I don't think my party is nearly as min-maxed as yours (though they do have a warlord whose epic power keeps anyone from dying due to negative hitpoints as long as he can see them).
My Warlord's player was seriously looking at that Epic Destiny, but he decided to go with Demigod instead. He thought the negative hit points thing would be too much.
How much real time passed for each fight? And what was the party composition?
Ogremoch was a long fight... about five hours. Lolth, we started at about 5:30 pm, and ran straight till midnight. So just under seven hours.
Our tank, Moa Gi'Morva is an Earth Genasi Warden (interestingly enough, he decided to play the Prince of Elemental Earth, the son of Ogremoch
before we decided he'd be fighting his dad for encounter number one). He took the Dreadnought paragon path, and the Unyielding Sentinel epic destiny. He has a stance that once he enters it, he's immune to all forced movement and he can ignore one enemy's aura entirely. It makes him hard to move. Also, his feyslaughter weapon prevents enemies from teleporting (greatly frustrating with Lolth, and it will be the same with Vecna).
The healer is Leyla, a Kalashtar Cleric. She was built to be easy to use, since the player running her is relatively new to D&D. She has the Miracle Worker paragon path and the Immanence epic destiny. She's got some very useful powers, such as the Spirit of Healing, where she sets up an angel in the middle of the battlefield, and once per turn, someone can spend one of their minor actions to use it for a heal. It's a free healing word once per round. Of course, once its used, it isn't active until her turn comes up again, but all that added healing (and the saving throws, due to a feat) really add up.
The second leader is Aiden Blacksworn, a Human Warlord. He's taken the Battle Captain paragon path and the Demigod epic destiny. While Leyla is focused on healing, he's a tactical warlord, focused on granting bonus attacks and the like. And he is very good at his job. The two key powers that see a lot of use are Perfect Front (Anyone within two squares of him get to roll twice and use the better result on attacks, lasts till end of the encounter), and Relentless Assault (Whenever an ally scores a critical hit, every other ally gets to make a basic attack as a free action).
Our controller is a wizard named Frost, technically a human (though he's playing him as the spirit of Winter itself). He's a control wizard with orb specialty. His paragon path is Spellstorm Mage, and his epic destiny is Draconic Incarnation. He turns into a dragon for most of the fight, usually, and if he dies (which hasn't happened yet), he comes back to life as a smaller dragon. He's got a whole slew of controller powers which lock down, weaken, stun, etc.
Rounding out the party, we have two DPS. The first is Nox Amandine, a tiefling sorceress. She's taken the Luckbender paragon path, and the Deadly Trickster epic destiny. As you might imagine from a sorceress, she deals incredible amounts of damage. Some of her more potent abilities include the ability to make a free additional attack when she crits with an at-will (so whenever the warlord grants her a free basic attack, she uses her at-will, and if she crits (on 19-20), she gets
another free attack). She's a glass cannon, though, and throughout the fights, she's taken more than her share of punishment when the enemies manage to get to her.
Our last DPS is the aforementioned barbarian, known as the Skulltaker. I don't have his sheet handy, so I'm not sure which paragon path he took, but I know his epic destiny was Prince of Hell. He, too, had sacrificed defenses to the point where I nearly didn't have to roll to hit him in favor of having tons of hit points, die hard, and some brutal rages and damage powers.
Awesome encounters. I keep trying to think up ways to make my encounters interesting like those lodestones. What materials did you use to make them?
They were actually really easy to make. I went to a craft store and bought two styrofoam half-spheres, two styrofoam cones (for the bases), and a dowel (the stick). I cut the dowel in half, and used a knife to carve the cliff-like look... I was surprised how easy it was to actually carve them up. Messy, though; I got styrofoam powder everywhere. Anyway, I found that the lodestones wobbled horribly once I had everything finished, so I stuck a metal plate on the bottom of each one, which helped to stabilize them.
If you've got Divine Mastery and Epic Resurgence, you can do this attack *twice* per encounter.
Funny you should say that. My barbarian can and did use that particular attack twice in the encounter. The first time, however, his first attack bloodied Selvetarm, which made him vanish. So he didn't get the rest of his attacks.
