Running the Adimarchus battle


Shackled City Adventure Path


For DMs that have already completed the adventure path, or anyone who's studied his stat block, how should I prepare for this final and hopefully epic battle?

Adimarchus is a tough opponent, and the party has to kill him twice. Do you think I should have them fight one form all the way to the end, and then have the other appear? Or should he randomly change forms as a free action whenever it helps him to do so?

Here is the party facing him:
Fighter 20 with very high melee damage
Transmuter 20 wielding a staff of the magi (engagement present from Boccob)
Cleric 20 (smoking eye, demigod rank 1)
Bard 20
Rogue/Monk/Acrobat 20 who flurries with Alakast
Rogue/Shadowdancer 20
super-archer cohort 18
Nidrama

A major problem in planning for this combat is that the halfling cleric of Yondalla has conquered Occipitus and ascended to demigod power. This gives him all kinds of immunities, DR, SR, an AC in the forties, and a buffing aura that helps the rest of the party. With this in mind, do you think I should also give Adimarchus a divine rank of 1 as detailed in the Deities and Demigods book? Of course this would take an already scary boss and make him just sick.

One of the best abilities Adimarchus has is Blasphemy, which if used as written would be a TPK in one round. The CL 30 is likely a typo and should be CL 20, but I might keep it that high and simply reduce the effects of blasphemy in this case to only the milder ones, not dead or stunned.

From what I've read, it looks like his Implosion ability is the next scariest, since it completely destroys an enemy.

Maze could be useful if successfully cast on the demigod cleric, since it removes him from the fight for at least a couple rounds and he is the biggest threat to Adimarchus.

In the experience of others, is Adimarchus the sort of foe you have to whittle down with hit point damage, or is there a spell or effect that will basically take him out if it breaks his spell resistance? What are his main strengths and weaknesses?

Do you think I should use his 1/day powers right from the beginning, or is that unfair and should I save them for later in the fight?

The party all recently purchased demonbane and/or cold iron weapons before going to Carceri, so I think they have a sporting chance.


I was a player in a Shackled City game that ran completely to its conclusion. Afterward, I purchased the campaign because I had enjoyed it so much. After reading Adimarchus' statblock and watching how our DM ran this encounter, I would recommend thus:

Our DM ran him slightly different than what was written, and I think it worked awesome. Instead of having Adimarchus change as a free action, roll two iniatives, and have him switch back and forth on each appropriate iniative count. For example, if the Angel side rolls a 21 and the demon side a 14, have him switch on the appropriate count, with full actions and HP of the side whose turn it is. Our Dm had two minis, one Angelic and one demonic, and would replace the mini each time the change came up.

I would lower the CL on Blasphemy to 21, which should pretty much give him one free turn, and penalize the strength-types (though remember the Template of the Smoking Eye makes one immune to alignment-based effects on the good/evil axis).

If you're really looking to challenge your players, or if you feel that they will smoke him quick, I have a bit of hard-learned advice for that:

When trying to make an encounter harder, don't try just upping the one monster. All this does is make an already insane monster ridiculous and chances are it won't make him survive any longer. I have ALWAYS found it better to simply include MORE monsters than just advancing the one monster. It ties up more players, forcing them to parcel out their attention and not just single-mindedly focus on the big bad. Our DM added in two Marilith's who came up the stairs behind us when the fight began (presumably summoned by Adimarchus). It was more or less perfectly challenging for our six-player group so I'm sure it can work for you too.

Finally, if it really looks like your players are smoking him fast, don't be afraid to up his Hp total. A simple and often ignored solution, as I believe most statblocks include only about 2/3rds of what the possible Hp total of a monster could be.

I suppose thats all the advice I can give. Hope that helps you out. :)

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

FYI, the CL is NOT an error on his part. His CL equals his HD, which is thirty. I think a gentleman's agreement in is order for that one.

I did not get my group to the very end, so I can't speak from any experience. I think running him as Crow's DM did would make him a decently tough battle, even for your wrecking crew of PCs there.


How is your cleric a demigod at this stage of the game? Everything I've read indicates that mastering Occiptus is not a short term possibility. And how would your cleric become more powerful than Adimarchus ever was (being only a demon prince)?


A few things. The cleric *aggressively* trained in his morphic powers and subjugated the inhabitants Occipitus as quickly as he could. Being subjected to nightmares and possible possession from Adimarchus (I've made him roll will saves periodically) he has some insight into the mind and memories of the demon prince, which also helps. Additionally, he has the support of the halfling pantheon. His patron deity, Dallah Thaun, was actually killed by the Ebon Triad in my alternate storyline and he is being groomed to replace her. I know it's strange and perhaps if I were to do it again, the power would be toned down. But at this point I'm not going to snatch back the cheese I've already handed out.

As for the CL, I will keep it at 30 with the very important exception of the blasphemy and word of chaos spells. Being automatically stunned for several minutes, or even being killed outright, kinda takes the fun out of the entire 2-year-long campaign.

Dark Archive

I wrote a really long response awhile back when this thread was first made, but the forums ate it and I became dejected and didn’t feel like writing it all over again However, I have recovered so here we go again….

I ran the Adimarchus battle several years ago, about 2 months after the original final module appeared in the magazines. As such, many accessory books that have come out since did not exist and thus might change how this battle goes for other people. I’ll start by talking about how it went. The party won, completely defeating the demon lord after about 4.5 hours of combat. Over the course of the battle the Horizon Walker (w/ the smoking eye template) attempted to planeshift away and Adimarchus “piggybacked” and ended up taking the whole top half of the asylum with him. Thus the last part of the battle was fought in the ruins of Skullrot on the plains of Occipitus. The final casualty count was two dead angels (Nidrama, and an NPC trumpet archon), but no dead party members.

The thing to know ahead of time about fighting this guy is that if you have a group of players that HATE save-or-die spells, then you are going to have to rework Adimarchus a bit. As has already been mentioned, his opening move is most likely blasphemy and that will kill most of the party (it killed Nidrama). Now, my party has a bard who was using one of his abilities to make the party HD+1, and that ultimately saved their collective butts. If your party has no fast way to recover from death (I’ve seen players that create cleric PCs who can rez the party mid-combat), then make minor changes to how that effect is going to work. The other big killer is his implosion punch (this killed the trumpet archon), and it’s only because Adimarchus basically wasted it on the big tanks that this didn’t kill any PCs.

Once you get past those abilities, Adimarchus is really pretty easy to beat. I want to point out that a core-only party would have a lot of trouble with this guy, but now a lot of PCs are a lot more powerful than they used to be. When I ran him I gave BOTH forms the ability to fast-heal and they did so even when he was transformed into the other form. He is supposed to be a Demon Prince and an invincible general of heaven, beef him up, use accessory books to give him nastier abilities, make him dangerous! This is the final climax of the campaign, so don’t be afraid to make an absolute monster of an encounter. I would also suggest adding in other demons to fight along-side him since no single monster can ever really measure against a whole party.

I had him randomly change form as a free action at the end of his turn every round. I simply rolled a d2 (flipped a coin) and changes his form every time it came up heads.

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