Forkrul Assail (CR25+) needed for Malazan themed campaign

[Decstarr]

Hi guys,

my 2+ year weekly campaign in a heavily Malazan inspired world nears its final and hopefully epic conclusion. While I have been able to adapt most of the big Malazan NPCs to 5e without too much difficulty, the Assail are posing a significant problem for me now.

One of their main concerns is that the Assail manage to come back from their banishment and they need to prevent this at all cost. Therefore, I need to stats 1 Forkrul Assail to make it pose a threat for a 6 LVL 20 player - super ridiculously stacked since it is Malazan after all - group. They recently destroyed the CR 30 Tiamat Avatar with quite some difficulties since the strafe and fly turned out to be a big problem for them.

So, I am trying to create a CR30 Assail based on what the Assail can do in Malazan. But I am lacking ideas in the form of "cool & dangerous moves".

Basics: Spells lower than 7th level won't have any effect. Immunity to all damage from non-magical weapons (party is stacked with magical items) and resistance to everything psychic related. Immunity to most status effects like stunned etc. Your "standard" CR30 array.

It will have the "Voice of command" like they have in the books. Will be a DC 20something (based on the Assail's stats) Charisma saving throw against utterly following every command of the Assail. I intend this as a save-or-die mechanic, as it is basically 50% of the Assail's power to be able to control pretty much anybody. Since they have a Bard and a Sorc with 24 CHA each, at least one of those two should be able to make the save and find a way to release the rest of the group afterwards.

Assail are super fast, super strong and virtually impossible to kill. This means high stats all along. I am thinking about using some Monk stuff to have the Assail attack really fast several times in a row. It needs a very high move-speed as no matter how beefy I make the enemy, if they ever manage to lock it down, they will easily annihilate it.

Can you provide me with additional ideas for moves it could have? I am torturing my brain to come up with stuff based upon their "arbiters of judgement" Alien fascist style, but I just can't come up with anything. You can go crazy here, there are 2 Soletaken within the party and one of them is basically Icarium, so I am not very afraid of actually killing them.

Additionally, I need some mooks for them to fight before they reach the Assail. Who would be your typical mind-controlled, obnoxious to fight against mook? I WILL USE some very weak poor villagefolk that will engage my heroes, using their own blood and flesh to protect their master and I am hoping for some cool interaction here (likely they'll just put them to sleep, though). But I'd like to throw some half-way dangerous encounters at them to build up the Assail.

Thank you very much for your help!

[Quoz]

Not much help for you on the BBEG end, I don't have much experience with that level of play. But for the mooks/opener fight, if you want it to be a mild drain of resources and show what they are up against:

30 commoners. With wands of magic missile and longbows with magic arrows. Spread over several acres in hunting blinds and other ambush sites. (If you have one NPC in the group high enough level to cast Pass Without Trace on the group and use hit and run/hide it may cost them a decent amount of resources to overcome). Maybe some mounted on horses and ponys with large saddle packs full of alchemist fire as suicide bombers. If there are any appropriate NPCs, especially ones they saved/rescued or reformed villains, have them as the captain or leader. The point isn't to kill the PCs, it's to slow them down and get in their heads, make them angry and off balance.

[GlenSmash!]

I'm interested to see what you come up with, as long as Hood can still bite its face off.

[trollballz]

This is awesome. Its been a decade since I read the series but I'll see what I can do.

So the Forkrul Assail are devastating in their simplicity. They are nearly unkillable, have supernatural speed and strength, and can get trapped under a boulder for a hundred years then stand up and dust it off like nothing happened. Let them pummel it for rounds and have it still be alive. If they burn through all its legendary resistances and things are looking grim it should be able to outrun them.

They are nasty bruisers before even including their voice. I think your standard CR30 array is a good start. I would add on some of these:

Movement: a hell of a lot

HP: 500-600

Resistance: Bludgeoning Slashing and Piercing damage (regardless of magic or not)

Immunities: Psychic damage

Condition Immunities: Immune to Fear, Frightened, Charmed, Grappled

Mobile: When you make a melee attack against a creature, you don't provoke opportunity attacks from that creature for the rest of the turn, whether you hit or not.

Legendary Resistance: 5/day

Regeneration: 10 hp/round

Actions: The FA gets 4 attacks per round in addition to one use of Voice.

Attack: +18 for 4d8+12 damage

Gouge: When the FA hits the same target with 3 or more attacks in a turn it can gouge the target for additional damage. The target must make a DC22 con save or be permanently blinded and take an additional 4d8+12 damage. This can be restored with a Regeneration, Heal, Greater Restoration, Wish, or similar spell.

Voice: Basically Dominate Monster, recovers on a 5+ on a d6

Tack on some additional legendary actions and I think you are all set. The legendary actions are probably additional movement that doesnt provoke or attacks.

The FA are difficult to kill off, make it so they are a hitpoint sponge and resistant to the regular damage types to boot. Let it drop save or dies on them, and use hit and run tactics to either strike at the softer caster targets or escape.

[trollballz]

Also, If you are only planning on having them fight 1 FA, I would have it be after a string of other fights for sure. Let them blow resources with 3+ other fights before running into him.

[JNAProductions]

Why Grappling immunity?

[trollballz]

Well, I remember they have extra joints and move in strange ways that are basically impossible for anyone else. Arm bars dont work when their limbs bend in every direction.

At least that was the logic. Again, havent read the series in a decade.

[JNAProductions]

Well, I remember they have extra joints and move in strange ways that are basically impossible for anyone else. Arm bars dont work when their limbs bend in every direction.

At least that was the logic.

