Edited the title, was too misleading. Sorry!
So... In a bit of a bind here. I'm playing in a game that others would call a Monty Haul game, never really had to think about using resources wisely as the others and myself just spend and spend all of the gold and loot we find. My character isn't optimized as far as I can tell. So while we are over equipped for our levels, we aren't equipped for the coming battles that we narrowly avoided.
Uhm. Quicker summary. We were exploring a castle that is lead by a cabal of elder vampires and their children, to find a way to stop a pair of Gorum avatars from invading and leveling a city that we don't want them to level. All the vampires in the cabal are immune to daylight and aren't particularly weak against holy water.
After waltzing on through a number of encounters in the castle, injuries and magics getting eaten up, we encountered the elder vampires (we hope) as they tried to enjoy a performance by their undead minions. After slaughtering the minions and a weak version of Death, we fought one of the four boss that were there. After nearly being TPKed, we teleported out to restock and reequip.
So here's what I'm looking for... items, spells, scrolls, whatever you can think of that would round out at least my character and make things a tad more survivable. I've been thinking of buying scrolls of Heal and have suggested trying to see if there's a Staff of Life on sale somewhere, along with scrolls of Greater Teleport or Plane Shift in case we have to do our shopping in the bigger market places.
I currently have 177,734 gold. Could sell a few things to get more gold if needed.
The rest of the party, I believe are (I never looked at the sheets of the last two):
Human Half-Dragon Rogue 5/Fighter 5/Godling 3
Ifirit Sorcerer 13 (the player is rarely able to show up, but we still set aside his share of the loot as there's so much)
Awakened Dire Wolf - Anthropomorphized - Fighter 13
Pseudodragon Rogue 13
+1 Rifle (Bane vs Dragon, Bane vs Undead)
+1 Rifle
+5 Double Barrel Shotgun (Lucky, Greater Reliable) (looted from this castle)
+2 Revolver of Flaming, Frost, Shock
Amulet of Natural Armor +2
Bags of Holding
Boots of Teleportation
Eyes of the Eagle
Gloves of Arrow Snaring
Headband of Mental Superiority +2 (Use Magical Device)
Ioun Stone (Dark Blue Rhomboid
2 Potions of Cure Critical Wounds (loot)
Ring of Freedom of Movement
Ring of Sustenance (I will not sell or remove this ring)
Robe of the Archmagi
6 Scrolls of Restoration
5 Scrolls of Resist Energy (UMD DC of 23)
Strand of Prayer Beads, Lesser
Wayfinder
30 Holy Water Flasks
Wristbands of See Invisibility (See Invisibility once per day, for 30 minutes)
Efficient quiver
Divine Scroll, Disrupting weapon (5th level /9th caster level) : 1125gp
Potion of Barkskin (2nd level /3rd caster level) : 300gp,
And one custom staff that was looted early in the game...
Staff of Vampire's Bane - 7 charges currently left
* Cure serious wounds (3 charges)
* Lesser restoration (1 charge)
* Remove blindness/deafness (2 charges)
* Remove disease (3 charges)
* Sunburst (1 Charge)
* Flamestrike(1 Charge)
* Create Light (Unlimited)
Level 1: Expeditious Retreat, Hydraulic Push, Shield, True Strike, Vanish
Level 2: Fiery Shuriken, Hypnotic Pattern, Levitate, Mirror Image, Unnatural Lust, Resist Energy
Level 3: Dispel Magic, Fly, Haste, Reckless Infauation, Communal Resist Energy
How is item availability for you? Your gm seems pretty open from the looks of it.
Scrolls of Wish to get rid of the pesky immunities to sunlight from the vampires and then a final one to disintegrate their room at noon (Control Weather ensures a bright and sunny day) seems like it would probably be too easy, but it's well within your budget IMO.
Barring that, planar binding can whip up some potent allies, and much of that process can be attempted by your sorcerer buddy via scroll.
How's your alignment? A horde of burning skeletons with mirrors can pull some funny shenanigans with mirrors against vampires, bypass their Dr, and are immune to fireballs...
Hide from undead will allow you to simply walk past some minion undead encounters if they are unintelligent.
A couple of Magic Circles vs Evil should protect you from being dominated if the party will stick together.
Deathward has a short duration and Scarabs of protection are expensive (though you can afford them). Though negative levels are not as bad as they used to be they can be a real pain - Some scrolls of restoration (100gp version) are prob worth getting.
