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So, we are starting a new campaign. One of my players is playing a Lawful Good cavalier. But the cavalier does not really behave in a LG manner.
Aside form the snarky, sarcastic talking he did this.
They were cornered by a group of brigands, numbering in the twenties, and had about fifteen crossbows trained at them. The leader expressed interest in rummaging through their possessions and taking what he fancied (which quite frankly would have been some food and maybe a trinket or two). The cavalier responded by firing at the bandit leader and getting pin cushioned in kind. He barely survived, but then the bandits took ALL his stuff in recompense.
So, would a Lawful Good character just fire at an NPC who was obviously not good, but maybe not evil and was engaging them in conversation, and telling them that he will rob them.
The player justified it by saying that his father has taught him not to give quarter to criminals.
This behavior strikes me more like LN then LG.
Self-defense is not evil. I see no problem with it as a matter of alignment, unless he took great pleasure in it. Especially if he can justify it as "protecting the others", assuming there were others. And as for snarky comments, Lawful Good is often unpleasent to be around in a variety of ways.
I'm not seeing the issue here.
A bit stupid, yes, but he IS Lawful Good...
The guy is a bandit (who, by definition, is a criminal and one that it is legal to kill) and was talking about committing a crime right in front of the man with 15 other armed bandits standing behind him.
He was justified.
Just a little thing, though the Cavalier was stupid to take on the 20 bandits by himself, how was he to know that they were going to take ONLY food and trinkets. There were over 20 after all. Once they were done with the small things they could easily taken everything else. Of coarse we're not dealing with LG bandits ;)
I don't see any alignment issues with the LG cavalier being snarky or his action vs the bandits. might not be the brightest move ever...but alignment do not have a Int requirement.
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Well, IMO, he willingly endangered the lives of the rest of the party. The bandit leader was quite clear that they would not harm the PCs. And if the rest of the party tried to help him (they did not), it would have probably been a TPK. Thankfully, they stood their ground and let themselves be robbed.
Later, they found their stuff.
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Lawful? Absolutely
Good? Absolutely
Int or Wis dump stat? Probably
Honestly... this is typical lawful stupid behaviour. The worst problem is that by firing at the leader, he FORCES the leader to hit back harshly, or look weak before his men. This could well have ended with a TPK right there. Out of game, the situation is that he is so afraid they will take his stuff that he chooses to put the GM on the spot: Kill him this early in the campaign, or be shown to be willing to break immersion to adapt to what a whiny player wants. It's a chicken race move, and the kind of s*+& that disrupts campaigns.
It is not, however, an alignment issue. Maybe it's time to penalize his intelligence, though.
Well, IMO, he willingly endangered the lives of the rest of the party.
Well yes, but again there's that line between malice and stupidity, and he falls on the right hand line here.
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Well, IMO, he willingly endangered the lives of the rest of the party. The bandit leader was quite clear that they would not harm the PCs. And if the rest of the party tried to help him (they did not), it would have probably been a TPK. Thankfully, they stood their ground and let themselves be robbed.
Later, they found their stuff.
None of that matters as that would be out of game knowledge...he acted with in character. Who is to say they would keep their word? Or they won't take something that any given PC would need for survival...etc.
You are taking the whole picture which you have as a GM and judging the action of a PC based on that. This is a classic GM mistake I see that lead to long alignment arguements. For cases like this you have to judge it based on what the Character knows at the time.
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Exactly. This is definitely an 'idiots or aholes' situation, but not on the player's side of the screen.
Robbing me by force is 'maybe not evil?' Robbing my group who, as a cavalier, could make these people my charge to protect?
You put a guy in a lose/lose/lose scenario and he chose an option that's perfectly understandable for a martyr "style" character to take.
The question 'I'd rather let a village be killed than put up with someone elses lawless sh@t sounds very lawful good to me. Especially from a cavalier.
When you give a player a choice between take it up the @$$ or take it on the chin... don't be surprised when they chose the chin option.
This was no alignment violation and suggesting that the character should be penalized for making the choice is basically turning it into an @$$ or @$$ option.
Hostages taking their own initiative to get out of a lose/lose situation are neither neutral/chaotic/evil. "Go down swingin" isn't either. One can hope that one's decisions work out well not just for you but for the other hostages, but it's not on you when that doesn't turn out to be true.
