Any one can coment his/her experiences with the final combat with Karzoug? It seems to me VERY difficult, but perhaps i don't see something.
Thanks in advance and please forgive my poor english.
|
Any one can coment his/her experiences with the final combat with Karzoug? It seems to me VERY difficult, but perhaps i don't see something.
Thanks in advance and please forgive my poor english.
When my party gets there I'll let you know. Then again I am being a little bit evil by bringing in a friend to play Karzoug. This way i can arbitraite rules better and let them all sweat it out.
Any one can coment his/her experiences with the final combat with Karzoug? It seems to me VERY difficult, but perhaps i don't see something.
Karzoug is the Runelord of Greed afterall. But yes he is a mean old man with lots of destructive potential. I think that you will find a group of characters that is able to survive long enough to see Karzoug will have the ability to take him down.
Unless you are running a group that is an odd make up (without a healer for example) I think that you'd be surprised at what 4+ players can come up with. My group is still quite a ways away from kicking the old man in the teeth so I can't offer concrete examples here.When my party gets there I'll let you know. Then again I am being a little bit evil by bringing in a friend to play Karzoug. This way i can arbitraite rules better and let them all sweat it out.
Holy crap Deathboy that is a fantastic idea! I have an old friend that used to GM for my group when we were just wee nerdlings. I may have to pull him out of retirement and import some seriously wicked classic GM power for the fight when it comes.
Any one can coment his/her experiences with the final combat with Karzoug? It seems to me VERY difficult, but perhaps i don't see something.
Are you asking to see how different groups tackled Karzoug for a gestalt final plan of operation? If so ...
That's just an idea.
Hummm... thanks for the idea but my question leans more towards if you consider Karzoug being a disproportionate challenge for a fifteen level group hurted and tired from multiple combats.
An one-use object that projects an anti-magic field could be a GREAT help but it would transform Karzoug in a failure as the last villain, wouldn´t it?
Herbo, I think that only with his nine level spell Karzoug could be a problem (and more with the amount of his HP).
Please forgive my poor english.
Karzoug is supposed to be difficult. The assumption is that 1) the party heals/buffs up fully before entering the runewell and 2) goes all out with "expensive" (high material component cost, XP) spells and charged/one-shot items. This is the climax of the AP, after all.
My player suggests a combination of planar allies and anti-magic shell. Allies are called, not summoned, and do not go away in the anti-magic.
He's not happy with this solution as it has almost no role for the PCs, and little chance that the fight will be interesting; but it seems like the best available for his particular PCs.
We'll play it tonight and I'll report back.
Mary
It's worth considering that once the defenders of the Spires are all gone, there is no particular reason the PCs shouldn't rest--other than the worry that K. will get away. I understand why the module gives absolutely no information about why he is still in there, how long he'll be in there, what could be done to get him out, etc.....but it's a pain, as this is an obvious focus for Commune/Contact Other Planes/etc.
My player, to my dismay, managed to chase Viorian into the Eye of Avarice. So he has to deal with her as well. Not the way I would have chosen to set up the last encounter, but it came so naturally out of the previous fight that I really couldn't avoid it. (He put Viorian in a forcecage next to the lens and gave her plenty of time to think about her situation, then let her out in order to pound her to death with massed spells. She had seconds to live and nowhere to go--except the Eye. The PCs realized what was happening after round 1 and tried to stop her quickly; unfortunately they used fire magic!)
Mary
|
|
Hummm... thanks for the idea but my question leans more towards if you consider Karzoug being a disproportionate challenge for a fifteen level group hurted and tired from multiple combats.
An one-use object that projects an anti-magic field could be a GREAT help but it would transform Karzoug in a failure as the last villain, wouldn´t it?
Herbo, I think that only with his nine level spell Karzoug could be a problem (and more with the amount of his HP).
Please forgive my poor english.
First he is a Runelord, he is supposed to be powerful. He should cause ulcers to players as they think of facing him. Fear is one of his weapons.
Next reading the adventure the party has enough time to level up before they fight him and should easily be lvl 16, which by the book would make a party of 4 an EL 18 or 19 which makes Karzoug a high end, but fair fight. Well with in a party's limits. Also don't forget they should have the weapons from Sins to help out as well.
Finally he was never ment to be easy or fair. This is the Epic final fight and thus you should pull no punches and go for the throat. Win or Die is the motto for both sides of this fight, anything else would be less than heroic.
Outcome in our game:
Against a large (though not individually all that powerful) and caster-heavy party with high Initiative, Karzoug's given tactic of waiting until they appear and then casting Time Stop and his defensive spells turned out to be a recipe for Sudden Villain Death Syndrome.
The PCs prepared by summoning (and hasting and enlarging) four dire bears, summoning four avoral guardinals, and planar-ally calling a high level guardian naga. They had a good set of allies, the surviving Wrath faction from Runeforge. They also cast extensive buffs on everyone. Then Wren tore a hole into the Eye and they flooded in. Before Karzoug's initiative, they did this:
Enervation: 4 levels. (From a PC.)
Enervation: 3 levels. (One of the low-level Wrathful got lucky with his roll against Karzoug's SR.)
Fire Seeds: ~100 points damage. (A PC.)
Fireball: ~24 points damage. (Another lucky Wrathful).
And about five more spells that hit SR or Mind Blank (from more Wrathful, angels, and the naga).
Two PCs readied spells against Karzoug's casting.
Fighting creatures began moving into position.
