Experiences with Mirrors of Opposition

[DreadPirateMurphy]

Last night we had our first PC deaths in our campaign. The culprit was a mirror of opposition. It was obviously a very evenly matched fight, and our 2 4th-level party members bit the dust. The 3 5th-level and our 2nd-level henchman survived...barely.

It was a weird fight. We had a LOT of bad rolls mixed in with a few spectactular criticals. Our campaign has house rules that are a variant of action points and special action cards, and those were our only advantages over our foes. There wasn't much magic, since we were at the end of a long dugeon delve, and most of us had slight damage at the start.

Overall, it was a lot of fun, but it was also a very hard and long battle. The deaths were from the weakest characters (who were weaker because of some unusual character choices -- one was a half-orc barbarian/sorcerer, and the other was a scout with Con as a dump stat), but it was a close thing. Has anybody else had better or worse luck with this evil magic item?

 

[jgbrowning]

Has anybody else had better or worse luck with this evil magic item?

I've managed to get a TPK so I guess my luck was better.

joe b.

 

[Graf]

I ran a “visit to the mirror plane” in one of the first sessions of my SL game (3ish years ago)?
I thought that the “perfect duplicate” thing was boring…. So I made their opposites “what if your character had made ‘evil’ choices” and built their opponents with the same stats and the same number of levels.
The paladin’s dupe was weak but looked identical to the character so he managed to replace them. They entered the maze separated and (the opposites spawned in random locatiosn) the player was playing his dark half. The player played his ruthlessness to the hilt but the other players still got confused.

The other two PCs were “weird” so the weirdness came out full strength. One was a far side outsider who thought he was a construct; his opposite had a tentacle for an arm. One was the scion of some sort of vastly powerful and evil sorcerer lineage; the character was a sorc/monk but his opponent was straight sorc (and almost wiped the group out when he caught them at the opposite end of a long corridor).

Generally the death rate should be 50%+ if they are perfect copies.

 

[genshou]

The only experience I've had with a mirror of opposition is from an encounter in the Book of Challenges, in which the players/PCs are tricked into thinking they've encountered a mirror of opposition when in fact, they are fighting disguised creatures, among whom are a pair of dopplegangers and a gnome. The details are fuzzy, but it's a nasty encounter because the PCs will refrain from using tactics based on knowledge of themselves, when those tactics would work fine against the creatures they're actually fighting.

 

[Agent Oracle]

Our DM was so enamored with the mirror of opposition, she had us encounter our "evil opposites" on day 1 (4th level)

We had a drow "paladin" fight his evil opposite, a Drow Darkcaster (3rd party 3.0 base class, balance level unknown). Monk Vs. Arcane Monk (3rd party 3.0 base class, unbalanced), Ranger Vs. Ranger, cleric vs. cleric.

75% party fatality / unconciousness later, she realized her mistake and had the bad-guy NPC's run away for little reason.

They continued to show us and harass the party, albiet never all four at once again.