Last night the party I'm GM'ing for went into delvehaven. were they encountered the deadly triceratops. The wizard had however prepared command undead and since the triceratop is non intelligent it only managed a suprise hit and then 2 more due to winning the initiative before the wizard cast command undead. Since there is no save for nonintelligent creatures it was an automatic succes. It then took him an extra round to bring it under control due to the fact that his first order to it was to back away which it did, while firing a searing darkness against the paladin. They then proceeded to the armory, where the triceratops made short work of the shadow mastiffs. After the shadow mastriffs howl, Jair came up in mist form to check on the intruders, when he saw that they had taken possesion of the triceratops. He lured the bard away and took possesion of him, and commanded him to attack the triceratops (which he fortounately resisted, it then commanded him to attack the wizard controlling it, which he did) Alas to no avail other than an unconcious bard. This was the point that our gnome got the bright idea that with a little handiwork the barding on the horse could be used to make a near tank out of their friendly triceratops.
Finally they decided that they needed to break the domination on the bard, which they used 2 dispel magic scrolls and 1 break enchantment charge before succeeding.
I was at this point dreading the effect this powerfull ally could have on the rest of the dungeon, although they would not be able to bring it the the lowest level due to the small stairs, they would have a serious advantage in the rest.
My worries would soon turn out to be unwarranted however, since the next real encounter, besides my quickened dolls was on the will-o'-wisp which materialised inside the triceratops and made an interesting yet short encounter. Upstairs there wasn't really anything to fight, and downstairs they were unable to bring it into the insect museum and beyond, so the wizard told the triceratops to attack anything who came close to it without the company of the wizard. This the gnome sorcerer completely forgot, when he chose to run from the mad fighter who was attacking his friends inside the ship-room and back to his huge new friend, only to be blasted with a bolt of searing darkness.
After a couple of rounds things got under control again, and they decided to rest. They went upstairs again cut the bridge on the first floor, and set the triceratop to guarding just outside the guest rooms they slept in.
At this point I decided that a little intervention would be in place next morning the fighter was the first to exit his room, which landed him a rough awakening by a triceratops. On the other side of the collapsed bridge he spotted 3 very white humanoids, 2 which was casually looking and a third who was in deep concentration.
The gnome came out from his room a bit further down the hall and unleashed a fireball wand at the 3 vampires on the other side, which caused them to flee, leaving the triceratops once again nonintelligent. The wizard however was still a good minute or so from having prepared his spells.
The triceratops began to pound in the door to the guest room with the fighter and the bard, the bard decided to make a silent image of another wall 5 foot from the backwall which they hid behind. 3 rounds later the triceratops had broken down the door and enough of the wall to be able to enter the room. Knowing their doom, the fighter braced his glaive for one last hit... And scored a critical hit for 82 points of dmg which killed the already wounded triceratop.
I thought it turned out awsome. I was just wondering if any other GM have experienced the players use of command undead on this mighty beast, and what the results from this was?