Pan's right. A character with his back against a wall will choose 'go down swinging" 10 times out of 10. Results don't determine alignment. Sometimes captain america ends up being braveheart.
Can't even call it lawful stupid... This guy sounds like he knew his braveheart moment was coming ahead of time. Mad props for playing in character if you ask me. Especially if he's got a low int or wis.
If he stood idly by and let the group be robbed... It could be argued that he was 'not good' for not standing up on other's behalf.
So, would a Lawful Good character just fire at an NPC who was obviously not good, but maybe not evil and was engaging them in conversation, and telling them that he will rob them.
The player justified it by saying that his father has taught him not to give quarter to criminals.
This behavior strikes me more like LN then LG.
Yes, brigands are trying to rob him. I don't think there's any alignment that says "you must sit back and let people rob you".
Good doesn't mean stupid. If anything, good people wouldn't sit back and would sacrifice themselves to destroy the brigands.
I think the game is better when GMs don't try to make each and every PC action fit into their concept of alignment. The game is more fun without alignment police. I'll go one step farther, the game is a lot better without alignment altogether.
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So, we are starting a new campaign. One of my players is playing a Lawful Good cavalier. But the cavalier does not really behave in a LG manner.
Aside form the snarky, sarcastic talking he did this.
Where in the alignment description does it say that a Lawful or Good individual cannot be snarky or sarcastic?
Where is the sense of humor mentioned at all as it relates to morality or ethics?
Sorry if I sound snarky myself but I really don't get why this was included here.
Personally, I'd be delighted to see someone play more of a down to earth or yes, even back-talking LG character than the usual ridiculously sterotypical lofty noble speech that always sounds like the character has a stick up his or her posterior. We need more Roys and fewer Mikos, IMO. (If you are not familiar with it, a reference to the Order of the Stick. Roy is definitely all the way an LG character but gets very sarcastic often. His sarcasm does not undermine his sense of honor, duty, and altruism.)
Besides, the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon teaches us all cavaliers are wise-asses. ;)
They were cornered by a group of brigands, numbering in the twenties, and had about fifteen crossbows trained at them. The leader expressed interest in rummaging through their possessions and taking what he fancied (which quite frankly would have been some food and maybe a trinket or two). The cavalier responded by firing at the bandit leader and getting pin cushioned in kind. He barely survived, but then the bandits took ALL his stuff in recompense.So, would a Lawful Good character just fire at an NPC who was obviously not good, but maybe not evil and was engaging them in conversation, and telling them that he will rob them.
If the Lawful Good character truly believed that the brigands were either going to attack and hurt is friends, or that the party losing their gear to the brigands was going to assist these criminals in getting away with decidedly criminal behavior, and he thought trying to fight back was the most honorable course of action, then yes, what he did was within the limits of his alignment.
It may have not been the best idea, but it was not against his alignment.
In fact, since he drew fire from the brigands, you could even say that he was willing to "make sacrifices for the good of others" (give the party time to also fight, react, or run away), which is one of the key defining traits of a good character according to the rules of the book.
I don't see an alignment issue here. Forgive me if I misinterpret, but what I see is that you dislike the decision the cavalier player made, and rather than just call him out on making a foolish decision, you are trying to accuse him of bad roleplaying or not playing his alignment correctly. Which is not going to resolve anything directly.
My advice, to take or leave, is to let his roleplaying decisions be his own business. If there is an issue with interpreting his alignment, that is between him and your GM to resolve, it does not involve you. If you feel for OTHER reasons, the PLAYER is not a team player or his tactics leave something to be desired (which has absolutely nothing to do with alignment), THEN that is something to address with him yourself, politely and civilly, being clear your concern is making sure everyone in the game is having fun (the cavalier player included).
Shooting the leader is not the brightest thing he could have done. Even without their stuff, they could have waited until a better opportunity to wipe the brigands out. Going down fighting still includes going down, and that's a serious loss for team Good. To make it worth it, you would need more incentive than "If I manage to kill the leader in one hit, maybe the brigands will not find another leader and go home".
Another factor to consider is that if this was just a harmless "Robin Hood" type bandit, the GM should have let the players know this by telling them about his reputation. Or the bandit leader should have said upfront that they just wanted some food. Or that he was quite powerful, beyond their current abilities. If the players knew that, I'm sure there would have been a less violent response.
