Help Us Kill Morrus - Just updated 23/03/05

Forcecage
SR: No
Save: No

holy cow, I dont look at high lvl spells much, but this is nice.
Drawbacks its expensive, and they can Teleport out.
will he fit in a 10x10 cube?

die_kluge said:

Well, we just don't know with these, so it could be either good or bad.

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Yep.
As I said: I agree with using confusion on them. I just didn't agree that these guys necessarily have poor Will saves.

Good ideas here. But I'm genuinely afrtaid that we can't get out of this one on our own. We're not going to be able to win the fight unless the mooks are a good deal less terrifying than they might be. Almost my greatest worry at this stage is what the other thread's primed Morrus with in the meantime!! OK. I think my conclusion at this point is that we're going to have to bluff. Divide and conquer.

If the phyllactery isn't in this room, there's no point our trying to destroy the queen. She'll be back, and very angry at us. I don't want an epic lich chasing our 15th level backsides across a multi-planar skeet-shoot...

Bluffing options:

1. Phyllactery
2. Summon something behind 'em.
3. Illusions (The Diviner's probably got a few dozen).
4. Talk our way out. (Start laughing as though they've fallen for our trap).
5. Threaten to destroy the room.

Unless anyone else has another idea, I really think only 1 & 2 is a runner.

And if bluffing the queen, stand within 10 feet of the Paladin or the Cleric. If she mindscans you and you agree to that, the protection from evil effect will mean you can't be dominated!

(Assuming I've cast mine. I'm not too sure!)

there are 4 pillars of negative energy in the room?... they lich is going to be immortal... if memory serves negative energy heals the undead.. all she'd have to do was fight with her back against a pillar and she'd gain some form or regeneration or fast healing.. also immobilizing a psion is pointless.. they dont need to gesture to manifest ... feeblemind or similar intellect damage might be your best bet for crippling the lich. aside from that get the diviner looking for weaknesses, and most specifically the phylactery, crush that and she's not gonna come back.

Ok, sounds like you boys are in deep dung. There's been a lot of good advice, and here's my take on it. There's some questions/caveats that I'll begin with.

1) This appears to be a non-standard cosmology. Are common racial hatreds of the out-planes still at play?
2) Has anything suggested that these strange Slaad are potentially psionic?
3) I'm not up on the book of exalted deeds or some of the prestige classes, nor your items so I'm going to toss out somethings that may be irrelevant.

Ok. As a GM who routinely spanks his players when they do something stupid, but is often foiled when they do the completely unexpected, as a general rule I am going to suggest going against conventional wisdom and do the riskiest, boneheaded thing you can. If Morrus doesn't expect it, you may be able to catch a break.

Behold the Power of Bigotry: Githyanki working with Slaad? Not impossible, but generally unlikely, unless the Githyanki are using the Chaos Frogs in a ploy to get at their ancestral racial enemies the Githzerai. At least the Githyanki Mooks you describe aren't equipped with Silver Sword - vorpal is bad for PC health. Anyway, back to may racial ranting. If you have Githyanki in front of you, use a summon spell to summon up Githzerai, they are extraplanar and should be able to fall under the auspices of the spell. Drop the pugs right amidst the Githyanki warriors and their queen. Have your summoned Githz attack the queen, the Githy should give in to their natural racial hatreds and ignore you for their sworn enemies.

Alternate mode - does Morrus allow you to template normal creatures that would make them outsiders/extraplanar and thus appropriate for summon spells? If yes, go one step further on the racial hatred scale: Summon a Shadow Template Mind Flayer, or maybe a fiendish Mind Flayer with your summon spell. Not only will the Gith go butt-nutty over their MOST hated racial enemy, any mind flayer can back a wallop with brain removal, and if you work that into your bluff that the Slaad king is on your side (and the mind flayer or githz's side), the queen might be more likely to fall for it. Also, since both Githz and Mind Flayer's have natural planar travel abilities, their sudden appearance will smack less of summon monster #.

Moving on to unlikely and impossible plans - try to dispel the negative energy walls. Or better yet, even without feats a number of 3E and 3.5 books have mentioned using a clerical turning attempt to disrupt or put into abeyance negative energy effects and wards (I definitely recall a rules light section on this from back in defenders of the faith, but don't recall if it was ever updated, repudiated, or made strict by some rule). If even the slightest chance, see if you can "turn" the neg energy walls in some fashion. You have turn attempts, and you ain't gonna scare the lichy girl with them.

