Deck of many things

[Littiz]

IT IS interesting! Believe me. Yes, you lose many minor items
in the game, and some of the really good ones, too.
But....

1-"Fortunately" the last dragon in SoA, and the others in Tob, leave
no choices but fighting

2-Many of the enemies are not actual threats for you, but indeed they
are for innocents and "commoners"

3-The Ring of Gaxx cannot be left behind... so I think: he's the most
hopelessly evil being in the realms, and the most powerful...
IMO guarding his bones is not enough! He has to be destroyed!
Really, those "guarding" liches should give me an opportunity to
speak before attacking me....


Also,I really wanted to try those cards. So, I decided to force things
a little, and it resulted in one of BEST moments of gaming and roleplaying I've EVER had!
For my 200th post, I've decided to share it with anyone so patient to
read it! Enjoy it if you want! This was really GREAT.
This all happened on the FIRST try. I've only cheated before to check
the alignment of the demon's companions (Good, good, good, neutral. Ouch!!!)
Forgive my english...


Duriella is my Neutral-SuperGood kensai/mage. She travels with Imoen and Sarevok, in the hope to redeem him (they're sisters and brother, after all!).
Duriella speaks to the Demon. She says that cooperation is needed
to find an exit, not gambling. Together, they could figure a way out.
But the demon doesn't listen to her peaceful words, and attacks.
Just a moment to decide what to do.
She doesn't want a bloodshed. She's aware of her own great power, and that this is meant to be carefully used. She has not the right of killing people just because they happen to be on a wrong path.
Especially if she "senses" they're good beings, as in this case.
The Demon... if killed, he'll return to his plane.
In the end this would be a favour, for him. Maybe this is the real
reason behind his attack. He'll win in any case.
So, she knows what to do.
"Just kill the Demon! DO NOT hurt the others!!!!"
Sarevok was already on his way to cut some heads off.
(Group AI set to on!!! )
But hearing her words, he stops. Why on hell should he listen to
the orders of his DISGUSTINGLY GOOD sister, good to the point of
being unbelievable? Yet, he stops.
There's something... again, he finds himself following that little, stupid and.. strange... girl. How can she have the Blood of Bhaal
in her veins??
Well, a kill is a kill, after all. He points the Chaos Sword
in the direction of the Demon.
Imoen... she follows her will, as usual. Damn girl! Instead of attacking the demon, she immediatly mazes the priestess.
Good move anyway. Priests can be very annoying. And NO harm.
The mage is still free to act, though. I knew he would have proven
a real danger. After a few confusing rounds and an Abi Dahlzim,
Duriella is badly hurt (portrait red till over her hat..), and Sarevok
is dead! Imoen also is badly wounded.
Imoen's contingencies trigger. Three protection spells, and an Abi Dahlzim centered on her.
(Duriella always told her, don't put that spell in the contingency!
You may end hurting someone by accident!!!!
"But it will hurt only my enemies!!!", cried Immie in replay.
Oh, girl! There are not REAL enemies!! See... oh, it's pointless!
You'll learn it by yourself...)
So, now all are wounded in the field. Duriella's contingencies conveniently trigger, just in time. She's badly wounded, but now nothing can hurt her. Time to have time itself freezed!
She casts Time Stop. In the first round, her katanas give the last blow to the demon. Unfair, I know, but necessary.
Then, she casts Improved Alacrity, followed by almost all the rest...
dispel magic, all the protections she has left, and Spell Immunity:
Abjuration, to prevent them from being dispelled in their turn.
Then Simbols (Stun and Fear), and Wish. And the amazing Spook!
Then she waits.
Simbols have little effect, spook affects one of the tieflings.
The Wish genie speaks to her.
He offers, among other things, to heal EVERYBODY, enemies included,
in the area! She immediately chooses this options. Perfect!
Imoen, from afar, starts casting Greater Malison, and Summon
Planetar.
Duriella keeps the tieflings occupied, being protected from
all the possible attacks.
The Planetar raises Sarevok, then heals him. Immie casts horror.
Not enough.
So the Planatar himself starts casting ALL his Simbols of Fear
in straight sequence.
This is enough. All my enemies are scared and confused, they run
back and forth... I have gained a little time.
Sarevok seems really surprised and confused.
He stares at the creature of immense beauty and power that stands
in front of him, looks at the scared tieflings, then turns his head
to Duriella.
"How do you feel, Sarevok?"
"You two... er.. you THREE have resurrected me!!!"
"It seems to have worked, yes."
"But... I thought this was the last of my deaths..."
"We've not saved your life to leave you dead again at the first chance!
Is that what you believed, maybe?"
Sarevok has no more words. Ordered by Duriella, he recollects his
equipment, while she takes the cards and the gem from the ground.
She intends to return later and offer to these scared tieflings
a way out. (I mean, if the demon can do it... )
But just before passing through the portal, Sarevok starts the
last of his dialogs, and decides to change his alignment!!!!!!!!!!!




