D&D 5E Help with 19th level boss fight

[Eltab]

Have her cast the Counterspell, let the PCs roll to evade or shut it down or whatever, look at your notes and make a face, say "Your spell works despite her interference".
The first time.

So they get their cool plan off. After that she gets to REALLY Counterspell them. The PCs have no need to know.

P.S. I accidentally killed Arauthator (In Tiamat) by having him hover over the Bard who had come up with an inspired idea - I wanted to see if she could make it work. He should have been moving away from the group because they were finally getting into their groove and hitting him back.

 

[Greg Benage]

Having her do Counterspell would almost certainly work - the party can't cast that themselves - but seems like a bit of a dick move to arbitrarily negate what is actually an interesting tactic.

First, this sounds awesome! Second, everyone has different preferences.

That said, with all those high-level magic-users in the room, my interest as a player would go right out the window if none of them counterspell. I'd want to be responsible for developing tactics to neutralize the obvious threat of counterspell (what can I do to compromise visibility/line of sight?). Failing that, I'd much rather the DM create an "easier" fight in which the opponents actually use their abilities. For me, this would be like fighting Orcus and he doesn't bother to pick up the wand sitting on the table right next to him because that "wouldn't be fun."

 

[cooperjer]

What occurred to me while reading the responses is that there is opportunity for the players to "win" regardless of the outcome of their characters. Let's say the characters actually defeat that encounter. Then the players feel very confident and they have proven that they are more powerful than an immortal lich.

Let's say the characters are defeated in that encounter. What can you do to ensure the players still have interest in their now dead character? One idea that came to mind was that the lich offers to not kill the PCs, but offers them a life of allegiance. If the characters have proven to be powerful enough to get this far without dying, surly they can be used to protect the lich from other similar adventurers that happen around every so often. If a player decides their character would die instead of working for the lich then the death was in the players control and not subject to a die roll. If they decide to keep the character alive, then this gives you a new NPC/PC that can interact with the new story you may have in mind. The NPC/PC is owned and controlled by the DM, but the Player is an advisor to the character actions.

I would have to check the DMG, but if the XP you listed for the encounter is at 70%+ of the daily XP for the group then it most likely will be a TPK. Since the characters already spent some resources on an encounter they may be short those resources for this new encounter. I don't have enough detail to determine the risk of a TPK because I don't know what was used in the previous encounter. It may not make a difference if you find a way to make it a win regardless of the encounter outcome.

Edit Added the following

If you want to keep the level 20 game going, then consider allowing the PCs to work for the lich. The lich will have enemies and goals to retain and increase its power. Will the players allow their characters to work for this lich if it means their assigned tasks to destroy other liches? Will they continue to work for this lich if they're assigned tasks to recover a relic that is in the control of a tyrannical king? This may allow the characters to continue play at level 20.

 

[Quickleaf]

Hey all,

When the next session of my campaign takes place, we'll be rolling initiative for the most monstrously complex (and unfair) fight that I've put my players up against yet. I'm coming to you for help in ensuring that I made interesting and fun choices for the bad guys. Let me begin by outlining the situation.

Great summary of the situation, Charles! I wish all posts asking for assistance were this articulate and detailed

The Setting: The fight's setting feels a bit bland. It should unmistakably be set on Tu'narath (githyanki capital city built on floating dead god). It should unmistakably be on the Astral Plane, and give PCs (and NPCs) a reason to use their (possibly) enhanced speed. Some things I'm imagining...

• Lair Action for Vlaakith which change the apparent gravity in Castle Susurrus by making the dead god stir. This should allow her to make difficult terrain with gravity wells, to instigate a non-magical effect akin to reverse gravity, and generally make the fight feel like it's happening in a M.C. Escher painting.
• Lair Action for Vlaakith which cause sections of the citadel to tear apart (e.g. to hover like "earthbergs" or simply to separate like the old distance distortion spell). Imagine that scene in Star Wars: Rogue One where the planet tears apart, separating Rey and Kylo Ren. Now the PCs have a reason to move! And the githyanki can misty step / jump between areas.
• A "soulcatcher" effect where souls of the dead are caught by Vlaakith as they pass through the Astral on their way to their eternal reward. Maybe any PC who dies in her sanctum is turned into an undead under her command? Or recharges a number of her spell slots equal to their level/HD?
• Meteor swarm – cast later in the fight – blowing the top off the throne room (giant meteors are going to do structural damage), so the silvery mists of the Astral are visible and also expose everyone within (save the Lich Queen) to Psychic Winds (DMG p. 47). Luckily for the githyanki, many of them have the ability to plane shift to quickly return to the Lich Queen's side...but what about the PCs?

