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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7679922" data-attributes="member: 6787650">There are a fair number of "ruthless DMs" out there whose idea of "ruthless" is to change the stats and/or the rules. Even you yourself just suggested arbitrarily increasing Orcus's HP. You'd need to get a DM who is good at being ruthless within the constraints imposed by RAW--and even then there is some question about what exactly he can do in his Time Stop. (Clearly, casting Animate Dead counts as affecting another creature/object and ends the Time Stop, but what about conjuring undead with the wand?)If I were the DM in question, I'd make sure his temple is a messy, corpse-filled, debris-strewn rubble-palace and lean heavily on Orcus's flight and on total/partial cover. The PCs are the ones under time pressure because Orcus is animating ghouls constantly and PWKing from afar, all while his booming laughter echoes from the temple. If they don't think to Locate Creature or Locate Object (Wand of Orcus), they'll be hard-pressed to prevent him from picking off the rearguard. If he does engage the rearguard, it will be while they are already fighting a dozen ghouls, and he'll use his "skeletal arms" lair action to isolate the rearguard from support while his Creeping Death legendary action and Finger of Death + Taste of Undeath kills some hapless PC and turns it into a zombie. If the PCs survives (maybe thanks to Death Ward) then the lair action next turn gets dedicated to PWKing them. Then next round Orcus retreats behind total cover... and then back onto a prepared position with 3/4 cover, a few dozen corpses, and a lich (for Dispel Magic/Counterspell/Fireball IX), a demilich, and a death tyrant. (To make this fun I'll assume that Orcus doesn't have any pre-summoned undead for some reason--these are all undead that he summoned just now during the combat.) If things go sour for Orcus (low on HP, surrounded) he will use Time Stop to get out of combat, leaving his minions behind.That will be the plan anyway. There are things PCs could do to mess up the plan[1] because it's a pretty narrow plan without a lot of contingencies; we'd have to see if they actually did so. But if they win it would feel like they had earned it.[1] I.e. Pass Without Trace almost certainly kills Orcus's cat-and-mouse game because he has to get within 120' to see them, to say nothing of Etherealness. And Locate Object turns cat-and-mouse on its head.</blockquote>

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