Epic 4th Edition: We Fought The Gods

This is where my party is going to be fighting Lolth.

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I've attached my draft of her stats.

Things I've added include letting her minor action web attack pull the target which with teleportation should help to string the party across the battlefield. She also gets Lolth's Ire, which makes someone lose resistance to poison, but they can transfer it to an ally by hitting the ally with an attack. Then she has her 'weavers,' spider minions that will craft a tangled web so the PCs screw themselves over.

Set-Up
The party arrives through the portal to the edge of the platform in front of the statue of O Cristo Redentor. The sky is clear, and in the moonglow they see a woman with black skin and white hair standing in front of the statue with her back to them.

(This isn’t Lolth, just a mass of spiders that she’s animating. So if the party interrupts her little monologue, they don’t get the drop on her.)

“Welcome to the mountain top,” she says. “Thank you for killing the sycophants and back-stabbers who called themselves my pantheon. They seem somewhat pathetic compared to the treachery I’ve seen in the banking and oil industries. I’m thinking, after I slay this God of Earth, I’ll take a cue from the locals and start a corporation. They’re really this world’s greatest invention.

“Become the head of a global corporation and you can be as evil as you want, sow as much chaos as you could ever desire, and everyone just wants to invest in you more. And the self-righteous ‘heroes’ of this world are too coddled by lattes and the world wide web” – she chuckles – “to ever think of actually fighting evil. You try hacking a villain with a sword here and you’ll get sued.”

She huffs a laugh. “I’ll practically be doing these people a favor by killing their god of mercy and compassion. I understand understands liars, but no one likes a hypocrite.

“Now stay close, and maybe you’ll get lucky and this God will bleed on you when He falls.”

Then the woman raises her hands and collapses into a massive swarm of spiders. They begin to ascend the statue, climbing 20 ft. each round and cocooning it in silk as they go. Attacks against the swarm do little; there are always more spiders. The statue is 130 ft. high, but it takes an eighth round to get the arms cocooned too. At the end of Lolth’s eighth round, she becomes invulnerable to damage.



Details
The terrain here has a lot of different levels, hiding places, perilous falls, and interesting sight-lines, but not many special rules. If you’re on the arms or head of the statue, you get a +4 bonus to defenses against lightning attacks because there are lightning rods.

At the end of round 8, the mountain begins to shatter. Bottomless rifts to the Demonweb Pits (4 squares wide by 12 long) tear through different sections of the mountain, one per round. The combat, the entrance to the chapel at the backside of the statue will begin to glow, alerting PCs to the possibility of entering the statue to draw upon its power. They’ll have to get past Lolth, cut through webs, open the door, and ascend 70 ft. There a PC can place his hand on a carving of Christ’s heart, which will destroy the web around the statue and (if it seems necessary to give them a fighting chance) heal the PCs. If the PCs don’t do this by the start of round 13, the statue itself plunges into the Demonweb Pits, and Lolth wins.

If Lolth is finally reduced to 0 hit points she screams, and her spider body explodes, leaving her upper torso heaving, gasping to death.



My Party
Orinthol, a revenant (tiefling) swordmage/master of flame/punisher of the gods who is almost impossible to kill, especially by solos.


Judson, a dwarf sentinel druid with a bear companion and tons of summons. He has the master of moments epic destiny, which grants him a spare minor action each round.


Neil, a goliath barbarian who smashes things. He doesn't really need a schtick.


Sam, a human storm sorcerer who lightnings like crazy, and can fly. He's a glass cannon, but Lolth can't easily get to him.


Hamid, a human warlord who never makes attacks. Instead he gives everyone attacks and they get 24 temporary hit points. And no ally within 20 squares of him can die or go unconscious from damage. He's the most heavily armored member of the party, but Lolth needs to crack his shell.




Tactics
Early on she’s hidden, and as a lurker she’ll want to hit and run. She’ll generally want to dominate Judson’s sentinel druid/master of moments, since he loses the most actions. She’ll alternate with Orinthol’s swordmage so he can’t screw with her.

Some sample rounds include:

Surprise. Web pull Hamid’s warlord, Lolth’s kiss him, teleport away and hide. On a miss, she teleports twice to keep distance. She wants him to save so he'll be dazed.


Take Two. Teleport, web pull Hamid’s warlord, Lolth’s kiss him, action point to Scourge someone and keep them away. This lures people in.

Murder Hamid. Lolth’s Ire Jud’s druid, Lolth’s Kiss Orinthol’s swordmage when he inevitably teleports in to punish her. Then Insidious Poison him to attack Hamid, and action point to Scourge Neil’s barbarian.

If her Lolth’s Kiss misses, Scourge Orinthol, action point to insidious poison and have him attack Hamid.

Get-Away. If possible, use Insidious Poison again so someone will attack Hamid. Otherwise Scourge Hamid. Kiss someone, then teleport. (If she can hit the whole group, impenetrable darkfire instead of kiss.)

General Strategy. Scourge someone who’s close, teleport away, web pull the warlord. Use Insidious Poison when possible, because it’s awesome and dodge’s the swordmage’s mark.

