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View Full Version : So I'm splitting my party, and... [3.5]



Private-Prinny
2011-01-22, 03:26 PM
I need help coming up with satisfying fights for them.

First, some backstory:

I've been running a RL campaign with a semi-large party, and the story is finally coming to a climax. At first, their only troubles were finding adventures to go on (typical low level stuff), but then I made it personal. One of their major antagonists has been a Bard (who is actually a Beguiler. I've been pretty careful about only using spells that overlap those lists.), who was going to assassinate the local royalty that they were working for in an attempt to gain power. Enter the other antagonists, a group of powerhungry ex-adventurers who want to seize power. The evil group's necromancer takes over the capital city before the Bardguiler has a chance to do anything, so he sits back and waits. The PCs liberate the city, and a new ruling party is established. They go on another seemingly random fetch quest to help refill the city's newly emptied coffers. Once they get there, they find that the Bardguiler has struck a deal with the other group and is now working with them towards domination. A couple weeks go by, and the ruling party calls them in, and tells them of reports of suspicious activity in a number of cities. They scout those cities with teleport scrolls (I gave them just enough to get to all of the cities and back) and find that the evil group are all lurking there. Some are laying low, some have won over the people, and some are ruling with an iron fist. Notably, the Bardguiler is over the border into another country. The plan has been decided. The PCs have seen the enemy bases, so if they teleport again, they can go straight to the inner sanctum. Knowing that they probably have some way to warn the others should things go wrong, they are splitting into a coordinated strike force to attack all targets at once.
The PCs party consists of:


A human Spellthief 7/Chameleon 2/Factotum 1, a skillmonkey character who always likes to keep a caster buddy nearby.
A changeling Wild Shape Ranger 5/Master of Many Forms 5, with a penchant for turning into bears. Probably the most dangerous by herself.
A dragonborn Dragonfire Adept 10, she chose the wings and uses her breath weapon for pretty much everything. Almost never rolls a d20.
A gray elf Duskblade 10, who uses the duskblade spell list to full effect. Almost as dangerous as the ranger.
A human Barbarian 10, who rages at the drop of a hat to pump his strength for the fight. Can deal damage, but extra effects are lacking.
A human Shugenja (water) 10, who focuses on keeping his allies in good condition with buffs and healing. Likes to use invisibility.
A human Unarmed Swordsage 8/Monk 2, who uses mainly Shadow Hand and Setting Sun maneuvers. Dex is his prime stat, and attacks of opportunity never happen to him.
A human Hexblade 10. I gave a small buff to hexblades, where the curse isn't used up if the enemy makes their save, and she has a special item that ups the DC by 2. Her weapons of choice are her longsword and Mirror Image.
The villains' party consists of:


A human totemist (by himself)
A human hexblade/fallen paladin/blackguard (by himself)
A human beguiler (by himself)
A tibbit rogue (with the barbarian)
A human barbarian (with the rogue)
A human *martial type character* (by himself), who is a dragon-slaying (Good dragons) gloryhound.
Some predictable arrangements:

The Dragonfire Adept will go after the undecided martial character.
The Spellthief will want to go with either the Shugenja or the Duskblade, the latter being more likely.
The PC barbarian will go after the enemy barbarian.
The Shugenja might go with the Barbarian.
The Ranger might go after the Totemist.
The Swordsage will probably want to go after the Beguiler.

Any advice you could give me would be helpful. My party is medium-op, and I've used Tier 3 as a balance point myself. I'm pretty attached to the base classes, but I'm open to PrC suggestions, feats, ACFs, minions, level, the whole deal. I just need them to be able to provide a challenge to 1-2 PCs.

Mango Fox
2011-01-22, 04:31 PM
Just throwing out an idea:

For a fight with the evil barbarian and rogue, you could have the barbarian be sitting in the inner sanctum with several low level guards present, while the tibbit is off doing something else in the base. When the good characters teleport in, the guards immediately attack while the evil barbarian watches. As soon as the guards are killed, the evil barbarian attacks. The tibbit only realizes what's going on and returns to the inner sanctum when the evil barbarian is nearly defeated, and returns just in time to try to backstab one of the good characters.

In the above, I'm assuming that the good barbarian will be one of the characters involved. Whatever happens, make sure the barbarian has a lot of mooks to cut down. We barbarians loves the blood and guts :smallyuk:

Elfin
2011-01-22, 05:00 PM
Well, obviously the undecided martial type character has to be a warblade.

*cough*pointstosigforoptimizationideas*cough*

Hm...what if his inner sanctum was lined with trophy heads from the dragons he's slain, which come alive at his command? You could use downgraded versions of the dragon golems from Draconomicon.
Or perhaps, just for coolness, he draws the spirits from the trophies to wreath himself in one of those evil-dragon-aura spells from the same book?