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My players have currently planted themselves in the heart of Jorgenfist and are trying to figure out how to deal with Mokmurian. On my 2nd reading of books five and six, I've hit upon an idea for a somewhat radical change for ol' Karzoug.
The second half of this campaign involves a tremendous number of spellcasters in the role of BBEG. Barl Breakbones, then Mokmurian, then the many and varied wizards of Runeforge, finishing up with the the big Transmuter-of-Doom at the end. While themes can be good, it feels like two big problems could erupt:
1) The players develop a sense of tedium: One more spellcaster, one more battle with loads of annoying spells combined with the occasional explosion that ruins everyone's day.
2) As the players develop anti-spellcaster tactics, the possibility of them giving the arch-villain of the campaign a righteous pasting becomes more and more likely. The couple of threads I've seen noting games in which he was wiped from the field in a big hurry have reinforced this concern.
So I did some thinking about Karzoug's nature: As the Runelord of Greed, he's incredibly old, fantastically greedy, and highly intelligent. While a ten thousand-year-old wizard certainly fits the bill, I think there's something else that might fit as well, if not better.
I'm thinking of making him a Dragon.
Now the party will face two dragons en route - Freezemaw and Ghlorofaex, but there has been a surprising dearth of dragons in this particular campaign. It's also worth noting that I have a very simple reason I would like to make this change - that Colossal Red Dragon "miniature" sitting on my bookshelf. Making Karzoug into a Great Wyrm Red Dragon changes up a couple of things about the final encounter:
1) It makes combat a lot more visceral - the Burning Glaive notwithstanding, Karzoug as written will spend most of his time slinging high-powered magic at the party. While this presents interesting tactical challenges, the melee folks are at the mercy of necessary fly-items to get them to grips with the Wizard. While a dragon of such age and power would hardly need to engage in hand-to-hand, a mighty Red is the kind of dude to get his talons bloody.
2) It's a surprise for the players - Presuming that Karzoug dealt with his minions and fellow Runelords in a shapeshifted-human form, the players are expecting a mighty wizard. When said wizard transforms into a Colossal Dragon...well, I get a little evil giggle from imagining the looks on their faces.
I might have to redesign the Eye of Avarice a bit, though it's certainly a large enough space. It makes changes it altitude a bit trickier, as his flying ability will lack the precision of the spell. There's also the fact that his spellcasting will diminish significantly (though I may adjust that to make his spellcasting sufficient to the task of being a Runelord, even if it's not 20th-level Transmuter kind of power).
Is it a good idea? Will I end up TPK-ing the party? Am I letting my love of one big mini overwhelm good sense? Are there other changes I should be looking at? What do ya'll think?
A Great Wyrm Red Dragon is a CR 22, I believe. That can be a pretty tough encounter, but you'd have to gauge you players' strength to find just how hard of an encounter they can handle. For groups that practically optimize and/or have access to 3.X era supplemental books I'd say the dragon is just about right with my experience running Rise of the Runelords. If any of the players are inexperienced, or have mechanically less sound characters, I'd definately shave an age category off of that dragon; or at the very least add a template to weaken it. High level party's have quite a few tricks so the CR system gets a bit sketchy, it'll be better to eyeball your finished dragons statistics against the players' character sheets.
A Great Wyrm Red Dragon has a CL of 19, so he isn't that far behind a Wizard of equivilent CR and spells will likely be his primary method of combat despite the being all bad-ass giant and super-strong. The HP and AC from being a dragon will definately increase the length of the battle into something longer and more climatic if HP damage is the party's primary method of overcoming combat (as opposed to SoL effects and the like), but this will also come with a greatly increased chance of a PC dropping.
Going from a NPC Wizard to a dragon will also change his total treasure value and usable gear as well, if you bother using the charts as guidelines.
Thematically I like it a lot. The next time I run a party through the AP I just may have to make such a change myself. A Red Dragon fits both the flavor of the villian and his story quite well.
It's been a while since I've used any of the giant dragon miniatures. Last time I used Johnny Fab (the collosal red dragon, as he became to be known, along with Pitbull Steve the gargantuan blue) was as a Wu Jen -> Eldritch Knight with the Giant Size spell. Even with our enormous gaming map we found it quickly became easier to move other figures around the collosal mini rather than move it; moving in combat with such a large figure on the map became rather annoying. Honestly, though I think the change is a good one, you might be better off not using miniatures for the combat unless your willing to deal with the hassle.
