Manbearcat
Legend
As the title indicates, my home game was 27th (now 28th) level and fast approaching its climax and denouement. Something pretty impressive ocurred recently that I figured I would share. Hopefully it will give an assist to GMs who have limited tenure in the Epic tier of play.
The Epic Tier of play is one of an "Abyss on Earth" and "7 Deadly Sins" theme. Demon Lords of madness, ruin and corruption (etc) attempt to take over the world once every age and the time is (unsurprisingly!) now. So we've got the Abyssal Lords Juiblex, Demogorgon and Dagon as our primary antagonists. They either send proxies to possess everyday folk or lend their own considerable weight to subvert the will of the world's power brokers. In the present case, Juiblex itself had the PCs' (to that point) primary antagonist as his thrall; a mighty Paladin King sworn to protect the lands from just such a demonic incursion. The PCs defeated the Paladin in a memorable battle that left them fully cognizant of the fact that the Paladin was under the sway of a might demonic presence. The ooze-like traits that were slowly undoing his corporeal form and a successful Religion check made it transparent that Juiblex was the culprit. As such, the PCs set about binding the Paladin in order to replenish themselves (Extended Rest) and prepare for the Rituals of Magic Circle and Adjure the following day. Obviously, their hope was to exorcise Juiblex from the Paladin and restore the mighty hero for the titanic clash to come.
The Adjure Ritual calls for a complexity 4 Skill Challenge and given that this was the exorcism of an actual Abyssal Lord, I determined that all DCs are Hard. It started out well enough. The Bladesinger called out Juiblex as the culprit, delivering the ancient enemy's (speaking of The Ancient Enemy...a large portion of the preceding game was a horror themed riffing of "Phantoms" by Dean Koontz, with Juiblex as The Ancient Enemy) truename by way of a successful Religion check. The Abyssal Lord answered in his own special way. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor began to ooze and all manner of foul, Lovecraftian horrors, including the holy sepulcher the Ritual was taking place in, began to rise against them. The other 2 PCs at this point had an extraordinarily tough fight on their hands while the Bladesinger attempted the Ritual (I'll speak of that below as it is relevant).
Ultimately, the Ritual failed, reaching 3 success just before the 3rd failure. The PC lost 3 Healing Surges (primarily psychic biofeedback). However, the Adjure Skill Challenge resolves itself by way of a continuum of successes, 3 being:
With the Skill Challenge failed, it was determined that the Paladin would be consumed by Juiblex's posession. However, the players wanted the Paladin to live in order to reclaim his rightful place as holy beacon for the people of this ravaged world..and of course to fight the demonic incursion with them! So, with the horde of Juiblex pressing in, the Bladesinger decided to do something desperate with his momentary authority. He called out the archfiend and requested to be immediately brought to his Abyssal Sanctum. He challenged him in a duel to the death, offering Juiblex his powerful services as herald to usher in this new age of darkness in the material world, giving him endless innocent, goodly beings to consume. Or...he would vanquish the archfiend forevermore and his sway over this noble Paladin would be broken. Offer accepted!
A one-way portal to Juiblex's Abyssal Domain opened and the Bladesinger stepped through while his allies fought back the malevolent hordes pressing in to consume them and the Paladin.
Couple mechanical things right quick without getting too deep into the nuts and bolts (spoling for space and brevity):
[sblock]
1) The Bladesinger's Epic Destiny is Draconic Incarnation. To make a long story short, this character is actually a reincarnated dragon who died heroically in the last age while vanquishing the immediately preceeding demonic scourge. He is reborn anew every age to fight this Abyssal Plague.
