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The fight lasted about 18 rounds. Alex the scout tried to sneak into the Dark Cathedral and spotted the Aspect by the pool, unforunately it spotted him as well and it moved to attack. Alex whacked it with an arrow and noted that it did not do as much damage as it should have. It bite him for a good amount of damage. He retreated back to the party behind the door leading to the Grimlock area.
Now I did try to have the Aspect follow but I gave the players such a hard time about using enlarge in the grimlock area I could not justify the Aspect fitting down a 5' wide hallway. I had it ripe away at the entrance of it for a round. Then the wizard of the group dropped a web on him and they lost sight of him. They started to make plans and I thought it was time to try to draw them out, after all, the Aspect does have an int of 12.
The Aspect goes and starts to destroy the elevator and Alex comes out about 4 rounds later with magic weapon cast on his bow (thanks to the recall a spell from a pearl of power). Alex takes a shot and hits doing some decent damage. The Aspect lunges over to him and bites him again. Alex retreats again.
The Aspects moves out of sight and Alex makes his brave plan. He is going to run up the ramp and have the Aspect follow him allowing the rest of the party to move in the room and set up for the fight. What Alex did not figure was the Aspect moves as fast as he does. Alex moves past the Aspect giving up an oppertunity attack and gets the bite again, makes it to the stairs. The Aspect follows him and bites again, more damage. Alex is not doing so well. Alex spends the next three rounds tumbling away from the aspect as his move action and then moving as a standard action for a total of 60'. He was quite dismayed as the Aspect kept up to him.
Three round later they are both on the highest paltform and Alex does a swan dive off. Tunble check, followed by a jump check to launch without giving up an attack of oppertunity, and then a tunble on his landing. Alex take a d6 of damage when he makes all 3 rolls. He was statled when the Aspect jumped down and moved right up to him. By this time the rest of the party was setup in the room and taking pot shots at the Aspect.
The fight in earnest starts. Everyone is afraid to go toe-to-toe with the Aspect and Alex is just about dead. Then Karl, cleric/fighter of Kord, moves to intercept the Aspect so Alex can escape. The Aspect uses a move action and cast Standard of Hextor on Alex thinking that should finish him off and advances on Karl. Karl misses an attack on the Aspect, which was down to 18 HP at this point from all the peppering it has received from the other players. The Aspect uses its free action to do Bloodthrist of Erythnul and heals 10 points, and with the profain bonus and it full attack, takes Karl down to 1 HP in a round.
The rogue/druid, Analyn, and Paladin, Wilhelm, rush in to save Karl. Wilhelm had summoned his warhorse and it also joins the battle. By this time Alex has run out of range of the Standard of Hextor and it has returned to the Aspect. The four way battle goes on for a couple rounds. Then the Aspect uses a standard action to redirect Standard of Hextor on to Karl, and it hits doing 10 damage and drops Karl to -9. It then chews on Analyn. The next round the party brings down the Aspect and Karl expires.
It truly was a great battle. Now, I think that the fight lasted as long as did for one reason, the party was depleted of spells having just finished the grimlock area. As was their habit, they thought they would lock themselves into the Hextor area to rest and regain spells. If they had rested in the grimlock area then the aspect would have gone down quicker.
Advice, use every tool the Aspect has. Fight intelligently, it is not stupid. Don't pull any punches. If you think that it will be too easy, advance it a couple HD. I was going to do that, but when they party encountered it spell weak, I decided to use as written.
Hope this helps you out. As I said, an awesome battle, the best of the adventure to date.
Thanks for the rundown Olmac.
We ran through this fight last night and it sounds like we had similar experiences. The Ebon Aspect lasted for at least 18 rounds and the fight took 3.5 hours. Everyone was on the edge of their seats the whole time. What fun!
I had the Aspect smash the elevator as written, but I also had it smash most of the pillars in the room to give itself plenty of room to work with. The dwarf rogue felt the tremors so he knew that something was up.
The surprise round started when the dwarf peered up the elevator shaft to find the Aspect crouching just out of site, waiting. The dwarf chucked a spear, dealing all kinds of sneak attack damage and managed to hurt the Aspect a wee bit. The Aspect dropped to the ground and manifested the Standard of Hextor (yeah I know that's probably too much for a surprise round, oh well!). The wizard was in the logical place for the Standard to strike, so the wizard took beating. The rogue backpedals as the half-orc barbarian moves up. The barbarian accepted an AoO for position, and then raged. He somehow managed to whiff with his great axe. I wanted the group to take the Aspect seriously, so I had him use the fury of Erythnul early and take a full attack on the barb. Between the power attacking, the critical on the bite, and hitting with all of the claws, the barbarian went down deep into the negatives. Luckily we play with the house rule that you can bleed up to your con score not just to -10. The wizard got smacked some more by the flail. The cleric cast sound burst and couldn't overcome the SR.
After that it got ugly. With the main damage dealer down, the party was a bit shocked. The wizard continued to get whalloped by the Standard of Hextor. The rogue darted in, missed with the spear, and received gaping wounds for his trouble. By the time the cleric could get to the barbarian, he was a round or two away from being dead. The wizard went down to the Standard of Hextor. The barbarian eventually got up again and ran away to heal and shoot innefectual crossbow bolts (dropping his axe in the process!). The rogue ran over to the dying wizard (in a corner)and rummaged in her backpack to pull out the Faceless One's mask. He put it to his face and as the Aspect loomed over him he said, "I'm the Faceless One! Obey me!" The Aspect roared at him and dropped him into negatives. The cleric made it over to the wizard and healed her to be dropped into negatives for her trouble.
At this point, there were three characters down and the Aspect still had 70 hitpoints. I decided that I didn't need to add in the extra 15 hp and up the SR like I'd planned to make the encounter challenging. :)
The Aspect turned to go after the barb who was at 0 hp after the flail's final swing. The wizard, barely conscious, used her only CLW potion to heal the cleric (to 1 hp). I had the Aspect climb the wall to get to the top of the 30 foot platform (the barb was on the 20 foot one) just to shock the players at how fast that thing can move.
The barbarian was busying drinking potions and running away, while everyone else backed into the entry passage for the caves of Erythnul. Once everyone was in, the dwarf rogue shut the door and barred it with a piton. The cleric burned through a CLW wand as she went. Everyone readied actions to chuck stuff at the Aspect when it appeared. Between the squeezing and the tanglefoot bag and the solid critical from the spear weilding rogue, the Aspect eventually went down.
Every character was bleeding to death at some point in the fight, sometimes more than once. I couldn't have been happier.
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Sounds like fun. Our fight lasted two hours. Sounds like your group had a few more spells ready than mine did. My group may have been lucky to be spell depleted because Vecna's Blessing was a non-factor in the fight. Only one spell cast at the Aspect, a magic missle, which never got through the SR, and healed him 2 hit points.
I think the Ebon Aspect is one of the most enjoyable and entertaining fights I have DMed in a long time. I am sure the players will remember it for quite some time.
One of my players comment that they loved the whole grimlock area. With all the height considerations and difficult terrain to fight it, made it very challenging. I was thinking of not including HoHR and doing something else, but I think I will leave it in. It should prove entertaining for them as well, considering the whole difficult terrain thing.