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I am curious to know how others handle it. It being the big final battle, the climatic battle of heroes vs bad guy. the DM has spent weeks, or months, working on this campaign, and this bad guy/thing is tweaked just right, just enough to make things very difficult for the PCs to over come, with plenty of magic and mundane items, terrain favorable to the npc, and just enough minor npc's for cannon fodder. but then, at game time, one PC comes up, gets a lightning bolt to the face, then proceeds to make his attack roll. on his first attack swing, he rolls a natural 20. he then confirms his crit, and ends up doing so much damage that the NPC is literally turned into goo.
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how do you handle that?
Lol... I have a guy do this to me every game session, we roll in the open so I know it tr ue and it always seems to be a x's 3 weapon.
Choices...
1. Roll up into a pillow and have a good DM cry (works for me at times).
2. Keep letting him one shot bosses until an PC brings in an evil rogue that kills him in his sleep for the metagame ruining of others fun.
3. Create a special DR / (insert PCs name here) and it is only bypassed by the other party members.
Serious answer...
Controllers... big crit damage.means a.good.sized.weapon (usually), with CMD's being so doable a disarm / sunder NPC cohort of the main boss who is a specialized fighter in that area whose main job is to stand by his boss and toss weapons.s away 15ft. Or leave them in shards on the ground.
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I am curious to know how others handle it. It being the big final battle, the climatic battle of heroes vs bad guy. the DM has spent weeks, or months, working on this campaign, and this bad guy/thing is tweaked just right, just enough to make things very difficult for the PCs to over come, with plenty of magic and mundane items, terrain favorable to the npc, and just enough minor npc's for cannon fodder. but then, at game time, one PC comes up, gets a lightning bolt to the face, then proceeds to make his attack roll. on his first attack swing, he rolls a natural 20. he then confirms his crit, and ends up doing so much damage that the NPC is literally turned into goo.
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how do you handle that?
Make the realization that I spent weeks, or months, and didn't think to add fortification onto a low HP BBEG, all the while ignoring the fact that this very thing could happen since there's a fighter in the group and learn not to do it for the next campaign.
Easy to follow ideas:
1. Does the End boss have high HP? Make him immune or at least resistant to instant death attacks (high saves).
2. Does the End boss have low HP? Make it hard to reach him and have him invest in some way to avoid critical hits, or give him lots of minions as cannon fodder.
...congratulate the player and move on with the game?
+1
Your players will talk about how awesome it was that they got to the BBEG in that campaign years ago and they took him out with one hit... like the little punk he was compared to how awesome their characters were.
If a GM is getting angry about something that is an ever-present possibility within the system, they should probably build their sessions differently or start implementing house rules. That or try a different game. Or just have a drink or two and try to laugh it off. Or rethink the philosophy of what it means to be a GM. Or get anger management. Plenty of options!
In any case I think BBEGs are ideally less about raw HP and AC and more about the situations they create. They're not just sitting in that special room waiting to be challenged. They're posting bounties for the PCs' heads. They're blackmailing you with what you want most. They're rigging traps and summoning nightmarish foes to harry your advances. They're spying, scrying and plotting ten steps ahead. If you break them down to the HP and the AC and are disappointed with how easily they go down, just remember that it's the HP and AC that went down. You must somehow transcend those numbers to create a truly memorable BBEG, and it's not always easy.
i am sure ill recieve hell for posting this, but oh well.
i am playing a 10th level fighter with a greathorn longhammer (2d6 dmg, 19-20/x4 crit)
my DM had given us some special rules at character creation, points buy for character build or rolling, making sure that the rolling equals at least 32 build points. and then he also had us roll either a freebee weapon, armor, or wonderous item chart. i rolled on the major wonderous item and got a headband of mental superiority +5. He also allowed us to cash in items if we didnt like them, so i cashed it in and got 144,000 gps plus 10th level starting gold. so i was able to crank out with the gear a tank. +3 adamantine full plate, +1 longhorn greathammer with sonic burst, boots of haste, a handy haversack, some potions and a belt of giant str +4.
the dm allowed feats from 3.5, so i was able to pull feats from ogl 3.5 to include two handed power attack and two handed power strike along with wpn spec and gtr wpn spec, so yadda yadda, at full power, my character is smashing down at 2d6 + 37 + 1d6 elec dmg per hit. we have a house rule where instead of rolling each time, we just multiply by the crit mod and go from there.
so yea, i know my guy is probably more like a level 12 guy, but still, 202 pts of damage in a swing is still rather impressive....
and now bring on the comments about how i metegame this or how i dont adhere to Pathfinder rules because of that....
