EL 23 encounter vs. party of 11th-16th level pcs... yikes!

[the Jester]

Well, the party imc has jumped in waaay over their heads and gotten to the end of the dungeon that's supposed to lead them to nigh-epic levels... they've pretty much bypassed everything else and are in for a very nasty encounter, possibly first thing in the session.

I'm hoping that I won't have a ten-minute TPK on my hands, but... well... yikes!

I guess we'll see what happens in a couple of hours, but things look grim for our heroes.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Maybe the villains should just laugh at the PC's and leave, maybe summoning some other creatures first? Otherwise you'll be hard pressed to hit a TPK.

Do they know that they're in waaaaay over their heads?

 

[Oni]

Give them a chance to run away.

 

[the Jester]

To give a little more detail, the party has gotten into an area sealed off by epic-level magic. To break the spell- and have a chance to get outta there- they have to destroy this big crystal with 800 hp and a hardness of 8. The problem is, as soon as they start tampering with it a mithral golem is aroused and comes after them.

On the other hand, destroying the crystal does 10d10 damage to the golem and a bunch of ability damage to the Bile Lords..... nasty monsters who are CR 21 and tons of trouble.

 

[Zappo]

Give them a chance to flee. Maybe have them peek unseen at some scene that makes the villain's power evident.

 

[Endur]

Instead of having the high EL monsters slaughter the low EL party, you could always enslave the party and put them to work in the coal mines for a couple of decades.

Once they escape, they'll be more careful in the future.



Tom

 

[the Jester]

Well, they'd previously managed to figure out that the crystal was the crux point of everything, and they'd located the crystal...

Frankly (after the fact), I'm amazed at the pcs. They were incredible and had a good plan. They did much better than I'd feared and avoided a tpk.

They had the chance to work for the bile lords and were being given the run of the place (at least, the run of the level they couldn't get off of) until they decided to serve the bile lords or did something that made them put the smack down on them.

Whew! I'm glad I didn't kill 'em all- but it really could have happened. Their ability to deal out horrendous amounts of damage to the crystal really fast went a long way.