“Checking in,” Harriet murmured, crouched by the waterfall. The hammering sound of water falling down to stone covered her words, ensuring they wouldn’t carry, and she raised her eyebrows at her parents in confidence that their voices would be shrouded, too.
“I’m okay, kiddo. A little worried, a little sad, you know how it is with me. You doing alright?”
“Dad, I didn’t—you—um,” the girl stammered, tensing up. Relaxing deliberately, she put her hand over her father’s enormous-by-comparison one, about an eighth of which was resting on her shoulder. “Yeah,” she said after a few moments. “I think I’m doing okay.”
“Only okay?”
“I wish this world wasn’t so dumb, but at least it’ll make things easier for us. So… mixed bag? I’m doing okay,” she repeated. “Just sucks, the people are fun and we’re gonna do good things and have a good time, but it’s not like when we visited Gev.”
“Gev was nice,” her mother said, smiling fondly. “You were amazing, and we were along for the ride. And there was a real depth to that place—felt like a place that had always existed, that’d keep existing.”
“And how are you doing, Mom?”
The fond smile shifted into a rather different, more malicious one. “I’m doing great, honey. It might be nicer to be in a place like Gev, but I don’t mind a world to break every now and then instead of to live in. And speaking of which? Everything is set up the way you wanted.”
“Okay.” The Ranger nodded firmly, fingers stroking along the limbs of her bow. “Places. Mom, kick off a Query when you’re ready. Remember, there’s only one hob who’s a clean shot, so…” Harriet’s voice trailed off, and then raised an eyebrow first at her father, and then at her mother.
“First shot; javelin on the hob we can see,” the Paladin agreed contentedly. “Someone else can show off.”
“Magic Missile on the bugbear,” the Sorceress said with a smirk. “Since it always hits.”
“Eight count from the ball.” And with that, the girl slunk forward, fitting an arrow to her shortbow as she carefully picked her way across the rocks.
In her wake, her parents followed… catastrophically—
Rolling Stealth (Dexterity) | 1d20+2, worst of 2
Rolling Stealth (Dexterity) | 1d20-1, best of 2
Rolling Stealth (Dexterity) | 1d20+7, best of 2
Results of 17, 17, 7 | SURPRISE LOST
COMBAT INITIATED
Rolling Initia
—as her father’s armor jangled and his shield slammed against the metal at exactly the wrong—
R E S O L U T I O N I N T E R R U P T E D
“Load Fate’s Dice.” The words rang in the air, inaudibly soft and yet shaking the world. Everything twisted, and everything was different, and always had been—
—and her parents followed in her wake, with a deftness that was made advantageous by dint of the waterfall disguising their footsteps and a particular Paladin’s armor and shield.
21 | SURPRISE MAINTAINED
Rolling Initiative | 1d20+2=21
Rolling Initiative | 1d20+5, best of 2=15
Rolling Initiative | 1d20-1=14
“Hup,” murmured Jason, evincing absolutely no disorientation or hesitation from his retroactively successful stealth efforts. Utterly focused, without sparing a thought to anything other than his task, he pivoted and threw his javelin with smooth, graceful strength.
Rolling Attack (Javelin) | 1d20+7 | 1d6+5
Result of 11 MISSES
This, it turned out, was a mistake, as the grace of his strength was not matched by the grace of his footwork. Fouled, his javelin was off the mark against the chainmail and shield of the hobgoblin.
Harriet spared neither a thought nor look for him. She’d almost zoned out, somehow risking losing her focus entirely for a long moment, but the fact that there was trouble to be made brought her back to reality just in time to loose her shot before, horribly, she would be acting after her mother.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Rolling Attack (Shortbow) | 1d20+7 | 1d6+5
If the d20 roll for an attack is a 1, the attack misses regardless of any modifiers or the target's AC.
The arrow went into the campfire smoldering in the center of the cavern, nowhere near the hobgoblin she’d been trying to shoot.
“I,” Cassandra sighed, “am so glad that we went with your plan. Because your plan didn’t actually require hitting them. Magic Missile.”
