transform; and our mage charged in on his horse to attack her.

It turned out that she was a Hag of some description, pretty powerful too. We found out later that she was turning to leave as we were sitting at a distance with ranged weapons and weren't being lured towards her. Except our mage charged her. Actually, he's a fighter/mage of sorts, so it isn't quite as dumb as it sounds. Nevertheless, bad things happened.

The Hag attacked the mage's horse and rent it asunder, leaving the mage thirty feet away from the rest of us and standing close to the Hag. He shouted for help and, as it was my turn in the initiative order, I felt some strange sense of responsibility. Stupid monk's Lawful alignment. I went forward to help him. So there we were, the mage and myself, standing next to a Hag. What does the mage do next?

He backs off and casts Shield on himself. Thanks, chum.

He charges in, gets in to trouble, I go in to assist, and he buggers off. I am left standing next to a Hag that is angry at us, and I end up being killed very quickly. This does not please me. I am glad to say that the rest of the party took some pity on me and got me resurrected, albeit with loss of experience points and a level, but to reflect this change to my character I changed his name. And I don't trust that damn mage any more.

Touched By Death is a Dwarf Monk. I chose a Dwarf because most of the others in the group had chosen to be Dwarves, and so we decided to make an all-Dwarf party. This also helped my stats a bit, as they were a bit flat to start with. I ended up with 14 in all abilities but Charisma, which had a score of 9.

My first level choice of feat was Improved Grapple for the Monk feat, ignoring Stunning Fist for now. This means I won't be able to get Stunning Fist for many a level, but I thought Improved Grapple would make combat more interesting. I also chose Combat Expertise, as my feat for a first level character, so that I could take other Improved... feats later on, as well as being able to improve my AC.

My idea was that I would choose feats that I normally don't pick, just to see what the character would play like and to give me different options in combat.

Touched By Death's character sheet.