Princes of the Apocalyps boss fights - tips or experiences?

[Waazraath]

Warning: spoilers, so don't read if you don't know the campaign and might want to play it one day.

I'm gonna DM 1 to 4 of the PotA boss dungeons for my table, as a stand alone adventure or, if it is fun, a mini-campaign running all 4 of them. My idea was:
- play the dungeons as in the book, only changing stuff that belongs to the bigger story;
- have everybody create a lvl 14 character, feats yes multiclass no, equipment conform DMG (average magic, so pick 2 uncommon items); I'll hand out some extra scrolls and potions as well
- I'll drop some hints that the magic items are connected to the portals, but not overtly state how they can be used to close the portal (and thus finish the fight)
- the party doesn't know what prince they are up against (so no possiblity to totally prepare against fire when going up against Imix).

My impression is that the Princes are all extremely dangerous, especially that several have the ability to shut down vision in several ways, and having blindsight themselves.

Would this work?

[Waazraath]

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[Lord Vukodlak]

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You're trying to do the finale without any of the lead up. People who played through the campaign can't really tell you how doing the final episode will go without having the party do the lead up.

[Waazraath]

You're trying to do the finale without any of the lead up. People who played through the campaign can't really tell you how doing the final episode will go without having the party do the lead up.

Fair enough, maybe I'm not concrete enough about what type of comments I'm looking for. I'll try to be more concrete on what would help me.

Are their people who did the boss fight, as in fighting one of the princes instead of closing the portal? How did it work out? Did you (as DM) or the DM (for players) went all in, and used lair action to maximum effect (effectively blinding the entire party for large portions of the fight, unless somebody had truesight prepared)? Did it ended in a player victory, total rout or TPK? Are there any practical tips for running the boss fight?

[Gilead26]

I ran POTA a while back for a party of 6, they ended up being a little lower level (12) but the two extra characters balanced that out.

In the campaign set up the party will only end up actually fighting one of the princes, so I can only speak to the Imix boss fight: The Imix fight is definitely challenging. It takes place on an peninsula in a lava lake with the portal being 30-50 feet away from the peninsula (it’s been a while I don’t remember exactly what the distance is). Vanifer, the prophet summoning Imix, has the ability to teleport and Imix can fly so the arena is much less of a problem for them (not to mention that they are both immune to fire damage). For the party though, especially the martials, the arena can be a serious problem.

A great deal depends on how you run Imix as the DM, you literally have the option of playing Keep Away with Imix while he bombards the party with fireballs and uses his Heat Blast to force the party to make DC 21 Con saves or take a level of exhaustion (the effects of which become exponentially worse and culminate in death). However, a smart party will focus fire on Vanifer, if the party can kill/disable her and claim Tinderstrike they can throw it into the portal and banish Imix.

Essentially, in my experience at least, the fight was a race against the clock. The party had to kill/ disable Vanifer before Imix destroyed them. To aid in this endeavor I helped the party out by making sure they had access to potions of fire resistance but it was still close. Out of the 6 man party we had two KIAs and multiple knockouts. In the end the party wizard bodily carried Tinderstrike through the portal, not wanting to risk Imix intercepting a throw (Imix was essentially playing goal keeper by that point in the fight). His heroic sacrifice saved the Dessarin Valley. The whole fight was a super awesome and memorable end to the campaign.

I can’t speak to how it will play out with the battle totally divorced from the campaign, in my case it was the culmination of a years worth of weekly sessions. You should definitely be aware though that the Elemental Princes are no joke and can be extremely lethal to an appropriately leveled party, especially as the arenas are set up to give the Boss duo of the Prince + Prophet a fairly substantial advantage (also make note that they can summon elementals and their might even be a few cultists still in the mix). Running all four fights strung together seems likely to result in TPK unless the party is allowed to bring in new characters to replace losses.

Hope this was useful to you. Good luck with the one shot!

