Quick, nasty combo to kill Orcus etc

[SlyFlourish]

I think we have to houserule guys like this:

Anti-heroic Fortitude: When stunned, Orcus instead loses his next standard action. When dazed, Orcus instead loses his next minor action.

Fixed!!

 

[Kordeth]

I think we have to houserule guys like this:

Anti-heroic Fortitude: When stunned, Orcus instead loses his next standard action. When dazed, Orcus instead loses his next minor action.

Fixed!!

Then the wizard breaks out sleep....

 

[eriktheguy]

Then the wizard breaks out sleep....

Sleep was the spell I had originally planned on using.

I have already houseruled to make stun lose only a standard action in my campaigns. I was considering making Daze lose a move action, but since the current implementation of Dazed has never caused me balance issues I decided to leave it.
I also house rule that orb wizards only apply the penalty to one saving throw (they use it as an immediate interrupt when an enemy succeeds at a save). I use house rules like this mainly to prevent smart players from cheesing my solos.

The thread with my houserules is here.

 

[shadowoflameth]

don't forget to do all that damage from 21 squares away or the aura will be hitting you even if he's stunned.

 

[FireLance]

don't forget to do all that damage from 21 squares away or the aura will be hitting you even if he's stunned.

At 30th level, if Orcus is stunned or unconscious, you will kill him before his aura kills you. Also, it's pretty easy to get necrotic resistance.

 

[Griogre]

I think we have to houserule guys like this:

Anti-heroic Fortitude: When stunned, Orcus instead loses his next standard action. When dazed, Orcus instead loses his next minor action.

Fixed!!

IMO you are house ruling the wrong thing. The problem is orb wizards - not solos (or not solos in this case - solos do have their own problems). Because orb wizards work against a fixed save DC their bonus should not be on a sliding scale it should be fixed bonus also, probably by tier.

 

[OchreJelly]

Sleep was the spell I had originally planned on using.

I have already houseruled to make stun lose only a standard action in my campaigns. I was considering making Daze lose a move action, but since the current implementation of Dazed has never caused me balance issues I decided to leave it.
I also house rule that orb wizards only apply the penalty to one saving throw (they use it as an immediate interrupt when an enemy succeeds at a save). I use house rules like this mainly to prevent smart players from cheesing my solos.

The thread with my houserules is here.

Sleep will still be tricky. Assuming you hit with sleep, how do you plan to close with Orcus to get the best use of Golden Mean? You pretty much want to be right next to him to get 5 rounds on him. Even if you aren't next to him you're going to be within reach of his attacks.

Closing with him is no simple matter thanks to difficult terrain aura of 6, but lets assume you have ways around that like teleporting. Now orcus is hit with sleep but he's merely slowed for a round before he gets to save. So he has a whole round of actions prior to making his save (including action point) to attack your wizard if he is within range. Can a wizard survive a +43 vs. fortitude death touch? Even after all of that, Orcus could easily teleport out of the golden mean before he has to make a save.

Of course there are ways around this, and probably better combos as using sleep, but it just doesn't look as simple as using 2 powers and orb mastery (oh and a potion). In fact there's a lot of risk in the above, so I wouldn't go so far as calling it 'broken combo' but good tactics.

And yes there are likely issues with orb mastery. A good HR would possibly be to cap it at -10 to saves.

 

[FireLance]

Sleep will still be tricky. Assuming you hit with sleep, how do you plan to close with Orcus to get the best use of Golden Mean? You pretty much want to be right next to him to get 5 rounds on him. Even if you aren't next to him you're going to be within reach of his attacks.

Closing with him is no simple matter thanks to difficult terrain aura of 6, but lets assume you have ways around that like teleporting. Now orcus is hit with sleep but he's merely slowed for a round before he gets to save. So he has a whole round of actions prior to making his save (including action point) to attack your wizard if he is within range. Can a wizard survive a +43 vs. fortitude death touch? Even after all of that, Orcus could easily teleport out of the golden mean before he has to make a save.

The Epic feat Unfettered Stride allows you to ignore the effect of difficult terrain on your movement.

And the party should have a rogue whose job is to beat Orcus's initiative and stun him before he can take any actions, and a warlord to maximize his chances of doing so.

 

[Obryn]

I can't believe nobody's mentioned the following combo:

(1) Dry up the third-party D&D market well before the announcement of a new edition,
(2) Add bad economic conditions,
(3) Delay putting out the GSL for the new edition, and
(4) Make the original form of the GSL rather constrained.



-O

Ahem. You get points for the funny meta-joke, but you lose slightly more points because most people won't get the joke and you're technically threadcrapping. We'll call it a wash. Move along, folks, nothing to see here! ~ Piratecat

 

[OchreJelly]

The Epic feat Unfettered Stride allows you to ignore the effect of difficult terrain on your movement.

And the party should have a rogue whose job is to beat Orcus's initiative and stun him before he can take any actions, and a warlord to maximize his chances of doing so.

Ah but see the OP was talking about just having the wizard incapacitate Orcus. No fair having your allies setup the combo.