Doctor Despair
2016-04-16, 11:37 PM
Hello, all! So I've been playing in an epic campaign (level 21) where the DM has been slowly giving out divine ranks (we're at 6 atm). However, the DM seems to have become frustrated at the power level of the party, sometimes, for example, pulling enemies from Pathfinder that use poison and petrification (which deities are immune to) or setting traps that perform the same function.. I offered to add a plot twist to the campaign and pull a final-boss type thing to make a more exciting challenge (morally and skill-wise) for the party, and he agreed. However, I want to be sure I make something that is challenging without overwhelming. Here is some relevant info...
I am a bard with a build similar to this: (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?472134-Could-I-get-some-opinions-feedback-on-this-bard-build). I have the harp of a deity with unknown properties, though I'm sure the DM would tell me for the purposes of this campaign. I believe it is homebrew, as he has been homebrewing a fair bit. I'm aware that I could probably just fascinate/suggest/dominate/etc the party from miles away, so I've added the caveat that this character does not want to harm/dominate the party unless forced to out of self interest. Until this moment, he has been playing as a chaotic good character, so I'd see this as a corruption of that. (see further potential motivation below)
A common trope of the campaign has been the use of prismatic effects. The crux of the campaign has been to find the source of black prismatic ooze that has the effect of killing gods (ie, causing them to crumble into dust after a time). The ooze can also take the form of an actual ooze but apparently suffers no damage from physical attacks. Some of this is currently in Tiny, the warrior of the party. I am now the only one in the party who immediately knows how to get to this enemy. The party also possesses a staff whose effects seem to be to encourage the growth of life and banish/kill black prismatic ooze.
Another common trope of this campaign has been the use of "dark scrying" which my character has, at the end of the most recent session, learned off-screen. It, so far as we have seen in campaign, can be used to prevent all divination effects and find anyone shielded from divination effects. It cannot find someone "more powerful" in the use of dark scrying, whatever that means to the DM. However, it consumes a living or dead soul in the transaction, preventing them from existing and therefore from reaching the afterlife, so the party is strongly opposed to using it save for on the most evil of evil people. We met a character called the Eye which seemed to be a beholder on steroids suspended from the ceiling -- it controlled a body and was apparently ancient, maybe wedded to history or something, but the DM intervened as character when the party tried to kill the Eye -- see below..
The DM has introduced a character named after himself as a sort of over-deity. He made it clear that it is a character, not himself, but that the character has meta-knowledge that this is a game, etc. He apparently derives his power from the worship of all the deities, just as deities in this world derive their power from the worship of their followers. Two of the other four members of the party have evinced that their main goal, apart from saving the world, is to kill this character.
So far, the DM has *not* made use of any sort of illusions as enemies.
The party consists of me, a straight druid that will have the divine salient ability to assume the form of living creatures (in this case, a Prismasaurus Rex with bab of something like 80 or something ridiculous like that), a character with yes-level points in disguise and a mask that grants invisibility impenetrable to truesight, a four-armed lawful-good knight that can alter his size to be colossal or diminutive and consistently does more than 1k damage per round (using magical devices to teleport, etheral jaunt, etc), and a paladin that does much less consistent damage and tends to be a secondary beat-stick. The knight specifically has been travelling with my character since they were level 0 and trusts him implicitly and, until now, would kill someone just because my bard said he was evil.
So I'm considering how I should structure the plot and the fight to the DM when I suggest them so that they are satisfying for the party and for the DM. Here's what I was thinking so far: Doggrel the bard has used Alter Reality to use Fusion on the Eye to gain its knowledge. The BBEG that has been sending out black prismatic to trigger an apocalypse of some sort used to be a student of the Eye, so Doggrel reasoned it could be useful to lean on the Eye's experience for this. However, upon gaining the Eye's centuries of knowledge from observing the past, Doggrel immediately becomes jaded and experiences an alignment shift from chaotic good to chaotic evil. He facilitates the party's journey to this student but tells them not to kill him, only to wound him with nonlethal to take him down (so the party gets to fight the BBEG they originally planned on fighting). Once he is unconscious, Doggrel snags the guy and disappears. Off-screen, he fascinates/suggests/dominates the guy to get him to agree to a fusion. With this knowledge, he uses a combination of dark-scrying, Alter Reality, and his already god-affecting bardic abilities and spells to reach out to every deity that has knowledge of and worships the DM-character besides those in the party.
