So... Nox.


Hell's Rebels


She's nuts. What have been your experiences with her in your own games? Have the PCs defeated her? If so, how? She seems like a TPK machine. DMs, use spoilers if necessary.


She kinda reminds me of Hosilla from Wrath of the Righteous.


Who is that? I didn't play that game.


Hosilla is an inquisitor character in WotR who has quite a bit of overlap in fighting style to Nox but has neither her mobility, nor her defensive staying power. She can hit very hard though.

Nox experience:
I may have done the encounter a little wrong but Nox would have likely killed my party had half of them not fled. When I ran the encounter, it was her, 3 Asmodean Redactors, and her Hell Hound. While the Hell Hounds, and the redactors weren't particularly threatening damage-wise Nox was cleaving away large chunks at a time. Her mobility, regeneration, and raw power are insanely good against a low level party. Heck if my fifth player were there I don't even know if they would have gotten her below 10 hp.

For reference our full party consisted of an aether kineticist,a two hand fighter, a trap breaker alchemist, a life shaman, and a sacred huntsman inquisitor with a warcat (who was not there this evening). They're moderately optimized with 20 point buy.


She's the final baddie of the whole module. I'm okay with her being borderline OP. I note that if the PCs are stealthy or clever, they may be able to avoid facing her with her allies. If she's alone, action economy will quickly give the win to a group of 4 or more PCs.

She has a pile of hp and decent AC, but if you have a heavy damage dealer -- a barbarian or a smiting paladin -- you can whittle her down pretty fast. So, for instance, a not-very-optimized 3rd level barbarian raging with Power Attack is going to hit her more than half the time for around d12+10 damage, and that's before anyone has thrown a single buff on him or even set up a flank. Throw in a flanking rogue, a healbot, and a wizard who still has a couple of utility spells left in his spell slots, and her chances do not look good. This is exactly why the module gives her allies -- if the PCs can concentrate their attacks on her, she's likely to go down fast.

Note that her saves are pretty crap. Reflex +2 means a simple Grease spell has a better-than-even chance of knocking her down. Will +4 means you can try a range of enchantments, illusions and other save-or-sucks -- Color Spray, Glitterdust, Blindness -- with a good chance of success.

To me she seems just about right: challenging and scary, but very killable if the players are clever.

Doug M.


To be fair, if she crits, it's Game Over for that particular PC. But facing down Hell shouldn't be easy!

Doug M.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Nox is intended to be a tough fight (hence the sidebar on page 10, which is intended to telegraph to the PCs not only the fact that she IS tough, but that she regenerates)... but!

Spoiler:
She also has a role to play in the 3rd adventure, and so if she confronts the PCs but then escapes, that's actually a GOOD THING. Don't be afraid to have her dimension door out of the dungeon after leaving her mark but before any PC dies... this way she can fill the role of a recurring villain a lot better.


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Poor, poor Nox.

Things don't really go her way afterwards:-D


It's kind of funny really seeing the first Book strongly suggests she will die during this initial encounter, but provides for her to potentially escape. Book 3 seems to think she WILL escape but might not.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Tangent101 wrote:
It's kind of funny really seeing the first Book strongly suggests she will die during this initial encounter, but provides for her to potentially escape. Book 3 seems to think she WILL escape but might not.

It works either way, frankly. If the PCs DO defeat her in book one, they'll have things a bit easier in book 3 as a reward is all, but book 3 assumes she DID make it because it spends words and art on her.


Hrmmm - typically in my games the situation goes like this:

Buffed uber bad boss with magic items and huge hps and wicked attack:

Party kills it in 3 rounds.

Naked CR -2 monster meant to be a 'annoyance' -

18 rounds later and 1/2 the night gone the party rolls above a 3.

:)

Honestly though a hint for 'grease' - it works against weapons - you know how many bosses have a backup weapon?

Seriously if something is using a weapon and has a poor reflex save... it's a nasty spell - you don't just have to use it on the ground.


She ate my pcs alive but I think it's because they fought her on her terms. A tanglefoot bag, some more ranged damage and not letting her own the bridge would have made a difference. Plus the grease spell would've had her fighting with a hand axe.


