ORCUS! EXCLUSIVE! ESCAPIST!

The Escapist has an awesome preview of Orcus himself! And by preview, I mean the stats -- along with some background features for Out of the Abyss. He's a CR 26 monster, wielding his famous wand. Also interesting his the quote from Chris Perkins, who clarified that the PCs would not fight him directly, but that "Fortunately, Out of the Abyss gives characters the chance to amass a small army and also turn the demon lords against one another, thus weakening them. There are also a couple other ways to banish the demon lords back to the Abyss, which is the party's ultimate goal."

For more, click on either of the images below! For tons more Out of the Abyss coverage, click here! It comes out September 15th (or the 4th in preferred stores - that's next Friday!)

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[Grazzt]

Orcus is a fat pig.

Graz'zt is a sexy bro.

Team Graz'zt!!

Agreed.

 

[Grazzt]

Juiblex is correct. I said it incorrectly for 25 or 30 years. Most of us have. Paizo decided to go with the more common and incorrect Jubilex which I think is kinda funny. Maybe to avoid IP issues? IDK.

We did it in Tome that way on purpose. No IP issues IIR. We had permission as he was on the list of 1e/2e stuff we asked to convert and OGC.

 

[Queer Venger]

Agreed.

(Bows)

 

[MonsterEnvy]

We did it in Tome that way on purpose. No IP issues IIR. We had permission as he was on the list of 1e/2e stuff we asked to convert and OGC.

Sadly it caused much confusion.

 

[charcoalninja]

Admitting a mistake on the internet? I'll give you props for that



I still disagree. I find it extremely implausible that Orcus would be fought without an escort of really powerful undead with him. All those undead and Orcus have to do is get PCs below 100 hp and *pop* *pop* *pop*. They all die. Without saves. By the time the party can get to him, it might only be just one PC who can attack him. And one PC can't do 450hp of damage in a round. A monster doesn't have to have a lot of hp when it's near impossible to attack him. You gotta figure half the party might be incapacitated right off the bat between his undead minions' special powers (elder mummy, lich, etc) that require tough saves every round.

Ultimately, I guess we'll find out tomorrow when I read the encounter

I'm not saying he won't have a powerful undead escort, I'm just saying that the moment the party sees his squishy carcass they're going to focus fire the big guy, ignoring the minions until big O is put down (which won't take long). At some point in the combat, and I argue it'll be really quickly since Orcus is HUGE and has 0 abilities to protect or hide himself, each member of the party will make an attack on him, and if they do 405hp is going to go away very quickly.

As written he is utterly dependant on the proper selection of minions in order to ensure that he doesn't get the piss kicked out of him embarassingly, especially if the DM makes the mistake of burning his 500hp summon on a huge mass of weak undead that get blasted into dust on the cleric's next action. I like his minionmancy, I like his offense and the interplay with his mechanics, I just feel that DMs are going to be frustrated that they only get 2-3 rounds to actually PLAY this demonlord since he's going to get ganked in short order.

 

[Zaukrie]

Will he be in his lair in this adventure?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Will he be in his lair in this adventure?

He apparently only gets a mention or cameo.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

All those undead and Orcus have to do is get PCs below 100 hp and *pop* *pop* *pop*. They all die. Without saves. By the time the party can get to him, it might only be just one PC who can attack him. And one PC can't do 450hp of damage in a round. A monster doesn't have to have a lot of hp when it's near impossible to attack him. You gotta figure half the party might be incapacitated right off the bat between his undead minions' special powers (elder mummy, lich, etc) that require tough saves every round.

The undead minions will be the real problem. The "no saves if you're below 100 HP" aspect isn't an insurmountable problem. If the PCs have done their research (big "if" at some tables) and know what they're facing, you can negate PWK with any of the following:

1.) Death Ward in advance to negate PWK completely.
2.) Aid V or better in advance (for 25+ HP) + Mass Heal during combat, in order to not be below 100 HP.
3.) Counterspell during combat. Lore Bard with Enhance Ability (Charisma) will succeed 78.5% of the time according to my Monte Carlo sim.
4.) Readied action: Revivify to bring killed character back to life at 1 HP.

