| Redox |
I have a few questions regarding the final battle against Kyuss.
1. Given his list of immunities, should I hint that he is not well protected against fire if the characters use divination magic?
2. How many prep rounds should the characters get as they reach the top of the spire?
The reason I ask these questions is that after reading his stat block, I came up with this quick and dirty game plan to defeat him. It does need some prep work, but does not use any extreme custom magic items. It also assumes that the characters completed all victory conditions to greatly weaken Kyuss and are only fighting him and no other minions at the same time.
The Plan:
The party’s Druid creates four scrolls of maximized Fire Seeds. These cost 2,250 gp and three days each to make. Hopefully they have the down time to make these. If not, then the Druid could also memorize the four spells and not have any 9th level spells available for the fight to the top of the spire. The Druid could also memorize regular Fire Seeds at 6th level for extras or to use instead, but with only four 6th level slots, this is not a guaranteed win. The Druid creates a single 20d6 acorn with each spell.
Party Wizard has the Talisman of the Sphere and the Sphere on Annihilation.
Before the characters reach the roof, they bring out the Sphere, and the scrolls are used with the acorns given to the Ranger. Any extra are given to other party members to use.
The characters reach the roof, and Kyuss starts to emerge.
The Wizard hits him with the Sphere, causing him to loose half his hit points. He goes from 660 to 330
The ranger throws all four acorns using a full attack action. Each acorn deals 120 points of damage with no SR and no save to avoid the damage. This is a ranged touch attack against an AC of 31. The Ranger has the Rod of Seven Parts thus is at a minimum of +40 to hit (+20 BAB and +20 insight from Rod). As long as his DEX bonus is at least +6, he will hit with all four acorns. Each acorn deals 120 points of fire damage, minus his 6 fire resistance, for a grand total of 456 points of damage. Kyuss is destroyed.
If they use the normal Fire Seeds, then the damage is 20d6 for an average of 50-70 points of damage. They would then need around seven to eight acorns, and more than one person would need to throw them. Thus with the Druid throwing three and the Ranger throwing four, and another party member throwing two to four, they can easily do the remaining 330 points of damage, if they have enough casting of Fire Seeds.
While this uses some meta-game knowledge, it is not a stretch that the characters would use Fire Seeds as it is one of the very few spells that bypasses SR and does a potential 20 die of damage. Couple that with some high level divinations to scope out a possible weakness of Kyuss, and this scenario is not that far fetched. Also when he is emerging is the perfect time to test the Sphere against him.
What are your thoughts on this? Should I bump up his fire resistance? Lesson the effect of the Sphere? Have Kyuss use his high INT score and emerge on the side of the monolith that is not facing the characters so they spend their free round using move actions to get to him? Or not do anything and see what happens?