How to kill a plane-jumping creature?

[Pinjata]

Heya, guys. Here is the tale:

Our party (lvl 8 Ranger, Wizard, Warlock, Barbarian) got hired by a bunch of peasants to kill the "big bad man" from the forest who regularly kidnaps and kills people from their village. All equipped with magical axes, fireballs, lightning strikes and our not-Legolas, we took off, to find the guy (quite unphased by us, I must say) in a run down shack in the forest. We even had some "village militia support" with as and kaboom and kaboosh later, we realized, this guy uses some sort of planehopping or something to avoid attacks. He appears, makes an attack (he killed a few of our guards) then, after a turn, just fades out of reality. Can, in this form, obviously travel around and not leave any corporeal traces.

It was a fight of "I ready my fireball" ... "I waste my fireball due to the fact that enemy did not appear". "I ready my Zephyr strike ... I waste my Zephyr strike, because old man appeared in the wrong place". Frustrating and silly. Old man is not worried.

How do we kill this thing?

[DarthPenance]

Honestly this seems like the DM is just going against you, but take my opinion with a grain of salt.
It sounds like that is a more powerful Blink spell, to be honest, the part where you ready the action to attack him when he appears should've worked, that and the fact that apparently he can choose if he appears or not and he can seemingly see what is happening on the area you guys are on and attack as soon as he appears then disappear, he seems a tad overpowered, I think only a few magic spells would work against this, Dispel Magic and Dimension Lock (I think that's the name), if not I don't think you are supposed to win this.

[DragonBaneDM]

Honestly what I would try to do here is read your DM a bit and go for the lore-win. Look for old legends on this creature, try to contact allies you've helped out in the past who are lore-masters or monster hunters. If he only attacks at night, you have a chance to "IT" this thing. Your ranger and spellcasters can try to track down it's lair and look for a weakness. You could even negotiate with the guy next time he comes a calling. Maybe he wants something specific/is drawn in by a pact or curse you can lift. If your party is the heroic type: hunker down in the village and swear you're not going anywhere until you're done protecting them. (Grinds the game to a halt. Shows your DM you're gonna resolve this before moving on to the next arc. YMMV, though, some DMs I know would take this as permission to TPK you guys with this powerful monster they want you to run from.)

I'm hoping your DM came up with a way for you to get this thing's goat, rather than just leaving the village vulnerable and giving himself a big unkillable baddie to feel good about. If you try to follow the narrative a bit, maybe you'll be rewarded for that?

That said, I ran into a bit of play last night where I exploited trigger specifics a tad. The party all had ranged weapons trained on the door they were expecting a Spawn of Kyuss to come through. After the Spawn's Ghost ally phased through the wall next to them, attacked, and phased back, they all switched to a sort of "sweep the room" type ready action which suited the action a lot better. Your DM may not allow this, and insist your character focus on one place. Can this thing hear you when it's phased out? Does your party (for the most part) share an exotic language you could use to communicate while fighting it to try and cover as much of the room you're fighting in as possible?

Losing spellslots sounds rough. If your DM is being strict on ready triggers, you may want to stick to cantrips for that. Good luck against Old Man Nightcrawler, the sequel to Logan.

[Pinjata]

Honestly this seems like the DM is just going against you, but take my opinion with a grain of salt.
It sounds like that is a more powerful Blink spell, to be honest, the part where you ready the action to attack him when he appears should've worked, that and the fact that apparently he can choose if he appears or not and he can seemingly see what is happening on the area you guys are on and attack as soon as he appears then disappear, he seems a tad overpowered, I think only a few magic spells would work against this, Dispel Magic and Dimension Lock (I think that's the name), if not I don't think you are supposed to win this.

My description was obviously not specific enough here. Guy attacks. Guy appears. Guy remains corporeal for an entire inititive turn. Guy jumps back to another plane. We have spent our Fireballs and Zephyr strikes because guy would appear at location A and attack our militia guys. PCs would attack the guy. Hit, miss, whatever. Next turn, he would go invisible/incorporeal/planeshifted/whatever. He would then MOVE and, for an example, attack our barbarian who was standing behind a huge tree in a position B. Thus, all of us had to move, maybe even make double move, to get in position to hit old guy. By the time most PCs were in position to harm him, he would again disappear. The actual problem is this:
- HE chooses if and when he will appear
- he can move undetected for an unknown number of rounds
- we are pretty sure, we are, even if we get him in such a position, unable to dish out enough damage, to kill him. Thus, he can just go invisible again and float away and just return in a day or whenever he fully heals up. And slays villagers again.



I think only a few magic spells would work against this, Dispel Magic and Dimension Lock (I think that's the name), if not I don't think you are supposed to win this.

Could be.




Honestly what I would try to do here is read your DM a bit and go for the lore-win. Look for old legends on this creature, try to contact allies you've helped out in the past who are lore-masters or monster hunters.

Our ideas exactly.

[alchahest]

replace the parachute with a bag of pots and pans!


oh, THAT kind of plane jumping. at your level, with the abilities described, I think diplomacy might be your only chance. Ask what it would take for him to leave the townspeople alone. otherwise I think the DM has some kind of plan for this guy to stick around for now and you're up the creek with no paddle.