Honestly I think #1 would be more than sufficient. If Orcus is burning an action to cast PWK, and it does absolutely nothing, that's a win for the PCs. He can try again next round and maybe succeed (if the PC is still below 100 HP), if no one Counterspells him, but if he does so, yet another character can just Revivify that PC. Frankly that looks to me almost less effective than just relying on direct attacks like his mighty tail, which doesn't have to play the HP-guessing game.

(BTW, remember to pre-cast Protection From Poison on everybody to cut down on his tail attack's poison damage.)

IMO, Orcus's stats are weak, not so much from an in-combat perspective as from an RP perspective. As a combat threat I'm fine with him, but he's just kind of boring and gear-dependent, especially outside of combat. That doesn't mean I wouldn't use him, as a DM--it means that I wouldn't respect him, as a PC. He's just a gigantic one-trick-pony Demon Lord who can't even teleport. The only thing he's got that truly scares me is probably an unintended loophole: it's the fact that the 500 HP of summoned undead have no duration, so apparently he can conjure infinite numbers of liches over time, and liches do scare me since they're wizards like me, when they've had time to think and prepare. Edit: I just checked the DMG, and it's not accidental. Infinite liches is deliberate. Huh.

What really scares me is a wizard who's owned a Tome of Clear Thought for 10,000 of the last 25,000 years.

 

[Ristamar]

I don't understand the big fuss regarding his hit points. 30 hit dice is nothing to sneeze at, and the stat block lists the average roll for his hit dice like any other creature. If you want him or the other demon lords to be beefier, just give them the max.

I'd like to see some small, confident groups of PCs play out and upload a 2-3 round "Orcus Takedown" while he's run by a ruthless DM. I get the feeling it won't go as expected.

"Everybody has a plan 'til they get punched in the mouth."

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'd like to see some small, confident groups of PCs play out and upload a 2-3 round "Orcus Takedown" while he's run by a ruthless DM. I get the feeling it won't go as expected.

There are a fair number of "ruthless DMs" out there whose idea of "ruthless" is to change the stats and/or the rules. Even you yourself just suggested arbitrarily increasing Orcus's HP. You'd need to get a DM who is good at being ruthless within the constraints imposed by RAW--and even then there is some question about what exactly he can do in his Time Stop. (Clearly, casting Animate Dead counts as affecting another creature/object and ends the Time Stop, but what about conjuring undead with the wand?)

If I were the DM in question, I'd make sure his temple is a messy, corpse-filled, debris-strewn rubble-palace and lean heavily on Orcus's flight and on total/partial cover. The PCs are the ones under time pressure because Orcus is animating ghouls constantly and PWKing from afar, all while his booming laughter echoes from the temple. If they don't think to Locate Creature or Locate Object (Wand of Orcus), they'll be hard-pressed to prevent him from picking off the rearguard. If he does engage the rearguard, it will be while they are already fighting a dozen ghouls, and he'll use his "skeletal arms" lair action to isolate the rearguard from support while his Creeping Death legendary action and Finger of Death + Taste of Undeath kills some hapless PC and turns it into a zombie. If the PCs survives (maybe thanks to Death Ward) then the lair action next turn gets dedicated to PWKing them. Then next round Orcus retreats behind total cover... and then back onto a prepared position with 3/4 cover, a few dozen corpses, and a lich (for Dispel Magic/Counterspell/Fireball IX), a demilich, and a death tyrant. (To make this fun I'll assume that Orcus doesn't have any pre-summoned undead for some reason--these are all undead that he summoned just now during the combat.) If things go sour for Orcus (low on HP, surrounded) he will use Time Stop to get out of combat, leaving his minions behind.

That will be the plan anyway. There are things PCs could do to mess up the plan[1] because it's a pretty narrow plan without a lot of contingencies; we'd have to see if they actually did so. But if they win it would feel like they had earned it.

[1] I.e. Pass Without Trace almost certainly kills Orcus's cat-and-mouse game because he has to get within 120' to see them, to say nothing of Etherealness. And Locate Object turns cat-and-mouse on its head.