A Touch of Chaos

This is the story of how a Samsaran Shaman completely wrecked a Pathfinder campaign.


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My friends and I have played Pathfinder for about a decade now. A few years ago, one of my group decided to GM Curse of the Crimson Throne. Our party conisted of a Human Warpriest of Abadar, a human slayer (sniper archetype), a catfolk Magus, and a Samsaran Shaman (voices of the past archetype) named Tanriel Dax.  

Samasarans are an uncommon race that reincarnate. They are light blue (some what like the Chiss from Star Wars), which dark hair and pale blue eyes. When they die, they are reborn elsewhere, usually to human parents, and have no memory of their past lives other than through dreams. Our introduction to the campaign had us track down a drug dealer who sold a concoction that gave people vivid dreams. For Dax, however, this awakened much of her memory of her past lives, so much so that she was very indecisive on what she should do in a given situation. 

As we entered the third module of the campaign, Dax had become pretty potent as a spellcaster, and her sheer unpredictability made for some interesting scenarios. A recent outbreak (second module) had splintered the city into two zones, the second of which was a small area (formerly connected by bridges) that housed most of the city's poor. A reclusive warlord had siezed power, and we were tasked with finding him. Initially, we were to do this by finding someone else who had information on him, but he had been captured and we were left mostly to our own to determine his whearabouts, and those in the area were unwilling to tell us, fearing what trouble it might bring down on them. 

Dax, who was Chaotic Neutral, got an idea of how to do this. When situations like this arose, I used a chance cube (red for chaos, blue for order) to determine if she would follow her impulses. I rolled red, so I just ran with it. I told the party I had an idea, and I'd get the intel we needed. I walked down the streets of the city hollering Monty Python style insults about the new "king," hoping someone would come out to stop me. After about 15 minutes of me doing this, a gang of thugs came to intercept me. My party followed me, albeit from a pretty good distance (about 60 ft away.) I had a spell prepared for when the thugs came, and before initiative was rolled, I released it. Invisibility. I vanished right before their eyes, and on my turn, I positioned myself near two of them and cast a second spell, black tentacle. This allowed me to grapple anyone who came near me, and since I was invisible, they had no reason not to. As the thugs wandered around, two eventually became grappled, after which on my second turn, I used another spell: Dimenson Door. At this point, I was able to teleport myself and my two captives about 600 ft, so I did, straight up, and let them go. 

I told them the first to tell me where the warlord's hideout was got to live. My party, however, having no real knowledge of what my plan was, took a different approach. They engaged the other thugs and killed them, but the sniper, seeing me falling with two more, took a shot with his longbow and aimed at one of them. Critical Hit! The thug died instantly. At which point, the other started pleading that he wanted to live, and I promised. I told him that was what I promised, but my party was crazy, so it was a gamble either way. He immediately surrendered and I cast feather fall on us both. The corpse of the other guy hit the pavement, taking 59d6 points of falling damage, essentially becoming paste on the pavement. 

Our intel lead us to a pretty big arena, and we were granted entry after convincing the guards we were a team of players of the "king's" favorite sport, bloodpig.  Essentially, we had to take a dead pig ball to the other teams endzone, but we were banned from using all spells and weapons. We had to completely disarm ourselves before the game began, and the king warned us that we'd be penalized a point if we used magic of any kind. This gave Dax another idea. Chance cube, red rolled. 

She figured a one point penalty might be worth it if the right spell were used., so I told the party to hang back a round.  Roll intiative to begin the game, they advanced on us, then it was my turn. Fireball on their side of the pitch, killing most of their team outright. This caused a riot to ensue, which thugs and such rushing us from the stands, and all of our arms and armor sitting in a trunk off the pitch. Using my archetype, I summoned a weapon from a past life to help the others reach the trunk, and between that, some other spells and some healing, they managed to arm themselves, after which, we went straight for the king and captured him. This broke up the riot pretty quickly, allowing us to complete our objective and end the scenario. My GM spent hours studying the rules of bloodpig to make it into a fun encounter, but one chaotic spellcaster turned it into something far different. Sometimes a touch of chaos can go a long way. 


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