Well, we finished the Ivory Sanctum, most of it. It was a disaster. I used the written stat blocks posted in the AP, except for Jerribeth and Xanthir.
They approached the door at the end of the valley (Q1) and destroyed the basilisks with a fireball. The other creatures ran for the hills. Thankfully, that alerted the entire complex of their arrival. Players fought the minotaurs through the illusionary wall. They had trouble with this because I forgot to ask for a will save to disbelieve. By round 4 someone asked, and it got easier: My fault. Wizard launched another fireball killing the two minotaurs they were fighting and two they didn’t even see. Players took some decent damage, but nothing too serious.
Jerribeth was waiting just outside of her hall and whispered the players to follow her, they hesitated. She told them to quick move to her room to discuss their plans before they entire complex is mobilized. They were very cautious here, which I normally wouldn’t blame them for if they hadn’t already dropped 2 fireballs and 4 rounds of loud combat.
I had Jerribeth telepathically tell the other members of the sanctum it was her, and to not be alerted. This gave the PC’s time to speak out their plans. Jerribeth wanted the PC’s to kill Xanthir and they agreed, but with the caveat of putting on the rings. They refused, a philosophically debate (in character, it was pretty good) went back and forth with Jerribeth until she gave up and just attacked. The monk almost went down and by the end of round one, it was obvious Jerribeth was too powerful. I quickly reverted her to the book stats and we fought for 2 more rounds. They players conceded she was more powerful and talked her down. They all put the rings on. They refused the wish.
Jerribeth lead the party to the room just outside of the guard room for Xanthir’s chamber. They plotted and made final deals with Jerribeth: she would hold back the Templars and kill the blackfire adepts (she was lying) and they would kill Xanthir. Once the players have a firm upper hand, or if she thinks helping will kill Xanthir quickly, she will help.
This is the situation that is much bleaker than appears. They PC’s have only killed 4 minotaurs and are now deep in the Ivory Sanctum. To make matters worse, I placed a sitewide unhallow with a dimensional lock to block any teleportation except for CE creatures. I did this do to a side story, the PC’s went to the Ivory Sanctum once before and Xanthir now wanted to block the PC’s from entering again.
The PC’s fought the locusts (again, no mods) and one NPC – he was pretty weak and did virtually no damage to the party. When they entered Xanthir’s room, he had caste two summoning spells, 4 babau and 1 shadow demon. A cloudkill spell dropped as well making the battle tight.
A few more summons and the players were hurting. Xanthir just started teleporting around and eventually stopped summoning. After 4 hours and 23 rounds of combat, I had Xanthir put the fright into Jerribeth since he knows that she betrayed him and he left the Sanctum. In a mad dash she attacked the PC’s trying to finish them. They eventually put her down by me using subpar tactics.
The player playing the wizard felt the adjustments and accepted they should have died. Especially if I had Jerribeth order the Templars to fight and bring in the blackfire adepts.
Uniformly, everyone agreed they hated mythic and we have decided to completely remove it from the game. Now, I believe these loses have more to do with their choices than mythic, but it seems the added options and complexity is making my players less effective. We will continue to run the AP without mythic. I will adjust accordingly and we will get back to having fun.
This AP… as another thread stated, is a complete failure in my book and I am disappointed I will have to rewrite it to make it work. I am used to homebrew settings, so this will not be too hard, but I am not going to waste my time any longer trying to get this AP to work as written.
I am surprised to hear that response to the mythic rules. I would also suggest scrapping the entire AP. I can't imagine your PCs becoming more powerful without mythic powers.
How's it going in your campaign, Scorpion? I fear your statblocks are not holding up anymore in my campaign, where with tier six the martials have begone doing ridiculous damage (with Critical Master), upgrading themselves from "ridiculous damage without the italics". :p
The Paladin just pulled two times 508 damage on The Defiled One and then Melazmera, while the Samurai only did some 400-something damage on Kestoglyr. ^^
Well, they will be much weaker than their mythic counterparts, but they have accepted that. I will redesign the AP to allow them to still experience the story and combats of the appropriate calibre that stays in the spirit of what the AP is shooting for.
