Leothar's page

I'm sorry to hear that, Trawets, and I thank you for running the game as far as you did.

I am in games with almost all of you so will still see you around. Phntm888/Ardriel, I hope we get a chance to play together again.

I like Leothar a lot but I made him 4.5 years ago, for a 6-PC party, for a GM I had no experience with, with a subsystem I had no experience with, built to synergize tactics with a PC who is no longer here. I have learned a lot over that time about the context I am dealing with and so I would have done a lot differently.

I think rebuilding is far less disruptive to the story than replacement and it would also be my preference. Ultimately it is up to the GM.

I will explain when I have more time.
Were retraining allowed, I would change feats and mythic abilities. Same stats, race, deity, archetype, and path.
Still Champion, but with Mythic Paragon and Legendary Item.

I would not presume to think that I would be allowed to bring in another PC if Leothar dropped out.

I would suppose the GM would open recruitment or invite someone.

"I will stay behind to guard the Sword of Valor after the Planetar departs."

I would rather not leave, but if retraining is not possible, then the party will be better off with Leothar replaced by a new PC, one informed by the AP experience to date and better designed to solve problems and cover our weaknesses. Leothar's inability to do anything other than damage were, in my view, a major factor in this dungeon being such an excruciating slog.

"I am fairly certain the succubus has escaped. We can ask the Planetar if he has any way to confirm that with his heavenly magic."

Leothar heals his wounds and strikes back at the constructs.

LoH 1 of 7: 4d6 ⇒ (3, 3, 2, 6) = 14 Should stop the Bleed.

Attack, Divine Favor, PA, Mythic Bless: 1d20 + 16 + 2 - 3 + 1 ⇒ (13) + 16 + 2 - 3 + 1 = 29
Damage, DF, PA, Bless: 1d8 + 6 + 2 + 9 + 1 ⇒ (2) + 6 + 2 + 9 + 1 = 20

Iterative: 1d20 + 11 + 2 - 3 + 1 ⇒ (15) + 11 + 2 - 3 + 1 = 26
Damage, DF, PA, Bless: 1d8 + 6 + 2 + 9 + 1 ⇒ (5) + 6 + 2 + 9 + 1 = 23

Leothar attacks one of the constructs.

Going after the one that Dadna attacked if it is still up, or else Orange, Blue, Green in that order of priority.

Attack, Divine Favor, PA, Mythic Bless: 1d20 + 16 + 2 - 3 + 1 ⇒ (10) + 16 + 2 - 3 + 1 = 26
Damage, DF, PA, Bless: 1d8 + 6 + 2 + 9 + 1 ⇒ (8) + 6 + 2 + 9 + 1 = 26

Iterative: 1d20 + 11 + 2 - 3 + 1 ⇒ (2) + 11 + 2 - 3 + 1 = 13
Mythic Bless Reroll: 1d20 + 11 + 2 - 3 + 1 ⇒ (17) + 11 + 2 - 3 + 1 = 28
Damage, DF, PA, Bless: 1d8 + 6 + 2 + 9 + 1 ⇒ (7) + 6 + 2 + 9 + 1 = 25

Leothar casts Divine Favor and moves into the room while drawing Radiance.

"Yes Dadna, I agree. I will have much work to do here."

"Everyone in the army should be screened by Detect Evil from multiple paladins, and none should be permitted to object to this. We know that the succubus demons can change their form."

The temporary negative levels from Enervation last 1 hour per caster level.

Leothar looks on with relief as the angel heals Dadna.

"I think we should go back to camp. Perhaps there are casters in the army who can heal the rest of us. We will want to bring in troops to guard the banner before the planetar departs."

"Some of the effect was Enervation, which we know wears off.
Some was the Nabasu's gaze, which is permanent unless healed by magic."

Leothar has no permanent negative levels. Just 6 temporary ones that do not pose a risk of becoming permanent.

