GM: Well Rasputin failed his will save, What are you doing?
Me: Turning him into a goat…
This past week has been gruelling torture out of character. Our GM had told us about how we had fought several enemies that had managed to escape and all of them managed to retreat into Rasputin’s lair. This included a set of demons that had stolen each of the party members shadows and Rasputin’s girlfriend. It sounded like a tough fight I was personally torn between maximizing party survival and taking out Rasputin as fast as I could.
The scene was set thusly. We kicked down the double doors and found Rasputin floating in the middle of the room. The very first, and last, thing Rasputin managed to cast was reverse gravity. Not to big of a problem. Each of the party members managed to bond with dragons in the fourth book, except for the reptile cavalier. He started this game with a “dragon” mount.
Hemming charged in head first riding his dragon into the antilife shell Rasputin had up. Breath weapon from the dragon to Rasputin’s face, a fast dismount, and his shadow demon disappears in gore. Emma flew her dragon into range for breath weapon and uses an oracle ability to place most our enemies in a persistent fire. Our Strix archer flies into the room and shoots Rasputin unimpeded by the antilife shell.
My witches build is based off of debuffing and SoS spells magnified by my winter witch specialization. The ability of choice was typically misfortune, my GM’s bane, which had often prevented crits on my friends and caused quite a few fumbles for my enemies. Mythic hexs don’t allow for saves unless the target is mythic. Typically our GM made the big bads of each book mythic to compensate for our power level. I had decided to play it safe and misfortune as many targets as possible to maximize our chance of survival.
Mikhail used misfortune on both Rasputin and his girlfriend (split hex is your friend). I waited for the inevitable roll of the die signaling that we were indeed fighting a mythic creature. It never came. I reminded the GM that if Rasputin was mythic he should get a chance to shake off my misfortune before I did my next action. Nope. Rasputin is currently in the process of obtaining mythic power. The hex sticks.
This was it. Mikhail couldn't pass up the opportunity to utterly humiliate the crazy fanatical distant relation of his and Baba Yaga. The whole book leading up to this point was just terrible death camps and ravaged Russian countryside. We tried avoiding conflict, mostly trying not to deal with the crazy shenanigans that comes up in these adventures seems to work out better for us. But our attempts at diplomacy were brushed off.
At this point I should explain the goat thing. Dusty the allosaurus had a healthy appetite. Even from the start of the campaign we had a string of goats following our party around so we could feed the dinosaur. We had a fateful encounter with another male winter witch who had a goat familiar we essentially murdered. There was also a point where goats almost became a currency we traded them away so often to NPCs and such for various reasons.
Mikhail cast Mythic Baleful Polymorph on Rasputin who rolled a natural 20 and then a four for his Will save, thank you misfortune. Rasputin became a goat to which Mikhail replied, “Hey, Dusty! Dinner time!”
Next time on Baba Yaga's Witch Hunters:
Lessons learned in part II of the fight with Rasputin.
-Don't piss off Rasputin's girlfriend
-Making out during combat is bad...sometimes
-Goat Herding with Mammoth Lord nomads
-How are goats like cats
