With Meleny out of the way, my stalwart party of adventurers continued on their way and headed off into Welkwood Bog. Welkwood Bog is part of the new content introduced in the Circle of Eight mod and really shows the quality of work that the modders have managed to put into the game as it really doesn't feel like modded content.
After fighting my way through Welkwood Bog, we finally get to the "boss" monster - an undead lich who is guarding the catacombs. Luckily for us, its not a full powered lich otherwise this encounter would have resulted in a TPK.
Unfortunately, we don't do very well on our initiative rolls (you can see the initiative order in the top left corner of the screen). My thief, Sonora, gets to act first but then 3 of the bad guys go before Coryn, my elven mage, gets to act. The fact that I gave all of my PCs Improved Initiative (which gives +4 to initiative rolls) shows you just how badly my guys rolled.
Not wanting to send my thief charging into melee, I delay Sonora's actions so that she will act after Coryn acts. This is to setup one of my favourite tactics in this game. Naturally, the bad guys just come charging straight for my frontline fighters.
Coryn's turn to act and its time to implement my master plan. One Sleep spell later and one of the bad guys (to the left of the group) falls to the floor - fast asleep...
... whereupon Sonora, who initially delayed her turn till after Coryn, moves up next to the sleeping enemy.
One round later, and I execute a coup de grace attack. Instant kill - no matter how tough the bad guy or how many hit points he had left.
>:)
Unfortunately, despite this good start to the battle, things took a turn for the worse.
Being a low level mage, Coryn quickly ran out of spells. As this was still early game, I didn't have enough money to equip him with a bow. I figured, what the hell - lets send him into melee. The enemy lich promptly chops him down.
One of the differences of 3.5e from 2e is that dropping to zero hit points doesn't actually kill you. Instead, you drop unconscious and, if you fail your saving throws, keep losing hit points until you drop to -10 hp - at which point you die.
Or the bad guy could take another swing at you and kill you.
Bastard. This is actually a real dick move. I mean, my mage was on the ground and out of the fight. There were four other better alternatives (better in the sense that they were more likely to damage the lich) and what does he do? He attacks my downed mage.
Seriously, what a dick!
2 comments:
So did you have a resurrection scroll handy? Or, given you're low level, I presume you used "Power Word Reload"? :)
Yeah - no resurrection scroll and didn't have anywhere close to enough money to afford one. As you say, Power Word Reload.
:)
Still, I found it interesting that the AI would choose to attack the mage even though the mage was down. It also shows one big difference between a human DM and an AI DM. Lets face it, if a human DM ever did that in a serious game, you would probably never play with him again.
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