[ATHATH]

Note that the group that I was in (as a player) was a bit oversized and was able to fight most of the elemental lords without their prophets present.

Imix
Imix is either incredibly scary or an absolute joke in a straight fight, depending on whether or not you have a party member who's immune to fire and whether or not you care if he just dips. Imix's only option to harm someone who's immune to fire is to make two 2d10+7 slams against them... but if he recognizes that he can't win the fight he's in and he's on the material plane, he can just cast Teleport and start wreaking havoc on another continent. Even if he gets Counterspelled or a member of the party can cast Teleport themselves (and knows where he went), he can cast Teleport 3 times per day, so he can just try again.

If Imix is facing a party who's not immune to fire, he can, as mentioned earlier by someone else, spend two legendary actions each turn to teleport 120 feet away (in addition to his normal movement on his turn) and cheese the party to death with his surprisingly long-range abilities. Alternatively, if he needs to protect something stationary (like a portal) or is feeling confident in his ability to use Teleport to escape danger/hit and run the party, he can aim to score some quick and cheap kills by just spamming 4 AoE exhaustion-inducing abilities per round.

Also note that the fire node around the portal is actually pretty dangerous for non-fire immune creatures, and members of the party could start the fight with a level or two of exhaustion.

I'll go over the other elemental lords in future posts.



It should also be mentioned that it's very easy for a party that isn't in the know to accidentally seal a portal by entering it while its corresponding elemental weapon is in their inventory.

I suppose I should also ask: Will the party be fighting these elemental lords before or after they're brought to the material plane? If they're fighting them before they're summoned, the aforementioned risk of the party screwing themselves out of a final boss fight by just accidentally sealing a portal is very real, and if they're fighting them after they've been summoned, the elemental lords can do some VERY nasty stuff.

[Waazraath]

Thanks Gilead26 and ATHATH, these were exactly the kind of replies that I hoped for.

Gilead26, yeah, I'll definitely allow for replacements if we decide to run more than 1 boss dungeon - else it's not realistic to finish it, but also because it won't be much fun for a player to watch an entire dungon. Love the way your fight turned out by the way, epic boss fight, victory through sacrifice... what more do you want?

ATHATH, I'll run the first adventure as if it was the last dungeon in the campaign - the party enters the final room when the prince is summoned from the portal. So no walking into a portal by accident.

Judging from your posts, I get the impression that 1) Imix is very lethal 2) if the DM plays him maximum smart (playing for exhausting everybody, or with kiting tactics), it might end up a TPK easily, especially if there are no characters immune or resistant to fire, BUT if several are immune, it might not be that hard for that players to survive cause there is little that can hurt them. Is that more or less correct?

From this, I think it's probably best to do first the fight against Ogremoch (very straighforward) or maybe Yan-C-Bin - though the latter has really nasty tricks, while the dungeon seems on the weak sight.

[ATHATH]

Olhydra
Olhydra has a handful of very solid tricks/tactics up her sleeve, and while those tricks are strong, they're not as absurd as the gimmicks of Imix and Yan. She's the most "fair" of the elemental lords, IMO.

If she can get away with summoning her three max HP water elementals during a monologue ("Of all the Princes of Elemental Evil, Olhydra is the one most interested in mortals.") or something, I think they're probably worth the HP cost. Monologuing might be hard for a creature that can only speak Aquan, but one of the members of the party will probably have telepathy or know Primordial or something. I'm not sure if they're worth both the HP cost AND the action cost mid-fight, though. There's also nothing stopping her from just summoning her three elementals well before the fight- there's no time restriction for how long those elementals can stick around for. In theory, Olhydra (and each of the other elemental lords) could slowly build an army at a rate of 3 max HP elementals per long rest while she's imprisoned with nothing better to do, although a houserule that she can't summon more elementals without dismissing her old ones would probably fix that issue.

