Paladins will be Paladins
We played some more Pathfinder yesterday, finishing up with the misty temple of Llamashtu.
So... the party was searching the misty temple for clues about how to get into the Hellforge, the temple misty because of a Guards and Wards spell that also hid all the doors which they also had to search for. In what looked like a dead-end room, Ash found one of the hidden doors, but when she tried to open it she set off a trap that made her paranoid that the rest of the party were trying to trick her into opening it so that she could be brainwashed into serving Llamashtu.
She responded by turning invisible and hiding in a corner. Everyone else failed their sense motive checks miserably and had no idea that she was acting unusual, let alone why.
At that point, the creepy shapeshifting creature that had been taunting them returned to complain about the peacock spirit or something, but before he could get more than two words out the Paladin lost his temper and drew his sword to attack... but then lost initiative. So the first thing that actually happened was that the creature cast Spiritual Weapon on June.
Then everyone jumped on him, or at least the Paladin (Zeddicus), Kaito and Elyssie. Because of the close quarters, Phoof and June were stuck in the room with Ash and now half a dozen summoned demons...
The creature was powerful and hard to hit, but not hard enough to hit for his regeneration to keep ahead of three melee types stabbing and/or punching him, and eventually he dissolved in a shower of sparks. They quickly finished off the demons, and all agreed that he probably wasn't dead, although there was some hope that he was a ghost or something and they'd banished him for long enough to finish up.
But first, finish searching the dead-end room. Elyssie found a hidden door, and tried to open it, only to be hit by a trap that convinced her that everyone else was trying to trick her into opening it...
This time, Noggin's valet noticed that something was happening, and June (who could see invisible) saw Ash cowering, and they started casting dispel magic to free them from the mind control. It took a lot of tries to free Elyssie, but June with a fly spell could keep up with her and keep trying.
Noggin disabled the trap on the door, and they were finally able to open it, revealing a short tunnel that dead-ended in a rockslide. Sure enough, a thorough search revealed another secret door.
Behind that door was a Forbiddance spell, which utterly failed to stop Zeddicus, Kaito, and Elyssie from walking inside and eating the damage *and liking it*. The creature was hiding in a corner of the room, but didn't attack immediately, instead complaining that they'd invaded his inner chamber before he'd finished interrogating the guard...
The leader of the guard troop they'd been looking for was also there, very dead -- apparently, he'd been interrogated mostly using Speak With Dead.
There was a peacock feather lying on the floor, so Kaito picked it up to investigate it. The creature saw it, and shrieked, "Give it to me!" Kaito responded by shapeshifting into a tiny fox, absorbing all his equipment (including the feather) into his form until he changed back...
So yeah, it was another fight. This time, the enemy was truly cornered, since he couldn't teleport away through his own Forbiddance. He still did some serious damage to Zeddicus before Kaito -- fighting in tiny fox form because he didn't know what would happen if the enemy got the feather -- leapt up and tore out his throat before he could finish casting Heal on himself. Zeddicus finally felt his Smite Evil dissipate, and knew that the enemy was dead.
Well, for now.
Unfortunately, aside from the feather and the body of the guard, the room held no new clues. "Haven't we searched everywhere? We still don't know what the key is."
Zeddicus remembered a set of double doors they'd skipped near the entrance, so they headed that way. They knew they were going to have to fight the creature's gigantic pet once they got to the main room, since it was no longer being restrained by its master, so they cast Haste and a few other buffs, and then... yeah, it barreled out of the mist as soon as they were through the door and attacked.
At first it was your standard 'extremely tough melee boss with summoned demon minions' which they fought in the usual fashion -- swarming over it and stabbing and punching. But it was also a very magical demon, and inverted gravity, dumping them all onto the ceiling 80 feet down. Kaito was of course basically unharmed, thanks to his Boots of the Cat, and most of the rest of the party made acrobatics checks to reduce the damage a bit, but Zeddicus landed very hard, hard enough that he had to channel energy to heal before pulling out a potion of fly...