2) The Bladesinger's build carries with it several features that make it an extraordinary soloing machine:
a) A suite of powers, spells, magic items that he uses to refresh Bladesong. Unless in a dungeon, my game features, almost exclusively, 2 fights a day @ (somewhere around) level n + 3 and n + 4. If its a singular fight, I will often pump it up to n + 5 (sometimes 6). The rest of the game is borne out of Skill Challenges and Transitional Scenes/Roleplay (maybe 2/3 of table time). You're looking at a number of combat ruonds per day somewhere around 12. As such, he is able to extend or refresh Bladesong for pretty much the entirety of the day. At level 27, that is + 2 power bonus to all defenses/to hit and + 17 damage on all attacks (arcane and melee).
b) He can maintain, almost indefinitely, a Defender ++ AC and Reflex that is hittable only by a 19 or 20. Will is almost in that same range while Fort is slightly weaker.
c) He has a deep array of ripostes, and minor action attacks that are all advantaged from Bladesong.
d) His level 2 Utility Spell inflicts auto-Force damage when he is attacked in melee.
e) He can teleport at-will.
f) He has various damage reduction means (elemental and physical).
g) His Epic Destiny allows him to turn into a fricken dragon and fly around and blast things with a breath weapon. Further, once per day, when he dies, his draconic spirit emerges (insubstantial, phasing, large, his maximum HPs and all of his powers) and fights on. If slain, then he is ultimately slain. If not, the spirit disperses and he is reborn at the end of a short rest once the encounter is over.
h) He has various interrupts that let him outright cancel attacks or reduce them to (usually) 0.
i) Lots of other stuff with spells that allow him a lot of control and the ability to decimate minions + a few Healing Surge abilities (including a Second Wind that grants an MBA).
[/sblock]
All of the above came into play when fighting, and defeating, Juiblex in his sanctum. This was an n + 6 (66000 XP budget) encounter for the PC in question! With Resistance (and immediate interrupts) he basically had complete immunity to Acid damage which is his primary damage + the oozes that he spawns. The primary threat to the PC was Juiblex's Psychic damage aura (which primarily hurt the PC in the action economy game) and the 2 hazards from the sanctum; a Psychic Wave that recharges and multiple AoE Poison Eruptions (20 OG poison which Juiblex is immune to given his Resist 20 poison) triggered on proximity that attack Fort (his weakest defense).
Anyway, after an extraordinarily intense battle, this singular PC slew an Abyssal Lord (Level 26 Solo Soldier brought up to 27) at an n + 6 encounter budget. Pretty awesome stuff.
The other 2 PCs were in their own titanic battle against Juiblex's Lovecraftian monstrosities and an "alive" sepulcher (n + 6 budget @ 132,000 XP for 2 PCs). Although the encounter budgeting was the same per PC, certain aspects of this fight actually made things more difficult for the duo of PCs; specifically auras, lots of environmental hazards from the "possessed" sepulcher, and not quite the requisite AoE punch against ooze swarms. Nonetheless, they prevailed. The Ranger/Rogue is a Dread Pirate Roberts Swashbuckler type. From a resource perspective, he is very similar to the Bladesinger in many ways (huge activatable AC and Reflex, tons of ripostes and minor action flurries, ridiculous mobility, suite of interrupts to outright cancel attacks) except he has different thematic (and mechanical) tricks plus an array of stealth attacks. The Druid has been rebuilt many times over, but has finally settled on an extremely powerful "Pack-Lord" build for their small group; a Sentinel Druid/Lazylord build. The Rogue/Ranger has an Ironwood Hound pet (level equivalent wondrous item) while the Druid has a PC build bear pet, fey familiar and multiple summons. The Lazylord part of the build grants a Daily nova attack from the Rogue and this companion/summons/familiar army. Massive force multiplier for a party of "2."
Anyway, Juiblex and his monstrous hordes slain. With the Paladin restored to his former self, the (now level 28) PCs will inevitably set their sights on Demogorgon, Dagon and the terrors that lie at the bottom of the Abyss. Pretty nifty stuff for a solo and duo effort respectively given the potency of Epic Tier bad guys; n + 6 encounters defeated. With the kind of force multiplication and lockdown that large, late Epic Tier groups are capable of, I'm sure the encounter budgeting would need to be carefully assessed (and reassessed) by those GMs regularly. Speculatively, for a normal sized group (5ish) my guess would be that any BBEG fight at late Epic needs to be at n + 6 bare minimum if working off full nova capability. For those size groups, once players have gained their "survive death" Epic Destiny Feature, n + 5 must become trivial. Once they get their level 30 capstone, assuming standard or + synergy, n + 8 is probably in play.
