Slain by Elf

We encounter a shadowbeast, a mere whelp of a shadowbeast but he doesn't look friendly. Being in a rather unfamiliar position of having a plan that looks to be working, paladin Ganelon takes advantage of the beast weakened by our light spell and moves forwards to attack.

'I'm going to call on my god to help me hit the shadowbeast, who is ostensibly evil!'

'So say you', a voice rumbles from above.

'Okay, I'll hit the most evil creature in range', Ganelon corrects himself, making me understandably a bit nervous, if only because our necromancer is sensibly hiding at the back of the party.

Actually, I think I'll be okay, but I feel I have to warn the rest of the party that the paladin is about to stab himself in the foot. Maybe he wants to become a ranger.

We finally learn some information about the shadowbeasts, asking around town about anyone whose seen such a beast or survived or witnessed an attack. The type of shadowbeast we will be looking for are slug-like creatures, lacking arms and legs and using natural attacks. What this means is that our normal tactics of disarming and tripping our foes will be rendered entirely ineffective.

'It sounds like a DM fix', Ganelon says, having had plenty of experience coming up with such fixes himself. 'Yes', he admits, when reminded of this, 'I was thinking about what I'd do'.

'If you were running this, it wouldn't just be the shadowbeasts who'd thwart our tactics. Even the bandits would have no legs and go around biting people.'

He ponders this for a moment, and says, 'Mmm, they'd be a bandit group of gelatinous cubes'.

'Are the shadowbeasts undead?'

'Make me a Knowledge (The Planes) check.'

'That's a failed roll, but I'm guessing they're extra-planar and not undead.'

There are shadowbeasts lurking in the darkness each night, and we want to find out more about them so we can eradicate them from the city.

'The story behind the shadowbeasts', our DM starts, 'the lore, if you will, the, uh...'

'Belief?'

'Yeah, the belief behind—'

'The Myth.'

'Right, ...behind—'

'The legend!'

'...behind the—'

'Tale!'

'This isn't a synonym contest, shut up and let me finish.'

Back from our successful recovery of our group's leader, we return the horses we borrowed to the stable master. He is a member of the resistance group himself and lent us the horses, as well as acted as one of the decoy riders for the ambush. But when Ganelon and I lead the horses towards the stables we see a brou-ha-ha ahead. Someone is arguing with Jacovo, the stable master.

It transpires that the horses we were lent were promised to a local and he is complaining that they are not ready to be collected on time. As we approach with his horses he only gets more agitated, upset to see 'his' horses have been unduly exercised before tonight's performance. We recognise the fellow as Thressing Umbero Ulvano, a famous and highly regarded actor, and one with a thespian's flair for the dramatic.

Ganelon tries to calm Thressing down, using his most diplomatic efforts. Sadly, diplomacy is not Ganelon's bag and he sounds more sarcastic than sincere. I am even less diplomatic, our smooth talkers heading in the other direction to pawn the weapons we recovered from our ambush to a friendly blacksmith, and can only try to browbeat the actor in to understanding that the world isn't actually ending. I'm equally ineffective, and come across as shouty and rude.

Our efforts to defuse the situation fail and so we deem it best to wander off instead of making circumstances worse. Of course, we already have, but we don't want to make them worse than that. So I'm not entirely sure why, when we watch Thressing continue to abuse Jacovo for minutes longer, I get the urge to run off to a nearby florist, buy a bunch of blooms, and return to shower Thressing with them when he finally shuts up.

'Bravo! Encore!', I call as I toss the flowers his way, 'Bravo!', fully appreciating the skill and emotion that went in to his performance, but for some inexplicable reason my praise is taken in the complete opposite way by the actor. Rather than bow and be humble in the face of such admiration, even with false modesty, it only seems to make him more upset. Moments before he was to turn away and leave the stables behind, Thressing instead bursts in to an even louder and angrier tirade at my impudence. I feel it best to turn away and leave him to it, although I can't help but chuckle to myself when I do.

I suppose I did actually ask for a repeat performance, and I certainly got one.

If you think our paladin gets unwarranted flak for his actions, I offer this simple exchange for consideration.

Moving to chop down another guard, Ganelon calls for him to 'Surrender and die!'

