My party got pretty creamed by the mauhrezi demon and the skinwalkers.
Psion: feebleminded; figher: enfeebled; duskblade: frightened; cleric: fireballed to death; wu jen: unconscious and nearly coup de grace'd.
The fight lasted about 12 rounds, during which the fighter was dropped unconscious (and at 11 Strength, thus unable to use 6 of his feats), the duskblade was 4 rounds away from the fight, a summoned ghoul was killed by the wu jen's hell hound familiar, the cleric was dropped to negative 36 hit points, the psion was down to 1 hit point and no power points, and the mauhrezi demon teleported away with 9 hit points left.
Did anyone else run this encounter yet? Was it as ball-shreddingly brutal as it was for my PCs?
Not so bad for mine, but my group is strong; I've actually cut XP rewards for any non-boss encounter in half, and even at a level below the benchmark, they still do fine.
As for the Fake Noltus encounter, it was interesting. The fear aura of the Jujalimus (I LOVE THAT NAME!) put the demon-hunting ranger (doh!) and the cleric (double doh!) out of the fight for the first 3 rounds. That left the ice troll warblade and the frost sorceror to "hold the line" as it were.
An enfeeble made things rough, but not terrible for the troll, and the sorceror was chipped down to 2hp by two charging skinwalkers. Once it was his turn though, he cast ice shield on himself (stoneskin variant from Frostburn), which allowed him to pretty much ignore the skinwalkers as long as they didn't crit for the next three or so rounds.
The mahurezi stayed invisible, and never played his hand. An early warning by the sorceror (he smelled a rat with a good sense motive) had gotten the lizardfolk clear, so there were no bodies to animate, so the ghoul-demon just watched what happened, then teleported away.
A bad roll on a sound-burst from the returned cleric stunned the Jujalimus long enough for the troll to rip it to shreds (Julajimus: unbelievably scary offense, crappy defense. No DR, SR, Energy Resist, and generally weak saves. Just don't let it get ahold of you.)
The skinwalker acolyte was the worst problem, as it noticed the sorceror was covered in ice, and all of his best offense spells were fire. (Ice shield gives fire vunerability, and the sorc has a dex of 10, uh oh spaghettio) But even after the sorceror went down a little crispy, the cleric did her job well (healing the sorc) and the troll showed the acolyte the truth of the 800 pound gorilla jokes. Once the ranger returned, it was all over; no escape against a bow specialist ranger with deepwood sniper levels.
I held back for the most part, too. No empowered spells or focused effort from the skinwalkers. Could've easily been a TPK.
Course, my PCs have had some ill fortune: they failed to kill Xerkamat, who slipped away with a second projected image from Khala to cover his trail. Onitali didn't even get into the fight, so he's fine deep in Taboo Temple. And after a day's rest, all three of them are waiting for the PCs.
So my end fight will be Khala, Onitali, and Xerkamat, plus the six Skullvyns. Ouch for the PCs.
well in a party of 8 average party level 11 i had 4 deaths through the course of the fight a couple of which were revivified but alot of hurt and with a little bit of luck they came out of it. one of the pc's that died in the last adventure came back as a cleric of pelor and that tied with the favored soul keep the party alive without the second cleric it would have been a tpk. I do think the temple will get a couple more but my campaign has been a blood bath my kill count is up to 10 which is really high for my games but everyone had enjoyed the challange and wants to see it out
Okay, maybe I'm blind and just completely missing something, but exactly how is Onailati supposed to "teleport" away from the battle? I don't see any SLA teleport ability, none of his other powers mention anything about teleport, and I see no magic items that would allow it. So... what am I missing?
The encounter was not hard for my group. In short, they suspected something was up and confirmed it with a few covertly cast spells.
So, when the bad guys were setting up the group for the ambush, the group was setting up the bad guys for their ambush and my group pulled theirs off first, taking the mahurezi and jujalimus out of the equation on the inital round before they could act.
The adept caused some problems on his turn but didn't survive the following round when he got the full attention of the group's two serious combatants. The skinwalkers were basically a mop up operation after that.
The difference being, in this case, the party's paranoia and caution serving them in good stead so they got the drop on the bad guys and not the other way around.
Okay, maybe I'm blind and just completely missing something, but exactly how is Onailati supposed to "teleport" away from the battle? I don't see any SLA teleport ability, none of his other powers mention anything about teleport, and I see no magic items that would allow it. So... what am I missing?
Nope, you're right. Maurezhi don't even have teleport in the Fiend Folio. He's a demon though, so maybe it's not out of line to just give him the ability as a SLA at will like most fiends.
Huh. I must've assumed he had that ability... does it not state in the Tactics section that he teleports away if reduced below X hit points? Or am I on crack?
Huh. I must've assumed he had that ability... does it not state in the Tactics section that he teleports away if reduced below X hit points? Or am I on crack?
It does. That was what prompted me to examine his stat block to see how often he could use the ability, if it came from an item, etc. I found nothing, zip, nadda. The killer thing is that the entire rest of the adventure setup assumes he teleports back and alerts the rest of the bad guys about the heroes, which is a big impact on how difficult the battles in the taboo temple will be. I mean, I thought about just giving him the ability to do it, but I don't like that sort of arbitrary change, especially one that makes the difference between whether the PC's enemies are expecting them or not. I may change Onailati into a different sort of demon who CAN teleport away, and can also change its shape. May be difficult to find one to fit neatly into that CR range. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Um... he had... a scroll... of teleport. And UMD. And he rolled a 20. Yeah.
I just ran this encounter last night and saw this discrepancy as well. My group had no idea what the demon was, so I just said he teleported away using some fiendish ability from his master, Khala.
As long as the adventure assumes he does this, not having the ability listed in his statblock is only a minor inconvenience.
I'll probably just have him use his abilities to get away (invisibility, disguise self). Unfortunately, glitterdust will make this difficult, but otherwise if they don't know he turned invisible, he may as well have teleported.
had him packing a couple of potions of dimension Hop (PHB II) courtesy of Khala.... and he really needed them, hehe