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The Veteran Necromancer Teaches The Greedy
Party A Bloody And Valuable Lesson
Currently in a 3.5 campaign.
My DM is a pretty great one, but the current
cast of players leaves something to be desired.
All are either first timers, or folks who
have only ever played 4e, so there is some
“system shock” to get over.
The DM confides in me that I can make whatever
build I want, since she will be protecting
the newbies and throwing reasonably hard encounters
at me.
So I decided to make a necromancer.
Specifically, a hyper-durable, impossible
to kill necromancer that will enable me to
survive any insane crap the party, in its
folly, drags me into.
I decided to specialize in rays, so that I
can hang in the background and let the new
players enjoy the spotlight.
I make judicious use of spells like ray of
enfeeblement and clumsiness, which allows
me to debuff like a boss and help the rest
of the party shine.
I slowly grow in power, hoarding as much magic
as I can.
The campaign progresses, and the other folks
who initially created unique snowflake Mary-Sue
characters are actually starting to work as
a team, providing support for each other’s
abilities, and tackling things with something
akin to competence.
And then, they got greedy.
It was a relatively hard fight, ending with
a rather masterful round of combat from our
cleric, who murdered several high-level combatants
and their undead minions with a greatsword
and a nasty combination of touch spells.
The party is dividing the loot and claiming
bits of choice treasure when, finally, the
pixie psion turns to my quiet, unassuming
human necromancer and demands a slice of my
loot, saying that I did nothing during the
struggle to take the tower, so I didn’t
deserve a full share.
Now, mind you, I had been reliably performing
my job as party troubleshooter and general
helper.
I stripped away the arcane protection of the
crazed mage in the basement, I had gotten
us through several traps of arcane nature,
used huge amounts of combat-control magic
during our struggle to the top level, and
in the final struggle, I had turned the rather
impressive stat lines of the leaders into
something you would expect from a 1st level
gnome commoner.
Needless to say, I was less than game for
losing the small mountain of coins, scrolls,
and gems that my labors had earned me.
After I politely refused to hand over the
loot, the psion threatened me with force.
A quick intervention by the NPC guide who
led us there averted anything serious, but
I knew that my time with this group had finally
come to an end.
Our characters split up, vowing to all assemble
the following day to ensure the hand off of
the tower to our generous employer and to
agree on loot distribution.
The following morning, we all assembled in
the entryway of the tower to show our boss
what we had claimed for him.
After around ten minutes of real-time haggling
we received roughly 60% more than we had originally
been promised, and now we were looking at
a pretty sizeable chunk of cash.
In fact, if all those gold pieces had been
melted down, they could have formed a mass
the size of a rather large sedan.
I had hoped that this would slake the greed
of the party, but now the rogue and sorcerer
had sided with the pixie and were insisting
that I should only be awarded a cut of the
payment from our employer, and not a share
of the swag we acquired when storming the
tower itself.
After again refusing, the pixie, in what I
am sure she thought was a stroke of brilliance,
said that we could all work it out the next
day, since we had to remain to guard the tower
until the merchants guards and mercenaries
arrived to take over stewardship.
Spotting the obvious trap, I reasoned that
this might actually be the best way for me
to survive the inevitable assassination attempt.
The rest of the party knew that I had a small
sanctum somewhere, just 6 or 7 rooms underneath
a tavern in a small city that were so heavily
warded with magic and traps that a demigod
couldn’t have entered if I hadn’t wanted
him to.
Naturally, I “had to” put up a little
fight until finally letting the pixie’s
words “sway” me into staying (sarcasm
here).
I took a small, cloistered bedroom near the
top floor as my own, and retired early.
To sell the illusion of my death, I knew that
I would need to make it believable to the
party.
My plan was to let them “assassinate”
me and then catch them talking about it to
ensure that no one could complain that I meta-gamed
it.
Then, I would unleash my fury, and it would
be truly monstrous to behold.
For a start, I warded the room with several
castings of alarm; the door, the window, etc,
arcane lock on the door, fire trap on the
lock itself, and then several castings of
icicle, an explosive runes or two, and a sepia
snake sigil on my fake spellbook.
These magics were relatively low powered,
as I wanted their assassination attempt to
succeed, but I needed to give them the impression
that I was cautious.
The key to the plan was casting clone, several
heightened illusions, and rope trick.
When all things were ready, I popped off into
my extradimensional space and hoped that the
party would fall for my plan, as within my
pocket dimension, I would be unable to effect
the world I was leaving behind.
So I crossed my fingers and waited.
I couldn’t have planned it any better.
The sorcerer dispelled my magic on the door
and several of the traps, while the pixie
undid the others.
The rogue proceeded through my “traps”
with ease, snuck upon my “sleeping body”
and “murdered” me with a vicious sneak
attack in my “sleep”.
The contingency illusions kicked in, my inanimate
clone twitched and coughed, and “breathed
its last breath”.
They knew I never went anywhere without my
“spellbook” and when the rogue was paralyzed
by the book I had left the sorcerer to cast
read magic and confirmed it for arcane script.
They clapped themselves on the back and went
off to begin to divide up my share.
The pixie made judicious use of psionic disintegrate
to hide all the evidence in the room, and
they considered themselves both more clever
than I.
My looks of shock and horror, numerous attempts
at out of character pleading and some rather
heated words with the DM sold the act.
The looks on their faces when I teleported
into the main hall the next morning were priceless.
You know what is a fun class?
Incantatrix.
The vast number of metamagic feats really
give a player a lot to work with.
The cooperative metamagic had also really
helped the party, as I had chosen evocation
as a banned school to further restrict myself
and ensure that our sorcerer and pixie, the
latter of whom was a kineticist, got to hold
the “nuke” slot on our team.
But it really shines when paired with a certain
feat: Arcane Thesis.
This feat reduces metamagic spell-level adjustment
by one, making this like Empower cost +1 and
Quicken +3.
At tenth level, an Incantatrix gets an unlisted
bonus that does effectively the same thing.
They also can add metamagic to spell a few
times a day without increasing its level.
This was about to pay massive dividends.
Even as the party was recovering from shock,
I was casting.
I had taken the time to hulk up in my room,
prepping with all the usual goodies: Haste,
Improved Mage Armor, Greater Mirror Image,
Blur--really, all the goodies.
I had almost cast Improved Invisibility too,
but I decided against it, as I also wanted
them to bear witness what their greed had
caused.
They asked exactly what they were seeing,
and the DM turned to me.
Throughout the whole campaign, I had been
the voice of caution, reason, and moderation.
I often backed off from more dangerous activities,
citing fear and self preservation.
My response?
“I look supremely and unshakably… confident.”
These newbies don’t know what they have
gotten themselves into.
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Second part of this story will be posted in
3 days, so stay tuned for more amazing Dungeons
& Dragons content!