The Lich Queen: Sounds like you have a good stat block for Vlaakith that avoids being a "glass cannon" like the MM lich! Have you given any thought to Legendary Actions and Lair Actions yet? Another thing to consider is that antimagic field doesn't work on artifacts and gods...and in the adventure Vlaakith is trying to become a god...so maybe there's some compromise that would make sense... For example: Antimagic field buys X amount of rounds during which Vlaakith is affected. Or Vlaakith slowly regains the ability to cast spells despite animagic, such as regaining 1st-level spells after 1 round, 2nd-level spells after 2 rounds, and so on. With this approach you could also introduce a secondary challenge to Disrupt Vlaakith's Divine Ascension (maybe Channel Divinity needs to be used on something in the throne room?), which would allow antimagic field to work completely like the players expect. That seems fair to me.

Opposition: Mini-liches, spectral knights, red dragons Looks like a good start! But I would expect more Githyanki Warriors and/or Githyanki Knights (see MM) to be present...maybe they enter the fray after a round or two? I would run them in 3 ways: First, they're mostly there to use the Help action (e.g. Help Vlaakith escape a grapple, or Help a red dragon attack a high-AC frontline PC). Second, when fighting they'd use the mob rules in the DMG (and also give the PCs a reason to want to lay down area effect spells). Third, I'd expect Vlaakith to have some ability – maybe a Legendary Action? – to drain the life of these "mooks" in order to fuel her own HP...because that's very in keeping with the lore about Vlaakith life-draining any githyankis who get too powerful.

The Party's Plan: While antimagic field is a game-changer, it's not a fight-ender. Because it requires Concentration, and focusing fire to break Concentration can be very effective. So I would absolutely have Vlaakith try to counterspell the antimagic field being cast by the cleric, since narratively that would seem more "recognizable"...unless you choose to mitigate the effects of antimagic field on Vlaakith as she is on the cusp of godhood like I mentioned above. However, I would have the antimagic field cast from the monk's ring go off without a hitch.

Also, you may enjoy reading this: Making Counterspell Awesome. For example, maybe her counterspell of the antimagic field leads to some unexpected side effect... creating a wild magic zone... or dispelling all magic currently in effect (including whatever spell – hallow? – causes the chamber to dispel invisibility & grant radiant resistance)... or knocking everyone back in a burst of force that shatters the Lich Queen's magical scepter... or whatever you imagine!

You've said Vlaakith has had the opportunity to scry the PCs and is familiar with their strengths/weaknesses. If she is aware of their plan, it might be a reasonable tactic for her to be using a project image or some other fake-out during initial contact with the PCs. I'd also have her warn her mini-liches that, in the event of combat, they're to cast bestow curse (at 5th level) upon known casters in the party to disadvantage their Constitution checks/saves (i.e. Concentration checks).

But lets say the monk casts antimagic field with the ring and grabs Vlaakith. She has a couple ways out of the grapple (and out of the 10-ft sphere of antimagic around the monk). Her Paralyzing Touch will automatically end the grapple if it hits (and one "mook" should Help her on that attack roll) because you can't grapple someone while you're paralyzed. Her Frightening Gaze will improve her chances of making an Acrobatics/Athletics check to escape if the monk fails his save, and then make it hard for him to close that range again...giving her time to mobilize some other defense (e.g. a wall between her and the monk OR having a dragon grapple the monk and carry him off).

Antimagic field is a complex spell: here is a blog post discussing it and giving the spell's text. The party expects that they'll lose the ability to kill the Lich in melee (no magic weapons, she's immune to non-magic weapons) except for the Monk and his magic fists.

As an aside, how on earth does a 19th level party have no magic weapons? Strange. But at the very least the paladin should be able to cast magic weapon.

