[AD&D Gamebook] The Sorcerer's Crown (Kingdom of Sorcery, book 2 of 3)

[Joshua Randall]

Bypassing the six gnolls would have been, as you said, a fight in another book. Which makes me think that HP in this book are basically irrelevant.

Correct on both counts. I keep “remembering” that HP matter in the Kingdom of Sorcery trilogy, and I keep being wrong.

There are no fights, there are either total success with barely a consequence outside of crossing off a spell on the list, or death.

Right! The system in Kingdom of Sorcery (such as it is) is not robust enough to have combat as a viable and entertaining option.

Contrast this with the Lone Wolf series: all those orange circles are combat encounters, and each one of those requires several dice rolls to resolve; the relative danger level of the combat depends upon a variety of factors including LW’s starting Combat Skill, the Kai abilities the player selected, the weapon LW wields (well, does it match up with Weaponskill, anyway), etc. Some of the combats have wrinkles around whether you fight groups of enemies one at a time or en mass.

Even in Fighting Fantasy #1, the combat system is already more robust than anything in Kingdom of Sorcery. FF allows you to use your Luck attribute to influence the outcome of a “round”. You may be able to Escape (flee from) the combat, at the cost of taking a hit as you go — this rule is almost verbatim how AD&D works, so FF more accurately models AD&D combat than the AD&D gamebooks do!

The Kingdom of Sorcery gamebooks could have done more to make combat more entertaining and HP more relevant. There are a few instances of multi-round combat, in which you’re not instantly dead after your first failed ability test. We could imagine such passages re-written in a flow as follows:

1. Enter combat. Choose whether to cast a spell or fight with your stupidly long staff.
2. Round 1. INT test for the spell or DEX test for the staff.
3. On a failure, take some HP damage; if you’re still alive, go to 5.
4. On a success, you win! Or if the foe is particularly tough, go to 5 anyway.
5. Round 2. Harder INT/DEX test as you try to finish off the foe.
6. On a failure, you’re dead. (Sorry, but you had two chances and you failed them both.)
7. On a success, take some HP damage (you are here because you failed or the foe is tough). If you’re still alive, you win.

This would be a workable system within these gamebooks’ constructs, but would require a LOT more numbered passages.

This makes the game much less gamey and more narrative than what we're used to.

It depends what we are used to. Carr’s journeys are closer to Choose Your Own Adventure than they are to Lone Wolf, so if you are used to LW then Kingdom of Sorcery would feel way less game-y. But if you came to Kingdom of Sorcery straight from CYOA, it might’ve been mind blowing.

Even the skill and stats allocation is barely relevant given the low number of skill checks we've encountered.

I am now curious how the number of skill checks in a Kingdom of Sorcery book compares on a percentage basis with the number of “skill checks” in a FF or LW book. I’d have to count up all the instances when you’re instructed to roll dice, and make some estimate of how long combat lasts in FF/LW….

Carr is what, 10th level?

We determined he’s 6th level based on the spells he has prepared (maximum 3rd level). However, I may need to revisit Carr’s level based on some other clues I picked up while doing my grad school style close reading of this book…. (Cue mysterious music.)

I don't think it offers a particularly satisfying game experience vs a good reading experience.

I enjoyed this gamebook a lot more before I read it so closely and critiqued it.

But if I put myself back in a 13-year-old’s shoes, who is reading-slash-playing the book for fun, with sense of wonder dialed up to 10 and sarcastic observational humor dialed down to 0, then it’s more satisfying. The book does have an Empire Strikes Back feel to it (to continue our Star Wars comparisons!) in that the enemy are mostly successful while the heroes are mostly unsuccessful — which raises the stakes for the third and final book.

• Thayne dies.
• Everyone who didn’t escape College Arcane dies.
• Dalris almost gets seduced by a gross bird demon. (This scene still shocks and amazes me to this day!)
• The Sceptre of Bhukod is shown to be impotent when needed most.
• Arno has the latest and greatest magical artifact and Carr doesn’t.
• Wealwood gets invaded and Perth is forced to flee.
• The book ends with the Rebel Alliance (err, Team Good Guys) confined to a small island while Team Evil controls the mainland.

It's more "guess the right choices" to be made.

In fairness, so are all gamebooks.

