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You know, I've been giving it some serious thought, and while I love how deadly the Dragon Disciple Ileosa is, the Caster version has a lot on her side. Between her spells and minions, she can cover a lot of basis. Damage, status effects, control, etc, while the DD Ileosa focuses a lot more on just straight damage. I'm definitely going to have to keep the Bard/DD combo in mind for a PC or Villain in the future though, that combo is fantastic.
Yeah, the more we discuss it I think the caster Ileosa is a better opponent to throw at the party. While the DD is extremely cool, there's just more versatility to the caster.
I have this mental picture in my head of the first couple rounds of Combat, Ileosa stays in her blob of blood, casting spells from within, before emerging a couple of rounds later (after a few mooks have perished). While in the blood, she can't be targeted and is effectively invulnerable, but the blob takes on the appearance of her face. Almost like a video game boss fight that happens in stages.
Hmm, that is a thought. Maybe if she takes too much damage, she retreats to her blood blob, uses the Fast healing to recover, before emerging again?
That's an excellent idea and I'm totally stealing that for my group. To take it a bit further, you could even run the battle like, as you put it, a video game boss in stages. The first stage is dealing with Ileosa in the Everdawn pool: this is mostly sending her minions at the party and Ileosa's face in the pool tossing a few buffs or battlefield control spells/bardic performance. The second stage she emerges as the caster Ileosa to confront the party. The third and final stage has her retreat into the Everdawn Pool to recover, where she undergoes a transformation and the Kazavon part of her becomes much more prominent. She then emerges from the pool as the DD Ileosa for her last stand. That might be a little too radical for what you had in mind and the DD would probably need to be bumped down a notch in power, but it does let you have the best of both worlds.
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That's an excellent idea and I'm totally stealing that for my group. To take it a bit further, you could even run the battle like, as you put it, a video game boss in stages. The first stage is dealing with Ileosa in the Everdawn pool: this is mostly sending her minions at the party and Ileosa's face in the pool tossing a few buffs or battlefield control spells/bardic performance. The second stage she emerges as the caster Ileosa to confront the party. The third and final stage has her retreat into the Everdawn Pool to recover, where she undergoes a transformation and the Kazavon part of her becomes much more prominent. She then emerges from the pool as the DD Ileosa for her last stand. That might be a little too radical for what you had in mind and the DD would probably need to be bumped down a notch in...
That's FANTASTIC! What I think I'll do, is introduce the DD Ileosa pre-buffs as, at that point, she won't have the ~minute or so needed to get her full buffs going. Plus, she should be sufficiently de-buffed (damage wise) to pose a threat, but not risk a TPK, but I may debuff her a little more.
The Blood could partially re-charge her spell list (just enough to pull off some combos, like the Bladed Dash), as Kazavon's energies altered them into what the DD knows.
I'm thinking, with Caster Ileosa's fall, the Crown of Fangs will begin glowing in an ominous blue light. The Blood will briefly form the Kazavon's head, claws and wings, as a claw reaches forward, grasps Ileosa in his claw, and brings her back, swallowing her. She is drawn back into the Blood, where lightning flashes, illuminating the silhouette of Ileosa as she writhes and twitches, transforming into the Dragon Disciple. During the transformation, the Blood also flashes to her face, screaming and clenching in pain. She emerges, bestial, and furious (I might give her the Blood Rage spell here, to fit the theme), focusing her hatred on the party, and combat begins again.
When she falls the second time, the thing with Kazavon trying to rebirth himself through the Blood will take place. Bonus points! If the party sunders the Crown right then and there, the shards will fly up into the re-forming Kazavon, re-attaching themselves to his mouth, giving him teeth (and hinting as to what is happening).
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Tels and Luz, I can definitely see your ideas working. A fight in three stage, especially with a large group of PCs, sound perfect.
Stage 1: The PCs fight Ileosa's mooks and simulacrums while the real Ileosa is in the pool, invulnerable and casting spells.
Stage 2: Ileosa bursts out of the pool and her caster version confronts the PCs. She might also try to take mental control over some of the PCs, providing her with new defenders.
