Astrid, Halfling Priest of Talos: Sendai
Yes, Imoen. It's time to move. Or, more precisely, it's time to groove. It's party time. And there's only one song we're dancing to. Hit it, Cespenar.
For those who are wondering, no: Imoen and Valygar did not fight alongside Astrid. Astrid did, however, invite them to the Pocket Plane for a post battle celebration. Just because you're solo doesn't mean you always want to be alone. Astrid would have invited more peeps, but no one else is cool.
For the first time in her adventure Astrid felt limited by her class. This fight would have been easier for a multitude of other builds. But Astrid prevailed, through perseverance and resource management. It was a long slog, but the outcome was never in doubt. Let's get to the action.
After some debate, I decided to allow Astrid to use balors in this fight, allocating three L7s. That was a colossal mistake. Two of the balors left me fair convinced that Gate is not, in fact, OP in SCS. They couldn't have been more useless.
The first balor was summoned in the initial battle with cleric Sendai. He was met by a deva and quickly stunned, never to so much as twitch again. That's an L7 full on squandered.
Facing cleric sendai, a deva and an aerial servant, with no allies of her own, Astrid chose to bide her time and wait out the deva. The deva could detect the invisible, but Sendai and the aerial servant could not, so Astrid decided to use a potion of invisibility here. Sendai attempted to counter with a Divination cast, but Astrid equipped her sunstone bullets, foiled it, and quaffed a second potion of invisibility. All we need to do is stay on the move.
Once the deva unsummoned, Astrid revealed herself, killed the aerial servant, and then went to work on cleric Sendai with Dispel and her sling. When Sendai decided to Sanctuary, we gave balor number two a chance. He fared well, killing cleric Sendai in her Sanctuary.
As you may have noticed, Astrid started this fight with a stripped down buff list, pro evil, chaotic commands, pro fire and pro lightning. With no Breach stopper in place, Astrid's buff were vulnerable. She was Breached. Here we see an efreeti taking advantage while our balor battles a djinni.
With effretis and djinnis on the field, Astrid like to run Shield and 100% fire resistance. Post Breach, we got the Shield up, and switched up our helm and shield slots, going with the Helm of Brilliance and the Dragon Shield. I should note, too, that at this stage of the fight we were wearing unenchanted full plate, to grant us access to our CoP + 2 II and IH. Once those were spent, we waited for a lull in the battle and switched to drow full plate, to be replaced later by Grandmaster Armor.
Our second balor fought well, but he eventually succumbed. When he did, Astrid once again found herself facing a statue, a celestial and additional summons all by her lonesome. We need to burn time. Potions of invisibility nullified Sendai while Astrid evaded the summons. Tic-tock goes the clock.
Once Sendai's summons disappeared, Astrid turned the tables by bringing some summons of her own. Now is a good time to use those Staff of Fire fire elementals.
When mage Sendai fell, we were faced with axe Sendai, a mage drow and a warrior drow. With the warriors using HLAs, and the mage harassing us, we could use reinforcements. Alas, garden variety summons would be of little use here. The solution seemed obvious: gather our foes together, dart to the opposite side of the map, and summon a balor. That'll even the odds, right? Well, it would have, if the balor didn't decide to attack an unactivated statue. You're going to spend 33 rounds wailing on that thing and there's nothing I can do about it, huh?
Three balors, and only one proved worthy of an L7. Granted, that one did excellent work, but still: we've been let down by our friends. In the end we had to kite all these enemies, supported only by lesser fire elementals. Meager though they may be, they helped more than that statue obsessed balor.
Our only buff at this point is a potion of mind focusing. Our mighty cleric is just a halfling with a sling. Happily, that's often all it takes.
C/M Sendai announced her presence by saying praeses. Astrid pulled back, and quaffed a PoI. Time Stop evaded.
Since I didn't want to fight C/M Sendai and her support warriors at the same time, we pulled the warriors, and chose to kite them in the bottom quadrant of the map. This was tight and, frankly, unfun. I resorted to trying the Staff of Command for the first time. Alas it didn't work. We'll just need to wear them down, going back and forth.
Eventually they died. Astrid revealed herself to C/M Sendai and hoped there were no celestials. Dragon's Breath? Sure, yes: thank you very much.
A comet? Excellent! Just don't drop a planetar.
C/M Sendai fought well, but Astrid is very hard to kill with magic, due to her resistances and saves. Acid is her greatest vulnerability, so these Death Fogs were a sensible choice. Astrid countered with a pro acid scroll and Darksteel.
Wiltings are a reasonable choice, too, but the BoIB seriously defangs them, even without AoF.
Once again, Astrid finished with her sling in hand, running minimal buffs. It's slow going but it works, and our book is still loaded.
Of all the statues, thief Sendai proved the trickiest, landing a pair of 86hp backstabs. Sadly for her, she didn't have the tools to follow up.
Astrid hacked away with her sling until thief Sendai was near death. She then snuck off and took her buffs. Pro Evil, Pro Fire, Pro Lightning, Chaotic Commands, Resist Fear, Death Ward, Storm Shield, AoF, IH, the Holy Triumvirate and RoAC II. She summoned her deva, too. After dropping a fire elemental to lure thief Sendai out, we killed the last statue and triggered the final showdown. Let's do this.
In the initial rounds this was a summon fight. We held our own, at first, with our deva chunking Sendai's invisible stalkers.
A planetar->Symbol:Stun combo from Sendai ended the party, though, and before long Astrid was on the run, yet again.
Celestials really are a problem for Astrid. I have no idea how we're going to handle the fallen solars if we make it to the Throne. Planetars, however, can be evaded.
While Astrid had been breached, her item based resistances still made the planetars fire spells a minor threat.
Finally -finally- we were left with Sendai herself. We sent in Mr. Efreeti to create the spacing for Dispel. That's checkmate. Sendai's book is thin, our book remains solid, and we have Simmy Astrid in reserve.
Bring the Energy Blades.
Sendai has fallen, but Abazigal awaits.
Best,
A.
