Just in case my players happen upon this thread, please look elsewhere.
Would appreciate advice on the balance of an end of game Lich.
So, end of a 2 year campaign coming up, my first campaign GMing, and I decided to go as stereotypical as possible and have a massive undead army type game. They've fought through every challenging encounter (not without casualties along the way) and beaten their way to the lair of the Big Bad, and are currently trying to find their way through a surprisingly effective maze. The problem is I'm not sure if my BBEG falls on the too broken/not powerful enough side of the scale.
It's a Lich, CR of APL + 3, (they're level 9, he's CR 12), necromancer and golemancer type flavour, and I'll be giving him some minions so he's not alone while the party has an NPC support+smashing oriented ally to balance things out, hopefully.
Minor Stuff:
The problem is I like to play hard and fast with the rules, rewarding fun non-standard party tactics but also coming up with fun non-standard enemy tactics (which I feel suits this Lich's title of the Mad Sorcerer [a misnomer, since he's actually a sort of mix of wizard arclord tattooed mystic umbral agent]). It's been very much a rules-lax game, I just don't know how to tell if an encounter is going to be crushing victory, crushing defeat or anything in between.
He rose to power in a magocracy by eliminating all the other magi, experimenting on their corpses and absorbing a fraction of their power (gaining spell like or supernatural abilities reflected via his levels in arclord etc.)
I also have a habit of accidentally breaking my bad guys.
Offence:
Speed 20ft Fly 60ft
Melee: melee touch +6
Ranged: ranged touch +13
I've gone with no save or die spells, most of the damaging options are acidic damage over time type things (10d4 acid every round for 4 rounds, in 1 target, multitarget and single target dazing varieties), then there's cloudkill, widened black tentacles and acid pit for some cc. As well as a fog that sickens and nauseates, haunting mists, and grease for no real reason. Though at this stage most of them fly so I'm thinking that black tentacles will be used to grapple and drag them down into the more lethal ground conditions. I also have hostile juxtaposition and enemy hammer for some hilarity.
My other straight damage type spells all come from his staff (modeled off a staff of fire) with the spells boneshatter, ray of enfeeblement, and a spell which is like a mix between scorching ray and vampiric touch that I'm calling blood siphon. It's also his bonded object, and they've been told that it's of major importance to him as a source of much of his power.
Defence:
AC 31 Touch 19 Flatfoot 23
HP 127
Fort +13, undead
Ref +12, immune to cold, electricity
Will +14, +4 vs channel
His defences are where I think I've gone overboard, since he has a buffed AC of 31 (and through various plot related silliness on the player's part he does know they're coming and most of what they're capable of) as well as having access to some spells he otherwise wouldn't have, like stone shield (reskinned as bone shield), fester, shared sacrifice and the ranger spell protective spirit (in this case a protective shadow). As well as the normal protection from energy, resist energy, fly and improved invisibility. As well as being a lich, with the immunity to cold, electricity, fear aura, paralysis and undead traits that that brings. Though on the other hand the players have discovered all of the lich-related characteristics as well, so should have prepared accordingly? And know that he has a non-standard spell list as well. And are about to enter the part of the dungeon where they can discover at least partially how non-standard it is and can glean what some of his tactics might be.
Special:
Then there are the swift action abilities he has, including transmutation's perfection of self for repeated temporary hit point meatshields and conjuration's swift action teleport, free extend spell to all conjuration creation spells, and cheaper widen spell metamagics, counterspell mastery, and binding trine from tattooed mystic, as well as the ability to disguise his spellcasting to be misidentified.
I don't know, it's been going round and round in my head for ages. Have I gone completely overboard? Or does it just sound like a fun challenge? Or a cakewalk for the party? (Who are a synthesist summoner, a druid, a twf rogue, a blasty oracle and an inquisitor, backed by a rage prophet npc)
I'll likely be going with minor golems and shadows for his backup, so they can avoid most of his AoE cc, as well as illusions, for fun and silliness.
Since they know he's a Lich, I'll be astounded if they don't just hit him with one or two scrolls of Heal and be done with him before he can do anything else. Worse, if the Oracle reaches level 10 and takes Heal as a spell known, he's utterly screwed if he can't control the Oracle. And since they know about his staff, he's very much in danger of having that disarmed or sundered. I would say their advantages outweigh their disadvantages.
Huh, that's a fairly easy effective method haha! However, they only have max 4th level spells available to them, and as far as I know have no scrolls of heal purchased.
But the point is that they know quite a lot about the boss and his abilities, and while they might not yet have such preparatory measures purchased, it is something they could easily do. Additionally, you have a large party going against what amounts to a single threat. He can only take one standard action, one swift action and one move action in a round, and even spending the standard and swift actions on spells and abilities, he is going to have a hard time controlling party members.
