some players (like mine) love to play less powerful flawed characters, whilst others love to meta game<sadness, anger...>I don't think Mr. Pett was describing an either/or scenario, rather he was describing two extreme ends of a scale.
just a thought...
I also don't think he was at all deriding meta-gaming in that comment.
"Working the system" to a fine point is one of my great joys. Fortunately as a DM, it rarely comes into conflict with the story. I've rarely had it cause trouble as a player either though (though I also enjoy the "less powerful flawed characters".
The only trouble with "meta-gaming" comes when, in whatever venue, the meta-gamed characters become the standard measure of character value.
Just posting in support of dmChucky's outlook towards GMing, and the role of the GM is to provide challenge but not necessarily be adverserial.
The role of GM as Judge too easily gets blurred with the concept of the GM as Prosecutor.
DM's shouldn't *be* adversarial.
However, for some DM's, and some players, the *appearance* of being adversaries is required to effect a sense of danger. (Although I can picture a very creepy DM, constantly saying 'Hey, I'm sure Conar will pull through' with a Mr. Rogers smile, as he pulls out another monster to join the attack).
DM's shouldn't *be* adversarial.
Exactly what I intended to say. I sometimes lapse into passive speech.
However, for some DM's, and some players, the *appearance* of being adversaries is required to effect a sense of danger. (Although I can picture a very creepy DM, constantly saying 'Hey, I'm sure Conar will pull through' with a Mr. Rogers smile, as he pulls out another monster to join the attack).
I recall a time when when the party fighter trailblazed down a rough cave passage. The player asked if there was anything but more the passageway. I cheerfully replied, "Oh yes! The rest of you see two thick tentacles desecend from the cavetop and grab Corso and start to grapple him!" Then I beamed at all the players around the table.
They looked at each other and burst into laughter. "That's a good one", one them remarked.
And then, still smiling, I cleared my throat and said.. "I'm serious. Two big old tentacles. Surprise round for now, but let's get ready for initiative after we make these opposed grapple rolls."
I'll never forget how their jaws dropped.
Runelords Spoiler
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While I do agree that the role of the GM is to mediate a great story, and a great story most of the time involves the players winning, I think it's important for the players to sometimes face adversaries that are too tough. If the players just charge into every encounter fully asured that the GM will never let them face something they can't beat, the game loses some of it's excitement. Encounters should of course be tailored for the players' power level, but there should also be room for exceptions. I hate how it seems that every orc and goblin disappears from the world after 6th level, and how dragons and giants just don't exist early on. The story, the realism and the immersion suffers from it.
Now, I'm not a killer GM, and I certainly don't concider myself as a GM the adversary of my players. On the contrary, I very much take part of their joy and happiness when they overcome difficult obstacles. I've GM'ed serious campaigns for the last 15 years, but I have very few player kills on my conscience, and I've only ever made a Total Party Kill one single time (in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil), and that turned out to work wonders for the group when they got back with new characters. They knew that they had to stay sharp to survive, and they were just more thrilled when they won. Still, it wasn't a pleasant experience, and a good GM should always concider if it's good for the game to kill of players, and have a contingency plan in the cace of a TPK.
I think Xanesha plays an important part in RotRL, as she defines relatively early on that this is a tough campaign. My group were ecstatic and cocky when they beat her, but they have changed from the experience, and I would say to the better. Now, they make sure to do their legwork first, to check out their adversaries a bit more before they ask them for a dance. Instead of just another Hackfest, the fear of meeting another Xanesha turned my group's assault on Ft. Rannick into a cautious and eerie sneaking session. As it should be, when a group of country boys try to attack a fort full of degenerate hillbilly ogres.
But of course, players are different, and groups are different, and a GM should always aim at giving the players what they want, in new and exciting ways that they didn't expect. If your players just want to win, by all means go ahead and let them win. If they want a good story, there's nothing wrong with someone dying, if it adds to the story.
Perhaps the book should have had a warning that Xanesha is tough, perhaps too tough, for players that level. Perhaps there should have been more hooks on how to do legwork on her, before the players end up trapped in the top room of a tall tower with her. Perhaps there should have been a few notes on how to tone her down a bit, or how to pick up the pieces after a TPK. But, in my opinion, that's what these messageboards are for.
