Any brilliant tactical suggestions?

[Rackhir]

The characters in question are here.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/plots-places/182305-rogues-gallery-shilsens-saturday-story-hour.html

In short, we are all 16th lv, there's a highly custom Alienist/Wiz (summoning focused), Two highly custom Druids, a Pal/Cleric/Silverflame Exorcist and a Scout who specializes in defense.

We are assaulting an underground Ziggurat, that was the site of our greatest battle and one we survived by the skin of our teeth.

That is here.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/3967881-post727.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/3967881-post728.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/3967881-post727.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/3967881-post730.html

The last one describes the fight at the Ziggurat.

We are going back to destroy the Ziggurat and have good reason to expect that things are going to be much tougher this time around.

We have managed to persuade a Planetar to assist us in the assault. He'll have barkskin and mage armor, in addition to it's normal buffs. He has domains of War and Destruction.

There will also be 6 Blackscale (some sort of half-fiend/half dragon Lizard men) they hit hard, but are (relatively) fragile (no more than 6 hd IIRC). They will be buffed with Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, Barkskin and mage armor.

The current plan is basically this.

Conjure 6-10 huge Air elementals with extended SM VII and SNA VIIs. Use an extended Haste on them and the blackscales. They will tear through the passages to the cavern at max speed, the air elementals will use the whirlwind to pick up and carry along any creatures they are able to, that they encounter. They can only do that for 8 rnds and it will take roughly 20 rnds (of the 32 they last) to get to the cavern, so they may "hand off" any captives to the next elemental. Any with still running or available whirlwinds will then do their best to vacuum up anything they can in the cavern, dumping them off at the top of the cavern (roughly 200') up, while the blackscales and the other elementals head for the ziggurat.

One of the blackscales will have an invisibility potion running in order to trigger the dispel magic pillars, so none of the elementals will be dispelled.

They will then assault the Ziggurat and attempt to kill as much as they can, before vanishing or being killed.

Nameless will have "Chain of Eyes" (let's you see through the eyes of a creature and passing it on to anything it touches) on one of the elementals to observe how it goes and gather information.

The point of this is to get them to trigger and use their buffs, before we go in with the Planetar and a bunch more summoned elementals. We are going to be using Korm's Aspect of the Delver ability, along with Find the Path, to tunnel into the top of the cavern right on top of the Ziggurat. We'll then
"drop in" and begin the actual assault.

The main question is the timing of the main assault, should we wait like 20 min for the 1 min lvl buffs to wear off or try and wait like 3 hrs for the 10 min lvl spells to wear off.

If anyone has some ideas/suggestions for tactics as well I'm all ears.

We are fairly certain that there is a pseudonatural tendriculos. A divination we did said

"The primary defenders of the ziggurat are veiled from divination by its power, as you are from them. But they expect your coming, just as you know they await you. Outside the ziggurat, giant and dwarf, beast and weed, are ready to defend it. Use your allies and minions to clear you a way to the ziggurat, and husband your strength, since you will need all your might to prevail."

We have a Staff of the Woodlands we'll use to summon 4 more huge elementals just before the main assault.

My Mage will have a Globe of Invulnerability running.

Hopefully the Planetar will put up a Holy Aura (+4 saves/AC, SR25).

 

[javcs]

Ya know what's bad for buildings? Underground or otherwise? Earthquakes.
If there are tunnels beneath part of the Ziggurat, assuming you catch a decent sized chunk of it, and you bring those tunnels supporting part of the ziggurat down, well, that's even more structural damage.

If you can manage it - get a scroll or two (the more the merrier) of Elemental Swarm.
Blistering Radiance, from the Spell compendium, auto-dazzle plus fire damage in a 50ft radius at long range, lasts 1 round/level.
Soften Earth and Stone on the cavern ceiling.

Depending on how far underground it is, you could try to bring the ceiling down.
Alternatively, if there's a watersource nearby - use spells and such to redirect it into the ziggurat chamber, which would need to be sealed - and then just pour in the water, via various means. Including Control Water, Dust of Dryness (used to absorb water already).
Ask the DM what happens when you hold open a Gate to the Elemental Plane of Water for as long as possible. Granted, you'd need it as a scroll or something, but nonetheless, it would be an effective means of flooding the cavern, the DM permitting.

 

[azhrei_fje]

Sounds like it'll be fun.

My Mage will have a Globe of Invulnerability running.

You do realize that in 3.x, globe of invulnerability is immobile, right? Just wanted to make sure you don't go running in thinking that the globe was going to follow you!

