Well.
I've got a half-elf rogue "Fingers", an aasimar paladin of Sarenrae "Eezo", a tiefling cleric of Maliki "Sibyl", and a gnome witch "Wick".
They've done pretty well overall, and last night they got to the final room of the Nessian Spiral. They backed off, disabled the cooling towers, and buffed up for a final showdown.
The cage annoyed them. Nobody had adamantine weapons, so nobody could bypass its hardness. There wasn't much in the line of direct damage spells either, so it took quite a while to whittle the thing down. All the while it really didn't do much to the party, who have great AC.
Finally the cage was destroyed and Liebdaga popped out. The players were bummed out that the Huge Balor mini I had sitting on my desk wasn't used. Oh well.
What to say. Rogue and paladin flanked, paladin smited. The witch used enervation on the poor Devil, adding two more negative levels. Liebdaga fireballed as written, not realizing that mass resist energy fire was up. The party ignored his fireball. More rogue-flanking-two-weapon-fighting-sneak-attacking-mithral-and-good-+2-quar terstaffing and more smiting. Liebdaga spent his next round getting focused. The witch used his slumber hex. DC18. Liebdaga rolled a 5. +11 on Will saves. Okay. Nappy devil.
The paladin coup-de-graced Liebdaga to -33. B'bye.
No second life, no breath of life, just gone.
The PCs shrugged and went topside.
Edit: just to be clear, the PCs were undamaged. And three of them were 7th level, with the fourth at 8th with a negative level (previous death). All I can say is... wow, paladins.
Yeah, thats been the campaign for my group as well. Sounds great but the challenge just is not there if the module is played as written. PC's and DM shrugs shoulders....
... Why no breath of life? 5d8+12 would've brought him up past -25 at minimum, and back above neg on a good roll. Well, laying down. But still alive. Even if he didn't, he'd just be disabled and would be able to great cleave or something before dipping neg again and dying for real.
Also, Liebdaga cannot be slumber hexed:
Tenacious Soul (Su) As an infernal duke, Liebdaga possesses
an additional power beyond most pit fiends—his tenacious
soul. This grants Liebdaga complete immunity to mind-affecting
effects...
v
Slumber (Su): A witch can cause a creature within 30 feet
to fall into a deep, magical sleep, as per the spell sleep...
v
Sleep
School enchantment (compulsion) [mind-affecting];
You know, a lot of things about Liebdaga's stat block tick me off now that I look at them. He should have his full hit dice, his full save on disease, his full SR, his full BAB, etc, but he doesn't, and it just annoys me. His stats are even worse than a normal pit fiend's, for no reason. He should just be a pit fiend with a bunch of negative levels. He for some reason is not that at all, but some sort of other creature. I guess it's the weakened template editing all of this down, but it should just really be what it is and be called the pushover template.
I noticed the "weakened" stat block too - I never did find 'weakened' anywhere, so I had already planned on making adjustments different from the as-written-stat-block.
The paladins thing ... yeah, instant death for the Big L waiting to happen.
Good catch on the cascading reference. It's there, I grant. I won't pretend it's not. All I can offer in my defense is that I expect immunities in the Immune area by saves. Joyously I also mis-read the whole bloody feature such that I thought if he dropped below -25 it wouldn't kick in. Not sure why the mental stumbling block, given I'm perfectly aware how breath of life works; you need to be dead.
So, okay, two compounded errors. He shouldn't've taken crit damage, and even if he did, he should've come back with 3 hit points (on average). Despite those mistakes, he still would've gotten precisely one round of action.
I'm not complaining that the foe wasn't powerful enough... just that paladins are... brutal for this kind of foe. Good thing CoT isn't full of them.
Thanks.