Just my two scents. Oh yeah, and buff Black Magga too. Totally wussy of her to run away, she should just stay and swat the stupid players.
some players (like mine) love to play less powerful flawed characters, whilst others love to meta game<sadness, anger...>I don't think Mr. Pett was describing an either/or scenario, rather he was describing two extreme ends of a scale.
just a thought...
Don't forget the gnashing of teeth... that went on in there as well.
You're right of course, and if I offended Richard in any way I apologize. It is just one of my pet peeves when optimizing is called meta-gaming. Making and playing a character is the game, not something outside of it.
But I digress...
To be more on topic, I think Black Maga is a good example of an encounter designed to challenge the players but is too high for them. The deal here is that they don't need to beat her to continue. Retreat is much more of an option.
I wonder who designed that encounter, they seem to really know what they were doing...
Sean Mahoney
Wow, impresive timing from your players... and good luck.
For my party it went a completely different way. We play Beta rules too.
My group: 1 dwarven fighter, 1 dwarven cleric, 1 human sorceress, 1 human rogue, and 1 halfling bard.
The rogue's player could not attend and having had her characters constitution reduced to 2 by Ironbriar's deathblade coated war razor, (I just had to try the PFbeta poison rules)we defided to leave her hove to rest.
So we are down to 4 and I do not need to do any conversions on the encounter aside from changing Xanesha to PF rules.
After entering the Shadow Clock the party is taken by surprise when Scarecrow attacks. He randomly chooses the bard as hs target. He scores a nasty hit. Next round the Scarecrow wins initiative (the sorc beats him but just casts fly) and attacks the bard with his next to attacks. One is a nasty hit and with 7 hp remaining the halfling gets cloven in twain when the second attack scores a crit (8d6+48! Ouch!).
The party manages to defeat Scarecrow with the cleric being knock out, but with no more cassualties.
The party procrastinas and after spending a lot of time discussiong what to do and healing the surviving members the faceless horrors decide to take the fight to the players. - They drop the bell on the party and try to sneak out disguised as miserable beggars.
The partynotice the beggars and hail them ordering to identify themselves. With a clever rouse and roleplaying I manage to get the faceless ones in position to surprise the party. The trap is sprung and combat ensues. It appears to go well. The dwarves cover eachothers backs well and the fighter gets to use his whirlwind attack. But alas, despite his AC 31 the dwarven fighter does not stand a chance when one of the faceless beggars stabs him with 3 consecutive 20's one the same attack. By a lucky shot the fighter is instantly killed. The cleric and the sorceres defeat the beggars with ease after that.
Now the party is face by a dilema. To continue and avenge their fallen, before the enemy has a chance to flee or regroup or to retreat to the closes temple!
The cleric, a follower of Abadar, demands justice for his fallen brother; he and the sorceress press on.
At this point I know the party is screwed and with a TPK looming I tell the remaining players that they can cast any number of preparation spells while ascending the tower. In return I decide Xanesha will not use any spells to prepare. She knows what has transpired and does not want to waste her spells on these two, knowing that other more organized and stronger enemies might follow.
The claric and sorc enter Xaneshas sanctum and win the initiative. The sorc cast magic missiles on Xanesha and furtunately penetrates her SR. The cleric charges Xanesha and hits AC27 which misses. The cleric player knows they are in trouble, when the sorc is hit by a scorching ray and decides to withdraw. The cleric is now facing Xanesha alone and is still unable to hit her. Xanesha grins and rapidly stabs the cleric three times. Desperation mounts and as a last resort the cleric casts stoneshape on the tower walls, and in a strock of luck the structure partially collapses. Xanesha who has not cast fly, fails her ref. save to catch herself and plummets to the ground taking almost 70 hp damage and is then burried by rocks (maybe 30-40 dmg more) the cleric survives the collapse. He has travel as a domain and uses the dimension step power to get to safety.
While searching the debris the survivors fail to find any evidence of Xanesha. She has of course dimensiondoored away and abandomned Magnimar in her human form... but she will be back in HMM!
My one regret is that the players never heard about the bet about the Shadow Clock - They might have saved themselves a lot of trouble and scored a nice jackpot all with one stroke!
We ran into this crazy encounter on Tuesday night. The team was comprised of a Cleric4/Wizard2, Rogue5/Barbarian1, Monk6, and Ranger6. We scouted the place and heard through a combination of Speak with Animals (rats in a city are GREAT informants for a little jerky) and a very sneaky, spider-climbing rogue, learned about the layout and defenses of the place, as well as how she flies in at morning time to sleep on the roof.
