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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Philip" data-source="post: 3758373" data-attributes="member: 10993">Breaking Lord of the Iron FortressExamples of game breaking spells from our experience.So, on of our DM's invited us to run us through this WoTC published adventure: Lord of the Iron Fortress. This didn't went exactly as planned (neither by the DM nor the WotC adventure writers). Note: this may contain spoilers.No rest for the heroesAt the start of the adventure the DM told us that we needed to retrieve the MacGuffin as soon as possible, for the evil plot could bear fruits 'at any moment'. Of course, this is a common plot formula to prevent recuperating between each encounter, even although the 'moment' is plotted to be just when the heroes arrive. In essence, a plot device is used to force our heroes to conform to the x encounter per day that is required for spell-users not to dominate encounters.Across the VoidWe arrive in the outer planes. This effectively disables and thus foils use of etherealness and a host of other problem spells. We need to go to some distant flying objective. One teleport later (my wizard likes risky teleport) and we are there, bypassing encounters on the way.Searching for the FortressOur characters need to find the fortress. To expedite this, the cleric use Wind Walk on our party. Fast, high and nearly invisible, we scout the target area until we find the Iron Fortress. We handily bypass 6-7 pages of encounters.Entering the Iron FortessThe adventure writers have given the Fortress multiple abilities that negate problem spells. Thick walls lined with lead are supposed to block divination spells. There is also an unhallow effect with a linked invisibility purge. All forms of invisibility and summon spells are thus effectively countered.Obviously, the entrance is well guarded. The walls are mostly iron, thus my wizard suggest that he use polymorph to turn into a Rust Monster, and use the (Ex) ability to turn a series of walls into rust and bring down the whole fortress down on the enemy. The DM looks pained. Several golems and some cat like constructs attack us then. They do not fly, and have poor ranged ability. We can fly of course.Monsters defeated, and the DM still look pained, it becomes obviously the adventure writers didn't anticipate us turning the fortress into rust. We agree to limit ourselves, and just use the rust monster to create an alternate entrance (and bypass the obviously guarded main entrance). This only causes some minor upsets, since the adventure was somewhat scripted assuming we entered through by another way.The Immobile End BossIt is time for the final encounter of the adventure. Our nemesis stand ready to kill us. My wizard flies over and releases an empowered ray of enfeeblement, rolls a 6 and reduces him to such a poor STR score, that, being armored and all, he becomes overly encumbered, needs to drop whatever he is holding and effectively becomes rooted to the ground. During the combat he scuffles and crawls around a bit, but is unable to contribute to the combat in a meaningful way. We kill him last after we defeated his minions. He was CR 16. The DM was a bit sad at that.Perhaps there were more things, but these are the things I remember best. During the game the DM informed us that we probably weren't "high enough level" for the final encounter, because the final encounter assumed we had gone through many of the encounters we bypassed handily. So at his advise we rested and then went out and had some of the encounters we bypassed, so the adventure would be less 'wasted' in we would be the proper level.</blockquote>

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