The Enemy Plan: I think the silver dragon polymorphing to paralyze & forcecage to entrap is a sound strategy against the party of frontline warrior-types. Sounds like you have a good handle on the spell strategy for Vlaakith and her mini-liches. However, I think the enemy's plan needs to make better use of their "home court advantage." I'd actually need more details on the stat blocks you're using & the environment of Castle Susurrus / the throne room to help better formulate Vlaakith's plan...for example if the spectral githyanki knights have telekinesis, I would make separating the party with movable barriers OR spikes on the walls that PCs can be flung into part of that plan.

Some ideas, perusing my old copy of A Guide to the Astral Plane...

• Under Vlaakith's description: "Assume the Lich Queen has numerous contingency-style spells active at any given time, utilizing her command of magic to its full extent."
• Many githyanki were described as exhibiting psionic talents, with 3/4 wild talents. You'll want to decide if that's the case in your game and if antimagic field works on psionics. For example, you could look to the Mystic (released on UA and now on DM's Guild) for ideas about psionic powers.
• On the Astral, githyanki warriors swarm in, making full use of their enhanced speed, attacks and then retreat before retaliation can be made, vanishing into the silver mists. Reminds me of a wuxia movie fight I once saw staged in a misty forest.
• Some githyanki have a "project thoughts" proficiency which allowed them to slow and even stop the movement of others on the Astral. It's described as requiring Concentration, and allowing saves each round to break free of.
• There are spellshadows on the Astral, the result of magic cast from a plane "close" to the Astral, appearing as nebulous floating shadows. They can be probed to learn the nature of the spell and the caster. Could be several of these floating around in Vlaakith's throne room, maybe from others who've tried to challenge her rule. Could be turned into a combat-puzzle. Could be used simply as flavor to her Legendary Action-granted spellcasting.
• Knights are described as anti-paladins.
• Gith Warriors are described as rising through ranks as sarth (sergeant) or kith'rak (captain). They wear chain, banded, or plate, and wield longswords, greatswords, bardiches, halberds, large spiked flails, scythes, and barbed whips. A recent innovation is the triple crossbow, a baroque-looking affair that can fire three bolts separately or simultaneously as a light crossbow.
• Githyanki Wizards tend to favor evocation and necromancy spells.
• Gish are fighter/wizards...possibly eldritch knights in 5e terms.
• Hr'ack'nir are generally non-combatant specialists that provide important support roles: healing, collecting astral energies, predicting the future and scrying, transporting.
• Tl'a'ikith, aka "swords spirits", are dead githyanki knights whose souls are bound to their swords, animating the swords. They sound like high-level versions of animated swords (MM) that could be "dispelled" using dispel evil and good or Turn Undead. Hundreds of them are in the Lich Queen's palace, guarding treasure vaults, egg chambers, and elite quarters. They don't speak or take orders, instead acting instinctively to defend the githyanki and their Lich Queen. Hmm...summoning these "sword spirits" could make for an interesting Lair Action... Personally, I wouldn't make them higher than CR 4, that way the cleric's Destroy Undead would still affect them. Or they could even be treated as a type of trap.
• Assorted magic items: Gravity-emitting rugs/spheres, Psychic armor protecting from physical effects of Psychic Wind, Psychic helm protecting from mental effects of Psychic Wind, Vorpal silver swords.

 

[HawaiiSteveO]

Make sure dead PCs (healers first) stay down - totally destroyed, eaten, viscera on walls, etc. No healing /whack-a-mole!

sounds epic

 

[Istbor]

I guess my question is, do the players know where the Phylactery is? I mean, defeating a Lich is all well and good, but ultimately just buying time if they can simply come back. Then you have made a great enemy who won't be letting go of a grudge any time soon.

 

[transtemporal]

Personally I don't like saddling my bad guys with bad tactics, especially if they know a lot about the PCs. My PCs are just about to go into combat with a very similar boss encounter (slightly lower level) but everything you mentioned... I'm going to absolutely deploy. Counterspell, forcecage, (on characters the bad guys know can't teleport), banishment, power word kill. Plus she has minions who can impose disadvantage on a saving throw. Its gonna be great. My players are probably reading this and crapping themselves, lol.

Having said that, my encounter is only 2x deadly and it's a six person party so I'm a little more comfortable throwing the book at them. If it was much harder, I'd probably be looking for reasons to reduce the difficulty.

