laces_out's page

I'm running a D&D 3.5 campaign and the party is currently level 13. Right now I'm in a situation where I have an epic boss fight that they are aware of, but are in no way ready to face. It involves a level 19 wizard and a balor. It's pretty much a guarranteed party wipe in my opinion. The way the plot has developed they know where it is and how to get there. Knowing this party, they are going to make a beeline for this fight, even if I have their mentor figure give them the sternest possible warning that it's suicidal. The problem is that they have a legitimate reason to hurry on this, because the balor has been summoning demons to terrorize the city they are trying to protect. I feel like I've boxed myself in a bit, and I need a creative way to stall out the situation for a bit.

To give a little more context, the party captured a flying castle from a lich, and used a wish to get it back to town. They didn't specify where in town, so they ended up buried in the dump. The flying castle is powered by souls, so the lich had an assortment of monsters caged in the dungeon as fuel. He also had a balor trapped in a sealed magical coffin which the party members chose to ignore. They told their temple to keep an eye on the castle, but then went off to deal with other things. Naturally, the high level evil enchanter found out about it, and used a wish to enslave the balor. Now he's feuding with some snake cultists that he had conspired with to take over the city. The party has been mopping up the cultists in the city and just found out about the balor situation, although all they know is that it's a powerful demon.

My thought for now is to have the wizard move the castle to another plane, or just fly it away, but they'll probably be able to locate it somehow and teleport to it.

Anyway, I'm just looking for some inspiration on how to handle this situation.

So the party in a game I'm running recently killed a powerful lich, but have yet to find his phylactery, which is sequestered away on another plane. They have one wish left from a genie and are probably going to wish for the phylactery so they can destroy it. So I have two questions:

1. The monstrous manual doesn't really specify what happens if you destroy the phylactery while the lich is alive. Will that kill the lich again? They still have a few days before he comes back to life, but I'm not sure what to do in that case. My gut feeling is that it should kill him.

2. How would you deal with players wishing for a phylactery that's hidden on another plane? My feeling is that it's beyond the scope of what would be considered a safe wish, so something would probably go wrong, but I'm looking for fun ideas for that.