So the wizard is not allowed to cast Alarm anymore.

So the wizard is not allowed to cast Alarm anymore.

So the wizard is not allowed to cast Alarm anymore.

(There’s an ever-growing list of who is not allowed to do what. For example, Gregor the Fighter is no longer allowed to trailblaze after last session’s hobgoblin ambush.)

Aelfwalch, who is an aspiring necromancer, has magic missiles that look like screaming skulls, so I was pretty interested in what his alarm spell was going to look like. As he paced the perimeter of the circle, ghostly hands and faces reached up out of the ground and then subsided, waiting. As he closed the circle, he rolled…

…a 6.

Well. He’s summoning spirits to call out a warning of danger, I think to myself, and I flip through the undead section. And oh look,, there it is—a spirit who calls out a warning of danger. I start to describe the translucent, cadaverous form rising up from the ground and I see the look of horror on the player’s face, and he’s way more into this than I would expect…

…oh, wait a minute. His master died under “mysterious circumstances” on the ship ride over, didn’t he? I add in some seaweed and ghostly water to the description and glance down at the banshee’s writeup. “A victim of betrayal (often by a loved one)”

Some things are just meant to be.

11 thoughts on “So the wizard is not allowed to cast Alarm anymore.”

  8. Nobody had told the Druid tha the’s not allowed to shapeshift…yet.

    After all, it’s been terribly useful. It got him out of an elven snare and he saved the party by flying off with a hobgoblin battle horn and leading the reinforcements astray. But this time it kept eating him in more and more trouble.

    So the undead master proved basically invulnerable to physical attack, but the screaming skulls of his former pupil tore through him and he wisely vanished, but not before his horrible screams drew the attention of the patrol of hobgoblins and worg-riders the party has been avoiding. So much for making camp.

    But the Druid has a plan, and for once it doesn’t involve setting fire to something. They leave the hobgoblin battle-horn and the goblin heads heave been collecting strewn about the clearing (a clearing covered with unnatural frost and withered plant-life thanks to the undead master) and are about to leave when they remember the worgs.

    “You guys go, I’ll turn into a skunk and spray the area so they can’t track us!” This whole plan sounds like a defy danger on int to trick the goblins into being scared away instead of following, so he rolls and…

    7. Time for a tough choice. If he stays to spray, he won’t get away. But he’s a skunk, so he figures he’ll be safe. The worg-riders begin circling the ring of frost and their shaman heads into the ring to begin to “cleanse” it. The druid decides to hide in some brush to avoid being spotted. Defy danger again? Sure!

    8. I can’t think of anything immediately so I have one of the worgs park itself right behind the bush as a worse outcome. Then I look over at the rest of the group and ask my wife, the barbarian: “when you were packing up to leave, you were in a hurry. What did you forget?” Turns out it was her dagger, and the shaman has spotted it. The worgrider behind the Druid dismounts and picks it up, and the goblins jabber excitedly. As the rider heads back, the Druid decides to shape-change into an adder and bite the worg-rider, poisoning it.

    Now the goblins are pretty freaked, what with the goblin heads and the horn and their missing scouting party and the horrible scream. And now one of them’s been bitten by an adder. The shaman’s the only one who keeps cool, and he orders two others to get the snake so he can make an antivenom.

    As they approach the brush with forked sticks, the Druid shape changes again, into a badger, and issues a warning growl. The shaman figures that badger blood will probably work just as well for his potion since badgers kill adders. (I have no idea if this is actually true of European badgers, but given that American badgers kill rattlesnakes and honey badgers don’t give a shit, I figured it was probably reasonable.)

    So the goblins go off to get spears and the Druid decides to change shape again to get away. And he turns into…a field mouse. Nobody’s going to notice that, right? And so he rolls.

    6.

    Well he spends his one hold to scamper away, and after he’s out of sight of the goblins I drop the other shoe: he can’t change back.

    So he’s struggling through the forest trying to catch up with his friends, and it’s time to wrap up, so I describe an owl taking flight, passing over the encampment (where the wizard has decided that rather than stay up on watch, he’s going to cast Alarm again) and gliding silently through the trees, when it spies something: a field mouse making its way through the frosty grass…

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