Narissa's Last stand

[Mr.$mith]

I was looking over the last AP and got to her, and she seems like an ok challenge but I have a few questions.

1. Is she staying in her room the whole time unless the PCs break her hold on the land and it gets shunted back to the real world?

2. Is that room she in basically a 10x10 room?

3. If she gets pushed back to the real world isn't this kind of a disapointing fight, I mean she really can't make the concentration check to cast spells...ever. Unless I read it wrong.
As for 3 I see my party fighting there way through every single part of her “kingdom” before they go to her palace and if that’s the case the plane will be shunted back to the materal world before they get to her.
Just wondering how other groups did this AP and what happened, from the obits I see that she has killed a lot of people but I’m just wondering what has happened in other people’s game.

[darklopez]

I played out the whole "uprooting" thing, but left away the rules weakening the encounters to make it more challenging. They did not Encounter Nyrissa in her room but in some kind of a special realm where they where floating high above the Stolen Lands while they (the lands) got sucked into some kind of cheese cover (Like the one over the rose in beauty and the beast was in). There they had plenty of space for fighting and summoning monster. The fight was not that interesting in the end, sadly. Her maze-spell caught the rogue and the druid, the barbarian didn't get any good rolls and after the "Dispel Magic" on her protective items wore off Nyrissa was nearly unhittable. The cleric fell in a combined fire storm/ chain lightning attack, the barbarian was finished in melee with her flame sword. I really felt, that the group is quite strong up to that point, thus i didn't "nerf" the dryad. The Jabberwock felt with easw, lasting only 2 rounds, same with nearly every other encounter except for the worm that walks. It was my first high-level experience as a DM and I'm still surprised how extremely superior spellcasting BBEG's are compared to fighters. Armag fell in one round, Vordakai nearly TPK'ed them. Still very sad they didn't manage to finish her off though.

Edit: Sorry, I just see that I didn't answer any of your questions as it seems :(

[Vaellen]

I can't comment on how the actual fight is supposed to go as I was a PC in this campaign but I can relate how our battle went. We fought her in a large freezing room. She had lots of room to fly around. Her saves were crazy high, touch AC was so high that no one's ranged touch attacks could hit her reliably. Her AC was such that only the Ranger archer and barbarian could hit her. She had evasion and freedom of movement so we could not grapple her. She mazed the barbarian and dominated the ranger. The casters spent the entire fight trying to dispel her defenses and keeping the ranger from killing the party. It took over a dozen rounds for the barbarian to make his Int check and return.

The only reason we won was that we had 5 actions for everyone one of hers. Most of the stuff we tried missed or fizzled or just failed. By the end of the fight we'd managed to strip away most of her buffs, and we wore her down. It was a tough fight. Not Dragotha tough, but still a challenging fight.

[Erik Freund]

I ran the House at the Edge of time as a one-shot for a group seperate from my main one.

I expanded the size of the final area by making it four-dimensional. Basically, think of each area as adjacent to each other (like stacked chess boards) and you can walk between them with ease. It's a trippy visual result, and gave a little room to maneuver.

The major takeaway from the fight was that it was one of attrition. My PCs actually really didn't enjoy it (though they loved the rest of the House). Basically, every round was just a whiff on both sides. Her AC is just too high, even for level 17 PCs to hit. And if she has hit a 12 or better on die just to cast a spell, even with the ability to cast twice per turn, it's a whole lotta fizzles.

We eventually just started rolling up our entire turns in groups of 5. In other words, I'd roll out 5 turns worth of attacks, and the PCs would also roll out 5 turns worth, then we'd tell each other how much damage to expect. We were desperate to just have the thing move along.

My PCs only hope was that they would get lucky with the vorpal ability. When they learned that she had the ability to "undo" that beheading, essentially requiring two vorpals, they nearly revolted.

Anyway, I didn't really answer your questions either, but consider changing her stats to fit your group.

[Mr.$mith]

darklopez wrote:

Edit: Sorry, I just see that I didn't answer any of your questions as it seems :(

Don't be sorry you did answer my question, I did want to know how group's fight with her went. This will also be my first "High Level" thing but were still at the end of book 4 so I just wanted to see how things have gone for other people. As far as BBGs go I just make them more awesome and kind of throw the rules out of the window to make the fights more fun after they have killed them according to the rules, makes everything they are doing seem more important.

[Mr.$mith]

Erik Freund wrote:

I ran the House at the Edge of time as a one-shot for a group seperate from my main one.

I expanded the size of the final area by making it four-dimensional. Basically, think of each area as adjacent to each other (like stacked chess boards) and you can walk between them with ease. It's a trippy visual result, and gave a little room to maneuver.

The major takeaway from the fight was that it was one of attrition. My PCs actually really didn't enjoy it (though they loved the rest of the House). Basically, every round was just a whiff on both sides. Her AC is just too high, even for level 17 PCs to hit. And if she has hit a 12 or better on die just to cast a spell, even with the ability to cast twice per turn, it's a whole lotta fizzles.

We eventually just started rolling up our entire turns in groups of 5. In other words, I'd roll out 5 turns worth of attacks, and the PCs would also roll out 5 turns worth, then we'd tell each other how much damage to expect. We were desperate to just have the thing move along.