They probably will not fight demon lords, but they will still have a chance to close the worldwound portal and have fun doing it. I'll keep giving them the wealth the AP has in it, which will give then more power than a typical PC.
They really don't want to scrap the whole adventure, but they are tired of the complex action economies due to mythic. It will be simple and fun.
@Globetrotter,
I hope your modification works in the end. I suggest removing the mythic powers from the enemies, so your players can deal with them more easily, but I fear it will be a lot of work. If you compile a document with non-mythic statblocks, be sure to share it! I think a lot of DMs out there would like to play this campaign without the mythic rules.
@magnuskn,
We are still in the fight with Ibaheniel, since we haven't played since I wrote about that encounter. We'll see, but I don't think I'll have the same problems as you, given that my players don't have the same path abilities as your group, and I only have four players :-)
@Caius,
Good to hear! If you want, I would like to hear how the combat went.
Well, I hope your players won't start doing more than 500 damage on a crit, like the Paladin did yesterday. Twice. ^^
I created an action economy tracker that my players really liked that helped keep their abilities in check. I would love to share that, but sadly, I have no idea how.
Care to teach a n00b?
I used the stats for Skulgrym today , I gave him 2 Advanced Bodak's and a pair of fallen crusaders.
Party was Level 9/tier 3 Dwarf Ranger Shield and Axe Guardian, Tiefling two handed sword Paladin, Elf Two weapon Ninja, Elf Wizard, Tiefling Monk/Paladin.
The fight started with the 2 Bodaks using Deaqth gaze on the Paladin (I for some reason thought Skulgrym could only use his once) and Skulgrum casting Enevervation on the Paladin (I forgot it was quickened, sigh) Paladin down 7 Levels.
First the Wizard cast Haste
The Monk and the Ninja used fleet warrior charged forward and cut a Bodak to pieces, a lot of overkill but the ninja could not hit anyone else. The Paladin fleet warrior charged forward and maimed the other Bodak, then the bad guys had a turn. Skulgrym Deathgazed the ninja and hit him with his parasitic link , sadly the ninja made both saves and only took 1 negative level and again I forgot the quickened Enervation or the Paladin would have taken it. The surviving Bodak death gazed the Paladin for 1 negative level just missing dropping him.
The ranger sent his Badger forward with mythic power and it shredded the Bodak (who only had 9 hp left). He charged forward and hit Skulgrum losing a lot of strength to the Unholy aura.
Starting the next round the Wizard hot Skulgrym with an enervation which bounced of SR and would have had no effect anyway.
Everyone laid into Skulgrym who was down to 1 hp by his turn, he chose to teleport out and got hit by the Paladins teleport blocking aura which failed to stop him but did enough damage so he arrived at his destination with -27 hp.
The party felt badly hurt , although they were able to recover all the negative levels and strength damage. Skulgrym will return.
Comparing this version to the book version , I think he would have died a lot faster instead of scaring the crap out of the pc's
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My players are going after Minagho with Nezzurius's help tonight. I decided that she's got a penthouse in the city, and I want to contain it to one fight rather than her hanging out in a complex or something. To this end, I'm trying to figure out a combat scenario that will be challenging to my party with Nezzurius present without overdoing it and killing them.
I'm using Scorpion's upgraded stat blocks.
My party is:
Paladin, guardian/marshal; relentless healing, oath against fiends. She's got good AC, nightmarishly high while smiting, and lots and lots of healing.
Note, that the Smite bonus to AC is deflection and doesn't stack with other deflection bonuses. Also, it's only against their Smite target.
Magus, archmage/trickster; he's got mirror dodge along with the player is a munchkin, plus (recently) the highest AC in the party. He will be a genuine problem.
Unhallow with Dimensional Anchor for all non CE people.