Another thing to consider is that some PCs (and players) don't like being walked over and bullied when they play. It sounds like the PCs were never intended to attack. It's not everyone's idea of fun and is definitely not 'heroic', but definitely more sandboxy/gritty/realistic. Different play styles.
Exactly. This is definitely an 'idiots or aholes' situation, but not on the player's side of the screen.
Robbing me by force is 'maybe not evil?' Robbing my group who, as a cavalier, could make these people my charge to protect?
You put a guy in a lose/lose/lose scenario and he chose an option that's perfectly understandable for a martyr "style" character to take.
The question 'I'd rather let a village be killed than put up with someone elses lawless sh@t sounds very lawful good to me. Especially from a cavalier.
When you give a player a choice between take it up the @$$ or take it on the chin... don't be surprised when they chose the chin option.
This was no alignment violation and suggesting that the character should be penalized for making the choice is basically turning it into an @$$ or @$$ option.
Hostages taking their own initiative to get out of a lose/lose situation are neither neutral/chaotic/evil. "Go down swingin" isn't either. One can hope that one's decisions work out well not just for you but for the other hostages, but it's not on you when that doesn't turn out to be true.
Pan's right. A character with his back against a wall will choose 'go down swinging" 10 times out of 10. Results don't determine alignment. Sometimes captain america ends up being braveheart.
Can't even call it lawful stupid... This guy sounds like he knew his braveheart moment was coming ahead of time. Mad props for playing in character if you ask me. Especially if he's got a low int or wis.
If he stood idly by and let the group be robbed... It could be argued that he was 'not good' for not standing up on other's behalf.
Just a question, Vincent, is there ever a situation where you think a player could possibly be wrong? Is every single situation "the noble, saintly players vs the wicked, conniving gm."?
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Another factor to consider is that if this was just a harmless "Robin Hood" type bandit, the GM should have let the players know this by telling them about his reputation. Or the bandit leader should have said upfront that they just wanted some food. Or that he was quite powerful, beyond their current abilities. If the players knew that, I'm sure there would have been a less violent response.
Another thing to consider is that some PCs (and players) don't like being walked over and bullied when they play. It sounds like the PCs were never intended to attack. It's not everyone's idea of fun and is definitely not 'heroic', but definitely more sandboxy/gritty/realistic. Different play styles.
Some sliding OT musing.... creating an encounter with an enemy the GM does not intend the PCs to fight seldom ever goes well -- and is a classic example of an issue where you have a GM trying to create a "scene" in a story, and the PCs are just playing a game as they feel set to play it. Very often, players assume that any encounter is one the GM intends the PCs to be capable of handling in a fight. If that is not the case, the GM needs to broadcast this in an utterly crystal clear manner. Even harder, as Jason S implies, the GM needs to try to manage it without making the players feel manipulated or bullied, which is seldom fun.
One of the golden rules of GMing is "the plot rarely survives contact with the players." If you don't want the PCs to attack them, then they probably will. GMs should then assume that will happen, and plan accordingly. It is of course possible in this case, the GM did so, hence the readied rain of arrows.
But there's also a lot of arguments that that shouldn't have worked---technically, you can't ready an action outside initiative. One could argue that as soon as the cavalier attacked, initiative should have been rolled. If he managed to go off before the bandits, he should have been able to do some damage before they shot him.
As for presuming the evil/non-evil ness of the bandits. If the party includes an LG cavalier, I would assume the party would be known as local heroes, and a Robin Hood type bandit would not assault them. Generally, I assume that if someone says "Hand over your stuff or I'll shoot you," then they are a criminal, that they hurt people without compunction, and that they are indeed evil (and at least in the city I live in, people like that shoot you anyway even after you hand over your stuff). "Good guy" bandit types aren't going to waylay a party like that. Or they will at least explain what's going on. "We believe you carry something that is very dangerous," sort of thing. Generally, theft is a violation, it does great emotional if not physical injury, and someone who willingly violates someone like that is evil; the exceptions where someone is stealing to feed their family or something are usually rather apparent, and normally involve larceny rather than robbery.
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Second session. Yep. Definetly Lawful stupid. He did this trick two more times. Once when there were bandits who blocked the road and were waiting for a money wagon to pass, and he attacked before the head bandit could finish his sentence that he will let them pass.
Then in an in he attacked a dude, beating on another dude, with a gauntlet.
Almost had a TPK each time and he always wound up into negatives.