You basic outline of your abilities suggest each PC is very capable singly, but no mention of your group tactics. Here's my "You do what?" suggestion for the night. Bring out the tiger, summon some ugly things that are big, have reach, and are good at grappling. Fill out a 9 man pike square (yes I know you don't have pikes, the slaad do,
but...). Why you ask? Move your party as a whole into the dead middle of them - ready your actions to spin the group as a whole as needed, but unleash the fighters as a focused side of the square, spellcasters in reach to hit them with the quickened true strikes and healing effects, and keeping as many of your overlapping protection effecs on each other (paladin's circle). Target area healing spells to catch as much of your group and the Queen every time. This may sound kind daft, but with the pike slaads and mobile githyanki, if you divide, they'll start conquering your with flanking maneuvers - heaven forbid any of the mooks (slaad or githy) have rogue levels. Furthermore, by shoving yourself right in the middle of them, you make it tactically harder for the Queen and King to use general damage inducing area effects without catching their own people. While that may be a risk the baddies are willing to take with their SR, I've found that SR tends to fail when targetted by the very very high level villains (I've lost more drow shock troops that way).

Lastly, as long as signs don't point to the Slaad being psionic too, save your dispells for them - they have spell-like abilities - you can't stop those with silence, but spell-likes are still subject to dispel effects, if they put something up, take it down.

shilsen said:

You get Evard's Tentacles spam? That's so cool! All I get is bankers writing me from Nigeria and offers to grow parts of my anatomy, including parts I don't even possess

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I know that feeling and I'd love to share the spell. Unfortunately I swapped it out for a Solid Fog of Vicodin. The main upside being that is it's far more repeatable than the alternatives.

The_One_Warlock

Nice post. Thanks!

Very cool idea with the summons.

So far our summoning has been pretty much by the book. Morrus might let us try some different summons, but he'd probably not let us rejig it on the fly in combat... I'm also a bit restricted with summons, only celestial/fiendish types and they get changed to pseudonatural.

Funnily enough, we've not seen any sign of gity/gitz (love those abbreviations!) conflict - not even sure it exists - we couldn't ask by name as it'd be player rather than character knowledge. The only enemy race we got were the slaadi - I'd like to find the guy who told me that and baleful polymorph him into a newt. (I'll have to buy a scroll first!)

I'm likewise glad not to see any silver swords... I like my characters head to stay attatched!

The_One_Warlock said:

Moving on to unlikely and impossible plans - try to dispel the negative energy walls. Or better yet, even without feats a number of 3E and 3.5 books have mentioned using a clerical turning attempt to disrupt or put into abeyance negative energy effects and wards (I definitely recall a rules light section on this from back in defenders of the faith, but don't recall if it was ever updated, repudiated, or made strict by some rule). If even the slightest chance, see if you can "turn" the neg energy walls in some fashion. You have turn attempts, and you ain't gonna scare the lichy girl with them.

Click to expand...

An intriguing idea! We tried to turn the negative energy effects on one of the doors leading into this place, but they were too difficult. Might be worth another go at the walls, but the results might well be similar if the creator is the same... They are a useful resource, our cleric has a range of feats that let him do interesting stuff to his spells. However, he does have a lot of them!

The_One_Warlock said:

You basic outline of your abilities suggest each PC is very capable singly, but no mention of your group tactics. Here's my "You do what?" suggestion for the night. Bring out the tiger, summon some ugly things that are big, have reach, and are good at grappling. Fill out a 9 man pike square (yes I know you don't have pikes, the slaad do,
but...). Why you ask? Move your party as a whole into the dead middle of them - ready your actions to spin the group as a whole as needed, but unleash the fighters as a focused side of the square, spellcasters in reach to hit them with the quickened true strikes and healing effects, and keeping as many of your overlapping protection effecs on each other (paladin's circle). Target area healing spells to catch as much of your group and the Queen every time. This may sound kind daft, but with the pike slaads and mobile githyanki, if you divide, they'll start conquering your with flanking maneuvers - heaven forbid any of the mooks (slaad or githy) have rogue levels. Furthermore, by shoving yourself right in the middle of them, you make it tactically harder for the Queen and King to use general damage inducing area effects without catching their own people. While that may be a risk the baddies are willing to take with their SR, I've found that SR tends to fail when targetted by the very very high level villains (I've lost more drow shock troops that way).

Lastly, as long as signs don't point to the Slaad being psionic too, save your dispells for them - they have spell-like abilities - you can't stop those with silence, but spell-likes are still subject to dispel effects, if they put something up, take it down.

Click to expand...

With you entirely on the dispels!

Our usual tactics involve the paladin, samurai and archer concentrating on the more threatening targets. Our cleric keeps them alive. The mage and sorceror engage in blasting and/or crowd control - that's the bit I enjoy! That's the basic plan, but never seems ot work quite like that

The pike square is a neat idea. It'll certainly give him a suprise... Although I'm a little concerned we might end up getting blasted with some serious area of effect stuff. Guessing her lichiness is going to be able to do that.

I'm rather tempted to scatter/inconvenience the guards rather than trying to fight them. Think her lichiness needs to be the prime target.

Evilhalfling said:

holy cow, I dont look at high lvl spells much, but this is nice.
Drawbacks its expensive, and they can Teleport out.
will he fit in a 10x10 cube?

Click to expand...

