So currently our party is 12th level, with one or two being 13th. We will soon, like next session, be facing a frost giant lord (jarl) and his army in his fortress. His fortress will be attacked by our party, while his putreaching lands and borer patrols will be attacked by a group monsters we have a contract with. Combat will take a few week sessions to do in real time. Exploration of fortress will take more time.
What sort of high level items, spells, prep gear would be needed not only for this major coming battle/adventure , but also in general?
We have potions of heal (GM allows any spell to be made into a potion essentially, even above 3rd level), potions of restoration, potion of stoneskin (for the tanks and damage dealers, like my character.
I'm not sure what else to purchase, or custom make, or have spells casted..
I already have tons of items, custom items (one item stacked with another), but I don't think I'll be doing a lot of damage, and survivability will be important.
For my barbarian I have the normal Big 6 items, as well as cloak of displacement lesser, ring of foe focus, jingasa ?..., cap of the freethinker, bracers of vengeance, juggernaut pauldrons and more.
For more damage I have rhinos hide armor for when i charge/pounce, and the bracers for when we face the lord. Money isn't an issue.
Tl;dr: party of 12th level, facing army of frost giants and their lord, most likely a level 18+ boss. Party is primarily optimized already, looking for new/more ideas, items, spells to use for ensuing combat, adventures from now on.
Thanks for the help.
Stoneskin would be useful, as would greater invisibility.
Agreed. Although I think a potn of stoneskin will be much better help than the belt of stoneskin, that only absorbs 100 damage.
Also, is there a better version of stoneskin? Or something that allows stacking of DR?
|
I would go with (as said above) potn of Stoneskin, potn of Fly (because it's hilarious to fight a giant eye to eye), also if you have an alchemist fire bombs will be invaluable along with anything that will stack fire damage ie: wand of vulnerability, wand of fire ball, potn of dragons breath (which is one of my favorites) not to mention wand of cure critical wounds
Frost giant strongholds are likely to have a lot of cold-generating stuff. Make sure, at very least, that your spellcasters cast resist cold on you before combat and before assaulting the fortress.
AC buffs are unlikely to help against giants (who are the quintessential tanks -- high BAB + high Strength + reach), but miss chances would be very good (blur, displacement, mirror image). Freedom of movement is vital to prevent giants from grappling you and then rending you limb from limb like Andre the Giant against a first-grader.
Most cold creatures are vulnerable to fire. Blasting magic might be particularly effective in this case -- a staff of fire, or a wand of fireball or wall of fire or fire shield might be useful, but there are higher-level fire spells available as well. Fire snake, fire storm, even boosting your archer with flame arrow would be worthwhile. Giants have bad Reflex saves and will likely take full damage from all these spells (unless they too have magical protection, in which case make it a point to eliminate their spellcasters.)
But the great weakness of giants is their notoriously bad Will saves. Use charm monster to get some of them on your side (or interrogate them), confusion to turn whole mobs of them against each other, and other high-powered Will save spells to knock them out or drive them crazy.
At high level in general, you need to worry about a number of things you don't at lower levels: chief among them is enemies scrying on you, or engaging in hit-and-run teleport tactics. Detect scrying is good for spellcasters to keep up, as are higher-level protective spells. You need to have some way to deal with regularly teleporting enemies (most mid-level outsiders can teleport at will, for instance, and your foes might summon them up, or have other ways to get them in.) Dimensional anchor will lock down a single one and keep it from getting away, but you might want to think about the implications of lots of teleporters.
Flight is extremely common. If you can't fly yourself -- find some means to get into the air. It's no fun being attacked on the ground by dragon-riding frost giants ;)
Hmm, great ideas so far. We all, more or less have means of flight. However, my barbarian uses one way of flight, while others use their own way, either fly spell, winged boots, so on. Which is the better way for me to have fly continuously, instead of activating it, to spend an action and waste time instead of me pouncing?
Party comp is: my barbarian, alchemist tank, fighter tank, magus, inquisitor, twf rogue, trip monk, wizard, NPC cleric, gunslinger (uses crossbow), typical 2hf fighter. Veteran characters are barbarian and alchemist, everyone else slowly joined over time, so those 2 have loads money compared to others.
Good scouting will let you pick when to activate your flying ability (pre-buffing for the win!). If you have an activation-based ability with short duration, well, use it when you need it. If your scout, or the wizard, can't figure out when you need to, you may be slowed down a bit before delivering loads of damage. That's life.
Looks like you mostly have combat covered, but I'm not really seeing any sneaky characters around. Fortunately giants are not real smart so you may be able to get away with stuff that wouldn't work against drow, demons, or dragons. But going toe-to-toe with giants is playing to their strengths, not yours. See if you can figure out some trips, ambushes, or Cunning Plans to avoid getting exposed to people with huge strength bonuses and Power Attack swinging Large greataxes at you.