Combat Balance question regarding Bastion of Broken Souls (Spoiler Alert)

[ThirdWizard]

My vote is to replace blasphemy with some other SLA, perhaps destruction. Alternately, you could make his fear radius have some extra effect, such as a Heightened bestow curse or toned down blasphemy effects. Then use bardic knowledge, gather info, or whatever for the PCs to discover that he's different if you want to warn them that he isn't a normal half-fiend dragon.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I do not see any necessity in using or strictly adhering to the Half-Fiend template. Any Great Wyrm is awesome enough in its own right. Does it really need substantial enhancement?

"My Jedi players are going up against the Death Star. But I do not want them to fight any old boring Death Star. This one is badass, so I am applying the Half-Fiend template. Now I am worried that that a 6666 HD Death Star might cause a TPK when it uses Blasphemy."

I am all for tweaking monsters to give them more personality, and I think that borrowing a few Fiendish and Half-Fiend abilities is a fine idea. Do not feel restricted to using all the abilities in any template.

If you really want to go the route of Half-Fiend, I would replace Blashephemy with something like Dominate Monster.

 

[frankthedm]

Killing thing no-save based on "caster level" is a pretty unfair thing IMHO. Characters have several ways to pump those cruely high.

 

[Victim]

In 3.0, the dragon's caster level for Blasphemy was largely irrelevant, since the spell effect was based on static HD, not HD in relation to caster level. Just use the old Blasphemy, not the new one.

 

[Infiniti2000]

In 3.0, the dragon's caster level for Blasphemy was largely irrelevant, since the spell effect was based on static HD, not HD in relation to caster level. Just use the old Blasphemy, not the new one.

The old one is completely useless beyond a certain level.

 

[Bad Paper]

Shin Okada, I sympathize with your plight. I have dragged my party through the entire adventure path, and this weekend we will put the final nails in Imperagon's coffin (Lord of the Iron Fortress). The Bastion has been bothering me for exactly the CR29 reason.

I'm going to send my PCs through a slightly beefier Harrowing (Monte Cook's Dungeon adventure from years ago) just to inflate their levels a little bit. I want to be sure that they're 20th (they are five 16th-level PCs now) before their audience with Ashardalon. I've managed to kill two of them per adventure. Considering the consequences of death in the Bastion, I don't want any whining when the inevitable catches up with them.

I thought that the feeling of the greater ENWorld community was that Silence is too powerful as written and it's really subject to Will saves and spell resistance and all that happy crap. Here, you guys are saying that it's a legitimate defense against Blasphemy. So which is it?

I have considered tweaking Ashy to the hilt. There was recently an article on the WotC site about changing the fiendish and half-fiend templates, but I can't find it. At any rate, I am going to make him absolutely insane with SLAs pulled from Spell Compendium and the other books. As long as Blasphemy is stupidly broken, I'll just change it.

I haven't looked at his other powers. I imagine Ashy will be the second-to-last NPC I convert, and it will take a week to do. And then there's the issue of the symbiont, heh.

EDIT: aha. here: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=150446 So without Patryn in this thread, Silence appears to work as written. OK, yay. I like the spell that way. All it really does is force you to move (unless you are actually a target).

 

[IndyPendant]

Shin, you could perhaps keep the dragon as-is, blasphemy included--if you hint the players somehow that they will face a CL40 Blasphemy-every-round attack.

A group of 20th level chars should easily be able to keep the Blasphemy from affecting them, forewarned.

It's the epic, final battle of an arc of ?8? modules. The PCs *should* be quaking in their boots at the very idea of facing Ashardalon.

Keep it in, I say. Just give the PCs hints, and let them work around it.

 

[Sejs]

Easy answer to the Blasphemy question: make some of his minions neutral, so that they'd be hit by the spell as well and he's not terribly keen on shooting himself in the foot.

And the Blasphemy isn't at will. It's once per day.

 

[Solarious]

Characters worth any part of their weight in 20 character levels will have performed divinations as to the nature of Ashadaron, and perhaps garnered some advice. I believe that the module requires a player to be a heir of Dydd, no? Using him/her as a focus to peer into the past to see what Dydd do to prepare against Ashadaron (or better yet, try to petition Dydd him/her?self) might gift your players with the knowledge to prepare Greater Spell Immunity keyed to Blasphemy and other deadly spells, or utilize the Soulfire enhancement found in the Book of Exalted deeds. A Cleric might cast Spell Resistance and beef up the caster level with a Bead of Karma to give a sporting chance. Silence is good, as noted.

Or, perhaps you might instead grant Ashadaron levels in the same prestige class that is named for this module, the Disciple of Ashadaron found in the Draconomicon. The flavour would be terribly ironic.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Just remove blasphemy. It's a stupid spell, anyway.

Geoff.