My PCs only hope was that they would get lucky with the vorpal ability. When they learned that she had the ability to "undo" that beheading, essentially requiring two vorpals, they nearly revolted.

Anyway, I didn't really answer your questions either, but consider changing her stats to fit your group.

I built the party's fighter so it’s the only one I can properly run math on for how strong he should be when they get to the fight. So his +to hit is +16 BAB +12 Str(34), 3+ FTR Weapon Class stuff, +2 WF and GWF, +4 weapons, +1 Haste, and +3 bard songs, so thats +41 to hit, and then -2 from TWF, so +39. So that’s only a 40% hit rate...ouch.

Looked up her saves and I can't imagine casters doing much to her.
I’m probably just going to end up running this with her as an “I’m not going to straight murder you” caster bad guy and then throw in an anti party made up off all the dead PC that have died or they just chose not to res. So far I have a sorc, oracle, barbarian, rogue and druid. Some of them were just straight abandoned by the more munchkinie player; well still on fence about the rogue…he did get turned to dust by a wizard.

If they do the uprooting, and I know there going go, then ill just give each anti PC some kind of stability to the realm check, like the druid will give her +10 to concentration checks for her druid spells, the rogue was LE so he will take away her confusion penalty. I might just have her in some kind of life/energy field that there visibly tethered to and make them a phase one fight and then her phase two or have her start fighting after a couple of rounds.

[John Spalding]

I made some changes because my group was big (6) and very coordinated.
1) Boosted her sorc level to give her Time Stop to balance action economy.

If you do this- roll her extra rounds and plan what she does. With quicken she is getting tons of spells off and the wait would be hard/

2) Swapped spells to buff her considerably - they could hit her pretty easily - they had bardic music plus tons of buffs in pretty much every fight (that is what the bard did before dying most every fight) - but she had fire shield and the druid thorn spell (or maybe wind spell) such that hitting her did 30+ damage in mellee and she created wind to shut down archery
3) Cast Delayed Blast Fireball frequently

The party won, but not after burning through 10 heal spells. It was a tough fight.

[FallofCamelot]

John Spalding wrote:

I made some changes because my group was big (6) and very coordinated.

1) Boosted her sorc level to give her Time Stop to balance action economy.

If you do this- roll her extra rounds and plan what she does. With quicken she is getting tons of spells off and the wait would be hard/

2) Swapped spells to buff her considerably - they could hit her pretty easily - they had bardic music plus tons of buffs in pretty much every fight (that is what the bard did before dying most every fight) - but she had fire shield and the druid thorn spell (or maybe wind spell) such that hitting her did 30+ damage in mellee and she created wind to shut down archery
3) Cast Delayed Blast Fireball frequently

The party won, but not after burning through 10 heal spells. It was a tough fight.

She is tough. My players waltzed through the final book with barely a scratch and TPKed on her. (For the gory details read the Kingmaker obituary thread).

Spoiler:

The real killer is Prismatic Spray, it accounted for the effective deaths of all 4 of my players. The issue is that the players only hit her on high numbers (14's-15's) she's throwing out 2 spells per round, her saves are massive (plus her ring of evasion makes direct damage spells worthless) and she has a bucketload of hitpoints. She's up there with many of the toughest challenges that Paizo have thrown out.

That said she's not unbeatable. An optimised party should be able to defeat her. She's not quite Xanesha levels of horribleness.

[Diego Rossi]

Not jet there but:

Mr.$mith wrote:

I built the party's fighter so it’s the only one I can properly run math on for how strong he should be when they get to the fight. So his +to hit is +16 BAB +12 Str(34), 3+ FTR Weapon Class stuff, +2 WF and GWF, +4 weapons, +1 Haste, and +3 bard songs, so thats +41 to hit, and then -2 from TWF, so +39. So that’s only a 40% hit rate...ouch.

With +39 you should be hitting with 12+, so 45%.

Even non considering that that character would be doing slightly more than 53 hp of damage every round with a full attack and 2 shot swords. Alone and without any buff removed from her.

If we start with 45% he will do 61+ hp of damage each round.

The second she lose any defensive buff the damage go up a lot. Remove shield and his damage go over 100 hp/round.

I don't see her AC as insane.

Knowing my players, they will get in with insane defensive buffs (unless they are really whittled down by previous encounters). The first greater dispel will have a good chance of removing shield or barkskin, immediately lowering her AC.
They will have followers, possibly an eidolon or summoned creatures. Their main problem would be cramming all that stuff in the small room in the Fable.
They will have at least one wish or miracle to undo a the effects of one spell.

Barring some great misfortune on the player part I see it as a though battle where the players will have to use all their resources but the risk of failure will be very low.

[wraithstrike]

She is good defensively, but offensively she is not that great. My party was really optimized so I had to bring in the some minions to do the damage. Every time they pinned her in a corner she would dimension door to the other side of the room. I found it quiet humorous, but they did not.

[PJ]

wraithstrike wrote:

She is good defensively, but offensively she is not that great. My party was really optimized so I had to bring in the some minions to do the damage. Every time they pinned her in a corner she would dimension door to the other side of the room. I found it quiet humorous, but they did not.

I can't wait for my group to get to her.