[Mythweaver: The Splintered Realm] Wraith Battle

[Michael Desing]

This was the encounter that let me know that 'Mythweaver: The Splintered Realm' was headed in the right direction.

I was refereeing a session with just myself and my wife Mary playing. She was playing her level 6 rake Willow, and we were running two NPC's between us- a brownie defender and a dwarven myrmidon, both of level 6.

Willow and her friends entered the abode of a wraith (level 10) that had taken possession of a friendly brownie mystic with fire magic. In the room was a mirror of possession, which had room for only one spirit within at a time.  The wraith had displaced the spirit of the brownie, and was controlling his actions.

The three characters spent three rounds battling the brownie. In the first round, the brownie used two of his repertoire fire spells, both area effect fireballs, which dropped the brownie defender to near 0 health, and left both Willow and the dwarf at about 50% of starting health.

By the beginning of the third round, Willow had dropped the brownie mystic, and drove the wraith out of the brownie. It then attempted to possess the brownie defender (I rolled randomly to determine the next target), and was successful. The transfer of spirits between the mirror and various bodies (wraith to the brownie defender, brownie defender to the mirror, trapped soul in the mirror back into the body of the now unconscious brownie mystic) happened at the beginning of round 3.

At this, my wife realized that the mirror was the culprit, and had to be destroyed. Her rake and the dwarf both turned on the mirror, and spent the remainder of round 3 breaking it as they were both attacked by the possessed brownie defender. It took them the full round to break the mirror, at which point the spirit of the brownie defender was released, and forced the wraith from his body and into its normal form.

At this point, combat resumed normally, with the weakened party (devoid of its most powerful spells and having used all of the signature moves available for the turn) left to take on a powerful undead creature with full health at half of their normal abilities for the start of round 4.

Willow and the dwarf spent the next two rounds using hero points to land attacks on the wraith and deal damage while the brownie defender cast a series of healing spells- the first to bring the other brownie to his feet (so that he could join in the combat with spells), the second to restore himself to a point where he could handle the damage from one strike without dropping, and the following spells to buttress both Willow and the dwarf, who were taking considerable damage from the wraith (in addition to losing dice ranks to its drain abilities).

By the end of combat, all characters were at below half of their starting health, two characters had lost dice ranks to the drain abilities of the undead creature, and each character had spent between 3 and 5 hero points.

This was a highly successful session in terms of excitement, pacing and variety.