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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 8389505" data-attributes="member: 20323">I ran Acererak for a party of 4 very experienced players with 12th or 13th level PCs, more magic than typical, good builds, and both Artus & Dragonbait as allies. One PC was shoved into lava, Artus was knocked unconscious over lava and fell to his death, and Dragonbait died to finger of death (becoming a powered-up zombie).My approach included a couple things:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I ran the Sewn Sisters > Atropal > Acererak as a sort of running battle, no rests.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Instead of having Acererak arrive when the Soulmonger and Atropal were destroyed, I had him arrive when either the Soulmonger or the Atropal were destroyed. In our case that meant they  had a last round of combat with Atropal that overlapped with first round of combat with Acererak.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I interpreted Acererak's legendary actions to allow him to upcast animate dead as a Legendary Action – this just made sense given all those skeletons in northern alcoves, and a way to pay off the overwhelming ossuary motif of the Tomb. I had these skeletons focus on Grappling (and dragging into lava), Shoving (into lava), and trying to break concentration of spellcasters – they never made normal attacks.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I had the lich phylacteries be an expendable resource for Acererak that he could "burn" to activate Legendary Resistance or to slightly modify his spells (e.g. extending range on animate dead to be able to reach the northern alcoves). I kind of foreshadowed that and was more lenient on the phylacteries being destroyable, so that players could choose to target the phylacteries if they wished.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Developed about 6 rounds worth of strategy focusing on creative use of Acererak's spell list as written.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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