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

[Nail]

Really, it *is* difficult to DM high-level play....but you don't have to gimp your players to be a successful high-level DM. You just have to play your high-level NPCs with the same degree of knowledge and ruthlessness.

On a previous note: I get why Ashardalon has a fiendish jist, but I don't get why they used the half-fiend template to do it. It seems to me that a better approach would be (spoiler text)

Spoiler

to play the symbiotic demon as one NPC and Ashardalon as another. That is, a red dragon without the half-fiend template (CR 26), but instead a separate NPC (CR 18?) within him.

Why wasn't that done instead? It makes no sense in 3.5e to use the half-fiend template. None at all.

 

[Bad Paper]

It makes no sense in 3.5e to use the half-fiend template.

Perfect sense, when (spoiler text) a fiend has been pumping your blood for a thousand years. Remember: the halvsies-templates go both ways...

And I cannot imagine how you would run the encounter the way you suggested. That's just bonkers. If you are going to allow the symbiont to participate and damage the PCs, then (via the two-way-street rule) you have to allow the PCs to inflict damage on the symbiont. Here's another thing to remember! The whoooooooole macguffin for this adventure is (spoiler text) the offscreen fiendish lord pulling strings, not some do-goody "let's kill Ashardalon" hook. I don't think that offscreen NPC wants the symbiont damaged, though I can't remember the specifics.

PS:
I have told my players to avoid this thread (we aren't starting BoBS until winter, at least), but you never know who is lurking around here... I have already switched NPCs' names, so any player with foreknowledge will be like, "huh? That person is Nurn?"

 

[Nail]

Spoiler:

Spoiler

The symbiont has total cover with respect to the PCs. How, exactly, would the PCs target it?

The trick here is that stat-ing up a separate symbiont allows you more control over the EL of the encounter. Give the squishy thing weaknesses, SLAs, etc...but not so many that the EL is much above 27. And, IMO at least, discovering the symbiote presence sometime *during* the battle adds that extra bit of realization for the PCs.

MMII has some symbiont rules, IIRC. Should I ever persue this idea, that's where I'd start. Saying the dragon gains the half-fiend template implies a fiendish parentage....which is not the case, no matter how long the demon's been pumping Ashy's blood.

YMMV.

 

[Bad Paper]

Spoiler:

Spoiler

MMII has some symbiont rules

oh! I didn't know that. I don't have that one, but I'll check it out, thanks

 

[fireinthedust]

ìn the module he has a list of spells to cast first. that means several rounds to play around before getting blasphemy. Wait on it.

and keep in mind, he's the capstone foe of an adventure path.

 

[Shin Okada]

As I saw a thread resurrection, I will write up what has I actually done.

I made him an age category older than usual Great Wyrm by using Draconomicon rule. And gave him various feats and spells from newer 3.5e supplements. So he was a CR 28 monster.

To reflect the background story of the module, instead of making him a half-fiend, I gave him Fiendish Heritage feat. Fiendish Creature template was almost useless for a true dragon of this age. And I did not like half-dragon template, because if I use it as written in MM, the Wyrm becomes outsider, not dragon. I did not want to make the mega-villain of dragon-themed campaign to be non-dragon.

It was a great fight. Five, L21 PCs and a L19 cohort vs CL 28 Super Great Wyrm (plus his pet Kobold bard). It took us several hours. But certainly a great enough encounter to conclude 2-yeas-and-a-half-long campaign.

A poor halfling warmage snatched by the legendary wyrm, before rescued by a fellow sorcerer via Wish spell.

 

[Runestar]

Has anyone done a 3.5 revision of said module? With more resources available, I am wondering if the various npcs could be better represented.

For example, I am thinking of removing the half-fiend template from Ashlardalon altogether, since it adds very little benefit (SLAs are broken, and aren't very draconic), plus wings/claws are wasted. Slap on the ravenous template, replace spellcasting with xorvintaal template?

For the fiendish aspects, perhaps swap in some of the abyssal heritor feats from fiendish codex?

I am also aching to work the wild hunt encounter (MM5) inside somewhere. Perhaps replace the cathezar fight with it? An EL24 encounter would be a great way to kickstart the module.