"Tactics in Action"--maybe I'm just getting too old, but this sounded boring as hell.

[Shade]

My question, though, is this: How in the world does Revivify put someone's head back on?

Revivify
"...while repairing somewhat the damage to the body. This spell functions like raise dead, ..."

Raise Dead can't put your head back on, so neither can Revivify. For that matter, neither can the Heal from a Fortunate Fate spell. So despite the cries of "cheese", at least one character should have been dead at the end.

That was my first thought reading that article, followed by "Woo-hoo! Revivify finally made it into another book!"

Personally, I have found revivify to be the savior of high-level play. With the ridiculous amount of instant-kills, it keeps the game playable. I was shocked that it wasn't plundered with the other 95% of the Miniatures Handbook in the Complete series.

 

[amethal]

That was my first thought reading that article, followed by "Woo-hoo! Revivify finally made it into another book!"

These spells reminds me of my beloved potions of immortality from Heroes of Might and Magic IV. Either that or "Its just a flesh wound" from Monthy Python's Holy Grail. Neither of them have what I consider to be an appropriate atmosphere for a game of D&D.

Does springing back to your feet after being killed provoke an attack of opportunity?

 

[jmucchiello]

1) A Knowledge check grants knowledge of all the spell-like abilities of the Balor, and a Greater Spell Immunity is used to negate most of them. I can see a Knowledge check of 40 - 45 (note he says it approached 45, not that it was) granting quite a lot, but that seems a bit much. Myself, I would have considered rolling a d4. I would have told them about the Unholy Aura, Teleportation (self), and Blasphemy, and 1d4 other at will powers. Once per day powers are not likely as well known as at will powers, after all.

Why not actually use the rule?

In many cases, you can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster.
For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information.

 

[Staffan]

Why not actually use the rule?

The actual HD-based knowledge rule has some weird side effects.
15th level wizard (Knowledge (arcana) +25) encountering a wyrmling white dragon (3 HD, DC 13): "Guys, it's immune to cold, breathes cold, can climb those ice walls like nobody's business, and is immune to paralysis and stuff."
The same wizard encountering a white great wyrm (36 HD, DC 46): "What IS that thing?"

 

[Plane Sailing]

The characters survived three rounds of Implosion, and something else, which I do not recall.

I remember Piratecats Balor doing multiple implosions too... Is the 3.5e MM the same as the SRD?

Spell-Like Abilities: At will— blasphemy (DC 25), dominate monster (DC 27), greater dispel magic, greater teleport (self plus 50 pounds of objects only), insanity (DC 25), power word stun, telekinesis (DC 23), unholy aura (DC 26); 1/day—fire storm (DC 26), implosion (DC 27). Caster level 20th. The save DCs are Charisma-based.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Implosion has a duration of one round per level, and you choose a new target every round.

 

[Evilhalfling]

We fought the same Balor in CoSQ - with a 16th lvl party and its tactics were not any better.
lucky for us. In our case it was due to the fact that the DM had not run a high level game before. I can't give the round by round details, but if it had defbuffed my cleric we would have lost. It died when I confirmed 2 criticals in the last 2 rounds with a Dire Pick. 101, 134 damage
I had not rolled as well on my knowledge check, and had a fire immunity to protect from its death blast. result I end at -47 hp

We had nothing both cold iron and holy, our archer was useless, our sorcerer went insane and the druids summoned creatures only fought for a round before banishment. Oh and the fighter got his head cut off.

Our sucessful tactics included - clerical buffs, breaking its vorpal sword, and forcing it to drop implosion by sending 2 huge augmented elementals to beat on it. Oh and me critting with a x4 weapon.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

One of the problems I have with the premise is that the PCs are using the power creep of a zillion splatbooks, while the balor is an out-of-the-box critter that was designed with only Core spells and abilities. Naturally, the PCs are going to have a huge advantage by being able to mine the splatbooks for the most (over?)powerful spells in print.

 

[Klaus]

The actual HD-based knowledge rule has some weird side effects.
15th level wizard (Knowledge (arcana) +25) encountering a wyrmling white dragon (3 HD, DC 13): "Guys, it's immune to cold, breathes cold, can climb those ice walls like nobody's business, and is immune to paralysis and stuff."
The same wizard encountering a white great wyrm (36 HD, DC 46): "What IS that thing?"

Nah.

To look at a white dragon (even a great wyrm) and know stuff it had since a wyrmling (like the breath weapon, cold immunity, fire vulnerability etc) you just need to beat the wyrmling HD. To know stuff that applies only to great wyrms, though, you have to beat the great wyrm HD (like, how many high-level spells does it have? How fast can it fly?).

 

[wingsandsword]

That article is pretty blatantly a giant ad. "Go buy these books so your characters can be more powerful, with just this stuff you can thrash a Balor levels earlier than you could before!" is the message between the lines in this article.

The Balor was played like a chump, the PC's spells were interpreted in the most generous way possible, and it felt like a group of powergamer PC's vs. an inexperienced DM.