#lethal encounter

Those that have known me for a while have know that I love to role play Villains and Antiheroes/Antivillains. For years, I try to play them to push the plot with minor conflicts to press characters to see what they're made of. Man vs man, man vs nature, man vs self; they're all points that can push a character to challenge the PC in ways that they never directly think of.

That being said, I have never actually tried to kill my fellow role players. At least not with a intelligent humanoid who knows the difference of right and wrong and the consequences of his or her direct actions. Piss off; yes. Challenge ones way of thinking; yes. Outright kill/murder? This weekend was my first time.

To set the scene the BBEG was someone from my Druid's past. Someone that I had been hinting at since they were level 3 was somewhere in the city tracking them with Imps, spawning random ambush because he wanted revenge against their druid bud. (Bad falling out where two of his friends/family were killed in consequence). It made him a Abjuration / Infernal pact Warlock hyped up on something called Dragonsblood, which is a highly addictive thing in game that gives you things like sorcery points, but widdles away your body like heroin.

Fast forward, they're now level 6/7 and I had to keep scaling him up to keep a good challenge going. Because truthfully, I wanted each of their past plot lines to be difficult to deadly encounters depending on how they left certain threads lie. So while his real body had like a -4 constitution, ac was 7, and Hp 5; the BB's mind went into a Horned Devil thanks to his Chain Pact with the Infernal. Kind of Detective Pikachu route where mind of guy in Wheel Chair goes into body of Mewtwo.

Story time: Conflict builds in talks. Big Bad, code name Paps, starts to realize who group is because Paladin says that his imps have been bothering them, and requests for him to stop. Paps says his imps have only been tracking one individual- to which Frosia (target druid) panics and drops a Magic Bean, from Bag of Beans.

98 on a d100. He summons a mini dungeon that is 60ft tall pyramid. In an underground bar. The center point of the structure lands right behind them, cutting off their sorcerer and cleric from the rest of the party for 5 rounds. 52 points of damage goes out from the collapsing walls, roof, and rubble cut into them. Everyone on Paps side passes Dex rolls, killing most of his minions in the process, but hes got 2 legendary resistance and actions so now hes in the air as a horned devil and pissed.

Easy way to defeat him was to find his real body and kill him, so the soul would leave the devil and desummon it and all his minions. Instead they go in against him at about 200hp, ac buffed up to 19, and this form has Con +5 and attacking +10

My group was on their edge of their seats the whole time with the struggle bus at half health due to the pyramid crash. Druid loses both of his beast shapes because Big bad is GUNNING for him. Falls unconscious like twice, only because Selune (our paladin) is able to keep him up with lay on hands.

They start widdling away his health, hes angry and starts to panic, and causes Druid to go under Enemies Abound. Two rounds go by, I start making him waste his last 3rd and 2nd level spells against random targets in the party. By this time hes out of spells (3 1st level), paladin has like 1st level, no health pool, and Rouge finds the door and starts unlocking it to find his actual body.

So fun thing about Devils. Most of them have a barbed tail that deal some sort of poison devils. Horned devils have a Tail attack that's 1d8+6, with an additional 3d6 damage called Infernal Blight, which is a NECROTIC based poison that says on the body and continues doing damage if they fail a con save.

Round 8 Jackal our Rouge finds the door that leads to Paps body. He tries to unlock the door, but with the Abj ward on it, its JUST out of his lock picking.

Paps body was in danger. And it became I needed to stop this rouge. Still wanted to kill the druid - ok. Last 3rd level spell; cast minute meteor

1. Does 2d6 fire damage and half as much on a Dex save. 2. Jackal (rouge) has dex maxed out. I know as a dm hes probably only going to take half damage. 3. He only has 5 hp points left, but with fire damage, worst thing is he will fall unconscious for a few turns, and the cleric is 60 ft away and can use a medical kit to at least stabilize him worst case scenario 4. Jackal I think has ever gone unconscious once before. It was an accomplishment on my part if I could ever knock any of these guys unconscious. Then Jackal used EVASION which pissed Paps off. Took zero damage on the success, made him - made me waste a third level spell to protect my body.

If I did not kill him, I would die. This was the last round. All stops were thrown out. So I had on legendary action left. I did the Tail attack. 1d8+6 piercing. He went down. Additionally took -14 NECROTIC damage. Auto kill. No saving throws, no death saves. Dead.

Stabbed through the chest, I ask Tyler what he wants Jackal's last words to be. He turns to Casey/Selune, the revenge paladin that had a similar background to him that has a beef with the religious group known as the Silver flame, and tells her to "Burn them all down."

No one had any spells left. Cleric had revivify, but she was out of third levels. Nothing. Zip. Nada.

Selune manages to kill devil right after. Still in rotation. They spend a few rounds breaking through the door where Paps is still trying to off spells like Crown of Madness and Sleep against the Druid as a last attempt of turning him on the others to kill him. As they're trying to get to him to compulse him to somehow heal Jackal, Paps just says to Frosia "You took two of mine; I'll take one of yours in return."

They manage to get him out of the safe room, pin him and charm him, screaming heal him, save him, which I can only reply "I'm not a cleric boy. You've known that from the start. If I had that power, I would have brought them back."

To which Frosia (druid from big bads past) slits his throat, and tells the others to get him out.

We ended the session on that cliff hanger because it was 630 at night. The shock and realization started to sink in thli the point where all I could do was remember an interview with #mattmercer whom had said they had taken everyone out to drinks when #Mollymauk had died in #criticalrole. We needed booze, we needed sugar. Walked everyone to Hurricanes and had sangrias cheese cake where Tyler was able to share a little more of a glimpse into Jackals back story.

Dry tears and emotions still flood, left on such a high point of drama. The reality of the situation is that they have 10 days to find someone who's willing to use Raise Dead on him to bring him back, but since there is a Stigma against Changelings in the area that they are in, the odds are low.

They have one friend who is a high enough cleric, but hes a three day trek out into the woods to find him. I'm interested to see where it goes.

I'm also still sitting with myself, trying to digest everything, because intentionally in game I murdered someone in cold blood. But playing true to a villain character, it was something that needed to be done.

But at the end of the day, its something morally that I stand behind as a role player. With conflict, comes risk of breaking people. But characters are like geodes; it's only when they're broken are you able to see what they are truly made of.

I have plans and ways to bring him back just incase Raise Dead does not work.

But for now, cheers to you Jackal. We'll see you again soon.