I have a group of PCs who are quite weak in the hand to hand department. They are a support cleric (str 8), a bard, a spiritualist, a witch and a swashbuckler. I'm thinking about giving him an NPC dwarf tank if they lean that way and they play they cards right.

Overkill or something they would probably need for Nox and her cronies?

Shadow Lodge

Rogar Valertis wrote:
They are a support cleric (str 8), a bard, a spiritualist, a witch and a swashbuckler.

I see four characters capable of casting summon monster II, one of which is guaranteed to know the spell.


Well, she has dimension door and is written to flee if reduced to 10hp, so the party needs to do 47 to win.

With AC 21 a 3rd level fighter with a masterwork greatsword, an 18 strength, and weapon focus hits 45% of the time, dealing ~13 damage on a hit (for an average of ~6pts per round). A party of four such fighters would chop her up in about 2 rounds.

A 3rd level wizard could magic missile for about 7pts. A party of four such wizards could blast her in about 2 rounds.

A 3rd level rogue with an 18 Dex who can get a flank and a masterwork short sword will hit 45% of the time, doing ~14 damage a blow (again ~6pts per round). A party of four such rogues will stab her to death in about 2 rounds.

What's Nox going to get up to in those two rounds shes alive? Well, she'll hit swing for 1d10+14 (call it 20pts per blow) but only with a +9 to hit. A fighter with platemail and a 12 dex is avoiding about half her blows.

Yeah, she could get lucky and start rolling the party, she can potentially drop a PC a round with lucky hits, but she seems pretty well balanced for a tough but totally winnable encounter to me.


Ring_of_Gyges wrote:

Well, she has dimension door and is written to flee if reduced to 10hp, so the party needs to do 47 to win.

With AC 21 a 3rd level fighter with a masterwork greatsword, an 18 strength, and weapon focus hits 45% of the time, dealing ~13 damage on a hit (for an average of ~6pts per round). A party of four such fighters would chop her up in about 2 rounds.

A 3rd level wizard could magic missile for about 7pts. A party of four such wizards could blast her in about 2 rounds.

A 3rd level rogue with an 18 Dex who can get a flank and a masterwork short sword will hit 45% of the time, doing ~14 damage a blow (again ~6pts per round). A party of four such rogues will stab her to death in about 2 rounds.

What's Nox going to get up to in those two rounds shes alive? Well, she'll hit swing for 1d10+14 (call it 20pts per blow) but only with a +9 to hit. A fighter with platemail and a 12 dex is avoiding about half her blows.

Yeah, she could get lucky and start rolling the party, she can potentially drop a PC a round with lucky hits, but she seems pretty well balanced for a tough but totally winnable encounter to me.

She's not alone


She can be, if the PCs infiltrate quietly they'll take out Mephiry in F5 before facing Nox in F7.


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I doubt Nox hangs out below the Monastery 24/7, so I was thinking of having her show up throughout the volume and go after the party Jason Voorhees-style. Specifically, she would appear if the party is too bold or reckless when confronting the Thrunies or waves a red flag in front of the bull, so to speak. The idea would be that the players are supposed to escape and FAST whenever she shows up.


I'm going to have her be more visible from this point until they finally beat her for good at some point. She beat the PCs in my game, so there will be no disappearance for her, at least not yet. She is going to be on the lookout for the survivors. After all, they killed her dog...

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

They actually killed Nox in my game, but they left The Spider alive in Book 2. Assuming my game gets to the end of Book 3, I plan on having a replacement for Nox at the Ball...

Shadow Lodge

Axial wrote:
I doubt Nox hangs out below the Monastery 24/7

Apparently she takes sporadic "stints" in the Monastery that can last up to a week.


Should holy water harm Nox? I didn't think so because she is neither undead nor an outsider, despite being devil-bound. Does being devil-bound make her susceptible? It kinda makes sense if it does, but I found no mention of this in the write up of the template in Bestiary 4.

If it could hurt Nox, should its damage count as good? This is also unclear in the holy water write up in the CRB, but once again, would make some logical sense. Thanks!

