GM Only - Book 2 NPC question


Skull & Shackles


Hey all! I have a quick question on a Book 2 NPC:

Spoiler:
The characters have just cracked Tidewater Rock (through the marriage route). Now they've done a little pirating, encountered Whalebone Plick, and it seems like it's a good time for Isabella Locke to make her assault. The one issue I have, though - Isn't she a bit powerful for a group of 5th level characters? Our party is a cleric/wizard focusing on necromancy, a swashbuckler, a fighter/brawler, a magus, and a bolt ace. I just don't see them handling a high level sorcerer all that well. Is this supposed to be a particularly difficult fight?


It can be tough. She gave my group a big challenge. If she hits them while they're on the roof, she can cast geyser which has the very real possibility of knocking them off of the tower. If the PCs can lure her into the tower, they have a better chance of it because her flying doesn't mean as much and a big fall isn't a possibility. Also, Royster McCleagh and some of the guards can always run interference if it gets too bad.

Lantern Lodge

My PCs ended up encountering her inside the tower. Worked pretty good actually, as her primary goal is supposed to be to take out the leader of Tidewater Rock. Thus, especially with the marriage route in play (which is how my PCs did it too), it makes sense that she would use her Invisibility/fly to sneak past any guards on the roof and get inside to kill the Lady.

So for my group, she snuck inside while the PCs were dealing with the general pirates. And then a loud crack of thunder and bright lightning were enough for them to realize that someone was inside. Alas, they found a smouldering corpse of the Lady after the fight finished.

But yes, Isabella is quite nasty, even in confined quarters. Between Lightning Bolt, Geyser, and Aqueous Orb, it was a very tough fight for my PCs. But a memorable one too. The Wizard in my group specifically took a spell at his next level similar to Geyser, after seeing its effects.


Two words: action economy. She gets one turn, the PCs get 5.


Nawtyit wrote:
Two words: action economy. She gets one turn, the PCs get 5.

Well, the fight is supposed to happen while her pirates are entering the keep from the first level so the party is likely going to split a bit. Also, she can hang out all invisible and cast 5 Summon Monster IV spells, each lasting 10 rounds, and has a familiar which can deliver touch spells (like her Vampiric Touch0 while she stays invisibile. Plus she has two great crowd control spells - grease and obscuring mist.

That said, if you guys think it's not an over-powered fight, I'm happy to take your advice. Thank you everyone!

Lantern Lodge

Probably should point out that I'm not a cut throat GM, and I forgot completely about her familiar. Also did not utilize her Summon Monster spells at all. She stayed invisible until she blasted one of the PCs with a lightning bolt and nearly killed him. Then she stood at a door way attacking through it, which bottlenecked the PCs, and gave her a bit of protection.

I can certainly see that if you used her to the absolutely most full extent, you could easily kill PCs. Guess that's your call as a GM. My PCs regularly threaten me with things like "strike me down and I shall come back with a new character more annoying than you can imagine". :P

So I regularly take them to mostly dead, but not completely dead. ;)


How rough this fight is depends on how spammy you are with spells:

Running lightning bolt on more than one character two rounds running is an easy way to start getting quick kills: however if you mix up vampiric touch (to make the fight last longer), geyser (area denial, since it will probably be indoors) and other stuff like blindness/aqueous orb/ray of enfeeblement, you are going to still cause mayhem without stacking huge damage numbers.

Summon stacking is also a potential game changer, so be aware of that.

How cut-throat you want to be with the encounter is quite easily scalable: my party proved difficult to get everyone to let the guards fight the buccaneers (Barbarian ended up holding the door the whole fight) so I ended up modifying Isabella's HP accordingly (Scaled them back from usual maximized HP i run with).

Considering that she uses lightning bolt on the door (possibly more than once, if you roll badly) and fly, limiting it to one lightning bolt in combat isn't too limiting: and geyser has some serious wow factor, if the party realises you just rocked out a level 5 spell, even if lightning bolt is probably more effective.

Playing around with the aquatic bloodline stuff is a lot of fun!


This AP has some tough alchemists and wizards and a lot of crappy fighter/rogues. My suggestion is just don't play them like an aggressive, optimized player would.

In my game they fought her on top of the tower. I had her summon once them fire at a player or two every round, and hover no more than 30ft from the ledge. It was a tough fight. Two people ended up falling off from gyser. One has feather fall and was just removed from combat, the other got dropped to -6 HP from the fall. Good times.

Sovereign Court

She owned them.

Royster and his Lady had to take her down for their own survival lol.

When the PCs regrouped, tied her and were about to question her, her pet snake activated a tattoo to fill the room with obscuring mist and proceeded to release her by casting acid splash on her bonds.

When the PCs got to her in the mist she dominated the first one on the scene and ordered him to help her escape.

They became lovers and are still sailing the FEVER SEAS!!!!


My party beat her, but not without difficulty. By the time it was done she'd blinded one of the party members and killed the other with a lightning bolt.

Good times.


We just had this fight two weeks ago. In the second round of combat, the Bard/Captain cast Hold Person and succeeded. Isabella made her save at the end of her turn, but that was still one turn without an action. The next round, the Bard cast it and again succeeded, this time allowing the rogue to coup de grace and that was that. It was a little anti-climactic for me, but the player's love steam-rolling over the bad guys. They had more trouble versus four Great White sharks than they did versus Isabella and her cronies.


lutzsd wrote:
We just had this fight two weeks ago. In the second round of combat, the Bard/Captain cast Hold Person and succeeded. Isabella made her save at the end of her turn, but that was still one turn without an action. The next round, the Bard cast it and again succeeded, this time allowing the rogue to coup de grace and that was that. It was a little anti-climactic for me, but the player's love steam-rolling over the bad guys. They had more trouble versus four Great White sharks than they did versus Isabella and her cronies.

It is sometimes very weird how you imagine things will go and how they turn out..specially when they struggle with low cr encounters with a little terrain-quirk vs a straight out slug fest with a tough cr.

Isabella didnt manage to kill any of the party, mostly because I suck at using casters, they have the "mortally stupid" feat. She did some damage but pissed them enough they killed her off once they were done talking to her.

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