Warding Ritual: How far should I go?

[Boci]

The situation: I'm already planning my BBEG's final stand, and I came up with the idea for a ritual based off something I remember vaguely from never-winter nights: a ritual that protects one creature as long as 5 summoned creatures remain alive.

The party: 6 gestalt PCs who will be level 19 or 20.

The BBEG: Gestalt, level 20 + 4 CR worth of templates.
The summoned monsters: Each one will be CR 11through 15.


The question: How much should the ritual protect him? I want to give the PCs an incentive to kill the monsters first, but it’s not epic magic so it won’t make him unkillable. I was thinking of using the bonuses from transcend immortality and gradually cutting them down as the monsters are killed. Is that too much?

[Yora]

At that level and those CRs, the monsters have no chance to survive against the PCs and probably pose no actual threat.

If the boss can cast spells at them while being partially protected, I'd probably go straight for him and don't bother with the critters. Alternatively I throw some high damage area spells at them to kill a few and then go for the boss.
It really comes down to the players knowing how well protected the boss is in any round, which is hard to do. If the first attacks are completely useless and they know it has something to do with the minions, the players will probably kill all creatures first and only then start attacking the boss. If they can harm him with the wards still up, they might not notice that he's protected at all and just ignore the minions.

[Boci]

At that level and those CRs, the monsters have no chance to survive against the PCs and probably pose no actual threat.

They are not meant to be a thread, but they will hopefully be non-trivial to kill.


If the boss can cast spells at them while being partially protected,

Boss is a martial character.


If they can harm him with the wards still up, they might not notice that he's protected at all and just ignore the minions.

DR: 30 will probably be noticed even at that level.

[Retech]

I don't think DR will be effective. I mean, can't wizards still save or die at that point?

[Tvtyrant]

A bunch of Beholder kin would be none-trivial in this encounter; easy to kill but can blast the heck out of the party.

[Boci]

I don't think DR will be effective. I mean, can't wizards still save or die at that point?

Wizards could save or die a long time ago. The problems with save or die (needing an opponent to pass their saves and immunity to the spell's subtypes) becomes problomatic at higher level as saves scale faster than the DC and immunities become more available.

[Retech]

I mean, doesn't DR gimp martial types much more than spellcasters?

[Boci]

I mean, doesn't DR gimp martial types much more than spellcasters?

Yes it does. If I decide to use transcend mortality as the guidelines for defensive bonuses it will also grants the BBEG SR 41, which could be problomatic for spells casters. They would also get energy resistent 50 across the board and a +10 bonus to saves.

[OracleofSilence]

if its the bbeg i would say the question is not how far should you go, but how far can you go? spammed alarms, glyphs of warding with whatever nasty spells can best divide the party, something that will make one of them a sleeper agent, delayed spells to cause damage at inopportune times, etc.

[Boci]

if its the bbeg i would say the question is not how far should you go, but how far can you go? spammed alarms, glyphs of warding with whatever nasty spells can best divide the party, something that will make one of them a sleeper agent, delayed spells to cause damage at inopportune times, etc.

I'm working on that as well but right now I'm more interested in the warding ritual buffs.

[Alabenson]

One question that needs to be answered is how optimized your party is. Gestalt by itself is very powerful, but there is a world of difference between the Fighter//Rogue who plays his character as a Fighter with sneak attack and the Artificer//Warblade who's copying the most lethal tricks of the CoDzilla while ubercharging.