Ok, so the Advanced Elite Fiendish Eye of the Deep. Doesn't look so bad on paper, until you get to Baleful Flash: DC 34 Fort save or be blind for 2d6 rounds and stunned for half that period.
.... O_O
My party is REALLY strong (as those who follow my posts know) and I usually have to make "important" critters use splatbook material to bring them up to the point where they actually challenge the PCs.
I had to DOWNGRADE this critter so he didn't wipe the whole group. I removed the stunning secondary effect, and the fight still lasted over 15 rounds, and was really only won because A: Vorthys natural 1d a save versus blinding poison from the ranger and B: the sorceror had elected to stay on the Fortitude, since he had decent line of sight and effect at that point.
Anyone else see this thing's abilities as a TPK in the waiting? Not that I mind, my players always know they can run away, which they were considering, but wow, this thing seemed to "up the arsenal" a bit relative to other encounters. (Although the shaved harpies did a number on my group as well. Such high DCs!)
The DC of saving throws is only going to get worse Black Bard. But then what do you really expect? If your players are having too easy a time of it maybe a reality check like Vorthys was called for. In the next few adventures the DCs for certain monster attacks is going to easily be in the DC 30 to DC 40 range? All of Demogorgon's attacks (even in his weakened state in the last adventure) are going to be over DC 40 (probably)! The only relatively normal DCs will be for his spell-like abilities.
..."light" spoilers. ;-) Ha ha.
It took me a second to figure out why Vzorthys' Baleful Flash DC was so high. (Most supernatural abilities are Charisma-based for factoring DCs, I think.) What happened here was that the creature description in Lords of Madness (the origin of an "eye of the deep") states otherwise, that its baleful flash's DC is Constitution-based.
Well, due to some sadistic number-crunching on the part of the wonderfully sinister Mr. Pett, Vzorthys is an incredibly healthy Eye of the Deep, with a whopping Constitution of 30!
Though, upon looking at how this number was reached, I was stumped myself, until I started doing some math. The creature starts at 12HD with a 18 Con. There is apparently some number shuffling amongst its stats, likely resulting in the base 15 for the "high score" from an elite array going to Con, which if we presume had a 10 in it to start (unlikely, but...), we get a 23 Con prior to advancing it. After advancement, it gets three stat points--all to Con--and a size bonus of +4 to Con, resulting in its mad-sick 30 Con.
...evil. Pure evil...