Marked By Destiny, Marked by Tragedy Part 2 (No Judge Yet)

[Patlin]

Initiative
Silvanon 22
Weapon 21
Brelach 19 (Dex 16)
Sin 19 (Dex 14)
Arvan 18
Ranya Initiative (1d20+7=15)
Deneith Initiative (1d20=6)

 

[Patlin]

Round 1 Begins
Silvanon, drawn into the illusion (or memory?) of the battle, moves into position in the formation and readies an action to shoot at the Deneith troops as they close in.

Weapon follows Silvanon's lead, and the steadfast warforged prepares to meet the charge.

Brelach attempts to dissasociate himself from the battle, making an attempt to hide.

Sin (for the moment) remains free from the grip of the illusion, and is aware that she is still underground. However, the intense images make the cavern difficult to see over the battle. [Sin may still act in round 1.]

Arvan remains convinced he has somehow been transported to a battlefield. Around him he sees "his" troops (including most of his comrades) getting into formation in preperation for an attack. [He may still act in round 1 as well.]

 

[Rystil Arden]

(OOC: I'm confused. If it is indeed an illusion, shouldn't it only be a translucent outline that does not obstruct vision for her?

A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false, but a figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline.

Or is this one special? What about this other girl who was here before the illusion (Rayna it says in the init chart?) Did we her see her cast this spell? She lost initiative, so shouldn't she be exactly where she was before we rolled initiative and therefore easy to spot? Does this mean she can't see us either? I'm confused! )

 

[Bront]

Arvan draws his axe and prepares for the oncomming horde, still unsure of where he truely is.

OOC: He'll do another will save try if he can.

 

[Patlin]

[sblock=rules and illusions]Out of Character, the module submission included special rules for this encounter and I'll be attempting to follow those. In character, Sin guesses that there may be multiple illusions in play, not all of which she's interacted with yet. Sin knows the general area where Ranya was, but not the precise square, and in character she isn't sure she beat Ranya on initiative as she can't see Ranya at the moment.[/sblock]

 

[Rystil Arden]

(OOC: Lovely. Not that it will matter--Alys only has targeted spells, so even if she knows the exact square of her enemy, she still can't nail them unless she sees them)

"Ignore the illusion--the enemy is nigh," Alys gets her allies' attention as she heads to where the enemy is located, hoping they will follow.

(OOC: Full Defense with standard action. Move action is to move to the enemy while drawing crossbow. The good news is that if we can't see her because of the illusion blocking vision even on a successful save, she shouldn't be able to see us, but since this is apparently a houseruled illusion, I have a sinking suspicion it may not be.

Thanks to Tumble and Full Defense, Touch AC is now 18, total AC 22)

 

[Patlin]

ooc: Sorry it's taking me so long to get this updated. There's a book I need to consult, and my wife pulled out her back, which is tending to limit my free time when I'm at home and have access to my books. I'll do my best to give a substantial update in about 12 hours.

 

[Patlin]

Round 1 Concludes
Sin stays loose on her feat, ready to dodge to safety in any direction.

Arvan prepares to be attacked by the forces of House Deneith.

The enemy assault begins. To all eyes but Sin's, a dozen horse archers of house Deneith charge over the hill, with arrows flying everywhere. The abberantly marked respond with a hail of arrows of their own, but many arrows are deflected by Deneith warding. To Sin's eyes, a blast of eldritch energy lances down at her from a dark corner of the ceiling.

Eldritch Blast (1d20+5=12, 2d6=6)

Sin easilly darts out of the way of the Eldritch blast.

In the general chaos, each party member inside the formation is targetted by one arrow, while those outside are targetted by two. As he is at least somewhat hidden, Brelach only draws one arrow. Arrows of Memory (1d20+6=20, 1d20+6=12, 1d20+6=17, 1d20+6=16, 1d20+6=12) v. Sin (1d20+6=10)

Silvanon is hit by an arrow for 1 damage.
Weapon is missed.
Brelach is hit by an arrow for 1 damage.
Sin avoids both arrows.
Arvan is missed.

 

[Rystil Arden]

(OOC: I can see why you thought this was tricky :\ The following SBLOCK is more an indication of my ability to understand the scene melting down than anything else--please take it as my failure, not anything wrong with your work here.)

[SBLOCK=OOC]Hmmm.........this one is super-hard for me because I can't build a reasonable in-game explanation for events for Alys to believe. This enemy warlock girl got from the floor to the ceiling just like that without being seen and shot all at once? I'm going to give Alys a Knowledge: Arcana check to decide whether she wants to surrender. Since you listed the Eldritch Blast, I know from metagame that this is a Warlock level 3 or 4, but it's unfair to use that information, and Alys couldn't know of any ways to get to the ceiling like that so quickly without being seen except a suped up Dimension Door/Slide (or weird encounter writing by this adventure's GM, but Alys doesn't know about that possibility), and anyone with a Dimension Door could kill the whole group in one hit with an Area spell for 7d6.

I will set an arbitrary DC of 20 for Sin to be (incorrectly) confident that this teleportation to the roof is a display of unbeatable power. Lower and she isn't sure enough so won't surrender.

Alright, I rolled a 16. This is too low to be confident. She's still pretty shaken up by this, though!

Okay, next questions--How high is the ceiling? Enemy girl is shooting at us, presumably immediately hiding again. Doesn't Alys get a Spot check at +20 to spot her (or at least pinpoint the origin square)? If the answer to all of this is just 'The old GM said that the girl was made invisible by the illusion even though the PCs can see each other and the girl can see them, and the GM didn't explain / used fiat that the girl suddenly appeared on the ceiling', I'm cool with that and I'll stop asking, but could you tell me so I can stop hurting my head trying to think of a normal explanation in character as Alys?

Let me know if Alys sees the girl--if so, she can try to direct the other PCs. If, as I fear, it's the 'plot device illusion makes her invisible' thing and disbelieving the illusion doesn't help, I don't know if anyone in the party has anything better to do than shoot crossbow bolts into random squares (though maybe the others do).[/SBLOCK]

 

[Bront]

Arvan looks on again, unsure of what he sees.

He takes a defensive action agains the oncoming horde as he attempts to see what is realy there.

OOC: Arvan attempts another will save (1d20+2=11) not sure if I get a bonus for someone else disbelieving (I seem to remember a +2 or something). If so, then he'll spend an action point, if not, he won't.