So Karzoug had lost all his 9th and half his 8th level spells. He commanded his glaive to cast Cure Moderate on him, then opened his mouth to cast quickened Resist Elements and Prismatic Wall. The PC who had been holding her spell cast her readied Disintegrate. With -7 on his save Karzoug had a reasonable chance to make it, but in fact missed by two. Game over. (The other PC was readying Greater Dispel, with reasonable odds of making it work given Karzoug's reduced level.)
If he had made the save, he could have annoyed the PCs, but he was basically a character of their level at this point and overwhelmingly outnumbered. Viorian was about to wade into the bears and could probably have beaten them all, but the PCs would have taken Karzoug down via spell damage within another round.
It would have been a different fight if he had cast his defensive spells earlier, but the module was very clear that he would not--I guess he was afraid that the PCs would go away without breaching the Eye. (Which in fact they had, the previous day.)
It has not been my experience that a single foe can stand against a caster-heavy party of this kind unless they are nearly immune to magic, and without his buffs Karzoug is far from that. Enervation is a key spell here; get a few of those to work and everything else works too, because the target can no longer make saves. (Optimal play for Karzoug probably involves an early quickened Limited Wish to cast Death Ward.)
I'm not particularly bothered by this. I didn't expect it to be a good fight; high level play seldom, in my experience, produces good fights, especially against single foes. I'm a little sad not to have gotten to cast some 9th level spells, though; I never have, in all my years of D&D!
Mary
Thank-you for sharing your game with us, Mary. Is it over now, or will you have one more denouement session?
I look forward to reading about your exploits as a player in CotCT. I'll be watching for Jon's posts.
Outcome in our game:
Thanks for posting that, and I look forward to hearing how your CotCT campaing goes too.
For high level games, we do not use many save or die spells such as Disintegrate. This was actually a request from the players a long time ago. In campaigns that can span years, it is just too annoying to see a PC wiped out in one roll.
However, with both those Enervation spells hitting, I don't think K would have lasted too long.
I know it must be difficult, my fear is that He could be TOO difficult.
Thanks for your experience Mary, but it seems a fortunately combat, isn't it?
In any case only with his time stop, wish and meteor swarm Karzoug could destroy a party. This is my fear, sorry if it is a stupid idea.
Please, excuse my poor english and thanks for all the opinions.
Thank-you for sharing your game with us, Mary. Is it over now, or will you have one more denouement session?
I look forward to reading about your exploits as a player in CotCT. I'll be watching for Jon's posts.
It's over. The session was 45 minutes of prep and under 10 minutes of play, but neither of us really felt like continuing. Kind of bitter-sweet; I really liked those characters. If I understood and enjoyed high-level play *much* better than I do, I'd run the campaign against Alaznist, as that's where the PCs would naturally turn now. But it's just not feasible for us.
Neither of us could feel much about Karzoug at this point. I think the campaign had run out of steam somewhere around lower Xin-Shalast; perhaps it's just as well that it's over.
We're a couple of sessions into ramp-up scenarios for CotCT, and I'm enjoying it, though I'm scared to death that it won't be possible to make the AP make sense. We haven't reached any of the actual CotCT material yet; it's all side adventures. Low-level combat is *so* much more fun for me than high-level combat, it's really nice to be back down there.
Mary
I know it must be difficult, my fear is that He could be TOO difficult.
Thanks for your experience Mary, but it seems a fortunately combat, isn't it?
In any case only with his time stop, wish and meteor swarm Karzoug could destroy a party. This is my fear, sorry if it is a stupid idea.
Please, excuse my poor english and thanks for all the opinions.
It's a real worry. I wasn't sure either. I think my player was lucky in his initiative rolls (Karzoug rolled an 8, so all but one PC went before him). But the PCs also had strong defensive spells which would, I believe, have allowed them to survive Karzoug's initial attacks. Meteor Swarm is actually shut down pretty well by Resist Energy as it's four separate attacks which take resistance separately. PCs with Improved Evasion can pretty much avoid area of effect damage, and outnumbered 4 to 1, if Karzoug uses single-PC takeouts he will certainly kill some PCs but the remainder are likely to kill him. After the Meteor Swarm he doesn't actually have that many strong multiple-target attacks.
You might talk with your players about what they're going to do. Points to be aware of:
*Saves should be as high as possible (use backing spells).
*Spell resistance is good if you can get it, or spell turning.
*Energy resistance is cheap and a good investment. The fact that Karzoug's glaive is depicted as flaming in Xin-Shalast art should be a hint as to which kind of energy resistance.
*The more attackers the better--they can come from summoning, allies, charmed enemies, whatever.
*PCs should plan to spread out and not be in area of a single attack spell; to do that, Haste helps a lot, and of course Fly.
*Spells which are immune to SR are good choices here: Enervation, Glitterdust, etc.
If the PCs think that they can charge in and melee Karzoug--especially if they don't have Fly--they will die. But it seems to me, having worked through the fight, that a well-prepared party may often find this surprisingly easy--though much, much harder if they can't stop the Time Stop.
One last tactic to consider: readying an interrupt or counterspell to stop the Time Stop from being cast at all. If Karzoug has to make a DC50 Concentration check to cast it, the PCs' chances go up.
Mary
Thak you Mary. I suposse that part of my job how DM is entrust in my gamers ;) ¡Thank you very much!
Thak you Mary. I suposse that part of my job how DM is entrust in my gamers ;) ¡Thank you very much!
It's tough. Not many GMs have experience with 17th level play; I know I don't. Most of what I suggest above I learned by being surprised by my player....
Often you can just assume that somehow, the PCs will do it--and they will. But every once in a while you'll be totally wrong. (We had one of those in SCAP and one in AoW; I am proud to have avoided a repeat performance in RotRL.)
Mary
¡Thanks for all Mary!