2025-01-16 We Are the Champions
1492 DR 29 Uktar (The Rotting)
General Summary
We discussed what the ambush we triumphed over meant, in terms of our enemies being aware of our goals. We then continued forward, coming eventually to a wide clearing in the forest. A visible distortion, like a persistent heat haze, blurred the forest on the other side of the clearing. Standing between us and that distortion were a pit fiend and three horned devils.
The pit fiend announced itself as the "Champion Balakos". It fairly accurately sized us up, identifying Xander's focus and Enkidu's primal power. Dallon and Harad were named as a horizon walker and paladin, while Varanis and Leo were dismissed as "casters". Balakos challenged that if one of the casters faced him one-on-one, in melee combat to the death, he would allow another of us passage past them without conflict.
Balakos was unconcerned by us taking time to discuss our strategy, and was impervious to attempts to gain any further information. Varanis' impatience and Harad's strategizing clashed briefly before we settled on a simple tactic. Harad would summon a steed to close with Balakos and hand over to Leo to grant him mobility, while Xander would use Step of the Wind to launch himself and Enkidu into the fray. Dallon and Varanis would engage at range.
Harad was first to close with Balakos, discovering that the pit fiend was surrounded by an antimagic field. This significantly changed our tactics. Xander also discovered that Balakos displayed abilities similar to his own, effectively making it a pit fiend monk. In particular, Balakos could deflect attacks back on his enemies, inflicting damage and potentially stunning them. He was also surrounded by an aura that prevented melee attackers from easily escaping his reach.
The battle spread out quickly. Enkidu and Xander focused on Balakos, while the horned demons spread out to attack everyone else. Harad's summoned steed was destroyed, leaving Leo vulnerable, while Dallon gave up ranged attacks to engage a horned demon that closed with Varanis. Balakos delivered significant damage to Enkidu and, for a time, proved resilient to Xander's attacks.
The tide shifted when Varanis called in a meteor swarm on the horned devils. His metamagic transmuted the damage to lightning and protected party members not shielded by Balakos' antimagic field. The empowered spell inflicted 154 points of bludgeoning and lightning damage on the horned devils, destroying them all. Xander succeeded in stunning Balakos for 2 rounds, leaving the pit fiend vulnerable to a renewed assault. Harad tossed his elemental gem to Leo, allowing the bard to summon an earth elemental and send it against the pit fiend. Harad cast beacon of hope to boost healing magic from Leo, Lulu, and Dallon.
Balakos rallied towards the end, resisting a third Stunning Strike and bringing heavy pain to the party. Enkidu was dropped to zero hit points once, staved off by his Relentless Rage. He and Harad briefly swapped weapons, as Harad did not have the strength to effectively wield Ranagrim with his magical gauntlets suppressed. A second drop to zero put Enkidu down for good and Xander soon followed. Dallon's hunter's mark allowed him to consistently deal ranged damage throughout the melee assault. The earth elemental delivered the final blow.
Dallon used goodberry to quickly revive Xander and Enkidu. Leo followed up with mass cure wounds and Harad ended the session with prayer of healing.
Adjudicating Antimagic
Some quick notes on how we adjudicated effects and abilities not clearly covered by the text for the spell antimagic field. Mostly, this involves deciding which abilities qualify as creating "other magic effects" and which do not.
- The spell warding bond is suppressed if either caster or target is within the field.
- Inherent abilities not triggered by spells, magic actions, or any action type were deemed as not creating a magical effect, but representing energy contained within the character. This includes abilities such as a monk's Empowered Strikes and a paladin's Radiant Strikes.
- In contrast, using Channel Divinity to imbue a weapon using Sacred Weapon was not exempt.
- The spell hunter's mark was determined effective when used by a ranged attacker, since the spell is enhancing the attacker outside the field, and neither affecting the target nor enchanting the weapon used.
- In contrast, the Planar Warrior feature of Horizon Walkers was not exempt, since it converts a weapon attack into force damage.
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