This post has the following content warnings:
In Which Korvosans Rally & The Dead Envy The Living
« Previous Post
+ Show First Post
Total: 3650
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

Wizards like their Save or Die spells. They're slot-efficient. You cast one spell and you're done. If you know which their weak save is, the odds are in your favor.

But when the going gets tough enough - when they're fighting something that's on paper outside their weight class, with no weaknesses or none they know, like when the Tarrasque shows up and a local 7th-circle has to get rid of it again - a wizard may choose to set aside their Save or Die.

The truth about Pathfinder is that a powerful cleric or wizard can, if prepared, kill absolutely anything at least one time per day, and they don't have to give you a save about it unless they're feeling polite.

Toff doesn't know what Glorio Arkona's saving throws are.

The damage Glorio dealt with one attack implies that he's fairly high level. Toff saw him dodge Salgar's resilient sphere, and Maganrad's dominate person

So let's assume that Glorio Arkona's defenses are impenetrable. 

Permalink

The first Erinyes uses its fear spell-like ability on Glorio.

Glorio makes the Will save, and is not Panicked.

Fear has a partial effect on a successful save.

Glorio Arkona is now Shaken for one round.

Permalink

(What Toff Ornelos doesn't know is that Glorio Arkona has Spell Resistance. There are magic items which will give you Spell Resistance, but they're expensive, and they don't give you a lot of it. (A 90,000 gp Mantle of Spell Resistance gives you all of SR 21, which wouldn't block a spell from Toff Ornelos if he rolled a 2 on the 1d20.) And then Spell Resistance is a dangerously double-edged defense - it's much more likely to block the low level wand or cleric that's trying to save your life with magic healing than it is to block the high caster-level spells that I presume it is have you worried when you shell out 90,000 gp for SR 21. So Toff isn't thinking of Spell Resistance as a thing to worry about here.)

(Glorio doesn't have a lot of SR - only 25 - but it does mean that this strategy isn't the surefire way to off him that Toff Ornelos is assuming.)

Permalink

The second Erinyes uses its fear spell-like ability on Glorio.

Glorio makes the Will save, and is not Panicked.

Fear has a partial effect on a successful save.

Glorio Arkona is now Shaken for one round.

He was already Shaken for this round.

Fear effects are cumulative. 

Glorio Arkona is now Frightened.

Permalink

Fear effects are cumulative. A shaken character who is made shaken again becomes frightened, and a shaken character who is made frightened becomes panicked instead. A frightened character who is made shaken or frightened becomes panicked instead.

(But actually, that one failed against Glorio's SR.)

Permalink

The third Erinyes uses its fear spell-like ability on Glorio.

Glorio makes the Will save, and is not Panicked.

Fear has a partial effect on a successful save.

Glorio Arkona is now Shaken for one round.

He was already Frightened for this round.

Fear effects are cumulative. 

Glorio Arkona is now Panicked.

Permalink

(His Spell Resistance turns that one back as well.)

Permalink

The fourth Erinyes uses its fear spell-like ability on Glorio.

It hardly seems necessary, but he happened to roll for four summoned erinyes, and he may as well use them all. Call it redundancy.

Permalink

(Glorio failed his saving throw against this one and is in fact Panicked.)

Permalink

Characters who are panicked are shaken, and they run away from the source of their fear as quickly as they can, dropping whatever they are holding. Other than running away from the source, their paths are random. They flee from all other dangers that confront them rather than facing those dangers. Once they are out of sight (or hearing) of any source of danger, they can act as they want. Panicked characters cower if they are prevented from fleeing.

Run.

Permalink

He runs.

Permalink

Oh, but what is this? It seems that as you exit the conference room, you pass through a major image

Only now that you have interacted with the illusion, are you permitted a save.

No one in the room knows what is happening to you now.

Concealed by the illusion was a wall of ice to your left-hand side. 

And an osyluth standing to the right. A Bone Devil. That's a threat. A panicked creature runs from threats.

Across the way, a door is open.

You must go through that door.

Permalink

He goes through the door.

Permalink

Behind the door is an elaborate box of sculpted stone. 

Something like an igloo, if igloos were made of stone and came with tenuously attached portcullises. 

There is nowhere else to go.

Permalink

With Boots of Speed-enhanced alacrity, he makes it inside the igloo.

He cowers in the far corner.

Permalink

Toff Ornelos is paid by the month to carry a scroll of control water, as he's among the city's wizards who can cast from it. 

It is not so great a sum of money that he finds himself loathe to now expend that resource.

From the strategic saucer he'd left for the purpose, turbulent water fills the igloo in its entirety.

Permalink

A second osyluth, waiting invisibly within the igloo, breaks a thin band of stone and slams the portcullis shut.

The osyluth will attack now, underwater and in the dark.

Permalink

An invisible servant closes the door on the whole stone contraption.

Permalink

Drown.

Permalink

There's nothing else that he can do.

Permalink

Uh, what was that? 

Probably we should fight the invading devils?

Permalink

Togomor has permanent arcane sight; he noticed the illusion outside the door, saved against it, and has been watching Toff Ornelos's summons arrange the trap.

He didn't take the bait.

But now, with that scroll-cast control water... control water can be cast from a scroll at a distance of 840 feet. In the great outdoors, it wouldn't tell him where he could locate Toff Ornelos.

But they aren't in the great outdoors. They're inside Togomor's magnificent mansion.

Toff Ornelos needs to have had line of effect to his saucer. He can have flown up to 60 feet away from where he cast the spell. There are only so many places in the mansion where he could possibly be.

Permalink

Or run from them?

Or deduce six seconds too late that they must have been summoned by Toff Ornelos?

Permalink

Glitterdust has a diameter of twenty feet. The odds of catching Toff Ornelos with it in the spacious hall are basically nil. Fortunately for Togomor's purposes, freezing sphere has a diameter of eighty feet.

Which is pretty good, at least indoors. And 11d6 cold damage is a nice-enough perk.

His imp Pudgy Knuckles casts freezing sphere from the staff Togomor crafted him...

Permalink

...Flash-freezing the moisture in the humid air and coating invisible Toff Ornelos in a hearty layer of frost from the hem of his robes to the tip of his pointy wizard hat.

Total: 3650
Posts Per Page: