Although the fight with the man himself is still several months away for my players' characters; I'm interested in the experiences and opinions of other players/GM's who have run/participated in the fight with Kyuss. Specifically, have any of you found anything that can potentially derail the encounter?
For example, could a PC use a Sphere of Anihiliation/Bag of Holding/Portable Hole type combo to potentially send Kyuss off to the Astral Plane? Have any of you other GM's experienced any unexpected ingenuity from your players that seriously hampered Kyuss in the process? A fellow killer GM would like to avoid any such fortunate ideas by my players... Do help a brother out:)
One of the biggest variables in this fight is, indeed, the sphere of annihilation. When I ran AoW, the PCs didn't even go for the sphere until they beat Maralee, thus not having to contend with anyone messing with it. A good idea on their part, as I was more than ready for a troop of at least three of those advanced mortal hunters accompanying Lashonna to come in with rods of negation (I think that's the one), and ruin the void-based weapon.
Still, I wouldn't hand it to them "for free" here. Instead, I'd say that after they use the painting, or whatever means they use, to get the sphere, when they come back, there should be 1-3 broodfiends waiting. Certainly their numerous, and it's likely that the PCs have just quashed many of their brethren to get to the point just before Kyuss. This extra challenge will likely do nothing more than deplete their resources, but it could allow them some practice with their new toy. Alternately, if you decide that the Blessed Angels will continue to fight in the name of this cause after Lashonna's death (I did not, in my own game), then the remaining forces could be in wait, trying to buy time, as one or two went to procure the rod of negation.
But, when it comes to Kyuss, if they've strived to hang on to this item, let'em play with it. It's a once in a lifetime kinda move, so it should be a genuine combat-styled reward.
As for Kyuss, my party was such a sick set of high-damage dealers, that I bumped his hit points all the way to 1340. I did this, as I also let them use the wish spells they have been acquiring (ring of three wishes, scrolls from Manzorian, talismans of Zagy from Dragotha's horde), to simulate a night's rest, prior to their encounter with the demigod. With a party of three already epic characters, one of which had a predilection toward the time stop/delayed blast fireball trick (which I recently learned wasn't as fail-safe as I had thought), another an eldritch knight with arcane strike and a spiked chain-esque weapon wielded two-weapon style, and finally a bard with cracked out inspire courage, not to mention my own wormhunter/sacred purifier cleric, the party was consistently doing damage totals on their combined turns of around 400. Thus, more hit points.
The reason for my long-winded analogy is to highlight that you should find out what the parties strengths are, and force your players to rely on using those strengths to win the day. That is, if they do lots of damage, the fight'll be over before it's begun if Kyuss is just dilly-dallying in his prison. He's certainly a tough opponent, but he's also got the deck stacked against him in this fight. If your players are holding back, pull out all the stops, as they're sure to do the same.
I gotta agree with Hierophantasm about upping Kyuss's HP, especially if they have the Sphere. I ran the fight as is, and felt that with the Sphere and the Hand, (as well as the debuff Kyuss/save the city sidequest), Kyuss didn't last all of four rounds. I understand the final fight should be easier if the PCs take all the steps necessary to weaken him, but the artifacts push it over the top. If you want a more climatic fight, I suggest upping Kyuss's HPs to at least above 1000, and either give him minions or the ability to buff himself as he escapes the portal (Don't forgot that besides getting stunned for a round by the Hand, he also gets stunned the very first round by the debuffing sidequests). My players were actually slightly disappointed with the final fight (Cries of, "That's it?"), though the journey there was still good. Can't wait for the Finale of Savage Tide...
(Realized I didn't answer question)- Opening a rift to the Astral PLane seems like it would help Kyuss. There, all spells are quickened and he can freely (since he's no longer within Tenser's Dim-Lock Field) call upon hordes of minions to aid him. Instead of fighting Kyuss, parties could face legions of Broodfiends, Nightshades, and all manner of Fiendish Worms. Two Gates a turn sounds pretty awful to me, and with the PCs possibly able to pull similiar tricks, you could quickly be faced with a massive, escalating free-for all battle that would take at least thirty minutes of game time per round. My PCs entertained similiar notions, and while I appreciated their creativity, I subtly discouraged the idea.
