Fight with Xanesha - Extreme Mode?


Rise of the Runelords


Right, Been running rise of the runelords for a few months now, I love it, the players are loving it, their are 6 of them and have progressed quite well so they are cake walking everything but still enjoying it and that is the important thing.

They just dealt with the Sevens sawmill in chapter 2 and will be going onto Xanesha in the shadow clock next, however they let two of the cultists escape the seven sawmill.

Now, I hinted to them that they would be warning xanesha, but they chose to take a couple days rest to make items and hunt a hill giant for some reason.

So I was thinking about putting the shadowclock on extreme mode, any advice for this, keep in mind they usually cake walk bosses because they get 6 turns for every one of the bosses and some of them use magic, and have allot of it to spare, and we have a monk who flurry of blows heads of in 1 round.

I was thinking of having the scarecrow in the room with her, so they have to deal with both at the same time, aswell as possibly giving xanesha a 1 charge magic item of mass inflict serious wounds.

They are all on quite high health at the moment so it will just be something to strike fear in them really, like a oh shit we dont have that big buffer of health to keep us safe anymore.

Ideas?


Add Ajekrith (Classical Horror Revisited) as Xanesha's ally!


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The original(Which someone has wonderfully updated to Pathfinder rules) is pretty brutal.


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Azten wrote:
The original(Which someone has wonderfully updated to Pathfinder rules) is pretty brutal.

This is the way to go to challenge a 6 character group. The revised stat block I understand is ... disappointing by comparison.


I do like the original version, thanks I will use that.


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I had a group of four(3 and an NPC) that had crazy stats due to a crazy character creation rule set we were using. Even with a half-fiend and a half-dragon and a paladin in the party, the fight was pretty brutal. They just barely killed her before she knocked the flesh to stoned NPC off the roof.

Liberty's Edge

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The original is a TPK waiting to happen. She easily TPK'd my longtime powergaming PFS party and it wasn't close. X's AC plus Mirror Image plus SR19 plus that damage output at that level is troubling. In a lot of ways, the original version and the PFS conversion linked above is as tough an opponent until book 5 or 6.

I expected this and so planned/played an altered start to book 3 where 2 years or so had passed and the TPK'd PCs were on the gambling ship talked about in the background as domination/wisdom drain zombies. One of the other slaves cracks, lights a suicide fire and Xanesha waves goodbye and leaves the party to drown inside a prison part of the ship. When the cold water hits, they regain their senses and have to break out of the sinking ship, swim to shore with nothing and limp to town. After that, they return to the ship, gather belongings (their fave weapons were on display in the gampling hall) and continue with the adventure.

They met her again in the fortress where she was in Leucretia's place, and even prepared she escaped and they finally got her on the dam.

Liberty's Edge

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My campaign log and scattered thoughts are here:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2ld1i&page=1?GoBs-RunelordsKingmaker-mashup -campaign

Silver Crusade

I had a group of 4 pcs run this encounter.twice. first time they found out about the lamia and waltzed right into the tower, got to the top and found no lamia (since she was invisible). Then due to some poor will saves against the major image the barbarian died and got thrown off of the tower and the warpriest got skewered through the eye a couple times (he died too). Anyways the pcs got away only to return to kill the stinking bad guy who had killed their friends. Long story short they got the tower dropped on their heads which almost killed the ranger and smooshed his pegasus to goo. They did manage to kill the Lamia with a lucky greater slaying arrow from the ranger. however it was very close and very memorable.

If you want to make the encounter seem extreme just drop the tower on their faces and watch the encounter of pain unfold.


Now I'm picturing Xanesha suplexing the tower onto the party while they simply stare in "wtf!?" shock. Cue the lamia in her original form striding out of the rubble. "That was just the warm-up, b*&%$es. Now the pain really starts!" ^^


Thanks for all your input, I should explain we ran an adventure of my own design before we started rotrl as we wanted to see if we liked it, the guys realy liked their characters so we stuck with them on going into the campaign, so they are just short of level 9 now, which I think is why they want to go hunting a hill giant so they can level up.

So that is 6 level 9 characters that will be going against her.

We have

7 paladin/1 holy vindicator
8 Evocation Wizard
8 Aberration Sorcerer
8 Rogue
8 Monk
1 Wizard/6 Ranger/1 Arcane Archer

All with magic items as the wizard has a ludicrous spellcraft and so can create pretty much anything at the moment if she has the money.


Going forward, I suggest you adjust for 6 players by keeping them AT LEAST one level below what each chapter suggests, and consider either adding additional foes or maximizing the HP of the monsters or both. Otherwise they will walk all over everything. Already your group is 1-2 levels over the suggested level for this fight, AND they have 150% of the actions/round.


My group of 6 stomped her pretty good, even after unloading an alpha strike onto the illusionary demon and getting caught by surprise by the invisible real Xanesha. Of course, the fact that the alchemist in the party buffed everyone up like crazy before they climbed the final stair helped a lot. Xanesha also managed to escape by flying away while invisible, though she had 5hps left at that point.

Dark Archive

My 6-player group got lucky by dropping a glitterdust spell that included where she was standing invisibility (used the revised stat block). It was still a tough fight.

Regarding the 6-player campaign,

Jorgenfist:
we're now at Jorgenfist and I've held back the party 2 levels from recommended (my players are expert players with good tactics). This seems to have struck a nice balance with the difficulties of the encounters without having too much tweaking.

If I were to run this again, I wouldn't run with 6 players. The action economy for the boss fights makes them over in 2-3 rounds without having to make some major changes.

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