Olhydra has both impressive single target DPS and AoE DPS. For single target damage, her best option is usually to use her slam attacks to score a free grapple on a party member (or two party members if she splits her slams), then spam her Crush legendary action on them for loads of damage. If she grapples someone who moves at least four positions after her in the initiative order, she can get three Crushes in on them before they can spend their action to try to break the grapple.

As for spreading her damage, she has quite a few options available to her. Ice Wall deals 10d6 cold damage (save for half) in a shapeable AoE, Water to Acid can rack up quite a bit of damage if she's fighting 3+ melee attackers (or when fighting 2 melee attackers if she has both of them grappled), and Freezing Fog deals 3d6 save-less AoE damage as well. Storm of Vengeance should never be used in a fight against the players; it's one of the worst/most underwhelming 9th levels spells in the game.

Fling is a trap option that, even under optimal conditions (flinging a victim 60 ft. into a wall), does the same amount of damage as Crush on average... for double the legendary action cost of Crush and at the additional cost of dropping a grapple.

Freezing Fog is Olhydra's best lair action by far. Because she has Blindsight, if she drops a Freezing Fog on herself, she can make all of her attacks with advantage and impose disadvantage on all attacks against her (unless she's facing something with a counter to Darkness+Devil's Sight tactics). It also does some AoE chip damage and allows her to avoid taking AoOs from Blindsight-less creatures ("You can make an opportunity Attack when a Hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach."). On top of all of this, it also protects not only Olhydra from spells that require sight, but also the other creatures who happen to be in the fog with her... which means she can shut down Healing Word whack-a-mole tactics with it ("A creature of your choice that you can see within range regains hit points"). Note that a readied action (or a turn that lands exactly on initiative count 20) might be able to pierce the fog, depending on how you rule the duration of the fog to work.

The only real downside to Freezing Fog is that Olhydra's allies need to stay far away from it- while Olhydra has Blindsight and is immune to cold, her summoned elementals not only lack those two qualities, but are in fact slowed by cold damage. They should go for the back line casters or something instead of hanging around Olhydra's Freezing Fog, although they can dip into the fog if needed, since their base swim speed is 90 ft. and the fog won't deal very much damage to them.

Olhydra also has a 100 ft. swim speed and potent ranged attack options, so she's very hard to kite, unlike a certain other elemental lord. She can even do some kiting herself if she's running low on health. That swim speed (and her ability to make slam opportunity attacks that grapple on a hit) also lets her chase down party members who are fleeing to get healing.

My recommended strategy with Olhydra would be to start the fight using her AoE options, then go for single-target snipes on party members who think they're safe because they're out of range of Olhydra's AoE DPS. Spam Freezing Fog whenever possible, of course.

Next will probably be Yan, the most terrifyingly deadly of the elemental lords, then Ogremoch, who's a massive pushover (but somehow has the highest CR of all of the elemental lords).

[ATHATH]

Yan-C-Bin

Yan is an incredibly lethal elemental lord. He WILL score kills if he is played competently, and is very capable of pulling off a TPK. Yan does NOT mess around, and it's very fortunate that my group ended up accidentally sealing his portal instead of fighting him.

Yan can cast Invisibility at-will, so we can assume that he'll engage the party with it up. He's not proficient in Stealth (which is kind of a bruh moment), but he doesn't really need to be, as he can start his boss battle with a Thundercrack that will force everyone in the party to make a DC 24 CON save or become deaf for a minute. I don't care what your Perception modifier is, if you can't see OR hear Yan, you're going to have a VERY hard time pinpointing his exact position (if he hasn't attacked you from that position yet). Note that, because it doesn't involve an attack roll, casting a spell, or taking up concentration, using Thundercrack will not break Yan's Invisbility spell.

Change Shape can decrease Yan's size, reducing the risk of blind fire successfully hitting him, but it also makes it so that "a swirling breeze surrounds him", which could reveal his position while he's invisible.

