In Poor Taste?

[The_Ebolanator]

So I have me this here idea, see? It involves throwing a gestalt party against a war troll (the troll where only acid and not fire overcomes its regeneration) and stacking some kind of half black/green/immune-to-acid dragon template to immunize the troll to the only thing that can overcome its regeneration and giving it the full 5 levels of Occult Slayer to make it immune to mind affects. I'm thinking about doing this because I want this to be one doozy of a challange without a TPK.
My question is: Is this in poor taste? Is this too much of an "invincible" creature to throw at a party? I personally don't think so because it's still susceptible to ability damage and other clever tactics to kill off big brutes and I wouldn't whip this bad boy out until 15th level or so.
What do you folks think? Am I being a cruel DM or is this kosher?

[Honest Tiefling]

See what your players decide on. If none of them have access to a means to kill the beastie, try other templates. Don't make it so it negates their abilities, but should still be a challenge.

EDIT: I assume the rest of your campaign is also super tough fights? If so, run it by them first. Also, might want to make a back up plan if the troll kills them instead.

[Halna LeGavilk]

Here's a few questions to ask yourself:

*Can the party run away? That is to say, does the party have some way to escape?
*Are you going to help them out with this encounter or just spring it on them?
*Do they (the players) like dying mercilessly?

Generally, I'd say yes, it's in poor taste, because except for Trollbane (a paste for weapons that supresses regeneration), I'm not sure about the kill-ability of the troll. Most parties don't have things like lots of ability damage/drain, and if they did, they'd be using it anyway, which would make the fight simple.

[Aidan305]

The first thing you need to think when planning something evil like this is: "Could my players' standard tactics take this creature down?"

If not, you then need to ask yourself:
"Do my players have the necessary resources on hand to take this creature down?"

If the answer is no, then you need to structure the encounter so that the PCs will be aware of what they'll be facing beforehand, or provide a way for the PCs to escape the encounter so that they can learn who/what he is and how to deal with him.

There's not really any such thing as an encounter that the players can't take on; only an encounter they can't take on yet.

Given the nastiness of the boss, I'd put it in to a fairly plot signifiant position as well, so that the players will have reason to want to face against him, rather than simply: "It's a monster, let's kill it."

[Trufflehound]

A 15th level gestalt party should have plenty of spells like flesh to stone and disintegrate. Challenging it might be, but not particularly cruel.

[Kylarra]

Another big question is how optimized is your group? Are they likely to have the workarounds or are they the type that will be doing similar things at L15 that they were at L5, just with bigger numbers?

[Keld Denar]

Well, you didn't make it immune to non-lethal damage, so its not hard for a mid level party to simply knock it into negatives, bludgeon it so badly that it'll take a while to regen up to standing strength, and then dump the blighter into water. Suffocation can't be regenerated, and he'll be dead for good after that.

Other things will be able to finish it off as well. Baleful Polymorph or Polymorph Any Object will turn it into something completely non-threatening, making it lose regeneration AND immunity to acid, allowing you to slaughter it at your whim. [Death] type spells will work as well, from the lowly Slay Living to the mighty Wail of the Banshees. Also, energy drain and/or ability damage. Stack on enough Enervations and its here today, wight tomorrow. A +1 Wounding weapon will also eventually make short work of the troll, and is an all around VERY handy weapon to have.

[SleepyShadow]

Give him the Die Hard feat. That way he can keep fighting into the negatives. Also, he can keep going regardless of the non-lethal damage he takes.

Now rename him to The Truly Tasteless Troll :smallbiggrin:

[The Glyphstone]

Technically, Die Hard does nothing to help with Nonlethal damage. It just lets you act normally at sub-0 normal HP...even with Diehard, if you take a single point of nonlethal you're out for the count.

[ClockShock]

Dig a hole and push him in?

Not every enemy has to die to be defeated.

This is now a time-based challenge rather than a party Vs monster fight.

[eepop]

If you are doing it because you think it will kill your players, its in poor taste.

If you are doing it because you think your players will enjoy the challenge and be able to come up with some out side of the box thinking to deal with it, then its awesome.

I wouldn't blink about throwing it at my current playgroup, but I have played with other groups before where I would hesitate to do so.

[SleepyShadow]

Technically, Die Hard does nothing to help with Nonlethal damage. It just lets you act normally at sub-0 normal HP...even with Diehard, if you take a single point of nonlethal you're out for the count.

Ahh, my mistake. I just double-checked that. I rarely take that feat, so I was unclear on the ruling. I thought it just allowed you to act normally when you would otherwise be unconscious but not dead.

Thank you for clearing that up.

[Re'ozul]

I am currently running a dungeon crawl for a non-gestalt lvl 10 party and they didn't really have great problems with the standard war-troll i threw at them.

