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fjeTheNarrator
Human
(4/13/04 10:21 am)
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To Slay A PC ...
All you really have to do is play into their greed with an insanely over-powered trap.
Jondar The Painfully CN managed to do himself in.
I was looking through the Dwarven Temple section and noticed that the Pillar of Hammerspheres trap seemed a little off, then checked the conversion document/pages ... sure enough, the only thing that would make it work like stated was Polymorph Any Object. For fun it also used Dominate Monster.
The DCs were absolutely insane.
Their only Rogue is a Cleric/Rogue so her Disable Device DC is rather low. After checking the trap slowly, she decided that if it was trapped, she had no idea what made it work, and no idea how to disable it. They used detect magic and I told them: "After a while of looking at the pillar, you can see that it radiates Very Strong Transmutation and Enchantment magic."
To which Jondar replies: "I'll grab one of the spheres ... anything happen?"
Two flubbed saves later (he could have made them, actually, but it was about 70/30 against him on the Fort and 50/50 on the Enchantment) and he's Jondar The Obsessive-Compulsive Dwarven Mage.
After rolling straight down the line for stats, he ended up losing 8 points of Dex and one point of Int, while gaining about 4 Wis and 4 Cha (good Cha roll). Not exactly what he wanted. (He looked happy to be a Dwarf ... better Con, only 2 points off of Dex, no cares about his low Cha ... so I made him roll straight average NPC style).
They figured out that the magic holding him was insanely powerful and they had no hope of Dispelling the Domination. I ruled that the poly was probably permanent as the magic "happened" and then left. Nobody's a high enough caster to even hope to dispell them (DC 29). Basically they decided to leave him 20 days or so worth of food and back slowly out of the chamber, making no moves for the Hammerspheres. ("My Precioussssssss .... yesssss ...")
After they left Jondar gathered up the food and the spheres in a blanket and moved to the main temple room for protection. Which was wise. Between a crazy 8th level Wizard and a stone golem, I doubt there's much short of a full army that can get the spheres now.
So, after the game, the player emailed me about bringing in a LG sorcerer ... so we'll see how that works out.
--fje
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 Infiniti2000
Night Beast
(4/13/04 11:46 am)
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ezSupporter
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Re: To Slay A PC ...
LOL! The dwarven temple's a great place for the bebilith to hang out if it ever gets freed.
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N1njato
Staj
(4/13/04 11:59 am)
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Re: To Slay A PC ...
I don't get it... did Jondar the PC trick the others into thinking he was trapped? Why was he able to gather up the spheres/food?
Wait, I think I understand. He's dominated, so he's now working for the temple right?
Edited by: N1njato at: 4/13/04 12:01 pm
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Mr Kaze
Staj
(4/13/04 12:01 pm)
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Re: To Slay A PC ...
Isn't that just a great trap? My first time through, the party found that. And the bard who had died and been reincarnated as a wolverine (prompting a house ruling on reincarnate) decided that he was interested in the spheres. The polymorph failed, but a 30-point buy wolverine was sitting dominated to defend the spheres there for some time while the party went off to find dwarves to get their giant hairball back to normal.
The dwarves were glad to have their temple back, but abjectly unamused at the nosey, pushy adventurers.
::Kaze
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fjeTheNarrator
Human
(4/13/04 12:32 pm)
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The Temple Trap
Yes, the temple trap Dominates the affected PC to "defend the orbs".
I figured it wasn't out of character, at that point, to let him gather all of the orbs up and retreat to the huge Moradin-aligned stone golem the party retreated from.
There wasn't any combat the whole session. First they met up with the FIRST new PC (a retired PC after a near-death experience and the realization that the campaign had become too cut-throat for the PC build). D'Gran had kidnapped the new PC's cohort (replaced Descratid with her) and they came into the bridge area pumped to the gills and ready to rumble. D'Gran set up a little face-off with the Cohort standing in the middle of the hall, shackled to the floor, and himself "apparently" in position to CDG her if the party so much as made a twitchy blink.
I gave him a major image power to fake Slaazh earlier (which nobody thought to save against) and this was another image. He bargained for the PCs to leave his area of the mines in return for the elf, but Jondar The Mighty decided to chance the CDG and cast Knock on the chains ("When they're unlocked she won't be helpless, so he can't CDG her, so she'll just take big damage at worst. And if she doesn't have enough HP to survive that, she's dead later anyway." ... Thanks, Jondar.) The image waivered and Illusiory D'Gran parted with a "Tessimon will deal with you, interlopers."
