"The lich queen's beloved" - what's wrong!?

[Kaleph]

Hi everyone, I look from time to time into published adventures and modules, in the hope of finding a nice one to develope an entire homebrew campaign around; this is at the moment more of a theoretical exercise, since the time isn't enough, but anyhow.

I guessed that "the lich queen's belowed" had everything - NPC, lore, setting, epic perspective - I was looking for; it was supposed to be the apex for a special release of dungeon magazine (Du100), and a highlight for the (at the time) newly born 3.5 revision. The hype was quickly washed away, tho, as soon as I've read the beginning of the adventure itself. The reason?
Amongst other things, although the module is designed for 18th-level characters, in the (potentially) first encounter they are ambushed by a CR28 lich, supported by 2 CR16 dragons and some fighters, in a room where illusions hide deadly traps, with the advantage of surprise and all the time they need to buff them in advance. The encounter's difficulty makes no sense, and even if the PC would succeed somehow, they wouldn't RAW receive any xp (philactery apart).

After reading this encounter I've lost interest, but I'm still curious...has anyone tried it? Is there a way how it can become playable? Or am I simply missing something?

[icefractal]

Does the adventure present this is a likely-winnable encounter, or does it assume that the PCs will run / get captured / whatever? I'm not a fan of "cutscene" encounters, but it wouldn't be a balance issue in that case.

And/or, is it assumed that the Lich will leave / do their plan rather than fight the PCs? Because the rest of it does seem beatable by an 18th level party.

Actually the whole thing could be beatable if the PCs are optimized and the foes are played kinda dumb, but that doesn't seem like a good idea to assume.

[Kaleph]

That was my first guess (EDIT: that the fight isn't supposed to occur or to be "winnable"), but the adventure only mentions that, if the PC's flee, then the queen sends her undead minions after them.

With some 10 pages introduction and 2 pages of encounter, I was actually expecting some sort of "plan" for the DM to manage the possible developments/PC decisions, but I cannot find it. Just roam through a fortress and possibly fight a CR28 lich as the first enemy. No idea.

[Maat Mons]

Vlaakith is the big bad. The encounter with her should be tough.



The dragons are CR 16, true. But they only have access to 3rd-level spells, and the only offensive spell they know is Magic Missile. They're basically just big bruisers.

Well, I guess they can breath fire too. But Resist Energy is a 2nd-level spell, Mass Resist Energy is a 3rd-level spell, and Energy Immunity is a 6th-level spell.

And unlike all the other enemies in the room, the dragons are not immune to mind-affecting effects. The dragons have a respectable +17 to Will saves, but an 18th-level caster can probably get their save DCs up to 27 or so.



The two undead 16th-level Wizards are much scarier. They explicitly have Disintegrate, Dominate Person, and Flesh to Stone.

Hopefully, any party of 18th-level characters has the sense to be immune to mind-affecting effects. But probably not many will have bought Proof Against Transmutation armor. So a bad roll against Disintegrate or Flesh to Stone could take out a player character.

On the plus side, undead have weaknesses. Command Undead, Control Undead, or Turn/Rebuke Undead could really help here.




The two undead 16th-level Fighters don't seem like that big a problem.

[Bronk]

I just skimmed the adventure, and it's the kind that is presented out of order, because for some reason they think you need to know how many hit points the lich queen has before you find out how to get to her throne room. The encounter you were bummed about being first is actually the final battle, and the PCs have to jump through lots of hoops to get to that point. If you keep reading, there's this whole thing about going to different planes and - I think, based on the skimming - follow some NPCs bringing doomed githyanki eggs to the queen, have some adventures in the body of the dead god that the githyanki city is built on top of, get through the city, figure out how to get into the castle, then through the castle, then finally confront the lich queen. There's a whole bunch of undead stuff along the way, so they'll have some idea of what they'll need to succeed, or you'll have plenty of chances to drop the knowledge on them.

For fun, all you'd need to do to get rid of the githyanki wizards is to attack, then immediately run away. They'll presumably get XP and level up, and once they're level 17 they'll have to immediately present themselves to the lich queen for soul sucking death. Conveniently, she's right there!