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Myrmex
2009-04-10, 04:11 PM
You have 24 hours to stop 100 skeletons with 12 fighter levels and a ton of bow feats- they do about 15 damage/hit, each shoot 4/round, and can hit AC 32 about 10% of the time from about 800 feet away, through arrow slits. Nothing short of total cover or concealment has been able to stop them from targeting you. These things are not mindless. 8 hours have already been lost to resting to regain spells since last encounter. So you have fresh spell slots and 16 hours (14 after spell prep and some items rituals are taken care of)

They are accompanied by a Deathbringer (TWF from MMII, updated to 3.5), that has magical equipment, and presumably re-picked feats, maybe 36 point buy. It likely has the lifesense feat (LM), and is accompanied by two huge flesh golems.

They have 20 "pack" skeletons- mindless undead that carry the packed up siege weaponry of the army. They use the statistics for adult red wyrm dragons.

All undead were created by necromancer variants with some corpsecrafter feats. Expect +4 str, +4 dex, +4 HP/HD, +10 move speed.

Nothing flies.

The siege engines are huge, and require pack skeletons to move swiftly, but the deadliest ammo are self propelled drills- huge creatures weighing 5 to 10 tons, can burrow at a speed of 10ft through anything softer than hardness 60, and can walk at 5ft/round. They also have used cloudkill ammo. Setting up a siege engine seems to take them an hour; at least to get it operational to chuck a drill 2000 feet.

They have hundreds oh HP, DR 50/adamantine; DR25/-.

Characters to stop army (all gestalt):

A gray elf rogue that specializes in teleporting and getting full attacks at the end of each teleport (teflammar shadowlord), level 11. He can make up to 4 full attacks each round, with 6 or 7 attacks/full attack. He gets dex to damage, int as precision, and an assload of SA. If he uses a flaming blade ability, he gets something like 200d6 if all his hits land.

A level 11 deep dwarf cleric with full initiator levels, casting, and 2nd level psychic warrior powers. Uses a BIG hammer. Has leap attack and battle jump, for truly absurd damage on a charge. Uses pearl of black doubt to get very, very high AC, especially when skeletons are far away (they've learned to change targets, though).

A gray elf factotum//incantatrix, level 11. Persisted on party: haste, super haste (gain two instead of one extra attack), wraithstrike on rogue, heroism, fly. Cleric has his regular clericzilla spells up. No metamagic abuse; most of his spell slots have gone towards buffing the party/himself. Assume 60% of spell slots are used on buffs. Wizard is generalist, banned evocation (knows a handful of useful wind spells from it)

Between the cleric's plane shift, and the wizard's teleport, they are able to go on shopping trips whenever they need. Assume, as a party, they have 20k lying around to turn into needed stuff.

To sum up:
Goal: destroy siege engines (either through damage or rogue action)

Lots of enemies, no (known) casting, high damage output at range, with LOTS of HP. The skeleton archers have probably 150-200 HP per piece and are INTELLIGENT.

The characters are pretty much archetypical CharOp builds for persistent metamagic buff abuse.

A scry informs you that:
They have 9 blasphemes (LM), and 7 Necrosis Carnifexes (MMIV or V).
They are marching in a column at 4x speed (160ft per round), with the Deathbringer & golems leading, skeletons in 5x5 boxes inbetween 2x2 boxes of pack skeletons. The whole column is over 250 long, no more than 5ft gaps between anything.

Swordguy
2009-04-10, 04:17 PM
You may want to remove the option for infinite Solars via Candle of Invocation.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-04-10, 04:40 PM
An effective tactic, albiet one that blows through spells fast...

Wizard teleports Cleric, Rouge, and himself into the middle of the army.
Rouge Flaming blade wraithstrikes around, ending up right next to Cleric and Wizard.
Cleric Planeshifts away.

This can probably take out a fair number of enemies. Use on the blashemies and other leaderish undead. Rinse and Repeat.