Stage 3: When she is badly wounded or slain, she reforms in a half-dragon looking dragon disciple version of herself. Depending on how hard the fight has been up to here, you can go for the buffed or pre-buffed version.
These three stages will definitely serve in making this end fight muc more memorable. I like your ideas.
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Having used the Sound Striker archtype on Ileosa for this encounter, I will offer the one downside I found. Every simulacrum firing off ten weird words is a boatload of dice rolling. There is virtually no way to speed this up to a reasonable pace. It was brutally effective, but the game bogged down to a crawl, making it a bit tricky to keep the epic mood going.
I do like the three stage fight idea, though. If I ever run CoCT for a third group I'll probably give that a try.
I am so stealing this three-phase idea.
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Having used the Sound Striker archtype on Ileosa for this encounter, I will offer the one downside I found. Every simulacrum firing off ten weird words is a boatload of dice rolling. There is virtually no way to speed this up to a reasonable pace. It was brutally effective, but the game bogged down to a crawl, making it a bit tricky to keep the epic mood going.
I do like the three stage fight idea, though. If I ever run CoCT for a third group I'll probably give that a try.
I've anticipated the dice problem and I'm either going to use a dice rolling program, just average the damage out, or I'll tell the players to roll their own damage, so we can move on. Not sure which one, but it depends on what's going on around the table. If I don't have access to a computer, I'll either average or have the players roll. If the table is particularly crowded, or the game is going slow that day, I'll average it.
When it comes to attacks that involve saves, such as a poisonous monster with lots of attacks, I just tell my players the DC and tell them to figure out what they need to make it, and then just roll their saves looking for a pass/fail.
So if one person were to be hit with 5 Words, then I'm just going to say, "Hey, you need to make 5 Fortitude saves, the DC is 25, so roll 5 times and tell me which ones you make." Then I move on to the next person.
But, you know, I'm really happy with how this thread turned out. Got some great ideas here, learned a thing or two about bards in the process, and we came up with a fantastic final Boss fight that I hope will be really memorable.
Considering this is the first campaign I've ever GM'd, I'm really excited with how things are going.
That's FANTASTIC! What I think I'll do, is introduce the DD Ileosa pre-buffs as, at that point, she won't have the ~minute or so needed to get her full buffs going. Plus, she should be sufficiently de-buffed (damage wise) to pose a threat, but not risk a TPK, but I may debuff her a little more.
The Blood could partially re-charge her spell list (just enough to pull off some combos, like the Bladed Dash), as Kazavon's energies altered them into what the DD knows.
I'm thinking, with Caster Ileosa's fall, the Crown of Fangs will begin glowing in an ominous blue light. The Blood will briefly form the Kazavon's head, claws and wings, as a claw reaches forward, grasps Ileosa in his claw, and brings her back, swallowing her. She is drawn back into the Blood, where lightning flashes, illuminating the silhouette of Ileosa as she writhes and twitches, transforming into the Dragon Disciple. During the transformation, the Blood also flashes to her face, screaming and clenching in pain. She emerges, bestial, and furious (I might give her the Blood Rage spell here, to fit the theme), focusing her hatred on the party, and combat begins again.
When she falls the second time, the thing with Kazavon trying to rebirth himself through the Blood will take place. Bonus points! If the party sunders the Crown right then and there, the shards will fly up into the re-forming Kazavon, re-attaching themselves to his mouth, giving him teeth (and hinting as to what is happening).
I love this finale. My group is still a long way off (we're midway through book 2) but knowing how this part will go gives me lots of time to prep and foreshadow events for the rest of the campaign. Tels, please post this encounter after your group has played it. I'd really like to hear how it turns out.
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There are some GREAT ideas in this thread - I'm not sure I'm super keen on the 3 stage fight as it DOES remind me too much of a video game boss, which breaks verisimilitude for me.
However, I'm absolutely stealing the idea of having Ileosa transform into a DD version at some point during the battle, though I have some time yet before I need to figure out exactly when. I'm not sure that I want any bard at all to be present anywhere in my game, as I loathe the class (seriously, I'd rather have a gunslinger Ileosa than a bard). By the time this fight will happen I'll have the advanced class guide, and hopefully something there could serve as part 1 of the combat.
