Epic Enemies

[Angry Bob]

I tried asking for advice about this before, got "Lolhecatoncheires," a statement contraindicating their use as a powerful enemy, and then the thread ended without really answering my question.

So here it goes again, now with a list of prospective enemies.

Premise:

I'm sending off 3.5 by encouraging my players to cheese out, and then blowing up my setting.

Characters will probably be lvl 30 gestalt. No infinite/arbitrarily high numbers, no beholder mage, and no custom epic spells on either side of the screen.

In addition to reviewing what I have here, I would also appreciate being pointed at other creatures and abilities that lend themselves well to being high-level threats. I'd rather not homebrew creatures entirely(due to disallowing homebrew/3rd party stuff for the players), but actually look forward to advancing, adding class levels to, or throwing templates on existing things.

Enemies:

The Shadow Troika, a triad of 57 HD advanced infernals.

The Whisperscale dragonflight(or at least what the PCs will see of it), three great wyrm(or possibly a step or two down) force dragons with optimized spell loadouts.

Tarrasque(Optimized feats) stampede, probably an obstacle more than a real threat.

Briarios, Kottus, and Gyges, a trio of Hecatoncheires with high levels of wizard, warblade//psywarrior gestalt, and artificer respectively.

Xoraggos, a level 35 demilich sorcerer(probably with some PrCs), accompanied by a small circle of lvl 21 demilich sorcerers(again, probably with some PrCs) and a small army of lvl 15-20 liches.

The revenge of the Wall of Kniferape (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10846873&postcount=37), a fiendish living spell sentry ooze with levels of wilder. This time it brought friends, picked up a lot more class levels, and acquired templates.

If they beat everything else, I may have them face a neutronium golem, just for the lulz, despite its use breaking my own ban against 3rd party material.

If none of these can be expected to threaten such a party, I would like to know what you think could.

tl;dr: Recommend challenges for a cheesy 4-man party of lvl 30 gestalt characters.

Post Script: I apologize for typos, things that seem illogical, or things that just plain don't make sense. It's 1:30 in the morning, and I've already proofread this post as best I can. If you point things out for me, I'll gladly fix them when I'm back in my right mind.

[HappyBlanket]

Xoraggos, a level 35 demilich sorcerer(probably with some PrCs), accompanied by a small circle of lvl 21 demilich sorcerers(again, probably with some PrCs) and a small army of lvl 15-20 liches.

Demiliches can use any bone of the human body, right? The human body has 206 bones. Extrapolate.

"...You see a single, slim, humanoid figure approaching through the fog, it's features obscured by shrouds of velvet and night. The faintest of clicks pierce the night with it's every step, and as it nears, you hear what seems to be the soft whispers and cackles of hundreds of hushed voices. The lanky gait of the peculiar figure finally comes to an end as a single hand tugs away at the crimson fabric of it's hood.

The emerald jewels embedded into a demilich's skull gaze at you through the fog, and 206 maniacal laughs erupt into the night."

[link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184931&page=2)]

[Herabec]

Demiliches can use any bone of the human body, right? The human body has 206 bones. Extrapolate.

"...You see a single, slim, humanoid figure approaching through the fog, it's features obscured by shrouds of velvet and night. The faintest of clicks pierce the night with it's every step, and as it nears, you hear what seems to be the soft whispers and cackles of hundreds of hushed voices. The lanky gait of the peculiar figure finally comes to an end as a single hand tugs away at the crimson fabric of it's hood.

The emerald jewels embedded into a demilich's skull gaze at you through the fog, and 206 maniacal laughs erupt into the night."

Stolen.

So so so so so stolen. :smallbiggrin:

[Amiel]

Have all of the prospective enemies take the Paragon template.
Profit.

[Angry Bob]

Demiliches can use any bone of the human body, right? The human body has 206 bones. Extrapolate.

"...You see a single, slim, humanoid figure approaching through the fog, it's features obscured by shrouds of velvet and night. The faintest of clicks pierce the night with it's every step, and as it nears, you hear what seems to be the soft whispers and cackles of hundreds of hushed voices. The lanky gait of the peculiar figure finally comes to an end as a single hand tugs away at the crimson fabric of it's hood.

The emerald jewels embedded into a demilich's skull gaze at you through the fog, and 206 maniacal laughs erupt into the night."

[link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184931&page=2)]

I've seen this. In the "Things you do just to see the look on your players' faces" thread in Roleplaying Games. As much as I would love to imitate it, I feel it would just slay my PCs outright even if they were dumb enough to go looking for it. It is a great idea, though. Especially if you extrapolate past having to use bones. Make a demilich out of your skin. Have your bros make demiliches out of their various organs. Do the entire skeleton thing. Pass yourself off as a fairly fresh necropolitan.