Adult Red Wyrm dragons? Make up your mind, Adult or Wyrm? :smallwink:


Flying + Windwall should take care of the archers...And to allow you cleric to still attack, cast heroics, giving him the Flyby Attack feat.

You can destroy the seige weapons at your leisure once all the undead are dead.

RandomFellow
2009-04-10, 04:53 PM
I'd suggest Rods of Enlarge Spell.

Casters hammer the siege engines from beyond the enemies effective range (when siege engines aren't setup) to respond while flying. Have the other characters act as guards in case the enemy does turn out to have something that can fly.

Also, dropping rocks from that height should hurt.

Douglas
2009-04-10, 05:20 PM
No flyers? That just cries out for flying bombardment. Cast Shrink Item on a bunch of boulders, fly them up to directly above the column higher than they can shoot, and start dropping them, dismissing the Shrink as you drop.

Or, (this assumes the rogue and wizard/factotum have Use Magic Device) buy three scrolls of Stormrage (Spell Compendium) and get the rogue a Greater Truedeath Crystal (Magic Item Compendium) if he doesn't already have one for each of his weapons. Have each character use one scroll, the Incantatrix Persists them all, and go to town. You are now completely immune to the archers. Stormrage is, unfortunately, personal range so each character has to use the scroll himself to benefit.

ericgrau
2009-04-10, 10:03 PM
Teleport in/out: Any skeletons with half a magical brain will ready an action to fire at you the 2nd or 3rd time. Doesn't matter that you're in and out in like that; their readied actions go off before you leave.

Aerial Bombardment: Bows have a range of 1000 to 1200 feet, assuming the skellies don't have far shot to double it. I bet they do given the fighter levels and archery focus. Spells go up to 800 feet. Wind wall has a range of 200 or so feet, so you're gonna face a volley in the round you try to put it up. You may want a contingency set up in case it fails. Or perhaps a series of wind walls to get closer and closer. Catapults have a range of 1500 (light) or 2000 (heavy) feet, and aren't affected by wind wal. Looking at the catapult rules they're surprisingly easy to aim, but you can make a DC 15 reflex save for half damage. They also aim on one round and fire on another, so you can keep moving. But anything granting immunity to the arrows helps. And what about greater invisibility?

According to FAQ, if you drop a shrink item and then say the command word in mid-air, it still doesn't grow until after it hits solid ground. i.e., you can drop it or you can say the command word with it in-hand, but you can't do both.

If only you had 2 more levels of cleric or wizard, a control weather could make a storm that makes ranged attacks impossible. 2 mile radius centered on caster. So I haven't thought of anything yet, but I suspect the answer is still something with a massive area of effect followed by you guys going in and cleaning up.

Jack_Simth
2009-04-10, 10:17 PM
If only you had 2 more levels of cleric or wizard, a control weather could make a storm that makes ranged attacks impossible. Can do. Candle of Invocation has a use other than the Gate:


Candle of Invocation: Each of these special tapers is dedicated to one of the nine alignments. Simply burning the candle generates a favorable aura for the individual so doing if the candle’s alignment matches that of the character. Characters of the same alignment as the burning candle add a +2 morale bonus on attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks while within 30 feet of the flame.

A cleric whose alignment matches the candle’s operates as if two levels higher for purposes of determining spells per day if he burns the candle during or just prior to his spell preparation time. He can even cast spells normally unavailable to him, as if he were of that higher level, but only so long as the candle continues to burn. Except in special cases (see below), a candle burns for 4 hours.

In addition, burning a candle also allows the owner to cast a gate spell, the respondent being of the same alignment as the candle, but the taper is immediately consumed in the process. It is possible to extinguish the candle simply by blowing it out, so users often place it in a lantern to protect it from drafts and the like. Doing this doesn’t interfere with its magical properties.

Strong conjuration; CL 17th; Craft Wondrous Item, gate, creator must be same alignment as candle created; Price 8,400 gp;Weight 1/2 lb.(Emphasis added)

And it's within your price range.

ericgrau
2009-04-10, 10:22 PM
Sweeeeet. I was hoping someone would find a way.