What is your party composed of?
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What is your party composed of?
We've got six:
Elven Magus
Human Knight (from PHB II, modified for Pathfinder)
Elven Archery-Ranger
Half-Elven Wizard
Dwarven Cleric of Torag
Human Sorcerer (Undead Bloodline)
The wizard, sorcerer, and ranger give the party a heck of a lot of ranged damage, while the Knight and Magus have been working on steadily ramping up their AC. Sorcerer is primarily a damage-dealer, while the Wizard keeps adding irritation spells to his repertoire (The bad guys' least favorite? Unluck from the Spell Compendium: same reason I loathe Pugwampis). The Wizard took Leadership in order to get a mid-level rogue back into the party as cohort/lover, but that poor dude had better not show up to this party unless he brought the Evasion die that only rolls 20+.
Slightly larger than average party, a handful of casters to help avoid negative spell effects and resist ye ol' breath weapon, plenty of ranged support, access to the Spell Compendium... I'd say let 'em try their hand with the dragon version. However depending on their level when they hit the encounter you still might want to scale it down either an age category or with a template of some sort to temper it. Also there is a knight - he does need a dragon to slay afterall.
I am really liking this idea Bookkeeper, it makes a great deal of sense. Along with the ideas others have put forth to make the last fight a memorable one, this one I definately plan to utilize in some way. I do wish though that I had purchased the colossal miniature way back when I had the chance to get it for retail price. The prices on ebay are insane.
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My players have currently planted themselves in the heart of Jorgenfist and are trying to figure out how to deal with Mokmurian. On my 2nd reading of books five and six, I've hit upon an idea for a somewhat radical change for ol' Karzoug.
The second half of this campaign involves a tremendous number of spellcasters in the role of BBEG. Barl Breakbones, then Mokmurian, then the many and varied wizards of Runeforge, finishing up with the the big Transmuter-of-Doom at the end. While themes can be good, it feels like two big problems could erupt:
1) The players develop a sense of tedium: One more spellcaster, one more battle with loads of annoying spells combined with the occasional explosion that ruins everyone's day.
2) As the players develop anti-spellcaster tactics, the possibility of them giving the arch-villain of the campaign a righteous pasting becomes more and more likely. The couple of threads I've seen noting games in which he was wiped from the field in a big hurry have reinforced this concern.
So I did some thinking about Karzoug's nature: As the Runelord of Greed, he's incredibly old, fantastically greedy, and highly intelligent. While a ten thousand-year-old wizard certainly fits the bill, I think there's something else that might fit as well, if not better.
I'm thinking of making him a Dragon.
Now the party will face two dragons en route - Freezemaw and Ghlorofaex, but there has been a surprising dearth of dragons in this particular campaign. It's also worth noting that I have a very simple reason I would like to make this change - that Colossal Red Dragon "miniature" sitting on my bookshelf. Making Karzoug into a Great Wyrm Red Dragon changes up a couple of things about the final encounter:
1) It makes combat a lot more visceral - the Burning Glaive notwithstanding, Karzoug as written will spend most of his time slinging high-powered magic at the party. While this presents interesting tactical challenges, the melee folks are at the mercy of necessary fly-items to get...
I like this idea ALOT.... Not sure why I never made the connection. In redoing alot of the major NPCs in the arc I actually made Karzoug a half-blue dragon wizard, never made that leap to a full dragon.
Now I am going to have to re-think this.... :)
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Ok, So I worked out some of Karzoug, using the handy-dandy Hero Lab. I still like the embedded Ioun Stone schtick, and figured ioun stones embedded in scales would be cool. Here's my problem.
Karzoug-as-Great-Wyrm is CR 22. My party's running a little ahead of schedule, thanks to generous XP for character journals, so I hope to have them at 18th when they cross the threshold into the Eye of Avarice. CR 22 versus 6 18th-level PCs. No problem, right?