FF and LW books have fewer visible dead ends because they sprinkle in enough combat that those can also be (literally) dead ends. If you fight the Dragon and the Warlock back-to-back in Firetop Mountain without the necessary countermeasures, that is almost assuredly Your Journey Ends Here. If you fight the Gourgaz on the bridge in Flight from the Dark and you didn’t “luckily” roll a Lone Wolf with CS 19, Weaponskill - Sword, and Mindshield, then that is almost assuredly Your Journey Ends Here. You can also randomly die to strings of unlucky rolls even in easy combats. (Which makes combat always dangerous and to be avoided if possible, which again models the AD&D ethos!)

But even leaving combat aside, FF and LW books have plenty of “guess the right choice” situations. FF is notorious for its “turn left or right” passages, where there is absolutely nothing to recommend one direction over the other. LW has a few of those, too: you can die mere steps from King Ulnar’s throne room in Flight from the Dark and you can quite literally make the wrong left-or-right choice and die mere steps from the climax of Chasm of Doom.

I think it’s important to put gamebooks in their place and time. The world was very different in the 1980s. There was no internet. Videogames were in their infancy (and kinda stank). The culture of immediate gratification wasn’t as strong as it is now. You waited months or years for the next gamebook in the series to show up at the bookstore or in the pages of the Scholastic mail-order catalog at school. And what did you do in the meantime? You replayed the gamebooks you owned, over and over again, trying to find a legitimate (heh) path each time.

(Or you read other books or played outside or played actual AD&D or whatever.)

And it's infuriating because if you're "good" at the game, which means that somehow you guess correctly each time, you bypass a lot of content

Yes, that is infuriating and worse than it needs to be. Some amount of content can be intentionally scattered across various paths to encourage and to reward replaying the gamebook. But usually that content would be interesting tidbits, not critical pieces of information to make sense of the plot.

What’s infuriating about The Sorcerer’s Crown is that you are punished for making otherwise reasonable choices about where to seek knowledge. Carr himself says that he needs to talk to the other wizards at College Arcane, who are QUITE REASONABLY presented as the most knowledgeable about mystical matters such as demon lords and magic crowns. Yet it turns out there are no wizards at College Arcane (they’re all dead or fled) and that going there signs your own death warrant.

Why is some plot critical information in Wendel’s hut in a book that Landor randomly left here?

Why is Shanif the Marid “hidden” behind a sign that reads DO NOT APPROACH - DANGER - DEATH?

One could imagine a re-write of this book that takes the background about the twin crowns as given and makes discovering more about their nature and/or about how to defeat Pazuzu as the call(s) to adventure. After all, Carr is a magic-user: he OUGHT to be a seeker of knowledge over and above a warrior. Then the book could feature a journey to College Arcane where everyone is NOT already dead, but you’d have to discern who is trustworthy vs. who is an agent of Arno. It could feature some legitimate reason to go into Yellow Marsh — maybe you learn about the location of the tomb from someone else? — to consult with Shanif. It could feature scenes in which you must carefully seek out uncorrupted paladins in Saven in order to consult their religious texts that shed light on how to confront demon lords.

In other words: the fun info-dumps could be the rewards you claim for “correctly” playing the book rather than weird random asides, many on paths that inevitably lead to death!

Or as you put it:

Learning cool lore should be on a path that allows victory.

100%, as the kids say.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Correct on both counts. I keep “remembering” that HP matter in the Kingdom of Sorcery trilogy, and I keep being wrong.

There is still the third book.
Which I hope will be able to be won without using magic. The idea of Carr being a Muggle is totally cool. "My Dad was a rocket scientist, so my ability at rocket is... nil, actually, I took Archeology as a major".

The Kingdom of Sorcery gamebooks could have done more to make combat more entertaining and HP more relevant. There are a few instances of multi-round combat, in which you’re not instantly dead after your first failed ability test. We could imagine such passages re-written in a flow as follows:

1. Enter combat. Choose whether to cast a spell or fight with your stupidly long staff.
2. Round 1. INT test for the spell or DEX test for the staff.
3. On a failure, take some HP damage; if you’re still alive, go to 5.
4. On a success, you win! Or if the foe is particularly tough, go to 5 anyway.
5. Round 2. Harder INT/DEX test as you try to finish off the foe.
6. On a failure, you’re dead. (Sorry, but you had two chances and you failed them both.)
7. On a success, take some HP damage (you are here because you failed or the foe is tough). If you’re still alive, you win.

