Gibbering Orb vs. Level 18 Party

[prufock]

I am the DM for a group of 18th-level characters that has stumbled into the lair of a Gibbering Orb (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/gibberingOrb.htm) somewhat unexpectedly. They had used a scry-or-die tactic to pop in on an enemy of theirs that was, at the time, conversing with the orb. They annihilated this enemy while it was caught unawares, but they were likewise unaware of the presence of the orb.

The gibbering orb, for those who don't know, is a CR 27 monster from the epic level handbook. It's like a beholder plus plus plus with multiple eye rays, multiple bites, and two spells or spell-like abilities per round as a free action. I wasn't expecting them to encounter this until they reached at least level 20, but here we are. The creature's first action is likely to

I guess the question is: is there any chance that this won't be a TPK?

The party, in full, is:
Knight 18 with Horse wild cohort
Healer 15 cohort
Druid 18 with a Fleshraker animal companion
Warblade 17/Barbarian 1
Cleric 12 cohort
Rogue 6/Fighter 2/Master of Masks 5/Master Thrower 5
Bard 15 cohort
Warlock 3/Wizard 5/Eldritch Theurge 10

This party has often surprised me with the threats they can take on, but this CR is 9 above their average party level, and the GO is a beast.

The orbs attacks basically can't miss.
With AC 48 they have low chances of hitting it.
It has SR 37, meaning they'd need a roll or 19 to pass it (unbuffed).
SO MANY attacks per round.
Lots of HPs.
They are in a smallish lair, so no chance of keeping out of its range.

They do have a number of things going for them. The Warblade can consistently dish out over 100 damage per round. They are currently immune to the insanity effect from gibbering. They can get out with a plane shift if they survive a round or two. the GO's touch AC is a 36 - still high, but manageable - and its FF AC is only 24... if they can get it flat-footed.

I'm not one to generally pull my punches, but I'd really rather avoid a TPK. What are their chances of surviving this? Would a level bump improve this significantly?

Thanks for any advice.

[ViperMagnum357]

The Gibbering Orb has +20 Initiative, and as a standard action can produce 24 separate caster level 27th spells as (Su), including Disintegrate, Dominate Monster, Disjunction, Irresistible Dance, Flesh to Stone, Implosion, Slay Living, PAO, Finger of Death, and Temporal Stasis-among many others. A TPK is the default assumption, and nothing in your party leads me to believe this fight is going to go any other way. Time for some DM fiat: I might allow them to try to RP their way out, since the Orb is Int 40 rather than a slavering monster-and they should present no clear threat to it, even after splattering its minion.

[Goaty14]

I can generally say that, if you play the monster to full capacity, the players will undoubtedly fail, and the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/) agrees. Either the players would have to be amazingly smart (like, I dunno, setting an AMF on the warblade and starting a grapple), and the GO would have to be played pretty stupid (I don't even know, but you're sure as heck intentionally avoiding casting Disjunction on the players).

Er yea, I'd say your party is screwed if you don't pull your punches, though you might consider the possibility of the PCs avoiding combat entirely (intentionally or not).

[sleepyphoenixx]

That depends a lot on how optimized they are.
You can at least rule that it doesn't currently have any stolen spells or SLAs though.
It's also slow and has no movement powers, so if they survive the first round (or have very high initiative) they have a chance to get away.

A level 18 party should be protected by permanent Death Ward (via Soulfire armor) at least, so the Energy Drain, Finger of Death, Harm, ICW, PW:Kill and Slay Living eye rays should be ineffective.
I'm not seeing a wizard so unless they all have items of permanent Mind Blank that could be a problem. If they do it neutralizes a bunch more of the eye rays - Dominate Monster, Feeblemind, Hold Monster, Irresistible Dance, PW:Stun and PW:Blind.

For the rest you'll mainly need high saving throws. The eye ray DC is only 16+level, so 25 at most.
That's very doable at level 18 with good items and buffs, but the sheer volume pretty much guarantees they'll roll a nat 1 somewhere.

The really big problems are the Greater Dispel and Disjunction rays. Though the first could be a good indication that they need to run and it isn't going to kill anyone on its own.
I'd honestly just refrain from using the latter unless your players have a way to defend against it (wands of Wings of Cover, immediate-action teleports and total cover in range etc.). Maybe the Orb wants loot?

Really, it depends on how well equipped/buffed your players are and how you play the Orb. If you're starting off by hitting everyone with Greater Dispel followed by a mix of Disintegrate, Horrid Wilting and Implosion you'll have dead for sure, but letting the Orb "waste" some attacks by using spells the party is immune to leaves them a decent chance to survive at least 1 round and isn't too unrealistic.

[Segev]

What does the Orb want? Is killing the party the best way to achieve its goals? It certainly is under no real threat from them.