Fighter, champion/guardian; this player plays a troxx (the only large-sized race players can be), and hits like a freight train. Also has a ring of blinking, so anything without true seeing has a 50% chance to miss her. It's very, very annoying.
Mingaho should have True Seeing already.
Oracle, heirophant; loves mythic holy smite, holy word, all of that stuff. He's also got reflexive counterspell, which is one of the most BS and broken things in mythic if you ask me.
Do note two things. One, Reflexive Counterspell is an immediate action. Two, SLAs CANNOT BE COUNTERED. Second paragraph, last sentence.
Gunslinger, trickster/champion; he's got all kinds of silly things that he can accomplish with his gunshots. He can ricochet bullets around corners and off of flat surfaces, and shoot in a line and curve it. Also pretty much never misses due to almost limitless range.
I truly dislike gunslingers, so I don't have much to help on this one.
Any ideas of what I can give Minagho so they don't just curb stomp this whole encounter?
Minions and anything to give her extra action economy. You've got five players with at least one NPC and a hilarious amount of action economy on their side. If you don't balance it out, she'll be a throw away fight. Have Nezz playing both sides to weaken them both. Minagho knows they're coming and is already waiting with a Projected Image and a few Balors or your choice of nastiness.
Is Scorpion even GM'ing the AP anymore? He hasn't said anything in weeks.
Yeah, I'm still here, and GM'ing the AP :-)
Unfortunately these days I don't have much time to post or even read the boards. I still check out this thread several times a week.
We have resumed our game, and right now the party has attracted Nocticula's attention.
They closed the portal after defeating Ibaheniel, and hired Nezirrius to help them kill Minagho. With his help, Minagho was caught unaware and easilly killed. AFter that, they discussed how to get an audience with Nocticula. The first option was to fight Gelderfang at the arena.
Since they were on "good terms" with a powerful glabrezu merchant, they tried to bypass the previous rounds (combats with Nocticula's minions from The Moonscar), and that took one day.
In the meantime, they secured a meeting with Shamira. The negotiation didn't go well, and of course a fight started. I gave the party only a few rounds before Shamira realized she was in trouble and called a huge mob of demons into the room to defend her.
Although Shamira is a high-CR enemy, she's not that difficult to use. She started with a time stop, and since the duration isn't fixed, per the standard rules, the caster doesn't know how many rounds she has before the spell expires (a player rolled the rounds for me). The first thing she did was summon a balor, and then she placed two delayed blast fireballs. It didn't matter in the end, because the players spotted them and moved away.
The balor casted implosion and killed the sorceress.
The inquisitor moved towards Shamira and full-attacked, taking fire damage even with resist energy (fire) on.
The paladin charged the balor, who failed the concentration, thus ending the implosion spell.
The cleric and Arueshalae focused on bringing back the sorceress.
The balor knocked the paladin prone with quickened telekinesis, and full-attacked. I never rolled over a 3... sigh
The inquisitor took heavy damage from Shamira's arrows (although I never rolled a critical, that would've been nice) and full-attacked again, the fire damage almost taking him down to negatives.
The cleric healed the party members (mythic heal is awesome).
At this point I expected to cast meteor swarm since the inquisitor, the cleric, the sorceress and Arueshalae were in a nice close formation, but...
The sorceress decided to cast a mythic disintegrate on Shamira, spending additional mythic power to make it potent and automatically empowering it with Arcane Metamastery (previously casted). She also quickened true strike to ensure a hit.
She made the attack roll and of course hit Shamira. she passed the SR check by one only. Then I rolled the Fortitude save. I think Shamira only needed to roll a low, single-digit number to make the save. I remember she failed by 1.
Damage was rolled, and it was impressive. After that, the inquisitor made another full-attack and killed the nascent demon lord succubus before she could flee on her next turn.
Of course after killing her they got Nocticula's message granting them an audience.
It was an intense battle, and I was happy to see the players take down a powerful foe. The ability to overcome fire resistance was very important to challenge the players.
