Mokmurian Tactics

[Cesare]

My PCs will be squaring off against Mokmurian next session and I'm wondering if anyone has some neat tactics that a highly intelligent stone giant wizard would use against a party of adventurers.

(I know that the tactics in the book are a good starting point but I would like to hear other ideas)

[Joey Virtue]

I liked Repulsion with the Acid Fog

[FatR]

And without proper feats his direct damage spells cannot be of much use. Replace them. Go for battlefield control spells (such as above-mentioned Acid Fog and Repulsion, but also Evard's Black Tentacles) to make the party stand and take his ranged attacks. His default Reverse Gravity can be effective as a way to hold enemies at bay for 2 rounds, but only against non-ranged non-fliers without imagination. Think about replacing it with Waves of Exhaustion, which offers no save and reduces the party's attack ability in addition to making Mokmurian harder to catch. Also, Mass Reduce Person is crap, unless PCs use Enlarge bigtime and maybe even then. He can be very good in melee after Tenser's Transformation, if uses his club with two hands. Use that. Ideally he should cast a lot of buffs beforehand - not hard to do, wheh he hears combat in the area before his lair, then catch, separate, debuff and SoD/SoL party, then melee those, who break through. Oh, and if he's caught unprepared, just make him Dimension Door away.

[All DMs are evil]

My party of 7 PC's faced him last week, I used the supplied tactics and he kicked their butt, a good idea is to use the robe to recall a second solid fog, the ability to only move 5 feet through it gives him plenty of rounds to pick them off with his area effects and scorching rays.

I effectively got a TPK and I had already had him use reverse gravity and disintegrate outside against a Stone giant who had disobeyed him.

[deathboy]

When I ran this for a party of 5 + Animal compainions Mokmurian had total control of the combat, just by using the tactics written. Solid Fog is just brutal on a party that relies on stick and move tactics. Add to it the Spider Climb and haste he could get to either side of the battle zone and blast away with spells.

In the end one pc was killed and the rest of the party was in the teens by fights end, and that was with a druis healing and a rohgue using wands to help out.

[graven55]

I think the standard tactics are nasty enough already...

Spoiler:

He crushed my group of 4 + Conna the Wise (who they convinced to help, to give the 5th player, whose Duskblade died to the combined Rocs/Harpies outside, something to do) with the standard tactics/spell list. He had time to observe their tactics against the Headless Lord, and knows quite a bit of info about the party. Just taking that info and those tactics should give him a huge advantage. Here's the death total on what was basically a TPK (party of experienced 3.5 gamers):

Wizard (Arcane Order Mage): Turned to stone in Round 2 (tortured/killed later)
Cleric (Radiant Servant of Sarenrae): Reduced to 0 Str (Killed by a hound later)
Ranger/Fighter (Bow user): Uselessly stuck in reverse gravity-ed solid fog until Mok got around to polymorphing/crushing her
Dwarven Defender: Made useless by the reverse gravity/solid fog combo for the first part of the fight.
Conna: Managed, with the dwarf helping later, to force Mokmurian into a position where she and the Dwarf could retreat, but had no chance of defeating him.

Luckily, it was enough, with Conna's influence to break up the giant army.

Needless to say, pretty tough already. Luckily, the party likes the AP and decided to try and finish it. Their new characters, a group of pathfinder society adventurers arrived in Sandpoint just in time to investigate a mysterious sinkhole after clearing a nasty nest of vampires who had taken residence at Thisletop...