This would be a workable system within these gamebooks’ constructs, but would require a LOT more numbered passages.

Yes, and... it was done. This book was apparently (google-lore) published first in 1986. in 1985, the year before, the Way of the Tiger series was published. Not only were fights more detailed in general (you could select several attack types during half the first book, then you used Kwon's Flail all the time anyway) but some fights where narrated exactly like you say, with tactical chocies to be made. At least, the final boss fight with the the Grandmaster of Shadow was several sections of ultra-cool narrated fight in tome 4. And I thin it was already the case with the Yaemon fight in book 1.

FF and LW books have fewer visible dead ends because they sprinkle in enough combat that those can also be (literally) dead ends. If you fight the Dragon and the Warlock back-to-back in Firetop Mountain without the necessary countermeasures, that is almost assuredly Your Journey Ends Here. If you fight the Gourgaz on the bridge in Flight from the Dark and you didn’t “luckily” roll a Lone Wolf with CS 19, Weaponskill - Sword, and Mindshield, then that is almost assuredly Your Journey Ends Here.

That's why you don't roll. You use the number table, a tool which rewards immensely the player skills at memorizing how to push the pencil toward the area weighted with the big juicy numbers.

You can also randomly die to strings of unlucky rolls even in easy combats. (Which makes combat always dangerous and to be avoided if possible, which again models the AD&D ethos!)

Though very consistent with the "I don't want by body punctured by pointy objects" ethos.

But even leaving combat aside, FF and LW books have plenty of “guess the right choice” situations. FF is notorious for its “turn left or right” passages, where there is absolutely nothing to recommend one direction over the other. LW has a few of those, too: you can die mere steps from King Ulnar’s throne room in Flight from the Dark and you can quite literally make the wrong left-or-right choice and die mere steps from the climax of Chasm of Doom.

True of course. I remember a lot of big offenders in FF, less so in other series. But perhaps I'd be disappointed if doing a Critical Reading of them as an adult.

Why is some plot critical information in Wendel’s hut in a book that Landor randomly left here?

Actually, he quite rightly reasoned that should something happen to him and his son was to collect his inheritance, he'd be raised by Marla, then probably go to Wendel for information as the closest person the a magic user on his island. So giving him one of the books the son would seek (and was actually seeking) in book 1 was extreme foresight. Probably magical foresight. Except, well, nobody in book 1 seems to want to give poor Carr his father's books or care about his quest (or sanity).

In other words: the fun info-dumps could be the rewards you claim for “correctly” playing the book rather than weird random asides, many on paths that inevitably lead to death!

Yup!

 

[Joshua Randall]

Let's get some more negatives out of the way before I turn to the fun part of our overtime coverage.

---

One thing that makes book 2 exhausting is the IMMENSE amount of wishy-washy language. I previously ranted about this, so consider that rant reiterated tenfold. The limp language creates the impression that no-one knows anything; no decision is made with resolve; and maybe nothing matters because after all, who can say what’s true?

I wonder why Morris Simon wrote this way? If it was a subtle way to depict the teenage nihilism that afflicts everyone at some point in our lives — then my hat is off to Dr. Simon. If it was a deliberate stylistic choice to convey the stupidity and lackadaisical-ness of Carr and company — then again, he nailed it.

Personally I believe the wishy-washy words were written unconsciously. Perhaps the plot never gelled as much as it should have. Perhaps Dr. Simon was going through a rough personal patch. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it!

---

The Sorcerer’s Crown depicts an unpleasant and uninspiring main character. Carr, a young man of twenty-two, squabbles with Dalris like a petulant boy; is rude to his loyal familiar; ignorant of his own specialty; and physically clumsy. Carr is absolutely not the heroic stand-in for the reader that one would normally enjoy in a gamebook.

Indeed, Carr himself accomplishes nothing: an NPC reveals that path into the cathedral (wherein Carr gets to watch an admittedly cool scene, but emphasis on the word “watch”); the key piece of information about the twin crowns is delivered by another NPC only after Carr fails in attacking it; and a third NPC is the keeper of the book’s titular McGuffin.