I feel like if you are going to go with this then why bother with the dice? Would you rule the big bads AC was actually 5 points lower if the fighter missed 5 times in a row because missing over and over doesn't make for an 'epic' fight? A mid combat change to a monster in my opinion nullifies the choices and abilities of the players. At that point there is no point to good strategy or intelligent play, just go ahead and do whatever and the dm will sort things out. At which point, there is no purpose to the dice.
No, the numbers a great guidelines, and if you have to fudge constantly, you're doing something wrong. But I don't feel like the game should be enslaved to random rolls, either. Tweaking the dice rolls to make a more interesting story is not the same as completely scrapping randomness.
I am curious to know how others handle it. It being the big final battle, the climatic battle of heroes vs bad guy. the DM has spent weeks, or months, working on this campaign, and this bad guy/thing is tweaked just right, just enough to make things very difficult for the PCs to over come, with plenty of magic and mundane items, terrain favorable to the npc, and just enough minor npc's for cannon fodder. but then, at game time, one PC comes up, gets a lightning bolt to the face, then proceeds to make his attack roll. on his first attack swing, he rolls a natural 20. he then confirms his crit, and ends up doing so much damage that the NPC is literally turned into goo.
.
.
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how do you handle that?
Hopefully better than the player does when it sometimes happens to him.
If a GM is getting angry about something that is an ever-present possibility within the system, they should probably build their sessions differently or start implementing house rules.
+1, really. If minor bending of rules isn't enough to make the story work, the GM needs to work harder on implementation of the bad guys. He should know the capabilities of the players, and if he consistently makes bad guys you can take down in one hit and then gets upset, well...
If you are having a BBEG, always.. And I mean always! put him into stages if you want him to do things.
In other words, if he has 90Hp, and you want him to show up, taunt, then death cry, put 3 30hp stages the players have to go through. If a player does lots of damage in stage one, Don't carry the damage over to the second stage. So if player 1 does 90 points of damage, only move the monster to stage two.
Fudge him to 0 HP so he can have his final words?
You bring up an interesting thought I've had for a while. I've long thought a nice BBEG feat might be something like Dying Words. The recipient of such a feat is permitted to get off a few sentences before they perish.
I've also thought about another feat, Soliloquy. That one allows the character to launch into a speech before initiative is rolled. Sorry. You get to wait. Yes, you with the knocked arrow, just begging to crit my BBEG eyes out the back of my skull. Just sit down and listen. I'll let you know when I'm done so you can roll ninety-bazillion on your Initiative and crit me into paste before I get to act.
It wouldn't be unreasonable to roll them into one feat named BBEG, with pre-requisites that it can only be taken with GM approval.
You should totally celebrate it. That is the stuff of epic legendary roleplaying. Your players will tell THAT story more often than if the fight had lasted 10 rounds. That is great. GMs should have a healthy desire to kill the PCs, but they should also want to share in the joy of the cooperative story telling. IF they did it fair and square, that is awesome. Just like if you kill a PC fair and square.
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and now bring on the comments about how i metegame this or how i dont adhere to Pathfinder rules because of that....
Eh.
Every custom item or outside sourcebook you introduce into your game you take on the role of being an amateur game designer. Nothing wrong with that but sometimes things don't work the way you planned.
Edit: And celebrate the victory :D
Every custom item or outside sourcebook you introduce into your game you take on the role of being an amateur game designer. Nothing wrong with that but sometimes things don't work the way you planned.
Yeah, if your DM puts you in a situation where that's the weapon you use and it does that kind of damage, he's the one responsible for ensuring the bad guys make the cut. You did just what you should have: your best. What the DM is really mad about is that he gave the PCs powerful stuff without realizing the effects it would have on CR.
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...congratulate the player and move on with the game?MADNESS!
/insert obligatory 300 joke
On topic, yeah, I'd just congratulate the player. It's really cool when something like that happens, and part of being a DM is learning to roll with the punches and take things like that in stride.
It's pretty much guaranteed that the players won't enjoy your adventures as you intend them, and that big epic fight may be too easy or too hard depending on a myriad of variables.
Fact is, part of DM'ing is learning that this kind of thing is gonna happen, and you just gotta move on.