 

[Luz]

There are a lot of great ideas here, especially Quickleaf's Lair Actions. Distance Distortion is very appropriate here, and especially useful with the party's excellent plan to charge Vlaakith with antimagic field. In a situation like this, it makes little sense that Vlaakith - knowing what she know about the PCS - would not use all her best resources to stop them. I love the dynamic of a high level, spell-anemic party going up against one of the most powerful spellcasters in D&D, so it seems a shame to not use her to her fullest potential. I say she should throw everything you've mentioned (counterspell, forcecage, etc.) at the PCs and don't hold back. Don't worry so much about this being a letdown finale - players can get extremely creative under adversity, and 19th level characters are capable of pulling off some amazing things. If you want the party to have a chance, you're better off reducing some of the enemy hit points on the fly or waiving one or two of those banishment saves so they work in the party's favor.

That distance distortion is genius, tho. If they charge Vlaakith with those AMF spells, make them work for it!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The opposition here is really, truly, punishing: in addition to a CR25 Lich (all wizard spells known, 473hp), there is two 16th level undead spellcasters (same spell list as a Lich), two CR10 spectral Githyanki Knights, and two Adult Red Dragons without wings. The EXP here is 162,800, with a difficulty after modifiers of 407,000. In other words, 8x Deadly for a party of this size and level. Hopefully a file will be inserted below here which shows the layout of the room - enemy along the left wall, a dragon to the top and bottom, party on the right, and a necrotic-damage spell trap in the centre of the room. Miscellaneous magical effects in the location include no invisibility, everyone can fly at the speed of their Intx3, everything has resistance to radiant damage.

The Party's Plan
They are 19th level: Storm Cleric, 4Elements Monk, Devotion Paladin, Champion Fighter Archer, Arcane Trickster. No sharpshooter on the Champion. Their plan is to use a 8th level Cleric slot and the monk's Ring of Wishes to cast two Antimagic Fields, and use them to neuter the Lich and at least one of her spellcasters. They'll move into melee and grapple to try and make it stick. The Paladin will dual-cast Banishment on the Dragons to try and get rid of them. Then everyone will try and nuke down the Lich first.

Antimagic field is a complex spell: here is a blog post discussing it and giving the spell's text. The party expects that they'll lose the ability to kill the Lich in melee (no magic weapons, she's immune to non-magic weapons) except for the Monk and his magic fists.

Much depends on how you interpret Antimagic Field. Do the monk's magic fists remain magic inside of Antimagic Field, or are those "magical effects"? How about "Empty Body"? Paladin's Aura of Protection? How about the lich's lich-ness? For purposes of this post I'll assume you're taking a narrow view: only spells are suppressed, not monster abilities or class abilities. The lich doesn't cease to exist inside the sphere.

A couple of thoughts: if the monk tries to remain melee with the lich's magic fists, it's only a matter of time (a couple of legendary actions) before the lich lands a Paralyzing Touch and incapacitates him, causing him to lose concentration on Antimagic Field. Does he typically strafe (w/ Mobile or Step of the Wind)? In any case, he needs to remain within 10' to prevent the lich from casting anything; and the lich always has the option of paralyzing whoever's touching her. Even in an Antimagic Field, she's still pretty deadly.

In the party's best-case realistic scenario (one lich and one almost-lich neutralized in Antimagic Fields), that still leaves free one 16th level almost-lich, two adult red dragons, and two CR 10 spectral Githyank Knights (stats: unknown, but I'll assume moderately beefed-up Githyanki Knights) against a Devotion Paladin, archer Champion, Arcane Trickster, and 4 Elements Monk with no action left. (The Cleric is now basically useless because of Antimagic Field.) I'm not sure who is busy grappling Vlaakith, perhaps the Devotion Paladin, but he's at least burned an attack on that grapple so he's a bit behind on actions. The enemy basically wants to free Vlaakith (their biggest cannon) from antimagic, which they can do by either breaking the paladin's grapple or by breaking the monk's concentration.

So what's to stop either the Knights or the dragons from Shoving the paladin away from Vlaakith? That puts him outside 5' grappling range of Vlaakith and breaks the grapple. Shoving is the standard way of breaking grapples, for those with Extra Attacks and good Athletics, because you get a number of Shove attempts equal to your attacks, vs. getting only one attempt per action to break free if you directly oppose the grapple with an Acrobatics/Athletics contest. In this case it's a little bit unusual that you're shoving a third party, but it works...

