Started out as a humble rouge, ended as the best character I’ve ever played

Irregular sneak-thief urchin becomes one of the most powerful badasses I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.


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The campaign setting was a D&D Pathfinder format. The time, many years ago. I don't remember if this was home-brewed or not, but our group was hired by a fairy dragon and his orc bodyguard to obtain a powerful artifact that could enable him to right a wrong that had been done to him. I was Isaac, a level 1 Human Rogue. The main points I wanted to make were these: at one point, our party found the deck of many things.  Everyone except me got excited.  I was somewhat new to Pathfinder and didn't know what the deck did, so naturally I was a bit skeptical. Everyone took turns drawing a card from the deck by rolling a D100. The Half-Orc Barbarian lost a level, so naturally he was upset. The Human Dragon Rider got a cool magic item, the Elven Sorceror got cursed and our Dwarven Fighter got some gold. As for my character, I rolled a 13 on the dice. Our DM described the card that I drew: a bright sphere hanging over a lake of still water that showed its reflection. It was the Moon Card.

That meant a Wish spell.

I then had to roll a d4 to determine how long I had to use it. I rolled a 1.

One minute for one Wish.

The other party members at the table started freaking out, yelling at me what I should wish for. Higher dexterity, a ton of gold, an eternal servant, immortality, etc. I held up my hand as a symbol for quiet while I thought about my wish. Time was running out and I had to act fast. Suddenly, I had my decision. Here's how it went:

Me: Isaac holds the card high, and says in a loud, clear voice, "I wish to be the stealthiest Rogue alive."

DM: In a flash of light, the card disappears. Then, so do you. You now have the power to, at will, turn invisible. This granted me a passive + 20 to Hide and Move Silently checks.

Once again, all the other players at the table started freaking out. Who could blame them? Their already decent Rogue had suddenly shot up in terms of danger to anyone who crossed us.

After this, our group had ventured into a dungeon that was housing a multitude of chromatic dragons. This dungeon had stone walls with the usual decor: moss, vines, the usual. Near the entrance of the dungeon, someone had located a pocket of heat behind a part of the wall. Believing it to be a secret, one of our party members broke it down with their hammer.

Big mistake.

The wall did not lead to treasure, but to a bed of lava that begins flowing into the corridor. Everyone ran away from it northwards and our sorcerer threw up a wall of stone to keep it at bay. This will be important later.

Going back to the living system in this dungeon, the dragons acted as roommates in the way that they had their own section of the dungeon to themselves. So long as they didn't bother each other, they didn't have any problems. Some of them had kobold servants. Isaac was around level 7 or 8, so he decided to take a few levels in Wizard to add a little more versatility to his repertoire. His familiar was a rat he had found in the dungeon who he had attracted via pieces of fruit and meat. Isaac decided to call him Mortimer.

After we had dealt with an adult blue dragon lounging in a deep pool in the middle of the dungeon, everyone moved north to a safe spot while my character went invisible and did some scouting. In doing so, he accidentally attracted the attention of an adult Red Dragon. Isaac cast spider climb on himself to avoid getting tripped up by the rubble in the passageway, running along the ceiling into the passageway where our party had thrown up the wall of stone. I had forgotten all about it as we had been exploring. Now I was trapped between a rock and a large, fire-breathing, scaly place.

The dragon had caught on to what was happening, so he wasn't in any hurry to get to me. As the dragon slowly approached, a wide grin of triumph on its wicked face, the DM turns to me.

DM: What does Isaac want to do?

Me: Um, uh… I'm going to try to break through the wall.

DM: Okay, do you have any spells prepared that can do that?

I shook my head.

DM: Then you have two options. You can pull out your mace and try to smash it or you can go with physical brute force. The mace has a good chance of succeeding, but you will need to succeed more times to break through. Using your body, you only need to succeed three times. However, the chance of success is much smaller.

Remember, this is all while a large red dragon is closing in on me. For one thing, using the mace probably would have taken too long. For another thing, I was feeling lucky.