The Epic Tier of play is one of an "Abyss on Earth" and "7 Deadly Sins" theme. Demon Lords of madness, ruin and corruption (etc) attempt to take over the world once every age and the time is (unsurprisingly!) now. So we've got the Abyssal Lords Juiblex, Demogorgon and Dagon as our primary antagonists. They either send proxies to possess everyday folk or lend their own considerable weight to subvert the will of the world's power brokers. In the present case, Juiblex itself had the PCs' (to that point) primary antagonist as his thrall; a mighty Paladin King sworn to protect the lands from just such a demonic incursion. The PCs defeated the Paladin in a memorable battle that left them fully cognizant of the fact that the Paladin was under the sway of a might demonic presence. The ooze-like traits that were slowly undoing his corporeal form and a successful Religion check made it transparent that Juiblex was the culprit. As such, the PCs set about binding the Paladin in order to replenish themselves (Extended Rest) and prepare for the Rituals of Magic Circle and Adjure the following day. Obviously, their hope was to exorcise Juiblex from the Paladin and restore the mighty hero for the titanic clash to come.
The Adjure Ritual calls for a complexity 4 Skill Challenge and given that this was the exorcism of an actual Abyssal Lord, I determined that all DCs are Hard. It started out well enough. The Bladesinger called out Juiblex as the culprit, delivering the ancient enemy's (speaking of The Ancient Enemy...a large portion of the preceding game was a horror themed riffing of "Phantoms" by Dean Koontz, with Juiblex as The Ancient Enemy) truename by way of a successful Religion check. The Abyssal Lord answered in his own special way. The walls, the ceiling, and the floor began to ooze and all manner of foul, Lovecraftian horrors, including the holy sepulcher the Ritual was taking place in, began to rise against them. The other 2 PCs at this point had an extraordinarily tough fight on their hands while the Bladesinger attempted the Ritual (I'll speak of that below as it is relevant).
Ultimately, the Ritual failed, reaching 3 success just before the 3rd failure. The PC lost 3 Healing Surges (primarily psychic biofeedback). However, the Adjure Skill Challenge resolves itself by way of a continuum of successes, 3 being:
With the Skill Challenge failed, it was determined that the Paladin would be consumed by Juiblex's posession. However, the players wanted the Paladin to live in order to reclaim his rightful place as holy beacon for the people of this ravaged world..and of course to fight the demonic incursion with them! So, with the horde of Juiblex pressing in, the Bladesinger decided to do something desperate with his momentary authority. He called out the archfiend and requested to be immediately brought to his Abyssal Sanctum. He challenged him in a duel to the death, offering Juiblex his powerful services as herald to usher in this new age of darkness in the material world, giving him endless innocent, goodly beings to consume. Or...he would vanquish the archfiend forevermore and his sway over this noble Paladin would be broken. Offer accepted!
A one-way portal to Juiblex's Abyssal Domain opened and the Bladesinger stepped through while his allies fought back the malevolent hordes pressing in to consume them and the Paladin.
Couple mechanical things right quick without getting too deep into the nuts and bolts (spoling for space and brevity):
[sblock]
1) The Bladesinger's Epic Destiny is Draconic Incarnation. To make a long story short, this character is actually a reincarnated dragon who died heroically in the last age while vanquishing the immediately preceeding demonic scourge. He is reborn anew every age to fight this Abyssal Plague.