@Globetrotter,
To share my document I used GoogleDrive. I'ts easy to use so maybe you should give it a try.
@JohnHawkins,
Did you use the map as presented in the adventure? It's a huge advantage for the players if Skullgrym cannot fly and maintain range while firing enervations and making flyby attacks.
Otherwise it looks like you had a good combat! Thanks for your kind words.
@RanisTheSlayer,
I think Lochar's suggestions are top-notch. You seem to have an optimized party in your hands, so you better prepare some additional foes to throw at them.
I once though about a second assassin that Minagho may hire against the PCs: a gunslinger Pale Stranger. Obviously you allow firearms in your game so It shouldn't be a problem.
@Runner,
Thank you! Please share your combats with us if you have time, I enjoy reading other GM's experiences with the statblocks.
I did use the published map so Skulgrym could not avoid melee easily, I think If I had used open terrain allowing him to fly and control the range I could have managed a TPK.
When he comes back for revenge the terrain may be more favorable to him, of course by then my players may have found a way to cast death ward as npc's using enervation are very dangerous to them.
They will probably encounter the revised Vrock's next week which should keep them busy
Huh, I am not sure if even my players could have taken down Shamira, given how she had some really nice abilities... but I am probably not giving them enough credit at the moment. I probably would have used Meteor Swarm as my first action after Time Stop and have had Shamira flying high above the party. Her ignoring opponents resistances would probably have made quite a difference with that (normally pretty bad for a ninth level spell) ability.
Anyway, I am quite ahead in the campaign, it seems, I already am at least one third into Herald after one session.
My PCs were much more controllable and I think that she probably could have defeated them in one round. Time stop, plus balor, plus 1-3 delayed blast fireballs for full damage should do the job.
@JohnHawkins,
Good luck with the vrock encounter. I look forward to your report on that battle. Mine was very short but bloody, with a player falling on the lava and all that (good times!)
@magnuskn,
I think your party would have dealt with her with no problems, maybe a death or two. With six players, a lonely monster usually is an easy prey. One crit, and she would have exploded :-)
She was flying the entire combat, but the inquisitor flew too and focused on her (as he should do). I reeeeally wanted to use the meteor swarm (I like the spell even if it's usually considered subpar), but the party was smart and stayed apart from each other for most of the combat :-(
@Seannoss,
I tried to control them by attacking with both Shamira and the balor. He did a good job with the sorceress, but completely failed me when fighting the paladin. If I remember correctly, every time I have used a vorpal effect as a GM, I have managed to score a crit and "vorpalize" a player.
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Thanks for the hard work on this document. I have found it a very helpful resource for my current Wrath Game (they are currently in book 4). I Converted the word document to PDF and added bookmarks to help find things more efficiently. The document can be found here.
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This thursday my players took on Vorminak and his legion of Vrocks.
They were at Dreznan when the Paladin and the monk got visions of him carrying out the ritual upon some orphans who had been kidnapped from the orphanage they grew up in.
Part decided on a rapid attack , but took the time for the wizard to prepare teleport and buying 2 scrolls of teleport. They used share memory and scry on an orphan to look at the target area and then The PC Wizard teleported in with Paladin, Monk and Dwarf Ranger (and his trusty badger), Aravashniel teleported the ninja, Irabeth and Joren Vhane (captured at Dreznan and converted by the Paladin to worship Iomedea) before teleporting they cast all their buff's and got npc casters at Dreznan to augment.
The Paladina and the monk had freedom of movement and Air Walk, the wizard had mirror image up , the whole party had bless, Haste, blessing of fervor and protection from Electricity.
The first group teleported in , and faced 3 Vrocks and Vorminak noticeably they were missing the second group
Back at the lave rift the demons were surprised, and both sides rolled initiative the demons all lost.
A phantasmal web took down 2 Vrocks and everyone else used fleet warrior to close on Vorminak, hitting him several times with smite evil he used Block attacks to parry some of the Paladins attacks but still took 200 odd hp of damage (Paladin smite only halved his Epic DR, and I doubled his hp). The badger using mythic power moved up and coup de graced a webbed Vrock .