Umm...Per Hero Lab's numbers, Karzoug's currently running at 561 HP with an AC of 46. His touch is, to be certain, utter rubbish, but I don't want this to be a fight in which the spellcasters are the only ones who can touch him (and then only periodically with SR 33). Lowest Save is Will with a +26.
Running a few numbers:
Our Knight will have a BAB of +18. Give her a ramped up STR of 24 and a +4 weapon and that brings it to +29. She needs a 17 to hit him. Our Magus, who has divided his time and energy between spells and combat, may be out of luck.
Wizard's got Spell Penetration, so his CL Check should be in the neighborhood of +26, so he's got a shot, but that just makes him first target priority. Giving him an INT in the 24 range means his 9th level spells will be DC 26, so the Dragon passes every save on a "anything but..." I'm closer to ok with this because what I don't want to see is a Save or Die finish the campaign.
Am I setting up the party for a TPK? Part of me is afraid of that and part of me says that the final battle of a campaign should take skill, planning, and more than a little luck.
Am I setting up the party for a TPK? Part of me is afraid of that and part of me says that the final battle of a campaign should take skill, planning, and more than a little luck.
There is still the 6-full-actions-vs-1-full-action issue, so while this looks like a tough deal on paper, it might end up closer than you would think. You should probably give the party some hints that Karzoug is a Dragon as opposed to a Human; with proper preparation they should have a decent chance.
Of course, they are likely to have spent some resources before even reaching Karzoug though, which might tip the scale in the wrong direction.
If you feel it would be a too tough fight, you could build him as a Wyrm instead of as a Great Wyrm, and give him one or two Sorcerer levels to reach 9th-level spellcasting.
I suggest you run a trial combat to get a feel for how things may go.
Ok, So I worked out some of Karzoug, using the handy-dandy Hero Lab. I still like the embedded Ioun Stone schtick, and figured ioun stones embedded in scales would be cool. Here's my problem.
Karzoug-as-Great-Wyrm is CR 22. My party's running a little ahead of schedule, thanks to generous XP for character journals, so I hope to have them at 18th when they cross the threshold into the Eye of Avarice. CR 22 versus 6 18th-level PCs. No problem, right?
Umm...Per Hero Lab's numbers, Karzoug's currently running at 561 HP with an AC of 46. His touch is, to be certain, utter rubbish, but I don't want this to be a fight in which the spellcasters are the only ones who can touch him (and then only periodically with SR 33). Lowest Save is Will with a +26.
Running a few numbers:
Our Knight will have a BAB of +18. Give her a ramped up STR of 24 and a +4 weapon and that brings it to +29. She needs a 17 to hit him. Our Magus, who has divided his time and energy between spells and combat, may be out of luck.
Wizard's got Spell Penetration, so his CL Check should be in the neighborhood of +26, so he's got a shot, but that just makes him first target priority. Giving him an INT in the 24 range means his 9th level spells will be DC 26, so the Dragon passes every save on a "anything but..." I'm closer to ok with this because what I don't want to see is a Save or Die finish the campaign.
Am I setting up the party for a TPK? Part of me is afraid of that and part of me says that the final battle of a campaign should take skill, planning, and more than a little luck.
You are forgetting the metric ton of improvements to buddies' attack bonuses that are real easy to come by. Knight should have weapon focus (+1), a haste from the wiz (+1), probably a greater heroism (+4 morale), bringing that number to whomp on the BBEG down to a mere 11. And that's without trying very hard.
Factor in prayer (+1 luck), maybe a healthy shot of inspired courage (+4 competence), and your BBEG gets whack-a-moled by a Knight packing a +40 attack bonus.
There are quite a few other stackable increases in attack rolls potentially available still ... EDIT: such as the above-mentioned improvement via belt o' enormous strength. At this stage of a campaign, if the main attack bonuses of the primary melee types are anything less than at least in the mid-30s, something has definitely gone wrong.
18th caster +4 greater spell penetration = +22 against SR 33, 50/50 shot to punch SR is where it should be for a fight like this, so I would not worry about it. Even if the BBEGs SR was a 35 I wouldn't sweat it as the GM (too much). There are a LOT of spells that ignore SR just within the core rules - and they're often the ones you wish you had SR to shrug them off with in the first place ...
2nd Edit: The 6:1 action economy will almost certainly work in the characters' favor, especially after the first round or maybe two.