FA+
Shop
More Tales from the Tabletop
11 years ago
Wow, it has been a while since I shared some of my Pathfinder/DnD tales. Then again, understandable since my game group only got back together last Fall when our other DM returned from Afghanistan. Anyway, we've been working our way through "The Carrion Crown" adventure path, set in the land that's essentially Castlevania crossed with Mordor. Vampires, undead, zombies, Dark Towers, the whole package. Even have a legendary lich lord imprisoned beneath said Dark Tower, awaiting the day he is freed to revive his long vanished evil empire.
Thankfully, our DM allowed me to use my custom minotaur race for my character. Sure, pathfinder already has minotaurs, but they’re the savage, brutish, Large-size kind suitable only to give out experience points upon defeat. My character’s shorter, smarter, and closer to human than monster. Still have the horns, hooves, and some heightened senses. And the might and sturdiness of a bull. Originally I chose wizard for my character’s class, transmuter specialization. But after a near-lethal encounter with one zombie in the first session (turns out clubs are pretty ineffective against the shambling dead) prompted me to use my One Free Retcon to do a class change. Best choice I ever made was to switch over the magus class.
Oh magi, 2/3rds of a fighter mixed with 2/3rds of a wizard to make a mage-warrior hybrid that’s capable of so much than what could be accomplished with a multiclass fighter/wizard. I’ve always liked playing hybrid characters in The Elder Scrolls and the like, and the magus does them one better by merging sword and sorcery. From first level magi can use a full-round action to cast a spell and strike with a weapon, and even cast those spells while wearing armor (something that really isn’t all that easy for non-magi).
The last two weeks saw some really memorable moments. The rest of the party is made up by a half-orc cleric, a human gunslinger (able to dish out a frightening amount of damage in a short amount of time, though he takes hits like a paper crane in a hurricane), an elf bard (archaeologist archetype where he’s swapped out musical abilities for trapfinding and trap-disabling), and a halfling monk (who hits like a sodden paper crane but in turn can’t be touched by anything less than a critical success).
The location for the end of the current chapter was a manor perched on the cliffs over several rushing mountain rivers. The front door was locked so the monk and bard snuck in to unlock the door from the inside. Too bad the bard missed spotting the trap on the door, the trap that conjured a Huge air elemental. Normally fighting an air elemental would be one thing, but fighting an air elemental on a narrow bridge 100 feet over a rushing stream is entirely another. The elemental switched to its whirlwind form and picked up the gunslinger. It then glided outside and hurled the gunslinger off the bridge. Not to toot my own horn too much but I happened to have just the right spell prepared. A quick casting of Feather Fall spared the guy from taking 7d6 points of fall damage.
Now it’s a very good thing that magi gain the ability to expend points from their arcane pool to recover spent spells, because the elemental then swept my minotaur up and hurled him into the gorge too. I regained Feather Fall to save me from hitting the river. Not that I was really all that concerned since I have hp to spare. Still, didn’t want to risk getting too beat up. Especially since the gunslinger and I were going into the river 30 feet upstream from a 50-foot tall waterfall. Next spell up was Animal Aspect, going for aspect of the otter for aquatic agility. How a minotaur gets webbed hooves isn’t something I want to contemplate.
And while I was trying to keep the gunslinger from going over the falls the cleric got swept up in the whirlwind too. He too was thrown off the bridge. Luckily he had a Fly spell prepared, thanks to his goddess’ domain. That left the bard and monk to flail at the elemental while my bull and a flying half-orc tried to pull the gunslinger out of the river.
Things then took a turn for the dramatic when we began exploring the manor house proper. The cult that was suggested to be behind our earlier adventures decided to strike. Fairly certain it was the DM’s customization that we ended up fighting doppelgangers of ourselves. The foes were using illusions to look like us, but that didn’t change the fact they were several levels higher. My own twin paralyzed most of the party with Black Tentacles, a spell I was 4 levels away from being able to cast. And then the other gunslinger proceeded to dish out a massive amount of damage, taking out our gunslinger his first turn and then taking me down the next. And it didn’t help that my twin kept laying down the spells, Fireball and Phantasmal Killer. It would have been a TPK had it not been one of those “Battles You’re Supposed to Lose to Advance the Story.” It really was three inches from impossible. One foe at level 10 (the minimum I surmise they were) would have been an epic challenge, 5 were nigh unstoppable.
