PEACH My BBEG?

[Koury]

I spent the last couple hours throwing together the stats for the BBEG fight that is coming to my players. I like when my bad guys play by the same rules as my PCs, so I care about the NPC being rules legal, but I'm also not terribly familiar with Necromancy and Animate Dead and was hoping someone could go over the sheet I threw together.

I don't need anyone to break out the fine-toothed combs, but a quick numbers check or pointer or two would be very welcome. Especially regarding the undead listed at the bottom of the sheet in "Conditions and Effects/Additional Info," which are the ones she raised herself. I don't need optimization advice much (I do ultimately want the character defeatable), but any illegal or straight up terrible build choices I wouldn't mind pointed out as well.

Anyway, if you wanna give the sheet a once over, it's here (https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=2205127).

[Kelb_Panthera]

Unless your players are well experienced power gamers, that should be just fine for a level 21 encounter as a single CR 21 creature.

I'm a little concerned that those DCs are as high as they are. If he whacks the party's good saves, they've got a shot but poor saves are getting shredded.

If they're gonna have to deal with the two giant skellies at the same time too, that's gonna be a -rough- fight for any non-epic party. Which, I guess, "campaign climax" so it -should- be a hard fight but I'm pretty sure they're supposed to win, right?

[Esprit15]

Slight detail error: Undead use their CHA for Concentration checks.

And yeah, those save DCs seem a tad high. How do they compare to the saves of your party?

[Koury]

TL;DR Yeah, the Save DCs is a good call out. I feel it will be mitigated a bit but that’s exactly the feedback I appreciate.

I expect them to be immune to a large amount of her spells (Immune to Death/Negative Energy stuff, Freedom of Movement, some PCs with Mind Blank, etc) but I’ll definitely go over the list and make sure nothing is too crazy.

She will be in the deepest room of a mountain cavern performing Bad Person Magic, so the first few fights will be against her little army. The Cloud Giant and Ettin skeletons guarding the entrance chamber with about a third of the ravens. The ravens will be suicide bombing the players, exploding for 1d6 negative energy each. If they find a player without negative energy protection the will swarm hard, but that’s not likely. Should be a relatively straight fight here with a chance to heal (but not rest) afterward.

The path to the second fight has the incorporeal guys using some hit and run tactics to drain stats. They’ve encountered this before and have a Rod of Bodily Restoration, plus a cleric who can usually deal with this. I don’t expect many stat drains past a surprise round ambush, but this will keep them on their toes I hope.

Third fight is the dragon skeleton guards protecting the ritual chamber, along with another third of the ravens still suicide bombing. They will want to avoid being in a position to take full attacks from the dragons, but in the end they’re just big beatsticks. The fire immune here should annoy them (they use fire much too often, gotta diversify your elements), but no one will be completely neutered by that.

After the fight they will again have a short chance to heal and lay on some starting buffs before kicking in the door to the Necro. I want some cool battlefield elements to deal with here (nothing crazy, maybe like 6 pillars that are glowing with power from the ritual and one explodes per round in half Negative energy and half force or Bludgeon damage, going clockwise). They will be familiar with some of her tactics from an earlier encounter, but the new tricks like Avasculate might shake them, and they will hate her Daze attack. Ultimately though, I think action economy will give the players a nice edge, as she doesn’t have much in the way of answers to that. Her summons are weak at this point, so it’ll mostly be just her trying to murder the party. Her last third of ravens are here but I think they’ll be inconsequential really. She will still use the summons to screen for her, but she kinda sucks at killing without negative energy attacks. I actually worry she’s slightly too easy but if she lands Waves of Exhaustion and Avasculate I bet the party will feel really threatened still.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Just going to leave this here. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?408757-Could-use-some-advice-on-how-to-challenge-a-high-powered-stealth-group#15)

Its hp is a bit too low IMO, it could end up being a very quick and disappointing fight. At the very least anyone creating Necropolitans would do so in the area of a Desecrate spell with an evil altar, giving this character +2 hp/level. Fell Energy Spell in Dragon Compendium increases the +1 that grants to +3, which the evil altar doubles to +6 hp/level. Then there's the question of whether a Necropolitan can benefit from their creator having the Corpsecrafter line of feats, DN 8, Necromancer 1 with Enhanced Undead (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/specialistWizardVariants.htm#necromancerVariants), etc.