After that the orcs offered to parley ( I mean, really, they aren't even a small challenge to a party of that level and it would just take up my time. ) Jondar was going to allow the rest of the party to offer parley and the moment the orcs opened ranks he said: "I cast Fireball." I reached across the table for his sheet and we had a nice argument around the table about how lying ISN'T an evil act but lying and then frying a dozen people under a flag of truce IS. I said at the begining of the game that there weren't going to be any Evil PCs so, if he wanted to play Chaotic Evil he could do it somewhere else.
After the RP with the orcs the player said: "Wow. I really liked that. It was nice that there was finally an opportunity for some Role Playing. Here I thought Orcs always had to be totally Chaotic Evil and I figured they'd stab the Wizard in the back the first chance they got."
Chaotic Evil != Chaotic Stupid
I think that's where he decided to retire the PC, really. The orbs were just a good place to do it. Being dominated for almost three weeks is a bit of a bummer for playing.
Now I have to write in a Lawful Good Feytouched Sorcerer ... feytouched? Beh. I let him have it after I ripped out all of the totally broken parts. Like losing humanoid status. ("But I'm affected by all the magical affects that target Fey!" "Show me two in the PHB and DMG.." "Errr ...." )
--fje
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Narben
Human
(4/13/04 4:36 pm)
Reply
ezSupporter
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Re: The Temple Trap
Quote:
(He looked happy to be a Dwarf ... better Con, only 2 points off of Dex, no cares about his low Cha ... so I made him roll straight average NPC style).
Ouch, that seems a bit harsh
To me it seems a bit much for the character to want to stay behind to look after the spheres. Simply leaving them where they sit and locking the temple door behind them when they leave should be sufficient. I guess it depends on how you interpret the text.
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fjeTheNarrator
Human
(4/13/04 5:16 pm)
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Well ...
The trap cast Dominate Person/Monster on him with the command "protect the spheres". I thought letting him move them was a bit lenient. Here's the text from the spell on it ...
Quote:
Once you have given a dominated creature a command, it continues to attempt to carry out that command to the exclusion of all other activities except those necessary for day-to-day survival (such as sleeping, eating, and so forth).
So, by that, he's supposed to do nothing else but protect his Precious for 18 days or so, untill the spell wears off.
As for making him re-roll ... we had 32 point buy at the start of the campaign for PCs. He min-maxed his buy to (after Elf adjustments). 8 Str, 18 Dex, 10 Con, 18 Int, 10 Wis, 8 Cha. Pretty much perfect Wizard stats.
Now, if we took off the Elf and added Dwarf he'd end up with: 8 Str, 16 Dex, 14 Con, 18 Int, 10 Wis, 6 Cha. He'd gain 16hp and lose a single point of AC. On the whole, between Sheild, Mage Armor, Ring of Protection, Amulet of Natural Armor, etc, he has a 24+ AC and sits in the back row screeching for healing. Dropping his AC to 23 and giving him 16hp nets him a GAIN. He's totally abandoned his longbow (too heavy) so losing the Prof doesn't matter to him (packing Wands O' Magic Missile now), so, in the end, he'd much much rather be a Dwarf (for purely Stats reasons) than be an elf. Charisma never mattered to him, and the character is impossible to get along with anyway, so it actually FITS at 6.
Not that I have anything against Dwarven wizards (I think it's a cool combination) but when somebody is HAPPY about getting slapped with a big trap, the trap hasn't worked very well, has it? His initial reaction was, more or less: "Cool. Somebody dispell the Domination and lets get back to it, I've got 16 more HP."
--fje
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msherman
Briar Beast
(4/14/04 5:57 am)
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Re: Well ...
One of my players (the theif, naturally!) got hit by the Dominate part of the trap (but not the transmutation part). I interpreted it much looser than you did -- he simply wouldn't let anyone else in the party touch the spheres. Once the rest of the party backed out of the room, he was content to leave them be where they were, and continue on his way, since they were adequately protected by the traps in the complex.
Given that the player was already thinking of changing PCs, though, I think your interpretation works, too.
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