2) The Bladesinger's build carries with it several features that make it an extraordinary soloing machine:
a) A suite of powers, spells, magic items that he uses to refresh Bladesong. Unless in a dungeon, my game features, almost exclusively, 2 fights a day @ (somewhere around) level n + 3 and n + 4. If its a singular fight, I will often pump it up to n + 5 (sometimes 6). The rest of the game is borne out of Skill Challenges and Transitional Scenes/Roleplay (maybe 2/3 of table time). You're looking at a number of combat ruonds per day somewhere around 12. As such, he is able to extend or refresh Bladesong for pretty much the entirety of the day. At level 27, that is + 2 power bonus to all defenses/to hit and + 17 damage on all attacks (arcane and melee).
b) He can maintain, almost indefinitely, a Defender ++ AC and Reflex that is hittable only by a 19 or 20. Will is almost in that same range while Fort is slightly weaker.
c) He has a deep array of ripostes, and minor action attacks that are all advantaged from Bladesong.
d) His level 2 Utility Spell inflicts auto-Force damage when he is attacked in melee.
e) He can teleport at-will.
f) He has various damage reduction means (elemental and physical).
g) His Epic Destiny allows him to turn into a fricken dragon and fly around and blast things with a breath weapon. Further, once per day, when he dies, his draconic spirit emerges (insubstantial, phasing, large, his maximum HPs and all of his powers) and fights on. If slain, then he is ultimately slain. If not, the spirit disperses and he is reborn at the end of a short rest once the encounter is over.
h) He has various interrupts that let him outright cancel attacks or reduce them to (usually) 0.
i) Lots of other stuff with spells that allow him a lot of control and the ability to decimate minions + a few Healing Surge abilities (including a Second Wind that grants an MBA).
[/sblock]
All of the above came into play when fighting, and defeating, Juiblex in his sanctum. This was an n + 6 (66000 XP budget) encounter for the PC in question! With Resistance (and immediate interrupts) he basically had complete immunity to Acid damage which is his primary damage + the oozes that he spawns. The primary threat to the PC was Juiblex's Psychic damage aura (which primarily hurt the PC in the action economy game) and the 2 hazards from the sanctum; a Psychic Wave that recharges and multiple AoE Poison Eruptions (20 OG poison which Juiblex is immune to given his Resist 20 poison) triggered on proximity that attack Fort (his weakest defense).
Anyway, after an extraordinarily intense battle, this singular PC slew an Abyssal Lord (Level 26 Solo Soldier brought up to 27) at an n + 6 encounter budget. Pretty awesome stuff.
The other 2 PCs were in their own titanic battle against Juiblex's Lovecraftian monstrosities and an "alive" sepulcher (n + 6 budget @ 132,000 XP for 2 PCs). Although the encounter budgeting was the same per PC, certain aspects of this fight actually made things more difficult for the duo of PCs; specifically auras, lots of environmental hazards from the "possessed" sepulcher, and not quite the requisite AoE punch against ooze swarms. Nonetheless, they prevailed. The Ranger/Rogue is a Dread Pirate Roberts Swashbuckler type. From a resource perspective, he is very similar to the Bladesinger in many ways (huge activatable AC and Reflex, tons of ripostes and minor action flurries, ridiculous mobility, suite of interrupts to outright cancel attacks) except he has different thematic (and mechanical) tricks plus an array of stealth attacks. The Druid has been rebuilt many times over, but has finally settled on an extremely powerful "Pack-Lord" build for their small group; a Sentinel Druid/Lazylord build. The Rogue/Ranger has an Ironwood Hound pet (level equivalent wondrous item) while the Druid has a PC build bear pet, fey familiar and multiple summons. The Lazylord part of the build grants a Daily nova attack from the Rogue and this companion/summons/familiar army. Massive force multiplier for a party of "2."
Anyway, Juiblex and his monstrous hordes slain. With the Paladin restored to his former self, the (now level 28) PCs will inevitably set their sights on Demogorgon, Dagon and the terrors that lie at the bottom of the Abyss. Pretty nifty stuff for a solo and duo effort respectively given the potency of Epic Tier bad guys; n + 6 encounters defeated. With the kind of force multiplication and lockdown that large, late Epic Tier groups are capable of, I'm sure the encounter budgeting would need to be carefully assessed (and reassessed) by those GMs regularly. Speculatively, for a normal sized group (5ish) my guess would be that any BBEG fight at late Epic needs to be at n + 6 bare minimum if working off full nova capability. For those size groups, once players have gained their "survive death" Epic Destiny Feature, n + 5 must become trivial. Once they get their level 30 capstone, assuming standard or + synergy, n + 8 is probably in play.
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