The Pied Pixie
Welcome again to Masters and Minions, where I strive to give you interesting NPCs and encounters that can be placed easily into your game. This week’s encounter is with Tali, a well-intentioned pixie sorcerer that has been "liberating" the children of Ren's Dale from the "oppression" of the town's adult inhabitants.
Ren’s Dale isn’t a very big town, but they have scrounged together a 1,000 gp reward for the rescue of the kidnapped children.
The children that Tali “liberated” are currently living with the pixie in a secluded part of the forest.
If the PCs decide to talk to Tali instead of just attacking her outright, she is willing to listen and can be reasoned with.
Tali’s Tactics
Tali protects the children at all costs. Tali usually first tries to put attackers to sleep with her special arrows, but if that is unsuccessful she tells the children to scatter and regroup at her secret hiding place. She will continue hit-and-run tactics on the PCs until all the children are out of sight, before also heading to the hiding place.
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Invisibility (Su)
A pixie remains invisible even when it attacks. This ability is constant, but the pixie can suppress or resume it as a free action.
Special Arrows (Su)
When a pixie fires an arrow from any bow, it can decide to change the arrow's properties by sprinkling it with magical pixie dust. Doing so is a free action as long as the pixie is the one who fires the arrow. A pixie can generate a number of uses of dust equal to its Charisma score each day (16 uses per day for most pixies)—the dust is useless to another creature unless the pixie gives the dust freely. In this case, the pixie chooses what effect the dust will have on an arrow when it is applied, and it takes a standard action to apply the dust to the arrow. Once pixie dust is applied to an arrow, the pixie's chosen effect persists on the arrow for only 1 round. As long as an arrow is altered in this way, it does not inflict damage when it hits—it only causes its new effect. A pixie can choose any one of the following three effects when dusting an arrow. Save DCs are Charisma-based.
Charm: The target must succeed on a DC 19 Will save or be affected as though by a charm monster spell for 10 minutes.
Memory Loss: The target must succeed on a DC 19 Will save or be affected by a modify memory spell (this effect can only eliminate the previous 5 minutes of memory—a pixie typically uses this ability to make the target forget it encountered the pixie so it won't chase the pixie when he flees).
Sleep: The target must succeed on a DC 19 Will save or fall asleep for 5 minutes.