Each round, Yan can wait until the end of the turn of the creature that goes just before him in the initiative order, then use his Suffocate legendary action on the most threatening party member (likely a caster, especially if they look like a healer). If they fail a DC 21 CON save, they're now at 0 HP and dying. Using Suffocate won't break Yan's Invisibility spell, so even if his victim succeeds on their saving throw... Yan can just invisibly reposition and try again next round.

By using Suffocate immediately before his turn, Yan can ensure that his turn comes before the turn of anyone who could bring a Suffocate victim out of critical condition. On that turn, Yan can fly down, make two slam attacks to execute the target of Suffocate (breaking his Invisibility spell), and then fly out of reach/line of sight. Melee attacks made against 0 HP characters automatically crit if they hit, and crits against a 0 HP character apply two failed death saves, so Yan can take a character from "fine" to "actually dead" in just over the span of a single turn. If Yan whiffs one of his melee attacks, he's still almost certain to get a kill- at the end of the turn immediately following his, he can use Peal of Thunder to score that third failed death saving throw. If he whiffs BOTH of his melee attacks, he's STILL very likely to get a kill- he can still execute his victim with three Peal of Thunders over the course of the next three turns (turns, not rounds) if the party members who can act in those turns can't heal his victim or protect them from thunder damage with Silence or something.

Yan can then go invisible on his next turn and repeat the process. The party cannot outrun him, because he has a 150 ft. fly speed and the ability to teleport 120 ft. by spending two legendary actions. He is inevitable.

In other words, Yan can score one pretty much guaranteed straight up kill per round that he's actually visible for- and that's assuming that there's no cover around that he can block line of sight with until he can cast Invisibility again.

The party can try to blindly fire attacks or AoE abilities at where they think Yan MIGHT be, but while he isn't proficient in CON saves, he still has a +7 CON modifier and legendary saves for concentration checks, along with 283 max HP.

Glitterdust doesn't exist in this edition. Faerie Fire requires a DEX save failure in order to outline a creature. See Invisibility is a niche, self-only spell that the party probably won't have prepared, and Yan will almost certainly go for the casters first (especially if one makes the mistake of continuing to look directly at Yan while he's invisible).

If Yan is low on HP, he can switch to using three Peal of Thunders per round instead of one Suffocate per round. Like Thunderclap, Peal of Thunder doesn't break the Invisibility spell, so Yan can damage the party without ever becoming visible. The party might still be able to blind fire at the location that the Peal of Thunders are coming from, however... Assuming that Yan doesn't decide to instead just fire off one Peal of Thunder per round, allowing him to fire it off just before his turn or the turn before he uses the Teleport legendary action.

Yan should alternate between using the mass yeet lair action while invisible and using the Sleet Storm lair action (which may or may not require concentration) to conceal himself while visible. The torrent of debris lair action sounds nice, but it can give away Yan's position if the party knows to try to blind fire at the epicenter of the effect. Amusingly, because the text implies that Yan must use a lair action each round if he's able to and (unlike the other elemental lords) Yan can't use the same lair action twice in a row, Yan might want to fight the party OUTSIDE of his lair to avoid being forced to drop concentration on Invisibility by the Sleet Storm lair action or potentially reveal his location with the debris torrent lair action.

I'd like to finish this review of Yan-C-Bin's capabilities by posting an excerpt from his description:


Yan-C-Bin (pronounced yan-see-bin) is the Prince of Evil Air. A being of great wisdom and malice, Yan-C-Bin's plots began at the forging of the worlds. Subtler than the other elemental princes, Yan-C-Bin operates unseen, studying his enemies from afar, ambushing them swiftly, and vanishing before his foes can retaliate.

[Waazraath]

After reading a bit more:

- couldn't Yan-C-Bin just use the lair action to toss some characters (preferably the non-flying ones) through the portal to the Plane of Air?

- couldn't Ogremoch pick up the weapon that summoned him, put its hand in the floor (burrow) and pull it out again while leaving the weapon burried under several feet of rock? (thus forcing the party to only be able to defeat him by taking him down to 0 hp?)