My Players Have Raised R'lyeh And Must Defend It

[Lvl45DM!]

It all started so simply. To give the main DM a break, and let the players cut loose a little, I would run an evil campaign alongside the main one. It was going to be full of shenanigans, and the climax would be wiping out a city.
:smallsigh:
Then they screwed around a little with the fundamental forces, released the Old Ones and the Outer Gods into their world. For a short time, they went around fighting the Mythos, which is great. Evil characters fighting a worse evil! Fun!

They found the Necronomicon and studied it. They made their saves, were very careful, and found out a way to destroy it...Instead they mind controlled a random peasant into reading it. The peasant went mad, but gained great power. 'What a great villain' I thought.
But...then it happened.
They switched sides.
They saw that power and wanted it for themselves. They gave up on their previous goals, flipped off the entire world and decided to bring about the Rise of Cthulhu.

Honestly, it was kind of gradual at first, but then they dived head first into cartoonish supervillainy.

They turned the eternal maelstrom into Shub-Nigguraths pool, turning the Sea of the Winds into the Sea of Monsters.
They got dragon eggs and turned them insane and abberant, unleashing them.
They performed a ritual that turned all the water in a country to blood, and turned about 1/2 the population into wendigos.
They spread a cursed disease that turns its victims into wights and wraiths.
They conquered a Bastion of Unborn Souls and corrupted dozens of souls for the future
And tonight they completed their final task. They cut off the fire plane from the world. They killed fire.

Im so horrified and proud at the same time.

So anyway they are all 20th level now, time for a finale! They did enough stuff that the stars are now right and R'lyeh has risen.
Every NPC they ever pissed off, including a couple of former party members, is coming to R'lyeh to drive Cthulhu back under the sea.

So my party has to defend R'lyeh.

Their current opponents are
Lvl 18 Malconvoker
Lvl 5 Cleric/5 Keeper of the Cerulean Sign/10 Thaumaturge
Lvl 6 Psion/10 Thrallherd
Lvl 10 barbarian/10 Frenzied Berserker
A lvl 5 Ranger/2 Rogue/10 Assassin thats being possessed by a Formian Myrmarch
Lvl 16 Sorcerer Sentient Dagger that possesses people
A Storm Giant Cleric 3/Stormlord lvl 7
A jaguar warrior that I havent statted up yet, but need to be there cos someone rolled a 1 in the Bastion of unborn souls
And an Ancient Silver Dragon


The party is
A 1/2 Dragon 1/2 giant Frenzied berserker/soul eater
A 1/2 Farspawn Tiefling Ur Priest/Psion Theurge
A Psion in the body of a Coutal
A Grey Guard Cleric (hes gonna betray the party)
A Warmage
And a Binder
A Shifter Scout/Barbarian
All lvl 20

SO my question is...
HOW DO I DO THIS?!?!?

Theres 2 enemies that can basically summon armies, 1 enemy that just HAS an army 2 big hitters and 2 sneaker guys. Its just...so much. And it has to have the ticking clock of Big C coming out of his tomb, (so they can't just run and come back later) and some weird R'lyeh shenanigans that give them a homefield advantage would be nice.

Im currently thinking about like, breaking it up into each PC getting their own section of the city to shape to their will, and they will each fight off one of the enemies and then everyone left can team up on the dragon. Letting the other players control the enemies.

This is the finale. I'm going to be trying to kill them, but mostly through damage rather than failed saving throws. I want them to feel badass and have a decent chance to win, but basically unless they are lucky or very clever, they should end up losing.

I'm a little worried about breaking them up, because they do well together but at the same time I cannot fathom how to do it all at once.

Thoughts?

[pabelfly]

I ran a large(ish)-scale battle once - four players against approximately sixty enemies. To speed up play to something not completely unbearable, put groups of enemies together on your map, and give each member of that group the same initiative, so you don't have to spend nearly so much time referring to your notes and trying to remember which character went next. Let the mooks do simple charge-and-attack tactics to speed up play and save your complex strategies and casting and such for the relevant minibosses and bosses, rather than their underlings.

Oh, and if you have martial characters without area of effect abilities like a caster, think about giving them an extra turn in combat each round. Lets them contribute more.

[thorr-kan]

You've got a 20th level warmage, a 20th level psi with a draconic body, and 20th level cleric-y type running defense against two summoners and a minionmancer running offense.

Your attackers are under a time limit.

Your melees seem to be a match, and your casters are higher level than theirs. And they don't need to win; they need to run the clock down. Assuming the attackers don't have much time to assemble and optimize a Phenomenal Cosmic Army! (tm pending), I think your defense actually has the chops to pull this off.

ETA: Homefield advantage could be provide by R'yleh's SAN warping characteristics. Put Taint rules into play for the attackers. Too much, and them become omnicidal maniacs: everybody's a target.

[Lvl45DM!]

I ran a large(ish)-scale battle once - four players against approximately sixty enemies. To speed up play to something not completely unbearable, put groups of enemies together on your map, and give each member of that group the same initiative, so you don't have to spend nearly so much time referring to your notes and trying to remember which character went next. Let the mooks do simple charge-and-attack tactics to speed up play and save your complex strategies and casting and such for the relevant minibosses and bosses, rather than their underlings.

Oh, and if you have martial characters without area of effect abilities like a caster, think about giving them an extra turn in combat each round. Lets them contribute more.

But alot of the mooks aren't melee types. The Thrallherd has many low-level psions and wilders, and both summoners get monsters with SLAs. Grouping initiative is a good idea.


You've got a 20th level warmage, a 20th level psi with a draconic body, and 20th level cleric-y type running defense against two summoners and a minionmancer running offense.

Your attackers are under a time limit.

Your melees seem to be a match, and your casters are higher level than theirs. And they don't need to win; they need to run the clock down. Assuming the attackers don't have much time to assemble and optimize a Phenomenal Cosmic Army! (tm pending), I think your defense actually has the chops to pull this off.

ETA: Homefield advantage could be provide by R'yleh's SAN warping characteristics. Put Taint rules into play for the attackers. Too much, and them become omnicidal maniacs: everybody's a target.

Taint is a great idea.

I was unclear in my first post. The ticking clock cuts both ways. If big C rises then the players dont get dominion over the world like they want. But of course the NPCs don't want big C to rise either.

[pabelfly]

But alot of the mooks aren't melee types. The Thrallherd has many low-level psions and wilders, and both summoners get monsters with SLAs. Grouping initiative is a good idea.

You can make sure that the mooks have a short list of simple psionic abilities that they'll use instead. They're not as important as major foes, so I would suggest giving them simple and quick strategies and manifesting abilities that play into those strategies.

[thorr-kan]

I was unclear in my first post. The ticking clock cuts both ways. If big C rises then the players dont get dominion over the world like they want. But of course the NPCs don't want big C to rise either.
New plan, R2. Let the wookie win.

In this case...defenders hide. Let the heroes put down Cthulhu. Then rise up to put down the heroes. Or rise up to help the heroes iffen *they* can't put down Cthulhu.

Then off course, the heroes can curse your sudden, but inevitable, betrayal...

[Lvl45DM!]

New plan, R2. Let the wookie win.

In this case...defenders hide. Let the heroes put down Cthulhu. Then rise up to put down the heroes. Or rise up to help the heroes iffen *they* can't put down Cthulhu.

Then off course, the heroes can curse your sudden, but inevitable, betrayal...

Definitely not. They are too far gone to be anything but his slavish servants. They are too corrupted to battle him. They will hear his song and become his slaves.

But cheers for the two great sci-fi references!