[Asmotherion]

What does the Orb want? Is killing the party the best way to achieve its goals? It certainly is under no real threat from them.

Exactly. Since you decided to include it in the campain in the first place, give it a goal. Perhaps it wants compensation for slaying it's minion, and will pull it's punshes until it Dominates Everyone.

It's as good an Excuse to give them an opportunity to actually Run Away, when they see they don't do anything to it, as well as a Branshed Adventure Hook;

Either the whole Party gets Dominated, and views it as the Rightfull Ruler; Give them a Quest with the Orb as the Quest Giver, in which there will be a Chance that a Spellcaster will Dispell their control.

OR

One or more gets Dominated. The Orb orders them to act normally. If found out, they can cure them by a Dispell Magic. The dominated will try to drag the others in the Orb's Quest. If one is a Spellcaster with the ability to Dominate, he will do so on the others, but only when not at risk of being found out.

[Segev]

I wouldn't even have it be subtle about it. They cost it one minion, but they're all potential replacements. Domination and Charm effects need not affect the whole party for the Orb to be in a position to negotiate for them all to work for it. It's way smarter than they are, so trying to put one over on it is obviously out of their league (at least if the thing is anywhere near as arrogant as beholders). It can, of course, kill any who refuse.

But if they'll work for it, at least for a while until they can break free, then there's no TPK; it's just a different direction for the campaign to take.

[Deophaun]

Then they come back with ray deflection up and ROFLOLstomp it.

[Particle_Man]

The gibberish effect is automatic? That could be an issue.

[Goaty14]

They are currently immune to the insanity effect from gibbering.


The gibberish effect is automatic? That could be an issue.

It could be an issue... except it was already pointed out that it isn't. Sometimes it pays to pay attention.

[Particle_Man]

But if the orb dispels that immunity then it could become an issue? Unless they are non-magically immune to insanity somehow?

[Deophaun]

Its senses are also poop for an Epic creature. Hitting its FFAC isn't a problem if they have greater invisibility or HiPS. Fog cloud and blindsight might be enough for ranged. It has no way to deal with any sort of miss chance. No teleportation by default, so a solid fog would make it very sad. Sure, it's a scary thing to stumble into, but there is hope that they might accidentally have the tools to beat it.

[prufock]

Thanks for some feedback everyone. It sounds like without some very smart play or getting very lucky, they are well and rightfully screwed.


What does the Orb want? Is killing the party the best way to achieve its goals? It certainly is under no real threat from them.
Well, there's quite a bit of backstory, over 5 years and 18 levels worth of play, but essentially:
The orb is a denizen of the Far Realm.
The gods of our realm maintain a barrier to keep our planes separate from the Far Realm.
The gods have been weakened by other events.
The orb's proxy had started an atheist organization to draw people away from worship of the gods, further weakening them.
The orb's ultimate goal is to destroy the barrier, to merge our realm with the Far Realm.
The barrier has already weakened enough to allow some travel between our realm and the Far Realm, and some creatures can get through.

The atheist organization had been active for a while, but were keeping a low profile, so the party ignored them for the most part, dealing with other events, until their intentions became more clear. Now that they know, they have been tackling it directly with the orb's proxy, but they were under the impression that he was the top of the food chain.

The orb's plan is already in process, but she could definitely use more servants, especially now that her faithful thrall is dead. Whether that is accomplished through bargaining or via magical domination is a matter to let play out. I don't expect this particular band of heroes to accept any deal willingly (then again, the halfling is pretty tricky, we'll see).


Perhaps it wants compensation for slaying it's minion, and will pull it's punshes until it Dominates Everyone. (...) One or more gets Dominated. The Orb orders them to act normally. If found out, they can cure them by a Dispell Magic. The dominated will try to drag the others in the Orb's Quest. If one is a Spellcaster with the ability to Dominate, he will do so on the others, but only when not at risk of being found out.
Dominating one or more of the cohorts to use as a sleeper agent would be an interesting route to go.


A level 18 party should be protected by permanent Death Ward (...) Mind Blank (...) high saving throws. The eye ray DC is only 16+level, so 25 at most.
That's very doable at level 18 with good items and buffs, but the sheer volume pretty much guarantees they'll roll a nat 1 somewhere.

The really big problems are the Greater Dispel and Disjunction rays. Though the first could be a good indication that they need to run and it isn't going to kill anyone on its own.
I'd honestly just refrain from using the latter unless your players have a way to defend against it (wands of Wings of Cover, immediate-action teleports and total cover in range etc.). Maybe the Orb wants loot?