With this, we decided on sneaking in through the rooftop and ambushing the Lamia when she came in to sleep in the morning. We bedded down early, had the caster prep for dealing with a flying (possibly invisible) enemy when we woke, and had the rogue scale the tower with a rope line so we could all get up safely (though the cleric/wizard had to blow his featherfall at one point).
Once at the top, the group quickly wiped out the faceless horrors and found hiding places, with the caster replacing the spear with an illusory double using Minor Image, and the rogue hiding under the pillows of her nest.
When the Lamia finally arrived, we waited till she had her back to the ladder leading down into the tower, and the Monk charged silently up to wrassle the big meanie down, only to have her easily evade his grapple attempt. It was at about this point that we realized we might be in trouble.
We got off a surprise round and another round as she tried to grab her fake spear before she vanished using invisibility. The caster countered with see invisibility, and by pulling a potion out of his pack, but the Lamia threw on shield and magic armor, making her save for the silence spell the caster tried.
The caster helped the ranger pick squares, but the arrows were largely ineffectual, until one of them had a lucky crit for around 30 damage. The Lamia, having had enough, attempted to roast the caster with a Scorching Ray. This turned out to be a tactical error.
The monk had not been idly wasting his time. He tied a bit of their rope to the 2-ton angel statue on the clock tower, and fashioned the other end of it into a lasso. The GM ruled that, since the lasso was not trying to actually find a chink in her armor, hooking her with it would be a touch attack, albeit one with a -4 non-proficiency penalty.
A good roll found her leashed to the statue, and when the Lamia failed her Escape Artist roll to get out, the rogue and ranger thought it would be funny to push the Angel down the ladder. The weight rapidly dragged the Lamia into the hole and to the ground floor of the Tower. The caster knew they would only have a moment before she broke free, So he used his move action to step into the hole 160ft above his target, and he used his Standard to drink the potion of Tree Form they had taken from the goblin druid several adventures back. The monk followed suit with a 160 foot elbow drop of doom.
Both characters made their ranged touch attacks to connect with the Lamia on the ground floor, and the damage was finally enough to splatter her, though it drove the caster into single digits (the DM rolled low on the 16d6, and was nice enough to give the caster/tree 5/slashing, just like a real tree). They ran like hell from the construct that guarded the ground floor while the ranger and the rogue looted the place.
It was a good night.
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Both characters made their ranged touch attacks to connect with the Lamia on the ground floor, and the damage was finally enough to splatter her, though it drove the caster into single digits (the DM rolled low on the 16d6, and was nice enough to give the caster/tree 5/slashing, just like a real tree). They ran like hell from the construct that guarded the ground floor while the ranger and the rogue looted the place.
Oh that would be cool ! You drop down, stand triumpanthly over X's dead body at the bottom of the tower, and suddenly something big springs out of the shadows and crits you with a scythe for zillion damage. It's good to be an evil DM ;)
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So one of the groups I am running through this AP finally got to Xanesha. I did tone her down a little bit ... I had her watching for trouble when the bell dropped and at the end of the faceless stalkers combat, she began her buffs, except Shield (which would have made her AC way too high for the group). The players lost one character on the Terrible Stairs (their cleric) during the Faceless Stalker fight, which delayed their reaching the top of the stairs. The end result was her Mage Armor had 10 rounds remaining.
When the party came up to the roof, she was invisible, the party realized they were in a silenced area. They went back to back (there was a fighter, a paladin, a ranger, a rogue and a barbarian who made it to the top) and the demon appeared off the edge of the tower. The rogue took a sot and Xanesha cast Deep Slumber, knocking out the barbarian and the fighter. At that point the fight was on. The non-sleeping PCs attacked or worked on waking the two sleeping PCs.
Xanesha dropped the barbarian and ranger before she was even touched. This was due in a large part to the players having a REALLY bad run of dice rolls; the goblins from the start of the campaign would have probably put the hurt onto them with the way they were rolling. As the party was having such a tough time hitting her (even without the Shield spell), I figured she would be a bit cocky and was switching out targets each round, inflicting massive damage on a regular basis. By the time the rogue dropped, she had received only 16 points of damage (the paladin's minimum damage).
