Help me kill Darmanicus & Friends!

[kigmatzomat]

As Navar mentioned, the fake queen ploy has already been used. Can't do that again!

Personally I believe in using a decent tactic whenever it works. I guess the question is: what are the NPCs goals? What does the the Gith Queen want/get and what does the Slaad King want/get? We know you're after a beat-down but not a TPK so I think more character motivation is required before we can come up with a decent way to not kill the PCs.

The NPCs are just too tough and too smart to NOT be able to kill the PCs when they walk into a trap. The Queen's minions have fought the party so she has intel on their abilities and can plan for their general power level. Without any more information the best non-TPK I can come up with is capturing them to be used as food for the lich-queen or as the sacrifice in some ritual.

 

[Rystil Arden]

On my previous post: I guess I should explain my thought process: I also play with Psionics is Different, and I threw a heavily-templated beholder (psionic rays and antimagic eye) at the players that would have slaughtered them all if not for the party's psion, who committed suicide in order to take out the central eye, and these same PCs had wiped the floor with much harder challenges and had brought a powerful NPC with them as an ally against this beholder.

Kigmat: I think Morrus realises that he can kill them all if he tries, but he doesn't want to kill them all. It is clear that the NPCs involved are smart and powerful enough that they should win, period. However, when we are done, they aren't going to win, plain and simple. They'll fight for a long time, taking out a few of the PCs, but in the end they will fail. Everything else comes from that basic assumption

 

[kigmatzomat]

Kigmat: I think Morrus realises that he can kill them all if he tries, but he doesn't want to kill them all. It is clear that the NPCs involved are smart and powerful enough that they should win, period. However, when we are done, they aren't going to win, plain and simple. They'll fight for a long time, taking out a few of the PCs, but in the end they will fail. Everything else comes from that basic assumption

I grok his motivations but I could never run a game the way Morrus does. A session or two but not an entire campaign. I doff my hat to anyone who can routinely start scenarios with no clear plans on how to handle things. You are a maestro of improvisation.

To me cause follows effect, even in seting up a game. The NPCs do {X} because Y, where {X} is a set of reasonable actions given Y, the motivation and current conditions. The one action X that suits the GMs goals most is chosen. For a specific action, X, you can derive motivations, {Y}. There are usually more variations of causes {Y} for a given result X than there are results {X} for a given Y since people with diferent motivation often choose similar, if not identical, solutions.

If this were the King & Queen's first appearance we could work backwards to an acceptable start but that took me to the "double" scenario that's already been used. This means we have a history, both with the King and the Queen, along with some form of plan between them that risked the Queen's phylactery. (Or managed to fool a paladin into believing his god said it was the Queen's phylactery)

Obviously there's some motivations there that I'm not privy to. I'm not going to clutter the board with tangential arguements but without knowing what the characters goals are I've got nothing to offer. I'm sure Morrus can wing something on his own, he's obviously quite adept at it, but I'm also sure that posters other than myself could come up with more tailored ideas if they had the King & Queen's information.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I think any more advice I give will have to be predicated on how far you are willing to go against the PCs.

It seems that the true nature of this thread is less "Help me kill Darmanicus and Friends!" and more "Help my NPCs live long enough to scare Darmanicus and Friends, and post a lot so it scares them that you're giving me killer advice, making their victory all the more sweet," which is an excellent goal, but needs to be understood by all here if true.

As it stands, we can at least help survive the initial onslaught. If they have Forcecage available, they will probably target the most powerful character who they don't think can just Dimension Door out of it, in another words the Slaad King. So make sure that he can Dimension Door out or Disintegrate it, or else he's archer meat. As for Maze, there's nothing to do against that but hope for good rolls on the Intelligence check.

Spells like that aside, let's try to guess what they are likely to do:

The cleric will no doubt be healing, using the Telepathic Link thing (is it a Greater Status?) and his ranged healing abilities. He needs to die or be taken out of the fight, or else nothing else matters much.

Barring Forcecage and the like, the two casters are going to try to hit multiple targets with Area Effect spells.

Then the super-buffed archer, kensai, and paladin will try to beat the living snot out of the lich-queen.

I would say that the best way to shake them up a bit but still let them live would be to kill off the cleric and take down the casters before they can effectively deal with crowd control.
This forces the party to reimprovise, wading through the minions with the melees and archer (who can only target one opponent at a time).
Since they are superbuffed, they will probably win in their fight against the minions. At this point, once they kill either the King or the Queen, have the other run away (unless there's only one badly-injured PC left or something). The PCs are probably in no condition to fight the last remaining big baddy, but its best for such a powerful NPC not to risk the chance, plus it gives them a break to collect the fallen and heal (something smart enemies wouldn't allow, but you probably should just to be nice to the players).