Really, it depends on how well equipped/buffed your players are and how you play the Orb. If you're starting off by hitting everyone with Greater Dispel followed by a mix of Disintegrate, Horrid Wilting and Implosion you'll have dead for sure, but letting the Orb "waste" some attacks by using spells the party is immune to leaves them a decent chance to survive at least 1 round and isn't too unrealistic.

In character, the orb has no way of knowing what buffs they have up or what they're immune to, but only a couple members of the party have death ward or mind blank active.


But if the orb dispels that immunity then it could become an issue? Unless they are non-magically immune to insanity somehow?
The immunity comes from a magic item, so it certainly could be dispelled or disjuncted. However, it doesn't seem to have any way to recognize which item is granting the immunity, so it would be a random shot.


Its senses are also poop for an Epic creature. Hitting its FFAC isn't a problem if they have greater invisibility or HiPS. Fog cloud and blindsight might be enough for ranged. It has no way to deal with any sort of miss chance. No teleportation by default, so a solid fog would make it very sad. Sure, it's a scary thing to stumble into, but there is hope that they might accidentally have the tools to beat it.
Good calls on some tactics they could actually employ.

So, long story short, I think I'll have to treat this one delicately. I have no problem with offing some cohorts or even a PC or two, I just want to leave them the option of escape without a TPK. Thanks again everyone!

[Segev]

I forget if the Orb has suggestion, but if so, using that to implant some false flag operations might not be a bad course, should it be unable to subvert the party as a whole. Make the party or their allies be a little too zany, crazy, or violently zealous in decrying "the atheist organization" (whatever it's called), and maybe get a few bits of propaganda-worthy bad behavior from those opposing this new organization, and the Orb can use that to paint the PCs and god-worshippers in general in a bad light, building sympathy for and interest in her organization.

[Lotheb]

Dominate Monster is great for a lot of things, but creating sleeper agents isnt usually one of them since it's only a DC 15 sense motive check to determine that a victim is under an enchantment effect, which should be an automatic success if anyone has seriously invested in it, and the level 18 druid hopefully has enough wisdom to catch on pretty fast even if they have 0 ranks.

[Particle_Man]

I hope the OP tells us how it all turns out.

If you want to save the party, this might be a time to bring out some Far Realms weird weaknesses, like a party member happens to have some mundane, otherwise unremarkable item that happens to scare the Gibbering Orb away for some unknown reason. You know, like Green Lanterns being useless against the colour yellow or wood or something.

[AnonymousPepper]

Dominate Monster is great for a lot of things, but creating sleeper agents isnt usually one of them since it's only a DC 15 sense motive check to determine that a victim is under an enchantment effect, which should be an automatic success if anyone has seriously invested in it, and the level 18 druid hopefully has enough wisdom to catch on pretty fast even if they have 0 ranks.

By RAW, yes. But, putting on my old GM's hat, though? I would argue that a creature with 40 INT is probably sufficiently intelligent as to be able to exercise its control subtly enough that it would be significantly more difficult than DC15. After all, any idiot wizard can dominate somebody and make them slavishly carry out their will. Hypothetically here, a hyperintelligent supergenius such as a 40 INT (backed up by 24/22 WIS and CHA) Gibbering Orb, on the other hand, could likely phrase its commands such that the target's daily routine and actions are scarcely affected. This both makes sense and makes for a better story. I, personally, as a GM, would peg that DC at 25-30 at the very least. Your average every day Bob, Tom, or Larry should not be able to see through the plans of a BBEG who's been plotting this sort of thing for God only knows how long without an absolute miracle or a mistake on the baddie's part, and it should be nontrivial as a player character as well; otherwise, how did the plan not fall apart as soon as a random shmuck on the street rolled a 15, or an NPC cleric in a decently-sized city got the chance to make *any* roll? Narratively it doesn't make sense.

[noob]

By RAW, yes. But, putting on my old GM's hat, though? I would argue that a creature with 40 INT is probably sufficiently intelligent as to be able to exercise its control subtly enough that it would be significantly more difficult than DC15. After all, any idiot wizard can dominate somebody and make them slavishly carry out their will. Hypothetically here, a hyperintelligent supergenius such as a 40 INT (backed up by 24/22 WIS and CHA) Gibbering Orb, on the other hand, could likely phrase its commands such that the target's daily routine and actions are scarcely affected. This both makes sense and makes for a better story. I, personally, as a GM, would peg that DC at 25-30 at the very least. Your average every day Bob, Tom, or Larry should not be able to see through the plans of a BBEG who's been plotting this sort of thing for God only knows how long without an absolute miracle or a mistake on the baddie's part, and it should be nontrivial as a player character as well; otherwise, how did the plan not fall apart as soon as a random shmuck on the street rolled a 15, or an NPC cleric in a decently-sized city got the chance to make *any* roll? Narratively it doesn't make sense.

