Ring a Ring of Roses
Our party ventured further in to the deadly dungeon. We were faced with four doors, and they all seemed to open in to corridors. We picked one to go down, the one that seemed more likely to head to a dead end first and thus we could discount as the way forward more quickly, and sent the Rogue off to scout, which he did happily. This corridor did come to a room fairly soon, but there was another corridor leading off from it that had a spiked ball, five feet in diamater, rolling erratically along this corridor, back and forth. It was clearly created using powerful magic, judging by its movements and how it was restricted to the corridor.
As we were wondering how to get past the sphere of doom, and whether we really wanted to see what was on the other side if it had the power to create this thing, our rearguard was ambushed by some black skeletons, which appeared from a well-hidden secret door. This wasn't good, as our rearguard consisted of just our Mage, who wears no armour. I suppose it was kind of lucky that he was a-feared instantly by the first skeleton's piercing screech, and ran off like a girl to hide in a corner somewhere.
On hearing this, the Rogue, quick as always to react, came to his brother's defence and put himself in harm's way. After realising that there were more than just a pair of skeletons but half-a-dozen of them queueing up to taste warm flesh, he stabbed at one and then tumbled to put himself between myself and the Paladin, as we had now both managed to manoeuvre our way back down the corridor to face the black menace.
I had positioned myself a little distance away from the skeletons, the Paladin at my side, enticing them to come towards us. This was planned, as I have focussed my training in the Spiked Chain, giving me a 10 ft reach, as well as taking the Improved Trip feat. Along with Combat Reflexes, I thought this would be a good combination. Enemies moving from 10 ft away to come to fight face-to-face with me will provoke an Attack of Opportunity, which I can then use to Trip the opponent. Because of Improved Trip if I succeed at tripping the opponent I will then get a free melee attack at them. Combat Reflexes gives me more than the normal one Attack of Opportunity, so that I can take out several enemies coming towards me in the same round of combat. And now was my chance to use all this training.
The skeletons advanced. Before the first one reached me I had whipped it's skeletal feet from under it and followed that up with a solid hit. The second one approached, and it too was tripped over, although it fell too far away for me to hit it as it tripped backwards over the first skeleton. The third one came and was also tripped, falling to the side of the first this time so that it stayed in my range for a follow-up attack. My other attacks were not successful at tripping the skeletons, but we ended up with a skeleton facing both myself and the Paladin, and three others on the floor behind them.
It looks like my training was not wasted!