Telcarr's page

I was thinking (after the fact) of whether Lifeward would have defeated the Greater Slaying arrows, if Dragotha had a chance to get that buff up before the arrows hit. As you can see from my original post, that was part of his plan. Is a Greater Undead Slaying Arrow a positive energy effect? I think I would have ruled that Lifeward protected him from the arrows, just like Deathward protects against Death Magic for living creatures.

So KC, if you are looking for a way to protect Big D from this type of one-shot, perhaps have him protected with Lifeward from the start (or a Contingency to trigger Lifeward the first time the spell would provide a benefit).

Of course the problem is your party might dispel Lifeward (or the Contingency) before it's really needed. In this instance, if Dragotha had used his Anticipate Teleport round to get Lifeward up, Lifeward would have been dispelled in round 1 before the arrows hit in round 2. Gwilym only needed to roll a 2 to dispel spells cast by Dragotha (CL 24 + 4 Inquisitor bonus vs. CL 19) with Chain Dispel.

One factor will significantly affect how big a deal this is from campaign to campaign. That factor is what races the DM allows the players to play. In a human centric game that uses the FR or Greyhawk setting as written where the DM allows only races from the Player's Handbook, xenophobia is a natural condition in those campaigns. If an armored minotaur walks up Waterdeep's main gate, it is greeted by a hail of arrows, not a friendly "Welcome to the City of Splendors"! No one bothers to check his alignment first. A party of adventurers coming upon the siege of Blackwall Keep by lizardfolk typically will not bat an eye about breaking the siege to relieve the human troops in these campaigns. My PCs, which included a paladin and a lawful good cleric, had no misgivings, even after they later learned from the lizardfolk druid that the tribe had been deceived by Ilthane. They helped the druid by defeating the lizard king and helping her assume leadership of the surviving members of the tribe.

On the other hand, if a DM allows PCs to play all the dozens of races in splatbooks and Monster Manuals, the DM has to make some societal changes to allow those PCs to interact with NPCs, buy equipment, Gather Information, etc. Some would say these changes to civilized sections of the campaign setting make them more cosmopolitan, other less generous observers would characterize the changes as modern cultural relativism imposed on a fantasy setting. :)