Death Ward vs Shadow's Str Drain

[Diirk]

Reminds me of the time my party was playing a downloaded module.. we turned around a corner in the dungeon and ran into a bozar (? I think, I can't remember.. was some undead with a death gaze attack). So we all get to save or die and unsurprisingly one of us fails the save. Death ward seems like the spell to have in this situation, but there's a problem... we didn't know about the death gaze til after it happened. And death ward would only have lasted 9 minutes, on 1 person.

 

[Len]

Bodak. I hate those. If you don't know it's there, it's a guaranteed death or two.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

8 Shadows (EL 9) will kill almost any mage (or cleric if you ar not combat orientated) in the suprize round (incorporeal, can come out the walls). Other low level undead are the same.
8 Alips (EL9) will instantly kills most fighters or mages.
8 wraiths (EL11) will kills almost anyone.
Majere

Sounds like you've got a DM that likes to kill players' characters.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Sounds like you've got a DM that likes to kill players' characters.

Or, you have an evil necromancer that is halfway intelligent and wishes to kill the PCs who are trying to stop him. Creating a shadow, sacrificing some captive peasants to make more shadows, and sending the lot after the PCs is the easy way; blasting the PCs with spells in a head-on fight is suicide. At high levels, you should figure that the bad guys will try to devise nasty, efficient, and cheap ways to kill you.

The geometric reproduction of shadows (or wraiths, or spectres) is really a problem at the world level (that is, you must add some sort of constraint or the world would quickly be overrun). But even if you don't go into that, you still have an exceptionally deadly class of monsters.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Oh, I'm not talking about an intelligent opponent. I'm talking about a DM that sicks 8 negative energy draining undead on a single PC at a time. Presuming there's not 8 undead for every PC, that's still pretty harsh...

 

[MerakSpielman]

I used a couple of bodaks once. Pass through an arch into an evil temple and two hidden panels opened, letting them out. I had left a hint enscribed on the arch, something like "If you are faithful to the dark lord, pass safely, else look ye into the eyes of death." That encounter killed 2 PCs.