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

Doesnt look like anyone there is capable of casting Ice Assassin from Frost Burn. I'd wait the 8 hours it takes to cast it and make a God. If your DM is that nice of course. Though Im not looking up the particulars of it, but still. Worth looking into.

 

[moritheil]

I'm still scratching my head at all the air elementals - I realize that whirlwind form is neat, but underground, earth elementals are where it's at. You could seriously undermine the foundations of the ziggeraut without even needing to fight all the defenders, as long as you send dozens of earth elementals in.

As for the planetar, I wouldn't risk him up front until you have to - keep him around as a roving medic/summoner/dispeller. Get as many of those high level spells as you can out of him before putting him in danger. 133 hps (going from the entry) is not much for a combatant at 16th level - one disintegrate and he's gone, or one round of full attacks. You'll have to assume they have whatever it takes to ignore his DR and whatever it takes to hit him most of the time.

Overall, though - you're taking captives, getting your allies killed, etc - and for what? Just lay siege to the place and take it apart one brick at a time with conjured earth elementals, for as long as it takes. Do you actually need these aberrations alive? Why not just bury the entire place and pick off whoever comes up for air? Hell, if that won't do it, at 16th level you can buy or conjure enough lamp oil to flood the entire place and just set fire to it. Do the earth elemental thing and then do this to off whoever survives being crushed. Don't go in and fight on their terms.

 

[Rackhir]

We had to destroy the Ziggurat, the building it's self. Not flood it or bury it. Make the building go away.

The Ziggurat also had 5' thick walls that were at least as hard as adamantite, meaning each 5' block had something on the order of 2400 HP. So Earthquake which is only going to do 100 hp per casting was going to be essentially ineffective and would in fact take something on the order of a week of us using all of our 8th level spell slots from the druids casting it, in order to bring it down.

We wound up buying a staff of Transmutation, which could do 16 Disintegrates before running dry, plus those from my mage would have been sufficient to wreck it.

The point of sending in the air elementals was to get them to use their buff spells up. Earth elementals wouldn't last long enough to get to the ziggurat and given the DR of adamantite, they would inflict negligible damage on it.

It turned out to be pointless anyway since despite us all being mind blanked, they somehow knew to the round when we were going to be entering the cavern.

We had no access to 9th lvl spells other than what the Planetar had. Or books like Frostburn.

 

[moritheil]

We had to destroy the Ziggurat, the building it's self. Not flood it or bury it. Make the building go away.

Maybe I didn't understand your initial objective statement, then. How is burying it and drowning/incinerating the survivors materially different from dismantling it?

The Ziggurat also had 5' thick walls that were at least as hard as adamantite, meaning each 5' block had something on the order of 2400 HP. So Earthquake which is only going to do 100 hp per casting was going to be essentially ineffective and would in fact take something on the order of a week of us using all of our 8th level spell slots from the druids casting it, in order to bring it down.

Okay, that would have been helpful to know before I suggested earth elementals to undermine the foundations If you don't tell us this stuff, we can't account for it.

We wound up buying a staff of Transmutation, which could do 16 Disintegrates before running dry, plus those from my mage would have been sufficient to wreck it.

Not bad.

The point of sending in the air elementals was to get them to use their buff spells up. Earth elementals wouldn't last long enough to get to the ziggurat and given the DR of adamantite, they would inflict negligible damage on it.

Again, you didn't tell us that the entire structure was essentially made of adamantine - that is a very unusual detail - and it wasn't possible to guess that you specifically required the facility dismantled as opposed to inaccessible and unusable. Therefore what appeared to us to be easy paths to victory were shut off, but we didn't know that.

I hope after you won you carved out blocks to sell! You'll be rich!

 

[Rackhir]

Maybe I didn't understand your initial objective statement, then. How is burying it and drowning/incinerating the survivors materially different from dismantling it?

It is the BUILDING we needed to make go away. Not the creatures defending it. It is some sort of a gate to Xoriat and as long as it is in EXISTENCE, it is a dire threat.

Okay, that would have been helpful to know before I suggested earth elementals to undermine the foundations If you don't tell us this stuff, we can't account for it.

Again, you didn't tell us that the entire structure was essentially made of adamantine - that is a very unusual detail - and it wasn't possible to guess that you specifically required the facility dismantled as opposed to inaccessible and unusable. Therefore what appeared to us to be easy paths to victory were shut off, but we didn't know that.

It was actually referenced in the SH link, but I was really looking more for clever spell combinations or tactics for HL characters to use in combat, than suggestions on how to destroy the ziggurat. I had a plan for that.

None of it really matters, any way. We lost.