[Lord8Ball]

Make a cradle with a fake baby in it and trap it with as many glyphs of wardings as possible with a fireball in it. Guy enters radius to grab offering and gets exploded.

[Sigreid]

Caltrops and other means of denying him ground to come back to comes to mind.

[Armored Walrus]

Stand in a formation so that you are all within one move of each other (unless he also happens to have fireball, but you might just have to eat that). Or find whatever McGuffin you're supposed to be using against him.

Or, if you hate your GM, just tell the villagers this challenge is too much for you and move to the next village. (If he's using shenanigans specifically to keep this bad guy alive, this might give him a wake up call.)

[Lord8Ball]

Get a chariot with a spiked chain dragging behind it and a blade attached to each side(spiked wheels included). Two people are on the chariot with bows standing back to back. One is driving the chariot while the other is readying its action to shoot anything that appears or where the other person directs all the while having partial cover because of the chariots "wall". Have a wizard with see invisibility just in case. From then have to wizard's familiar drop caltrops behind the chariot. Circle the area where the enemy was seen last. Also I belive being on the etheral plane limits the opponent's vision to 60ft
https://userscontent2.emaze.com/images/9d95906c-56fe-40e7-8564-576a49f3a8a6/a63a1454-713d-42e5-8c47-cfa54fee5ff4.jpg

[Armored Walrus]

As far as an explanation of how the NPC is accomplishing some of this - he's on the Ethereal Plane. Blink puts you there randomly, Etherealness puts you there for a duration. It's possible he figured a high enough spellcaster would have some version between those two spells.

Being on the Ethereal Plane does allow you to see into the Prime, so he'd still be able to watch you, move, and appear where he wants. The only thing he's doing that can't be explained by a simple 3rd level spell, is he can choose when he goes back and forth.

So another way to beat him is to post some of your party on the Ethereal Plane, so you have folks around to hit him no matter where he is. Oil of Etherealness can do this, or the Etherealness spell. (side note, I much preferred Ethereality to Etherealness...)

Just pointing out it may not be the DM Mary-Sueing an NPC.


Edit: Or is it that new, what, Dream Druid thing from XGtE? Doesn't that allow selective Blinking, more or less?

[Asmotherion]

Heya, guys. Here is the tale:

Our party (lvl 8 Ranger, Wizard, Warlock, Barbarian) got hired by a bunch of peasants to kill the "big bad man" from the forest who regularly kidnaps and kills people from their village. All equipped with magical axes, fireballs, lightning strikes and our not-Legolas, we took off, to find the guy (quite unphased by us, I must say) in a run down shack in the forest. We even had some "village militia support" with as and kaboom and kaboosh later, we realized, this guy uses some sort of planehopping or something to avoid attacks. He appears, makes an attack (he killed a few of our guards) then, after a turn, just fades out of reality. Can, in this form, obviously travel around and not leave any corporeal traces.

It was a fight of "I ready my fireball" ... "I waste my fireball due to the fact that enemy did not appear". "I ready my Zephyr strike ... I waste my Zephyr strike, because old man appeared in the wrong place". Frustrating and silly. Old man is not worried.

How do we kill this thing?

Out of game; He's either using the Blink Spell, or is the Planar Variant Ranger at some significant level were he only takes half damage as a reaction.

-If your DM is rolling a Die, then he's using the Blink Spell. If not, he's taking Half Damage. Try to notice small things that indicate he has taken any amount of damage (buned beard, torn cloaths, blood marks?).

-Have you interacted with the NPC in question before attacking him? Perhaps he was an Important NPC and your DM wanted to provide him with some Plot Armor to ensure his story will go on smoothly. Not that I encourage nose-draging a story, but if you unknowingly attacked a lesser Neutral Evil Deity, who is planning to use your PCs, but does not care about the villagers, this seems like a very possible way the encounter would go. Perhaps you were not meant to kill or even fight that "creature", just interact with it, and taking the villagers with you was a bad call on your party's end that costed the vilager's lives.

[Demidos]

The answer depends on your level of play. If you're playing low optimization (which seems likely), there's probably a story answer to this.

If you're playing high optimization, the solution is probably --
1. You all stay close together in clear visibility
2. Your wizard readies an action to cast quickened true strike when he appears.
3. When he appears your wizard casts celerity after the true strike.
4. Celerity gives you a standard action to cast a (true-strike'd) dimensional anchor.

If your wizard doesn't have those spells then you're probably not playing high optimization, and you should disregard this advice, since you're having fun and don't necessarily want to have to learn all about optimized play -- while fun, it can take a lot of work from everyone in the party and isnt something to embark on lightly.

I'm sorry, I totally misread this as a 3.5 thread. I'll still leave this post up in case it helps jog anyone's memory, but be warned :smallbiggrin:.

[Yagyujubei]

well if your DM is being fair at all then it takes the guy an action of some sort to phase in and out be it a bonus action or standard or what not...so couldnt you just ready your action and say "i ready my action and attack as soon as he appears"? of course...this would kinda require ranged dps but it should work fine.