This is how I ran the battle with Ike in secret of the soulpillers.
Round 1: alerted of battle downstairs, Ike casts pro. Energy (fire), Bone devil casts fly
Round 2: Ike casts air walk, Bone devil casts major image in form of hall way. The illusion will appear as if there is a hallway running north at the top of the stairs in W9 with a door at the end. Ike has zombies line up on both sides of the illusionary wall ready to ambush.
Round 3: Ike casts res. Energy on bone devil, Bone devil readies wall of ice. Ike sends wraith to spy on PC’s
Round 4: Ike casts shield of faith on Bone devil
Round 5: Ike casts shield of faith on self (Quickened) & divine power
Round 6: Ike casts bears endurance
Round 7: Ike casts entropic shield
Round 8: Ike casts death ward, waits for word from wraith of PC’s advancement
Round 9: if PC’s are on there way, Ike casts mirror image
Round 10: Ike casts divine favor (Quickened) & divine favor on bone devil
Round 11: Ike readies flame strike on PC’s when they enter room.
Surprise round: Ike casts flame strike (45 hp), Bone devil casts ice wall to try to separate the worriers in front from the rest of party in back, gray render zombies and dread wraith attack. Wraith attacks with spring attack feat on most heavily armored person
Round 1: Ike casts flame strike (43 hp), Bone devil attacks wizards
Round 2: Ike starts to descend to floor. Casts destruction on rouge, bards, or wizards.
Round 3: Ike casts dispel magic on where it will do the most good and reaches floor
Round 4: Ike casts Inflict Serious wounds, mass
Round 5: Ike casts slay living and moves into combat, try’s to touch someone
Round 6: Ike tries to uses Death touch power
Round 7: Ike attacks
It was a great battle. I scarred the crap out of the party.
PCs: OK, we go up to the door and before we open it we cast all our buff spells.
DM (me): well, before you get a chance to cast your first spells, a column of unholy fire rains down on you, passing through what you now know is an illusionary hallway. Also your flanked on both sides by large zombie (mmm, brainssss).
PCs: OH SHI….
I made some mistakes (forgot to use the dread wraith spring attack feat and had Ike try to cast a spell while in range of the enlarged party’s main fighter). Ike killed the party’s rouge with the destruction spell (she was not happy when she found out later that it was going to take more then the new raise dead scroll she just bought to raise her). The group had a hero’s feast that morning so the bone devil’s fear and poison had no effect. Also the ice wall didn’t work because one of the PCs made there Dex save. Ike got taken down in just one round (attack of opportunity on him and full round attack from main tank of party. Stupid me), but the bone devil escaped. All in all a great fight. I have 7 PCs and one has a cohort so it’s a large party, I try to play the NPCs as smart as possible. Next up is the ice devil with his 6 summoned bone devils.
I will be running this combat in a few weeks and this morning is a lazy saturday so i'm doing some prep work for this encounter... I was acctualy going on to findout what to do about the invisablty purge that is in the temple and why in tacktics it says to cast invialbyt on Ike...
However Aceospades has given me several ideas that will help me in this encounter i think i will try and do something every simmilar in my encounter... I like the illusanary wall idea to suplement for the editors problem with inviablty... I wonder if they are going to fix this for the hard back?
Will have to watch out for my patys fighter he can dishout way to much damager and bull strenght and enlarger person are two tacktics my party uses all the time and they will mostlyly have that going on before they get up there...
Thanks for the help should be fun
Creative Director
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There's a fairly simple way to address the invisibility purge issue—it's what I'm incorperating into the Shackled City hardcover, at least.
Unhallow allows the caster to designate who gains the effects of the spell fixed to the unhallowed site. In the hardcover, the invisibility purge in the Cathedral of Wee Jas affects all those who do not worship Wee Jas. Thus, Ike's free to go invisible as often as he wants.
Of course, so are any PCs who worship Wee Jas... just a little perk thrown in there for Wee Jas PCs to take advantage of.
If you have tough PCs, consider these tactics:
1. Have Ike cast Silence on the Bone Devil, then have it bum-rush the spellcasters. The Bone Devil doesn't need to speak to use any of its abilities, but the spellcasters do! The Bone Devil can even stay invisible for the bulk of the combat and just stay near the spellcasting PCs! See idea #3 to minimize the area a PC can enter, trapping them inside a "quiet zone."
2. Have the Bone Devil cast Fly on the everyone in the room (with the duration of Fly, we can assume that the Bone Devil keeps it on everyone at all times). Have the monsters attack one PC at once from three dimensions.