Still good though. He wants to protect people from scum. But less lawful, more stupid good.
@ DeathQuaker. I know. That is why i make my NPCs defeatable if very very hard to beat when i want players to run away. I also made it crystal clear that not all encounters in the game will be level appropriate and that they should be served best running away from such encounters. Hasn't stopped them since.
When I posted, I'd missed the "my players" and assumed you were a player, not the GM. My bad. My comment above was just general musing.
This still REALLY doesn't sound like an alignment or even a roleplaying issue, though. More a player who is either impulsive, poor at tactics, or who is rebelling at encounters where the party feels like they just have to give up or run (even if he has gotten this notion mistakenly).
If the issue is impulsive or poor at tactics, I would suggest a chat with him, maybe with other players, to discuss other ways in which he might be effective.
If the issue is more of an issue of rebellion -- "I don't wanna give in so I'm going to fight" -- I would suggest also a chat, but depending on circumstances, ask him to give you some benefit of the doubt, etc. I might also suggest throwing in an easy, non morally grey fight where he can get some of his aggression out before getting back to what sounds like more of an intrigue plot. Maybe if he gets some opportunities to both wail and win, he'll hold back on some of the more complex situations. Just a thought.
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Just a question, Vincent, is there ever a situation where you think a player could possibly be wrong? Is every single situation "the noble, saintly players vs the wicked, conniving gm."?
No but DQ did put it correctly. If you're going to be a GM you have to have some semblance of encounter design in your head. You have to at least have a concept in your brain that you may have a player at your table who would rather die than kneel.
Intent is king... I also presumed the OP was the GM in this situation based on how it was worded
Did you create the encounter knowing he's this way and want him to experience the drawbacks of such black and white ribald valor? If you did then you wouldn't question his alignment. You'd know that he's doing what he thinks is right.
Did you do it because you're a closet Zod that wants the players at your table to metaphorically kneel before you and you'll kill off a pc in order to get a twisted satisfaction from godpower? These kinds of people might put you in a no win situaton and, after you survived the encounter, try to find a way to turn that 'win' into another 'loss'. Clearly this kind of gm gets my hackles up.
Did you do it because you have no idea about how your players will handle a situation so you simply throw sh** at them and see what happens and let the chips fall where they may? Well if you're this kinda guy you don't bother asking about the alignment ramifications after the fact.
How you, as a GM, react to how your players react to your campaign can be an educational experience about what kind of a gm you are. Some people don't even realize the reasons they do what they do and I like to examine those reasons. In this particular case I'm particularly curios why a gm would do what he did then question the alignment of the guy who'd rather die than kneel. Thats a relevant question of human interaction in my mind. This conversation is an important one to me personally, so I post. Only after the fact to we learn that this may not be the GM posting and that changes the nature of the conversation.
The original nature of the conversation I'm very interested in though. People interaction is very important to me. Its why you don't see me posting fervently in the 'critique my bard barbarian build.... I don't give 2 sh**s about a bard barbarian build... I do care about how gms interact with their players and their motivations behind it. That's 'relevant' to me.
If the op isn't the GM in this case then it could easily be that the gm is letting the player feel the ramifications of his fervor which can be a cool fun thing.. Some players love chasing that carrot and it's not a bad thing. These characters want to feel righteous in the face of the whip and as I've said before a great GM will give them that catharsis.
It could be that he full well expects the player to resist and charge valiantly to his death and has no idea how that's going to end up (often badly) because he hasn't/doesn't/doesn't care to crunch the numbers ahead of time, either intentionally or unintentionally. Either of these isn't necessarily a bad thing. Chips fall where they may isn't necessarily a bad style of play as long as you're not always just tossing players into 'rocks fall everyone dies' on a daily basis.
Punishing a player for valiantly staying in character in a lose/lose scenario is something I feel the need to address for the sake of the hobby. If the OP isn't the gm and he's just trying to figure out what was going on them I'm glad for that. I'm also curious what was going on. This very much is the part of gaming that I care about. The social nuances of the game and entertaining/dramatic interactions are way more important to me than 'beastmass 2.0'
Lawful good martyr cavalier makes perfect sense to me.
Player bravely staying with that even in the face of certain death.
Resonates with me and very dramatic and cool.
Intent of the gm who created that scenario in the first place?
Very important to me.
Anyone at the table questioning that player's alignment after the fact?
Strikes me as wierd so the nature of that question gets me curious enough to post.