Vorminak then acted twice (I have him 2 actions a turn at initiative and initiative -10) He spored (all saves made), Screeched (all saves made although 1 mythic power was used) , mirror imaged, and then full attacked the paladin (getting 1 hit his die rolling was rubbish all fight)
The next round the Monk and the Ranger attacked first hping to drop some of the mirror images takign down several and doing some damage, the mythic mirror image blinded the Vrock. The Paladin attacked and was parried but still managed one hit despite the blocks and mirror images , the Badger despatched the other webbed vrock and the wizaard dismissed the remaining Vrock.
Group 2 teleported in.
2 more vrocks swooped down one landing by the wizard and the other by the Paladin, lighting from dancing vrocks hit the group around vorminak but saves and protection from lightning made that pointless. Vorminak full attacked the paladin twice(hitting 3 times with 10 attacks he need 8 or more to hit)
Round 3 the TWF minja runs up behind Vorminak and tries to ginsu him (6 sneak attacks with demon bane swords)some are parried some hit mirror images, the blind monk attacks and still lands 2 blows on him, the ranger takes out most of the rest of his images, the Paladin hits him 3 times (he is now on 8 hp) the wizard dimension anchors him. Irabeth runs over and attacks the Vrock next to the wizard, Josen Vhane runs up and heals the Paladin with a cure serious wounds.
Vorminak decides to seek new pastures and takes a withdraw action and then continues to fly away , his 2 vrock minions grapple the monk and the Paldin having seen they can fly. Both grapple rolls work normally the monk would procede to demonstrate to the vrock why this was a bad idea instead she just walks away as does the Paladin both charge after Vorminak , the Paladin crits him for 70 points and he explodes (they took Attacks of opportunity from the vrocks both missed and the monk panther style kicked one of the vrocks in the face for good measure)
The remaining 2 vrocks die at the hands of the Ranger, Irabeth , the Badger and the Ginsu ninja (6 hits 48 d6 +72 damage).
Vorminak did much better than the book version, I should have added some more vrock but they were largely speedbumps and had a lightning blast every round , mythic mirror image worked well for himand with decent dice rolls he would have hurt the Paladin bad, however bad dice rolls and lay on hands plus the cleric made the damage negligible
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My group will be stumbling into the Woundwyrm's Lair tonight. I am using the upgraded encounter and they continue to ignore the devastation of the area (I describe the Worldwound as covered in black, oily sand with disturbingly flesh-like plants growing vine or vein-like across it's surface. Occasionally sickly animals will be spotted or diseased looking plants. For ever hex marked as the wyrm's territory, it's glassed smooth and acid etched stone, no life and strong ammonia smells), so they are not as prepared for a dragon fight as they usually are. I've given them plenty of warnings (a fly-by with the wyrm carrying a large demon carcass in its jaws, a massacre site where a caravan was ripped to shreds and everything is melted and a slain patrol with a lot of twisted and broken obsidian statue-limbs), so this one's on them. Plus, if we TPK, I have Iron Gods all prepped with an Obsidian Portal wiki.
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It's about time for a new update.
Since a lot has passed since I last posted, I'll keep it as brief as possible.
- The combat against Gelderfang was fast. Four players were allowed in the arena (no Arueshalae), combat started and our four-armed friend brought one of the front-liners (either the paladin or the inquisitor) almost into the negatives. Then the paladin used smite and proceeded to crit poor Gelderfang twice in a row. The rest of the party ended him fast. Well, it's not what I expected but he scared the players with the damage he did.
Just so you know, I had other encounters prepared from the Moonscar module, but the players got the option to pay a friendly glabrezu merchant they met to bypass them and go directly against the champion.