All those hours spent designing everything, then the GM parks the BBEG withi spitting distance of the party killmachine who is armed to the teeth with epic weapons and then is upset with what happens next?
Ummm....
1/ Congratulate player on doling out the inevitable curb-stomp.
2/ Un-lobotomise his BBEGs :p
You should totally celebrate it. That is the stuff of epic legendary roleplaying. Your players will tell THAT story more often than if the fight had lasted 10 rounds. That is great. GMs should have a healthy desire to kill the PCs, but they should also want to share in the joy of the cooperative story telling. IF they did it fair and square, that is awesome. Just like if you kill a PC fair and square.
+1
I once had a fairly major villain die because I gave his boss (the BBEG) devastating line-shaped ranged touch attacks, and forgot to also give him the Precise Shot feat. Attack misses PC, continues in straight line, kills other villain, who was sneaking up on the party from behind. My fault entirely.
No way was I going to retcon or fudge that one, either. I simply told the players, after the smoke cleared: "... and that's how he treats his allies!"
We just had something similar happen last session. The barbarian/rogue went first though and managed to crit the enemy causing a sucking chest would that would have caused him to drown in his own blood in a few rounds. It had already been written in the adventure that he would give up at 30 hit points. I figured that a sucking chest wound was enough and he surrendered right away.
It happens and the players love it. As GM, I have plenty more where he came from so I don't really care. I play them as best I can but in the end, the players were supposed to win anyway. Let them have their awesome victory.
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I once had a fairly major villain die because I gave his boss (the BBEG) devastating line-shaped ranged touch attacks, and forgot to also give him the Precise Shot feat. Attack misses PC, continues in straight line, kills other villain, who was sneaking up on the party from behind. My fault entirely.
No way was I going to retcon or fudge that one, either. I simply told the players, after the smoke cleared: "... and that's how he treats his allies!"
I REMEMBER THAT!
As GM, I have plenty more where he came from so I don't really care. I play them as best I can but in the end, the players were supposed to win anyway. Let them have their awesome victory.
All sorts of truth and awesome in that statement -- I especially love the, "I have plenty more where he came from" part.
how do you handle that?
It has happened to me. I usually keep the monster alive for a couple of rounds. Heck, twice I've done that just b/c the BBEG died in 2 or 3 rounds and hadn't gotten off a spell or attack I wanted him/her to.
Don't take away a player's moment of triumph.
I don't think you have to. It's easy enough to fluff it as taking off half the monster's face or an arm w/o killing them.
I feel like if you are going to go with this then why bother with the dice? Would you rule the big bads AC was actually 5 points lower if the fighter missed 5 times in a row because missing over and over doesn't make for an 'epic' fight? A mid combat change to a monster in my opinion nullifies the choices and abilities of the players. At that point there is no point to good strategy or intelligent play, just go ahead and do whatever and the dm will sort things out. At which point, there is no purpose to the dice.
I can't answer for him, but I can answer for me. I use the rules and the dice because I go by what they say 99% of the time. But, as DM, I reserve the right to tweak them to make my game go better. I agree, it is a game, and DMs who fudge everything take the feeling of fairness out of and begin to make actions seem meaningly. But, conversely, Why would I let the dice run my game? If I were going to do that, I'd just play a video game and do some talking as my character. The good thing about DMing is that I can make those calls and change what happens if I feel it ruins the story. And, ultimately, my goal is to tell a good story with my friends.
As for fudging to my players' benefit. I absolutely do that from time to time. In fact, I'm quite sure I've done that at least twice as often as I've done it for BBEGs. I don't change the monster's ac (as my players would figure that out). But those nasty axe crits? Monsters can get them too, and I've same many players from a quick death because I didn't want them to die (esp early in the game).
Same thing could happen to a PC a player has spent weeks, months, and somtimes even years playing up their character. If they get unlucky, they get splattered. BBEGs hit real hard too.
So if they manage to waste the BBEG quickly, more power to them. I've definitely had it run both ways. So you roll with it.
I rarely design encounters with a single BBEG. It doesn't work any longer especially with spells like Calcific Touch and Enervate. Relying on one creature to beat or challenge a party is asking to watch an NPC enemy get destroyed.
I also make sure the players know it is the enemy that has been throwing wave after wave of lesser enemies at them. So they still get the feel the guy was powerful even if they beat him easily once they get to him.
If I'm going to spend weeks designing a BBEG, I'm not going to use the exact rules for wealth, hit points, and the like. I'm going to make him tough enough to stand up to what my players will throw at him even with lucky crits. Otherwise, what is the point.
