Old Fighter's page

Glad your GM went light on you but your party is still pretty much destroyed. The fighter is permanently paralyzed and the wizard has lost his mind and all his spellcasting ability. Without a HIGH level caster joining you like right now you have no chance. The fighter will die in about 3 days without someone coming to release him from the paralysis and even if you could free the wizard he'll need at least a day to recover all the spells he lost from being polymorphed (and I believe the spell the Lich used was baleful polymorph which is NASTY!)

A monk, rogue and ninja could MAYBE sneak into the lich's tower to recover the bunny but have no way of undoing the effects on these two and considering how far from town the party is it's really unlikely they can get help in time to prevent the fighter's death. Ugh.

Yup. We have no way ourselves of un-paralyzing the Fighter or the Ninja, and very little hope of rescuing the bunny, and no way ourselves of un-polymorphing the bunny back into a wizard.

We do have a support structure though, and we may be able to get help from NPCs who are friendly to us. But... over the next week people will be thinking about how to move forward. Maybe some people will re-roll.

A complication is that, if assuming the fighter is un-paralyzed before he dies, then he will insist on rescuing the wizard after we recoup. "No one gets left behind".

And that just leads us into a worse situation.

So to bring some closure to my story, here's what happened.

The Lich stood as a move action and then tried reading his scroll again, which again he failed. Dunno what game mechanic the GM was using. The AoO this provided the Fighter allowed him to attempt to sunder the material components pouch (attack missed).

The DPS fought the air elementals. The Wizard managed somehow, with some combination of spells, to teleport nearby.

The Fighter grappled the lich.

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The Lich used paralyzing touch which the Fighter resisted, and then drained his life. The Ninja came over to the Lich. The Wizard summoned a celestial triceratops... Some kind of triceratops. The rest of the DPS fought the elementals. The Fighter pinned the Lich's hands.

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A whirlwind elemental followed the ninja to the lich. The lich again tried to paralyze the fighter and failed, and again death touched. The ninja used a special attack to push the lich into the whirlwind. The rest of the DPS fought the elementals. The fighter chose to hang on and got sucked in too.

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The lich again tried to paralyze the fighter and failed, and again death touched. Chaos reigned. Dps fought things. Wizard waited for an opportunity.

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Seemingly many rounds of the lich trying to paralyze and death touching while the two grappled opponents were in the whirlwind. Everyone was unsure what to do.

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Eventually the lich paralyzed the fighter, got out of the whirlwind, paralyzed the ninja and generally started to F the party up. The DPS goes nuts on him. The triceratops charges him.

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The lich uses expeditious retreat. The rogue and the monk stay with the disabled fighter and ninja to guard them. The wizard chases the lich into the darkness.

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The lich turns around and polymorphs the wizard. The wizard rolls a nat 1 to resist the poly, and a nat 1 to resist having his intellect changed into the int of the new form. The wizard is now a bunny. The lich picks up the bunny and goes back to his tower.

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end of the night.

Thanks everyone for your input. We didn't win, but it wasn't a total party wipeout.

As an 11th level fighter, you should have a few tricks up your sleeve - feats or magic items that let you do stuff besides take an AoO (which everybody gets) and grapple (again, everybody). You say you have Improved Trip (which implies you also have Combat Expertise)... there might be something hiding in the other dozen or so feats an 11th-level human fighter ought to have.

For instance, as somebody else pointed out, sundering the spell component pouch as part of an AoO could work. It depends on this guy's stats, but there's still a chance he's going to fail his concentration check if he tries to teleport away (not a great chance, but a chance).

Tentatively, my money'd say...
- if he tries to crawl away, sunder his spell component pouch
- if he tries to cast defensively, let him
- if he eats an AoO to cast, hit him
- if he attacks... let him. A fighter should have a decent shot at resisting a paralyzing touch, if anybody does.

Otherwise, just fighting as hard as you can is really all that can be expected of you. If it's to be a TPK, then you might as well go out swinging.

Thanks, I appreciate the ray of hope. I do have improved trip, disarm, etc, etc, .. Many improved (combat manoeuvres). I forget off the top of my head. I'm old.

I like the idea of a called shot against his spell pouch. That's a great idea.

I think I'll follow your suggestions.

My suggestion is to die with style and make casters of some sort next time.

You mean like the Wizard and the Monk with spell tattoos?

But I do want to die with style... Hell of a way to go out; grappling a Lich. I think that would be cool.

