I’ll start off by calming anyone’s worries based on the lengthy title of today’s blog by saying that this “brush with death” did not happen to me personally. It happened to a long-running character I’m playing with my friends in the Pathfinder Adventure Path, Strength of Thousands.
With that being said, on to “my” brush with death.
We were in the showdown with the villain of the fifth of six chapters of this Adventure Path, so it was all high-level and high-stakes. As the battle progressed and allies became isolated, it came down to my vulnerable Wizard versus the Powerful Villain.
And for once in a blue moon, the dice were on my side. I was landing important hits and barely avoiding horrible deaths, one after the other. My Wizard and the Villain were wearing each other down, bit by bit, until we both teetered on death’s door. My allies were rushing to my aid! They were nearly there!
And that’s when the dice turned on me, as they always do. One critically failed roll followed by another failed save and my Wizard was instantly killed.
As I grumbled in silence while my friends completed the fight, I was not only mourning a character I’d spent years roleplaying and leveling from 1 to 17, I was swiftly becoming overwhelmed by the logistics of having to create a new character at level 17. That may sound like a dream for some of my fellow alt-aholics, but for me it’s a nightmare.
I don’t like starting off with high-level, powerful characters that can be crafted from the ground up into a perfectly efficient machine built for one purpose. Not only do I find that thematically boring, I don’t have the brain to build a “perfect” character at those levels. There’s also the search for magic items that are ideal for your new high-level character, which is also something I’m not good at, nor do I enjoy.
What I love most is starting from level 1. The clean slate character, where their future is shaped not only by the events of a story but the random items they come across. When I first rolled up my deceased Wizard I had no idea he’d be attacked and nearly killed several times by insect swarms, so inspired by those events he began to learn spells that transformed him into insects! And from there, more spells that transformed him into elementals and even dragons!
That’s how I love to play. I love to start with a character with very little backstory or preconceived direction and see where the story takes me. But with my Wizard gone at level 17, I was going to have to face my worst nightmare and deal with the logistics of making a new high-level character.
Thankfully this was only a brush with death, for the story gave my Wizard’s allies an opportunity to return him to life. Not was his life saved, but I was saved from having to make a level 18 character, because the reward for defeating the Villain was gaining a level. Crisis averted.
And now, once again inspired by the events that have befallen him, my Wizard has learned an otherwise horrid spell that he would never have pursued under different circumstances; the very same spell that killed him.