They did it. I did not think it was possible, but they did it. They killed Kerzit.
First, they learned from their mistakes in the first encounter. Second, they prepared tactics beforehand. Third, Kerzit’s cascade was not as effective this time.
The players had a major pow-wow before the battle. The cleric cast commune to figure out some of Kerzit’s weaknesses (or lack thereof.) Then they summoned another planetar angel and a trumpet archon. The two planetars used summon monster IX to bring in two leonal guardinals. This brought the team roster up to:
Fighter 6 / Dwarven Defender 9
Mephit 6 / Sorceror 9
Illusionist 15
Cleric 15
Rogue 15
Monk 15
2 Planetar Angels (cast as 17th level clerics + other abilities)
Trumpet Archon
2 Leonal Guardinals
I punched in the respective ECLs into d20srd.org encounter calculator and found that their group was the equivalent of a 17.7 party. That made the battle “Very Difficult” according to the calculator.
After excessive buffing from the angels and the cleric, the illusionist tried to use greater scrying to locate Kerzit and teleport straight in. Naturally, Kerzit made his saving throw. Thus warned, Kerzit started summoning demons. The players knew that time was of the essence, so they used greater teleport to warp in to the location of the last battle. It took them three rounds to find Kerzit. By then, he had finished his cascade.
The cascade is where Kerzit’s problems began this time. By the time he and his were done, the opposing force was:
Kerzit
4 Glabrezus
8 Vrocks
45 Dretches
No Hezrous this time. The vrocks closed in first, just like last time. The players tried dimensional anchor on Kerzit and the glabrezus. Kerzit saved, the glabrezus did not. While the players took on the vrocks, the leonals used their “at will” fireballs to take out the dretches quickly. The angels cast implosion, first on two vrocks successfully. Kerzit then teleported right in front of the poor mephit. He almost got a one turn kill after all his attacks were counted. Poor Tevyn had 7 hp left with two abyssal wounds (-4 hp per round per wound) that would knock her unconscious by the next round.
The angels tried their implosion trick on Kerzit, who made his save naturally. They pointed their last two rounds at the glabrezus, which is where Kerzit’s problems got worse. As level 17 clerics, their saves and spell penetration was too much for Kerzit’s lieutenants. Kerzit just about took out an angel while one of the leonals used their supernatural “lay on hands” ability to heal up Tevyn.
The big turning point was the illusionist’s masterful casting of orb of sound. She empowered it with a metamagic rod and rolled a natural 20 on her touch attack. We play with the critical attack on ray and touch spells variant. She confirmed her critical and rolled up 15d4 for damage. With the empowerment and the critical, she did over 100 hp of damage with a spell that does not allow a saving throw or spell resistance (4th level in Complete Arcane for those of you searching for the spell.)
With the glabrezus out of the way, the players surrounded Kerzit and began their final assault. By the time Kerzit’s next turn came around, he still had over 100 hp. I figured he’d last another round at which time he’d TP away and heal up. I was wrong. The angels, no longer concentrating on implosion, used Power Word Stun on him. All they had to do was overcome his spell resistance, which they did. By that time, Kerzit had been hit by another orb of sound and other attacks and was below 50 hp. That’s 4d4 rounds of stun, it came out to 12 rounds.
The battle was over.
Kerzit could not stand up to the combined might of the 6 players and their 5 summoned companions. The fact that it took 11 of them to defeat Kerzit was a consolation. I truly did not expect them to take Kerzit down after two tries. I also expected more fatalities. I think they were truly impressed with the danger of the situation and planned accordingly. I have to hand it to them, they did well.
Now they have Eli Tomorast to look forward to. Mwah hah hah hah!