Eberron: Eyes of the Lich Queen module (spoilers!)

[Enforcer]

This post will contain spoilers for the module.

So my players (Warforged Fighter, Human Paladin/Exorcist of the Silver Flame, Half-Elf Wizard, Human Sorcerer, and Shifter Druid, all level 7) have reached the final battle of Chapter 3:

Spoiler

the tsucora quori.

We didn't get to finish the battle (I had to leave to get to my night job on time), but I've already killed two of the PCs in the first couple rounds with the

Spoiler

quori's phantasmal killer sting and its DC 23 saves.

Action points haven't helped. Heck, the Warforged Fighter was killed, revivified by some new Druid spell the next round, and then brought down again immediately thereafter (I followed the Tactics section for this encounter, which says go after the low Will save guys first, i.e. the Warforged Fighter). Having the Paladin's Aura of Courage didn't help either due to really low rolls. The Wizard bought it in round 3, despite a good Will save and action points.

Is this encounter as woefully one-sided as it seems or are my players just really unlucky? I mean this thing has SR (well, PR, but it's the same thing), energy resists, DR, AC 26, and lots of attacks including the above-mentioned PC killing one. Is there something I'm doing wrong? I'd prefer not to wipe out my players' party, but at the same time I don't want to coddle them. The Paladin is the only one guaranteed to avoid the death effect, but will probably be brought down in simple melee as this thing hits hard and often.

I guess I'm just looking for input from others who've run or played in the module and how they handled it. Did your players live?

 

[Crothian]

We had one or two PCs die in that battle. It was a good and tough battle. The creature got surprise and basically slaughtered the main NPC really fast. The PCs though made their saves so none died from that.

 

[JustKim]

I'm running the adventure and the same thing happened, amazingly, to the same character: a warforged fighter. The quori used its sting three times and the warforged just had some bad luck rolling the saves. When I read the encounter I anticipated that one or two people would probably die. It's what I think Eberron refers to as a centerpiece battle, but having grown up on Nintendo I think of as a boss battle. The quori is meant to be scary, it's meant to be memorable and it's meant to last more than a few rounds. All of those defenses help it to survive and make use of its abilities. I didn't feel comfortable removing any of them, but I did mix it up some.

I can't really tell but it sounds like you are using the sting every round. If that's the case then I would opine that you are doing something wrong. There's a lot more to the creature than full attacking with death sting. This is how I ran the monster in my game..
Round 1: Charmed the warforged fighter, used him to delay the party's attack.
Round 2: Id insinuation on the rest of the party, half of them made their saves and the other half lost a couple of rounds.
Round 3: The warforged fighter's charm was dispelled by another party member, the quori ceased concentrating on id insinuation and attacked the warforged, killing him.
Round 4: Eliminated summoned monster.
Round 5: The party's secondary fighters recovered and closed for melee, after boosting their AC into the mid-20s. The quori split its full attack among them and didn't hit with its sting.
Round 6: Healed itself. Mainly just to drag combat out another round.
Round 7: Another full attack, doing damage mostly with its pincers, either failed to hit with its sting or saved against- everyone in melee had high AC and good fort/will saves.
Round 8: Used recall agony to try and finish the weakest secondary fighter, who made his save. Finally, the quori died.

I think it flowed well, the players seemed to enjoy it. I can remember a Dungeon adventure some time ago where the final encounter was with a bodak, and that was really a different story. Between its death gaze and slam attacks there was really not much to the creature except dying randomly, and the players definitely did not enjoy it.

 

[Glyfair]

We had one or two PCs die in that battle. It was a good and tough battle. The creature got surprise and basically slaughtered the main NPC really fast. The PCs though made their saves so none died from that.

One PC (a warforged) die from the sting. The fact that they got two different saves gave them a pretty good chance of making their good save. One PC made it after using an action point and then being reminded of a bonus floating around (bless, bard, something or other).