The demon said a Power Word, and stunned him, making him drop his potion to the ceiling, while the demon next to him got ready to finish him off while he was looking at more than a full minute to recover...
But Phoof, who'd used her roots to cling to the floor, let go and pushed off to land next to him, and fed him one of her special cherries -- which healed him, cured his stun, gave him a huge boost to attacks and skills, and a bunch of temporary hit points as well. He was back in the fight!
Or would have been if the fight didn't abruptly end. While everyone was focusing on the Paladin's plight, Kaito got a fly spell from June and pounced on the demon, stabbing it a bunch, and Elyssie turned ethereal to float up to the demon and land on his crotch, where she finished it off with a powerful punch to the balls. Gravity reversed again, dumping everyone still on the ceiling back to the floor, which mostly hurt the enemies because much of the party was flying now and the rest of them made their acrobatics checks -- even the Paladin.
Oh, and while this all was happening, Noggin's valet, bringing up the rear since he was useless in combat, was attacked by another of the evil dogs. He ran into the reversed-gravity room, planning to climb along the wall around a corner and hide while the dog plummeted to the ceiling. Unfortunately, he wasn't good enough at climbing to pull this off, and they both fell -- and then fell back down because the demon died the next turn and the spell was cancelled. Luckily, he was strong and/or light enough to survive, while the dog broke its neck on the second trip.
At that point (after cleaning up the last summoned demon), the temple was clear of enemies and they were able to search (and search and search) until behind a series of even more hidden doors they finally found the last stupid clue, which was that the 'key' was received from the giant ring of faces at Mirror Lake by casting a spell of the appropriate school on each.
Since they had everything they needed, they left the misty depths and returned to the surface, where they handed over the body of the guard (in case the town wanted to raise him) and explained the fate of the rest of the patrol. Aside from an uneventful trip the next day to escort the priests of the town while they consecrated the temple in the name of Desna, they were finally free to go shopping.
In Miramar, because they remembered they could teleport, and it had a much better magical item market.
Kaito also had to go track down his missing girlfriend but we didn't actually figure that out -- he isn't a tracker and Shalalu was still hunting down the harpies.
prev | next
So... the party was searching the misty temple for clues about how to get into the Hellforge, the temple misty because of a Guards and Wards spell that also hid all the doors which they also had to search for. In what looked like a dead-end room, Ash found one of the hidden doors, but when she tried to open it she set off a trap that made her paranoid that the rest of the party were trying to trick her into opening it so that she could be brainwashed into serving Llamashtu.
She responded by turning invisible and hiding in a corner. Everyone else failed their sense motive checks miserably and had no idea that she was acting unusual, let alone why.
At that point, the creepy shapeshifting creature that had been taunting them returned to complain about the peacock spirit or something, but before he could get more than two words out the Paladin lost his temper and drew his sword to attack... but then lost initiative. So the first thing that actually happened was that the creature cast Spiritual Weapon on June.
Then everyone jumped on him, or at least the Paladin (Zeddicus), Kaito and Elyssie. Because of the close quarters, Phoof and June were stuck in the room with Ash and now half a dozen summoned demons...
The creature was powerful and hard to hit, but not hard enough to hit for his regeneration to keep ahead of three melee types stabbing and/or punching him, and eventually he dissolved in a shower of sparks. They quickly finished off the demons, and all agreed that he probably wasn't dead, although there was some hope that he was a ghost or something and they'd banished him for long enough to finish up.
But first, finish searching the dead-end room. Elyssie found a hidden door, and tried to open it, only to be hit by a trap that convinced her that everyone else was trying to trick her into opening it...
This time, Noggin's valet noticed that something was happening, and June (who could see invisible) saw Ash cowering, and they started casting dispel magic to free them from the mind control. It took a lot of tries to free Elyssie, but June with a fly spell could keep up with her and keep trying.
Noggin disabled the trap on the door, and they were finally able to open it, revealing a short tunnel that dead-ended in a rockslide. Sure enough, a thorough search revealed another secret door.
