Next session will be the final session of the campaign, with the assault on the spire and the battle with Kyuss.
The PCs are quite powerful, so I'd like some suggestions to make the battle with Kyuss more challenging.
With past tactics, I expect most of Kyuss's spells to be countered, he'll get disintergrated by the sphere of annihiliation, then finished off by the barbarian (and the swordsage) hitting him lots of times.
Geoff.
Don't forget about death ward, which can really shut down much of Kyuss' power spells. You'll probably see that, as well.
Kyuss got kinda pwned in my campaign. I should say that after twelve adventures of build-up, and a heavy knowledge and understanding of what Kyuss stood for, they were ready, artifacts or not. So I made a few compromises.
I gave Kyuss serious hit points. I gave him 1340, to be specific, chalking up 480 to a Kyuss-specific kind of "unholy toughness", and then another 200 for kicks, not that it really mattered. Truth is, I also followed the directions for the fight, partially to the word.
I reduced his divine rank to 0, as the PCs successfully fought off despair and destroyed the Unlife Vortex. I only kept him in the monolith for one round, as two would have definitely made it too rough. In retrospect, if your party consistently has a habit of doing massive damage early on, I'd forego that first round in his prison, as well, especially if your party brings the sphere of annihilation. (Note: I learned in that fight that a gate spell will not automatically shut a sphere. Poor Kyuss learned it too when he tried.)
I also let him keep his insight bonus to AC. This made it very hard (practically impossible) for anyone but our spellsword to hit him, even with touch spells, but that worked out fine for my party. (The spellsword, with all his crazy bonuses, was well past Kyuss' AC anyway).
I also, in a rather tongue-in-cheek way, gave him immunity to imprisonment (as the spell), as that spell, theoretically, might end the fight right there...unlikely, but possible.
Prior to the fight, they all buffed, but they also used a wish each (there are plenty to grab from in this adventure) to simulate a night's rest, thus being able to recover spells. It seems like a lot, but I figured it wasn't, as they timeline they had was closer to a week, and I played it up like Alhaster would be destroyed that night from the start. So, whereas they could have easily gone to Magepoint, slept, and returned, they opted to press on; and in that heroic spirit to save Alhaster, I figured it was fair.
In truth, our party (a diviner, bard, spellsword, and cleric, for short), had a great deal of resources to beat Kyuss. I still think he would be a challenging foe for most, so consider that before giving them a foe you know they cannot beat. Try to force them to use that sphere of annihilation, and the Hand of Vecna if they have it. They should automatically be using the 6th and 7th Rod parts, and someone should have Icosiol's Circlet on (perfect for overcoming Kyuss' DR).
Ultimately, Kyuss will probably be a memorable fight. It should be hard, but fair. If your PCs press on from the bottom of the spire to the top, they're in for a few tough fights to boot. Lashonna is amazing, and is nigh impossible to hit, especially for a dragon. And Maralee...whoa! Getting into melee with this monster is just asking for her to drop you, at least. Still, one of my brave PCs did just this, and the fight was truly unforgettable. Have fun with the Spire! It's a magnificent conclusion to the Age of Worms.
hey guys, thought i'd my two copper
I played through age of worms as a player. My best friend was the DM. Our party was crazy powerful, and before the kyuss battle my friend asked me to brainstorm some ways to make the final battle tougher, because we had a few weeks before slaughtered dragotha and my buddy didn't want the final battle with kyuss to be easy and therefore forgettable. He came to me because we are both DMs and often help eachother out.
I came up with a most evil idea that i'll share with you now. I realized there's one thing that could trully be a tough challenge to our party, and that would be if we had to fight ourselves.
So before the final game session my friend took our character sheets for an hour or so to check out our stats and make sure evrything was in order.
He then copied our stats and made some changes any of our abilities that affected evil or undead now affected good living creatures. He also made each evil version of us Undead. They ahd similar weapons and equipment. Thus when we met kyuss he shot this weird energy into us then three piles of worms formed into each of us. Then we fought ourselves while Kyuss spent a few rounds buffing himself then he joined in.
This was an awesome battle. We had to deal with our crazy unstoppable barbarian cleric, our paladin ranger, and our warlock counterparts as well as the power of a god. Add tot hat kyuss trying to destroy the sphere of annihilation with a gate, failing and transporting us all to another plane and this became a battle we are all still talking about.
Plus I felt this idea of creatign evil undead dopplegangers of the heroes was just the kind of power a god should have. So if you wanna really challenge the party try this out.