So there were our characters, knocked out and imprisoned, then to be individually interrogated by the cultists. My inquisitor was a real ray of sunshine, torturing my minotaur with a red-hot iron, stabbing and searing him when the answers I gave weren’t to his liking. He ended the questioning by using a mace to break off my horns (but since I managed to make him lose his cool I got an extra 200 xp when it came time for it to be doled out). The gunslinger was free first, and he had been beaten and water boarded. The cleric was hanging upside-down by a rope, off a balcony, over the gorge, with his hands bound behind his back. The monk was bound up to his neck in chains. His fingernails were pulled out by his interrogator in an attempt to keep him from punching them. It didn’t work, hence the chains. And we found the bard hanging upside down over a trio of rust monsters. The rust monsters were a fun fight. Normally they’d rust metal weapons away at a touch, but since my axe is magical, sentient, and indestructible thanks to it being a Black Blade (a feature of my own Bladebound magus archetype), I carved up some rust monster filets.
The next part of the manor we explored was the museum. One room had a pair of sarcophagi. I warm everyone not to touch either coffin, but what does the cleric do? He strides right up to one sarcophagus and opens it. Surprise, surprise, there was a mummy inside. A mummy that then attacked. Another winning spell selection on my part, as I used Scorching Ray to help reduce the mummy to a pile of ashes. The other sarcophagus actually didn’t have a mummy inside. Bad news was it was really a mimic, which then started constricting the gunslinger in its tentacles. Big, scary sarcophagus with tentacles? Yeah, we were up against a Cofagrigus without any Ghost or Dark type attacks among us. Not even an Ultra Ball.
The next part of the manor wasn’t my favorite part. I was in the front as we waded through 3 foot deep water. And because I was in front I had the fun of being attacked by two leech swarms. Swarms are tricky things, normally the only way to deal with them is magic or dogged persistence. Gunslinger thought it’d be better to hurl a vial of Alchemist’s Fire onto the swarms. Bad news was that the swarms were on me. And the monk hurled some oil to keep the fire burning. The fire that was burning on me. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that my minotaur no longer had any fur between his neck and navel. A bare torso showing off the network of scars and burns (including the mark from the possessed prisoner branding iron from the haunted prison). That’s going to be very, very itchy when it grows back in.
Big shocker came when the DM had the gunslinger roll a d100. He got a 16 and became an elf. No, we’re still not quite sure why he made the sudden race change. I am fairly sure he was rolling on the Reincarnation table. Good thing Pathfinder uses the 3.5 reincarnation options, original 3rd edition had less of a chance of getting satyr or centaur and more a chance of getting badger. Badger gunslinger sounds adorable but wouldn’t really be much use in battle. Be better off hurling an enraged badger at the enemy. Although, the thought of an elf gunslinger is pretty intriguing. Just think of Legolas from “Lord of the Rings.” Now give him a pair of pistols. Scared yet?
And the grand final battle of this chapter was against a custom, and pretty vicious, Variant Flesh Golem. Think the unholy love-child of Wilbur Whatley and a spider. Eight spider legs, pincers, tentacles, the most terrifying works. We had to win the fight by using the Castle Frankenstein-style apparatus on the roof to call down a lightning storm to charge the machine which we could then use to summon another flesh golem to fight for us, the same sentient flesh golem who were successfully defended in a trial earlier in the adventure (adventuring paralegals, anyone?). Even got to channel a little Eleventh Doctor into my magus as I figured out the device, “Big Friendly Button? Oh I just love Big Friendly Buttons!”
During the fight the monk and gunslinger engaged Big Ugly and got snagged by tentacles. Monk managed to wriggle free but the gunslinger wasn’t as lucky. Cue my latest epic moment. I stepped off the tower, slowed my fall with Feather Fall, draw my trusty Wand of Acid Arrow, and called a shot on the tentacle constricting the gunslinger.
Critical Hit.
Once again I was the gunslinger’s best friend. It’s generally advisable to be on good terms with the guy who can kill any other member of the party in one move should he so choose. So we were able to put down the Big Bad and completed the chapter, even got to level 7! Oh level 7, where my magus can now wear medium armor and cast spells without chance of failure. And he gains access to his level 3 spells. Now spell selection really gets fun, since I can choose from among Fireball, Fly, and Lightning Bolt, and that’s just the short list.
And so ends my latest Tabletop Tales. It’ll be some time before I play this character again, as it’ll be my turn to DM and I’m running the opening chapter of ‘Rise of the Runelords.’ Can’t wait to get back to that magus though. I didn’t set out to make him a scarred badass, but I am pretty happy with how he’s turned out.
TL/DR Started playing Pathfinder again, made a minotaur magus character, and he's a badass by accident, not design.
To be fair, my minotaur battlemage isn't furless. Though until it grows back his torso is bare. And even when it grows back in he'll still have those scars adorning his hide. Not sure if the horns will grow back, though.