Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4985841" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ok, wait a minute.  I've been reading this thread in growing disbelief, and the above comment just has to be called out.  Some of the other ones weren't believable either, but there was enough ambiguity in them that they were at least possible.  However, the above statements contain two impossibilities.1) None of the pre-gen characters has a weapon that can even damage the skull, much less smash it in a round.   There is only one weapon in the tomb that is effective, and that only in the hands of 2 of the 20 possible pre-gen characters.2) None of the pregen spell casters has access to any of the spells you'd need to consistantly take the skull down in a single round.3) The only spells which are available to the spellcasters are highly obscure and are employed in ways that they are not normally employed.  For example, shatter is one of the most effective attacks on the skull (but even it can't take the skull down fast enough to prevent it devestating the party) available to a party of the suggested level, but unless the players have cheated and have read the module text, shatter is unlikely to occur to them as an attack because in 1st edition it normally only effects non-magical unliving objects - as a monster (and a magical one to boot) the skull isn't even normally a valid target.4) The other ways to win the fight are even more obscure.5) The best the pregen party can do in the first round assuming good luck and all the right characters from the list present and everyone doing the perfect generally obscure thing is about 40 pts. of damage.  The odds of that much are pretty low.  Ascerak's skull has 50 hit points.  Generally speaking, I consider the fight to be impossible without spoilers for players using the pregen characters.  It's highly likely that after round one, no one will have anything capable of doing further harm to the skull.  It's immune to virtually all attacks, and those attacks its not immune to require equipment that is not available or spells beyond their character level.  Oddly, the best party for defeating the liche is the 4 character party that is one of the suggested if there are only 2 players.  In many cases, the critical party member (the one without which you can't win the fight except by inventing some method not in the text and convincing the DM that it will work) isn't even on the list of suggested party members.</blockquote>

Verification