Help! Defense vs Mindflayers

[10th man down]

@ Pendragon
Unfortunately they've got an above average Strenght score and the Ray of Enfeeblement has to penetrate their SR which is very high and it is unlikely that the lvl 8 wiz rolls routinely more than a 17.
Even an empowered Version will not automatically disable them.

 

[Nail]

We've been sniffing around some sort of frozen head trade .....

Right. There's a sentence I had to read twice to "get".

At the point about 2 minutes after we snuffed our second or third tattoo'd baddie, a Boss Monster named Thirdun (sp) telapathically contacted my Wizard,

Okay....here's where I'd have to ask my DM about scrying, telepathy, teleporting, and the like. Those three "sons" can only teleport to you if they know where you are. Telepathy doesn't do that. Indeed, telepathy has a range of 100 feet, so one wonders how the BBEG contacted you in the first place.

Rules are being "bent" here......and the DM needs to let you know that's what's happening. Otherwise you've got nothing to base your judgements on. The game has rules so these judgements are possible. That's the point.

I tried to separate them with a wall of ice, the dimension door'd through it and started doing DC17 mind blasts on everyone.

Ah! At last, some detail!

First order of business: Keep them from targetting you with the mind blasts. Me thinks you put the wall too close to them, and not close enough to you! (They were able to dimension door and still stay far away?) Try, next time, limiting their vision and/or their line of effect to you: Obscuring Mist, Web, and Solid Fog are all good ways of doing this.

Your goal, obviously, is to kill them...and, frankly speaking, you're not likely to be too good at that with their high SR. So use spells to make your Ftr friends tougher, or use spells that don't allow a SR. Evard's Black Tentacles comes to mind. Even if they've dimensioned door'ed out, that's one less action they have, while you're pounding on them.

The squid-faces left everyone's equipment intact.

Uhm.


Wow.

 

[Laslo Tremaine]

First order of business: Keep them from targetting you with the mind blasts. Me thinks you put the wall too close to them, and not close enough to you! (They were able to dimension door and still stay far away?) Try, next time, limiting their vision and/or their line of effect to you: Obscuring Mist, Web, and Solid Fog are all good ways of doing this.

If Mindblast is point-blank cone effect, does it need to be targetted? Can't they just blast in the general direction?

Uhm.


Wow.

Yes, I definitely think our GM was cutting us some slack...

 

[Nail]

If Mindblast is point-blank cone effect, does it need to be targetted? Can't they just blast in the general direction?

Sure. ...but you could have moved in the interim.

This will really depend on the set-up, of course. If yer in a small room, yer screwed.

Yes, I definitely think our GM was cutting us some slack...

Big time.

Problem is: there'd better be a good reason for it. If you are required to figure things out, then you should be able to infer information based on previous experiences.

Otherwise it's pointless to plan.

 

[Arkhandus]

Sending is a psionic power as well as a spell. That's telepathic enough in flavor, eh? Nothing and no one can hide from Metafaculty, and it doesn't allow a saving throw; it is possible that the PCs' BBEG is 16th+ level, isn't it? (Metafaculty is a 9th-level power...)

 

[Zentish]

Well, Lazlo and I want to thank everyone for their help. Using a combination of a Globe of Invulnerability scroll, Dimensional Anchor scrolls, and a Polymorph scroll we were able to snuff 2 of the three squid-faces. The prep was expensive, but I'll trade gp for a level loss any day.

They attempted to ambush us in an alley, we heard them and were not suprised. After engaging them in melee I activated the Globe to give us a safe base to work from. They tried to bouble-blast me but HAH! suprise on them. One then came into the globe to graple my Wizard so I was forced to back away and polymorph into a plant (Treant). It was brilliant! Between my wizard the Treant and our new best friend our clay golem we grappled and then converted two of them into gooey calamari toe-jam. The third escaped via dimension-door before we could anchor it. Their spell resistance was nasty, only one of the three dimensional anchors got through to them.

We also had an Antimagic scroll and several other polymorph's ready to go. A flexible response is usually the best!

Thanks again everyone!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Glad to hear that the help worked well!

Cheers

 

[Nail]

Good job!

(EDIT): Uhm......Globe of Invulerability is a 6th level spell (so you had to make a caster level check to cast it from a scroll)....and I'm not confident it is effective against a mind blast. Is that a spell-like ability or a supernatural power?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Good job!

(EDIT): Uhm......Globe of Invulerability is a 6th level spell (so you had to make a caster level check to cast it from a scroll)....and I'm not confident it is effective against a mind blast. Is that a spell-like ability or a supernatural power?

I was curious so I checked it up - mind blast is a spell like ability that is specifically called out as being equivalent to a 4th level spell, so it seems legit.

Cheers

 

[Gwarthkam]

Okay....here's where I'd have to ask my DM about scrying, telepathy, teleporting, and the like. Those three "sons" can only teleport to you if they know where you are. Telepathy doesn't do that. Indeed, telepathy has a range of 100 feet, so one wonders how the BBEG contacted you in the first place.

Rules are being "bent" here......and the DM needs to let you know that's what's happening. Otherwise you've got nothing to base your judgements on. The game has rules so these judgements are possible. That's the point.

I think you are a little harsh on his DM here. I would say that the DM can do whatever he feels is good for his campaign and the gaming experience of his players. Feeling obliged to comment whenever he his improvising would be ridiculous: "by the way, something is happening right now, but I can't tell you what because it's not something the characters are aware of. But I can tell you that I am 'bending the rules', just so you know"

Having said that, any effort from the players to try and stop th BBEG's method of scrying them, or whatever, should of course be applauded.