Dezea
2015-02-17, 08:24 PM
Hey guys,
As the title says, I would be really curious to have your take on some encounter my party is about to face.
Long story short : We are a party of 5 (Wizard 11, Rogue 11, Bard 12, Cleric 12, Barbarian 13) and we are about to face a Duke of Hell (A pit fiend with something like a CR 24+, is he mainly known lore-wise for killing an especialy powerful solar of our setting in 1v1).
Now, we all know this should be impossible. But we might be able to take the fight to him in a way that he would be surprise, and we should be able to gather almost all the data about him beforehand.
In some way, this is definitely a fight that should be won before being fought.
Before I'll ask you some questions, here are some specifics :
- We are running Core Handbook only.
- We are pretty much low to okayish op. Everyone of us got a gentleman agrement to not go on cheese teritory, so our fellow barb & rogue won't feel useless.
- The wizard is a conjurer, and used most of his feat to improve his...Skill at painting. Yeah, I know. Still, he got imp init, quicken spell and...Core pathfinder doesn't offer much as feat for caster, anyway.
- The rogue is your classic backstabing bastard, tho he got some high rolled stats and I would say he hit things with more consistance than most rogue and doesn't die quite often.
- The barbarian is your go-to "Insane Damage While Raging if able to hit" brute, with a heavy focus on boosting his saves.
- The priest probably never dealt a single point of damage. Not to say he spend all of your fight healing, but he mostly try to help around, buffing and controlling.
- The bard is a pretty competent archer and the buffing powerhouse of the group. He's also in charge of protecting the priest.
- We expect to be able to fight him in hell, but not on his own plane, and we should be able to trick him into coming to us, unexpecting the ambush. (I mean, lvl 12 adventurer trying to secure a kill on a Duke of Hell ? Comon...)
- As said before, we have access to every data available as for "Classic" pit fiend. In gaming term, It means that we can freely look at the pfsrd, as if we had access to an in game library with the data - Wich, actually, is the case. We also happend to know that he is stronger than your usual pit fiend, but the only specific differences we know is that he got an incredibly potent poison.
Sooooo : Here is how we did it : We looked at all the tool that a Pit Fiend have, and realized we had to face some very specifics issue, that we tried to list and analyse. Here is what we found, and the way we have found to answer them, I would be very glad is you see some issue we overlooked, and If you could help us to find some answer we are unable to get...
- Quite high physical damage capacity : Honestly, it doesn't deal THAT much damage for a monster of this level. Quite scary indeed, but probably not enough to even one shot the rogue. Prolly if he start using his turn full attacking, we should be able to overcome him thanks to pure action economy advantage.
- Very high AC : 38 AC for the classic pit fiend, more like 42 if he get his unholy aura off, and probably more like around 45 for the duke of hell. Actually, this is a big problem indeed, but not as big as we feared. If we are able to initiate the fight fully buff, the ability of a bard to help us hit stuff his really incredible. Still, we shouldn't expect to hit the full atack each turn, but some dps should be able to go through
- Very high DR/SR : We will be able to have good aligned silver weapon for the fight, so DR is no problem. Sr tho... Does someone see any way to bypass it using core only ? This is actually a major issue.
- Ability to teleport : If he go away...We are absolutely screwed. That would be okay if we could dimensional anchor him, but the spell is SR yes...Any idea ?
- Blasphemy : With him being pretty likely over 10 HD of us it looked like a problem at first, but we decided to get all defeaned to avoid the spell, with the wizard putting up some telepathic link
- Trap the soul : Here is another real problem. Save's gonna be quite hard, and protection against evil doesn't offer a second save... We are thinking about trying to contingency a spell to counter this, but counterspelling suck real hard in pathfinder, and trying to deal damage with a spell will need to beat the high SR...
- Wish : Well, this could be absolutely horrible. Same as trap the soul above, but harder.
- High fire damage : Well, quite trivial here, protection from energy will do the trick.
- His poison : Quite easy to counter, actually, with the fear tho that his poison will overcome a "Normal" neutralize poison.
Well : That's all we have for the moment. Thank you a lot if you went trough the whole post, considering I'm not from an english speaking country, and my english prolly sux.
I will be really curious to know what hole you find in our plan, and if you can see any way for us to fill the gap !