D&D is a roleplaying game. It's not about following exact rules for building an enemy. It's about making an encounter have the right feel. If you want the players to feel as though they fought a powerful BBEG that was a huge pain to kill, do what you have to do to make that happen.
Same thing could happen to a PC a player has spent weeks, months, and somtimes even years playing up their character. If they get unlucky, they get splattered. BBEGs hit real hard too.
So if they manage to waste the BBEG quickly, more power to them. I've definitely had it run both ways. So you roll with it.
I rarely design encounters with a single BBEG. It doesn't work any longer especially with spells like Calcific Touch and Enervate. Relying on one creature to beat or challenge a party is asking to watch an NPC enemy get destroyed.
I also make sure the players know it is the enemy that has been throwing wave after wave of lesser enemies at them. So they still get the feel the guy was powerful even if they beat him easily once they get to him.
If I'm going to spend weeks designing a BBEG, I'm not going to use the exact rules for wealth, hit points, and the like. I'm going to make him tough enough to stand up to what my players will throw at him even with lucky crits. Otherwise, what is the point.
D&D is a roleplaying game. It's not about following exact rules for building an enemy. It's about making an encounter have the right feel. If you want the players to feel as though they fought a powerful BBEG that was a huge pain to kill, do what you have to do to make that happen.
Yep this happened to one of my characters. Granted, I run at an accelerated rate compaired to normal people, so Even though I spent like 2-3 weeks on this guy and played him for 2 weeks, It was like I had him for several months.
I had plans for him. How he would build his kingdom, how to get his cohort, how he would eventually be a BBEBG. Hell, I've had his children, down several generations.
Then he fought a common troll and was killed.
Once had a fearsome green dragon come out of a poison lake to investigate what had set off its alarm spell.
The PCs all failed against its fear aura. An NPC cohort from one of the player's leadership feat, however, passed her save, tumbled under the dragon and critted with a frost burst rapier for massive damage in the first round.
I rolled a Fortitude save out in the open while explaining that, if I rolled a 1, the dragon would die from massive damage.
They were left with a dragon's hoard at the bottom of the lake, and a colossal ice sculpture of a dragon with a rapier sticking out of its heart.
We still talk about it to this day. I wouldn't change a thing.
I was running an adventure a few years back (1st edition) and part of the adventure was on a ship going from point A to B. They were 7th or 8th level and an encounter I'd planned was with a dragon turtle. It was supposed to eat a few sailors and damage the ship for an encounter later with pirates.
It rises out of the water and starts heading for the ship. The sailors scramblng around reading the heavy weapons of the ship. The groups wizard casts fireball for some damage then the poor dwarven fighter (who was sea sick)threw his +3 dwarven thrower hammer and critted
the dragon turtle.
At the time I had a house ruled critical hit chart and some of the effects were brutal. Including limbs being severed or broken and if you rolled '100' (being a d100 chart) meant instant death.
Yep -BANG- he rolls 100 on the chart.
Hammer to the eye of the turtle crushing the bone into the brain.
One dead dragon turtle and one heroic feeling dwarf.
Much celabration had by the players as the turtle sank below the waves.
When the next encounter with the pirates began I had the captain of the ship say 'Get the dwarf. His hammer will sink that ship in one throw!".
We still laugh about that one to this day.
-Flea
I am curious to know how others handle it. It being the big final battle, the climatic battle of heroes vs bad guy. the DM has spent weeks, or months, working on this campaign, and this bad guy/thing is tweaked just right, just enough to make things very difficult for the PCs to over come, with plenty of magic and mundane items, terrain favorable to the npc, and just enough minor npc's for cannon fodder. but then, at game time, one PC comes up, gets a lightning bolt to the face, then proceeds to make his attack roll. on his first attack swing, he rolls a natural 20. he then confirms his crit, and ends up doing so much damage that the NPC is literally turned into goo.
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how do you handle that?
Obviously, the NPC was just a clone if he turned to goo...
So long as the players don't gloat, I'm fine with it. Carry on and collect the rewards luck has delivered to their feet. Luck happens. If they gloat, however, well then my mean streak might come out and the next BBEG they meet will be packing all kinds of wonderful badness.