'Surely, "or die"?'

'No.'

We've almost cleared the wagon of guards, just one more remains on top. He is currently reloading the ballista mounted on the roof of the wagon, but I spring up to prevent the large weapon being used against us a second time. Poor Afutavere nearly had a second name change to Halfafutavere.

Brennan sees the potential of my actions. 'If you gain control of the ballista on top of the wagon we can start firing it at the cavalry coming back!'

Afutavere sees it differently. 'Or you could shoot the chap fleeing in the back!'

Hey! I'm not the paladin.

Our paladin is actually enjoying the fight, despite our ideal of not killing any of the guards. He even charges in to combat with two more guards who are over five feet away! This is unheard of, but explained when we realise the guards are only holding crossbows and so don't threaten in melee combat.

Wielding his longsword two-handed, Ganelon slices viciously through one archer, dropping him to the ground. 'Damn, that's another one I need to heal next round.' If we didn't think he was aiming to kill them it would be a pretty good tactic, and quite effective. Strike as hard as possible, then stabilise the dying character.

Apart from critical hits nearly slaughtering two guards in one round, when we are trying to merely wound or incapacitate, the ambush is going well. The leader has been dropped to the floor by Ganelon, our paladin, who then calls for the surrender of the guards.

Brennan the bard casts a spell to cause a few guards to fall asleep, and calls for their surrender.

Afutavere the ranger has accidentally shot a guard through the neck, and calls for their surrender.

I get in close and disarm two of the guards of both their longswords and crossbows, and call for them to throw down their weapons.

I should probably take the combat more seriously.

Our paladin, apparently intent on the plan to rescue the leader of the resistance group by waiting until he's executed and then raise him as a zombie, wasn't paying much attention when we were told of the group's inherently peaceful attitude. 'Try not to kill anyone', we remind him, as we wait to launch an ambush on the wagon holding Arael, captured leader of the group.

'How am I supposed to do that?', he wails, keen to spill guts as all paladins are. We try to assuage his bloodlust, telling him that we can fight but we aren't here to massacre our opponents, but still he struggles to grasp the concept of suppressive combat. I suppose that's just his lawful-good alignment kicking in.

It's not only our paladin who's having trouble. Our elven ranger is trying to work out how he can pull his blows so that he deals less damage. But hang on a minute, how do you pull a blow with an arrow?

'You could walk up to your target and hit him gently with it', Brennan suggests.

'No', I say, 'if you want to do less damage with an arrow just nock and fire it normally. That method's worked so far in dealing no damage'.

Whatever methods we employ to bring the enemy down without killing them, just don't go for the jugular. But it's too late, as the wagon holding Arael is in front of us, our decoy riders have done their job in drawing away some mounted guards, and the paladin is running to engage the guards on the wagon. He targets the leader, declared his chosen enemy, and slices through his jugular. Blood spews everywhere as the critical hit cuts the Hellknight down in a single blow.

Our Ranger is next, and his arrow flies true, as difficult as that is to believe. The arrow strikes hard in to the neck of another guard, a second critical hit dropping a second target to the ground in one blow, amidst another fountain of blood.

Ganelon looks back and asks Afutavere, 'Didn't you pull your blow?', somewhat sarcastically. Personally, I think he fired a warning shot and characteristically missed by miles.

In creating the next combat encounter, our DM is remembering the good old days.

I'd forgotten how much of a pain in the rear trying to make a monster was in 3.5e, which it seems to be the same in Pathfinder in terms of being a nightmare.

I tell you now, if you lot walk all over this encounter there will be trouble.

Help is at hand! There are resources available to ease the burden, and one of our players provides a handy link.

There's a couple of online resources that help a bit. This one is OK: D&D 3.5e Monster Generator.

I made a skeletal camel with 4 levels of paladin and a vampire squid with 5 levels of wizard - both took only a minute or so.

Personally, I'm dubious about its usefulness.

But those are really common wandering monsters. How does it cope with more exotic creatures?

Challenge accepted!

Pretty well actually. And there's a pathfinder link at the left, which is a bit better. I made a ghost assassin vine cleric 5/wizard 5/mystic theurge 5 too. Advanced to 33 hit dice. Worth over 1mil xp.