If at the end of the day this is just a player asking if the cavalier is playing Lawful Good correctly, The short answer is hell yeah.
The scenario on the other hand, to me raises the question of 'what was the intent of this encounter'. Is it a 'resurrection costs money sink player resources drain' encounter? Is it a chance for the cavalier to sink his chops into a martyr carrot? Is it an unplanned, un analyzed impromptu 'lets try this out and see what happens'?
These are conversations worth having to me. Are you the kind of gm that doens't really think about why you set up the encounters that you set up? Are you deliberate about setting up encounters to mess with particular players or classes or alignments? What you do and why you do it are the kinds of questions that I bother showing up for.
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We discussed his character's behavior. He is playing him like a bratty knight templar kid who thinks he can just go around righting wrongs.
I'm OK with it. It's roleplay. If his character dies because of his foolhardiness, we are both ready to face the consequences.
I design all my encounters to be beatable some easily, some insanely difficult.
Brave but foolish then
He's Johnny Cage.
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Gonna post here, so as to not open a new thread.
Session 3 has passed, and the party is getting its stride, starting to work together and being more tactically minded.
They're on an island, part of an archeological expedition, and someone has posted a bounty on harpy heads. Because harpies are harassing the explorers of the islands, drawing them in with their song and killing and eating them. One of the head archeologists explains to the PCs that this island belongs to the harpies, and that they make their nests here and that there will probably be young harpies as well.
So the PCs set out to kill some harpies and hopefully scare others off. They come upon several harpies fishing in a small pond
A fight ensues and a single harpy escapes. The PCs bag their heads and decide to follow the fourth one (the wizard is really angry at the harpy because it singled him out and did its damnedest to kill him, sundering his bound item).
So they track the harpy by feathers and blood droplets (it's wounded), and find a nest. They attach several grappling hooks to the nest and pull it down from the tree, breaking it apart in the process. The wounded harpy and three harpy babies fall out of the nest.
Wizard steps forward and casts burning hands on the harpy, catching the babies in the cone. Whoosh. Dead.
I intended for the harpy to ask for mercy on her initiative order, but she didn't get the chance. Anyway, at first, the wizard's player claimed that his character was angry and didn't really look to see what fell out of the nest.
"Fine i said, it's still an evil act. But since you're neutral, that's strike one."
So he gets angry, but after cooling down decides that his character will have nightmares about harpy babies as penance.
Any thoughts? Was including babies a dick move, although i gave them info that there will PROBABLY be young harpies around?
Wow. That's the exact opposite of my group that ran into a set of harpy chicks a couple sessions back. They took great pains to make sure they didn't injure them and even made arrangements for someone to adopt and raise them afterward.
I don't think it's a jerk move at all. They trailed the harpy back to her nest. Why wouldn't there be a possibility of infants there? Or eggs, at least?
I think the big divide here is what you've built up your game to be.
Have you made it clear that Chaotic Evil creatures can have babies that may turn out to not be Chaotic Evil?
Because these aren't just babies, these are HARPY babies, with an innate sense of people and the ability to manipulate them with their song, whose natural reproduction generally implies rape and torture.
I thought talking was a free action, so the harpy should have been able to say that she surrendered and ask them not to hurt the chicks.
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I described first.
No, monstrous races aren't irredeemably evil. They however follow the directions from the Bestiaries. Usually means usually.
Plus being evil is not a whack on sight license.
That is your choice in your world. But generally speaking no one other then a expectionally good LG character would try to redeem a monsterous creature. The normal NPC would do just what the wizard did and burn the creatures they knew would most likely cause them harm in the future. Heck there are LG characters built solely on eradicating evil with little mercy to those they see as evil and yes that would still be LG.
It seems like you are making the monsters 'more human' or trying to force moral dilemmas on them.
Geistlinger is correct, it is a free action to talk. The first instance in the original post isn't evil, just evidence of a low wisdom score. The second, I would have given a Perception check to notice the babies, but that's just me. Also, this is an instance of separating character knowledge from player knowledge. Did the player know that there were babies? Absolutely, if you described them. Did the character? Again, that's where I would require a perception check. Nothing too high, like 10 or something.
My two copper pieces.
Free actions still have to be taken on their character's turn. It's not an immediate action.
"Speak
In general, speaking is a free action that you can perform even when it isn't your turn. Speaking more than a few sentences is generally beyond the limit of a free action."
