This isn’t exactly a “new monster” thread, if you want to pigeon hole it then it is a MM1 monster post. I know this should probably be in the 4e general forum, but I think that only people that visit the House Rules and Creation forum might find this interesting…..
Background
My overarching campaign is fairly complicated, but from levels 1 to 21/22 the ultimate bad guy was Orcus, and the whole plot spun from a convoluted conflict between the Demon Lord and the Raven Queen that had spilled out into the middle world briefly about 40 years before the PCs were born. The PCs were the key players that would resolve the conflict one way or another (not that they knew this at the time).
At level 21/22 a twist in the plot saw Orcus’s and the Raven Queens plans go awry. The Aspect of Slaughter that Orcus had engineered as a weapon against the Raven Queen teamed up with a Lich (granted power by Vecna to undermine both Orcus and the Raven Queen) and killed the Raven Queen, but instead of channelling the divine essence to Orcus they kept it for themselves and split/destroyed Orcus’s and the Raven Queens forces in the shadowfell in the process. The pair then quickly moved against Vecna before he realised what was happening and killed him as well, again splitting the domains between themselves.
This created two new and pretty powerful gods, and effectively sidelined Orcus as the main bad guy as there were two new Gods on the block that were now far worse.
(there really is a whole load of information I am missing out here for simplicities sake, but I could elaborate a little if anyone is interested)
Later the group were approached by a Demon Lord called Holocaust who was on the same epic destiny as the Warlock and seemed to have similar powers (Life Stealer, Demi God). He had a plan to destroy Orcus and take his place, and offered the bargain that if successful he would concern himself with the Abyss and stay out of the middle world (leaving that for the group). He said he could engineer a situation where he would snatch the Wand of Orcus, if the group would actually kill him. This would give Holocaust plausible deniability and allow him to more easily profit by Orcus’s destruction. The group agreed, they wanted Orcus dead and if someone could do all the hard work of getting him in a killable position then they would be happy to oblige, and they have no concern over what happens in the Abyss.
Killing Orcus
About a week after the group got back from the Deep Far Realms the Warlock was suddenly contacted by Holocaust to say there had been a change of plans and ask how long it would take for the group to be able to teleport to a circle address (which he gave). Always ready for a fight the reply was 15 minutes and the Warlock set about casting the teleport while everyone assembled.
They teleported to another active teleport circle in the Abyss that sent them directly to another unknown address, only just able to hear Holocaust wish them good luck as he bounced them to their ultimate destination.
The group arrived in a large open air white stone temple surrounded by lush green forest. Around them were scattered dead elven looking bodies, before them they could see Orcus with his wand firmly in hand lifting the dying form of Melora into the air with a beam of green light. (note: During the past week of downtime the Ranger had been part of a special mission where he and a couple of specially chosen individuals joined Corellon, Sehanine and Melora in hunting down Gruumsh and killing him, but Melora was very badly wounded in the attack). Orcus turned to them, dropping the lifeless form of Melora to the ground and laughed, around him the dead bodies started rising as ghouls and the battle was on……
The group also noticed that Orcus seemed to have souls within him that pushed against his skin and tried to bite him, and that he had a number of shards of bone skewering his flesh. This was probably what Holocaust had done to prevent him from escaping, but his plans didn’t seem to have worked out 100% as he expected, after all wasn’t Holocaust suppose to have taken Orcus’s wand?
Encounter for 6 level 26 PCs (236750 xp)
Note: this is so far above a standard encounter for a level 26 group it is laughable.
1x Orcus – level 33 solo brute
20x Abyssal Ghoul Myrmidon – level 23 minion
5x Great Flame Skull – level 24 artillery
1x Atropal – level 28 elite brute
I had counters for 20 dead bodies that were scattered around the temple. When Orcus started his turn within 6 squares of them they rose as ghouls, when they were destroyed they fell as corpses ready to rise again at the start of Orcus’s next turn. I ruled that if the corpses were inside a damaging zone that they were completely destroyed. This worked quite well, but the level 23 minions were nowhere near a threat for the PCs.
