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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5256295" data-attributes="member: 61155">I think your approach can definitely work. I ran a combat that was very similar, conceptually, to this design. Not sure how much this info will be of use (since instead of a hitpoint shield, I instead had a 'skill challenge' shield, and instead of monsters with minion hp and standard damage, I just had a mixed group of minions and standard monsters being summoned.) However, hopefully it is close enough to give you some idea how things might play out... The party had been chasing after this enemy, who had found the resting place of Tenebrous and was draining the last godly power from the vestige. (An act that, ironically, would lead his lord, a Primordial, to eventually try and awaken the Elder Elemental Eye and claim/free the power of Tharizdun...) In any case, the party finally gets to him and he is in the midst of working some grand planar ritual - and surrounded by several magical portals. One to the Shadowfell, one to the Elemental Chaos, one to the Abyss, and one to the Material World. One surrounded him on each side, preventing any attacks from directly getting to him - they had to weaken each portal, and when the final one was weakened, all of them would collapse and they could fight him directly (a high-level Elite.) Alternatively, they could try and enter through the portal, fight across whatever realm it led to, and come out on the other side with him - but the party didn't make any attempt to do so.  Meanwhile, each portal summoned monsters through the combat. Each round one portal would produce a standard monster, and the others would produce minions. They could disable each portal through a short skill challenge (and any successes could prevent a monster from being summoned that round). In addition, they realized that throwing something anathema to the portal into it could help shut it down. (So they had recently passed through a room with a mindflayer corpse - someone ran back, grabbed it, and hurled it into the portal to the natural world for several automatic successes.) It worked out relatively well - the portals weren't too hard to overcome, but the PCs were enraged by their inability to get to this adversary as he hurled attacks and insults against them. Those who wanted to work on using skills could try and disable the portals, those who just liked to hack things up could fight it out with the various monsters being summoned, and those who wanted to be creative could try and find the appropriate items that would help shut down the portals.  Eventually, they went down, and he was quickly overwhelmed.</blockquote>

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