Quick, nasty combo to kill Orcus etc

[eriktheguy]

Orcus gets a piddly +5 to saving throws. Lets kill him with a Wizard. Toss a spell on him that incapacitates him with save end. Any status condition that makes him lose his turn will do, even the level 1 Wizard daily sleep. Use your orb of imposition for -6 or so to his saving throws with a decent wisdom score. Finally, use your level 26 daily utility power Golden Mean (Arcane power, lord of fate epic destiny, page 147). Congratulations, he is now stunned for 5 turns if you sustain minor. Don't forget spell focus for an additional -2 to the save. Now the save fails even with the +2 his allies grant with a successful heal check.
Your allies should be able to finish him in 5 turns of non-action and combat advantage. Also, you still get standard actions to hit him with in the mean time. I suggest taking an additional implement mastery with a wand to make sure your stun/sleep hits. Combine this with your 'Turnabout ability' (at the start of the combat you designate Orcus, until the end of the combat any condition he applies to your allies is also applied to him). This guy is going to be stunned, weakened or asleep for most of the combat.
Also works on the tarrasque, (who by the way, has a low will defense).
Does anyone else think the lord of fate is too good? The idea of 'golden mean' making a solo auto-fail saves is just frightening.

Please don't post solutions like 'Orcus and other solos have followers and minions that will stop the wizard'. These are moot as the wizard still has a pretty good shot at stunning a solo for 5 turns.

 

[Flipguarder]

OR the extremely convenient, you wake up refreshed with all your daily spells, item daily abilities and healing surges at the throne room door of Orcus' home fortress in the heart of the demon abyss?

 

[eriktheguy]

Ok, its hard to get to Orcus, but not the Tarrasque.

 

[Flipguarder]

Exactly

Orcus is a religious leader.
Tarrasque is the real world equivalent of the loch ness monster.

Imagine the pope had superpowers. and the Loch ness monster would be scarier.

Who would be easier to get into a fight with as the first fight of that day.

 

[kevkas]

Imagine the pope had superpowers

Who says he doesn't?? xD

 

[eriktheguy]

Regardless, does the golden mean power appear broken to anyone else? It practically begs for the players to metagame and treat all their actions as though the are in a game and not a real universe... then again, after reading the Lord of Fate description it appears that metagaming is roleplaying them properly.

 

[Larrin]

The problem isn't with golden mean....its with shutting down a solo, which is a well known problem. Any tactic that starts with "don't let the only monster do anything" is going to be lopsided in power. Try golden meaning orcus without shutting him down and see how good an idea it is, he won't miss you, you won't miss him....could be nasty, you might still win, especially if you could have beaten him anyway. But it will be more interesting then essentially hitting a punching bag for 5 rounds. Golden mean just speeds up battle a little and removes chance, but it does so for both sides. As long as everyone gets to go, its not an out of line power, and can bite you hard sometimes if the DM prepares for it....

As for 'metagame'; every single power requires that you treat the battle like its a game...the real universe doesn't have life broken into standard, move and minor actions. You're rolling dice to see what happens...thats pretty much treating things like a game. What the PC's know is different; as far as the PC knows Golden Mean just causes the most likely result to happen...are you more likely to hit or miss? Well thats what happens. Not because its game (although it is) but because fate is causing what 'should' happen to happen.

 

[Griogre]

As been discussed at length orb wizards are broken. The basic problem is simple - you have a increasing penalty to saves vs. a fixed DC number. This is the same problem you had with fixed skill DCs in 3.x. In the beginning typically it's rare to hit the target DC. After a bit it gets easier, and finally it never misses.

The wand and stave wizard’s increasing bonuses are applied vs. sliding DCs – Monster defenses and Monster attacks. The orb wizard’s increasing bonus is vs. a fixed DC. It’s one of the most hypocritical problems of 4E given how hard they railed against the 3.x's fixed DC skill system, IMO. They “fixed” the 4E skills with sliding DCs and introduced the exact same fixed DC problem from 3.x skills into 4E combat with the orb wizard.

 

[Regicide]

Power creep has made solos obsolete.

As for how hard it is to get to Orcus, E3 Prince of Undeath we have have 4 months to wait for the official answer.

 

[Pbartender]

Orcus gets a piddly +5 to saving throws. Lets kill him with a Wizard. Toss a spell on him that incapacitates him with save end. Any status condition that makes him lose his turn will do, even the level 1 Wizard daily sleep. Use your orb of imposition for -6 or so to his saving throws with a decent wisdom score. Finally, use your level 26 daily utility power Golden Mean (Arcane power, lord of fate epic destiny, page 147). Congratulations, he is now stunned for 5 turns if you sustain minor. Don't forget spell focus for an additional -2 to the save. Now the save fails even with the +2 his allies grant with a successful heal check.
Your allies should be able to finish him in 5 turns of non-action and combat advantage. Also, you still get standard actions to hit him with in the mean time. I suggest taking an additional implement mastery with a wand to make sure your stun/sleep hits. Combine this with your 'Turnabout ability' (at the start of the combat you designate Orcus, until the end of the combat any condition he applies to your allies is also applied to him). This guy is going to be stunned, weakened or asleep for most of the combat.
Also works on the tarrasque, (who by the way, has a low will defense).
Does anyone else think the lord of fate is too good? The idea of 'golden mean' making a solo auto-fail saves is just frightening.

Please don't post solutions like 'Orcus and other solos have followers and minions that will stop the wizard'. These are moot as the wizard still has a pretty good shot at stunning a solo for 5 turns.

So, let me get this straight...

The complaint is, "When you reach Epic levels, this combo requiring a Level 26 power kicks ass." I don't see a problem with that. At that level, the characters should kick ass now and again. They're Epic, after all.

That said... A couple of honest questions:

First, Orcus has defenses "AC 48, Fortitude 51, Reflex 46, Will 49". How easy will that be for a 26th Level Wizard to hit? A quick, conservative estimate for an average wizard: +13 level, +8 Ability, +3 Expertise, +6 Implement is a +30 to hit to start with. Bumping him up to a level 30 Wizard gets him an extra +2 (maybe +3, depending on how ability scores fall out). Even against Orcus' lowest defense, the 26th Wizard only has a 1-in-5 chance of hitting, and the 30th about a 1-in-3 chance, unless there's more bonuses he can squeeze out (I'm sure that there's at least a few I missed). What's the best we could do for the Wizard's attack? How certain can we be that he's going to hit the Solo?

Second, Orcus has more than 1,500 hit points. How much damage can a party deal in five rounds?

That's not to say it isn't an impressive combo... I just don't think that, in practice, it's quite as bad as you might think. Of course, I could be wrong, since I haven't actually seen anyone use it in an actual game yet.