- After meeting with nocticula, they fought the flayed angel and the abyssal harvester. I increased the harvester's reach to 60' ft., so it could reach the characters more easily. The angel rolled good damage, and lasted for 2 rounds. After the angel died, the tentacles retreated inside the qlippoth runestone.
- They bypassed the barge, using wind walk to reach the entrance to the mine fast. Since hepzamirah knew about the players killing Shamira, she increased her security detail and the complex was on alert. The metal gates had a balor instead of those useless cultists and hezrous. The demon spotted them from afar and teleported to warn Hepzamirah.
I couldn't use the fulsome queen because the players entered the cave, and the inquisitor went down flying, scouting ahead of the group. He descended invisible to the second level and hid inside the small passage to the right of the map. He heard a balor talking to the other demons, but couldn't understand what he was saying. Back at the top of the cavern, the balor appeared along with another balor buddy. Combat started, and one of the balors had to teleport to safety to remove the stone from his body (mythic flesh to stone) and then went back. On the second round I rolled and Melazmera returned to the cave, and the players got serious. The paladin went toe to toe with the dragon, doing some damage. The dragon did a lot of damage in return. Then the sorceress casted a mythic (not sure if augmented) empowered channel power maximized fireball, vaporizing poor Melazmera. It was awesome.
Then, the paladin asked Nocticula for help. Yeah, the paladin. I asked thrice if it was a formal request. He said yes, not expecting what was going to happen (I facepalmed). Basically what happened is Nocticula appeared in the form of a cloud of bats and proceeded to kill everything in the mines in the most gory way. She finally appeared in the caver, holding a near-dead Hepzamirah. She threw Baphomet's daughter at the paladin's feet and then shot her in the head with the crossbow. Player's jaws dropped. She disappears...
And then Baphomet appears. He gives his speech, blablabla, and then Nocti proceeds to kill him with style. After that she teleports bringing the paladin with her...
While the paladin was having the night of his life, the rest of the party searched the caves and divined about what was going to happen to his friend. I'm not going to detail everything that happened because that could take ages, but I can tell you that the paladin was tricked by nocticula into believing that he had lost his connection to Sarenrae and got the lady in shadows' mark. In the end, he was restored and got rid of the mark. This was resolved at the beginning of Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth. We had a lot of fun as a group with the situation, and quite a lot of awesome roleplaying moments :-)
So then we started Herald, with the encounter with Iomedae, wich went surprisingly well. I changed a bit the encounter and the players really enjoyed it, and were eager to answer the questions. They got all the gifts, and after they were sent back to Drezen, the Inquisitor used the special atonement of his goddess to help the paladin clean his soul.
I have changed the setup in a lot of the encounters in this module. As written, it seems that Baphomet isn't that interested in stopping the PCs. Not in my game. He will use all his resources to crush them, and if they fight him at the end I'll use every trick at his disposal (including using his awesome scroll mastery) to obliterate them.
So for the first encounter I used Odeenka, one baphomet golem and two balors. The players were defeated, and had to plane shift using the stole of the inheritor. To sum it up, Arueshalae got turned to stone by Odeenka, the paladin was killed by Odeenka after she used smite good, and the cleric/inquisitor fell to the golem's mighty blows. The balor's death throes did a lot of damage in this combat due to the player's failing the saving throws.
After licking their wounds, they plane shifted back to the ivory labyrinth, and had another combat. This one included one balor, one baphomet golem and two labyrinth minotaurs. The balor teleported away to warn Odeenka, and got back to the combat with her and a second balor. This time the group had better luck and used a better strategy, although the cleric turned into a nice statue. Odeenka fled after getting fireballed almost to the death, one balor died, the other fled after suffering grievous wounds and the minotaurs just died... they were useless. After trying the original statblock, I have created a modified version that I intend to use inside the ineluctable prison: the ivory minotaur. I have added it to the document, be sure to check it out.
While visiting Blackburgh, the players made verbovezzor angry after a few unfortunate words but teleported away before the combat could start. I intend to use him, so Baphomet will probably allow Verbovezzor inside the prison to reinforce his forces, and the mythic vescavor swarm will be able to feast on those juicy memories! I still have to think how to best introduce him again.