In fact, why not Shove Vlaakith herself out of the paladin's reach? Or grapple the monk and carry him and his little Antimagic Field out of reach? Much depends here upon how the DM rules various things (e.g. will monsters with Multiattack have to give up their whole action in order to make a single grapple attempt, or can you grapple/grapple/bite instead of claw/claw/bite) but fortunately, you're the DM and you already know how you'd rule. Presumably the Paladin and the Monk are going to be slightly better than the dragons at grappling/shoving, since the dragons have only a +8 whereas the PCs will have around +11 due to being trained (presumably) in Athletics/Acrobatics--but it only takes one success, and they've got several creatures' worth of actions to attempt it with. Moreover, Fearful Presence from the dragons imposes disadvantage on ability checks if the PCs are frightened (and can see the dragon that frightened them); that won't help against the paladin due to auras, but could potentially be of use against the monk depending on geometry.

So anyway, one approach is to focus on getting Vlaakith out of the paladin's grip. Another is to just kill him. If both dragons and the githyanki knights all gang up on him, he's looking at about 100 HP of damage from each dragon plus whatever the spectral knights inflict (50 each?), times hit percentage, so call it 300 * 0.75 = 225 HP. That should get him to release his grip on Vlaakith.

And we've still got two leftover spellcasters (one of them in an Antimagic Field from the cleric, although I'm not clear on what's keeping him there since there's nobody to grapple him--what can he do to the cleric without magic anyway? Hard to say but probably more than the cleric can do to him). I'd strongly recommend you NOT use the default lich spell list because it's weak and fairly unbelievable; the MM encourages you to switch up spell lists freely anyway. If you want to cause some arguments you could cast Globe of Invulnerability VIII and argue with your players about whether or not it nullifies an Anti-Magic Field; if you just want to shut the PCs down you could use Wall of Force or Forcecage or Banishment VII (depending on the geometry and how clumped up the party is). If you want to be really evil you could attempt to cast Magic Jar into the Champion Fighter, although that presumes that Vlaakith had enough warning of the party for the almost-lich to spend a minute casting Magic Jar before the fight broke out. Anyway, the point is that the Champion Fighter is likely to have protected himself against Wisdom saves, but probably not against Charisma saves. (Ditto the Arcane Trickster.) If you can neutralize the Champion Fighter while turning his weapons against the paladin/cleric/monk, oh yes, that prospect is full of WIN.

The correlation of forces against the PCs is pretty adverse. Once you factor in Counterspell as well (note: it has a range of only 60' so may not be usable against the monk; it's almost certain to be usable against the cleric though), the PCs' plan looks to me like it's fragile and probably doomed to failure: either antimagic never goes off due to Counterspell, or the grappler gets killed by focus fire and Vlaakith turns into a dragon, or Vlaakith gets shoved (or the monk or grapple gets shoved) far enough to get Vlaakith out of the antimagic field and Vlaakith turns into a dragon, or Vlaakith just paralyzes whoever has her grappled before the PCs can chew through her 400+ HP. And meanwhile at least one and maybe two high-level spellcasters are neutralizing PCs with Forcecage/Wall of Force/Dominate Person/Magic Jar/etc., and three of the PCs are tied down in one way or another keeping the antimagic fields in place.

I'm curious how it turns out. I expect a massacre and if it's not I'll want to know why.

 

[S'mon]

As for the 4e style - I do tend a lot to Combat as Sport, if you know that term. I mean, not religiously, but in general that's how it goes. So while we can think of ways for Vlaakith to win easily - have her minions cast Forcecage on the Paladin, Counterspell everything, etc - I'd prefer it was a fun fight even if it is a TPK, not a frustrating murderfest.

Yeah, I was thinking Combat As Sport - in 5e I stick pretty hard to Combat As War (though
running a published AP like Runelords works best with elements of both), when running 4e it works best with a heavy Combat As Sport element and that's the feel I get from your plan.

I would suggest thinking of reasons why she doesn't just do the obvious I-win things. Eg why
not remove Force Cage from her spell list if you think it's too easy a win? Maybe it didn't exist
when she was learning her spells millenia ago...

I'm also thinking re Force Cage that victims adjacent to the Cage wall when it forms could be allowed to use their Reaction to make a DEX save to get out. You could still auto-trap people within the 20x20 version, but not quite as many.