Unless shown otherwise, my stance would be no to both questions, RAW.


Get some holy water and force Nox to drink it while telling jokes so she chokes on it and drowns. ;)


Shaun wrote:

Should holy water harm Nox? I didn't think so because she is neither undead nor an outsider, despite being devil-bound. Does being devil-bound make her susceptible? It kinda makes sense if it does, but I found no mention of this in the write up of the template in Bestiary 4.

If it could hurt Nox, should its damage count as good? This is also unclear in the holy water write up in the CRB, but once again, would make some logical sense. Thanks!

Unless shown otherwise, my stance would be no to both questions, RAW.

I said it did, it made sense, since she's mainlining the power of an evil outsider. At the very least, it shut off her Regen for a round, noone actually successfully tagged her with one.


my party was really lucky , our tiefling inquisitor gave her a nasty critical x3 with her great axe and rolled almost max damage in the first round and the paladin smite her so she had to run away in the secund round :)


My player's Bloodrager was enlarged, raging, Bull's Strength, and bardic Music. Then Crit with a great axe. Nox took 84 points of damage, then they pushed her into the river and drowned her.

Silver Crusade

My two weapon fighting slayer and tengu with 3 natural attacks action economied her to death. It helped that she couldn't roll above a 4.


Our party had very few things that could touch her at the end of the first book, with her... well, her being her...

So after defeating minions and a whole lot of keeping her at bay and out of melee while doing very minimal dam per round via arrows and spells, she escaped.

And knows our faces, which has required us to taking precautions and second guessing where we go and how we approach things. We know better and have made better preparations. I am sure the GM will scale her up for the next "encounter."


Got very lucky when fighting her ( after having the group severely depleted by the rest of the dungeon and the Phantasmagorium before) with the witch (armed with Accursed Hex) bum rushing her, succeeding on Evil Eye and getting her "slumbered". While her hell hound killed the witch on the next round ( and subsequently got slaughtered by the rest of the group), the sleeping Nox was summarily decapitated with her own glaive for "sleeping at her post" and naturally failed the Fort Safe. Her head was taken along to prevent any raise dead or similar nonsense.

But basically it came all down to luck - if she had saved, she would likely have slaughtered the group's remaining 2 characters.

Overall - that fight cost the group 2 of 4 characters (thief and witch) . and since the group was aimed (at social play a la "Ultimate Intrigue") which they enjoyed but mostly had nothing to do with the pre-written plot, and severly disliked ,

Spoiler:
the underwater excursion in Act II the group gave up after the Dismal Niche part of "Dance of the Damned" (by then 6 characters had been killed 3 of them by the Aboleth).


So there are lots of stories about parties who have killed her

Have there been many where she gets away?
Isn’t that narratively unsatisfying? How did the players react?

And are we to assume Thrune tortures her without asking for details of who did it?


Lanathar wrote:

So there are lots of stories about parties who have killed her

Have there been many where she gets away?
Isn’t that narratively unsatisfying? How did the players react?

And are we to assume Thrune tortures her without asking for details of who did it?

I’m towards the end of book 2. She got away in our play through. My players were wearing masks when they assaulted Hoccum’s so she doesn’t know who they are. It’ll be fun to reintroduce her in the future.

The threat of her still out there is a fun one and as far as she knows: “it was a group of masked people.” Only after they have continued to act against the government did Barzillai connect the dots about the Silver Ravens.


The players had to flee in my game after two of them went down. Nox would be able to describe those two well enough and give basic descriptions for the others. But that doesn't mean that Barzillai would know who they are, just who to look out for. Which is why the Silver Ravens notoriety goes up by 2D6.
And also why he would know if fake Ravens try to claim his gifts at the end of the second book.


Killed her before she even woke up. And since then have had a fake Nox running around as one of the good guys, whenever we think Thrune needs a distraction from the actual rebels. Although we've just reached the Ruby Masquerade and Thrune just unveiled his own fake Nox, in chains, and the manure has well and truly hit the windmill

Acquisitives

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

She stomped us. ROFL stomped us.

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