Protecting against Blasphemy

[moritheil]

I got TPK'd as a player by blasphemy. We were low level, and working under a big mage guy who had a cambion 'under his control'. So the big guy disappears, mysteriously, and we effectively broke into his keep to see if we could save him or help him in some way. We fought some low-level outsiders and found the cambion locked in his bedroom. The cambion convinced us hook-line-sinker...thanks goodness you're here, the big guy is in trouble, just follow me. We followed him into a lower part of the keep (where scrying and teleport and such didn't work) and he got ambush, surprise, and several minutes to kill everyone at his leisure becaue he had blasphemy 1/round.

After the encounter the players were all a little upset and the DM said "I love blasphemy!"

At lowish level, with regular non-anti-blasphemy character builds we couldn't figure out anything that would have saved us. The only defense for this 7th level evil cleric spell was to be higher level and have SR or more tricks in our hat. Of course if we were higher level we wouldn't have all been paralyzed.

Clearly, you feel you have a blasphemous DM.

And no, there isn't really anything you can do about it, except to be out of range.

 

[Nail]

CR, which is what I think you mean, does not equal a creature's HD automatically. See elementals.

CL = Caster Level

...so no, he didn't mean CR.

Read the thread!

 

[Nail]

and he got ambush, surprise, and several minutes to kill everyone at his leisure becaue he had blasphemy 1/round.

And as using a (Sp) is a standard action each round.....what on Earth did the cambion do to you during his remaining move action?

I assume you're leaving out the help the cambion had in killing you.

As I've said, a great and low-level counter-tactic is the spell silence. Your cleric should have had the spell available.

 

[moritheil]

CL = Caster Level

...so no, he didn't mean CR.

Read the thread!

I did read it, but I thought he was trying to make some statement about character level, because the thread was previously discussing character level interactions with Blasphemy. It makes sense now that I read it as caster level.

 

[noeuphoria]

He mentioned that the entire group was paralyzed by the Blasphemy meaning that the cambrion cast it as a caster at least 5 levels higher than the group. Since they were all paralyzed, I imagine it was just a matter of the demon performing a coup de grace on each party member. That, and his recollection of the DM's comment, "I love Blasphemy", make me think they were a bit overmatched, or else have a killer DM.

 

[moritheil]

He mentioned that the entire group was paralyzed by the Blasphemy meaning that the cambrion cast it as a caster at least 5 levels higher than the group. Since they were all paralyzed, I imagine it was just a matter of the demon performing a coup de grace on each party member. That, and his recollection of the DM's comment, "I love Blasphemy", make me think they were a bit overmatched, or else have a killer DM.

Water is wet. Did you know?

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

werk - that's not a friendly DM... Do you still game with them? Are they often like that?

That's the kind of situation I was worried about...

Other week our party of 15-17th level had a brush with a Pit Fiend and entourage... While stealing water from the River Styx. Plane Shift the hell out of there was our answer. Couple of the PCs were sat there going 'we could have had it'. My character (having a +20something Planes knowledge) explained the blasphemy problem to them... Been wondering how to circumvent it!

Besides I view Pit Fiends and the like as things you shouldn't tangle with unless you absolutely have to.

Seems like silence, freedom of movement and spell resistance are going to be our best bets if we have to fight one. Dispersing the party might be good. The mage has Iron Body - guess that'd render him immune, as long as he didn't mind the 50% spell failure.

 

[Cyberhawk]

I threw a high level evil Vecna cleric against my party, fully planning on rending them with Blasphemy and assorted Fire Storm/Flame Strikes. But on the first round the party archer scored 2! critical hits with a magical longbow...sufficiently distracting him just in time for the party cleric to throw a Silence up. Needless to say the cleric had a rough go of it from then on....

When it works Blasphemy is devastating to a group but it has two limitations: extreme vulnerability to the Silence spell and a relatively short area of effect.

 

[moritheil]

I threw a high level evil Vecna cleric against my party, fully planning on rending them with Blasphemy and assorted Fire Storm/Flame Strikes. But on the first round the party archer scored 2! critical hits with a magical longbow...sufficiently distracting him just in time for the party cleric to throw a Silence up. Needless to say the cleric had a rough go of it from then on....

When it works Blasphemy is devastating to a group but it has two limitations: extreme vulnerability to the Silence spell and a relatively short area of effect.

This highlights the DM's problem with Blasphemy. If you don't use it effectively, your kung fu is weak. If you do use it effectively, you're looking at a lot of TPKs.

 

[werk]

werk - that's not a friendly DM... Do you still game with them? Are they often like that?

That's the kind of situation I was worried about...

No, I moved far away. I got in with him and his group because they were playtesting 3e (the tan and baby-blue paperbacks with no art and missing content) and he basically threw the kitchen sink at us to see what would happen.

It was a very DM vs Players environment, not my style at all.

He was also one of those DMs that basically has a game/campaign that he plays over and over with different groups. Like his imagination only worked once long ago and he's stuck ever since. [Do not deviate from the correct path or I shall smite thee!]


Gratuitous on-topic point: blasphemy - [n] blasphemous language (expressing disrespect for God or for something sacred) and the only component for casting blasphemy is verbal.

How do you roleplay blasphemy?