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After four years and 103 sessions, the end of the Runelord of Greed has come. Pretty brutal end actually.
Karzoug's (GM's) fatal error: staying in one place 1 round too long, assuming 270 hit points would be enough to get to his next action. Being next to the 18th level hasted, flying dwarven fighter armed with a dominant weapon was a very bad place to be. He might have made it but the party sensed they had him on the ropes and that they might not get as good a chance again, so after the fighter did a full attack action, he spent a hero point for another attack and then the bard spent one as well, used his action to cast heroic finale on the fighter and after yet one more attack, Karzoug was down. 7 attacks were too much, even with the fighter missing once. The dwarf was kicking out 40-50 hp a clip (including the bane damage) and bypassing the stoneskin DR (penetrating strike greater.) My goal had been to keep Karzoug alive for 10 rounds. Didn't make it to 7. Karzoug knew the fighter would a problem - tried his best to kill him, but every time he got the fighter dangerously low on hit points, someone would hit him with a Heal spell. Happened at least three times.
Key Karzoug tactics I used:
- fiery body (intended to use the lava and glaive fireball feature for healing but didn't quite get there)
- Spellbane - block: mage's disjunction, anti-magic field, gr dispel magic, dispel magic. Nearly broke the table when the pc's tried disjunction and dispel magic one after each other for no affect.
- Mind Blank
- Permanent Prismatic Sphere at the base of the stairs to the Runewell
- Pouring a lot of buffs into his minions - protection from spells, protection from energy, communal, mass bull's strength, mass bear's endurance, haste, stoneskin - communal, magic army, heart of the metal (giving them all adamantine weapons to bypass the pc's likely stoneskin.) He needed some use out his transmutation spell slots - all of the pc's had dominant weapons.
- Caustic Blood - dwarf took a lot of acid damage but not enough to deter him
- Clashing Rocks - simply a devastating spell
- Wail of the Banshee - ditto
- Wreath of Blades
-Rain of Arrows (w/adamantine arrows to bypass stoneskin) - didn't get to use this one
Note: the pc's rested overnight in the room of the Anima Focus (because everything else in the Pinnacle was dead) and they all were wearing sihedron items. So Karzoug knew when they were coming and I let him buff for as many rounds as the pc's buffed (which was a lot.)
Key PC Tactics
- opened a gate to the Eye by hitting the anima focus with a dominant weapon - no chance to arrive stunned (though they didn't know that)
- summoning monadic deva's. able to spam holy smite, not bad attacks and they all come with 1 Heal spell a day. And flight. And holy aura.
- boosting actions - not just for the final blow to Karzoug - earlier in the battle the bard had given an extra action to the wizard, who cast time stop and then cast two summoning spells. At one point, between the time stop castings and others, there were 9 monadic deva's on the field. (Conjuration wizard had Summon Good Monster feat.)
- Taking out Rune Giant right away, turning the Storm Giants to their side
- Putting a larger diameter, hemispherical Wall of Ice over the prismatic sphere to keep Karzoug from running in and out of it easily