Also, Luz, AWESOME idea with the 3 shadow demons - they will certainly be present in my campaign when that battle comes.
Also, I'm looking for less numerous, but stronger, minions to serve Ileosa during the final fight - that is, I want to swap out the simulacrums either with fewer and more powerful simulacrums, or with something else entirely. Suggestions?
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Well, for the stages, it's more just a gimmick to give Ileosa a real chance to be a threat, without bordering on a TPK. I fully expect my players to buff as much as possible before encountering her, and then rushing her with as much damage as possible.
For instance, one of the combos the Mystic Theurge has come up with, is Telekinetic Charge on the Paladin plus using his Rod of Quicken to Quicken a second Telekinetic Charge on the Fighter. Now you've just launched two of the highest DPS characters in the group, into flanking positions, and each gets an immediate attack on Ileosa, followed up with a full attack on their turns.
Then the Archer can take his turn to hit her for ~150 points easy.
Between those three, they can lay down ~400 points of damage on a single target in a single round. With flight being a necessity to traverse the Sunken Queen, even using a method of Flight to avoid the martials isn't likely.
With my group, I kind of need the three stage gimmick in order for her to really even have a chance of hurting the party. It may not be appropriate for other groups, but I've played most of Curse of the Crimson Throne AP with a group size closer to 10 than 5. I love having all my friends around the table, but I have got to say it is a major pain to run encounters that aren't over in the first round or two.
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It may not be appropriate for other groups, but I've played most of Curse of the Crimson Throne AP with a group size closer to 10 than 5.
I... cannot even begin to fathom your pain...
On a more serious note, yeah, I see your point. I'm having trouble with my 4 player group, and we are not even high levels yet (currently level 7). I think instead of having a stage fight I'll have Ileosa be accompanied with a bunch of powerful allies, something similar to the approach the revised RotR AP took with it's final battle.
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We have been playing the revised hard cover of the adventure path since it came out last year, and are now 14th level and in the castle. The PC group has fought their first false illeosa, and are about to face the rest of the castle defenders. After that, they'll be off to face the Queen in their final battles. I've moved the whole end game into the mastaba, because my players are tired of leaving the city.
This thread has been invaluable with ideas for buffing up Ileosa. I'm not sure what I'll end up with. I'm almost certainly going to make the crown intelligent and give it Kazavon's spellcasting. That should level the field a bit.
I have 6 or 7 players who are pretty optimized, so I need to make things tough.
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I'm going to be running Ileosa as a multi-phase battle. First in her bard form, then after her first "death" she'll be possessed completely by the spirit of Kazavon and fight on as a dragonblooded sorcerer, then once they "kill" her again she'll gain the half-dragon template and become an Eldritch Knight. All this time as well until the last round, I'll also use the Intelligent Crown abilities.
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I've moved the whole end game into the mastaba, because my players are tired of leaving the city.
This is the second time I'm running the campaign... and the second time I'll be doing exactly the same thing.
I must admit to being slightly unimpressed the first I ran it. Dragons! Devils! Armies of Adversaries! Boggards!... wait... what?
As for Ileosa, I dropped the two aristocrat levels and made her Bard 20 with the Wit archetype. Partly because Cutting Words is awesome, partly for the ability to guarantee she acts before the PCs and partly because I despise the Versatile Performance class feature. If you want more oomph, I'd suggest the Advanced template and/or a couple of mythic tiers.
Also: My advice is start her in the blood pool, and have her and all the false Ileosa's emerge at the same time, and all with mirror image active.
And if you really want to mess up the PCs day (and Ileosa was "too easy", I'd suggest skipping the 10 round transformation sequence and have Ileosa's corpse and the blood pool immediately transform into Kazavon.
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My idea was to have Kazavon erupt out of the slain body of Ileosa and their fight against him the ultimate encounter of the campaign. Since one of my players is basically playing the reborn soul of one of the original party to contain Kazavon in the first place I think this makes a lot of sense and should bring closure to that character's personal story arc.