We continue to clear Castle Scarwall in Part II of Skeletons of Scarwall (8 page .pdf). Two more of the four sub-bosses, a devil bat lady (who really reminds me of an enemy from some video game I can’t place) and a shadow dragon, fall to our swords and sorcery, leaving only one sub-boss to go and then the main boss – who we already killed once before, so no worries there. Our party is only three strong, but we are mighty!
The main challenge is keeping enough spells held back to take care of Shadow Count Sial when he finally decides to turn on us. He’s acting even twitchier than usual and it’s clearly only a matter of time. I hope Laori sides with us and not him when it all goes down. Though Annata’s not quite sold on the hot girl-on-girl Laori proposed last session, she’s been a good friend so far.
We hit level 13 at the end of the session. For Annata, I’m thinking adding a level of Crusader (a holy martial artist from Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords) to get more combat prowess. She’s supposed to be a holy warrior but her damage sucks (1d6+2 whether you need it or not!). She’s finally worked through the feat chains to add one of the Pathfinder beta crit feats, which will help… She could make her crits fatigue, stagger, sicken, or bleed an opponent, I’m still deciding which. But with Crusader she’d get all kinds of nice boosts. Paul’s letting me swap out Stone Dragon school for Desert Wind school to match Sarenrae’s sun focus, though counting the powers as one level higher. I’m thinking Death Mark, Fan the Flames, Flashing Sun, Foehammer, Divine Surge, and Thicket of Blades stance. Although Iron Guard’s Glare is also attractive, and if combined with Fire Riposte and Holocaust Cloak, and potentially the various fire shield magics Annata has available to her, could be compelling.
It’s a shame to lose a level of spellcasting, but truth be told, seventh level cleric spells suck. First of all, there’s not enough of them. And four of those, really the only good ones, are basically the same spell (dictum/holy word/blasphemy/word of chaos). Spells like Holy Word and Disrupting Weapon suck because they specify that they only affect creatures of less than your caster level. So they’re no use on big bads, they are only mook-mowers, and we have plenty of other mook-mowing options. The symbol spells which also take up several spots on the spell list suffer from the same issue. She’ll miss the level bump to Channel Energy way more.
Geek Related 