Dress up my Aboleth savants

[Zanticor]

Hi there,

Night Below spoiler: do not read this if you are a player in the Night Below!

I have been living up to this moment for sometime and now the end of my Night Below campaign is coming into focus. My players will be about level 19 when the finally start to encountering the real bag guys of the plot to dominate the entire kingdom. I’m talking about a group of six Aboleth savants who are all cleric 3/wizard 5/ Mystic Theurge 10 (the are all specialized wizards in different schools of magic). I have decided they are CR 20 but you might argue with me on that point. They won’t encounter them together of course but I want them to be a hardy bunch flinging 8th level spells at my guys and not dieing in round 1. So I need to dress them and I’d like it a lot if you would help me! They have two bracer slots, a couple of ring slots, a belt or mantle a head, lenses and amulet. I’ll fill some up with standard +6 int and some armor things but there is a lot of room for interesting stuff. These guys have been around since before the gods were born, are possessive paranoid about their survival and like to craft things. If it seems like an impossible task for the players: that’s what I have impressed on them. But I don’t need the best items cause I don’t want to kill my players. I just need some cool items to make fighting these monsters worthwhile. So what would you use as dressing on my monstrosities? I’m looking for like six-seven items per creep and want to give them all some feel of originality. Thanks a lot in advance!

Zanticor

 

[s-dub]

What's the GP limit?

How many slaves will each aboleth be sporting and how strong are they?

How well equipped are the PC's and what spells will they cast before the final round of fights?

 

[SolitonMan]

Are you allowing the use of Complete Arcane? One "trick" that I like is the use of contingent spells. Especially with such powerful creatures as your aboleth savants, a contingent True Resurrection would be a nasty surprise for players, as well as making the baddies that much worse

As far as items go, there's a lot of cool stuff in the Magic Item Compendium. Particularly useful/tricky is the Belt of Battle, which I know gets a bad rep, but it can be so useful in the right situation. Depending on the gp limits you're using, you might craft specific unique items for your aboleths, maybe a ring of greater spell immunity or something similar, targetted to spells the players use frequently (and which the aboleths gained awareness of through scrying, of course).

Exactly what are the gp limits you wish to use?

 

[Zanticor]

gold limit: hmm. Thats hard because I have not been very liberal with my treasure until now. The DM guide says 80.000 gp is the norm. So I guess thats fine. They will need some standard items (what wizard leaves home without a headband of intellect?) but I have the item compendium so nice things like a belt of battle can be included. I think I'll give that one to the transmuter. He'll go with iron body and tensers transformation so he'll need the combat stuff. That leaves a necromancer, an evocer, a summoner a cleric focused theurge and mos6t importantly the enchanter. The guys will fight through a host of minions before them but will meet these guy alone. Although they might just meet their project images some rounds before . I'm looking for some unique additions that wll make them memorable but not impossible. Contingent resurrections sound like just that . We only allow 4 buffs up and running so that might be nice for my necromancer. Great advice. Keep it coming.

Zanticor

 

[bigbaddragon]

Bracers of Entangling Blast from MIC can be a nasty surprise for your evoker. They say that when casting a spell that deals damage you can halve the damage dealt and entangle the victims for d3 rounds without save. They are dirt cheap also, 2-3k gp I think.

Another dirt cheap item is Ring of Darkhidden which makes the wearer invisible to darkvision. This can be interesting if they encounter him in the dark and rely on darkvision.

Another nice thing you could do is examine item sets from MIC or create your own sets and then distribute the pieces among the aboleths. Also don't forget to include some save boosters, although your party probably have this covered it is quite logical for the aboleths to have them and after all your players can sell them when they dispatch the aboleths.

 

[Zanticor]

I love the entangling blast bracers. Finding enough bracers for these beasts is almost imposible. This will be nasty. Creating a set sounds like a lot of work. I might try it. Any ideas?

Zanticor