Does using the Sphere in the Kyuss fight strike anyone else as a very bad idea? Two Words: Dominate Monster. "Oh look, you have A SoA. ::Casts spell:: Oh, look. I have a minion with a SoA. Moo Hoo ha ha."
Unfortunately by the time he has the chance to do that, he has to concentrate most of his efforts of healing himself and possibly getting up a buff or two, and that's assuming the Controlling PC in question doesn't have MindBlank up. (Heck, even Protection from Evil Stops dominate). Of course, giving Kyuss more HP, he might have a chance to employ such tactics, hopefully after dispelling such protective wards. Unfortunately, if he's concentrating on the person controlling the sphere, he leaves himself open to the attacks of everyone else, and nothing hurts worse than an Epic Beatstick PC taking a full attack with Bane/Holy weapons.
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While my own campaign is still quite a bit away from the final battle, here is some suggestions i am juggling in my head:
* Very much consider keeping a certain vampiric dragon around for this fight. With 4+ PCs forcussed fire, the 600-odd HP of Kyuss are going to evaporate in 2 rounds, tops. With two "worthwhile targets", this becomes a more managable amount of hurt on each.
* Time, time time... as it stands, there is really no reason not to save Alhaster first, and shut down the unlife vortex. Put the PCs on the clock much stricter than the adventure suggests. At the threshold to epic levels, the PCs have more than enough ways to "beat the system" when it comes to regenerating. So, give them 3-4 days tops before the Age of Worms starts in earnest.
* The fact that the PCs get one (likely 2) rounds of free kicks against Kyuss pretty much seals his fate from the get-go. Eliminate the "emerging" round entirely. If they manage to fight despair despite the harsher time limit - okay. They earned their bonus fair and square. If not, Kyuss emerges as they climb the last stairs, and the battle begins immediately.
* Back to "Time". Time Stop can screw you badly in the fight (heck, is there any where it can't?). However, there used to be this lovely 2nd Edition concept of Dieties being unaffected by Time Stop - might a very nasty surprise for the Wizard, and lead to a quick "ERRRDISMISNOWHELPME!"
* Finally, in a very different spirit: Keep it fair. The PCs have suffered a lot in the campain - and as much as a Edge of their Seat fight is a worthy conclusion, a TPK on the final boss would be a rotten way to end the campaign. Take a look at the semifinals (Dragotha), decide accordingly how much more punishment your group can take before you overdo things.
Allen,
You would do well in searching these threads for older posts on Kyuss...you'll find a treasure's horde of information.
I ran AoW pretty much RAW, up to and including the showdown with Lashonna and everyone else in and around the last spire. But I knew that I wanted the very last encounter (not counting Prince Zeech) to play out in a completely different kind of way; essentially, rules as they relate to Kyuss were no longer applicable. Characters had to sacrifice a variety of relics, artifacts, and even one of their own companions in order to defeat the god. Mundane spells and attacks were simply ineffective against the god. I didn't need to know what Kyuss' AC, hit points or saves were. It might not be a popular approach by hard-liners, but I wanted a particular result to culminate the nearly two-year long path, and that was how I was going to achieve it.
An idea I've been working on is this: make Kyuss himself a pawn to some other, more powerful being: the Queen of Chaos! Basically, the energy of his ascention, now trapped in the spire, is somehow able to help her escape the prison she's been in since the battle with the Wind Dukes on the Fields of Pesh. This helps tie in all the Wind Duke stuff (Rod of Seven Parts, etc.), and gives a final twist to the ending. You can still throw Kyuss in there too, of course.
