Ilthuliak On Hard Mode

[Spastic Puma]

Dragons are iconic in pathfinder. Just about as iconic as dungeons, I would say :P. Therefore, as GM I find it my responsibility to make sure an encounter with one as powerful as Ilthuliak, The Great Wyrm is memorable and exciting.

The Problem:

I often find dragon encounters are almost always anticlimactic. Most I've fought in my adventuring days barely last more than two rounds. And that's AFTER the GM cheated and doubled their hp once he realized his favorite monster was being turned into a chump because it only got 1 turn for every six the players got. If Dragons stay on the ground, bringing their full array of natural weapons to bear, they get surrounded and full attacked until they burst open like a giant pinata of xp and gold. They can, and usually do, open with a breath attack, but for the dragon's CR the damage dice are never enough to severely cripple a party. And unless you're actually dealing enough to incapacitate one of the players, they will continue to fight at full strength.

Enter the flying dragon. The one that makes passes, refusing to land until at least half your party is dominated, statues, or piles of ash. This is very cinematic, and brings a lot more of an older dragon's abilities to bear. After all, as porpentine would say, a dragon is a SMACC - a Spellcaster on a Mighty Awesome Combat Chassis. This also eliminates the full attack problem. However, while this makes for a longer encounter, it's still missing something. The party ranger who took favored enemy dragon (In my six years of pathfinder/dnd 3.5 every ranger I've seen has selected dragons as a favored enemy) isn't really going to mind the Dragon's tactic. Neither is the wizard hiding under his force sphere, summoning monsters every round. The paladin and fighter just bum a fly/wind walk off the wizard or cleric and now they too join the first half of the fight. Much better than the melee dragon... but this is still missing something.

Enter the Tr00 Dragon. The one who's existed for over a millenia, who's intelligence is genius-level, and who has eaten scores of adventurers in the past. He/She is a cunning creature, who often spends most of their time thinking solely on how to obtain more gold/power or keep the gold/power they already has. This is the Blue Dragon from the 3.5 Monster Manual who's lair entrance was a 120-foot hallway -- the same size as his breath weapon. This is the Red Dragon who builds his lair next to a periodically erupting lava fissure because it doesn't bother him too much and precooks his meals for him right when they wander in. It's borderline GM cruelty, but this is dragons we're talking about. They are cruel and they are smart. The players are entering the dragon's house, and now they have to play by the dragon's rules. This is the dragon we want.

Our Toolbox:

One Black Great Wyrm as per the six player conversion of Kingmaker. I know the first basic of encounter design is adding foes makes an easier-to-balance encounter, but the six player conversion only uses the Wyrm so that's what we'll be doing here as well. We also have her arsenal of spells. I'm not going to tinker with her spell list too much -- just adding the overrated disintegrate for my own nefarious purposes. We also have one giant ivory tower that functions as her lair of sorts. The adventure doesn't detail it much but that lets us fill in what we wish. More importantly, Ilthuliak will have plenty of time to pimp her lair and still plenty of time to get ready once the PC's arrive in Thousand Breaths.

Pimp My Lair:

Yo dawg, I heard you like... Ahem. Annnnnnnyways, Ilthuliak's made a few modifications to her lair. Since she's been playing minecraft lately she's been inspired to start excavating. Using a combination of her claws and the 60 cubic feet of nonliving matter she can disintegrate per day, she has dug down in front of the entrance to the High Folly and created a 1-5 scale model of the enterprise large cave below. Using the original tunnel she used to dig down as reference, she has also made sure there is a considerably large patch of stone in front of the entrance that is only ten feet thick. Beneath that is the open cave. We'll say it drops off from there about sixty feet. The cave is somewhat cramped for a dragon, but still 130 by 40 feet wide. Ilthuliak will have moved most of her hoard down there. After all, she can't risk those pesky adventurers simply flying to the top of the tower and taking her hard-earned loot! Finally, using plant growth, she's modified most of the surrounding area of the high folly's tower into horribly twisted patches of briars that cover all but the approaching path to the tower. This earns her a few Maleficent points and serves to "guide" the PC's right where she wants them.

A Plan In Action:

It's game day. From atop her ivory tower, Ilthuliak spots the PC's on their way. She starts to get nervous dragonflies fluttering around in her stomach. It's been a while since she last ate some adventurers -- 16th level ones at that. Overwhelmed with excitement, she crawls down the interior of the tower and makes her way down to her underground chamber. She casts clairvoyance outside of the tunnel to keep an eye on their approach, and covers the excavation tunnel entrance with a hallucinatory terrain. Down there, she waits, fantasizing about all the promising loot this six player party is bound to have. Eventually she casts darkness, a 110 foot radius but lowered in caster level so it does not extend outside the illusory patch. Using clairvoyance to get her timing right, she waits until the PC's are standing in front of the ivory tower scratching their filthy, un-scaled bodies as they argue over who gets what buff and why Paizo hate rogues or something. Ilthuliak casts Acid fog at the bottom of her lair and then follows up with the piece de resistance: Transmute Rock to Mud.