The party talked to Orengofta, declined his offer politely and went for the father of worms blood. The players devised a strategy to get the blood as fast as possible and get the hell out of the shadow-hole and into the bridge to the ineluctable prison.
Combat against the mythic nightcrawler lasted 1-1/2 rounds, the Father first used greater dispel magic to remove death ward from the party members, breathed on the party (cleric got 4 negative levels), and then the shadow casted wail of the banshee. The cleric blew his save and died. The Father wasn't alone, I gave him 6 greater shadows that got good hits, nearly killing Arueshalae with the strength damage.
With the blood in the chalice, The PCs regrouped and removed whatever they had from their encounter with the Father. Then teleported to the entrance to the ineluctable prison. I gave the group a Perception check to notice a faint glow in the pools near the groaning gates just before the vavakias appeared. Arueshalae rolled great, and initiative was rolled. At each player's turn, I rolled 1d4 to see how many bone spikes attacked him/her (I didn't remember about being 4 attacks always, use whatever method you think works best for your party). Remember that I changed the encounter setup, so the spikes attack whatever enemies are in the bridge and near the doors, even if they are not flying. It worked great, putting a lot of pressure on the party to deal with the enemies and also advance (the spikes ceased to attack only after the group entered the prison). I also rolled two-three crits, with a x3 multiplier it hurted a lot.
One of the vavakias died before he could act, falling in the pool again. The other charged the inquisitor and almost stunned him. He also enervated him for two negative levels (I should have done this before charging, so the chance to make the fortitude save was lower, but whatever...). The vavakia ended the charge in the air, and after the inquisitor moved an killed it, the spikes were very close to knocking him unconscious and sending him into the waters below.
The pcs then melted the lock using the blood, wich triggered the wail of the banshee trap. I changed that because it seemed to me that the blood is just another way of damaging the door, so... I upped the DC to 33, and the PCs passed the saves (I think they all had to surge).
That's all for now. I'm very happy with the changes I have made so far, and the players have the impression that without mythic power they would have a much tougher time surviving the ivory labyrinth...
I'm still thinking about what I want to change in the prison. The paladin kept Baphomet's horn after being killed by Nocticula, so I plan on rewarding him by allowing it to be used as a key to the cells (they react to the evil aura in the horn). I also want to make the prison much more harder, to represent a maximum security prison. Right now these are my ideas:
- Mixing demodands (3 types), vavakias (groaning gates guardians statblock), ivory minotaurs and baphomet golems in the encounters
- All of Baphomet's minions are under the effects of a mythic heroism spell while inside the prison.
- All maze effects (those that duplicate the effects of the spell) inside the prison are converted into mythic mazes and maximized. If the spell or effect is already maximized, it deals maximum double damage (the herald, I think, is the only one with a maximized mythic maze)
@Caius,
I'll try to update the Favored of Deskari, but Areelu is first on my list and right now my time is limited. You can try giving him more barbarian levels or tiers, and an ability to "jump" through dimensions (a supernatural ability as a swift action to teleport or dimension door) to increase his mobility.
My group start the assault on the Ivory Sanctum this week , it should be the first test of extended combat for them since I the end of book 2. We will see if they can keep up the lethality over multiple fights. I will be using your modified characteristics and see how things go , I expect it will take several sessions to get through it
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The assault on the Ivory Sanctum began, it is ongoing and just in case any of my players read this I am going to leave out some details which they don't know yet
I have a large group of 7 characters and Arushalee (I gained players mid campaign and will be dropping an NPC Character I started with), as a result I have multiplied all creature numbers by 50% and used the statblock document , I also boost the hp of some creatures.
