Heroic Vs. Epic encounter consumer heavy

[Cute-Hydra]

Hi,

Just as a setting concept, my campaign is set in a setting based upon the bhaalspawn saga of the Baldur's gate games. Therefore, a party member is a bhaalspawn. They do have minor powers but nothing special more rollplaying to make them feel special. Certainly nothing game effecting, the rest of the party also have small powers based on their respective backgrounds etc. For anyone who is not familiar with this saga it is a scenario similar to the Highlander films with a destined people killing each other to be the last one standing. I don't want to be any more specific in fear of spoiling either of the two above. But that is just the setting.

Now, the point is- the party is heroic level, all lvl 7. It is a largish party of 6 people. I would like to have a really powerful bhaalspawn arrive to kill them. This would be an epic level character. I would like to have the epic level character arrive to slay them but by *luck* the player characters manage to defeat it. This I feel would allow the player characters to have the satisfaction of bringing down an epic villain without a poor plot device such as timely intervention etc.

I was experimenting and playtesting, with how to allow the player characters to defeat this villain without nerfing the villain in question particularly. The main difficulty is that the villain will have very high defenses which the player characters will not be able to touch.

My Campaign is also experimenting with the home brew concept of anti grind proposed on a few other forums of doubling damage output of monsters but giving them half health.

My main stuggle is in giving the players the means to hit the villain and I have looked at consumables that I can give them which will allow them to fight back. Ways I have found so far:

Elixir of Accuracy, gives a free action that gives +13 to hit-char level.
Augmenting Whetstone +4, for an encounter gives a +4 to weapon enhancement
Lucky Charm +2, as an immediate interupt can give +d6 to an attack roll.
Heavy use of 'miss' attacks which can squeeze some damage through, as the villain has half health it only has 97hp.

I am in favor of heavy consumables as they will not effect the overall power level of the campaign. I don't really want to give them some powerful item and then have to take it away afterwards.

I need to playtest the encounter heavily before I actually do it. And I am aware that the loot required to have paragon and epic consumables is a lot higher than it normally would be. Most of the above consumables use the char's daily item usage.

The villain in question is going to be a Rakshasa Noble, levelled from 19 to 21. I know this is slightly cross purpose as I am levelling the villain as well but I thought that I may as well do epic vs heroic. The chosen creature I thought would be pretty cool as a rakshasha Bhaalspawn and it's controller leans more to battlefield control which would make for a rememberable fight. The trick I feel is to not hit repeatedly on same players, as on double damage the Rakshasa would take a pc out easily in 2 hits.

Can anyone suggest any way's I could give the players a sufficient edge to take the bhaalspawn down.

Cute-hydra

 

[BrokeAndDrive]

Can't really give any good advice myself, but you might want to check out Bahamut's stats in Draconomicon: Metallic Dragons if you have it.

One of his forms is a humanoid that's meant to give your party powerful buffs (something like +10 to attacks until the end of the encounter, etc., and a limited teleport-players-away if they're really about to get screwed). Altogether, with Bahamut on the player's side, they're supposed to fight enemies 10 levels above, but you get XP as if they were 2 levels above (since, y'know, you have a GOD helping you out!). You might find some inspiration from looking at Bahamut's at-wills.

 

[keterys]

Just make him a solo of lower level - even if you're feeling purist about the xp, a 21st level character would be a 12th level solo, frex. 9 levels difference, which puts it within spitting distance of your characters.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I would heartily suggest creating an encounter that has a skill challenge resulting in defeating the target built into the encounter area.

Examples are:

a fight near an inactive one-way planar gate (skill challenge is to activate the gate, then "simply" maneuver the bad guy near it)

Dropping a house or other structure on him.

Dropping something out from beneath him (fighting on or near a bridge over a chasm)

Fighting him near a site that imprisons something incredibly dangerous (either evil or good, it doesn't matter: the focus of the fight becomes to get this thing to attack him instead of you).

Hand out one of the old-school imprisonment items from 3.5e

I really don't think that a 'traditional' defeat is going to work.

 

[Fridayknight]

Fighting him near a site that imprisons something incredibly dangerous (either evil or good, it doesn't matter: the focus of the fight becomes to get this thing to attack him instead of you).

I can see the players now with their ration packs, waving them infront of a Cerberus's nose. Good dog, now go attack the man for more meat.

 

[Kingreaper]

I second the solo suggestion.

Make him a solo of reasonably high level, and then add in terrain dangers/other enemies/whatever. Things that the PCs can work together to avoid, but that the big bad will have a tougher time with.

What size is the big bad btw?
Terrain features can make life really hard for a huge creature, without affecting a medium size party much.

 

[Cute-Hydra]

Okay, he is technically medium. But there is no reason for him not to enlarge himself only to be screwed over by terrain. Means, he can have a dramatic move, and B. it's another turn that the PC's are not being hit with horrifically too high damage.

The problem with a solo boss, is that his health will be a lot higher

lvl 21 soldier- 200
lvl 9 solo - 400
lvl 12 solo- 500

as in my campaign it's halved you are looking at 100, 200 hp, 250

If every player has a jumped up consumable and spams dailies with a miss chance they would take down the standard pretty quickly. But would have a real hard time against the solo.

Also Solo's have a lot more area attacks to be able to take on a party while the idea I had was to allow the PC's to overcome this massively overpowered character by ganking him. Thanks for everything and all the imput. I feel there is more to be said from dropping a house on him.

Will playtest