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and venture forth on an epic fantasy audio journey anytime, anywhere. 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. Make sure to share your reactions in the comments
section. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel,
All Things DnD. Second part of this story will be posted in
3 days, so stay tuned for more amazing Dungeons & Dragons content!