Perhaps give them advantage on checks made to escape grapples? But at the same time, a 20 Strength Barbarian/Rogue who has advantage on Athletics and a +17 should be able to grapple something, even if it's weird.

[Decstarr]

Thanks for the input so far!

The plan is to have their target area be inaccessible via magic means/ordinary travel. Secluded valley, Assail using her god‘s power to block off all magic travel. So they‘ll have to go through a network of very narrow tunnels (this is rock gnome territory). I want to have them suffer a bit from temperature and very slow progress as half of their party is normal sized and bulky while the other half is a halfling, drow and rock gnome. They’ll be squeazibg through the tunnels and I’ll introduce some little rumbling that eventually will become louder. They’ll encounter a purple worm who’s very likely gonna swallow one of them and be a pain in the butt for them.
Once they overcome this they’ll eventually end up in The Valley and will have to overcome a rather high number of „relatively“ harmless people controlled by the assail. There‘s prolly 1-2 strong NPCs within that group, just to make it a bit interesting. So they should’ve drained „some“ of their resources for sure by the time they reach Serenity (Can’t resist on this naming).

Gouging sounds like an awesome idea. We’ve been using the permanent injury table anyways - which has become rather obsolete since they’re such high level now - and I will use that to determine which kind of injury Serenity will inflict.

Since her voice is so powerful, maybe some
Legendary action that is centered around noise? A booming sound which knocks you off your feet, inflicting damage because the pressure almost makes your lungs burst or something like that. Maybe it’s so distracting that for the next round, all attacks will have disadvantage.

She prolly shouldn’t be immune to being grappled, but just have a very high chance of not being grappled/breaking free quickly. Or, since she is a super strong brawler, maybe she deals increased damage/inflicts stronger wounds while she is being grappled. I mean, even if you could grapple that grizzly and maybe even hold on to it for a bit, it wouldn’t be the best idea...

I’ve left Hood out so far as I didn’t want to have the party run to him every single time someone died, negotiating. So I won’t have him bite faces off, unfortunately. But damn, thanks for giving me that memory back and the idea. Now I really want to do it...

[Decstarr]

Here is my draft for the moment. Appreciate any input :)

https://imgur.com/a/xWr3C42

https://imgur.com/a/xWr3C42

[trollballz]

I think that looks pretty good but theres a few things i would consider changing.

Voice of Command: This scares me a little because bad saves could end the fight fast, but this is CR30 though so it might be alright. Maybe give a chance to remove it with greater restoration or remove curse, etc.

Near Immortality: How do you kill her then?

Sonic Irritation: Ooph, I think it should cost more legendary actions, maybe 2? Exhaustion is really hard to remove, and after someone gets 3 levels of it they get disadvantage on their future saves for it. There would be no reason not to use this 5 times a round. After 2 rounds and 10 uses of this anyone without con save proficiency is dead. Alternatively let her have this as a bonus action to limit the frequency of it (pun intended). Dunno, CR30 is crazy but this seems like it would kill too quickly.

[MaxWilson]

Hahahaha! I don't feel like I ever understood the Forkrul Assail well enough to suggest any moves--Erikson rarely explains what anything is actually capable of--but I do know them well enough (from House of Chains mostly) to be scared silly of them. I pity your players. :-P Good luck and good hunting!

[Decstarr]

I think that looks pretty good but theres a few things i would consider changing.

Voice of Command: This scares me a little because bad saves could end the fight fast, but this is CR30 though so it might be alright. Maybe give a chance to remove it with greater restoration or remove curse, etc.

Near Immortality: How do you kill her then?

Sonic Irritation: Ooph, I think it should cost more legendary actions, maybe 2? Exhaustion is really hard to remove, and after someone gets 3 levels of it they get disadvantage on their future saves for it. There would be no reason not to use this 5 times a round. After 2 rounds and 10 uses of this anyone without con save proficiency is dead. Alternatively let her have this as a bonus action to limit the frequency of it (pun intended). Dunno, CR30 is crazy but this seems like it would kill too quickly.

Thanks for the input. I am indeed considering to up the cost for Sonic Irritation to 2 or 3 Actions. The whole point here is, Assail are super arrogant as they are fully aware of their strength. An Assail would use its voice to dominate any opponents and if that doesn't work for whatever reason, would likely toy a bit with them before finally finishing them off. So it probably would use Sonic Irritation once or twice relatively early to wear down the enemy and then have fun with them by hit&running them to oblivion. Addtionally, the assumption is that of the 6 PCs, at least 2 or 3 will be mind controlled, so the Assail will likely be spending his first legendary actions on issuing commands to those characters and therefore not use the Irritation too early in the battle.

My whole point when creating this was to try to have it be very different from the classic super high CR enemies who most often have devastating AOE abilities. Sure, voice of Command is potentially a TPK ability but no group - and especially not mine - would engage such an enemy without proper research. So they'll be prepared for ridiculously high CHA saves. They have a Sorc, Bard and Warlock in the group, each with 24 CHA. The entire party is lvl 21, super stacked with items and 2 of them turn into Ancient Dragons if they drop to 0 HP. So the chance of them dying is relatively low. I wanted to create a fight that is long and obnoxious, against an enemy that is pretty threatening but without the potential of annihilating the group within 1 or 2 turns (like TIAMAT almost did to them).

I kept Voice of Command "open" on purpose in case anyone else feels like using this at some point. I am 100% sure my players will find a creative way of dealing with the commanded creatures and getting rid of the mind control in some weird way that I can't even think of. They usually do. And yes, it is super dangerous but we are talking about a creature here that most Ascendants wouldn't willingly cross and that tortures its own god to gain powers. So it should be threatening.