Oddbean

Good news all, it was mostly successful. Took five damn hours though. Killed fourteen evil clerics, a fire elemental, and captured the villain with our strike force. Successfully drew the attention of enough of the palace so that our larger second wing could take the palace. Depleted every single spell slot I had. Really complex battle; had to use all my resources correctly to leave counterspells open at the right time to block the big fatal spells, etc. Always a big trade-off between different options. At the climax, the other three party members in my group were down, I had 6 HP and the villain had 3 HP, and I was just trying to kamikaze with him at that point basically. The one good cleric on the side of the bad guys came and the villain was like “help me kill her!” and I was like, “No, instead arrest us both if you must! And stabilize my three compatriots. I can speak of his treachery under a Zone of Truth but he cannot do the same!” Rolled higher than him on my persuasion check (I am a bard after all) and had reached out to that cleric previously so I had already set her up with evidence of his treachery ahead of time. So she listened to me and had us both arrested and stabilized the team, and that’s a win for our side that’ll be sorted out in the resolution episode. Phew.