Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2298638" data-attributes="member: 143">Well, Jenya's a solid NPC (16th level cleric), but she isn't tricked-out like the Heroes. With her Con 10 and without any bolstering stat/save items, her +10 Fort save is good, but not awesome. Remember she hasn't had much time to buff... her spell resistance is pretty much it, and while she got lucky with the balor, Thifirane has Spell Penetration. Thifirane, on the other hand, IS very good at what she does. With fox's cunning up, and her Spell Focus (transmutation), the save for her disintegration is DC23. So actually, Jenya would have needed better than average luck to make her save. * * * * * Chapter 405Mole watched, wide-eyed, at the titanic struggle developing before her eyes.  It was as if she was outside of her own body, a disembodied participant in a drama far beyond her, a legend being written down for bards to share around warm firesides in crowded common rooms on cold winter nights. Only she was here, now, on a cold night, in a common room that was being destroyed around her.  Her friends were still held by the balor’s power, helpless to do anything to affect their fate as they struggled for their lives.  She felt her heart pound in her chest as Jenya had faced the balor, releasing the breath she’d been holding when the priestess successfully banished it back to whence it had come.  But then another ambush had followed immediately upon the heels of the first, and Mole saw more enemies emerging from the forest, confident in their victory.  She could hear the soft sounds of Cal’s chanting nearby, knew that her uncle was calling on his magic again, adding what he could to the fight.  Yet she could only stand there, a mouse hiding in the shadows, surrounded by cats and dogs engaged in a bloody struggle for survival. Still, a part of her marked each of the enemies, balanced the strengths and weaknesses that she could see, identified the spells they cast, the way they moved.  Jenya’s holy word did not affect her, but she reveled in what it did to their enemies.  But then the bad guys were coming again, delayed only momentarily by Cal’s illusion.  Cal’s shadow-ally distracted the spellcasters in the jungle for a few moments, but then they destroyed it, too, and turned their attention back to the melee.  Jenya got Arun on his feet, and then healed him when the enemy warrior had gotten a few good licks in against the virtually unarmored paladin. All during that, she just stood there, watching.  Her crossbow hung neglected at her side, her rapier dangled uselessly from the opposite hip.  It was as if she’d forgotten how to move, how to do anything but suck in breaths made painful by the gathered smoke.  And then the enemy wizard disintegrated Jenya Urikas.  Jenya, who’d been so welcoming to her and Zenna, when they’d just been strangers in a harsh, foreign city.  Jenya, who had healed their wounds so many times, had protected them against the powers of their enemies.  Jenya, who had given the people of Cauldron help when so much had been falling apart around them…It was as if someone had thrown cold water in her face.  Shaking, but able to move, the gnome darted out from her shelter, leaping out from the ruined frame of a window.  Invisible, silent, she was swallowed up in the nearby undergrowth at the jungle fringe in a matter of seconds. Arun, healed by Jenya, was holding out against Alurad Sorizan, but his situation was rapidly growing more dire.  First, the effects of the high priestess’s holy word were beginning to fade; out of the corner of his eye he could see the drow fighter coming forward again, moving faster as he shook of the lingering blindness effect of the spell, coming to his right around the melee, likely to establish a flanking position.  That was bad enough, but they also had allies still concealed in the jungle fringe; he’d already taken one arrow to the shoulder and narrowly avoided several others, and one spell that he’d somehow blocked with his sword.  He knew without looking that his friends were still helpless; he’d been hit with a blasphemy before and knew that it took several minutes to fight off the paralysis. Several minutes may as well have been ten years. Arun gritted his teeth.  Jenya clearly did not have another remove paralysis spell at hand; for whatever reason she’d chosen to use it on him, so it was up to him to hold of the Cagewrights for as long as it took.  So he gave ground before Alurad’s assault, forcing the blackguard to follow, not allowing him to get set for a full attack.  He did not see Jenya disintegrated, did not know just how alone he was.  Another attack from the forest—a blast of ochre magic missiles that he absorbed once more with his sword.  There were probably others that he didn’t see—more than once, he felt a sudden icy touch upon his soul, which quickly faded as he fought off whatever it was that tried to affect him.  More arrows, which found their way past Alurad as if they’d been launched in anticipation of the blackguard’s movements, darting through Arun’s defenses to score his flesh.  Thus far he’d avoided a hit that would have crippled him, but it was only a matter of time before he was too slow, and one pierced something vital.  But he also felt his reflexes suddenly increase, his limbs feeling light and agile, and he knew that Cal, at least, was still with him, aiding him from cover. He’d just darted back from another powerful rush, calling upon Moradin’s power to heal him, when the shadows around him came alive. At first the paladin thought he was seeing things.  But then a wisp of shadow wrapped around him, and he felt pain explode across his back, real pain.  He lashed out at another shadow with his sword, but his sword passed through it; it had no substance, was no conjured monster or undead thing.  Arun was too veteran a fighter to let his guard down, but even so he nearly had his head taken off when Alurad leapt in, swinging his sword in a decapitating arc.  Luckily he’d donned his helm when he’d hastily left his quarters, but even so he felt a ringing echo in his skull as he staggered back, briefly stunned. But that pain was nothing compared to the agony that exploded through his side as a shadowy form appeared out of the darkness behind him, sinking a wedge of what felt like frozen death deep into his body.</blockquote>

Verification