D&D, not DUD. (hey, if I can't laugh at my typos, who can?)

[mneme]

Haven't given this journal a lot of love, so might as well drop a quick D&D report in.

It's worth noting that Stephen, as GM, is a big believer in "give the PCs a bunch of overpowered items, and then don't worry too much about what you throw at them. They'll figure out something. Eventually."

So, when we last left our heroes 14th level, they'd bugged out via Carnelian Cube from a fight in a against a 200ft diameter room with 12 orcish mages (ranging form at-level to above level), 12 orcish rogues, a couple of hundred fighters (including some seriously high level ones, and nobody below 5th level), and what looked like the orc king, much higher than party level and with insane armor and the ability to do 120 damage in a single attack sequence. Oh, and some giant crystal sphere that, it looked like, would magnify anything cast into it across whatever it was looking at -- in this case, the exterior battlefield, with the entire PC-allied army in it.

Having been pretty much creamed by the opposing force, the party -might- have considered running, or at least waiting, but it looked like the bad guys were about to take out the entire army -- plus we'd popped the "orc king" from a stupidly powerful chess set -- a one-use item that gave us a 20th level orcish marshal who also acted as a rod of rulership for orcs for 24 hours. So, we spent 7 rounds healing up, buffing up (we'd gone in unbuffed initially, for various reasons), and planning, including deciding to use two more chess pieces' one use ability -- the green queen (20th level sorcerer) and one of the knights (wait for it).

Since we couldn't use teleports to get into the uber-protected orc fortress, we used the aasimar cleric's 1/day Gate ability (gained from another overpowered item -- a soul sucking spear that at some time in the past, she sucked a balrog into, gaining a bunch of its abilities as long as she keeps the balrog in the spear), and ran back in.

To find the bad guys having just finished wiping out our army, in 7 rounds, after dropping a silence spell on them that knocked out pretty much their entire spellcasting power, and turtled up around their uber-powerful king.

We did a round of attacks, and dropped some spellcasters, and then out came the real surprise -- Beth(Vadania) activated the knight she was carrying. Whose one-use ability is to summon a squad of 20 orcish war mammoths, complete with barding and mounted warriors on top... Nothing says "you wish you could get out of the way...but you can't" like a squad of war mammoths.

The mammoths took care of pretty much the entire room except the king and his guards, who started making a hasty exit (while the dwarf peppered him with arrows. Brilliant Blade. Good spell). That's when the "transformed into an invisible balrog" cleric flew across the room and yanked open the door.

Well, the King couldn't quite pass up the "balrog" as a worthy foe, and attacked it, and despite the invisibility, dropped it (a 13th cleric not having that many hit points). Fortunately, in pre-game planning, I'd persuaded said cleric to pack a few Immediate "save someone from dying NOW please" spells -- Close Wounds and Delay Death -- so I suggested that perhaps after the first of three attacks took half her hit points, she might want to -cast- that Delay Death (so she only fell unconscious rather than dying or risking death). Then, a cohort cleric got her up again, at which point the second (or is that fourth) very amusing thing happened:

Sure in her current invulnerability to dying, she attempted to Disintegrate the king. The King's armor, it turned out, in addition to being enormously studly, also has a spell turning effect...even on Touch spells. Our cleric -also- had spell turning on her (from the orcish sorceress. We're not high level enough to cast it). So the spell bounced back and forth for a while, and...hit both people for full damage.

Now, a nice point here: Delay Death doesn't let you get killed by damage while its in effect. But Disintegrate, if it reduces you to 0, kills you outright -- not due to damage, but due to its own special "I'm a disintegrate, suckah" effect. So when Thorn (the cleric) made her save, and rolled exactly 15 damage, well, that was exactly as many hit points as she had...which was when I suggested that she use the other spell I'd suggested she pack -- close wounds, which at her level, heals 5+d8 damage...as an immediate effect that can save you from death. Missed her by -that- much...

Meanwhile, with the opposing forces (that weren't the opposing orc king) taken care of, Vadania decided to see if, with a magical spell magnifying artifact at her disposal, she couldn't do something about the "they annihilated our army while we were healing up" problem. She did have a wish scroll, but isn't high enough level to cast it without a chance of failure. After a bit of telepathic (party communication items; gotta love 'em) chat regarding lending her my lucksword, it occured to me that she -did- have a 20th level caster at her disposal -- the orc queen! So after hurredly working out a 22 word "undo the effects of all spells cast through this item in the last minute" wish, she made the queen cast it...and presto! Army got again! Stephen's comment: "If only you'd used one fewer word, or not specified punctuation, she could have added ", and free me" and then it would be all "eat meteor swarm, elf bitch". But it was not to be...

Fun times!

Comments

[crash-mccormick.livejournal.com]

To be fair the silence spell that incapacitated the allied army was the player's. The Orc's had simply not thought of that. Subtle being rare though not entirely absent.

[mneme]

Ah! I'd been wondering about that, actually. But yeah, that totally makes sense; the only spell the PCs threw without expressly trying to avoid the sphere (ignoring the Wish) -- and it turned out to be the most damaging one.

[ebartley.livejournal.com]

Right. The fact that our party cast the silence spell is something we should perhaps not mention to the Intralund barons. Vadania doesn't even have to be particularly evasive - she was collapsed into dramatic potential at the time, or whatever, her player having missed that session.

I'm going to have to miss *next* session, too, and I really want to find out firsthand what happens next. :(

Sister formally getting her PhD! :)