How Touched By Death Got His Name
Touched By Death, my monk, was originally called something else. What it was I forget now, which shows how long it lasted, but why did it change? Well, in the first couple of weeks our group was returning to town after a fight and encountered an old woman on the road. Sat on our horses some distance away, we quizzed who she was and what she wanted. I was sceptical about her and told her to begone, at which point two things happened: she started to transform; and our mage charged in on his horse to attack her.
It turned out that she was a Hag of some description, pretty powerful too. We found out later that she was turning to leave as we were sitting at a distance with ranged weapons and weren't being lured towards her. Except our mage charged her. Actually, he's a fighter/mage of sorts, so it isn't quite as dumb as it sounds. Nevertheless, bad things happened.
The Hag attacked the mage's horse and rent it asunder, leaving the mage thirty feet away from the rest of us and standing close to the Hag. He shouted for help and, as it was my turn in the initiative order, I felt some strange sense of responsibility. Stupid monk's Lawful alignment. I went forward to help him. So there we were, the mage and myself, standing next to a Hag. What does the mage do next?
He backs off and casts Shield on himself. Thanks, chum.
He charges in, gets in to trouble, I go in to assist, and he buggers off. I am left standing next to a Hag that is angry at us, and I end up being killed very quickly. This does not please me. I am glad to say that the rest of the party took some pity on me and got me resurrected, albeit with loss of experience points and a level, but to reflect this change to my character I changed his name. And I don't trust that damn mage any more.