So my party just went up against the Shadow Demon under Drezen.
The party is a Paladin of Iomedae, a Fire Sorcerer, a Trapfinder ranger that straddles between archer and Great axe as needed, and grapple monk. We are using a few house rules, the most specific of which is that we removed inspired spell" and "wild arcana" and created replacements. The Sorcerer took the new option, which allows a caster to lace any spell with mythic power, making it bypass elemental resistance and immunities, along with getting two rolls to penetrate spell resistance.
The Paladin is working on redeeming the Barbarian from earlier in the citadel and keeping her near so he can coach her "under stress".
Thanks to the Ranger, they bypassed the telekinesis traps without discovering the illusionary floor or the slime. They threw open the door, saw the darkness, and... didn't do anything. Just looked at it.
After a few moments of that I made my first attempt at Magic Jar. Given his stated preferred target, I aimed at the Paladin, as the only healer. I was not surprised when he saved. Nor when he saved on the forced re-roll. Nor on the second attempt.
He backed out of sight and tried to taunt the creature (he has antagonize). Not wanting to leave the darkness as long as they were going to leave it up, but having to attack, I used telekinesis to throw the Sorcerer at the Paladin, and blew the roll something fierce, missing completely. At this point the only one in sight from the door is the Ranger, who made some perception checks to take blind shots at any movement he heard.
I responded with shadow evocations of chaining spells, to get around the corner. After almost dropping two of them, using up channels and lay on hands, the Sorcerer finally broke out the scrolls of dispel, and got a solid roll on his first try, dropping the darkness.
The Barbarian's readied action finally got to go off and she charged the Shadow Lord, doing some damage. The Monk and Ranger joined in the melee while our Paladin applied some more healing to the Sorcerer, who had not had much luck on his saves before moving to be able to attack in the next round.
This brought him within line of sight for another Magic Jar attempt, which also would get the Lord out of Melee. Somehow, He failed his save, so he blew his second chance trait. Made the second attempt, so I forced one last re-roll with his last surge, which the Paladin threw a 1.
Shadow Lord vanishes into the Paladin.
Party thinks he's dropping into invis at first. I look over the Paladin's sheet, and decide that if he attacks, he's just getting grappled. His spells are useless against the party, so I decide to go for suicide. His AC is high enough that a coup-de-grace is unlikely to be reliable... but there is all that green slime. One round off movement later he's swan diving through the floor.
It takes 3 rounds and all but 2 of his con before they manage to get him out of the pit, and they had to fireball him to clear enough space to get to him safely. Grapple checks ensue and they get everyone clear before the slime pours back into the void.
At this point the Player of the Paladin decided if he's possessed he might as well have fun with it and starts RPing heavily (dropping us out of combat time), faking waking up from the possession, faking "detect evil", and advising that the demon jumped to the Monk. He manages to talk the Barbarian and Sorcerer over to his point of view, and in order to get him tied up, the Monk proposes that the party ties up both of them.
The Sorcerer asks for some additional healing, and I blow some shadow conjuration, and the lucky bugger makes his save to see through the spell, Learning that he's been fooled. Playing to his high Cha character, he hides that he knows, and moves to "tie up" the monk, dropping "enlarge person" on him instead, which starts some more grapples, ending in a pinned, possessed, paladin, and a pinned Sorcerer (the Barbarian thinks the he's helping the "possessed" monk.
The Shadow Lord summons a shadow, in the square behind the monk, and has it make a break for it, in an attempt to make a new bluff check on everyone by "proving" that the monk was the one that was possessed. No one falls for it this time, and the Ranger takes out the low CR shadow before it can get out of sight.
The Sorcerer, not liking all this summoning, or the Shadow Lord possibly having teleport, moves and puts up the "Sword of Valor".
Unfortunately, the only one that can use the summon Planetar power, is the possessed paladin.
They decide to take the now tied up Paladin up to the army for the NPC clerics and paladins to exorcise. Not liking that idea, the Shadow Lord flees out one of the arrow slits as they move to exit, and eats repeated laced fireballs from the Sorcerer the moment there are walls between the party and the Shadow, and that's enough damage to take him out before he can get out of range.
The rest of the night was spent deciding we really don't like the downtime system as presented, adding the new Mythic Tier, and other such end of book housekeeping.