There is other ways of mental control that do not have that drawback so you do not need to remove the drawback on a spell that is "I zap you and you obey right now" the effect of dominate is discernible because the spell itself is not subtle(it is basically an in battle spell so this kind of spell is not created with subtlety in mind but for being possible to cast with a single action and at a distance) but a gibbering orb can start mind raping(close to impossible to notice and close to impossible to revert) or hypnotizing(see mind rape but impossible to revert without homebrew) the people in power and dominate(easy to see but if the dominated people are isolated nobody will know) less known people that they hide for having a loyal army they can use if someone finds out the gibbering orb mindraped all the people in power.
Once 100% of the population is mindraped/hypnotized/dominated then there is no need to hide dominated people.
then you mindrape or hypnotize all the dominated people because dominate have a durations in days and so needs periodical upkeep which can be unpleasant if you want to be the ruler of the world.

That way you avoid the whole "my wizard have 70 int so I should be able to do what that gibbering orb did with dominate"
even if we do not push int optimization to the maximum a level 20 wizard can start at 18 then he add 3 through ageing then +2 by race then +5 from the tome of int then +6 by the headband then +5 by stats increments which makes a total of 39 int then adding a bit more should not be that hard.

[Deophaun]

but a gibbering orb can start mind raping(close to impossible to notice and close to impossible to revert)
This requires that it's eaten a level 17+ wizard who happened to have mindrape memorized within the past 24 hours. A gibbering orb who relies on that is going to quickly wind up turned into someone's novelty beach volleyball.

Similar problem with hypnotism. Eating spellcasters in the hopes of enslaving the cleaning staff does not strike me as an efficient use of resources. (And getting 100% of the population enslaved requires that "at-will" applies to the specific stolen spells, not the general ability to cast stolen spells. Otherwise, not going to happen.)

[sleepyphoenixx]

By RAW, yes. But, putting on my old GM's hat, though? I would argue that a creature with 40 INT is probably sufficiently intelligent as to be able to exercise its control subtly enough that it would be significantly more difficult than DC15. After all, any idiot wizard can dominate somebody and make them slavishly carry out their will. Hypothetically here, a hyperintelligent supergenius such as a 40 INT (backed up by 24/22 WIS and CHA) Gibbering Orb, on the other hand, could likely phrase its commands such that the target's daily routine and actions are scarcely affected. This both makes sense and makes for a better story. I, personally, as a GM, would peg that DC at 25-30 at the very least. Your average every day Bob, Tom, or Larry should not be able to see through the plans of a BBEG who's been plotting this sort of thing for God only knows how long without an absolute miracle or a mistake on the baddie's part, and it should be nontrivial as a player character as well; otherwise, how did the plan not fall apart as soon as a random shmuck on the street rolled a 15, or an NPC cleric in a decently-sized city got the chance to make *any* roll? Narratively it doesn't make sense.

40 Int isn't exactly out of reach for PCs. Are you going to allow them the same benefits?
There's also the Puppet Master feat from Dragon Compendium to increase the DC by 5.

[noob]

This requires that it's eaten a level 17+ wizard who happened to have mindrape memorized within the past 24 hours. A gibbering orb who relies on that is going to quickly wind up turned into someone's novelty beach volleyball.

Similar problem with hypnotism. Eating spellcasters in the hopes of enslaving the cleaning staff does not strike me as an efficient use of resources. (And getting 100% of the population enslaved requires that "at-will" applies to the specific stolen spells, not the general ability to cast stolen spells. Otherwise, not going to happen.)

It is based on spells known so if you get a level 1 wizard with mindrape on his spellbook(that he can not cast) then you can mind rape people also you can resurrect the same wizard to eat it every day(totally manageable with the wealth you have in epic).
And for hypnotism there is an item doing that spell at will for really cheap.
I mentioned hypnotism and mind rape for controlling the people in power and it seems you did not read my previous post.(hypnotism works on high level people after you dealt them some negative levels and you can heal them afterwards with an item again)

[Deophaun]

It is based on spells known so if you get a level 1 wizard with mindrape on his spellbook(that he can not cast) then you can mind rape people also you can resurrect the same wizard to eat it every day(totally manageable with the wealth you have in epic).
Questionable readings are questionable.

Also, if the point is to prevent players from abusing the orb's tactics, the orb should not employ alternate, even more abusive tactics. Houseruling dominate literally does less harm than opening the door to Tippyverse.

and it seems you did not read my previous post.
This is ridiculous considering I quoted your only other post here and responded directly to it.

[noob]

This is ridiculous considering I quoted your only other post here and responded directly to it.

Then you should not have spoken of mind raping janitors yourself since mind raping low rank people is delegated to mind raped wizards once you mind raped all the people in power.