So, I was curious if I'm interpreting this wrong and was wondering if there's another way to look at this.
The Nightmare Rook, while in Nyrissa's realm, is one of the only things that can go above the 200 foot high treetop level.
His spire is a mile high.
His tactics are to use flyby attacks, and retreat to his spire if things aren't going his way.
How can you possibly harm this thing? The players cannot actually follow him above the treetops and his fly speed allows him to go above 200 feet in one round if "running" (sacrifice AC for quad move). A mile high is out of the range of basically all spells as well.
Our GM has been hitting us once, then retreating immediately to safety. Unless we happen to be able to kill him during one flyby attack, which our party make-up is having difficulty doing (Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple, Magus, Cleric, Rogue/Shadowdancer), this seems like he's impossible to damage enough to win.
The GM has given us all of this info, and I don't want any more spoilers to the game, I just want some advice as to what tactics could we possibly employ. Our Magus has almost all of the spells available to him, but the Sorcerer is missing any form of paralysis/staggered spells due to saves being too easy to pass.
Try tanglefoot bags, nets, and other things that make flying difficult. I forget how big he is since I don't have my books on-hand, but if you can ground him you can take him out.
Seems you need to keep it from staying in the air, or getting back into the air once it lands.
What about a very big air elemental to keep it form flying up?
Wall of force/forcecage?
How about a harpoon gun with a fast acting grappling cable atached to a harness? Outfit everyone with these and latch on, then ride him bak to his roost?
If you could fashion a way to attach metal to it, and then get above it, you could use repel metal to ground it.
Failing all that, just place a shiny bauble on the ground, and use wish to prevent it from moving. the Rook should see it, investigate, and then become overwhelmed with the urge to steal it -- but it cant b/c the shiny can't move!
It's Colossal, so that's a no-go on the tanglefoot bags. A net MIGHT work, but I'll have to see if our GM will allow it, since he's very likely to claim that a net wouldn't cover a Colossal creature unless we get some form of over-sized net. This could possibly work, I'll ask my GM how he feels about nets and Colossal creatures. It can certainly break it using the full-round action, but that still buys us the round we need.
The Cleric can summon Elder Air Elementals, but the only thing that would ground it is Whirlwind attack, and the Rook has a 75% of not getting caught in it.
We do not have Wish or Forcecage. The Magus can cast Wall of Force, which could give us a 150 foot square wall. It's possible this would confuse the rook long enough, but with his movement speed it's also possible that he could just fly straight sideways and escape (it doesn't land as it focuses on Flyby Attack)... IF he figures out what just happened to him. This idea has potential. One or two extra rounds and we may be able to kill it, and this might buy us one round.
As for grappling cables or hanging on, I believe our GM's impression is that only things it desires can accompany it above the treetops. So the magic of Nyrissa's realm will probably just make our ropes look infinitely long while we still can't reach it.
Did they change TFB so they wouldn't work on larger critters? I remember them being used as the go-to way of grounding even the biggest dragons back in 3.5.
Particularly:
A tanglefoot bag is a small sack filled with tar, resin, and other sticky substances. When you throw a tanglefoot bag at a creature (as a ranged touch attack with a range increment of 10 feet), the bag comes apart and goo bursts out, entangling the target and then becoming tough and resilient upon exposure to air. An entangled creature takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls and a –4 penalty to Dexterity and must make a DC 15 Reflex save or be glued to the floor, unable to move. Even on a successful save, it can move only at half speed. Huge or larger creatures are unaffected by a tanglefoot bag. A flying creature is not stuck to the floor, but it must make a DC 15 Reflex save or be unable to fly (assuming it uses its wings to fly) and fall to the ground. A tanglefoot bag does not function underwater.
Hm. Sounds like your GM isn't interested in you 'defeating' this thing. Perhaps an option that prevents it from accessing you? Can you use some sort of obfuscation to prevent it from seeing you? Or come up with a way to avoid it? Run into a densly forsted area when it's near? Have potions of fly ready in case it wants to fly up and drop you?
Question: Is wall of force something that can be seen, or does it work more like an invisible force field? If the latter, how about settign up a wall of force in the critter's path, such that it kareens into it, knocking it out? We've always run that walls of force are invisible, thus something like what I'm suggesting would work. However, other GMs may not agree. (Btw, I am a gm and support all of these ideas as potential ways to address this problem -- I'm sure my own players will come up with even more clever ways to handle the big birdie.)
I'm not sure how helpful this is, but you linked the stat line so this hopefully isn't spoiler-y.
Is it possible for you just to weather the creature's attacks and chase it back to its perch to fight it there where it has nowhere to run to? You can't fly above the treeline, but maybe you're allowed to climb the spire it lives on? Yes a mile high spire is a fair ways to climb while being attacked by a big angry bird but...
Particularly:
A tanglefoot bag is a small sack filled with tar, resin, and other sticky substances. When you throw a tanglefoot bag at a creature (as a ranged touch attack with a range increment of 10 feet), the bag comes apart and goo bursts out, entangling the target and then becoming tough and resilient upon exposure to air. An entangled creature takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls and a –4 penalty to Dexterity and must make a DC 15 Reflex save or be glued to the floor, unable to move. Even on a successful save, it can move only at half speed. Huge or larger creatures are unaffected by a tanglefoot bag. A flying creature is not stuck to the floor, but it must make a DC 15 Reflex save or be unable to fly (assuming it uses its wings to fly) and fall to the ground. A tanglefoot bag does not function underwater.
