high level monster tactics

[wordelo]

I love these lists of tactics in the high level age of worms books. they are so helpful.

if reduced to x HP they do this.

for example thessalar, a lich in the wormcrawl fissure says he retreats to area 7 if brought below 40 HP. in the second confrontation he fights until reduced to 10 hp then retreats entirely.

as a standard wizard he has no way to heal himself so he will start the second fight at less than 40 HP against 5 level 19 PCs. he will not survive half of an attack from the main fighter as most of his attacks do more than 80 damage each, the sorcerer does over 100 damage, the cleric can do over 60 damage, and the rogue/wizard can sneak attack undead and do 150 damage.

yeah he'd be lucky with his 145 max HP to survive 1 round against this party.

of course I changed him up. gave him a way to heal himself some better spells, so hopefully he'll be more of a challenge. but I find it hard to challenge them with anything really.

[Steel_Wind]

Last I checked, a lich can cast vampiric touch, enervation and energy drain. Most importantly limited wish permits a lich to cast harm, which essentially fully heals it.

The suggested spells for this encounter allow for maximized enervation and enervation, both of which can be used to heal it, but you can vary as you see fit. Limited wish used to cast harm is the easiest way to add a heal spell to the lich for this encounter.

If you can't challenge a party -- any party -- with a lich? You really aren't trying hard enough. or you don't know to play a Wizard to maximum effect. Try adding a contingency and greater dispel magic along with something uber. Etherealness and noncorporeal body adds surprises as well. Change it up.

Throw off a hit and run Disjunction to strip their buffs, break their stuff (even artifacts) and REALLY piss them off. Reverse gravity fields are still horrendously powerful at an opportune moment, as are surprise anti-magic fields near powerful environmental threats.

Greater dispel magic and a quickened enervation in the same round or an energy drain -- empowered feeblemind after a disjunction on the Wizard PC and then teleport the Wizard away to kill him -- all of these things can be utterly devastating. Use hit and run. Teleport away -- FAR AWAY and use selective spells to split up the party -- or just leave and come back after the buffs wear off (some times this simple tactic is the most effective). Don't let your lich show himself. They should not even be able to even reach it without real effort.

Really, any caster that can cast 9th level spells has its finger on the "I win" button if you want to give the appropriate spells to it as long as it has superior knowledge and the initiative. And as the GM, you decide if you have that or not.

Running high level encounters is difficult because with access to that much power and being devious about things, it's quite easy to TPK the party. Playing up the threat without pushing it over the top is the hard part.

[Steel_Wind]

P.S.: You can chain a contingency spell to key off the casting of another spell on the same target with the same action. With this tactic, you can hit a target with two maximized touches of idiocy in the same round. That's -12 to CHA, INT, and WIS, no save. Even with PC uber stats, that is likely to wipe out most 7, 8, and 9th level spells possessed by that character at a stroke. Following a disjunction spell that screws up major stat gain items, you might effectively wipe out BOTH party casters with this tactic.

With spectral hand and a lich's BAB from surprise? You won't miss either.

You absolutely CAN screw over just about anybody with a 19th level lich. Play it smart, patient and mean. Don't be fair about it. You'll be surprised how quickly the party can fall.

[wordelo]

thank you for the ideas but...

limited wish cannot cast harm, 5th level or lower cleric spells and 6th level or lower wizard spells. harm is 6th level.

contingency spell can only be used once. I could give him the feat craft contingency but he uses up some npc gear value.

enervation and energy drain would give some temp HP max 20 or 40 but it doesn't stack with itself thus the most he would ever get is 40.

according to the story he loves life and is a transmuter. he only became a lich so he can study life more. I used his ability to command thessalmonster to surround himself with a protolife shell, basically an ooze. there is no line of effect between PCs and him until he wills it, so he can cast spells through it. this will make him last a couple more rounds.

as for healing since he is a transmuter I gave him the stone body spell. he can cast transmute mud to rock to bring him instantly to full health. he can cast his maximized vampiric touch on his protolife shell to get some temp HP.

I also gave him chain dispel. mord's disjunction is just too mean for me to use.

I was only making fun of the tactics of the monsters they put on here. they expect him to last 1 round at 40 HP. fights till below 10 hp then leaves. if I were him and wanted to keep all of my stuff that I gathered over the last 50 years. I would book if they dealt me 150+ damage in one round.

I was going to explain my expectations of how this encounter would go down but he has a lot of spells on him when they arrive (thanks to his prying eyes) ironguard makes him immune to fighter, ray deflection makes him immune to sneak attack dude (uses maximized orb of acid), energy immunity fire makes him immune to sorcerer who deals fire damage. and improved turn resist makes sure he isn't destroyed by pelor cleric. these spells have to be taken down first. too random to predict.

oh and 4 of the 5 PCs can cast GR dispel magic. and the 2 clerics can use divine defiance to counterspell as immediate action.

[P.H. Dungeon]

I agree with the OP. I don't know how well playtested these adventures are, but I don't feel like the designers often really have a handle on how tough a high level party can be. They tend to abide by the CR system pretty closely, but the CR system has gone out the window long before the PCs get to level 19.

I'd probably give the lich a bunch of extra hp and/or some really powerful minions to help even the odds.

At that level I end up redoing a lot of encounters (at least I did with my Savage Tide campaign). When the encounter says they fight a Balor demon, instead they fight 5 balor demons and a few mariliths.

As an example look at what the designers did with the final encounter of Rise of the Runelords.

Spoiler:

In the original adventure it's Kazroug on his own. In the anniversary edition he's got a couple of storm giants and other minions backing him up. They really beefed up that encounter, having learned that it ended up being a big cake walk for most parties in the first version, and the last thing you want is for the final boss villain of your entire campaign to go down like a chump in one round.

Of course the problem with this tactic is that the combats will take a looong time.

[wordelo]

it's all about turn economy. the enemy gets one turn while the good guys gets (in this case) 5 turns. and they supplememnt those turns by using belts of battle, and clerics' devine defiance feat.

there's a special encounter I made with a whole crap load of kobolds. not wanting to keep track of 50 mobs I made 1 super mob, with 3000 HP.

let's see how fast they can burn through that. AoE of course is X 1.5 but even then they would need to do 2000 AoE damage.

I could go the 4.0 route and multiply solo enemies' HP by 5. but that brings to light the fact that this is a game.

I guess it's up to the players how they want to feel, like a game or real life.