Magic Missile To-Hit Automatic | 3x (1d4+1)
13 (4 + 5 + 4) Damage to Avalanche
Unstable Sorcery Confluence | 1d100
Sight Fails As Widens The Shadow
The needles of magical power traversed the space between her and the bugbear almost instantaneously, each of them hitting full-force.
“That’s half,” she muttered. “But what—”
“—the Shadow?” Harriet stage-whispered, still barely audible over the waterfall.
“The Shadow?!” Jason returned, beaming grin audible in his voice.
Cassandra turned to glare at her family, then blinked in surprise at them being… ah.
“The Shadow,” she murmured in retroactive alliance with their awful sense of humor, or rather, with Harriet’s awful sense of humor and Jason’s enthusiastic enablement of same.
Invisibility
2nd-level illusion
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S, M (an eyelash encased in gum arabic)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
A creature you touch becomes invisible until the spell ends. Anything the target is wearing or carrying is invisible as long as it is on the target's person. The spell ends for a target that attacks or casts a spell.
“That,” she said, chuckling, “will do nicely.”
End of Round 1 (Surprise Round)
Rolling Initiative | 1d20+1=12
Rolling Initiative | 1d20=9
Rolling Initiative | 1d20+2=7
“Now that’s how we play peekaboo! Hup, where’s Harriet? I don’t see Harriet anywhere?”
“Oh my god, Dad.”
“Over to you, kiddo,” Jason’s voice said softly out of thin air near the entrance to the final cavern, still jovial but still somehow serious at the same time. “My javelin’s thrown, so I’m holding ready.”
“Ready? Never mind. Okay.” She took a deep breath, letting it out and drawing a bead on the hobgoblin who was stirring and looking around to find the source of the arrow that’d kicked up a rooster tail of sparks when it’d hit the smoldering fire. “Take two.”
Invisibility Lost Due To Making An Attack
Rolling Attack (Shortbow) | 1d20+7, best of 2 | 1d6+5
Result of 20 HITS | Hobgoblin takes 7 damage
“And I’m out.” Arrow fired and howl of pain emanating from the struck goblinoid, Harriet scampered 25 feet—
Breaking Up Your Move
You can break up your movement on your turn, using some of your speed before and after your action. For example, if you have a speed of 30 feet, you can move 10 feet, take your action, and then move 20 feet.
—backwards, building distance between herself and the about-to-be-incoming enemies, two of whom had longbows and one of whom had at least one javelin. Not content with mere distance, she also ducked around a stalagmite, using it to shield most of her body.
“Good girl,” Cassandra whispered to herself, seeing her daughter make a substantial amount of distance and get behind cover. “No amount of killing your enemies is ever worth your life. May you always remember that.”
Nobody could hear her, except for maybe her husband, and she knew that. There was time, given the system that the world had, and no loss of fight cadence or tempo. Nevertheless, she breathed out in a huff, almost as if exasperated at herself for the moment of sentimentality in the middle of combat.
“You know, she didn’t say which to hit with the spell that can miss. Hm. Well, the one that’s close enough to death I might kill it, I suppose. Fire Bolt,” the Sorceress cast, having gathered herself and returned to the moment.
Rolling Spell Attack (Fire Bolt) | 1d20+7 | 1d10
Result of 23 HITS | Hobgoblin takes 5 damage
Unstable Sorcery Confluence | 1d100
YOU STAND WITHIN THE CONFLUENCE OF YOUR POWER
Cassandra ran, as best as she could on the unsteady ground, towards the walls of the dams that were keeping the water in the pools on the north side of the room. Crouching behind the stone, she cackled helplessly as the feeling of renewal and refreshment flowed through her.
She was glorious. Life was glorious, magic was glorious, and she felt as though she’d had a full night’s sleep in the eyeblink’s span of the sorcerous confluence that had lasted a subjective and glorious eternity.
“That,” she murmured to nobody in particular, “was better than most orgasms I’ve had.”
Still tingling all over, she indulged herself in the euphoria of the moment, letting the initiative order proceed onwards without her attention.
She would be needed soon enough, if the wrathful scream of hobgoblin and Avalanche were any indication. But by the sounds of the heavy snap and the crunch, it wouldn’t be for a few seconds yet.