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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6989178" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Yep, that kind of thing happens all the time. One of the most memorable moments was when the party's 9th(?) level Necromancer tried to take on a Death Slaad, solo and naked except for garments woven from tree bark because the Death Slaad (in disguise) had previously captured him and taken all of his gear including his spellbook and Robe of the Archmagi. The Death Slaad was in the form of an Enkidu (from Dominions; think of a cross between a Volo's Firbolg and a nature-oriented half-Ogre with horns) and had a couple of dozen of half-ogre-statted Enkidu guards with him when the Necromancer assaulted the city and captured the walls with his skeleton troops. I let one of the players run the Death Slaad during the battle and it ended up turning invisible and trying to get the Necromancer while Enkidu troops assaulted the boarded-up front doors  of the tower the Necromancer was holding. To make a long story short, the battle came down to one crucial moment when the Death Slaad was at a handful of HP left and had declared that he was Plane Shifting away; the Necromancer's skeletons had rolled just barely enough damage to kill the Death Slaad this round; and the only thing that was needed in order for the Necromancer to kill the Slaad and get his Robe of the Archmagi back (the Slaad was wearing the robe BTW) was an initiative contest: all the skeletons had to get their shots off before the Death Slaad could complete his Plane Shift spell.It was very tense! There was a happy ending though. IIRC the Slaad rolled a 3 or something on its initiative, and all the skeletons beat it after all, and the Slaad died messily and the Enkidus stared in amazement at the toad-corpse of what they had thought was their Ensi and the Enkidus surrendered and everything turned out fine.P.S. Also, my wolves aren't smart enough to declare that conditional action the first time. So Peter will be fine on the first round if he wins initiative; on the second and subsequent rounds the wolf will be more canny and Delay or declare a conditional attack. And the same learning process will occur BTW with the next wolf they meet--it's not the DM being simpleminded in his action declarations, it's the wolf. A dumber animal like a snake might not learn at all.Edit: oh, it's Neville, not Peter. My bad, but I'm leaving it unchanged in my post because Prokofiev. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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