[Crits/crit fails do not apply to skill checks RAW. Since I, the player, am sick, just woke up to see that I need to rush a post, and got a surprise screw you first thing in the morning to the tune of an extra penalty for bad luck, this is limited to crunch for speed and lack of interest in taking over an hour to type up something.<br/><br/>Surprise round (before it surfaces): Casting Giltterdust. DC17 will save or be blinded for 5 rounds. Gets a new save at the end of each round in the event of failure. Everyone can see it's entire shape regardless.<br/>First round is dumping the Schrodinger's guards out of their bag of holding hiding place. Whether their standing orders to protect Linda enable them to immediately join the fray or not is up to the DM.<br/>If doing that happened to only constitute Linda's move action: Defensively casting Ray of Sickening, Concentration rolled 20+10=30 vs 19, passed. Ranged touch rolled 13+1=14, go figure it actually hit despite the stacked penalties. DC16 Fort save or be sickened for 5 minutes.]