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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zappo" data-source="post: 1896384" data-attributes="member: 633">So I'm playing an astral deva in a game where we're trying to destroy some cultists of an evil god. These cultists have invaded a town and raised some zombies to work in the nearby mines. My character, being a bit Old Testament style and more keen on punishing than forgiving, would like nothing more than putting the fear of God in these cultists and then smiting them. A premise about how the scene worked. An astral deva of my level can cast Invisibility Sphere, and he can also surround himself with a halo of light which works as a powerful magic circle against evil, and also as a lesser globe of invulnerability. This means that 3rd-level or lower spell effects are suppressed, including the invisibility sphere. This particular deva, thanks to a few setting-specific rules, could also turn weak undead; he's powerful enough to destroy 1-HD creatures utterly, but not much more. So I enter the mines while invisible and locate the main cave. A half dozen priests are watching ten zombies that are working the mine. Invisibly, I place myself in the middle of the room and fly a meter or so above the ground... Suddenly, the cave is flooded by light. Before the priests can even turn to see what's happening, almost all of the zombies crumble to dust and piles of dried flesh. A heavenly being, clad in silver-gold armor and wielding an engraved warhammer, stands in mid-air in the center of the cave. The voice of the deva fills the mine: "The gods of light will not suffer your works any longer. The day of judgement has come for your kind. Repent now, or burn forever!" Four of the priests take their maces and charge the angel; their efforts are entirely useless, for as soon as they come close they feel themselves being repelled by the creature's aura of sanctity. Their attacks all miss, save for one - which the deva completely ignores. Not even a scratch or a bruise is left on the celestial flesh. The fifth priest comes close and intones a prayer to his dark god, asking for the power to cast a minor curse. The deva makes no attempt to stop him, but the priests' grin turns into an astonished look as the spell produces no effect at all, without apparent reason. "Your god has abandoned you." The celestial states this as a fact. His voices conveys the tone of inevitability. There will be no fight. There will be no hope for the wicked. The priests flee in panic, and those that don't kill themselves over common mine hazards get out and warn the rest of the cult. Half of the cult's forces immediately pour into the mines, but when they arrive in the cave, there is no trace of the celestial. A low noise, however, is echoing through the mine, growing louder and louder... A minute later, the entire mine collapses, killing or burying alive all the cultists within. Out from the airborne dirt exploding from the entrance, the celestial walks away, unharmed. --- The mechanics of this should be pretty evident, though I also had some serious luck with the dice. In the surprise round, I activated the aura as a free action, suppressing the invisibility, and turned undead. The priests were unable to hit me due to my high AC and the penalty from the double-strength magic circle against evil. One did hit, but his damage was fully negated by damage resistance. The priest tried to cast bestow curse, but he was within the magic circle and nothing happened (bestow curse is 3rd level for clerics). Then my turn arrived, and I figured that, since the priests had been unable to harm me even when hitting, and they had just seen their spell mysteriously fail, I had a great chance of completely destroying their morale. So I roll Intimidate - and a whopping 31 comes out. The rest, as they say, is history, invisibility, high explosive and damage resistance. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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