Along the way, Dalris saves Carr from a manticore; her kinsmen provide transportation; Wendel redirects Carr onto the One True Path when he strays; and the big magic that Carr attempts to wield is only there to show his incompetence. Enchant an Item is a no-go; Contact Other Plane leads either to insanity or to a useless conversation; and the Polymorph Other transformation of Rufyl into a roc is a near disaster: Carr and Dalris survive by luck when Carr’s spell is not as powerful as it could have been — i.e., the reader-player must roll low on an INT test.

---

Bleh! I'll punch my pillow a few times, take a run around the block, and return later with a more positive attitude towards what is FUN in this gamebook.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I think the wishy-washy language is strangely appropriate in this world of WIS 3. Really, nobody can be sure of anything. They just somehow guess things, and even obvious deductions made by surrounding NPCs are told in the form of a question. I am surprised that they assume Estla is the same Estla running the mid-island elf village or another, totally unrelated Estla. The whole key of this book is that no-one knows anything. Intelligence gathering isn't a thing they do. Consider that someone banned from the College Arcane, to the point the door is trapped to warn of his arrival, is the main source for getting news from the College Arcane -- a place one can otherwise visit freely.

I am in the "it's spot on!" camp.

 

[Joshua Randall]

As I did with book 1, I'll critique the cover art.

This depicts Carr's confrontation with Arno and Pazuzu in the cathedral of Saven. Carr wields the Sceptre of Bhukod, accurately depicted with "three large pearl-like spheres at its bulbous end", and wears his Deeppockets cloak, accurately depicted with many colors.

Arno wears the Crown of Lolth and looks mighty swarthy indeed. (Hmm….)

Pazuzu is much more muscular than I imagined it: check out those 26-pack abs! It is accurately depicted with wings and yellow eyes.

The only part of this awesome scene by Clyde Caldwell that makes me raise an eyebrow is that it takes place outdoors, judging by the flagstones, crenelations, and leering gargoyle above and to the right of Pazuzu.

 

[Joshua Randall]

The question was asked if there is anywhere in the book that we get to blast people with our mighty magic. The answer is yes!

---

If we take the main highway to Saven, we run afoul of a patrol of two (count 'em, TWO) knights. Or paladins. Or fighters. The book can't make up its mind. Dudes in heavy armor on horseback.

Anyway, we start blasting.

At (208) we get to pick from these offensive spells:

• Burning Hands (132)
• Magic Missile (141)
• Fireball (97)
• Lightning Bolt (101)

I'll run through 'em all.

---

132
[Burning Hands]

Joining your thumbs in the proper manner for the Burning Hands spell, you aim both hands at the older paladin on the bay stallion. From long practice, you know how to adjust the width between your fingers to produce jets of flame with maximum force and pinpoint accuracy.

"Pfoebrauknayt!" You mutter the Elvish spellword.

(INT test. On success…)

82

A spout of fire springs from your fingertips. You concentrate it into a white-hot gusher [oh dear] of such magnitude and force that it envelops the knight instantly and unseats him from the armored bay stallion.

---

141
[Magic Missile]

You quickly form the first two fingers of each hand into a forked 'V' shape and point with one hand at each of the mounted knights. Then you mutter the mystical command phrase to activate your Magic Missile spell. "Ruspal!"

(INT test. On success…)

104

Four bullets of pure energy fashioned from the dweomer of your Magic Missile spell streak from each of your fingers, two at the first paladin and the other pair at his younger comrade. They find their targets unerringly and explode in flares of white fire and smoke. When the smoke clears, the two knights are lying on the hard clay of the road with blackened and bleeding chest wounds where the magic missiles penetrated their armor.

---

97
[Fireball]

Your hand is a blur as it dives beneath your cloak for the tiny ball of compressed bat guano and sulfur you need for the powerful Fireball spell. Clutching it in the palm of your right hand, you point at the approaching knights and murmur "Twenty yards" in High Elvish to set the spell's dweomer for that distance.

(INT test. On success…)

The powerful dweomer of your Fireball spell gathers into a stream of magical energy that shoots from your finger toward the two knights. They see what's happening and try to turn their horses, but it's too late. The dense beam of energy stops at the distance you commanded as if it has rammed into a solid obstacle. Then the rest of the stream catches up with the first, swells into a great ball of fire, and explodes with a tremendous roar that shakes the ground beneath your feet.

