As soon as the bronze serpent was cast in the light of Kass's sunrod, her magic washed over it. The mindless creature gave no indication, though, moving swiftly over the bed of coins in a sinuous, side-to-side movement. Despite its long shape, it slowed down to negotiate the archway. It was still a bit more coiled up than usual when Aria, clicking her bootheels and bracers, popped out from around the corner drawing a kukri and slashing where its head segment joined to the next.<br/><br/>She hopped short dumbly swished through air, then blinked out and sliced through ethereal space again, but kept clawing with the weapon, and soon a second kukri; several times she sliced the bronze serpent right at the joints of its segments, causing them to rend open and nearly separate with showers of sparks.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Missed ya!<br/><br/>X-cum-Y for nouns or adjectives X and Y is just an old phrase for means "something that was X, and then became Y". 'cum' is probably short for 'become' in that usage. It's not sexual (but surely lends itself to double entrendres) and the phrase isn't very common (probably b/c of the sexual association.)<br/><br/>So it's not a masturbation desk or table surface used for sex. (Makes ya wonder what's in those books!) As amusing as the idea is....<br/><br/>Minor mistake in dragon fight: I subtracted its DR 10/magic from Aria's unarmed attacks, but in fact her bracers of striking are enhanced as a +1 warning weapon so they should've passed DR /magic (and had an extra +1 atk/dmg).<br/><br/>Kass can establish line of sight for Slow (and nice choice, one of the few Will save or status effect spells for constructs!) Note that her effective range for most things is 60' (the illumination of the sunrod), so I'll place her 60' away from it after her move. Actually 55', since then the bronze serpent can't fit itself completely into the first room if it approaches her, and will take squeeizng penalties (-4 attack, -4 AC, half speed) for being in the archway which it would probably still have on Aria's and Kass's next turn, due to an inability to get fully into the room (without using more actions to bull rush them back, grapple and drag, etc.) (The original monster entry has oblong space for the creature - like you'd expect something long and skinny to be - but it's 3.0 and in 3.5 everything has square facing.)<br/><br/>If Kass is holding the sunrod, she couldn't spellcast with the sword in her other hand. I guess she could have tied a sunrod to herself or something, since there's no fire danger like with a torch, and no need to trigger it every round like with a wand. (The downside of that approach would be the inability to as quickly drop or store it to hide in darkness, or toss it to illuminate a distant area.)<br/><br/>serpent makes its Will save (after Kass beats its SR)<br/><br/>Serpent:<br/>double move up to Kass<br/>(can't charge b/c it has to 'squeeze' through the archway; and despite its reach it wasn't able to attack her after 1 move)<br/><br/>Aria:<br/>(forewent her AoO against the moving serpent - she was only armed with her unarmed attack and figured it'd do piddly damage and might alert it to her presence before it had begun its second move action - which it had by then, but she doesn't know that. In fact the attack would've done 0 since it's nonlethal damage, which constructs are immune to.)<br/><br/>haste (8/10) and deathstrike bracers (3/6), draw kukri and ful attack<br/>atk 33/33/28/23/18 (17 bab 10 dex 1+4 weapon 2 blink -2 twf 1 haste), dmg 1d4+13 (2 str 6 int 1+4 weapon)<br/>off hand mods 29/24 dmg 1d4+8<br/>blink rolls<br/>Result: 58, 7, 27, 16, 96, 37, 54,<br/>(2nd and 4th main hand attacks go ethereal)<br/>3 mh + 2 oh attacks/threats:<br/>Result: 1, 7, 15, 18, 12, 3, 13, 6, 17, 15,<br/>1 atk nat1<br/>3 atk 28+15, threat 28+18, crit<br/>5 atk 18+11 hit<br/>(worth noting that it loses its Dex bonus to AC due to her blink)<br/>oh1 29+13 hit<br/>oh2 24+17 threat 24+15 crit<br/>then 5' south<br/><br/>dmg: 3x mh + 3x oh + 4x SA<br/>46 + 32 + 216 = 294<br/>as a construct it's immune to both ability dmg (from Weakening Critical class feature) and the staggering (from Staggering Strike feat), since the latter allows a Fort save and doesn't affect objects.<br/><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;"><br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>. . . . . . . . .<br/>      . . .<br/>      S S S<br/>. . . 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