"Neither Ian, nor Dadna, nor I are in any condition to face additional foes until these necromantic effects have been removed. We should see if the planetar can help, or the casters in the army.
We have reason to think there is still a succubus about, and such foes can also drain the life from us."

Leothar stands guard over his paralyzed friends until the effect wears off.

Mythic Bless is +1 morale bonus to all saves, don't forget, as well as the ability to roll twice and take the better once during the duration.

AOO, smite, Bull's Strength, Mythic Bless, 6 negative levels: 1d20 + 16 + 3 + 2 + 1 - 6 ⇒ (9) + 16 + 3 + 2 + 1 - 6 = 25
Damage, Smite, Bull's Strength, Mythic Bless, Holy: 1d8 + 8 + 3 + 3 + 1 + 2d6 ⇒ (4) + 8 + 3 + 3 + 1 + (1, 1) = 21
Apply whatever PA modifiers you deem appropriate.

Will, Mythic Bless, 6 negative levels: 1d20 + 10 + 1 - 6 ⇒ (19) + 10 + 1 - 6 = 24

Leothar follows the demon and strikes it again.
It looks like 50' exactly even counting all the stairs as difficult terrain (which stairs are not always).

Again using Power Attack - apply whatever you deem appropriate.
Attack, smite, Bull's Strength, Mythic Bless, 6 negative levels: 1d20 + 16 + 3 + 2 + 1 - 6 ⇒ (11) + 16 + 3 + 2 + 1 - 6 = 27
Damage, Smite, Bull's Strength, Mythic Bless, Holy: 1d8 + 8 + 3 + 3 + 1 + 2d6 ⇒ (7) + 8 + 3 + 3 + 1 + (4, 2) = 28

Still have the Mythic Bless ability to use, as well as 1 remaining Mythic Power.

Leothar's icon was in the square north of the door, adjacent to the square containing the door. You did not have a problem with that. So he 5' stepped west. But, have it your way.

Otherwise you are saying it is ok for a spell to do less damage but not someone swinging a sword.

Yes, I am absolutely saying that is ok. And note that some spells will still do the same damage (like Acid Splash or Stone Call or Enervation itself) and some sword swings will do less (like Smite or Challenge).

Please reconsider.

The map shows a 5' square north of the door and a 5' square occupied by the door. Leothar was in the square north of the door, adjacent to the door. Not in a niche or alcove. I moved him literally 5' adjacent on the map. I am relying on the map as presented to me.

Power Attack is not level dependent. It is BAB dependent. It is not affected by negative levels. The only discussion I can find about it is here. If you have a source that contradicts this please show it to me. Negative levels hurt some things far more than they gain from levels (like saves, which go up by 1/2 or 1/3 each level but go down 1 for each negative level) and they hurt some things not at all (like BAB; you just get a penalty to your attack rolls, not a lower BAB).

If I had hit the demon with a crit, and it was still up, then I would have used Mythic Bless for the reroll on the Fleet Charge attack, making it a hit.

I strongly disagree with your ruling on the 5' step because I moved 5' on the map.
I strongly disagree with your ruling that Power Attack magnitude is a level-dependent variable.
You are missing +1 from Mythic Bless on the Fleet Charge (and hopefully you are accounting for the Banner's -4 AC to the demon).

Even so, if that is how you wish to rule, then I will use Mythic Bless to reroll the Fleet Charge attack and use the rolled 12.

And if you won't allow that, I will use my last Mythic Point for 2d6 ⇒ (4, 6) = 10 +6 to hit.

I would have done my turn quite differently had I known the rulings you would make.

Pretty sure that Leothar has just destroyed the original one. He comes out of Delay when Ian's light illuminates it, and his initial strike is a crit for 144 damage (was 141, Mythic Bless adds +3 more).

We needed some good luck.

Don't forget Mythic points for extra standard actions if you need them.

"Ian, move to me!"