When the fireball's glare has passed, both knights and one of the horses are nothing but smoldering corpses on the road. The surviving stallion is racing back toward Saven….

[This is a supremely satisfying description of magical might.]

---

101
[Lightning Bolt]

Deciding to use one of your most powerful spells against the armored paladins, you retrieve the clear crystal rod and the small patch of rabbit fur you need to cast the Lightning Bolt spell. Aiming the rod first at one rider, then at the other, you mutter, "Slikkit!"

(INT test. On success…)

105

At the instant your mouth utters the last mystical syllable, a single jagged bolt of lighting streaks from the tip of the crystal rod. Halfway to the knights, the magical lightning branches into a forked bolt, one headed for the older man on the bay and the other for his younger colleague.

The smell of ozone fills the air, as surely as if a thunderstorm is coming. The twin bolts of lightning strike the two men squarely in their chests, exploding them from their saddles to the ground in unconscious heaps. Almost simultaneously, a great boom of thunder nearly deafens you and spooks the warhorses into a gallop toward Saven.

"An excellent Lightning Bolt spell!" Rufyl thinks appreciatively. Your father couldn't have done it better."

---

Pretty cool paragraphs, right?

Unfortunately if you are reading one of these paragraphs, You Are Already Dead, because you're not in the Yellow Marsh asking Shanif the One True Question.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

If we take the main highway to Saven, we run afoul of a patrol of two (count 'em, TWO) knights. Or paladins. Or fighters. The book can't make up its mind. Dudes in heavy armor on horseback.

Good. A good, old-fashioned Grey Star blasting Shadakine on the docks in Suhn, while ignoring his teacher's advice that stealth will be the best approach.

I expect to be disappointed.

132
[Burning Hands]

Joining your thumbs in the proper manner for the Burning Hands spell, you aim both hands at the older paladin on the bay stallion. From long practice, you know how to adjust the width between your fingers to produce jets of flame with maximum force and pinpoint accuracy.

"Pfoebrauknayt!" You mutter the Elvish spellword.

(INT test. On success…)

I'd be interested to know the TN. We start with 15-19 INT, and honestly, a MU should be able to cast Burning Hands automatically...

Also, one of the few pros of Burning Hands is that you can hhit several characters, like to horsemen riding close to each other...
Will we be eating grilled horse meat tonight?

82

A spout of fire springs from your fingertips. You concentrate it into a white-hot gusher [oh dear] of such magnitude and force that it envelops the knight instantly and unseats him from the armored bay stallion.

That's a Force push, not a Burning Hands spell!

141
[Magic Missile]

You quickly form the first two fingers of each hand into a forked 'V' shape and point with one hand at each of the mounted knights. Then you mutter the mystical command phrase to activate your Magic Missile spell. "Ruspal!"

(INT test. On success…)

104

Four bullets of pure energy fashioned from the dweomer of your Magic Missile spell streak from each of your fingers, two at the first paladin and the other pair at his younger comrade. They find their targets unerringly and explode in flares of white fire and smoke. When the smoke clears, the two knights are lying on the hard clay of the road with blackened and bleeding chest wounds where the magic missiles penetrated their armor.

Exposure to video games (where all the MM targets the same creature, probably for ease of coding at the time) has led a large number of players, up to this day in 5th edition, to think that they can't hit several targets with the same spell.

4 bullets. Level 1 is 1, level 3 is 2, level 5 is 3, level 7-8 is 4. Carr is therefore level 7 to 8.

So they had less than 2d6+2 HP. We basically killed mooks.

97
[Fireball]

Your hand is a blur as it dives beneath your cloak for the tiny ball of compressed bat guano and sulfur you need for the powerful Fireball spell. Clutching it in the palm of your right hand, you point at the approaching knights and murmur "Twenty yards" in High Elvish to set the spell's dweomer for that distance.

(INT test. On success…)

The powerful dweomer of your Fireball spell gathers into a stream of magical energy that shoots from your finger toward the two knights. They see what's happening and try to turn their horses, but it's too late. The dense beam of energy stops at the distance you commanded as if it has rammed into a solid obstacle. Then the rest of the stream catches up with the first, swells into a great ball of fire, and explodes with a tremendous roar that shakes the ground beneath your feet.