The paladin remained standing solely by utilizing her Lay on Hands and the fighter had a decent enough AC that Xanesha was getting only one, sometimes two, hits. I did tell the PCs they could attempt to flee, but the paladin player decided they would rather fall than flee such an evil creature and the fighter was ticked at having his brother (the ranger) being dropped by the creature.
The last two rounds of combat, the tables turned. Xanesha hit the paladin only once, reducing her to 2 HP. The paladin hit Xanesha and the fighter managed to confirm a critical hit with his dwarvish waraxe. The total damage they hit her for put her a mere 3 points shy of when she would have taken flight. The hit, however, caught her attention, and she turned to the fighter the following round.
She hit the fighter with two hits, reducing him to 14 HP. The paladin managed to hit twice and the fighter confirmed a SECOND CRITICAL for maximum damage, reducing Xanesha to -5 HP.
All the players were preparing to create new characters, with one planning on being the cousin of the Brothers Diamondtooth (the dwarvish fighter and ranger), which would have allowed for an easy transition into the campaign story line, but when the fighter scored the first critical, the mood shifted. The group was cheering on the two remaining players and when that second critical came through, it was a moment of true celebration.
The rogue was in the negatives for HP but had stabilized, so the fighter and paladin brought him back up to the positive range. The party also shelled out the cash to bring back the ranger (since he was a relation to another party member), but did not raise the paladin (primarily due to a lack of finances at that moment).
All in all a truly memorable fight.
Hello everyone,
I'm the DM for a group of 3 PC's, playing RotRL for a while now. Thouroughly enjoying it. Soon the players will face Xanesha, and from what I've read on this messageboard, she's a real partykiller, so I'm a little worried about my players (I like putting them in danger, but a TPK would be a really demoralizing situation I try to avoid..).
The question; many players seem to mention casting Dispell Magic at Xanesha to remove her buffs. Was this played in the DnD3.x rules? Since in PFRPG Dispell Magic is changed to only dispell 1 active spell (according to the PRD). 'If' the party manages to cast a Dispell Magic -I doubt the cleric prepares this spell more than once, or that they overcome the Silence- and dispells her Fly or Haste, she will no doubt still mutilate the party beyond recognition.
Should I just coincidentally put a wand of dispel among the treasure found earlier? (Or other means to help the players a little at the tower, like for example potions of spiderclimb?)
Also, when I play the villains as a DM, I like to play the enemy as having some rudimental form of common sense. My players should just play the game Lemmings if they don't like that, hehehe. So many enemies tend to flee (including Xanesha/Mammy Graul using Dimension Door). Would it be a good idea to supply the players with a wand of Dimensional Anchor? Its horribly expansive, but I imagine it to be a nice 'trophy insurance' for the players.
I would like to hear your thoughts on these.
Hello everyone,
I'm the DM for a group of 3 PC's, playing RotRL for a while now. Thouroughly enjoying it. Soon the players will face Xanesha, and from what I've read on this messageboard, she's a real partykiller, so I'm a little worried about my players (I like putting them in danger, but a TPK would be a really demoralizing situation I try to avoid..).
The question; many players seem to mention casting Dispell Magic at Xanesha to remove her buffs. Was this played in the DnD3.x rules? Since in PFRPG Dispell Magic is changed to only dispell 1 active spell (according to the PRD). 'If' the party manages to cast a Dispell Magic -I doubt the cleric prepares this spell more than once, or that they overcome the Silence- and dispells her Fly or Haste, she will no doubt still mutilate the party beyond recognition.
Should I just coincidentally put a wand of dispel among the treasure found earlier? (Or other means to help the players a little at the tower, like for example potions of spiderclimb?)
Also, when I play the villains as a DM, I like to play the enemy as having some rudimental form of common sense. My players should just play the game Lemmings if they don't like that, hehehe. So many enemies tend to flee (including Xanesha/Mammy Graul using Dimension Door). Would it be a good idea to supply the players with a wand of Dimensional Anchor? Its horribly expansive, but I imagine it to be a nice 'trophy insurance' for the players.
I would like to hear your thoughts on these.
I would not recommend that wand of dimension door. Xanesha is very tough make no mistake - although I didn't use the silence for her, giving the 5 characters a fighting chance against her.
The 3.5 rules presumed multiple possible successes with each single dispel magic, so at the time that was written up it was a reasonable supposition that the group would have two of them available to facilitate stripping her spell-based defenses and enhancements fairly quickly.
