S'Sharra assassination attempt(s)

[Ancalimon]

Hi to everybody!

Last week we've played our fourth (if I remember right) session of Into the Maw.
Short premise. First "relevant" NPC we met into Divided Ire was this read chick in red outfit named S'sharra. We barely let her say anything, when our main wizard named Ancalimon (no, it's not a coincidence) threatened her... the dialogue was like: *cutting her off* "hand us the death knight and the mortal woman, at once!" "Or what are you gonna do, mortal?" "Or, this mortal will burn this accursed place to ashes and remove your very memory from the multiverse!".
... Ancalimon is the typical "à la Vaarsuvius" arrogant archmage, his confidence bolstered by his fairly broken combo of abjuration-related classes and spells;).
In fact I think the entire party is about as strong as one can get, so we seldom show any fear. Plus, although nobody truly has a code of conduct, all of us are "very good" aligned (like exalted good) and very little inclined to negotiate with evil outsiders.

S'sharra just fled and kinda disappeared. Oh well.

So, after killing Kululblax and Belshamot, we were trying to decide what to do with Saureya and Orgosh... basically going back and forth in the prison's corridords, when suddenly Ancalimon got attacked and hit, like, 3-4 times and nearly killed by someone in greater invisibility. This was the surprise round (yes, all of us completely forgot the "standard action-only rule"...).

So we rolled initiative. Our rogue/wizard proceeded to (defensively) cast Glitterdust centered on the injured wizard, but "slash" he got attacked while casting: the invisible attacker had arguably prepared an action. Concentration check botched by one.

Our druid Healed the main wizard, who casted Time Stop and prepared to lay down his usual array of world-shattering (:P) defensive spells before starting to blast. I was so pissed that complelely forgot to cast defensively, got AoOed but spent an immediate action to convert Heart of Earth into DR 10/adamantine and easily passed my Concentration check.

Another player adviced me against this tactic, suggesting I should've just cast Glitterdust upon myself instead. But I knew better!
2 rounds of Time Stop: Karmic Retribution, Shield, Ironguard and Warding (imbued with Blue and Indigo veils).

Last charachter to act, the one who discussed my choice. A cleric, Ordained Champion Fist of Raziel who didn't have purge invisibility prepared (!). He did pretty much nothing but activating Law Devotion. End of the 1stround.

I was already gloating, waiting for S'sharra to hopelessly strike at me, only to roll three saves and most likely get her ass rightfully kicked... but nothing happened! We looked into each others' eyes.
"She's getting away!!" "I told you, you should've cast glitterdust! Most stupid waste of a 9th level spell ever!" "Damn, if she has Haste we're f*ed" and so on.
Ok, rogue/wizard cast True Seeing on himself, but saw nothing. Too late (I admit we completely suck at ordinary Listen and Spot checks, at least when confronted by a "well done" sneaky npc).

Bottom line.

I clearly made a mistake there, not seeing things for what they were and reacting the way I react for any "serious" fight.
Retrospectively, the best course of action would have been: quickened glitterdust upon myself by rod of metamagic/circlet of rapid casting, THEN Time Stop (if I couldn't resist showing off).

The problem is another. I've realized with horror that we weren't ready! None of us had See Invisibility cast. None of us had poison immunity (by gear or spells).
We were relying upon druid's Scent and my Anticipate Teleportation for warning: either S'sharra has something to fool Scent, or our GM has improved her with something from MIC to present a decent challenge (the latter wouldn't surprise me).

What to do now?

Without telling me anything specific about S'sharra, how would you prepare (generally speaking) for an assassination attempt which could come anytime anywhere inside the Ire?

I've skimmed through all those low-level utility-spells and decided to always have See Invisibility active (2-3 castings should cover an entire day). We'll have the cleric and druid cast Delay/Neutralize Poison on everybody (at least the ones with low Fort). I'll force our cleric to have a couple of Purge Invisibility prepared.

Ancalimon is the one with the most spells always active upon himself (Focused Specialist, spells with duration in hours and Extended Abjuration from Abjurant Champion go a long way):

Mind Blank, Greater Luminous Armor, Heart of (all four), Energy Immunity (all five), Heroics (Improved Initiative), Celestial Brilliance, Overland Flight, Anticipate Teleportation, Battlemagic Perception.

I was planning to add: See Invisibility, Delay Poison, Permanent Detect Magic, Permanent Arcane Sight, Nondetection.

I've also considered placing a few Alarm spells at critical intersections into the Ire: since we're killing most of its wandering inhabitants, sooner or later there won't be much left around but S'sharra and we could approximately "track" her.

Am I forgetting anything? Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[Luna eladrin]

True seeing might help. A PC cleric in my group uses it to great effect. Of course the duration is not very long, but if cast at the beginning of combat, you could at least spot invisible creatures. And another one is invisibility purge.

[Charlie Bell]

Lantern of revealing. I'm pretty sure there was one somewhere in the treasure for STAP. I know my party had one, and they didn't buy it. That's how they were able to get S'Sharra.

She is one sneaky b+#$~, though.

[Ancalimon]

@ Luna: yes, we'll make sure to have at least 2-3 True Seeing prepared (all of us are able to cast it, which makes our previous ineffectiveness against S'sharra even more embarassing!), and a couple of Purge Invisibility.

@ Charlie: Lantern of Revealing? We may have found it, I'm not sure because I'm not the one keeping track of our loot, but I think so.
Anyway, given its value, I'm afraid we've sold it: I remember we've sold a lot of stuff to the Mercane merchants at the beginning of this module, including the lantern perhaps. Or, we sold it even before. I'd be surprised to find out we still have it, but one never knows. :P

Foresight too would solve the problem of assassination attempts, but its duration isn't long enough to cover a day of wandering. Even with a greater rod of extension (which I don't have), it wouldn't be worth a 9th level slot IMO.

Thanks anyway, I'll let you know as soon as we've got her. ^^

[Luna eladrin]

I would like to hear that story. At the moment I am preparing this adventure for my own group of players.

[Charlie Bell]

S'Sharra story:

Luna, I think you have my PF conversion of S'Sharra. In my game, she waited for PCs to get split between rooms and would use a combination of greater invis and her regular old astronomical Stealth skill to ambush obvious casters. She damn near one shotted the wizard the first time they encountered her. She broke contact and ran away.

After that, she would follow the party around Divided's Ire, waiting for them to get into fights with the other denizens. She would never attack unless the party's attention was focused on another encounter. Two or three times she jumped into other fights, laid out some smackdown, and retreated before the party could refocus themselves and pin her down.

They finally caught her in area 8, just outside the doors to the bridge. They were in a fight with a roving patrol of hezrou when she struck again. They pulled out the lantern of revealing so she couldn't just invis away. I can't recall now whether they surrounded her or hit her with some kind of save or suck, but they managed to capture her alive.

After that it got kind of ugly. They traded her to Belshamoth.

[Luna eladrin]

That was very inspiring. I do not want her to be a pushover.