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Damn, forgot that completely. Well, too late to rewind now. And i don't think that the wizard would have listened. He was really really angry and antagonistic.
Anyway, he called me, and we discussed it. He decided that his character would be feeling really horrible, and would start doing nice things to somehow make up for it.
I have already thought up a nemesis for him though. A harpy who is the actual mother of the babies, who was on an errand of some kind and the rest of them were her sisters and were watching the kids. She'll have character levels. It's gonna be fun.
Bandits, traditionally, are fair game for slaughtering in any fantasy story, self-defense or otherwise.
Actual real world bandits? Heck no! Victims of the system who could use a hand up. Fantasy bandits though? A scourge on the good people of the land to be dealt with by force (unless you have a more generally enlightened worldview established for your campaign).
Bandits, traditionally, are fair game for slaughtering in any fantasy story, self-defense or otherwise.
Actual real world bandits? Heck no! Victims of the system who could use a hand up. Fantasy bandits though? A scourge on the good people of the land to be dealt with by force (unless you have a more generally enlightened worldview established for your campaign).
Umm...actually the literal definition of "bandit" in real world use means they're fair game for slaughtering.
Bandit is a synonym for outlaw (or, at least, bandits are generally considered outlaws once their presence is known), which historically meant someone who had to give up his property (and forfeit citizenry) and "could be killed without recrimination".
Just sayin'.
Bandits, traditionally, are fair game for slaughtering in any fantasy story, self-defense or otherwise.
Actual real world bandits? Heck no! Victims of the system who could use a hand up. Fantasy bandits though? A scourge on the good people of the land to be dealt with by force (unless you have a more generally enlightened worldview established for your campaign).
Umm...actually the literal definition of "bandit" in real world use means they're fair game for slaughtering.
Bandit is a synonym for outlaw (or, at least, bandits are generally considered outlaws once their presence is known), which historically meant someone who had to give up his property (and forfeit citizenry) and "could be killed without recrimination".
Just sayin'.
Just a difference in the view of the people dealing with them. The modern view is to catch them alive and hand them over to authorities, the old or fantasy view is to get rid of them however possible since in some cases there are no authorities.
If the wizard has seen the cavalier humbled repeatedly as the cavalier took the high road (over broken glass, it may have been, but it's agreed as the high road, it seems), he may have seen little reason to be 'good'.
If the cavalier has seen other alignment tallies made against folk, he may have been thinking about that sort of penalty in his decision-making process. Arm and enrich bandits? Allow a public armed beating? If he was thinking, 'The GM is gonna ding my alignment if I let this stuff pass', I can understand his choices.
Just guessing at these.
Ask him. Maybe he sees himself as having class or alignment forcing 'must always step up', or 'must always open the red door'. Maybe he's wondering why there's so many red doors.
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So, we had a short session, and the Harpy mother made an appearance. I gave her heroic stats and 2 levels of ranger. And i played her as cleverly as possible. Because she really wanted to murder the wizard. So she gulped a lot of potions that gave her a lot of bonuses and good protection.
Fire resistance and 20% ranged miss chance off the top of my head.
Then she, using a composite longbow on which she applied the magic weapon oil, pegged the wizard, with a critical. He was down, 1st round of combat, taking more then 30 points of damage at level 4.
She then tried hitting him again, but the cavalier used his shield as cover while the druid healed him.
Rogue shot some arrows at her, but the entropic shield did it's magic.
Wizard woke up, and hit her with a scorching ray. Not for much because of fire resistance.
She put another arrow through him, dropping him to the negatives.
They healed him again, the cavalier once again giving him cover with his shield.
She realized that she will never succeed in killing him with his companions about. So she used rapid shot and deadly aim, almost dropping half of his hit points in a single round.
Wizard, once again, pegged her with a scorching ray, again dealing little damage.
Druid summoned three eagles flanking her which attacked.
She had to switch to her greatsword to kill the eagles. Then she decided to go into melee, so she made very liberal use of fly-by attack, again dropping the wizard into the negatives. That unfortunately allowed the cavalier to brace his lance and skewer her on it, almost killing her. She tried to escape, but the wizard finished her off with a final scorching ray.
After that, everyone gave a great sigh of relief. She would have probably succeeded at killing at least one of the PCs if druid hadn't summoned those eagles. A very tough fight.