Once he can see the demons (whether through Ian's movement or Dadna's spell or something else), Leothar will drop his axe, 2-hand Radiance, 5' step and full attack the wounded demon (which is his Smite target), then use Fleet Charge for an extra attack. Fleet Charge doesn't ignore AOOs, so they can take those after the attack is resolved, but Leothar isn't too worried about their melee attacks. Just moving 5' north so remaining in melee.

I mean, they had Silence in there so they couldn't have heard what we were planning. But I understand them wanting to come out before the Summons expires.

Also, Nabasu in this AP have been very lucky with their Enervation rolls.

Leothar will drop his shield (move) and draw his Waraxe (move).
If nobody finds something better, then next round he will try to wedge the axe blade under the door as a full-round action.

"They can't hear us talking out here because of the Silence in there. That's something."

Leothar has his old MW Dwarven Waraxe. Could that be wedged under a door to jam it?

"Help me spike the doors!"

I have no idea how this might be accomplished mechanically, what physical resources we have available, or what actions I need to take this round.

The door doesn't even clear the jamb anyway, so there is no gap.
I realized that we do know the thickness. They have 60 HP and break DC 28, which is consistent with a 2-inch-thick metal door.

Moving such a door 1 inch will not create an opening.

Opening the door even one inch causes darkness to spread around? Light and Darkness are spread effects that go around corners?
Then he closes it again.
Open an inch and shut is certainly less motion than moving the door all the way open.
At one inch it probably wouldn't even clear the jamb.

Edit: found a specific citation. Even if there were effectively no jamb (like the door was 1 mm thick, which I doubt is the case), the door would need to be 12' tall for a 1" opening to allow spells to go through it.

An otherwise solid barrier with a hole of at least 1 square foot through it does not block a spell's line of effect. Such an opening means that the 5-foot length of wall containing the hole is no longer considered a barrier for purposes of a spell's line of effect.

Here.

My reasoning for concluding that the doors are self-locking is that the Nabasu was able to move to the door (move), close it (move), and lock it (??) all in one turn. Unless locking a door is a free action, which is news to me. Did we see the Nabasu having a key in hand? A key already present in the lock would have been dislodged by Enos's lockpicks. Hence my conclusion that the doors are self-locking. However, if the GM ruled that locking a door is a free action and the Nabasu already had the key in hand, then it could be that the door is not locked now and so they are not stuck inside. Leothar will test that.

If Dadna has moved out of the way, then Leothar will move to the door setting his feet so that it only has one inch to open, and then test to see if it is locked. If it opens that one inch, it is stopped by his feet. If it is locked, it won't move even that one inch.

Summon Monster lasts 1 round per level.
Daylight lasts 10 minutes per level.
Waiting for the Summons to expire does not risk losing our Daylight.

It's a Nabasu, not a Shadow Demon. Not incorporeal. We have fought this kind of demon before and we knew it would be a Nabasu here. I think we can bottle it up and deal with it at our leisure, since it can't Teleport. If you are deciding tactics on the assumption that it is incorporeal, we should clear that up.

I strongly disagree with rushing in before the Summons expires.

If you absolutely wish for Dadna to take part, at least stay out of line of effect of the death gaze until you can move+strike. The Nabasu will undoubtedly barricade the doorway again, meaning a couple of rounds to get through, meaning a couple of rounds of saves against the gaze.

The double Enervation that Dadna took would have killed Leothar. He did the right thing falling back.
The remaining Enervation that the summoned one has would kill Dadna. She did the right thing falling back.
This is a tactic against which we are virtually defenseless (except Enos if he has Mirror Dodge) and there's no shame in retreating from it. Rotating PCs to tank it until they run out is pretty much all we can do.

@Dadna, where did you want to move to?

I think we need more information on the current situation before deciding on our actions.

So if the Planetar can cast Death Ward, that suppresses all penalties from negative levels that you have, and prevents you from gaining any more. Dadna would be back to fighting strength.

It's one of the spells I find myself missing the most in this AP.