IMAGINE MY SURPRISE!!!!
I'll will always play this game...

[UserUnfriendly]

naaahhh...my justification is this. demon had something I want, so i played and got spectral brand and wish scroll, summoned 5 m swords and placed them thoughtfully near the demons party and hasted them, and picked a fight. neat and simple, and I hardly had to fight at all. its one thing to be anice guy, another to have soemthing i wanted.

so littz, you are my anti personality, eh? oh well, one of these days I will finally give in and become evil.....and get rewarded in hell!!!!

[kopywrite]

@ Littiz: fanatstic 200th post. Great stuff.

@ Littiz & User: you two should seriously consider a multiplayer game together. It would be the stuff of legend...


©

[frogus]

I second Kopy...great post! oooh...what I wouldn't give for a roleplay like that once in a while! with me, I beat him in all the games and he attacked my anyway. I knew that he was good and worth redeeming, but it was him or me! and he betrayed me! AND he had a deck of many things!!!.....

...which brings me on to my next thing. I haven't yet used the Deck, so what does it do. Will I pick a card and take the consequences? Can it do any permanent irreversable bad harm?

[kopywrite]

Originally posted by frogus
...which brings me on to my next thing. I haven't yet used the Deck, so what does it do. Will I pick a card and take the consequences? Can it do any permanent irreversable bad harm?

Its what save game was invented for


©

[Littiz]

Oh, thanx guys!
It was really fun, Sarevok never died before that "battle"!

I assure you, Duriella is fun but hard to play...
I have another game, PC paladin. He's "simply" Lawful Good, so a lot
easier to play! You know, there's Good, yes, but also Laws, and no mercy for bad guys. He kills a lot more, in the end.
In the same team of the paladin however I have a Chaotic-Good fighter/thief, who backstabs only monsters (Mind flyer, Umber-hulks, Yuan-ti...).
No humans, elves, drows, dwarves, nothing!
That's because backstab is too... definitive.
Fun game, all in all. I also have Viconia (romance) and it causes
some trouble... when dialogs start unexpected, the speaker talks to
the first member of the group in sight.
When this happens to Viconia, I choose a replay that fits to her, not
to the paladin!! Ah ah!! Strange things happen!!!

But Duriella remains my most beloved char! I have yet to decide whether
she will become a god or not, but I think she'll remain mortal.
(After all, she loves nature and living beings, she's not interested
in the politics and wars between gods)

@User:
You kill people when they possess something you want?!!
I hope never to meet you..
Could be interesting an encounter between our chars...
User approaches... then discovers that in neutral ground he cannot cheat!!!
No more kensai/sorcerer/beholder with Holy Avenger!!!
Just a scared mage with low hps and Thac0!!! Easy kill...
But don't worry User!
I'll show mercy in the end!!

@Frogus: I have a detailed document about the deck if you want...

[frogus]

@Frogus: I have a detailed document about the deck if you want...

let's see it then! as long as it doesn't have any real spoilers in it....i'd love to have a look.

[Littiz]

@Frogus: I wanted to send it to you by e-mail....
warning, being a DETAILED document, it is extremely spoilerish
(about the item)
I can't remember where I found these informations, unfortunaltely....
CTRL-Ced SPOILERS ahead
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The First Encounter

You meet the gambling Cambion Aesgareth in the maze of the third level of Watcher's Keep. He's big, has a huge sword and probably has more teeth than he knows what to do with. But he's friendly. Gamble with him and you can get a number of interesting things.

You have the option of drawing 3 times with him. The first two, he will allow you to gamble experience or hp permanently. I suggest wagering the EXP, as you can always gain it back by slaying a few monsters here and there. I'm missing the exact numbers for HP and exp, send them to me and your name could be in here!

There are 2 possible effects in each draw, both for you and for him. Your draw is worth a specific number of 'suit' points. The more points, the higher the suit. If your suit points are higher than his, you win the gamble. If you tie, he wins.