With only 3 characters to deal with her, you might want to make the bell tower a "Xanesha solo" encounter. Also, don't forget about the Scarecrow - he has a chance of one-shotting a player character at the intended character level with a fortuitous critical hit ...
We fought Xanesha a few sessions ago. We'd mopped up Ironbriar with our group of 6 6th level characters - human barbarian; human inquisitor; dwarf witch; halfling bard; half-elf sorcerer; and gnome cleric (NPC). I do not believe the GM weakened her but he did admit afterward he was worried about a TPK at session's beginning.
When we got to the tower my sorcerer looked at it and said, "Hey, I'm just guessing here, but I bet this Wanton Nature thing is going to be up top, so why don't we go up the outside instead of slogging our way through the defenses?"
Lucky idea. We had a couple of fly potions, the witch can do it by himself, and the halfling is still riding Ripnugget's gecko from the skull island. We came up over the side buffed up and caught her unprepared, yet it was still a pretty hairy fight. She went invisible and mirror imaged and after I dispelled the invisibility she hit me with the Medusa mask and I rolled a 2 for my save . . . and the bard invoked her Lucky Halfling feat to reroll for me and hit the save on the nose. We had buffed the hell out of the warriors (the barbarian was at +20 to hit at one point) and the witch got lucky when his summoned grell grappled her (it was quickly reduced to a catatonic state via wisdom loss, but we didn't care). The final round the barbarian critted after the inquisitor had already clocked her and they combined to knock her out before she could escape.
Of course I cast Feather Fall on her so none of her equipment would get ruined when she hit the street. Love that snakeskin vest!
@ Entropi : I'm GM'ing skinsaw and my group is arriving at Magnimar next session. I'm a brand new gm and havent played pen&paper roleplay for more than one and a half year. I noticed your country (Denmark i assume) and I'd hope you'd wouldnt mind helping me out a bit with some questions. You can mail me at muniaxe(at)gmail dot com. Would really appriciate it.
My players made it through the unmodified encounter without any deaths and a great sense of accomplishment. They were terrified, but they were also quick-thinking and adjusted their tactics accordingly. Only a few rounds after the party cleric declared "we're dead!" things turned around and they took Xanesha out.
It was one of the more memorable encounters I've run with them.
When we got to the tower my sorcerer looked at it and said, "Hey, I'm just guessing here, but I bet this Wanton Nature thing is going to be up top, so why don't we go up the outside instead of slogging our way through the defenses?"
That's pretty much what our group decided too. In our case my sorcerer had his air elemental familiar fly up to the rookery repeatedly so as to switch places with each party member in turn via benign transposition. We then snuck up into the upper room to confront her. Inexplicably, she was already girded up, buffed and waiting in ambush for us. That kind of soured the fight a bit for me...
The fight went alright, though my sorcerer was temporarily petrified. In the end it was my familiar who killed Xanesha with a timely blast from her wand of magic missiles as the lamia tried to flee with a fly spell; ended up crashing through a rooftop down below.
Actually, when our group had first sailed into Magnimar and our DM was giving us an overview of the city, including the shadowy district under the Irespan, I declared "I bet the big bad's lair is somewhere in there." =)
Ah it's good to see the Wanton still fighting her corner. Thanks for sharing those.
So, time to twist the BBEG lairs on their heads.
Rich
Well I have every intention of running Xanesha as written..or should I say as rewritten for PF..I must start working on that soon.
Having said that because my party seriously lacked front line combat power I have introduced a 7th character to the party.
I seriously don't understand how my players are supposed to beat this thing without me changing things. Nobody can hit her AC, how are they supposed to kill her?
She's actually a red flag for the DM of this campaign. Thing is she is way overpowered compared to pretty much every fight they will have in the rest of the campaign. If your party is optimized enough to beat her without half of them dying then they are way to powerful for this campaign and will find every fight from now until the end pretty much a cake walk that presents no real challenge since, never again will they be faced with something this far out of the power curve.
She's actually a red flag for the DM of this campaign. Thing is she is way overpowered compared to pretty much every fight they will have in the rest of the campaign. If your party is optimized enough to beat her without half of them dying then they are way to powerful for this campaign and will find every fight from now until the end pretty much a cake walk that presents no real challenge since, never again will they be faced with something this far out of the power curve.