I went with the physical force. Keep in mind, I might have been a rogue/wizard, but my strength was a little above average; around 12 or 13.

DM: Okay, roll 3 strength checks.

Nat 20.

Three times.

In a row.

This was all over roll20, so I couldn't have botched the RNG even if I wanted to.

I broke through the wall in an act of desperation not wanting to get mauled by a dragon.  I sprinted along the ceiling while invisible, Mortimer holding on for dear life as we ran over the lava. The dragon, now furious that his prey was escaping, gave chase. Isaac successfully cast Prestidigitation on the lava and rolled high enough on Bluff over his Sense Motive to make him believe that I had fallen in. So while he was thrashing about in the lava looking for my corpse, I made a hasty retreat along the ceiling of the passageway.

I failed to Bluff my way past some kobold guards that were working for the local white dragon and had to flee through them back to my party while being chased by it, its minions, and now the red dragon that I had fooled. Thankfully, everyone else had gotten a chance to rest while this was happening. Ready or not, we were in for a fight.

Things seems to be going well. We had our share of injuries, but we gradually killed the white dragon and its cohorts. All that was left was the red dragon. It breathed fire in our general direction. Everyone rolled well on their reflex saves and dove out of the way, taking half damage.

Everyone but Isaac.

He took a face full of raging flames. That was enough to kill him outright. The party killed the dragon, but I was dead. They were wondering if anything could be done to save me. Then the sorcerer remembered that he had a scroll of reincarnation. Well, no time like the present.

The DM played it out that my soul had to partake in a Wheel of Fortune type of game. I rolled a d100 and he looked up as what race I would return. After consulting the chart, the DM looks at me, then back at the chart, then back at me.

DM: Air quickly fills your lungs as you begin gasping on the cold stone floor. Your skin, as you notice from your hands, is an eerie gray. Rushing to the pool where you fought the blue dragon, a strange reflection looks back at you. Wispy white hair flows down your back, the same color as your pupiless eyes.

Congratulations, you are now…

a changeling.

The table went silent. Everyone looked slack-jawed at me. I was beside myself with how unbelievably lucky I was. It's almost as if my character had shed its skin from a simple human and transformed into the best race a rogue could be.

We ended up finding a large cache of Adamantite ore. I took my share to the nearby town's blacksmith, who created a cutlass from it for a hefty price. I then had it enchanted to summon an adolescent red dragon as an action.

The campaign ended with a three-way fight for the artifact we were hired to retrieve. I and our Dragon Rider join forces with a tiefling who served a chaos god that had been wrongly rejected from its Pantheon while the other three sided with our original employer. Group three was a pair of Black Knight who wanted the artifact to give their evil deity more power in order to earn favor with him.

We double-teamed the knights, then attacked each other. I won't bore you with the details, but the Dragon Rider and I we are victorious. The tiefling was about to use the artifact to fulfill his master's wishes. However, a backstabbing from the fairy dragon ended his life and allowed the dragon to break the curse that was on himself, revealing his true form to be that of a black dragon.

The dragon proceeded to fly far north and destroy a land that was home to the wizard who had cursed him in the first place. Despite being evil, he still honored his word and everyone, even the two that had betrayed him in the end, were rewarded for our efforts in retrieving the artifact and breaking the curse. I suppose the thrill of being freed was greater than his desire to exact vengeance upon those who were beneath him.

The land that was bequeathed to our party was divided amongst ourselves. Isaac got another rat familiar, Mortimer the Second, and retired to the southwestern area, setting up a tower filled with illusions, traps, and bits of treasure in certain areas to entice adventures into playing his game.

And that, my friends, is the story of my character's transition from Isaac, another simple Human Rouge, to Isaac, the Changeling Arcane Trickster. He who could, at a whim, turn invisible, naturally alter his appearance, and summon a red dragon.

The stealthiest Rouge alive.

The reincarnated shapeshifter.

The greatest character I've ever had the esteemed pleasure of playing.


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