Mini Adventure, Week I
Our reduced party ended up as three Humans: me as the Melvin the Wizard along with a Fighter(2)/Rogue(7) and a Barbarian mixed up with some prestige classes from a new splat book. I was looking forward to smacking some sense in to monsters with an empowered Fireball or two. No such luck in the first, introductory encounter, though. There were peasants intermingled with the monsters, and the others in my party thought it would be a faux-pas to kill any of them a few minutes after arriving in the village. Ah well.
However, one thing I wanted was a chance to try the Necromantic spell Magic Jar, and I got it. Magic Jar lets the caster leave his body and enter a 'magic jar', whereafter he can try to possess another creature, although the choice of creature is pretty much random. Nevertheless, it seemed like it could be useful (well, it should be for a 5th level spell). I didn't think it would be much good in a big fight with lots of enemies, but I thought it would be interesting to use as an infiltration spell, and in this case when we couldn't initially see what we were fighting.
I cast the spell and sensed a few strong characters and about a dozen weaker ones, and guessed that our party were the former and the enemies the weaker, so tried to possess a weaker one. By the end of the next round I found myself in the body of a water elemental, which had just jumped on to the deck of the ship we were on with some of its chums. Of course, they didn't know I wasn't their ally, so I smacked them up a bit while my party helped dispose of the others. Woo!
Mind you, our enraged Barbarian killed my host body in an attack of opportunity as I went to see what was attacking the underside of our boat, but that's okay; I returned to the magic jar and took over another enemy in the next round. There I found myself as a Triton, surrounded by three others, all beating the boat's bottom to shreds. I started to attack, and this weirdness was enough for them to decide they'd had enough, although they were sure that the boat was doomed anyway, and they nicked off. I returned to my body, happy with the first use of the Magic Jar spell. It was more helpful than casting fireball in a cramped space, at least.