The Atropal was what Melora had become by being slain by Orcus’s wand (instead of a dread wraith). Bouncing around inside her sagging flesh the PCs could see 3 glowing balls of energy (Melora’s domains). As the rounds progressed the lush forest slowly died away and necrotic mist started rising from the cracked ground to show that as Melora had changed her domain was changing to reflect her new persona. When the Atropal was finally defeated a chasm opened in the ground and it was sucked in by a pillar of necrotic energy (the new God was defeated but not destroyed!).
On round four Orcus raised 5 remaining corpses as Great Flame Skulls who tried to keep at range and assist in Orcus’s battle. These tried their best, but were largely ignored by the PCs who too busy ganking the Demon Lord of Undeath.
Orcus
I used his stats right out of the MM1, I figured I owed it to the writers of the ‘most powerful creature in the core D&D book’. On round 2 I made the decision to increase both of Orcus’s recharge 6 powers to recharge 5,6 (Touch of Death, and Necrotic Burst). It wasn’t enough, my group annihilated him in about 5 rounds (pathetic).
I was not going to let an ultimate bad guy go down so easily so I instantly gave him a free action when reduced to 0HP (from an original 1525) of regaining 1000HPs and losing all ongoing effects.
This at least allowed him to die with a little dignity and bought him another 4 or 5 rounds.
For the record I cannot overstate how pathetic Orcus is as written in the MM1. In the entire encounter I think my group spent about 5 healing surges between 6 of them and 3 of those were through the Atropal’s blast attack that drained a healing surge on hit.
In Orcus’s defence I was rolling badly, his recharge powers that I had increased to 5,6 only recharged once each in the entire battle. Even at 7 levels higher than the group he managed to miss with one of his Touch of Death attacks.
Orcus should be acting at least 3 times a round and doing at least double the damage written in his stat block. His variable resistance 10, 3/encounter should be upgraded to 30 (really designers, what is 10 resistance going to do? Nothing at all). Of course I knew this before I used him, but I wanted to see the real vision of the original monster creators in order to gauge myself against them. How could they get it so wrong?
Anyway, Orcus is dead, my players have the Wand and Melora is a whole new god. The campaign continues.
As an amusing aside my players remarked that they have faced standard creatures of mine that were more challenging, and that Orcus really didn’t have a hope in hell. I agree with them wholeheartedly.
Has anyone else used Orcus?
If so did you change him or run him as written?
I would be interested to know.
Background
My overarching campaign is fairly complicated, but from levels 1 to 21/22 the ultimate bad guy was Orcus, and the whole plot spun from a convoluted conflict between the Demon Lord and the Raven Queen that had spilled out into the middle world briefly about 40 years before the PCs were born. The PCs were the key players that would resolve the conflict one way or another (not that they knew this at the time).
At level 21/22 a twist in the plot saw Orcus’s and the Raven Queens plans go awry. The Aspect of Slaughter that Orcus had engineered as a weapon against the Raven Queen teamed up with a Lich (granted power by Vecna to undermine both Orcus and the Raven Queen) and killed the Raven Queen, but instead of channelling the divine essence to Orcus they kept it for themselves and split/destroyed Orcus’s and the Raven Queens forces in the shadowfell in the process. The pair then quickly moved against Vecna before he realised what was happening and killed him as well, again splitting the domains between themselves.
This created two new and pretty powerful gods, and effectively sidelined Orcus as the main bad guy as there were two new Gods on the block that were now far worse.
(there really is a whole load of information I am missing out here for simplicities sake, but I could elaborate a little if anyone is interested)
Later the group were approached by a Demon Lord called Holocaust who was on the same epic destiny as the Warlock and seemed to have similar powers (Life Stealer, Demi God). He had a plan to destroy Orcus and take his place, and offered the bargain that if successful he would concern himself with the Abyss and stay out of the middle world (leaving that for the group). He said he could engineer a situation where he would snatch the Wand of Orcus, if the group would actually kill him. This would give Holocaust plausible deniability and allow him to more easily profit by Orcus’s destruction. The group agreed, they wanted Orcus dead and if someone could do all the hard work of getting him in a killable position then they would be happy to oblige, and they have no concern over what happens in the Abyss.
Killing Orcus
About a week after the group got back from the Deep Far Realms the Warlock was suddenly contacted by Holocaust to say there had been a change of plans and ask how long it would take for the group to be able to teleport to a circle address (which he gave). Always ready for a fight the reply was 15 minutes and the Warlock set about casting the teleport while everyone assembled.