When I ran this we had one death in this fight happen (and only because of a massive critical hit), the second death of the campaign up to that point. Through the end of the AP they had 4 more deaths after adding in two cohorts.
I would guess they would disagree with what you said up above.
Of course I don't know where you gained benign transpositionIt's from the Spell Compendium.
On second thought, since your sorcerer had a familiar, I guess you play 3.5.
No, we're playing Pathfinder, albeit with some updated 3.5 material thrown in occasionally. Arcane bloodline sorcerers can acquire familiars in Pathfinder.
I seriously don't understand how my players are supposed to beat this thing without me changing things. Nobody can hit her AC, how are they supposed to kill her?That is very surprising; her AC is high, but a front line fighter or archer shouldn't have much trouble hitting her with the first attack, even if she is fully buffed. Likewise the magical support shouldn't have too much trouble debuffing her.
A 35 AC is not easy for a 6th level fighter to hit. What's a 6th level fighter going to have, at most - 20 str, 6 BAB, weapon focus, +2 weapon, Weapon Training 1, so +15. Huh, he's likely to hit only on a 20.
unless you have a proper strategy
It's not really something that strategy affects. Do you get your dispels off, or don't you? And that's assuming your spellcaster prepped dispel magic, which isn't a given at all.
Strategy makes ALL the difference. As in "don't go in there when she's expecting you." Do a little recon and fight at a time of your choosing and not hers.
A 35 AC is not easy for a 6th level fighter to hit. What's a 6th level fighter going to have, at most - 20 str, 6 BAB, weapon focus, +2 weapon, Weapon Training 1, so +15. Huh, he's likely to hit only on a 20.
There are zero tactics taken into account here, which might explain why you don't think she's hittable. +2 for flanking, +1 for Prayer/Bless, +2 for a Potion of Bull's Strength/Heroism, even Aid Another isn't even mentioned. And all that is assuming no debuffing, and attacking her strengths instead of her weaknesses (touch attacks).
How did you get AC 35?
Her normal AC is 26 (+1 armor, +1 Deflection, +6 Dex, +9 Nat, -1 size)
Her Buffs give her +4 shield and +4 armor (which doesn't stack with her armor) so AC 33; 34 while hasted, but that only lasts 8 rounds so either she needs to caste it while engaged in combat or it will expire after a few rounds.
Then a fighter should gain either +2 for charging or +2 for flanking; a single enemy that is not flanked or charged is usually a sign of very poor strategy. So even if the players don't try anything fancy a fighter hits with a 15. And if he gets a Bull's Strength and haste (both very common) it's at 12 for the first and 17 for the second attack. Not easy, but far from unhitable. Add Prayer or bless, or something similar and he gets more than a hit/round on average.None of these are really exotic buffs. If at this level the party doesn't prepare for a boss fight, they are inviting disaster. There's enough hints around that this enemy is really hard. If nobody can caste those spells, scrolls and potions are available; if nobody bothers to buy them, that's a severe strategic error by the party, not the adventure designers.
Then there's the debuffing; at this level the party should have some ability to strip enemies of spells or hinder them in some way. If they don't, they are ill prepared. Dispel Magic is the most common tool and one or two should always be handy; scrolls or wands can be acquired easily enough. A wand would represent a major investment, but a good investment; half a dozen scrolls are cheap enough that there is no excuse for not having the spell handy.
Her SR makes more direct hindering of her abilities with spells difficult, but with a 50/50 chance of getting spells through they should get her with some effects. Her saves are high, but if the casters have buffed their casting attributes, she will fail some saves, especially Fort saves.
Then of course there's the possibility of summoning monsters to grapple her or have one of the characters do it. She can DD away,...
You are not taking into account the battlefield. Remember, the limited space of the Clock Tower makes charging her somewhat problematic. Beyond that, the 280+ foot fall is a very real danger at this level.
Add this to the fact that she starts the encounter invisibly and her first action is to attempt to petrify and then knock off the tower one of the characters. (Did I mention the 280ft fall?)
That is not the only issue though. Getting to her is also non-trivial, with the fight with the flesh golem often eating up a lot of spells and/or hit points.
Then there is the climb up the stairs with the fight against Ugothol. Normally, they would not be a big deal, but environment that the fight occurs in also makes this a tricky battle.