I feel like I'm missing something. Why did the Elementals pop up during the first round of combat? Shouldn't they have appeared just before the Lich's turn in Round 2? I suppose it could have used a Quicken Metamagic Rod, but it seems unlikely. It would have done something else if that were the case.

It had a held spell that it cast and held at the end of negotiations.

Greater teleport solves the wizard abscence

Unfortunately he doesn't have Greater Teleport. He and I had though considered the following:

He teleports to where he left us and flies up in the air. We are 10 miles away from that spot.

We signal with some kind of huge explosion and he teleports to the explosion.

But we couldn't figure out how to create a huge fire/explosion in the Arctic plain with just the resources we have.

Would a Lich really need his jaw to speak? I mean, he's already pulling some Sir Fortesque stuff.

This is exactly why I considered pinning it, because I couldn't be sure that a called shot to the jaw would stop it from speaking. There's no lungs or tongue or vocal chords.

Therefore I figured if I cannot be sure of stopping the verbal component, I would pin it's hands and stop the somatic and material.

with your current groups complete lack of spellcasting (arcane or divine) vs a prepared arcane lich with three huge elemental servants you have about a 95% chance of being completely trounced inside of the next 2-3 rounds.

Totally agree. I told my wife something similiar. "There's a 75% chance we wipe tonight"

Any ideas on how we can get the Wizard to us ASAP? He can teleport, but isn't familiar with this area.

Indeed, in turn 2 one of the air elementals was already doing a whirlwind, thus temporarily incapacitating the Monk.

I, the Fighter, hadn't thought about the possibility of paralyzing touch. My only goal is to keep the Lich from casting on the DPS long enough for them to handle affairs.

And I agree that the most likely outcome will be a total wipe out. It was exactly this concern that prompted posting for help. Indeed, I wanted to negotiate with the Lich and avoid combat.

Oh well.

Ok, we (the players) are in a juicy situation and I'm looking for advice.

First, the GM is an encyclopedia of rules and he follows them all. He will also not hesitate for a moment to wipe out the entire party.

Next, We players are all level 11, and are vets at gaming (19 years together as a team).

Fighter - specialist in combat maneuvers
Rogue - fights with a big cat and does insane dps
Ninja - that knows all kinds of "snake style" and "tiger style"
Monk - that has weird tattoo spells
Wizard - general practitioner

We are all on an Arctic plain at night in an alternate dimension with no stars or moon. The Wizard missed last game and the Gm handled it by having him overland fly back to base to get some gear. So right now he's flying back to base. We are all telepathically linked, so he is still "in network", but he's very far away.

The Wizard can teleport, but has never been where we are. Furthermore, the telepathic communication does not include sensory images so we can't send our vision to him for use as a teleportation target.

Our quest is to walk to a tower where two Lichs are residing and get a magic item from them.

At the end of the last game, one of the Lich's confronted us on the arctic plain. I negotiated with it to trade it's magical item in return for X, but negotiations fell apart and we attacked.

The init order is this:

Lich
Ninja
Monk
Rogue
Fighter

== Turn One ==
The Lich summoned up three huge air elementals.

Ninja, Monk, and Rogue attacked the air elementals.

Fighter did a full run around the elementals and towards the Lich

== Turn Two ==
The Lich attempted to cast a spell off a scroll but failed his spellcraft check (it was a public roll). It then started to run away.

Ninja, Monk, and Rogue DPS'd the elementals with varying degrees of success.

Fighter charged the Lich and tripped it (improved trip, rolled a nat 20).

== End of Game ==
The GM halted the game right there

Tonight, we will resume the fight with the same init order. I expect the Lich to do one of two things:

1. Stand up
2. Teleport away (cast while prone)
3. Something else

Our goals are:

1. Keep the Lich here
2. Defeat the Lich here
3. Continue on to it's lair and only fight the remaining Lich before the first lich is restored by it's phylactery.
4. Destroy the phylacteries, get the item, and leave.

So -

If the Lich stands, the Fighter will get a turn. On that turn he will try to grapple and pin the Lich, thus preventing somatic and material components. The Fighter will keep the Lich pinned until the DPS shows up to kill it (or he is killed by death touch)

If the Lich starts casting prone, it will provoke an attack of opportunity. The rules appear to prevent a combat maneuver as an attack of opportunity. In this case the Lich will probably escape and we'll have to fight two at once.

If the Lich does something else, well, who knows.

I'm looking for the following advice:

1. How to keep the Lich in combat with us
2. How to get the Wizard to the combat
3. How to defeat the Lich

Any ideas?