 

[Morrus]

I think any more advice I give will have to be predicated on how far you are willing to go against the PCs.

It seems that the true nature of this thread is less "Help me kill Darmanicus and Friends!" and more "Help my NPCs live long enough to scare Darmanicus and Friends, and post a lot so it scares them that you're giving me killer advice, making their victory all the more sweet," which is an excellent goal, but needs to be understood by all here if true.

I'd hoped I'd been clear about my goals several times over in this thread, but I guess I haven't been clear enough.

I don't need help killing PCs. That's easy - I'm the DM. "You see 20 epic tarasque-lich-dragons"; I mean, killing PCs is the easiest thing in the world. "You're dead".

What I want to do is run a memorable, fun, challenging encounter - that, I think, should be the standard goal of any DM and, one would assume, implicit in any thread like this unless specifically stated otherwise.

Anyway, if I haven't been clear, I apologise.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I'd hoped I'd been clear about my goals several times over in this thread, but I guess I haven't been clear enough.

I don't need help killing PCs. That's easy - I'm the DM. "You see 20 epic tarasque-lich-dragons"; I mean, killing PCs is the easiest thing in the world. "You're dead".

What I want to do is run a memorable, fun, challenging encounter - that, I think, should be the standard goal of any DM and, one would assume, implicit in any thread like this unless specifically stated otherwise.

Anyway, if I haven't been clear, I apologise.

That's what I gathered from your last post, but others basically got the opinion that once you set the stage with reasonable NPCs (i.e. not 20 epic tarasque-etc), it then became open season for playing the smartest possible tactics for each NPC (perhaps deadly), as long as the initial enemies were fair opponents (a la kigmat's X follows Y approach or the people suggesting that "A 25th-level lich would never allow it to come to this unless she was sure of her victory, so let's give her a reason to be sure.").

I think you've been quite clear by now about this, perhaps it is people who read the thread's title and not the content up to this point who are the most misled? Anyhow, based on your preferences, I think we should turn our attention to protecting the NPCs from being slaughtered rather than offensive strategies. For an ideal protracted fight where the bad guys lose, they are going to need to play very defensively (otherwise they will either kill everyone or be killed very quickly).

I've already listed a few options so far. Any other ideas guys?

 

[Rystil Arden]

Hmm, after 89 posts of thinking they were fighting Githyanki, the Diviner pops up and says "It has just come to my attention that the creatures we are fighting are not Githyanki, they are Githzerai." I nominate him for the "read this thread" award.

 

[Kaodi]

A Little Surprise

Morrus, how would you feel about giving the Githzerai Queen or the Slaadi King an item, perhaps a minor artifact, that has this little ability I just thought of: to inflict -2 str, -2 dex in temporary ability damage on any character that is affected by a conjuration (healing) spell (or just a healing ability of any kind if you prefer), with no save, no resistance. The logic being that this item in effect makes the spell draw out some of the characters own body mass and energy to affect repairs. I don't believe that this kind of thing would be overwhelmingly powerful, but it would be hard for the players to counter the full effects, unless there is some sort of mass lesser restoration spell I don't know about.

 

[Navar]

We want to know how this turns out btw morrus so keep up posted.

 

[Sir ThornCrest]

leave the pc's to rely on their feats, tactics, skills & tenacity...remove everyone’s ability to use magic via anti magic shell...something this room generates 1 time per round on its init....

The players or the Slaad king may use dispel once a round and hope they beat the init of the room to cast...there for you have a tactically challenging environment. A room that’s gonna suck your spells forcing you to beat initiative and waste a dispel magic every round. Team work tactics & initiative all of a sudden are more important (they must time attacks and actions with each other) Greater dispel is a waste because the room will generate another anti magic field on the next round. The Queens guards are 15th Monks/a few levels of Devoted Defender; they will take the damage for her. Then heal it hopefully...either way they will have a high initiative and will strike out at those trying to cast spells at the queen....this will definately test the concentration of any casters...the Monks will leave the 20’ radius around the Queen for no other reason. The Monks will all have snatch arrow ability.

And a very simple thing to jack with the players, the 3 Monks are wearing special slippers, why because the flooring within 20’ of the Queen is slicked with grease on a marble floor, all but impossible for anyone else to gain footing and attack in same round reflex save 17 plus circumstance bonus of 4 because of the marble surface = DC21reflex you can raise or lower saying it’s a high level rogue grease trap or it’s the simple spell grease via the Queen. Most people entering this area will find themselves prone and getting smacked by monks with bonuses accordingly.

Having to spend a full round getting to your feat is definitely not fun....the Monks may even shuffle board players out of the radius, or just keep tripping them and kicken the crap out of them and the salad that enter...

Thorncrest