Oops!

Geek Alert!

Saturday we settled down for a Gaming Day, and my D&D character accomplished what we all consider the most tremendously bone-headed act of stupidity we had ever witnessed. (As the player, I'm absolved of any blame, of course!) The former Top Boner was a wizard casting Lightning Bolt while everybody was knee-deep in swamp water.

Wendy (she has stormy eyes) was accompanying her gal pals (a priestess and a paladin) and a fighter on a quest to save the soul of a slain paladin. She's only a 5th-level Wizard (Transmuter), but her prized possession is a Wand of Polymorph Other and she has an amulet that summons three minor demons (manes, left) to serve and protect her (I don't think the paladin ever caught her using it). Her selection of highest-level spells had only one offensive choice (L. Bolt) so she kept in mind a use for the Haste spell that wouldn't magically age friends of hers. If the offal started flying, she'd Haste the demons and send them out to fight at double speed! When a great big Shambling Mound enveloped and tried to smother the priestess, she applied the tactic. Unfortunately, she overlooked the fact that these demons explode in a puff of acid when they die... and everybody but Wendy ("Ouch!") was within the danger radius. "Oh, I know, I'll turn one of the remaining ones into a Hydra! With the wand!" Poof! It worked!

Jon, the DM for this session, rolled some dice and sadly looked at me, "You know, you don't control the Hydra...."

"The Hasted 11-headed Hydra, you mean?"

Remember Boromir's expression in Moria when he said, "They brought a Cave Troll?"

It certainly helped us kill the Shambling Mound, but it killed everyone else too! Wendy could have escaped, but stayed to Lightning Bolt the Hydra or Polymorph it into something else; she was rent asunder before she could even start the spell. A good time was had by all, though we'd hardly touched the good stuff yet.

We continued the adventure with another set of characters and have a date in mid-August to finish it.

I just re-checked the description of the Wand in the DM's book. You can't Polymorph Others into Hydras with the wand! You must turn them into bunnies, snails, or other innocuous creatures, like Wendy has been doing ever since she's had the thing. I don't know what Jon's gonna do about it.