3. Have the Bone Devil keep Wall of Ice spells criss-crossing the room. If the fight goes badly for Ike, he can cast Antimagic Field to run through the walls and PCs cannot follow easily, buying him a few rounds of healing spells. Close off the stairs with 5-6 Walls(more than 30' apart to prevent a Dispel from taking one more than one at a time) to slow the PCs, make them waste time/spells, and allow Ike to cast his more useful buffs.
4. Have the Bone Devil start the combat by maintaining an illusion of Ike and the undead as pillars or something, with a fake Ike and and undead across the room. Let the PCs waste a round of spells on the illusions.
5. Let Ike concentrate on the death magic like Hold Person(plus a Coup De Grace by a Zombie) and Slay Living. Melee only if he's out of spells.
6. Don't forget that Ike has a scroll of Teleport. If things go bad(he looses 50% hp) and he can't heal to full next round with a spell, he is going to try and get out of there. Use that Mirror Image scroll!
7. Save his non-death magic spells for spontaneous healing, as well as his Harm.
Will have to watch out for my patys fighter he can dishout way to much damager and bull strenght and enlarger person are two tacktics my party uses all the time and they will mostlyly have that going on before they get up there...
My party does this also. That’s why I sent the dread wraith after my party’s fighter. Because it’s incorporeal, it can go through armor like it’s not even there (literally). Also if I remember correctly, the fighter has only a 50% chance to hit because it’s incorporeal. Through in spring attack and the fighter will only be able to get in one attack a round because it would have to ready an attack as the dread wraith pops in and out of the floor.
This will be a great way for me to make that fighter who has two weapon fightnig stiles (one sword is a +1 holy long sword) witch ends up with 4 attack a around with 19-20 cit range with +8( or +4 for not sure) to conferm cirticals) and for a while there he had the affects of the elxer the hags had so +8 to str (however i would elminate him with a will save spell)
and yes uless someone has a goast touch weapon a MAGIC weapon has a 50% chance to hit a nonmagic weapon can't hit it... The only problem with the wrath is my fighter has an ok touch AC however it will still mess him up
If you have tough PCs, consider these tactics:
1. Have Ike cast Silence on the Bone Devil, then have it bum-rush the spellcasters. The Bone Devil doesn't need to speak to use any of its abilities, but the spellcasters do! The Bone Devil can even stay invisible for the bulk of the combat and just stay near the spellcasting PCs! See idea #3 to minimize the area a PC can enter, trapping them inside a "quiet zone."
2. Have the Bone Devil cast Fly on the everyone in the room (with the duration of Fly, we can assume that the Bone Devil keeps it on everyone at all times). Have the monsters attack one PC at once from three dimensions.
3. Have the Bone Devil keep Wall of Ice spells criss-crossing the room. If the fight goes badly for Ike, he can cast Antimagic Field to run through the walls and PCs cannot follow easily, buying him a few rounds of healing spells. Close off the stairs with 5-6 Walls(more than 30' apart to prevent a Dispel from taking one more than one at a time) to slow the PCs, make them waste time/spells, and allow Ike to cast his more useful buffs.
4. Have the Bone Devil start the combat by maintaining an illusion of Ike and the undead as pillars or something, with a fake Ike and and undead across the room. Let the PCs waste a round of spells on the illusions.
5. Let Ike concentrate on the death magic like Hold Person(plus a Coup De Grace by a Zombie) and Slay Living. Melee only if he's out of spells.
6. Don't forget that Ike has a scroll of Teleport. If things go bad(he looses 50% hp) and he can't heal to full next round with a spell, he is going to try and get out of there. Use that Mirror Image scroll!
7. Save his non-death magic spells for spontaneous healing, as well as his Harm.
These are EEEEVIL. One comment on #5. The zombies can't coup ded grace because it is a full round action and they can only take a single action each round. The dread wraith, on the other hand....
The zombies can't coup ded grace because it is a full round action and they can only take a single action each round. The dread wraith, on the other hand....
I think it's possible to take a full round action spending two single actions (2 rounds) when limited to single actions.
From SRD D20 Hypertext:
Start/Complete Full-Round Action
The "start full-round action" standard action lets you start undertaking a full-round action, which you can complete in the following round by using another standard action. You can’t use this action to start or complete a full attack, charge, run, or withdraw.
Coup de grace is not a full attack but a full round action.