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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 5383042" data-attributes="member: 20323"><p>I like your set up! I've only run 2 dragons at high heroic, so take this with a grain of salt. One of those was a modified 12th level Fettered Dracolich that the 9th level pcs faced... on an open battlefield. The pcs witnessed the dracolich get summoned when they were only 2nd level after a botched attempt to stop a ritual, so this fight had been looming over them for a long time. I knew it had the potential to be a TPK, so I gave them a few (too many) extras... First, during the campaign they found the dracolich's phylactery which was a puzzle prop I made that could only be opened near the dracolich - it had the power to negate one of the dracolich's powers per round with the right combo of sigils, but that required standard action and healing surge...later in the fight it was used to pin the dracolich's wings so it couldnt escape.  Second, the pcs managed to convince nobles to lend them archer minions (the battle took place during a siege), which dealt an extra 5-10 damage per round against the dracolich. Third, they used some awesome daily utilities at the start. The battle opened with the dracolich killing most of the cavalry, routing the rest, and flinging the cavalry's mortally wounded prince commander (an old ally of the pcs) 30 feet  through the air... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> The bard ended up stopping the rout, allowing cavalry to hold a line so pcs could focus on just the dracolich without dealing with waves of minions. And the cleric healed the wounded prince (and kept him alive) so the pcs gained an allied npc for the fight. IOW they were swimming in power-ups for a seven on one solo fight. I think one pc nearly died, but otherwise the pcs kicked the dracolich's asstail. I think a level 20 dracolich would have been been too much, though I could see presenting an "ancient dracolich" as a multi-part encounter where the pcs face skill challenges and hazards to evade, slow down, and weaken it with the dracolich's final level determined by their successes (though no harder than L+5).</p></blockquote><p></p>

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