Actually, I've had this happen multiple times. The absolute best/worst was years ago in a 2nd Edition game. The climax of this low-level party's first adventure was penetration of a secret Zhentarim complex culminating in a confrontation with a mid-level Zhentarim cleric supported by some goons. The party did well in penetrating the complex stealthily so they actually had a chance to confront her before she buffed, but they were low on spells when they burst into the sanctum sanctorum. The wifty elf wizard with an 8 Strength won initiative and was first to act. With no useful spells left, he pulled his never before used longsword and charged the cleric before she could speak, thinking he could at least serve as a distraction. Critical Hit. We roll on the Dragon magazine crit table we were using. Throat Cut - Instant Death. I rule that the cleric's minions are so awed by his martial prowess that they instantly throw down their weapons and surrender. I don't think that wizard character ever hit anything with a melee attack before or after that time.
I was kind of annoyed at the time that my carefully crafted badass BBEG died without even getting a spell off, but in retrospect it was kind of cool. I know that I still remember it vividly to this day, whereas many more conventional battles have been forgotten.
So my advice is - roll with it. Sometimes the ending of the story is a surprise, even for the person running the game. That's not a bad thing.
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I am curious to know how others handle it. It being the big final battle, the climatic battle of heroes vs bad guy. the DM has spent weeks, or months, working on this campaign, and this bad guy/thing is tweaked just right, just enough to make things very difficult for the PCs to over come, with plenty of magic and mundane items, terrain favorable to the npc, and just enough minor npc's for cannon fodder. but then, at game time, one PC comes up, gets a lightning bolt to the face, then proceeds to make his attack roll. on his first attack swing, he rolls a natural 20. he then confirms his crit, and ends up doing so much damage that the NPC is literally turned into goo.
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how do you handle that?
Enjoy the smiles, as he celebrates with his friends. Then bask in the fear as he wakes up the next morning with the BBEG's blood soaked ghost standing over his bedroll. (Might as well get some more milage out of him).
Amen. You might even get a story like this.
So my advice is - roll with it. Sometimes the ending of the story is a surprise, even for the person running the game. That's not a bad thing.
Fun story - eerily similar to my own in some respects. I've had groups like that before that never, ever back down from a fight, even against things they should know they have almost no chance of beating. That gives you two choices as a GM. Either you carefully make sure they never encounter anything overpowering, or you let them try for glory and let the dice fall where they will. The best players (as far as fun to play with, not necessarily game mastery) don't whine when the dice don't go their way. So I try not to whine when the dice gods bless the players.
@OP: Question, How many times does the opposite happen? You plan for an encounter to be fairly easy to moderate and your players end up getting the dog-shizzle kicked out of them? Sometimes the dice giveth and sometimes they taketh away.
@OP: Question, How many times does the opposite happen? You plan for an encounter to be fairly easy to moderate and your players end up getting the dog-shizzle kicked out of them? Sometimes the dice giveth and sometimes they taketh away.
well, its not my campaign. im just a player. originally i was curious to see how other DM's handle the situation, cuz the DM just kinda sat there a minute, sullen, made a couple funny remarks about my mom, and then carried on. If it was me, i wouldve been laughing with the group, but when i got home to the wife, idve been laughing and grinding my teeth due to the lack of climatic funness.
@OP: Question, How many times does the opposite happen? You plan for an encounter to be fairly easy to moderate and your players end up getting the dog-shizzle kicked out of them? Sometimes the dice giveth and sometimes they taketh away.
I had this happen with an out-of-combat encounter (that would have led to a combat encounter). I had a fairly easy Strength check (DC 20) encounter to lift a very heavy door where 2 characters could aid (DC 10 Strength check) 2 others who both had to make DC 20 checks. They could take 10 but that wouldn't cut it and due to straining issues they couldn't take 20.
We sat there for 10 minutes with people rolling dice and they could...not...make...it...happen. So we bypassed the planned encounter for the time being (but the creature inside was able to get out so it pestered the PC's later on). Bad dice...bad!
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Would you do the same if the party rolled poorly and you were headed for an unplanned character death? And if you would, what purpose does good tactics or planning serve, if the dm will just send things in the direction the story was supposed to go anyway? At this point you are closer to acting from a script then roleplaying. For me the story is important, but the actions of the players and roll of the dice (chance) impact that story. If not, then the players have no agency, and thus have far less stake in the story.
My group is like this. And it's simple. The dice do not rule the story.