The Nabasu, we know from experience, has two level-draining attacks.
One is Enervation. I think the one original demon is all out and the summoned one has one shot left. No save, SLA ranged attack. Step Up or Readied actions provide some minor defense, as does staying in back.
The other is the death gaze. Area effect, hits everyone (staying in back is no defense), grants a save, probably (Su) so can't be disrupted.

"We'll keep it bottled up in here. I'll take Ian's shield if that is okay. Maybe Daylight on Ardriel's armor too.
Dadna, you and Ian should fall back to the Planetar and ask if he can give you protection against necromantic effects.
Or, we can spike the doors and all travel together. These locks seems to have some cunning mechanism to lock automatically when closed, and few foes that we have defeated carry keys, so the demon may be locked inside. We'll spike the doors anyway.
Those are my suggestions. Daylight on armor or shields; wait for the summons to expire; seek magical aid from the Planetar; and expect barricades when we open the doors again."

How many rounds to get back to the Planetar? Maybe faster if we go west from here through F10?

I think we'll do much better to cast it on someone's armor.
An unattended object can easily be hurled out of the room, covered with a sheet (there were beds in the room), whatever.

I also think that we don't go back in until the summons expires, and Dadna doesn't go back in at all unless she can get a Death Ward from the Planetar. Save at -8 against a permanent negative level from the gaze? Not good odds.

I believe that all ammunition is considered destroyed when it hits its target if you go strictly by rules as written and ignore logic.

I would cast it on something less fragile. I believe that arrows that hit their target are considered destroyed, which could be interpreted to end the Daylight effect.

We can all use it without a UMD check, since Daylight is on our spell list (well, except Ian since he has no spell list).

I am just astonished to realize that we have it after what a nightmare Deeper Darkness has been for our party in multiple battles.

It's not the solution to all of our problems, but it's a big, big help.

Aravashnial stands unsteadily holing the furniture to steady himself. He then turns and talks to the corner of the room, not being able to see you still, "I thank you greatly for your assistance in getting to the Library. On our way where we stopped and checked out a cache I knew of to see if it was still safe. Here is what was in there." He uncovers a pile of items on the table and sits. You can see eight potions of cure serious wounds, four potions of lesser restoration, 10 +1 evil outsider bane arrows, a chime of opening, a cold iron warhammer, a cold iron dagger, a wand of magic missiles (CL 5th, 31 charges), and a wand of daylight (24 charges).

Did anybody remember that we had a Wand of Daylight? I know I had forgotten it. It wasn't on the loot tracker sheet. I don't think we ever sold it.

I think we can take this guy once the Summons expires (it is rounds/level, right? Do we know that?) and if the original one is all out of Enervation (I think we know it is normally 3/day from our fight with the first one). He hit Leothar, then Ian, then Dadna. But he may have a Mythic ability to recharge it, or it could be at will.

Still, Leothar has Step Up (new feat which I hadn't used yet and so wasn't thinking about) which is at least something of a defense against Enervation. Get in his face, then if he tries to 5' step and Enervation he needs a concentration check to use the SLA without provoking, and even if he passes that, he still takes an AOO for using a ranged attack in melee.

Also, he's at -4 AC and saves from the Sword of Valor.

The area-effect drain ability is still bad, but it grants a save and is only 1 level at a time. Still means that Dadna can't be anywhere near there. And since Ian can't see even with Daylight, then he doesn't need to be there either.

Leothar can hold Ian's shield for the Daylight and take the lead.

That's my suggestion. Pull back a little bit, wait for the Summons to expire, and go after him. Then go to the Planetar and the casters in our army and beg for Restorations.

Not knowing exactly how long it would take to get through broken furniture was a huge problem for me when I was trying to figure out what to do, which is why I fell back. Being delayed for a round and double-Enervated would have killed Leothar without him even getting a hit in. Just a futile and pointless death. Obviously the demon is going to push more furniture in front of the door this time, but if it is out of Enervation then having to take a round to smash stuff (which I can now estimate based on Dadna's experience) is not so bad.

The Silence and the Summon will fade a lot faster. They are rounds/level and we timed our re-entry just perfectly to suffer their effects.

