Baptism of fire
- Squirrelbirb
- 27. März
- 3 Min. Lesezeit
There it was again—that feeling like time had rewound itself. We’re playing Eberron. In Xen’drik. Exploring the ruins of a lost civilization. And then: swarms of bats. Before we can react, we’re surrounded.
My mind starts racing. My rogue has a few tricks up his sleeve, but against swarms? Boomerangs, kukris, bow—completely useless. In D&D 3.5, swarms can’t be hit with critical or sneak attacks. Weapon damage is reduced to almost nothing. Area attacks? We barely have any. We own exactly one torch, but to light it, we’d need our storm lantern. Unreachable in the chaos.
I check the inventory. A sonic arrow—maybe it could confuse the bats. But there’s no way my rogue can draw his bow in this mess. A small pouch of flour? Might cause some chaos, but it won’t fly far. Also: flour explosion. Wouldn’t be the first time we accidentally blew ourselves up. Rubber ball? Useless. Hacksaw? Rope? I can practically see my rogue frantically pulling random objects from his pack like in a comic.
Our ranger is also going through his gear. He sighs: “I can barely do anything.” Our druid stays optimistic. He’s got Ice Storm as a last resort. It would hit us too, but if it prevents a TPK, so be it.
I love finding creative solutions. Using unconventional methods to solve problems is my thing. But this time? Nothing. “I can barely do anything,” I hear myself say as I read through my inventory list again.
And then comes the déjà vu. Same DM, different campaign. Back then, my bard was often powerless in combat. “I can’t do anything” became his mantra. Sometimes he could at least sing Inspire Courage, sometimes not even that. I always build my characters to be versatile so they can stay useful in any situation—but when a DM sets the hurdles too high, that doesn’t help much. We talked about it a lot back then, and over time, things improved. The fights in the past months have been way better—challenging but fair.
Now there are the bats. And with them, the old uncertainty. Has the DM lost track of things again? Does he realize this fight isn’t that exciting, but almost frustrating? Should I bring it up? But our druid’s player is new, and this kind of discussion would probably just make him uncomfortable. Besides, it wouldn’t change our situation. So my rogue keeps slashing at the swarm with his kukris, hoping for a miracle.
And then the miracle happens. Our druid checks his spell list one last time and finds it: he can summon small fire elementals. Four of them. The elementals happily throw themselves at the bat swarms—BBQ time. My rogue finally gets a chance to light the torch. Our ranger lands the last hits. Fight over.
We spent two or three hours on this encounter. Our new player seems so happy—his plan worked perfectly. I’m relieved. And yet, a certain conflict remains. Was this a good fight? Maybe it had to happen exactly like this. Without the desperation, our druid wouldn’t have thought of the fire elementals. And because of that, I think, the fight was actually fine.