I'd, as a group and if the GM is willing, consider hiring a cleric to come adventure with you.
Also remember that a Bane weapon counts as being +2 more enchantment and +3 enchantment will overcome silver DR.
How much does the party know about vampires? I don't want to advise stuff that relies on in character knowledge you don't have.
You say they are protected from sunlight - so something like a Sunblade is probably not worth it - Arcane sight to determine how they are doing this and a well placed dispel magic (or rod of cancallation?) could cause havoc for a daywalker.
Speaking of character knowledge, your characters could visit a well stocked library to learn about the weaknesses of vampires, and try to use that to their advantage. Remember, you can use knowledge skills untrained if you have an adequate library to use.
Item availability: Open until he says no.
May try a few Wish scrolls, if only to see if they can loose their immunity to sunlight. Will need to look at binding and what we can summon.
As for the skeletons, any possible way that would work within one or two days? We kinda have two avatars of Gorum heading our way and we would perfer not fighting them. We openly choice to a fight an elder black zombie dragon over tangling with Gorum. ^^;
The mindless undead are following in the wake of the avatars, leaving none to guard the castle. But there's plenty of intelligent undead working with the cabal.
Adding Magic Circle vs Evil and Deathwatch to the shopping list.
The cleric is likely a no go. The city is focused a bit too hard on defending itself against the undead and Gorum's avatars heading their way.
Bane, check. We knew that we were heading up against undead and vampires so we did grab the Bane weapons just in case we needed the extra firepower. Which we completely do.
Arcane Sight, will give a try.
In character knowledge: Asking the GM right now.
Is the Zombie Dragon mindless? If so Command Undead will take it out no save. Indeed a wand of command undead will take out 50 mindless minions and make them useful for 3 days each - ok they might get recontrolled but then the enemy is doing that not hitting you.
Also make sure you buy Deathward not Deathwatch scraolls! Though the latter could well be useful too.
Talked with my GM, roughly this is what he told me after I rolled a Knowledge check. Also learned that my character knows most of a stock vampire's details.
"These aren't vampires, they're Undead that the world hasn't seen since Geb. Or maybe they are vampires but are old enough to remember the Disappearance of Aroden. All you really know is that its really odd that you've seen four of these monsters working together."
We know a whole lot of nothing that likely won't change until after we manage to capture their castle and stop their minions and the Avatars of Gorum.
Now, after I've finished talking with the other players that I could reach, here's what we know in character and out of character about the four bosses.
The first was at least a level 20 evil cleric that wanted us all for slaves. We would have gotten wiped/enslaved had not the Half-Dragon player decided to stuff the Cleric into a bag of holding and rip the bag up. Better to have her stuck, at least temporarily in the Astral Plane, then fight straight out.
The second looks like Franken Fran, who considers a +5 double barrel shotgun with Lucky and Reliable to be a pathetic waste of time to craft.
The third boss, we couldn't see. But we know that he disdains all forms of magic and has an inside voice as loud as a semi-truck's air horn. Also has a code of honor or a blood lust that wants only fresh prey, he was the one that allowed us to teleport out of the castle.
Fourth boss is the straight man in a room full of fools, which is basically the only thing we got from him. We already know that we have to kill him to do any more teleporting within the castle once we return.
Going back to the avatars of Gorum. As nice the thought is of stopping them, we aren't foolish. We have no illusion of being able to do more then add a mar or three onto their armors. They are avatars of the god of battle; even if they have stats, they can not be killed.
Edit in the reply to Voodoohoodoo!
The Dragon Zombie was definitely not mindless before we killed him. Haven't seen any mindless undead in the castle at all. But perhaps a small list of what we have encountered would help?
Encountered outside of the castle, guarding or patrolling: Elder Black Zombie Dragon (killed), Minotaur wall guards, Adult Black Zombie Dragons, Half-Dragon (Black) humans, vampire fighters, lich magi, lizardfolk.
Encountered within the castle: Fungi plants, bottomless holes, shotgun traps, Wrights, Dhampir, corrupted Aasimar, vampires, a Death/a Reaper, and the bosses.
And about positive Energy... we don't know! Ran out of positive energy sources after nearly getting wiped.
Plot... armor? No. They're all killable. As I've stated several times, we teleported out as we ran out of resources. And this thread was for spells, items, and what not that we could use.
So thank you all, for your suggestions.