When the fireball's glare has passed, both knights and one of the horses are nothing but smoldering corpses on the road. The surviving stallion is racing back toward Saven….

[This is a supremely satisfying description of magical might.]

Great. Though I question the ability of a horse to survive a fireball, even when succeeding on the save.

101
[Lightning Bolt]

Deciding to use one of your most powerful spells against the armored paladins, you retrieve the clear crystal rod and the small patch of rabbit fur you need to cast the Lightning Bolt spell. Aiming the rod first at one rider, then at the other, you mutter, "Slikkit!"

(INT test. On success…)

105

At the instant your mouth utters the last mystical syllable, a single jagged bolt of lighting streaks from the tip of the crystal rod. Halfway to the knights, the magical lightning branches into a forked bolt, one headed for the older man on the bay and the other for his younger colleague.

The smell of ozone fills the air, as surely as if a thunderstorm is coming. The twin bolts of lightning strike the two men squarely in their chests, exploding them from their saddles to the ground in unconscious heaps. Almost simultaneously, a great boom of thunder nearly deafens you and spooks the warhorses into a gallop toward Saven.

"An excellent Lightning Bolt spell!" Rufyl thinks appreciatively. Your father couldn't have done it better."

The last one would be an excellent start for the book.

Pretty cool paragraphs, right?

Unfortunately if you are reading one of these paragraphs, You Are Already Dead, because you're not in the Yellow Marsh asking Shanif the One True Question.

Worse, if I have followed you correctly, we can do nearly the whole book by being already dead, since we can get to Saven, meet Garrrrn, enlist his help, infiltrate the cathedral, get to Seagate Island, land in Freeton and then be denied the opportunity to move to Thayne's village but be forced to enter the College Arcane and die.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I'd be interested to know the TN.

The target number is 23 for all four spells. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think this book cares that much about relative difficulty based on spell level.

4 bullets. […] Carr is therefore level 7 to 8.

Hmm…. (Cue mysterious music.)

Worse, if I have followed you correctly, we can do nearly the whole book by being already dead

Yes indeed. That we can. Counting from when we make our decision on where to go — and assuming reasonable sub-decisions; i.e., I didn’t deliberately take the longest path — from the time we wake up and choose the highway to Saven, along which we fight these mounted enemies, it is 46 numbered sections until we end up either stuck in Wendel’s hut or dead at the College Arcane.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Pointless Polymorphing

The Sorcerer's Crown gamebook absolutely LOVES Polymorph Other: it gets more play than any other spell and, as we know, can be the key to get us off Dalris's kinsman's boat and back into the barren Yellow wasteland Marsh where we belong.

But let's pretend we take the highway to Saven and defeat the knights using our weapons and/or Rufyl's O.P. stinger. Then we are left with the problem of what to do about some still living captives. We could merely tie them up and gag them, but why use a commonsense approach when there is a perfectly good magical overkill just waiting to happen?

---

32

At the precise moment you utter the last word of the powerful enchantment, the paladin is enveloped in a greenish sheath of some opaque magical substance. At first it seems so thin that the warrior might easily tear it with his hands, but it hardens rapidly so that all signs of interior movement vanish. Then the long shell begins to wrinkle and darken, as if it were a pea pod shriveling and shrinking in the hot Tikandian sunlight.

"It's cracking!" you tell Dalris, who is standing in the road with a frown marring her beautifully tanned face.

"And you're already cracked!" she retorts, although you notice that her dark eyes are glued to the diminutive envelope to see what emerges. The enchanted shell finally collapses, leaving in the middle of the road a confused terrapin crouched and trembling in terror.

"Ha!" you exclaim, tossing a small pebble at the tortoise. It bounces off the polymorphed paladin's new 'armor' and frightens the creature so badly that it draws its head into its shell. "He won't be talking to anyone now!" you announce with glee.

---

The illustration is glorious:

---

I will nitpick one thing.

… you notice that her dark eyes are glued to the diminutive envelope to see what emerges.

From (20) we know that Dalris has "olive" colored eyes. I wouldn't describe that eye color as "dark".

---

Speaking of Dalris, we do have one chance to use Polymorph Other on HER. I will leave the implications of this choice to the psychiatrists. On the topic of psychiatry, this is one of the more bat-guano crazy decisions that WIS 3 Carr Delling makes in the entire book.

