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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 5779591" data-attributes="member: 20323">Fair enough. Here's where I give my usual advice about adapting to the players, prepping to improvise, blah, blah. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Look good "on paper." Obviously very conditional on what happens prior. You've got a demon prince, thief of time, and you want to send slimed after the PCs? Huh? Also this challenge depends on the epic level PCs running, right? I'm pretty sure this is a Bad Idea. What's the essence of what you want to have happen in the first phase?For example, I was expecting the PCs to be thrown into a temporal rift type skill challenge or puzzle/hazard.Also as a matter of preference, I put non-combat phases in the middle of fights not at the beginning. Generally a boss fight begins with a new session (and takes the entire session). At the start of my game sessions players are chomping at the bit for combat. What about terrain? If he's primarily an artillery or controller in his spellcaster form (and he's encountered by himself), then go nuts with terrain. I've not run epic games but I've heard a lot of folks talk about the importance of damaging terrain at epic tier.For example, a field of entropy. Mortals age within it, eventually become weakened (or, preferably, an alternative to weakened, I'll post in a separate thread some homebrew stuff). Terrain crumbles and warps, causing damage which can be mitigated with Acrobatics, Endurance, or Arcana checks. As the fight progresses the terrain fractures into floating isles of earth, and eventually dissolves into nothingness. Time to fly or die! I'm not really feeling the way youre presenting this transformation. It kinda flies in the face of the whole "master of time" theme. But if that's what you want, maybe you could toss out some ideas for what kind of powers his demonic form would have?From experience, I strongly encourage you to ditch "Variable Resistance" in favor of something else (Demonomicon has alternative suggestions). It sucks to track and slows play. Then again maybe at epic it's no big deal, and with a boss you don't mind a slow fight. Hmm. Your call. I love this! I'm not sure why he's in spellcaster form since isn't the idea that as he weakens his true form is revealed? Which would be a demon right?    While the scene is very evocative, I don't like this idea for 2 reasons.(1) Since it hurts implement users it effectively puts melee fighters in the spotlight for no particular reason. You could mitigate this by allowing folks to use the swords as implements. Still ranged attackers would get screwed.(2) It requires math on the spot. IME/IMO not worth it. You could recalculate everyone's attack/damage values during game prep. Still don't see much point to it. Also why do they lost their weapons? What's the justification? As 4e characters are extremely weapon/implement dependent I just don't see this working as you've presented it. Instead, what if each sword acts as a terrain power to negate one of Nihilous's spells or negate some terrain effect?Hey, it's the last fight of the campaign so the PCs are playing for keeps. This seems like a relatively minor way to break the rules. 100 HP gies fast so this wouldn't gimp epic PCs with all their "return from death" powers (they can use those at any time in the fight besides this).Oh he'll die I guarantee it. That's what PCs do with BBEGs.  Overall yes, but it needs quite a bit of work.</blockquote>

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