The DN can cast Desecrate via Arcane Disciple for the Evil domain, or use a lesser or greater Ring of Desecration (https://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021031x). So its minions should have the benefit from that as well.

[Koury]

I intentionally didn’t give her access to Desecrate for her minions (she isn’t exactly a paragon of wisdom and intellect), but agree she was probably necropolis-ized in a Desecrated area.

That being said, her defense isn’t exactly lacking. She’s got DR 4/-, permanent 20% miss chances via Blurring armor (I don’t think the party will get a True Sight item, but they may surprise me), Resist Acid & Electric 15, about 30 undead ravens that she will end up having suicide bomb heal her (they explode Negative Energy on death), False Life, a ton of negative energy she can use herself, etc.

The party doesn’t have an Ubercharger or Mailman either. They’re a Beguiler (most her offense is Shadow Conj/Evo), Factotum/Warblade (Iaijustus for a few handfuls of d6), Crusader/RKV (can hit hard but leans more lockdown) and Swordsage/Mo9 (who leans heavy on Desert Wind/Shadow Hand). I’m not convinced they could one-round the boss at all.

That goes both ways though, I don’t think the boss can one shot any of them either, assuming they’re Death Effect immune.

It is a good call out though. I’ll keep tabs on how their offensive capabilities change as they near the fight. If I think it’s needed I’ll give her max HP per HD (so 280 once I account for Desecrate).

[Kelb_Panthera]

Unless that RKV only has the one level in cleric, he can nuke those ravens in droves as long as he remembers that he can use a turn attempt to, ya know, turn undead. Actually might be able to do it anyway if the ravens are half a HD or less. Just *presents holy symbol* and poof! a dozen ravens worth of dust raining on the battlefield.

I'd keep a close eye on that factotum/warblade too. Factotum 8's cunning surge letting you spam maneuvers can get impressively powerful quite quickly.

[Koury]

The RKV is planning only one cleric level, but also has rebuke instead of turn. If she takes command of the ravens, then thats fine, honestly. Between them persisting two spells and the first three fights, I kinda expect her to have run out by the big fight but if she hasn't and succeeds on a turn check to pop the birds, then thats just good for them.

The factotum/warblade is running a build I wrote (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?326446-Martial-Factotum-(WIP-PEACH)) forever ago (as a base, at least. Hes made a fair amount of tweaks/race changes/different item choices) so I know I'll have to watch him. If I really wanna mess up his groove I'll find a way to give her some sort of Flatfooted resistance (Foresight, somehow?), that'll put a cramp in his Iaijutsu attacks.

My goal isn't to neuter the party, however, so I'd be more likely to max her HP than prevent her ever being flatfooted.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Iaijutsu is cute but unless he's using quick-razors it's probably not the thing to worry about. I'd be more worried about ancient mountain hammer, swooping dragon strike, finishing move, etc coming back to back to back to back if he gets in range and has the chance to nova.

He probably won't be able to do it more than once, what with having to refresh maneuvers and burning through his inspiration in a hurry, but cutting the BBEG's hp in half (even if you max it) in a single round is rough for the encounter.


I'm not saying you -should- do anything. The encounter as you've described it sounds like it could go either way and that's what I like to see as a player/DM focused on the game aspect of D&D. I was just pointing out that at average HP there's a chance, albeit not a great one, that it could end rather anticlimactically just as soon as the warblade gets his shot. You know your players and their characters far better than I do.