Also, it seems like "the Worm who Walks" from the Epic Level handbook should have been included somewhere in the AoW (just saying...).
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Alas I will put my two cents into the pot. When I ran the fight I found on the boards an idea that I will put back out here. I am sorry tot he person who had this great idea that I cannot remember your name and give you proper credit that you deserve. I started the fight with a big lighting bolt of green electricity that made an evil copy of each character with the same equipment and spells, buffs all diametricly opposed to each character and set them loose useing the players favorite tatics against them. They still complain about that fight not being fair and the whole encounter went 14 rounds of game time and 4 hours of real time.
I have started thinking about the end fight with Kyuss; and came up with an idea I'd like to discuss: What if Kyuss just casts (quickened ?!) antimagic field on himself and goes melee?
His artifacts are unaffected, why care for buffs as he is imune to almost anything that can hurt inside an antimagic field, and the PCs are seriously hosed. Dispelling an antimagic field is quite difficult.
Oh, and from the SRD: "Artifacts and deities are unaffected by mortal magic such as this." Does that mean he can still cast spells in side his antimagic field?
Has anybody tried that out? Other thoughts?
He is Colossal no? Is the antimagic field even large enough to contain him?
He is Huge.
Antimagic field is a 10-ft. radius emanation centered on the caster (even if you take centered literally and want it to emanate from his central square, the antimagic field extends beyond his space ba 5ft. Not sure though if it wouldn't be centered on all his squares and extend another 10ft. He also could enlarge it, if necessary).
Divine Aura and Engulf are unaffected, beeing Ex abilities. Divine Blast is a Su ability; which normally wouldn't work, but "deities are unaffected by mortal magic such as this".
An idea I've been working on is this: make Kyuss himself a pawn to some other, more powerful being: the Queen of Chaos! Basically, the energy of his ascention, now trapped in the spire, is somehow able to help her escape the prison she's been in since the battle with the Wind Dukes on the Fields of Pesh. This helps tie in all the Wind Duke stuff (Rod of Seven Parts, etc.), and gives a final twist to the ending. You can still throw Kyuss in there too, of course.
Also, it seems like "the Worm who Walks" from the Epic Level handbook should have been included somewhere in the AoW (just saying...).
I think I like this idea, and I will have to make another Lieutenant for Kyuss. Dragotha can be the leader of his armies. Lashonna can be the PR person, who builds his army and takes care of admin stuff. The 3rd guy is his R&D guy, and his enforcer. A really smart guy, but also sadistic person that loves to use brute power to squash threats that Dragotha or Lashonna point him to. He does not do it because he feels he is beneath them, but just for the enjoyment of it.
I just have to decide how to introduce him into the story, and how he came to join Kyuss. Maybe he was the most powerful person in Kyuss court when Kyuss was alive, and he could have created the artifacts Kyuss wields now.
I also have a 3rd idea for him, that allows him to be the creator of a disease I plan on introducing that turns people to zombies or other creatures(of the worm variety).
Exemplars of Evil has an NPC that may fit the bill for this R&D role as your third guy for Kyuss. Check it out, I don't remember but I think he is powerful enough for epic characters, if not can always increase his class levels.
I had forgotten about that. I think its a CR 19 or 20. I might Pathfinder it instead of doing a villain from scratch. No what the level is I will find somewhere to put it.
We enter the Wormcrawl Fissure tomorrow, so Kyuss is right around the corner. We play in the Forgotten Realms along the Sword Coast near Waterdeep.
