New DM asks for help with chain devil boss encounter

[Ekzanimus]

Hello fellow D&D players! Newbie DM is here. I am designing a campaign for my friends and I am having troubles with boss encounter - 4 level 4 characters against chain devil in a room full of chains. I know that chain devil's CR is 8 and this encounter is beyond deadly for my players. But I really want it in this place for campaign logic reasons. How can I make it very hard but fair and beatable for them? I thought about adding 1-2 NPC veterans to help them but I am not certain...

[DeTess]

Okay, so here's the thing. A chain devil in a room full of chains will drop 1-2 level 4 characters every turn after animating those chains. Adding extra helpers might make a difference if they go down first, but even then the encounter is very lethal. However, if you remove the 'room full of chains' aspect, it suddenly looks like something that even a party of level 4 characters should have a chance at winning, providing they all ahve a way to overcome the creature's resistances.

[dreast]

Don’t fuss too much over the deadliness of the CR; it’s more an art than science. Some things to consider, though:

First, can the party leave the room? Can the chain devil? Chain devils lose a lot of action economy away from their “chain” lairs. A party that can retreat from a deadly encounter, especially one that benefits from preparation like any devil fight, is a party that needs significantly less help.

Second, can the party reliably do damage to the devil? It’s immune to firebolt, conjure flames, scorching ray and darkness, resistant to nonmagical, nonsilvered weaponry, and has magic resistance to boot. How many party members still function at 100% against it? If the answer is less than 2, consider having some silvered weapons available.

Is the chain devil fighting alone? Solitary nonlegendary monsters make for a swingy fight when their CR starts hitting deadly levels. This can be swingy in either direction, too, leading to player deaths on the one extreme and unsatisfactory boss fights on the other. Consider making it legendary but nerfing its HP (to compensate for legendary resistance) and attacks (to compensate for legendary actions) to compensate. This will even out the fight (and make it more dramatic) without lowering the CR. If the devil has cannon fodder, it gets significantly more likely to TPK unless the party can bait some out (see point 1).

Hope this helps!

[Ekzanimus]

How many extra chains will be acceptable for devil to have with him? I understand that all four will be too much but for example two useful in the fight chains while two other animated chains are doing something unrelated to fighting for example?
To paint you a gruesome picture of this encounter - imagine this (and I apologize in advance for any mistakes - english is not my native language): characters need to save prisoners from the stronghold. They are looking for them while hearing screams of pain from the heart of the keep. When they find prisoners in cells they are told that some captives were steadily taken away by prison guards and then screams where becoming louder for a time. When characters find the heart of the keep it is a large room full of chains - chains in heaps on the floor, chains in tapestries on walls, chains like a web on the darkened ceiling. When they enter the room door behind their backs is slammed shut and blocked with two crossed chains. Immediately after that from the ceiling plops a body on chains like marionette on strings and welcomes them with a soft voice of a devil who wants to play. Body is hideously mutilated but alive - hooks of chains are in it's flesh and it is moving not by itself but because of chains. After that from the ceiling drops 2-3 another bodies hooked on chains - some of them alive, some of them dead. But moving and attacking characters nonetheless using some weak statblocks like that of zombies. Characters then have a choice of killing marionettes or destroying the chains which are controlling them. After that one of the chain heaps on the floor reveals itself to be a chain devil who attacks the party.
So I am trying to balance it to be beatable without completely revamping all of flavor.

[s0ckd3]

wow , he is :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

[Ekzanimus]

Don’t fuss too much over the deadliness of the CR; it’s more an art than science. Some things to consider, though:

First, can the party leave the room? Can the chain devil? Chain devils lose a lot of action economy away from their “chain” lairs. A party that can retreat from a deadly encounter, especially one that benefits from preparation like any devil fight, is a party that needs significantly less help.

Second, can the party reliably do damage to the devil? It’s immune to firebolt, conjure flames, scorching ray and darkness, resistant to nonmagical, nonsilvered weaponry, and has magic resistance to boot. How many party members still function at 100% against it? If the answer is less than 2, consider having some silvered weapons available.

Is the chain devil fighting alone? Solitary nonlegendary monsters make for a swingy fight when their CR starts hitting deadly levels. This can be swingy in either direction, too, leading to player deaths on the one extreme and unsatisfactory boss fights on the other. Consider making it legendary but nerfing its HP (to compensate for legendary resistance) and attacks (to compensate for legendary actions) to compensate. This will even out the fight (and make it more dramatic) without lowering the CR. If the devil has cannon fodder, it gets significantly more likely to TPK unless the party can bait some out (see point 1).

Hope this helps!

Thank you very much for your advice! Yes, I am planning to give the players opportunities to get at least silvered weapons before this fight. I understand that without a reliable way to deal full damage it will be just a slaughter.

[DeTess]

How many extra chains will be acceptable for devil to have with him? I understand that all four will be too much but for example two useful in the fight chains while two other animated chains are doing something unrelated to fighting for example?


I'd simply do a bit of math. Each chain attack does 11 damage on average with a chance of a 7 damage rider. They have a +8 to hit, so they'll hit more often than not in most cases. If your creature by not rolling horrible could kill a PC in a single round, you're probably already looking at a bit too much (so that's probably no more than 4 chain attacks total, probably only 3).

[Ekzanimus]

I'd simply do a bit of math. Each chain attack does 11 damage on average with a chance of a 7 damage rider. They have a +8 to hit, so they'll hit more often than not in most cases. If your creature by not rolling horrible could kill a PC in a single round, you're probably already looking at a bit too much (so that's probably no more than 4 chain attacks total, probably only 3).
Thank you for an idea! This will be very helpful when I'll have exact stats of my PCs.

[Wildarm]

Hello fellow D&D players! Newbie DM is here. I am designing a campaign for my friends and I am having troubles with boss encounter - 4 level 4 characters against chain devil in a room full of chains. I know that chain devil's CR is 8 and this encounter is beyond deadly for my players. But I really want it in this place for campaign logic reasons. How can I make it very hard but fair and beatable for them? I thought about adding 1-2 NPC veterans to help them but I am not certain...

Do the characters know it will be a devil they are going up against? If so, it's fairly easy to have a sympathetic NPC give them a couple consumable tokens that grant Protection from Good and Evil for 10 minutes. Having some of the PCs being buffed by that would make the fight doable but still dangerous, especially for those without the tokens.

[Ekzanimus]

Do the characters know it will be a devil they are going up against? If so, it's fairly easy to have a sympathetic NPC give them a couple consumable tokens that grant Protection from Good and Evil for 10 minutes. Having some of the PCs being buffed by that would make the fight doable but still dangerous, especially for those without the tokens.
At first I didn't think about giving them information about the creature in the room. But now I think that they'll have some information - not exactly who is it but at least that it is probably devil. And I really like your suggestion about giving one or two of them Protection from Evil and Good in some form of a consumable!

[dragoeniex]

As an aside, your English is wonderful, and I haven't noticed anything obviously off with word selection. Very fitting descriptors and such. Kudos!

Also, if you want to scale it down, you could reduce its to-hit by a couple points and reduce the number of free-fighting chains to one or two so damage isn't coming from so many places. Flavor more emphasis on the big, heavy chains being swung by the devil and how much excitement it's attacking with. The attacks hurt! But in the devil's enthusiasm, it's also getting its chains caught on or tangled up in something when it misses.

How much threat reduction you need, I think, is going to depend on how much the party has already been through.