Forcecage is a good 'un. Pretty sure he's too big to fit in the 10X10 version, but he probably would squeeze into the 20X20 barred version... he'd be able to cast spells out of it, but we could keep our distance. Let the archer entertain him!

Zephier said:

there are 4 pillars of negative energy in the room?... they lich is going to be immortal... if memory serves negative energy heals the undead.. all she'd have to do was fight with her back against a pillar and she'd gain some form or regeneration or fast healing.. also immobilizing a psion is pointless.. they dont need to gesture to manifest ... feeblemind or similar intellect damage might be your best bet for crippling the lich. aside from that get the diviner looking for weaknesses, and most specifically the phylactery, crush that and she's not gonna come back.

Click to expand...

Good point. Guess we'd better keep her away from those. A bullrush might do the job, but only the paladin has a death ward - think it'd be a very bad idea without one. Supose telekinisis combat maneuvers could also be used...

Not sure if feeblemind would work on a lich, got a feeling they're immune to mind affecting stuff. Wonder if there's any other stuff that could get in the way of her powers.

Eccles said:

Good ideas here. But I'm genuinely afrtaid that we can't get out of this one on our own. We're not going to be able to win the fight unless the mooks are a good deal less terrifying than they might be. Almost my greatest worry at this stage is what the other thread's primed Morrus with in the meantime!! OK. I think my conclusion at this point is that we're going to have to bluff. Divide and conquer.

Click to expand...

I thought he'd already done that... perhaps he had and just wanted even more sick to throw at us

Eccles said:

If the phyllactery isn't in this room, there's no point our trying to destroy the queen. She'll be back, and very angry at us. I don't want an epic lich chasing our 15th level backsides across a multi-planar skeet-shoot...

Click to expand...

Aaaagggh. I been trying not to think about that. Supose it's justice - spent the last couple of months playing hunt the phylactery with the group I DM for. Must be Karmic payback.

If this one is the real queen and we manage to defeat her, then we need to hunt that thing down and introduce it to a large adamantine hammer.

Eccles said:

Bluffing options:

1. Phyllactery
2. Summon something behind 'em.
3. Illusions (The Diviner's probably got a few dozen).
4. Talk our way out. (Start laughing as though they've fallen for our trap).
5. Threaten to destroy the room.

Unless anyone else has another idea, I really think only 1 & 2 is a runner.

And if bluffing the queen, stand within 10 feet of the Paladin or the Cleric. If she mindscans you and you agree to that, the protection from evil effect will mean you can't be dominated!

(Assuming I've cast mine. I'm not too sure!)

Click to expand...

Sounds fairly sensible. I rather like 4+2 together. It'll be good clean fun. Taunt her about 1 if that doesn't work.

No way in hell is she getting an invite into my brain. I'd rather feed it to mindflayers. Although it might give her a bit of a funny turn... I'd guess the thoughts of an alienist are going to be fairly disturbing.

I like the solid fog thing.

Morrus isn't likely (I reckon) to be D-Dooring the Gith and making use of all their abilities to the fullest. Unless he's been reminded to in the Thread I don't wish to name.

And their potential is a bit of an unknown. The ones we fought last weren't as scary as I'd expected, to be honest.

So. Time for another list.

1. Need the Diviner to check the powers of the room, and the negative energy walls, with his Arcane Sight. Does it stop flight? Does it stop teleporting? Does it stop planar travel? (If so, there's going to be no summoning or indeed ghost form!)

2. Fire arrows at the villains through the walls. Do the neg-energy walls stop passage of materials? If not, what damage reduction do the gith and the slaad have?

3. Find out how powerful the big black slaad and the gith mooks are. As I remember it, 'normal' black slaad are spell casting machines. These certainly aren't acting like it, and I reckon both sets are just fighting mooks. Potentially very powerful mooks, but mooks nonetheless.

4. Try to bunch the mooks up and nuke 'em. Need to see this once we've got it on a map. It could make life a lot harder if the two sets are coming at us from two different sides.

5. Prioritise one group over the other. Probably Solid Fog the Gith and deal with the Slaad, or vice versa, whichever group checks out as having more magical potential with our knowledge and Arcane Sight.

6. Try to divide and conquer. There's no way Morrus will've put us in this situation and not have a way that he'd use to get out of it. Even if it's not one that's obvious to us.

7. If we've got time, try to turn or dispel the neg-energy walls tactically in our favour. And use a Wall of Force if needed to slow the enemy advance.

8. I don't know about you lot, but if I've got the chance, I don't want to go all out on a 20th level psionic lich. Not when she's at full strength, and the capacity to regenerate. If we can check the phylactery situation (and remember to Sense Motive on the Slaad King whilst we're bluffing the Queen) early on, then it might narrow our options.

9. Let it rip and see how far we get.

Ok for the record im the diviner and it has just come to my attention that the creatures we are fighting are not Githyanki, they are Githzerai ,so now thats clear it might make a difference. not alot, but hey.
Any questions regarding my spells ,ask!