I'm thinking of having three Kyuss "avatars" manifest in three different locations, one near the PCs' homeland in the Savage Frontier (which is my "Alhaster"), another near an ancient Vaati ruin (the late Illthane's lair), and a third in Chult (Kuluth Mar). These are the areas where Kyuss' influence has been strongest in my campaign (Wormcrawl Fissure bears Dragotha's influence), and it connects rather loosely to the "Three Faces of Evil" angle, which connects loosely to Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul in the FR setting. I continued that by introducing three powerful hags (from Expedition to Castle Ravenloft) as villains who worshipped Kyuss (and were eventually killed one way or another). The group will also ultimately face three apostles of Kyuss (those ulgurstastas), which is another "three is the magic number" element, so I thought having three Kyuss avatars might finish that pattern nicely. Each one will be occupied by powerful NPCs while those heroes wait for the PCs and the sphere. An advanced coautl and its minions will occupy Kyuss in Chult, and several wizards including Khelben Arunsun and Elminster will corral and contain Kyuss near Waterdeep. It'll be a Realms-shaking event, for sure. ;-)
I'm also thinking of simplifying Kyuss. My group would annihilate Kyuss with only 600+ hp, so I'm thinking of given him no real hit point total, rendering him virtually immune to mortal attacks and magic. Only the sphere can harm him, so PCs will have to use their talents to dodge Kyuss while the wizard uses the sphere. Considering the various minions I can use (Brazzemal, Dragotha, Maralee, etc.), I could have Kyuss destroying the countryside like some force of nature, where he's more of an environmental threat, so he wouldn't be out to immediately TPK the party.
I'm leaving out the spire. It's not necessary in my case. Kyuss will be born from out of the very earth itself, and each site will be a site where his presence once manifested thousands of years ago. The spire seems to house additional bosses and monsters, but those can be brought to the field by Kyuss himself. Imagine him dumping a deluge of worms on the ground (or a PC), and when the cascade ends, there is Maralee and her Kyuss knights. ;-)
Concerning time stop, Kyuss will definitely have the epic feat spell stowaway (time stop). No time stop/dimensional lock/forcecage on this one. To everyone else, any wizard using time stop will appear to dissolve into a green mass of Kyuss worms, as he would have been engulfed during those few rounds. ;-)
Should the party attack Kyuss, he'll use his engulf and his vorpal executioner's mace, but I really don't plan on using any of his other abilities. Even if he uses wail of the banshee, that's still a spell available to the PCs, and I don't want any connection between Kyuss and mortality, if that makes sense. I want Kyuss to be totally alien, invincible, and unstoppable.
I don't plan on a TPK. We have so many PCs, cohorts, NPCs, and other characters on-hand that the endgame with Kyuss will be like the entire Justice League mobilizing against Darkseid. There will definitely be deaths, but our campaign will continue onward after Kyuss. It must! ;-)
I'd be careful about introducing anything "new" to the encounter. Giving Kyuss a bunch of mooks wouldn't be a bad idea. Some broodfiends, some badass ulgurstasas, and whatnot.
The published setup leaves a very wide range of possibilities...
Yes, your players might run though the final adventure as the designers expected, dealing with Lashona at the base of the tower, Maralee before the top, and so on.
Or, they might go more along the lines of my players, who decided they wanted to get the drop on Kyuss before he became too powerful, and before they had their resources whittled down getting to him. So they by-passed the tower and just went straight to the top (with a bevvy of summoned help). After a couple of warm-up rounds, they found themselves fighting Kyuss, Lashona, Maralee, etc all at once. It took them a long time to get rid of all these "minions", barely surviving, then it became a bit of a stale-mate between them and Kyuss until, after many hours of real-life time, they finally whittled him down and defeated him, having used nearly all their resources on the way. That was a pretty epic ending, where the players really were scratching their heads on ways to win (playing it out in two sessions helped there).
So I guess my point is that a lot depends on your players - how well prepared their PC's are to combat Kyuss, and then what approach they take in the final adventure. As a DM, you can try and prepare for some of that, namely how well designed the PC's are to fight Kyuss etc, but in the end it still comes down to exactly what spells they have on the day, their tactics in the fights, and whether they take out all the "support crew" before they reach Kyuss, or if some are left alive and can come and join in the final battle. You can't predict that, and I think that open-ended nature is a great feature of the final adventure.