I do have a plan for what I would ask of the Planetar but let's see if we can get out of this without anyone dying.

Then he turns back, motioning to others to follow him as he moves.
I believe once he is out of the dark room, everybody should be able to see him.

He would have used 1 Mythic Power to initiate Fleet Charge before his regular turn, so he is down to 2/9.

Reflex, Enervation: 1d20 + 7 - 2 ⇒ (15) + 7 - 2 = 20

Leothar can see in the hall that Ian is radiating light towards the eastern doorway and presumably into the room.
So Leothar goes forward blindly into the darkness through the western doorway, trying to get to where the light should be.
If his way is blocked, he gives up and retreats.
If his way is not blocked, he hopefully kills a demon
Spending a round to move stuff out of the way is near-certain death by Enervation. So he will not do that.

Edit: Leothar's path is probably also blocked, right?
If he finds it blocked when moving, this battle is now unwinnable, so he will instead withdraw back down the hall and around a corner (to the green square), motioning for his allies to follow him. If his way into the room is impassible.

Leothar starts moving through the darkness.

If he hits something, he turns back.
If he gets into the light, he sees the demons and hits them.
He does not need to see where he's going to use Fleet Charge.

He can see that Ian is radiating Daylight and therefore he knows about where the light should be visible inside the room.

Leothar uses Fleet Charge to move into the room and attack.
Although he cannot see at first, he can move at half speed, and 25' is enough for him to get to a place where, by Ian's light, he can see both demons. So he attacks the one that he has his Smite declared against.

Fleet Charge, Smite, PA, Tier, Bull's Strength, Enervation: 1d20 + 16 + 3 - 3 + 3 + 2 - 2 ⇒ (2) + 16 + 3 - 3 + 3 + 2 - 2 = 21
Using Rally on that to reroll
Fleet Charge, Smite, PA, Tier, Bull's Strength, Enervation: 1d20 + 16 + 3 - 3 + 3 + 2 - 2 ⇒ (1) + 16 + 3 - 3 + 3 + 2 - 2 = 20
Figures

Primary: 1d20 + 16 + 3 - 3 + 2 - 2 ⇒ (18) + 16 + 3 - 3 + 2 - 2 = 34
Damage: 1d8 + 6 + 7 + 9 + 2 + 2d6 ⇒ (5) + 6 + 7 + 9 + 2 + (3, 2) = 34

Iterative: 1d20 + 11 + 3 - 3 + 2 - 2 ⇒ (16) + 11 + 3 - 3 + 2 - 2 = 27
Damage: 1d8 + 6 + 7 + 9 + 2 + 2d6 ⇒ (8) + 6 + 7 + 9 + 2 + (4, 6) = 42

He then uses Mythic Power to strike again.
Standard Action Attack: 1d20 + 16 + 3 - 3 + 2 - 2 ⇒ (20) + 16 + 3 - 3 + 2 - 2 = 36
Damage: 1d8 + 6 + 7 + 9 + 2 + 2d6 ⇒ (1) + 6 + 7 + 9 + 2 + (6, 1) = 32
Confirm?: 1d20 + 16 + 3 - 3 + 2 - 2 ⇒ (8) + 16 + 3 - 3 + 2 - 2 = 24
Crit Damage: 2d8 + 12 + 14 + 18 + 4 ⇒ (4, 6) + 12 + 14 + 18 + 4 = 58

Mythic Power down to 1/9. Hopefully 166 damage is worth it. Have accounted for Enervation in both the attack rolls and Smite damage. If he drops one he will switch his Smite to the other.

It has been 3.5 years since we faced one of these guys before, when we were 6th level. There is a ton in Discussion from 2021 about how difficult its Darkness, Silence, and Enervation are to deal with.

We haven't really gotten any better at handling such things. But we do know its capabilities in character.

It took us 19 rounds to beat that last one. An excruciatingly long game of cat-and-mouse.

What can Leothar see or hear?