The awesomeness of paragon characters

[Jack99]

Tonight we had the culmination of the latest part of my campaign. The heroes (level 18) have been hacking their way through a 4e version of the Tomb of Horrors, in search of one part of an ancient ritual that will allow them to enter the memory and mind of a god. Eventually.

Anyway, 4 of 5 characters having been stripped of their magic items the last time, made things look fairly gloomy. They were getting closer to the chambers of the demi-lich, but there was still a way to go. Lots of trap to deal with and a few encounters at least. Or so I assumed.

Enter a few rituals. Locate object, wizard sight and boom, they had locked in on where their items were. Of course I could just have said they couldn't scry them, but where would the fun be. Instead, I had placed a magical defense on the entire dungeon, so that any teleport spell/ritual (or the like, including things like passwall) would instantly summon 4 ghosts and wraiths to attack them. They had tried this before, when the feylord in the party "accidently" summoned 8 of them in the middle of a trap, before he realised what was happening.

Anyway, with wizard sight and arcane gate, they opened up a shortcut to the demi-lich's lair and entered quickly.

Which means they found themselves facing a 32000k combat (demilich, 2 ghosts, 2 wraiths, 20 minion ghosts and a evil circle of malvolence, giving bonuses to undeads, all in all equal to an n+6 fight, going towards n+7) with no magical items in hand. Sure, they were spread out in the chamber, so with appropriate perception checks, one could locate them and pick one up, but still.

On the other hand, they had all their surges and all their powers, having just rested.

To make a long story short, I really thought they were done. And it was close. The cleric had his soul sucked out about halfway through the combat, so he was dead. The warlock and the rogue were both on their second failed deathsave, the wizard had a handfull of hit points left and the fighter was bloodied when the demi-lich finally died (the rest of the monsters were dead by then) and there was absolutely no healing left.

It was, for a lack of a better word, an awesome combat, both for me the DM, but also for the players. And it really showed the resilience that end-paragon characters have, even without most of their toys. (The fighter got his axe and his neck item during the fight, and the rogue got his dagger, but the wizard and the warlock couldn't find their implements, so they had to deal with everything without.)

Anyway, I just got home and thought I wanted to share this, because well, it was a great night of gaming.

Cheers

 

[Rechan]

*snfl* I feel like I'll never see paragon tier, the way gaming keeps shaping up for me.

But yay for your group, Jack!

 

[fba827]

like rechan, none of my groups/games have yet made it to paragon tier. So it's actually good to hear some experiences from that! Sounds like it was a good session

 

[gribble]

Hmmm... I'm guessing the opponents were all mostly at or below the parties level - otherwise how were they hitting higher level opponents without magic items???

By high paragon, magic bonuses to hit account for about a +4 swing... so they would have been needing 15s to hit opponents of the same level (and more to hit higher level opponents)?

 

[Dice4Hire]

My face-to-face group just hit 20th, after playing through from 3rd on WOTC's adventure path. So far it has been fun in both tiers, though the adventure path leaves a lot to be desired. The party can tkae hits, there are good tactical choices to be made, and when you work together, you do a lot better.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Hmmm... I'm guessing the opponents were all mostly at or below the parties level - otherwise how were they hitting higher level opponents without magic items???

By high paragon, magic bonuses to hit account for about a +4 swing... so they would have been needing 15s to hit opponents of the same level (and more to hit higher level opponents)?

Yes, that is a problem at paragon, whereas you start to focus more and more on one weapon, at-will power or trick you have invested a lot of effort into. Secondary weapons take a lot of investment, such as bows or thrown weapons, and hitting and doing reasonable dmaage becomes harder or harder. It is possible to keep up with good weapon choices, but the swing between good and poor is a lot higher.

 

[Jack99]

Hmmm... I'm guessing the opponents were all mostly at or below the parties level - otherwise how were they hitting higher level opponents without magic items???

By high paragon, magic bonuses to hit account for about a +4 swing... so they would have been needing 15s to hit opponents of the same level (and more to hit higher level opponents)?

Nope. Regular monsters and the minions were all level 18, the solo (demi-lich) was level 20. And yes, they had huge problems hitting at times. Especially the wizard and warlock who had -6 to hit compared to normally, due to no implement (magic bonuses + expertise). Both the rogue and fighter were quick to find their weapons. But they started the fight with a +1 flaming dagger and a rusty longsword.

So in short, yes. They had some good rolls. But there was a good deal of missing.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I'm going to be running a demi-lich and an iron golem against our PCs next week. Did you find any tricks while running the demi-lich I should keep in mind? I primarily plan on him hitting them with the soul drain while the iron golem and some fire archons dish out the real damage.

The party has a lot of necrotic and fire resistance so its going to be hard to do a lot of damage to them. The party is very low on surges, however, and has blown a lot of dailies, but I expect they have a lot of tricks left. This will be their sixth fight without an extended rest.

 

[Jack99]

My demi-lich is not really by the book, but yeah, try to keep it behind the golem and make sure it gets at least one with the soul-draining attack. When my players were hit by it, I told the victim that he felt as if someone was trying to pull his soul out of his body.. That caused immediate tension as the players now knew that there were big consequences from missing the save. Unless you tell your players everything up front, then my advice means little

I gave it more shadow rays (up to 4, still max 2 per target), aside from the usual tweaking I do with the hit points/damage-ratio. Otherwise I used the waves of ghost minions to keep players occupied/distracted.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I plan on pounding them with the soul drain every round including action points. I have a stack of tweaked Demiliches but I think I'll stick with basic except for one change. the demilich can crush a soul gem to gain an action point and gets this recharged when it is bloodied. That's a lot of soul drains. I hope to get at least someone.