Then, and only then, will the party enounter Xenesha (a.k.a. TeePeeKay)
Again, it is obvious where the Big Bad is, and any party that waltzes in there unprepared like lambs to the alaughter (or flies into a web) deserves what they get.
My group captured Ironbriar, cut a deal with him for intel, and all had potions/spells of Fly up. They dropped down from the Irespan and went straight in the hole in the roof. At dawn. Buffed. Needless to say, Xanesia didn't have all of her buffs up, and had to sacrifice rounds of combat to get some in place. They still had Fly up when they went on clean-up duty in the rest of the tower, shouting "Death from Above!!" as they hacked the Scarecrow down in under 3 rounds.
None of these are really exotic buffs. If at this level the party doesn't prepare for a boss fight, they are inviting disaster. There's enough hints around that this enemy is really hard. If nobody can caste those spells, scrolls and potions are available; if nobody bothers to buy them, that's a severe strategic error by the party, not the adventure designers.
Nah, I'm kind of tired of people using 'strategy!' as a catch-all for a fight that's clearly out of whack with the power levels of everything else in this campaign. It requires a particular spell (dispel magic), without which the party is hosed. And that assumes that, say, the party wizard isn't the only one who can cast it and gets petrified at the start of the combat. Add that the her first two melee attacks are at something like +17/+17 with 2d6+21 as the damage - if she crits on one of those the fighter is going down in one full attack.
Her CR is 4 higher than the APL. There are tons of fights just like that in this AP, including the Big-K himself.
It is "strategy!" to not let her get those buffs up and to not fight on her terms. Is she a hard "boss fight"? Yes. But that's what makes it one that people are still talking about years after the adventure was released.
And Dispel Magic is on the Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Sorcerer, Wizard's (and Inquisitor, Oracle, Summoner and Witch's) spell list. And a scroll of Dispel Magic is only 375gp.
Add that the her first two melee attacks are at something like +17/+17 with 2d6+21 as the damage - if she crits on one of those the fighter is going down in one full attack.+20/+15/+10 (2d6+9/19-20/x3) to be exact. It's a lot of damage is she crits. Compared to other CR 10, say a fire giant +21/+16/+11 (3d6+15/x2/19-20) + power attack, or a white dragons six attacks it's okay. Her damage potential is actually a bit lower than most CR 10 creatures, because she has an above average defensive, so you can't really complain about the damage.
When hasted she gets another at her full attack bonus, so Terraneaux wasn't that far off.
Don't forget, if you convert to Pathfinder, Lamia Matriarchs should have the "Undersized Weapons" trait, so her spear damage should be 1d8, not 2d6.
Add that the her first two melee attacks are at something like +17/+17 with 2d6+21 as the damage - if she crits on one of those the fighter is going down in one full attack.+20/+15/+10 (2d6+9/19-20/x3) to be exact. It's a lot of damage is she crits. Compared to other CR 10, say a fire giant +21/+16/+11 (3d6+15/x2/19-20) + power attack, or a white dragons six attacks it's okay. Her damage potential is actually a bit lower than most CR 10 creatures, because she has an above average defensive, so you can't really complain about the damage.When hasted she gets another at her full attack bonus, so Terraneaux wasn't that far off.
Don't forget, if you convert to Pathfinder, Lamia Matriarchs should have the "Undersized Weapons" trait, so her spear damage should be 1d8, not 2d6.
I'm counting with power attack and haste up.
Mirror Image is a SLA for Lamia Matriarchs.
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I don't know about your parties, but the scout in my group would fall back and tell the others; the fight would certainly be delayed by at least three rounds and quite possible ten minutes.
Unless they have a spellcaster who knows what spell is being cast behind the door and is the one listening in, Id wager they wont know how long to wait.
Also, if they waited too long to try to outlast her short-term buffs, Id have X fly out of the tower, down to the ground, in through the open door(cause really, do PCs ever specify closing the door they just walked in?), and then come up behind them on the stairs for the petrify. Bad luck for whoever is in the back on the stairs.
Almost off-topic, back in the day when we knew we were being scryed upon, we would walk up to "the door", buff ourselves and ready our weapons, reach for the doorknob..... and stop. Stand around for 10 minutes, minimum. Then whip out the scrolls/potions and rebuff before going in. Ideally, whomever was watching us would see us buff up, do the same, and then watch as both buff timers wore off and then they were out of their daily buff spells but we had back-ups ready to go...