And that one had a range advantage: 100feet down a long corridor as well as a large splitting energy bow for ranged attacks.

The party didn't even have a dedicated caster. Considering that all-against-one fights usually suffer from action economy problems, by level 15 even the powered up version shouldn't be that much of a problem.

[myancey]

Here's a few questions to ask yourself:

*Can the party run away? That is to say, does the party have some way to escape?
*Are you going to help them out with this encounter or just spring it on them?
*Do they (the players) like dying mercilessly?


These are great questions to ask, in my opinion. If something kills the party (or player) in a surprise round or first round with no chance of success, it's normally cheesy (with a few exceptions). But any encounter (bearing the last sentence in mind) is legit provided you give the party the opportunity to run away.

You wanna scare a level 1 party with a big dragon--do it--but give them the chance to flee. Not all encounters in the world should be based on the EL of a party. Sometimes a group of 20s need to encounter a tribe of malicious globins..and dispose of them as 20s would. Sometimes the party gets in over its head.

As for the troll--I don't have my books and therefore no access to the templates and class...but can't it still take Con damage? If it can, when it hits zero it's dead. Regeneration stops when Con is gone...and it's con is gone.

[FMArthur]

If your group is unlikely to have the tools to defeat it, give them advance warning. Make it a McGuffin creature that someone is trying to create/summon and that person is leaving books around to that effect. Basically this sort of thing requires the abilities of a Tier 2 or Tier 1 spellcaster to beat it without such warning, and it's totally plausible that an otherwise competent Tier 2 build would not have the tools to stop it. I'd only spring that thing on an unspuspecting group if there were at least two tier 1 casters, personally.

[erikun]

Why not just make it an undead Half-Black Dragon War Troll?

Although yes, you probably shouldn't randomly throw an effectively invulnerable opponent at your players without a large amount of warning, such at the whole campaign being about it. The troll you have planned can still be knocked out, or disintegrated, but it would more likely fall into the "highly annoying to fight" category rather than the "memorable tough battle" one.

[myancey]

Why not just make it an undead Half-Black Dragon War Troll?

Although yes, you probably shouldn't randomly throw an effectively invulnerable opponent at your players without a large amount of warning, such at the whole campaign being about it. The troll you have planned can still be knocked out, or disintegrated, but it would more likely fall into the "highly annoying to fight" category rather than the "memorable tough battle" one.

You'd totally lose the regeneration, which is a Troll's best friend.

[Keld Denar]

Actually, disintegrate won't work. It's not [Acid], and thus is not lethal. The disintegrate clause only kicks in when HP are below 0. Nonlethal damage counts up, not down, and this guy will never take any actual damage so his actual HP will never be below 0. There is no "Searing Spell" feat for [Acid].

Well, barring the use of Trollbane or the Greymantle spell.

[Thurbane]

FWIW, you don't need 5 levels of Occult Slayer to make it immune to mind effects - two feats (Willing Deformity + Deformity [madness]) will do that.

As for nonlethal damage - levels in the Crimson Scourge PrC (Cityscape) will get you an ability called Deadened Hide, which allows you to ignore nonlethal damage.

...as for the original question, throwing an all-but-invulnerable foe at the party depends on why it is there. Is there a plot device that depends on the party coming up with a creative way to neutralize this threat...or is it just there to aggrivate the party until they figure a way around it's defenses?

[FMArthur]

Also, what is the expected role of each party member in this fight? Even if the party contains two T1 casters to bring it down, what are other people going to do besides soak its damage and feel helpless? I realize the absurd difficulty in making truly all-inclusive encounters because classes like Samurai exist, but it's different when you as the DM have custom-built a monster for the sole purpose of just saying 'no' to all but the most powerful classes in the game.

[Greenish]

If something kills the party (or player) in a surprise round or first round with no chance of success, it's normally cheesy (with a few exceptions).If something starts to kill players, you have bigger problems than whether something is cheesy or not.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

If something starts to kill players, you have bigger problems than whether something is cheesy or not.Maybe one of them has a severe dairy allergy.

Anyway, whether or not this kills your party depends on their level, build, opportunity of escape, and creativity. Generally I'd expect the worst case scenario to be misjudged combat, one character dies, and the party flees. It's not like War Trolls have much offense outside of 'hit it until it stops moving.'

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I would make sure to describe the opponent in a manner which lets the party know that this isn't something they can just power through. Or perhaps start dropping hints throughout the campaign so they know they're going to need something like Trollbane or Greymantle to take it down conventionally.

[yugi24862]

I just want to note, the Voidmind template gives both acid and mind-effecting immunity for 3LA. Its heavily tied to Illithids though, so you might want to refluff that.

[myancey]

If something starts to kill players, you have bigger problems than whether something is cheesy or not.

Yeah...that's a good point...