The unsuspecting party falls through the cave in, heading straight into Ilthuliak's carefully planned trap. As they tumble through the air, they likely shout curses of surprise and indignant cries of "Don't I get a saving throw for that?". To which a voice in the sky replies "No, you're falling through a 77.46-foot wide pit. There are no saves to travel laterally 38.23 feet in span of a second." Defeated, (and likely mad at their GM) they find themselves with 3d6 points of falling damage,(half because mud is soft) and laying prone in a sphere of darkness that even the party half-orc can't see outside of. As the acid fog begins to eat them away for minor damage, they roll initiative, eagerly trying to find Ilthuliak who and has no problem seeing through them from the edge of the globe of supernatural darkness. She opens with an acid pool breath attack that should be quite easy to land now that the PC's are likely blind, had to spend a move action to stand up from prone, and are slowed to 5ft. movement by the mud all around them. They'll have to save vs. 24d6 acid damage that remains there for several rounds afterwards. From this point, Ilthuliak can continue to harass the PC's with spells and periodic breath attacks until they locate her in the dark pit. She can either become the flying dragon and leave the pit, picking them apart at range, or just eventually enter melee.

The End?:

In all likelihood, she'll probably just get Mazed by the party wizard and come back in a few rounds to a welcoming party of 3d4+3 augmented, celestial, dragon-smiting, anklyosauruses. Or worse, a lowly dazing ball lightning will perma-daze the legendary beast into submission. Either that, or maybe Rage-lance-pounce AMBARBARIAN creates an explosion of dragon gore that permanently stains the side of the ivory tower. Eh, at least she tried, right?

Well, that's all I can think of for now. Be sure to post any crazy dragon strategies you have, point out any mistakes I may have made, or just call me a sadistic bastard.

[Jason Nelson]

Spastic Puma wrote:

Dragons are iconic in pathfinder. Just about as iconic as dungeons, I would say :P. Therefore, as GM I find it my responsibility to make sure an encounter with one as powerful as Ilthuliak, The Great Wyrm is memorable and exciting.

** spoiler omitted **...

You might check out the giant mythic ancient black dragon in Mythic Monsters: Dragons for some ideas, or if you've got a little bit of time coming before you run the big showdown we will soon be releasing Path of Dragons with even more magnificent dragonish dirty tricks, which is described a bit in this blog post.

[Dragonchess Player]

<Cough>

You may want to look at my outline for making Ilthuliak a mythic encounter...

Alternately, you can follow my strategy for Cadrilkasta in Shattered Star, adding Champion tiers and selecting Dual Path (Archmage) as a mythic feat...

[Spastic Puma]

I've long considered adding mythic abilities to important foes in this adventure path. I just feel guilty pitting them against a party with no mythic powers of their own.

[thenovalord]

Just stick to stuff that was released at the time of KM, so no dazing!

I gave her antimagic shell as 8th level spell. Really helped her DR20/magic and stopped her being shot to pieces like the rest of the AP. She also got briar back of the pcs in the fight in her lair.

[Spastic Puma]

I actually really like that idea. Anti magic shell would be awesome. I might do that...

[thenovalord]

Sorry 6th level spell.
With this on she became mighty. Just using the books available on publication released at the time. No clustered shot forex

[Spastic Puma]

Well, I ran the encounter the other night and I'm pleased to report it turned out wonderfully. The fight lasted 16 rounds and took up nearly the entire session. I may type up a play-by-play later as it was surely an encounter to remember!

[Inneliese]

I definitely want to make the encounter with Ilthuliak to be quite epic, but I would also like to give her a bigger role in the campaign. I'm definitely adding a child of hers to the Hooktongue Slough (running a 6-player campaign, so I have extra xp to work with), possibly even living in his mother's former lair. I've also considered changing her morale away from fighting to the death, so she could return for a later re-match... or even to change the last bloom and have Ilthuliak come through along with the army of fey... and then retreat back to the First World if engaged by the party. (She does have teleport, after all.)

[Randuril]

Inneliese wrote:

I definitely want to make the encounter with Ilthuliak to be quite epic, but I would also like to give her a bigger role in the campaign. I'm definitely adding a child of hers to the Hooktongue Slough (running a 6-player campaign, so I have extra xp to work with), possibly even living in his mother's former lair. I've also considered changing her morale away from fighting to the death, so she could return for a later re-match... or even to change the last bloom and have Ilthuliak come through along with the army of fey... and then retreat back to the First World if engaged by the party. (She does have teleport, after all.)

I "gifted" my crew with 4 black dragons in the slough (like #100 on the random encounter table, which I picked from and did not roll). It was a significant combat against my collection of broken PCs, but the most amusing part (to me) was that they had no clue that these were Ilthuliak's spawn and had no lair or treasure of their own. They spent game-weeks scouring the entire Hooktongue map looking for that lair. Ah, memories!