Once she Transforms. Her first order of business is to place the drider’s curse upon someone (probably the barbarian), then pick one target and try to beat him to death, webbing anyone who tries to disrupt her, kicking aside people she can’t web.


The game isn't for another 2 weeks, but I'll post how it goes when we finish.
 

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MortalPlague

Adventurer
I've attached my draft of her stats.

She looks positively bestial. I love the Lolth's Ire attack; the flavor of it really fits with her as a goddess. One little thing I noticed, and I'm not sure if this is an oversight or not, but she has threatening reach in her first form, but not her second.

Also, during my Lolth battle, the shift between forms was very strange. She basically becomes huge size, but the power doesn't in any way make a space for her to do so. I'd recommend letting her teleport (wouldn't have worked in my case, since my tank wields a Feyslaughter weapon, but it might work for your group), or making her push everyone one space regardless of whether or not they resist forced movement.

Having the Queen of Spiders be forced to squeeze for a round is just awkward.


(This isn’t Lolth, just a mass of spiders that she’s animating. So if the party interrupts her little monologue, they don’t get the drop on her.)
Clever touch. And a well-written monologue!

At the end of Lolth’s eighth round, she becomes invulnerable to damage.
I notice you've budgeted 13 rounds for the fight till the statue falls? I'm curious how the party would kill her after she becomes invulnerable to damage? :p

Murder Hamid. Lolth’s Ire Jud’s druid, Lolth’s Kiss Orinthol’s swordmage when he inevitably teleports in to punish her. Then Insidious Poison him to attack Hamid, and action point to Scourge Neil’s barbarian.
This is my favorite of all your planned tactics. It seems very Lolth-like to use the tank's mark against him.
 



If they get inside the statue they can free it from Lolth's webs, which makes her vulnerable again.

Now who knows. They might drop her to her spider queen form by round 2, and then in round 4 kill her off. But if combat goes to round 8, then they have until round 13 to get into the statue, free it, and finish her off.
 

Epametheus

First Post
"Even if the target dies and comes back with epic level shenanigans, it remains under Lolth’s control" is gold. I could picture my own players trying a "let's see if dying fixes it" solution.

Edit: Though after some thought, it occurs to me that while touching the heart of the statue probably shouldn't heal the party, it would be cool if it ended any domination effects. Free will and all that.
 
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Thanlis

Explorer
Ah, see, now that's what puzzled me.

I can easily understand how someone might hit three times for 250+ damage in a single round.

I thought the Barbarian hit once for 250+. Big difference :)

Just for hypothetical funsies: an avenger picks up a +6 Vicious Fullblade. Fullblades are high crit weapons, so it'll do +3d12 on a crit at level 30. Since it's vicious, it also does +6d12 on a crit. Our avenger has a laser-like focus on damage, whatever the consequences, so he takes Final Oath, which is 9[W] damage. At this point, on a crit, he's doing 108 base damage plus 9d12, or an average of 166 damage.

But he's ambitious, so he has a War Ring, which gives him an extra 1d12 damage on a crit, and he uses the War Ring's daily, so he gets another 24 points of damage (because we've passed a milestone). Now we're up to 197 or so damage, on average.

But we can do better than that! He's one of the millions of avengers who worship Tempus, and he has Righteous Rage of Tempus, which maximizes extra damage dice when you use it and then crit. His pal, the Divine Oracle, can make one successful attack per encounter crit automatically. Let's be conservative and assume that only the 6d12 from Vicious maximizes -- we've still got:

9d12 from the attack, maximized to 108
6d12 from vicious, maximized to 72
2d12 from the war ring, maximized to 24
3d12 from the high crit fullblade, averaging to 19.5
1d12 from the war ring, averaging to 6.5

Totals to 230 damage. Plus 10 for Wisdom modifier, plus 6 for the weapon enchantment, plus 6 for Iron Armbands of Power (epic), plus 3 for Weapon Focus (Heavy Blade) and bam, you're at 255 damage in one shot on average. Once per day, but still pretty fun.
 

Been following this thread and found it pretty righteously awesome. Thanks for that.

I can't help humming to myself though; I keep humming "I Fought the Law" by the Bobby Fuller Four, or The Clash (remake), but substituing "Gods" for "Law", so its:

"We fought the Gods, and the Gods won"... Maybe someone needs to rework the lyrics and make it a real D&D tune.

:)
 


Remind me never to DM a game in which you're running an avenger :lol:

It could have been even worse - lets say that enterprising and overachieving Avenger had acquired;

"Painful Oath" (what Avenger is *not* going to take this feat?):

Benefit: The first time you hit your oath of enmity target each turn, you deal extra radiant and necrotic damage equal to your Wisdom modifier.

and the paragon path, Ardent Champion power, "Battle Rapture":

Effect: Until the stance ends, your attacks deal extra damage against your oath of enmity target equal to 1d10 + one-half your level. In addition, when any ally deals damage (not ongoing damage) to your oath of enmity target, you take 3d6 damage.

Heck, while we're at it, throw in "Devastating Critical" as well:

Benefit: When you score a critical hit, you deal an extra 1d10 damage.


Whew....'nuff said. :)
 
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