They are just tools to help the story along. When a tool isn't what you need it to be, you disregard it.In this situation there are a number of things you can do. Blatant lying isn't one of them. But since you never tell the player's what the hp of their enemy is, you're not lying if you slap on a couple more. A personal favorite tactic of mine as a DM is to describe the glory but tell them it just wasn't quite enough. If done right, this will make the pc loathe the npc. Let combat go as planned for a round or two, shooting off your big bad so the players know the force behind the past few months of their in-game lives and when it comes back around to the player who pulled out a can of whoop-a**, describe his shot as epic and end combat. Award a little extra XP if you want to make yourself feel less guilty. Most player's prefer the last combat of the campaign to be ridiculous. And it should be.
Thank you for not reading the very last sentence in my post that you quoted (which has mysteriously disappeared by the way :( ).
I have no issue with killing a pc if they don't play it smart. And by play it smart I mean "remembering you can always run away". I don't fudge dice rolls to make them survive, but I do want them to enjoy combat, not just one shot everything.
But go ahead and read that last line again. LAST COMBAT OF A CAMPAIGN. If my player's one-shotted the bad guy, they would not react with joy. They would (knowing me) be waiting for the real bad guy to show himself and I would either have to extend the campaign and retrofit a new bad guy and have tie in explanations, or call my own bluff. I'm mostly honest in game with my players, so I would probably ask their opinion first in that situation. Because no one wants the last few months of their get togethers to end in the first round. That sucks.
I have no issue with killing a pc if they don't play it smart. And by play it smart I mean "remembering you can always run away".
I'm not calling you out specifically, but I figured this is a great spot to point something(s) out.
Just remember that sometimes running away isn't an option. In fact, it's not an option more often than one would think. Once a fight has gone badly, odds are good the enemy is in a good position to dictate how it ends. You either kill that dragon or it eats you, for instance.
It's also true that sometimes running away isn't an option for character reasons. I proudly recall an instance that rapidly devolved into a TPK. My cleric/psion gestalt risen-demon PC was the last one standing (and the star of the show). The bad guys gave her a chance. "Give us the McGuffin and you can leave." There was no way she could accept that deal. There was no way she could justify handing over the object to save her skin. She died cleanly.
Anyway, I felt it was important to remind GMs that "run away" isn't necessarily on the menu as often as you might think.
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I have no issue with killing a pc if they don't play it smart. And by play it smart I mean "remembering you can always run away".I'm not calling you out specifically, but I figured this is a great spot to point something(s) out.
Just remember that sometimes running away isn't an option. In fact, it's not an option more often than one would think. Once a fight has gone badly, odds are good the enemy is in a good position to dictate how it ends. You either kill that dragon or it eats you, for instance.
It's also true that sometimes running away isn't an option for character reasons. I proudly recall an instance that rapidly devolved into a TPK. My cleric/psion gestalt risen-demon PC was the last one standing (and the star of the show). The bad guys gave her a chance. "Give us the McGuffin and you can leave." There was no way she could accept that deal. There was no way she could justify handing over the object to save her skin. She died cleanly.
Anyway, I felt it was important to remind GMs that "run away" isn't necessarily on the menu as often as you might think.
Agreed. However, I'm more referring to two types of players; The one's who use "my character would do that" as an excuse (especially when they wouldn't do that, they would run) and the ones who play stupidly (i.e. not falling back for the cleric to heal them or not using their potion that could save them because all they want to do is attack). Playing smart also refers to tactically setting up yourself and your other party members in more advantageous positions when possible.
The last time something like this happened to me it was due to a combination of time stop, some type of illusion spell, a natural 1 on the save roll, and a sphere of annihilation. The CR 27 Dragon I had spent a couple of weeks perfecting to create an epic fight ended up chomping on the sphere instead of the fighter that had been right in front of it :)
Not much you can do in such situations except laugh alongside your players and say "Well, I guess that was the end of the session" :)
I have been dm for twenty years it happens let the players enjoy thier triumph moveve on ironically a weaker foe may get a nasty crit vs pc.
The last time something like this happened to me it was due to a combination of time stop, some type of illusion spell, a natural 1 on the save roll, and a sphere of annihilation. The CR 27 Dragon I had spent a couple of weeks perfecting to create an epic fight ended up chomping on the sphere instead of the fighter that had been right in front of it :)
Not much you can do in such situations except laugh alongside your players and say "Well, I guess that was the end of the session" :)
I know which AP that is. I took that item out of the game. It does not even allow a save IIRC.
You also can not attack during the timestop. It may be too late now, but it might help next time. :)