Behind that door was a Forbiddance spell, which utterly failed to stop Zeddicus, Kaito, and Elyssie from walking inside and eating the damage *and liking it*. The creature was hiding in a corner of the room, but didn't attack immediately, instead complaining that they'd invaded his inner chamber before he'd finished interrogating the guard...
The leader of the guard troop they'd been looking for was also there, very dead -- apparently, he'd been interrogated mostly using Speak With Dead.
There was a peacock feather lying on the floor, so Kaito picked it up to investigate it. The creature saw it, and shrieked, "Give it to me!" Kaito responded by shapeshifting into a tiny fox, absorbing all his equipment (including the feather) into his form until he changed back...
So yeah, it was another fight. This time, the enemy was truly cornered, since he couldn't teleport away through his own Forbiddance. He still did some serious damage to Zeddicus before Kaito -- fighting in tiny fox form because he didn't know what would happen if the enemy got the feather -- leapt up and tore out his throat before he could finish casting Heal on himself. Zeddicus finally felt his Smite Evil dissipate, and knew that the enemy was dead.
Well, for now.
Unfortunately, aside from the feather and the body of the guard, the room held no new clues. "Haven't we searched everywhere? We still don't know what the key is."
Zeddicus remembered a set of double doors they'd skipped near the entrance, so they headed that way. They knew they were going to have to fight the creature's gigantic pet once they got to the main room, since it was no longer being restrained by its master, so they cast Haste and a few other buffs, and then... yeah, it barreled out of the mist as soon as they were through the door and attacked.
At first it was your standard 'extremely tough melee boss with summoned demon minions' which they fought in the usual fashion -- swarming over it and stabbing and punching. But it was also a very magical demon, and inverted gravity, dumping them all onto the ceiling 80 feet down. Kaito was of course basically unharmed, thanks to his Boots of the Cat, and most of the rest of the party made acrobatics checks to reduce the damage a bit, but Zeddicus landed very hard, hard enough that he had to channel energy to heal before pulling out a potion of fly...
The demon said a Power Word, and stunned him, making him drop his potion to the ceiling, while the demon next to him got ready to finish him off while he was looking at more than a full minute to recover...
But Phoof, who'd used her roots to cling to the floor, let go and pushed off to land next to him, and fed him one of her special cherries -- which healed him, cured his stun, gave him a huge boost to attacks and skills, and a bunch of temporary hit points as well. He was back in the fight!
Or would have been if the fight didn't abruptly end. While everyone was focusing on the Paladin's plight, Kaito got a fly spell from June and pounced on the demon, stabbing it a bunch, and Elyssie turned ethereal to float up to the demon and land on his crotch, where she finished it off with a powerful punch to the balls. Gravity reversed again, dumping everyone still on the ceiling back to the floor, which mostly hurt the enemies because much of the party was flying now and the rest of them made their acrobatics checks -- even the Paladin.
Oh, and while this all was happening, Noggin's valet, bringing up the rear since he was useless in combat, was attacked by another of the evil dogs. He ran into the reversed-gravity room, planning to climb along the wall around a corner and hide while the dog plummeted to the ceiling. Unfortunately, he wasn't good enough at climbing to pull this off, and they both fell -- and then fell back down because the demon died the next turn and the spell was cancelled. Luckily, he was strong and/or light enough to survive, while the dog broke its neck on the second trip.
At that point (after cleaning up the last summoned demon), the temple was clear of enemies and they were able to search (and search and search) until behind a series of even more hidden doors they finally found the last stupid clue, which was that the 'key' was received from the giant ring of faces at Mirror Lake by casting a spell of the appropriate school on each.
Since they had everything they needed, they left the misty depths and returned to the surface, where they handed over the body of the guard (in case the town wanted to raise him) and explained the fate of the rest of the patrol. Aside from an uneventful trip the next day to escort the priests of the town while they consecrated the temple in the name of Desna, they were finally free to go shopping.
In Miramar, because they remembered they could teleport, and it had a much better magical item market.
Kaito also had to go track down his missing girlfriend but we didn't actually figure that out -- he isn't a tracker and Shalalu was still hunting down the harpies.
prev | next