This happens when we are in the Yellow Marsh, desperate for a way to combat the powerful creature that Rufyl has sensed and warned us about.

---

120

I could change Rufyl or Dalris temporarily into a form powerful enough to handle the thing in the fog! you think.

According to your research, the intelligence of a subject cannot be increased by the Polymorph Other spell. That means the new form will be restricted to the average intelligence of a pseudodragon if I use Rufyl, and the thing down there has got to be a lot brighter than that.

You glance at Dalris's slim figure advancing slowly into the fog and know what you must do. [...] At the spot in the incantation where you must name the new form to be assumed, you pause, then add a phrase describing Dalris's new shape as 'anything stronger than the thing in the fog'.

[INT test with a target number of 27 (!). On success…]

71

At the instant you mutter the last word of the spell, Dalris's body arches in the monster's grasp. The bard's chest swell so suddenly that the yellowish fingers open, dropping the transforming body to the bare ground. You watch in horror as, with a hideous rending noise, Dalris's beautiful form splits into a shattered, bloodless shell.

The towering thing that emerges from the bard's carcass has a horned, batrachian head with a spiny carapace extending to the tip of its switching tail. You watch it rise on its hind feet, carrying its cavernous maw at least thirty feet above your head. It is filled with sharp, pointed teeth, each one nearly a foot long.

"A tarrasque! You turned Dalris into a tarrasque!"

[This from Rufyl who proves he has higher INT than we do by running away. As does Shanif after the marid points out the irony that an archdruid's daughter will now ravage the countryside and turn it into, you guessed it, a barren wasteland.]

You try to spot the speaker of the message that thunders directly into your brain, but you catch only a fleeting glimpse of the giant humanoid hand dissolving into a yellow mist and blending with the fog. The tarrasque's huge forepaws swipe the haze where the hand had been, only to fan the stinking yellow fumes. Then the horrible creature turns towards you with saliva dripping from its lipless mouth and fangs. It's hungry. ✠

---

Like I said: bat-guano crazy. And a fitting end for OUR Carr Delling in this case.

But we are not done with pointless polymorphing, because there is another target for the spell, conveniently in the same general location as Dalris.

Cue mysterious music…!

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

But let's pretend we take the highway to Saven and defeat the knights using our weapons and/or Rufyl's O.P. stinger. Then we are left with the problem of what to do about some still living captives. We could merely tie them up and gag them, but why use a commonsense approach when there is a perfectly good magical overkill just waiting to happen?

Also, if we're to waste high level magic, why do it AFTER the fight, and not in a critical moment where lives are at stake?

At the precise moment you utter the last word of the powerful enchantment, the paladin is enveloped in a greenish sheath of some opaque magical substance. At first it seems so thin that the warrior might easily tear it with his hands, but it hardens rapidly so that all signs of interior movement vanish. Then the long shell begins to wrinkle and darken, as if it were a pea pod shriveling and shrinking in the hot Tikandian sunlight.

Another cool depiction on the magic doing its work. While we're shamelessly nitpicking, there are a lot of things to like in the books, and the colour of the spell being cast is one of them. Their usefulness, on the other hand, isn't.

"Ha!" you exclaim, tossing a small pebble at the tortoise. It bounces off the polymorphed paladin's new 'armor' and frightens the creature so badly that it draws its head into its shell. "He won't be talking to anyone now!" you announce with glee.

So, we're celebrating a victory over a tortoise, because turning our foe into one wasn't enough? Also, what will the other paladin/armor-user do in this case?

---

The illustration is glorious:

View attachment 402204

OUR Carr does look like a moron.

You glance at Dalris's slim figure advancing slowly into the fog and know what you must do. [...] At the spot in the incantation where you must name the new form to be assumed, you pause, then add a phrase describing Dalris's new shape as 'anything stronger than the thing in the fog'.

Honestly? That's all OUR Carr can think of as a description of the monster?

"A tarrasque! You turned Dalris into a tarrasque!"

Totally insane...

Then the horrible creature turns towards you with saliva dripping from its lipless mouth and fangs. It's hungry. ✠

Wait! Wasn't there a chance that the polymorphed person loses its mind and starts acting like the real monster? It might have saved us...