Dezea
As the title says, I would be really curious to have your take on some encounter my party is about to face.
Long story short : We are a party of 5 (Wizard 11, Rogue 11, Bard 12, Cleric 12, Barbarian 13) and we are about to face a Duke of Hell (A pit fiend with something like a CR 24+, is he mainly known lore-wise for killing an especialy powerful solar of our setting in 1v1).
Now, we all know this should be impossible. But we might be able to take the fight to him in a way that he would be surprise, and we should be able to gather almost all the data about him beforehand.
In some way, this is definitely a fight that should be won before being fought.
Before I'll ask you some questions, here are some specifics :
- We are running Core Handbook only.
- We are pretty much low to okayish op. Everyone of us got a gentleman agrement to not go on cheese teritory, so our fellow barb & rogue won't feel useless.
- The wizard is a conjurer, and used most of his feat to improve his...Skill at painting. Yeah, I know. Still, he got imp init, quicken spell and...Core pathfinder doesn't offer much as feat for caster, anyway.
- The rogue is your classic backstabing bastard, tho he got some high rolled stats and I would say he hit things with more consistance than most rogue and doesn't die quite often.
- The barbarian is your go-to "Insane Damage While Raging if able to hit" brute, with a heavy focus on boosting his saves.
- The priest probably never dealt a single point of damage. Not to say he spend all of your fight healing, but he mostly try to help around, buffing and controlling.
- The bard is a pretty competent archer and the buffing powerhouse of the group. He's also in charge of protecting the priest.
- We expect to be able to fight him in hell, but not on his own plane, and we should be able to trick him into coming to us, unexpecting the ambush. (I mean, lvl 12 adventurer trying to secure a kill on a Duke of Hell ? Comon...)
- As said before, we have access to every data available as for "Classic" pit fiend. In gaming term, It means that we can freely look at the pfsrd, as if we had access to an in game library with the data - Wich, actually, is the case. We also happend to know that he is stronger than your usual pit fiend, but the only specific differences we know is that he got an incredibly potent poison.
Sooooo : Here is how we did it : We looked at all the tool that a Pit Fiend have, and realized we had to face some very specifics issue, that we tried to list and analyse. Here is what we found, and the way we have found to answer them, I would be very glad is you see some issue we overlooked, and If you could help us to find some answer we are unable to get...
- Quite high physical damage capacity : Honestly, it doesn't deal THAT much damage for a monster of this level. Quite scary indeed, but probably not enough to even one shot the rogue. Prolly if he start using his turn full attacking, we should be able to overcome him thanks to pure action economy advantage.
- Very high AC : 38 AC for the classic pit fiend, more like 42 if he get his unholy aura off, and probably more like around 45 for the duke of hell. Actually, this is a big problem indeed, but not as big as we feared. If we are able to initiate the fight fully buff, the ability of a bard to help us hit stuff his really incredible. Still, we shouldn't expect to hit the full atack each turn, but some dps should be able to go through
- Very high DR/SR : We will be able to have good aligned silver weapon for the fight, so DR is no problem. Sr tho... Does someone see any way to bypass it using core only ? This is actually a major issue.
- Ability to teleport : If he go away...We are absolutely screwed. That would be okay if we could dimensional anchor him, but the spell is SR yes...Any idea ?
- Blasphemy : With him being pretty likely over 10 HD of us it looked like a problem at first, but we decided to get all defeaned to avoid the spell, with the wizard putting up some telepathic link
- Trap the soul : Here is another real problem. Save's gonna be quite hard, and protection against evil doesn't offer a second save... We are thinking about trying to contingency a spell to counter this, but counterspelling suck real hard in pathfinder, and trying to deal damage with a spell will need to beat the high SR...
- Wish : Well, this could be absolutely horrible. Same as trap the soul above, but harder.
- High fire damage : Well, quite trivial here, protection from energy will do the trick.
- His poison : Quite easy to counter, actually, with the fear tho that his poison will overcome a "Normal" neutralize poison.
Well : That's all we have for the moment. Thank you a lot if you went trough the whole post, considering I'm not from an english speaking country, and my english prolly sux.
I will be really curious to know what hole you find in our plan, and if you can see any way for us to fill the gap !
Dezea