How did your PC's fair in the acid wraith battle when they first got to Alhaster? Right now my PC's are in the middle of fighting it and I must say it's looking to be a tough fight.
They got it down to 1 hitpoint but when it's turn came around, fast healing kicked in and it use spring attack to avoid the most dangerous of the fighters, ducking into the floor. Now it's fast healing all the way up to give it another go. I'm not sure if my players can take it down now that I've figured out this tactic. It pops up, the players take their readied actions it breaths acid and ducks down into the floor.
True it can't spring attack when it breaths acid but even so they only have the one round to kill it in before it hides and heals up again. Looks like my players are likely going to flee, if they aren't all paralyzed by then from the poison this thing's breath weapon deals.
How did your players deal with this? Am I missing some important tactic on the PC's part?
How did your players deal with this? Am I missing some important tactic on the PC's part?
My players' tactic was "kill it before it can act". Quite sound, really.
I've said it in other threads, but the spirit shaman class from Complete Divine makes mincemeat of anything incorporeal. This alone was basically how my PCs killed it in three rounds. Protection from Elements also went a long way into turning the uber-cool monster into an ineffectual, 2-3 pt dmg per turn hitter. My PCs had a tougher time with Ilthane's Brood, whose damage output from full attacks were quite scary, especially if they went against their nature and ganged up. Don't forget about the effects of the environment they fight in, though PCs of about 15th should have no problems countering them.
We were headed straight for a TPK, at least until the Wizard did a prismatic spray, it roled 1 and turned to stone. Then they sold it...
We were headed straight for a TPK, at least until the Wizard did a prismatic spray, it roled 1 and turned to stone. Then they sold it...
It's sometimes worthwhile to bend the rules to avoid a TPK, but technically undead are immune to a prismatic spray's petrification effect because it requires a fortitude save. (See undead type entry in MM and prismatic spray spell description). It's easy to miss these little bits of fine print--it just seemed a little weird to me that you could turn an incorporeal creature to stone so I looked it up. There is nothing in the incorporeal subtype description that prevents it, but the rules cited above do.
Odd. I was quite disapointed in the acidwraith. The placement of the 4 black dragons just prior to it meant that any party with access to resist energy was going to have it up prior to this encounter which basically nerfs the acidwraith.
Thematically its nice, but challenge wise the wraith was a non event due to the nonevent fight prior to it.