Agatha Blackmist
Welcome to Masters and Minions. If you don’t recognize my face in the corner of the page there, it’s because I’m stepping in for Justin this week, as he’s not feeling well. But enough about me: let’s talk about this week’s Master and/or Minion.
Agatha Blackmist is a troll gifted with an exceptional intelligence, but also with an even blacker heart and greater penchant for cruelty than most of her kind. She was once a shaman amongst her people, having made a pact for power with a dark force that her clan worshipped. She became drunk on the magic that she was offered, however, and began to take part in dark rites that even her fellow trolls could not condone, mostly involving capturing and sacrificing her own kin and then raising them as undead slaves.
Cast out, Agatha has taken up a solitary existence in the swamps and fens in the county of Ravenmoore, not far from the trading town of Aching. She quickly used both her physical and magical might to scare away the local hag who claimed the territory as her own, and has earned the grudging respect of other hags in the region, even joining their coven as an honorary member.
Agatha’s cruel and vindictive urges cause her to regularly seek out victims she can torture in new and creative ways. She prefers to prey on travellers who come to her hut, disguising herself with alter self to appear as a comely elf maid offering hospitality and then promptly drugging the food and drink she serves, tying up her victims, and taking her leisure with their torture. When travellers are light, however, she is not above making her way into town in the middle of the night and stealing away a victim to stave off her boredom.
Still, her knowledge of alchemy and other arcane matters makes her an invaluable resource for those who can deal with her as equals, and who come prepared to do so. Agatha is keenly intelligent and can be bargained with, trading favors, services, or magic items in exchange for her knowledge or potions. She is devious, though, and never to be trusted: if she thinks she can overpower a “business partner,” or double-cross them and get away with it, she won’t hesitate to do so.
Tactics:
In combat, Agatha prefers to take out her foes nonlethally if possible, so that she can torture them later. She uses enervation, bestow curse (the option that imposes a penalty to one ability score, typically Strength), blindness/deafness, and ray of enfeeblement to nonlethally disable her foes, taking great delight as she easily overpowers them and ties them up. If her foe is proving resistant to her spells and is consistently making his saves, she’ll use her evil eye hex to temporarily reduce his saving throw bonus.
If she finds herself in real danger (a rarity, considering her regeneration), she stops playing and begins to fight in earnest. She uses her lightning bolt and vampiric touch spells. In a worst case scenario, she uses black tentacles or some of the more powerful creatures on her robe of bones to distract her foe, then flees.
The witch class, hexes, and other witch class features can be found in the Advanced Player’s Guide. The poison frog familiar option can be found in Advanced Arcana Volume I.