Aboleth Savant Lair

[Madara]

So my party is getting to the high powered part of 3.5 where everything breaks down (just hit level 10) and they're going to probably be confronting the evil Aboleth who has mind controlled the entire city above him.

So- what sort of dungeon features would an Aboleth lair contain? I found surprisingly little discussion about using them online (although, that is likely because the 5e threads pop to the front of google these days)

I've read over Lords of Madness and really like the lore, but in terms of gameplay...

The Aboleth has Arcane casting as a lv 15 wizard.

[liquidformat]

Water! Lots of Water! Even water that isn't actually water! No seriously make it a completely underwater dungeon maybe go through stormwrack for hazzard ideas?

[tstewt1921]

Water! Lots of Water! Even water that isn't actually water! No seriously make it a completely underwater dungeon maybe go through stormwrack for hazzard ideas?

This, lots of this, some krakens, some illusionary krakens, krakens that cast illusions, hell even put them on a ship in open waters as an illusion at one point.

[tstewt1921]

Also I'm totally copying this idea for my game!

[liquidformat]

This, lots of this, some krakens, some illusionary krakens, krakens that cast illusions, hell even put them on a ship in open waters as an illusion at one point.

You mean krakens casting illusions of krakens that cast illusions of krakens on ships?

[tstewt1921]

You mean krakens casting illusions of krakens that cast illusions of krakens on ships?

Exactly! Several layers of illusions!

[ahanna12345]

So with Aboleths there are 4 main things

1. They breath water use water, no air
mayby few small air pockets for some exotic slaves but the rest is no air. Use dispel magic it ruin their waterbreathing spells and true seeing because..

2. They love illusions. Really they do you can do illusions of krakens making illusions of krakens or.. even better have the aboleth cast an illusion on a kraken making it look like the aboleth casting an illusion of aboleth on a kraken. fake walls fake monsters real fake doors. have your escape exit be covered in illusions but haveyour real escape exit be a lightless hole in the bottom of the floor with a greater dispel magic trap on anyonewho is not the aboleth passing through. add a few grapplers in there and he can almost always escape.

2. They like pets/slaves
They are collectors not just scum have some aquatic assassin vines, some drowned, giant crabs. Things with dispel magic again. combined with grapplers. they really are good at drowning players.

3. they are old old old and paranoid. They are basically the Kwisatz Haderach from Dune. They have the genetic memory of all of their ancestors. They have seen it all before so they have meta gamed everything. scry the heck out of the players choose the spells to counter their spell lists. Also
NEVER FIGHT TO THE DEATH. These people ARE the long game, if there is even a chance of death run. they can always come back and start again. In their memories they have fled again and again and seen their brothers and sisters who stayed and fought die again and again. You can always wreak your revenge later. Have escape routes to escape routes.
Have a command word trap of wall of iron so when he swims away a wall of iron seals the room behind him.

[danielxcutter]

Incidentally, do you have the stats for this Savant Aboleth? What sources do you have access to? There are certain spells that an Aboleth would benefit from more than "normal" Wizards such as Extend Tentacles(I think that was what it was called? It's from the SpC) and other spells that would work well with an Aboleth's MO, such as (Greater) Anticipate Teleportation.

[Tvtyrant]

Illusory Wall is permanent, and Aboleth's have perfect recall. This means they can cover every opening with fake walls, create mazes and hide traps without falling in themselves. To keep enemies from using true seeing or the like they can use Invisible Spell with Explosive Runes, hiding bombs inside the walls that will kill the party if they try to force through them.

Along with ER, invisible glyphs set off traps along the way. What seems to be a large cavern system is actually mostly a lake with fake walls and a number of invisible walls of stone and iron for structure.

The

The Aboleth has "safe" hallways for its minions to go down. These all converge on a sub boss room, which is something suitably nasty and grapple based like a Kraken.

Dispel glyphs try to remove the parties breathing periodically as they pass through the complex.

The Aboleth uses its projection to attack the party when they confront minions or the sub-boss, but it avoids personal conflict. It has a planeshift contingency if it gets caught in the surprise round, and flees if ever brought to a fight.

[liquidformat]

Illusory Wall is permanent, and Aboleth's have perfect recall. This means they can cover every opening with fake walls, create mazes and hide traps without falling in themselves. To keep enemies from using true seeing or the like they can use Invisible Spell with Explosive Runes, hiding bombs inside the walls that will kill the party if they try to force through them.

Along with ER, invisible glyphs set off traps along the way. What seems to be a large cavern system is actually mostly a lake with fake walls and a number of invisible walls of stone and iron for structure.

The

The Aboleth has "safe" hallways for its minions to go down. These all converge on a sub boss room, which is something suitably nasty and grapple based like a Kraken.