If you play fast and loose with the rules, you might consider giving him a means of taking multiple actions in a round, a means of absorbing damage/shunting damage to his minions/avoiding damage all together, and a means of healing himself in an efficient manner that doesn't use his entire turn. Assuming you want an epic encounter and want the boss to stick around for a reasonable challenge, you are going to need to include some DM-BS unless your party is severely under powered and under-prepared.
Personally I would give him a magic item (possibly a property of his staff) that transfers all of the damage he takes to his undead minions and spreads it across all of their health evenly, and allows them to regenerate that damage at a set pace unless they take damage directly. That way the party can't just kill the BBEG and be done with it. They have to fight his pets while he is able to act with impunity for a few rounds to set up his tricks and traps. At the same time, I would give him an item that either casts spells or fires projectiles on his turn (or even throughout the round) to use party resources in order to counter them or heal the damage. It could be a property of his lair like wall sconces/statues that fire beams of negative energy or something like that, or a crown that casts one spell as a free action each turn. Or you could just straight up cheat and give him three extra standard actions on his turn.
You might even have a means of overcoming some of these things that is not readily apparent unless the players look for it. IE, when he takes damage the wound appears but immediately heals again. The players could take some sort of check to notice that a specific statue on the wall now mirrors the wound the boss took, and targeting the statues with a Dispel Magic will negate the effect and allow them to damage the boss.
I like including these kinds of things in encounters that I design because they lend an extra challenge to boss fights, and force players to actually think outside the box in order to overcome them. They also mak the fight more cinematic and epic feeling, and prevent BBEG's from getting 1 shotted by powerful parties, but they don't heinously increase the offensive power of the boss like stacking extra levels on him can do. He can use abilities appropriate to the party level, with DC's appropriate to their level, but he can just use them more often, and has more damage absorbing potential.
Hmm, I really like the idea of the lair itself being a part of the threat, thanks! I think I might implement that statues/sconces idea, or at the very least have them described, and ready to hand wave the threat element into existence if they're needed after the 1st or 2nd round heh. They've practically become used to second guessing everything they see at this point so there's actually a chance that one of them will rush headlong into attacking a statue even without evidence of it's magical nature! >=D
Cool, you've given me some nice stuff to think about, if anyone has any more input I'd love to hear it.
As an aside, when does it stop becoming my responsibility to ensure they have a means of survival?
It is never your responsibility to ensure they have a means for survival. PC's have PLENTY of resources available to them if they choose to seek them out. It is your responsibility to ensure that they are rewarded for doing enough legwork, but it is not your responsibility to hand them everything they need to be successful on a silver platter.
If you use something like the statue/sconce idea, I would not overtly highlight their presence any more than anything else. Just include them in the general description of the room. However, if a player uses Arcane Sight or something like that, they would likely be highlighted as magical objects. Of course, the sconces would likely be lit and a continual flame spell might be enough to throw them off without a good spellcraft check.
Basically, unless your players go above and beyond with their research, they probably will not be keen to every trick the boss has up his sleeve, and that's a good thing. A few surprises here and there are not outside the realm of normality when dealing with a BBEG, and most of them are smart enough to have some kind of backup plan or object of power that they keep as a closely guarded secret. If everything about them is revealed before the fight, it's not very interesting.
If the players are really into the campaign thus far, and enjoy their characters, any final, campaign ending fight had better have great tpk potential or it will feel cheap and unearned. Nothing worth gaining is easy. If the tpk happens, then perhaps some greater power saves them or something like that, or it just ends with the bad guy winning, which can set up a whole new campaign if you choose.
Ok, thanks. Yeah, they got really unlucky with their saves against his initial setting up spells (repulsion, acid pit, aqueous orb, and enemy hammer against the only guy who could approach him) while they dealt with some constructs of his. Then black tentacles, cloudkill and a dazing spell. They got really lucky and inventive and pulled off some great tricks to get out of the cloudkill even despite the black tentacles, finally clued into his illusory statues trick, managed to surround him for long enough to all get stinking clouded with a Contingency, then got really dejected after finding out that he could also go invisible, had swift action teleports, could fly, and worst of all, was a gnome.
All the while I might have been role playing a power-mad megalomaniac a little too well. =D
We had to pack up before finishing the encounter so knowing them they'll come back with a host of interesting tactics to try, but 3 of them are on less than 10 hit points, they're out of all their powerful healing spells, and the lich still has a fair few tricks up his sleeve (especially looking forward to his hostile juxtaposition kicking in at an opportune and hilarious moment)
Very happy that they didn't just cream through him in 2 rounds, but I always wonder if I've been too mean.
