Arcadia v. Abazgial (or The Best Laid Plans of Cats and Half-Elves)
Arcadia has defeated Abazigal and Tamah despite the fact that nothing went according to plan. Fortunately, Arcadia was resourceful enough to improvise her way to victory.
First, phase 1: the drakes and salamanders. The drakes and salamanders were taken down with Foebane while Arcadia ran long duration specific protections. A Contingency: See Enemy-ProMW and an Improved Haste cast helped expedite the process.
The drakes in Abazigal's lair are the ToB equivalent of the Kuo-Toans for me. I hate'em! The have an uncanny knack for getting under my skin. It's not their oodles of Stoneskins. Nor their many healing spells or there invisibilities. It isn't even their damaging breath weapons or their high APR. It's everything together that makes them so incredibly irritating. They can be killed, no doubt: I've never lost a character to them. But they annoy me to the brink of tears every time I fight them. Hate'em!
The drakes typically do more damage to my characters than everything else before them in ToB combined. That was true once again in Arcadia's case- even if Foebane insured that she ended the conflict with more hit points than she started with.
Once the last drake was down, Arcadia swept away the salamanders. Pro Cold protected her from their Fireshield: Blues. As expected, Arcadia ended phase one with a hitpoint total nicely buffed by VT and Foebane. At this point, everything was going according to plan.
Onto phase 2: Human Abazigal. The battle with human Abazigal went as expected- at first. Abazigal opened with a Hardiness, making him immune to Arcadia's range weapons. A Breach removed the Hardiness, however, rendering him vulnerable again.
Arcadia gradually whittled down Abazgial's hitpoints with the Sling of Seeking. In between sling bullets, she layered in her buffs. Spell Shield, Spell Deflection, Spell Turning, II, SI:D, SI:A, Greenstone Amulet. She was just about to layer in her last mission critical buff, Hardiness, when this happened.
Abazigal flipped sooner than expected. And worse still, it looked like Arcadia might be trapped. Fortunately, the engine pushed Arcadia out into the open, although her position seemed far from secure.
Let's check the defenses.
Just as expected. All the critical buffs were up except for Hardiness. With Arcadia's aura clouded from Greenstone Amulet activation, she'd have to evade Tamah while counting on the Defender and Roranach's to cushion breath weapon damage (NW: Tamah's breath weapon does crushing damage).
Slightly panicked, I considered taking refuge in the hidey-hole, only to discover this:
Abazigal appeared to be stuck in the hidey-hole, leaving Arcadia to fight the ever dangerous Tamah in the open. Arcadia typically allocates her 2 L9s to Improved Alacrity and Black Blade of Disaster. In this case, however, she went with a Time Stop, reasoning that it might help mitigate wing buffet risk. A good line of thought, but Tamah had an even better idea: she cast Invisibility an instant -and I mean an instant- before Arcadia's Time Stop kicked in.
With her Time Stop essentially foiled, Arcadia swung south, cast Improved Alacrity, filled in her buffs, and then removed Abazigal spell protections with a Warding Whip. She then returned to Tamah's position, waited for time to resume, and engaged the newly revealed Tamah in melee.
Happily, Tamah's THAC0 wasn't sufficient to allow her to hit Arcadia consistently. Nonetheless, this was nerve wracking. The Greenstone Amulet had to be refreshed without fail. Physical damage protections had to be kept in place. Arcadia -who was reserving her Abjuration school weapon defenses for Abazigal- remained in melee until Tamah finally ate through the Stoneskins. Once that happened, Arcadia pulled back and finished with the Sling of Seeking.
It's always a relief to see Tamah fall.
Onto Abazigal. This phase of the fight was mishandled terribly. Over-eager, I lost track of the rounds remaining on Arcadia's last SI:A cast. Sure enough, it expired almost as soon as Arcadia showed herself to Abazigal, leading to a Remove.
Fortunately -or unfortunately depending on how you look at it- Abazigal was stuck and so couldn't pursue. Arcadia was free to rebuild her protections in peace. But still: I remained over eager and consequently made a bad call. Why use the Spell Shield + SI:D + SI:A trigger when there were SIs in the book?
Wouldn't that just waste a Spell Shield, leaving Arcadia open to Ruby Ray->Warding Whip? It did.
No matter. An SI:A recast allowed Arcadia to lock in her electricity resistance as well as her ProMWs- setting Abazigal up for the kill. To give the stuck Abazigal a sporting chance, Arcadia fought in melee. He was finished with Foebane Whirlwinds.
Sendai's Enclave will be next.
Best,
A.
Great work, G_0. CKT
Retour en haut
) so I guess I have no choice but to dress up and have fun with him and my wife. Oh, and our dog, white Swiss Shepherd - I'll get her a Glabrezu costume, if I can find one for her size. 
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