Dispel glyphs try to remove the parties breathing periodically as they pass through the complex.

The Aboleth uses its projection to attack the party when they confront minions or the sub-boss, but it avoids personal conflict. It has a planeshift contingency if it gets caught in the surprise round, and flees if ever brought to a fight.

This whole group of tactics really only works if we are talking about the CR 17 Aboleth Mage, or at the very least is very level and build dependent...

[Tvtyrant]

This whole group of tactics really only works if we are talking about the CR 17 Aboleth Mage, or at the very least is very level and build dependent...
Depends on if you treat casting classes as associated or not. If not a level 8 Sorcerer or wizard Aboleth is only CR 11. Then +1 CR per level above that. So CR12 for all of those abilities.

[danielxcutter]

Depends on if you treat casting classes as associated or not. If not a level 8 Sorcerer or wizard Aboleth is only CR 11. Then +1 CR per level above that. So CR12 for all of those abilities.

The OP said the Aboleth had 15th-level Wizard casting, so... probably, yeah.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Ah, aboleth savants. My party still has nightmares from the last one I used. :smallcool:

A few tricks I've used to good effect:

1a) The bridge of sound spell lets creatures walk on it normally, but doesn't block line of effect for spells. An aboleth could create a whole fake cave complex, where what enemies think is the ground is in fact a permanent image'd layer of permanent bridges of sound (either by allowing permanency to work on it, or using Aboleth Glyphs to re-cast each one every minute) connecting levitating islands/natural bridges/etc. of solid ground over a body of water where the aboleth lives. While the party is wandering around an apparently-empty cave with no apparent exits wondering what in Baator is going on, the aboleth can swim around below them hitting them with all manner of spells completely unimpeded.

1b) Make a fake cave complex as above, but have the bottom water-filled layer also be a fake complex as a middle layer, with the aboleth on the actual bottom layer one level below that, then use project image to have the aboleth appear to be in the middle layer. You can actually nest this tactic as many times as your players will put up with, since the LoE on project image extends through any number of bridge of sound layers.

2a) Making illusions of incorporeal creatures is quite effective, since they're already intangible and having attacks "miss" frequently due to incorporeality is expected. Fill a bunch of normal/greater/elder glyphs of warding with summon monster spells for eladrin, summon undead spells for incorporeal undead, and so on, and/or have a dominated caster summon them...and then make an illusion of a dominated caster and a bunch of "summoned" illusions of creatures of the same kind to intermingle with the real ones.

2b) Illusions of intangible spell effects work well too. Hit the party with some real walls of evil, Otiluke's refusals, and other spells that the aboleth's minions would reasonably be able to pass through but the PCs would not, so they know the aboleth is capable of using those spells, then scatter some real and some illusory ones around; that makes monsters walking through walls more believable later on, and makes PCs less willing to just dive through apparently-illusory walls in case it's an illusory wall over a harmful spell effect.

3) Invisible Spell and invisibility in general are your friends. Illusory walls plus invisible walls of stone plus real walls of stone with llusory walls superimposed over them make for a very tricky maze. Invisible blacklight (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/spells/blacklight.htm) has no visible effect but blinds anyone trying to use see invisibility or true seeing, while allowing the aboleth to see through it just fine if the party tries to go invisible themselves. If you rule that Invisible Spell makes summons invisible as well, mixing those in with real visible summons and illusory visible summons is great (and if not, Imbued Summoning [invisibility] will accomplish the same thing).

[sleepyphoenixx]

If you want to be really nasty give your Aboleth the Shadow Weave Magic and Insidious Magic feats so they have to succeed CL checks for things like Detect Magic, True Seeing and See Invisibility to work.

Cast Symbol of X spells on the walls and put illusory walls in front of them to get anyone who does succed on their CL check.

Put the entire lair under Forbiddance or Halaster's Teleport Cage (or a mix of both if you want to be really mean).
If you do use Teleport Cage a few teleport traps can be used to divide and scatter the party if they won't do it by themselves.

[Tvtyrant]

Oh and hostages. It has a whole mind controlled city to threaten; I would expect children flinging pots of alchemist's acid and nets at the party and Saw style traps full of civilians along the way. When they work their way close to the bottom I would have it tell them that it set the city on fire as a distraction.

Aboleth's are immortal, ancient and terrible. If civilians aren't drinking Aboleth Mucus in front of the party while some are illusions and others rigged with traps then you aren't playing them to their full potential.

[danielxcutter]

Oh, I'm guessing the Aboleth has levels in the Savant Aboleth prestige class? That's pretty useful - it means it can literally cover the entire lair with a bunch of glyphs of various strength. Not to mention that a prereq for the PrC is Craft Aboleth Glyph, so you can also make use of the nasty ones listed in the book.