They teleported to another active teleport circle in the Abyss that sent them directly to another unknown address, only just able to hear Holocaust wish them good luck as he bounced them to their ultimate destination.
The group arrived in a large open air white stone temple surrounded by lush green forest. Around them were scattered dead elven looking bodies, before them they could see Orcus with his wand firmly in hand lifting the dying form of Melora into the air with a beam of green light. (note: During the past week of downtime the Ranger had been part of a special mission where he and a couple of specially chosen individuals joined Corellon, Sehanine and Melora in hunting down Gruumsh and killing him, but Melora was very badly wounded in the attack). Orcus turned to them, dropping the lifeless form of Melora to the ground and laughed, around him the dead bodies started rising as ghouls and the battle was on……
The group also noticed that Orcus seemed to have souls within him that pushed against his skin and tried to bite him, and that he had a number of shards of bone skewering his flesh. This was probably what Holocaust had done to prevent him from escaping, but his plans didn’t seem to have worked out 100% as he expected, after all wasn’t Holocaust suppose to have taken Orcus’s wand?
Encounter for 6 level 26 PCs (236750 xp)
Note: this is so far above a standard encounter for a level 26 group it is laughable.
1x Orcus – level 33 solo brute
20x Abyssal Ghoul Myrmidon – level 23 minion
5x Great Flame Skull – level 24 artillery
1x Atropal – level 28 elite brute
I had counters for 20 dead bodies that were scattered around the temple. When Orcus started his turn within 6 squares of them they rose as ghouls, when they were destroyed they fell as corpses ready to rise again at the start of Orcus’s next turn. I ruled that if the corpses were inside a damaging zone that they were completely destroyed. This worked quite well, but the level 23 minions were nowhere near a threat for the PCs.
The Atropal was what Melora had become by being slain by Orcus’s wand (instead of a dread wraith). Bouncing around inside her sagging flesh the PCs could see 3 glowing balls of energy (Melora’s domains). As the rounds progressed the lush forest slowly died away and necrotic mist started rising from the cracked ground to show that as Melora had changed her domain was changing to reflect her new persona. When the Atropal was finally defeated a chasm opened in the ground and it was sucked in by a pillar of necrotic energy (the new God was defeated but not destroyed!).
On round four Orcus raised 5 remaining corpses as Great Flame Skulls who tried to keep at range and assist in Orcus’s battle. These tried their best, but were largely ignored by the PCs who too busy ganking the Demon Lord of Undeath.
Orcus
I used his stats right out of the MM1, I figured I owed it to the writers of the ‘most powerful creature in the core D&D book’. On round 2 I made the decision to increase both of Orcus’s recharge 6 powers to recharge 5,6 (Touch of Death, and Necrotic Burst). It wasn’t enough, my group annihilated him in about 5 rounds (pathetic).
I was not going to let an ultimate bad guy go down so easily so I instantly gave him a free action when reduced to 0HP (from an original 1525) of regaining 1000HPs and losing all ongoing effects.
This at least allowed him to die with a little dignity and bought him another 4 or 5 rounds.
For the record I cannot overstate how pathetic Orcus is as written in the MM1. In the entire encounter I think my group spent about 5 healing surges between 6 of them and 3 of those were through the Atropal’s blast attack that drained a healing surge on hit.
In Orcus’s defence I was rolling badly, his recharge powers that I had increased to 5,6 only recharged once each in the entire battle. Even at 7 levels higher than the group he managed to miss with one of his Touch of Death attacks.
Orcus should be acting at least 3 times a round and doing at least double the damage written in his stat block. His variable resistance 10, 3/encounter should be upgraded to 30 (really designers, what is 10 resistance going to do? Nothing at all). Of course I knew this before I used him, but I wanted to see the real vision of the original monster creators in order to gauge myself against them. How could they get it so wrong?
Anyway, Orcus is dead, my players have the Wand and Melora is a whole new god. The campaign continues.
As an amusing aside my players remarked that they have faced standard creatures of mine that were more challenging, and that Orcus really didn’t have a hope in hell. I agree with them wholeheartedly.
Has anyone else used Orcus?
If so did you change him or run him as written?
I would be interested to know.
Last edited:
). But he has good utility powers and with the right support could really mess up a group, I think he might actually put up a decent fight.