No, I think around ten or so is plenty, never mind 206.

[CTrees]

I'm fairly certain that with a 206 Demilich collective, someone could come up with realistic looking skin. "You finally confront the archmage. He laughs maniacally, and suddenly, thousands of lights flare up, from beneath his skin. With a resonance to his voice, as if an entire chorus were speaking at one, he says 'Meteor Swarm.'"

[The Rabbler]

steering the thread back on track, I don't think you should worry about combat, Bob. In general, as soon as you hit epic levels, combat becomes more of a chore than anything else as everyone has been playing rocket tag with nukes for the past 10 levels. Sure, you might get an interesting situation in which you have to balance the lives of a player's home town vs those of the rest of the multiverse, but in general by level 30 (especially with gestalt and as much cheese as you can fit) combats will be one maybe two rounds long and odds are the PCs will either crush the opposition or get smothered in the titanic power of whatever they're fighting.

Epic levels become more about the storylines where crazy stuff happens at every turn until you get a plot so convoluted and confusing that it's almost impossible to understand who is actually in control of the situation (it usually ends up being a god of some sort). I've only ever done it once, but solving that kind of alphabet soup of lies and trickery feels mighty rewarding.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Demiliches can use any bone of the human body, right? The human body has 206 bones. Extrapolate.


Been there, ran that, got the satisfaction of obliterating the PCs again and again and again T-shirt. Second spoiler. :smallamused:


I feel it would just slay my PCs outright even if they were dumb enough to go looking for it. It is a great idea, though.

No, I think around ten or so is plenty, never mind 206.

1) Death is a speedbump at best at those levels. If you don't have 15 contingent true resurrections on every party member, you're Doing It WrongTM.

2) Just bones for the demilich, I'm afraid, no skin or other organs. Though I recommend having some demiliches shapechange into skin kites or other organ-like undead for kicks.

[Angry Bob]

steering the thread back on track, I don't think you should worry about combat, Bob. In general, as soon as you hit epic levels, combat becomes more of a chore than anything else as everyone has been playing rocket tag with nukes for the past 10 levels. Sure, you might get an interesting situation in which you have to balance the lives of a player's home town vs those of the rest of the multiverse, but in general by level 30 (especially with gestalt and as much cheese as you can fit) combats will be one maybe two rounds long and odds are the PCs will either crush the opposition or get smothered in the titanic power of whatever they're fighting.

Epic levels become more about the storylines where crazy stuff happens at every turn until you get a plot so convoluted and confusing that it's almost impossible to understand who is actually in control of the situation (it usually ends up being a god of some sort). I've only ever done it once, but solving that kind of alphabet soup of lies and trickery feels mighty rewarding.

That's the thing. The campaign is essentially that the Great Wheel is exploding, go fight something to take your mind off it. Like I said, I'm running this campaign to send off 3.5, and I'm doing it by encouraging players to make something broken and then trying it out on the nastiest things the multiverse has to offer.


1) Death is a speedbump at best at those levels. If you don't have 15 contingent true resurrections on every party member, you're Doing It WrongTM.

Yes, it is, but it should be something they have a reasonable chance of defeating, not something that they can recover from. It would be trivial for this thing to teleport to their location and burn through all of their contingencies like a hot chainsaw through a baby. Fewer of them would have to keep some of their spells in reserve.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Yes, it is, but it should be something they have a reasonable chance of defeating, not something that they can recover from. It would be trivial for this thing to teleport to their location and burn through all of their contingencies like a hot chainsaw through a baby. Fewer of them would have to keep some of their spells in reserve.

A successful scry-&-die by the Voltron demiliches, when the party arcanist has greater anticipate teleportation up at all times and the party is constantly mind blank'd and death warded and immune to a bunch of energy types? Even the noncasters in epic (as if there were any epic noncasters :smallwink:) have layers and layers of buffs, from items or otherwise. Also, you'll note I mentioned 15 contingent true rezzes for a level 30 party--that's because the other 15 contingent spells they're allowed should go to getting your newly-rezzed self the Hells out of there to prevent an ambush from running through all of your contingencies.

I'm not saying you have to put the demilich Voltron in your game, just pointing out that for a party of 30th level gestalt characters, facing 206 21st level demiliches is a beatable challenge, just not one that's necessarily beatable immediately; it's a BBEG-type encounter, not just one among many epic threats. Even the Xoraggos encounter you mentioned is closer to a BBEG encounter than the rest of the threats if only due to the sheer number of epic and near-epic casters working together under a single higher-level-than-the-PCs caster, and BBEG encounters in epic need to be approached with care by the PCs and the DM alike.

[Andorax]

Shadow Demi-Dracolich.