1st draw:

You:
Plague - Gambler is Cursed - 1 point
Strife* - Gambler is Slowed - 3 points

Him:
Triumph - 1 point
Construct - 4 points

2nd draw:

You:
Strength - Gambler's str and con are reduced to 6 - 6 points
Guile - Summons 6 assassins to play with - 2 points

Him:
Defiance - 2 points
Empress - 3 points

3rd Draw:

You:
High Priestess - Silence on gambler - 4 points
Emperor - Permanent Mind Shield - 5 points

Him:
Wheel

If you play for the gem in the second round, you can win the gem from him. If you do, however, he will go hostile on you and attempt to kill you, since he *does* want to get out of there.

There is *NO* way to win the last draw. The Cambion will always draw the wheel on the third, and will walk away with the gem. Unless, of course, you kill him and his cronies, and take the deck yourself. You can also pickpocket the Cambion for the Deck as well, and this will *not* affect what happens when you play with him. Once you have the deck in your possession, you move on to...

The Second Encounter

Here's how the deck as an item works. *'ed cards are considered Bad Draws. The previous draw affects the subsequent draw. Note that some of the other draws can be pretty bad too, but they're not considered BAD in terms of subsequent drawing. Once you have drawn a BAD card, you will have to continue using the BAD draw list. This means that if you draw a good, then bad card, your third draw will be from the bad list.

First draw (random):

-Donjon* (Imprison user, save at -4)
-Ruin* (Party loses all gold)
-Euryale (permanent -1 to all saves, no save. ha ha.)
-Flames (Gate in a Balor and 4 fire elementals to play with)
-Gem (Get a rogue stone, king's tear, sapphire, diamond, ruby and emerald)
-Jester (User gets 50,000 exp)

Second Draw (if first draw was a BAD card):

-Void* (Disintegrates user, save at -4)
-Key (Get a powerful magic item, I think it's a ring of protection +3)
-Star (Get +1 to one stat, depending on class (fight/barb/pal/ranger str, mage/sorc int, thief/bard dex, monk/cleric/druid wis)
-Rogue (User is dire charmed and attacks the party until dead. Cannot be dispelled, so kill the person and raise him/her)
-Sun (party gains 300,000 exp)
-Vizier (User gets a mantle spell that lasts 24 hours)

Second Draw (if first draw was a NOT a BAD card):

-Void* (see above)
-Magician* (user turned into a rabbit. Cure with remove curse)
-Knight (summons 4 demon knights to duke it out. They do not drop equipment once killed)
-Rogue (see above)
-Sun (see above)
-Vizier (see above)

Third Draw (no BAD cards yet). Note that this is the final draw you can pull.

-Skull (Gates in a Death Shade to play with. He attacks with +5 weapons, dispels magic with each hit, 100% magic resist, resists most attacks, sees invisible and attacks fast. Only tries to kill the user, and once the user is dead, leaves)
-Moon (+10 hp permanently)
-Talons (user permanently blinded until remove curse is cast)
-Fool (user's Wisdom lowered to 3 + confusion (no save). remove curse to restore wisdom, dispel to fix the confusion)
-Comet (5% fire resist permanently)
-Erinyes (+1 to all stats for 24 hours, also called the Fates)

Third Draw (Bad card happened sometime along the way)

-Skull (see above)
-Throne (party gains 1,000,000 exp)
-Moon (see above)
-Fool (see above)

Draw again? Deck dissappears. By the way, if you want to cheat, you can play with the global variables to manipulate what kind of draws you get, though you still get an equal chance in each case. The global variable is DOMTdraw. A value of 0 means no cards drawn yet, 1 means 1 drawn, etc. If the variable value is 3, it will auto-dissappear whenever you draw another one. The global to see if you've gotten a BAD card draw is BadCardDrawn. 1 meaning yes, 0 meaning no. If you don't mess with the global variables, if you cheat in a deck of many things (item code: deck), your first draw (from the second (cheated) deck will make the deck dissappear (DOMTdraw = 3).

Optimally, you probably want that 1,000,000 exp, you'll go for a bad card in the first draw (and survive, hopefully), then go for either Star, Sun or Key in the second draw, then the Throne in the third. However, I did notice that there are only 4 possibilities on the third draw after having drawn a bad card before. Perhaps those are undisclosed happenings, but I haven't seen it yet. Perhaps that was what DaveG was talking about before, that the strategy guide missed, because everything else shown in here is listed in the guide. If you want to cheat, you can set the global variable BadCardDrawn to 1 before you even start drawing, so you can get a *good* card (jester) in the first draw, and still get to those other cards in the subsequent ones.

Written By: Setsuna