Now, from this point it would be easy enough to just erase the knowledge of him to remove the DM-deity's power, but I think the influence of the Eye and the BBEG will kind of affect Doggrel to make him more of a megalomaniac than an epic bard already would be, so I want to offer a sort of moral quandary to the party. Doggrel's plan is to make all these deities worship him instead of this deity. Then, to solidify that, he plans to send out black prismatic ooze to each of them, take stock of each of their minds and memories, and make a copy of them from the black prismatic ooze -- that could then consume the deities. I want it to be morally grey enough that the paladin and knight could never accept it, but tempting enough that they'd have to pause. After all, this is the party getting ultimate power and possibly the only way for the party to accomplish that goal of killing the over-deity.
So, bearing in mind that Doggrel wouldn't want to kill or dominate the party (especially Tiny), I'm kind of at a loss for structuring a fight from the perspective of a pseudo-DM. Here are some things I was thinking...
Throw a teleport cage on the location, just to limit options
Make ice assassins of the party for them to fight?
Labyrinths all the time in an already labyrinth-like place, just for shenanigans
Maybe make a black prismatic ooze coupled with strong illusions (protected from truesight with dark scrying) that look exactly like Doggrel to pseudo-fight the party (it's immune to physical damage apparently) while protesting to the party, trying to sway them? Maybe trigger some BFC, debuffs, etc from the next room. Ideally they'd grapple it down or use some sort of magical ability to shut it down eventually
A room full of these black-ooze lookalikes, perhaps to imply the real Doggrel is there? More BFC, more persuasion, imply that the Paladin has Doggrel's child (shenanigans last session where the two had a threesome with the incarnation of a planet), call on Tiny's loyalty, the disguise master's urge to chaos, and... not much to appeal to the druid with. Maybe just a general plea to her for power?
A corridor with glass walls through which they can see prisons cells surrounded by some sort of magical walls. As they progress, traps trigger that kill the prisoners and announce their crimes? More moral quandaries for the party
Finally, the real Doggrel with some stupid large amount of hp (3, 5, 10k? Something.) Maybe he looks increasingly distressed and claims that the Eye and BBEG are trying to get him to kill them, to smite them, but he can't do that. Maybe throw a few token offensive abilities at them until someone attacks, then have him cower behind the harp for each one to give them a free sunder on each attack to see if he was successful? When it breaks, perhaps he goes more on the offensive and... to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how to structure this fight. Is there any sort of tactic I could pursue that wouldn't just kill them with a charisma that high? Tiny could probably tank a Divine Blast (51d12s does, on average, 357, and he has like 400-500 HP...), but that's only good for like one character. I'd imagine one of them would be in Trex form -- maybe spawning the Terrasque to fight them would be good? Tiny can't rush by without leaving the Terrasque with the party alone, so they all have to focus on it? But what of when they reach Doggrel?
I am a bard with a build similar to this: (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?472134-Could-I-get-some-opinions-feedback-on-this-bard-build). I have the harp of a deity with unknown properties, though I'm sure the DM would tell me for the purposes of this campaign. I believe it is homebrew, as he has been homebrewing a fair bit. I'm aware that I could probably just fascinate/suggest/dominate/etc the party from miles away, so I've added the caveat that this character does not want to harm/dominate the party unless forced to out of self interest. Until this moment, he has been playing as a chaotic good character, so I'd see this as a corruption of that. (see further potential motivation below)
A common trope of the campaign has been the use of prismatic effects. The crux of the campaign has been to find the source of black prismatic ooze that has the effect of killing gods (ie, causing them to crumble into dust after a time). The ooze can also take the form of an actual ooze but apparently suffers no damage from physical attacks. Some of this is currently in Tiny, the warrior of the party. I am now the only one in the party who immediately knows how to get to this enemy. The party also possesses a staff whose effects seem to be to encourage the growth of life and banish/kill black prismatic ooze.
Another common trope of this campaign has been the use of "dark scrying" which my character has, at the end of the most recent session, learned off-screen. It, so far as we have seen in campaign, can be used to prevent all divination effects and find anyone shielded from divination effects. It cannot find someone "more powerful" in the use of dark scrying, whatever that means to the DM. However, it consumes a living or dead soul in the transaction, preventing them from existing and therefore from reaching the afterlife, so the party is strongly opposed to using it save for on the most evil of evil people. We met a character called the Eye which seemed to be a beholder on steroids suspended from the ceiling -- it controlled a body and was apparently ancient, maybe wedded to history or something, but the DM intervened as character when the party tried to kill the Eye -- see below..
The DM has introduced a character named after himself as a sort of over-deity. He made it clear that it is a character, not himself, but that the character has meta-knowledge that this is a game, etc. He apparently derives his power from the worship of all the deities, just as deities in this world derive their power from the worship of their followers. Two of the other four members of the party have evinced that their main goal, apart from saving the world, is to kill this character.
