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Help with 19th level boss fight
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7142690" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>always</em> has the option of paralyzing whoever's touching her. Even in an Antimagic Field, she's still pretty deadly.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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...</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>I'm curious how it turns out. I expect a massacre and if it's not I'll want to know why.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 7142690, member: 6787650"] 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 [I]always[/I] 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. [/QUOTE]
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