Well. That certainly nerfs what used to be one of the more useful items. Still great for smaller critters but....
But yeah. Really big net would still work, as would a wall of force set up like a Windexed glass panel. In theory anyway.
Jabberywonky >> Our GM isn't interested in us defeating ANYTHING. :) He has a habit of making things more difficult than they're supposed to be by bending the rules in favor of monsters. Not very classy, but it's what we got.
Although, in Nyrissa's realm, the densely forested area is off-limits. It's a magical barrier of sorts. Nobody can truly traverse it. We HAVE been using the Fly spell, but that's why it can't kill us either. It hasn't helped us much in killing it since anything above 200 feet is inaccessible to players.
I will add though that it's quite easy to bypass. We want it dead. It's making rest difficult (Nightmare Rook), plus defeating Nyrissa's champions seems to help out our cause in some way that we don't fully understand yet. Two birds with one stone (pun intended).
Wall of Force is invisible, and I was thinking that very thing. It loves Flyby Attack, and a readied action to throw it directly in it's path would certainly make things slide in our favor. It would buy us a round I bet, and possibly the Magus can toss another Wall of Force directly above it's head on his next turn and really confuse it.
Once, it used another tactic just to toy with us. It literally flew directly above us and divebombed/sat on us before flying away. I'm fairly certain it was just showing off. It decided to take the 200 foot falling damage just so that it could do the same to our group before being out of reach next round. If it gets cocky and tries this again, Wall of Force could be slightly more amusing.
As to your players Jabberwonky, if they have a Wizard or other form of direct caster, they probably have a lot more options. I hope your encounter ends up enjoyable!
Balfuset: I'm fairly certain our GM wouldn't let us do that. He removes a lot of options that help us win if there's even a remote argument chance that it makes even a fraction of logical sense. Nyrissa's realm says we can't go above the tree-line, he'll take that to the extreme I'm sure.
In this case, I think it's not the DM making things more difficult than it should be. Rather, he's making it slightly easy on you: According to its tactics write-up, the Nightmare Rook should use flyby to snatch someone up and then drop them from height into another monster-laden area :)
Readied wall of force to force the Nightmare Rook into close-combat should work, although the Rook isn't exactly an easy close-combat encounter either.
Nyrissa's realm says we can't go above the tree-line, he'll take that to the extreme I'm sure.
It doesn't though. It says that anyone trying to fly always has 200ft trees above them. Technically you can climb the spire
I've been getting the impression due to the "Morale" section that the inaccessibility of the spire is being overstated by him. Also, the treeline reference for the drop make me think that the height restriction isn't there in the glades, but that's how I'm reading it.
You are right though, his tactics are sound. I'm just making it clear that if there's any "this COULD work" argument, I know my GM. He'll say no. We've gotten quite used to being told that nothing works. Mostly, he's never run a pre-made campaign before and he's struggling with allowing creativity in a plot that he's uncomfortable changing. If he invented this campaign, creativity would be much more rewarded. As it stands, if a book doesn't specifically say something helps us, then we can't do it.
He wouldn't even let us drop a flask of acid while flying because there's no attack roll. It was "glued to our hands".
As for close combat, I could solo this thing. My character is the Dragon Disciple and I could take him down in two rounds alone. Actually, I did that against the Frost Giant boss which made our GM flip out. :)
Nyrissa's realm says we can't go above the tree-line, he'll take that to the extreme I'm sure.It doesn't though. It says that anyone trying to fly always has 200ft trees above them. Technically you can climb the spire
** spoiler omitted **
If it says you always have 200 ft of trees above you, that sounds to me like ther is not a ceiling. The trees just keep growing, as high as you fly.
Thus, if you fly up 2 miles, the trees are 2 miles + 200' height.
Sounds to me like you should be able to fly up to it's roost, should you want to, or just fight it in mid air.
This may be your solution due to wording. Loophole? I can't say as I havent read the encounter, but....
I dont recall that being a very tough fight
Jabberwonky>> Oh, I agree that it seems a little flakey that we can't reach him, but the GM made his call and unfortunately there's no changing it. He will not allow us to go higher than 200 feet. At this point, I suppose it's irrelevant if he's mistaken, because this is the hand I must work with. He won't change his mind I'm sure.
We would fight it in mid-air, but it retreats to the inaccessible area after one round regardless. With a fly speed of 80 (perfect), one round of quad-move running puts him above the 200 foot restriction to follow. If we could fight it for longer than one round we'd already have won this fight.
So far, the Wall of Force sounds like the best tactic to use under these particular restrictions.
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So far, the Wall of Force sounds like the best tactic to use under these particular restrictions.
Like a sparrow hitting a window. Good luck with it! May you feast on giant crow drumsticks for many days!
By the way, I'll let you guys know how this pans out. We may not even fight the Rook again this upcoming Sunday, as the party decided to go wander over and mess up those purple worms instead.
We'll get back to the Rook for certain though, and I'll let those of you who graced me with advice some follow-up!
Speaking of which, thanks to all who participated!