So far, the DM has *not* made use of any sort of illusions as enemies.
The party consists of me, a straight druid that will have the divine salient ability to assume the form of living creatures (in this case, a Prismasaurus Rex with bab of something like 80 or something ridiculous like that), a character with yes-level points in disguise and a mask that grants invisibility impenetrable to truesight, a four-armed lawful-good knight that can alter his size to be colossal or diminutive and consistently does more than 1k damage per round (using magical devices to teleport, etheral jaunt, etc), and a paladin that does much less consistent damage and tends to be a secondary beat-stick. The knight specifically has been travelling with my character since they were level 0 and trusts him implicitly and, until now, would kill someone just because my bard said he was evil.
So I'm considering how I should structure the plot and the fight to the DM when I suggest them so that they are satisfying for the party and for the DM. Here's what I was thinking so far: Doggrel the bard has used Alter Reality to use Fusion on the Eye to gain its knowledge. The BBEG that has been sending out black prismatic to trigger an apocalypse of some sort used to be a student of the Eye, so Doggrel reasoned it could be useful to lean on the Eye's experience for this. However, upon gaining the Eye's centuries of knowledge from observing the past, Doggrel immediately becomes jaded and experiences an alignment shift from chaotic good to chaotic evil. He facilitates the party's journey to this student but tells them not to kill him, only to wound him with nonlethal to take him down (so the party gets to fight the BBEG they originally planned on fighting). Once he is unconscious, Doggrel snags the guy and disappears. Off-screen, he fascinates/suggests/dominates the guy to get him to agree to a fusion. With this knowledge, he uses a combination of dark-scrying, Alter Reality, and his already god-affecting bardic abilities and spells to reach out to every deity that has knowledge of and worships the DM-character besides those in the party.
Now, from this point it would be easy enough to just erase the knowledge of him to remove the DM-deity's power, but I think the influence of the Eye and the BBEG will kind of affect Doggrel to make him more of a megalomaniac than an epic bard already would be, so I want to offer a sort of moral quandary to the party. Doggrel's plan is to make all these deities worship him instead of this deity. Then, to solidify that, he plans to send out black prismatic ooze to each of them, take stock of each of their minds and memories, and make a copy of them from the black prismatic ooze -- that could then consume the deities. I want it to be morally grey enough that the paladin and knight could never accept it, but tempting enough that they'd have to pause. After all, this is the party getting ultimate power and possibly the only way for the party to accomplish that goal of killing the over-deity.
So, bearing in mind that Doggrel wouldn't want to kill or dominate the party (especially Tiny), I'm kind of at a loss for structuring a fight from the perspective of a pseudo-DM. Here are some things I was thinking...
Throw a teleport cage on the location, just to limit options
Make ice assassins of the party for them to fight?
Labyrinths all the time in an already labyrinth-like place, just for shenanigans
Maybe make a black prismatic ooze coupled with strong illusions (protected from truesight with dark scrying) that look exactly like Doggrel to pseudo-fight the party (it's immune to physical damage apparently) while protesting to the party, trying to sway them? Maybe trigger some BFC, debuffs, etc from the next room. Ideally they'd grapple it down or use some sort of magical ability to shut it down eventually
A room full of these black-ooze lookalikes, perhaps to imply the real Doggrel is there? More BFC, more persuasion, imply that the Paladin has Doggrel's child (shenanigans last session where the two had a threesome with the incarnation of a planet), call on Tiny's loyalty, the disguise master's urge to chaos, and... not much to appeal to the druid with. Maybe just a general plea to her for power?
A corridor with glass walls through which they can see prisons cells surrounded by some sort of magical walls. As they progress, traps trigger that kill the prisoners and announce their crimes? More moral quandaries for the party
Finally, the real Doggrel with some stupid large amount of hp (3, 5, 10k? Something.) Maybe he looks increasingly distressed and claims that the Eye and BBEG are trying to get him to kill them, to smite them, but he can't do that. Maybe throw a few token offensive abilities at them until someone attacks, then have him cower behind the harp for each one to give them a free sunder on each attack to see if he was successful? When it breaks, perhaps he goes more on the offensive and... to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how to structure this fight. Is there any sort of tactic I could pursue that wouldn't just kill them with a charisma that high? Tiny could probably tank a Divine Blast (51d12s does, on average, 357, and he has like 400-500 HP...), but that's only good for like one character. I'd imagine one of them would be in Trex form -- maybe spawning the Terrasque to fight them would be good? Tiny can't rush by without leaving the Terrasque with the party alone, so they all have to focus on it? But what of when they reach Doggrel?