Succubus Boss Fight - Finished(?) Product!

[Trit One-Ear]

Hey all,

Due to an amazing string of bad luck and schedule conflicts, my group has yet to tackle the Succubus boss fight many of you helped me design. The silver lining of this is I've been able to polish it up a bit more before we play. I wanted to put my design out there one last time for folks to pick apart, so I'm 100% confident when I run it this Sunday. My players are all itching to play after almost two months of downtime, poised right before the epic conclusion, so I want to make it memorable.

First off, thanks again for everyone who helped me on my last thread!

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The heroes have stormed a city under siege, fought off cultists and devils, all to reach the central citadel of the city. Bursting through the throne room doors, they find the Duke and his advisors in a tense meeting. The heroes are able to identify which of the advisors is the Succubus they've been hunting. After a brief opportunity to roleplay (a Skill Challenge I'll more or less make up on the fly, with some substantial benefits if they're able to break the Succubus' hold on the Duke), we begin!

Stage 1
The Succubus commands her Cambion mooks, disguised as the City Guard, to apprehend the heroes. The guards engage the heroes, attempting to keep them from the Duke and his Council (one of which has allied himself with the heroes). 5 guards form a wall, but I expect this will be broken. When the players reach the Succubus, the Duke intervenes, forcing the heroes to either attack him or allow him to strike at them again and again. The Succubus uses wizard-sytle spells, some damage and some control, in line with her appearance as the Duke's Arcane Advisor. Fairly straight forward, this stage ends either when all the guards are defeated, or when the Succubus' health is drained to 2/3 her total health (effectively killing this monster stat block).

 

[Trit One-Ear]

Stage 2
Seeing the heroes will evade the attempted arrest, the Succubus reveals her true form, thinking she's playing her trump card. The tapestries on the walls all burn up, revealing portals to four of the different Hells. From the portals, a stream 3 appropriately themed minions emerges. A blast 5 zone in front of each portal also becomes afflicted with some bleedoff of the Hell's specific energy. The Succubus disappears into one portal, and emerges every other turn afterwards to strike at heroes within range of them. Any successful attacks against her reward one success towards closing the portal she just emerged from (2 successes on a substantial hit or a crit). Heroes can make skill checks/attacks/spend surges to attempt to close each portal, 3 successes needed to close one. This stage completes when the heroes have closed 3 of the 4 portals.

I'll spare you the minions' stat blocks because they're simple, but here's the basics:

Avernus Portal - Blast 5 zone: Healing surge values are reduced by half.
Devils: Legion Devil Grunts (basic damaging minion with short range teleport).
Stygian Portal - Blast 5 zone: Difficult terrain (does not affect the devils)
Devils: Stygian Skulkers (-2 to attacks next round after killing one in melee).
Phlegethos Portal - Blast 5 zone: 1d6 fire damage starting your turn in the zone (again, does not affect the devils).
Devils: Burning Devils (5 fire damage explosion on death).
Malbolge Portal - Blast 5 zone: -2 to AC while in the zone (corrosive cloud).
Devils: Bats of Malbolge (simple flying minions, hard to lock down).

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[Trit One-Ear]

Stage 3

As the last Portal begins to close, the Succubus sees her escape route closing. Leaping through before it vanishes, both she and the players are shocked when she is expelled in a erruption of fire. A soft but firm female voice echoes from within "No, Elspeth, you are not welcome to return. Not until you have proved to me you are not a failure. Do what I have charged you with. Bring me souls... starting with theirs."
Trapped, Elspeth attempts one large mental suggestion: SLEEP. As everyone around her succumbs to the power of her mind, she is amazed to see the heroes resist. A ritual, completed by the Head Librarian before the assault, has protected the heroes from the majority of her power. However, with the strength of this assault, the protection of the ritual has been expended.
This last stage has Elspeth fighting like a cornered beast, lashing out with her whip to great effect. Pulling enemies in close to seduce them, causing them to attack their allies, flitting around the room. I expect this phase will be fairly short lived, but with lots of friendly fire and a satisfaction watching Elspeth fall that will not be soon forgotten.

This is the stat block I most need advice on. I simplified her a lot from my initial ideas, but want to make sure I've struck the good balance between brutal-solo-fight and devastating TPK (while avoiding any element of grind).

Thank you again for all and any help! I'll be sure to let everyone know how it went!

Trit

 

[Trit One-Ear]

For those interested, here's a quick recap of the Boss fight from a few weeks ago.

Things were very successful, and all involved had a lto of fun. Depite a high amount of damage being dished out, I really got a good view of how durable the players now are. I think I'll be stepping up my game in the future

After a impromtu roleplay/skill challenge section to start us off, in which the players used Magic, divine powers and reason to try and free the Duke from the Succubus' influence. With a decent number of successes they were able wake the Duke up enough to have him fight for control. He was essentially paralyzed, but removed from the combat.

Stage 1 was fairly straight forward. The heroes engaged the Cambion guards and ignored the Succubus hiding in the background. The guards dealt a decent amount of fire damage, though focused mostly on the Cleric who charged forth. Killing the last Cambion, the Cleric cast a daily which raised the Cambion from the dead to aid the heroes in Stage 2.

Stage 2 made things much more interesting. As the portals opened and minions began pushing forth, the ranger activated a her daily Spitting Cobra Stance, allowing her to make basic ranged attacks against anything within 5 squares that moved closer to her. Quickly learning defeating the minions as an easy way to close the portals without being overrun. I was slightly disappointed no one tried to make skill checks to close portals as well, but having them track down certain minion types across the board to close one portal first, while dancing from zone to zone to mitigate their effect was exciting. The dominated dead Cambion helped hold off a few waves, while the remaining friendly NPC took a few out as well.

I cut Stage 2 slightly short as we were running a little close on time for our session. After closing 3 portals, I moved us on to the last stage. The intevention of the Succubus' Dark Mistress got a satisfying rise from the players, who gleefully reveled in seeing their nemesis trapped before them.

Stage 3 was a touch shorter than I had hoped, but with all guns pointed directly at the Succbus I didn't expect her to last too long. She moved around the battlefield, escaping the Palading and Monk to grab the Ranger. Her Suggestive Whispers got several PC's to hit each other, and the Wizard drilled the grappled Ranger with a Magic Missle. I probably gave the players too much information up front about how often the Succubus could avoid damage (once a round) but they were sufficently annoyed with her for my design.
The largest problem I had was how often the Succubus missed with her mind-control power. Betewen having to hit the heroe, and then rolling to hit with their attack (even with a +2 bonus) there was a decent amount of time her attacks just missed. Mostly I felt this was due to poor rolling.

All in all, a very fun session, and satisfying end to the long adventure. Thanks to all those who helped me prep this; my players had a blast. Next time, I'll aim to be deadlier .

Trit

 

[Storminator]

I've taken to using this math http://dmg42.blogspot.com/2012/02/boot-on-face-of-level-1-damage-forever.html for my monsters. It's a pretty good pile of damage, and my 12th level PCs are feeling the sting.

PS

 

[Kinak]

Glad to hear this worked out. Looks like a fun fight

Cheers!
Kinak