Overall, I think the adventure is pretty well designed and allows for a wide range of possibilities. It's good to allow the players actions to dictate the overall outcome, including just how hard that final fight is. It's a fitting way to end a very epic campaign.
There's only one thing I would quibble with, and that's the severe de-buffing that Kyuss gets if the PC's succeed on various quests before hand. You should expect your PC's to succeed on these, or they are a bit stupid really (and if so, how did you let them get this far in the AP?) So I'd suggest you reign in on the de-buffs. But also trim the "endless healing" cheese that Kyuss has - let himself timestop and/or heal himself only a limited number of times, otherwise your group might be destined for a very long, slow fall if dealing damage is the only way they can defeat him (which isn't unreasonable - he's pretty much immune to 'save or die' stuff as far as I recall). From memory (it was a long time ago now), I let Kyuss cast Heal about three times, and even then it was starting to get pretty monotonous as the players didn't have any other options left to try and take him down except to keep pounding on him - nearly all their cool tricks were used up, and Kyuss just healed himself back up again! But then, my group's PC's were not especially cheesed out builds - they were strong builds, and the players battle-hardened through having played their PC for two years of real-life time, but there were no game-breaking PC's in the mix.
The published setup leaves a very wide range of possibilities...
Yes, your players might run though the final adventure as the designers expected, dealing with Lashona at the base of the tower, Maralee before the top, and so on.
Or, they might go more along the lines of my players, who decided they wanted to get the drop on Kyuss before he became too powerful, and before they had their resources whittled down getting to him. So they by-passed the tower and just went straight to the top (with a bevvy of summoned help). After a couple of warm-up rounds, they found themselves fighting Kyuss, Lashona, Maralee, etc all at once. It took them a long time to get rid of all these "minions", barely surviving, then it became a bit of a stale-mate between them and Kyuss until, after many hours of real-life time, they finally whittled him down and defeated him, having used nearly all their resources on the way. That was a pretty epic ending, where the players really were scratching their heads on ways to win (playing it out in two sessions helped there).
So I guess my point is that a lot depends on your players - how well prepared their PC's are to combat Kyuss, and then what approach they take in the final adventure. As a DM, you can try and prepare for some of that, namely how well designed the PC's are to fight Kyuss etc, but in the end it still comes down to exactly what spells they have on the day, their tactics in the fights, and whether they take out all the "support crew" before they reach Kyuss, or if some are left alive and can come and join in the final battle. You can't predict that, and I think that open-ended nature is a great feature of the final adventure.
Overall, I think the adventure is pretty well designed and allows for a wide range of possibilities. It's good to allow the players actions to dictate the overall outcome, including just how hard that final fight is. It's a fitting way to end a very epic campaign.
There's only one thing I would quibble with, and that's the severe...
I'd really love to read a "play by play" of this fight. Especially details on tactics and resources used by PC and NPC alike.
My notes from the time are in the archives HERE - just look through for my posts.
Other than that, I only have my fading memory to go by... I've DM'd two new campaigns since then (the latest being 4e, so my memory of 3.5 is fading).
FYI, the PC's consisted of an ogre fighter/kensai (big maul, big longbow) at 23rd level (after level adjustment), a human cleric/rogue/PrC at 23rd level (equiv to about 20th level cleric for spells), an elf sorcerer/fighter/PrC at 21st level (equiv to about 20th level sorc for spells), and a human paladin at 21st level (Melinde, from Diamond Lake). While the player of the Fighter considered his character a bit cheesy, personally I didn't think so in fact I thought he needed to be to keep up. Mostly it was a melee-heavy party, with buffing support from the cleric and a bit of versatility from the sorcerer (e.g. limited wish got used a lot, as did some scrolls). While I pretty much allowed any 3.5 books, there was no uber-cheese used anywhere from the PC's; I helped them with their builds towards the end, but no-one went hard-out on the optmisation or abuse of spells etc.