The Brazen bull confronted the party and only the Ninja and the Wizard beat its initiative , the Wizard hasted the party and the ninja held his action planning on flanking later. The Bull moved up and breathed on the entire party , several saving throws were failed after some rerolls granted by a spell and some mythic expenditure only the ninja was petrified. The monk charged forward and grappled the Bull, much to my suprise and it was then beaten to death by the Paladin, Ranger and Gunslinger a smite evil was expended by the Paladin.
Reaching the entrance the ninja went in to scout was hit by the invisibility purge and discovered 3 Scions of Baphomet waiting for him with held actions. 2 charged him and he expended a mythic to activate deadly dodge which managed to avoid both charges. The rest of the party rushed in and a viscous exchange of blows followed the minotaurs rolled badly but when they did hit they did a lot of damage and they managed to last into the second round as the party did not use Fleet warrior or similar so did not get full attacks on round 1, one of the minotaurs was grapped by the monk and the 2 would sit out the fight with the monk slowly beating the helpless minotaur to death.
3 More Minotaurs arrived and were hit by a Mythic Empowered Fireball and Mythic fireball from the Oracle and the Wizard which left them in a bad way , by the end of the round all were down and the party was spending healing resources to fix the damage they had taken .
The party moved out and found the elven wizard Jerribeth who seems to be the other of the elven wizard they restrained her and talked to her, she was a prisoner of the evil Xanthir vang who had been tortured terribly for information, she was able to give the pc's directions to Vangs quarters and they went on her way. The Iomedean Paladin did not trust her so they left her tied up in a cupboard.
They found the shrine of Baphomet Unguarded and broke the Unhallow effect, then proceeded towards the area full of black fire adepts , Templars and Grillexbee who's attempts to negotiate were ignored , a Fireball and a Mythic fireball were fired at a group of templars killing an adept and wounding all the templars and finally most of the templars were walled off with a wall of Stone while a cloudkill spell drove the group on a direct line to Vang into retreating as the session ended the group moved to assualt them.
The Scions of Baphomet proved very effective they came close to killing 2 pc's if they had rolled better
Hey JohnHawkins,
Nice writeup! I see you handled Jerribeth differently from the module, I expect to see some PCs jaws' drop as Jerribeth attacks them after fighting Xanthir :-)
Also, I would like to point out something about the grapple strategy your monk seems to have:
- The brazen bull has a continuous Freedom of Movement spell, so unless the monk has some special or mythic ability that allows him to ignore that, the grapple should have failed.
- The scions of baphomet can teleport at will as a move action, it's not a spell-like ability so they don't have to roll concentration, just spend the action and they are gone. Then they proceed to vital strike the monk to death :-)
Hope this helps!
Update: After reviewing some statblocks, I think Khorramzadeh has too few uses of mythic power for all the things he can do with them. I have updated the "endless power ability" to give him more.
Yes Freedom of Movement I completely forgot about it until after the fight was over , I also missed the teleport ability. Which would have helped the reinforcements avoid the fireballs. Ooops.
The Jerribeth issue went differently than I expected ,hopefully may players are not reading this , but it will be particularly bad as she has the demons from the temple and Skulgrym to back her up
Just noticed a typo in the first post
Jerribeth is the MOTHER (Not Other) of the PC elven Wizard
Anyone else having issues with the document loading?
Same here, couldn't download the word document, but the pdf compiled by Spaarky works for me.
Ruyan.
After delays caused by player absence my players have nearly reached the end of the Ivory Labryinth, and it is proving quite challenging for them.
First they finished fighting through the sorcerors and antipaladins, while most of the antipaladins were trapped behind the wall of stone the sorcerors dimension doored in to reinforce their colleagues. The players were hit by a barrage of Enervation spells which fortunately they were protected against by spell immunity , it took 2 rounds for the sorcerors to realise this which greatly reduced their effectiveness,also I brought them in as a group and they ate an empowered Mythic fireball from the Oracle and a normal fireball fromthe wizard which killed 6 of them, this fight did little damage although the Paladin was hit by several lightning bolts while his 3 colleagues with evasion must have hidden behind him.
They then engaged the Derakni outside the door to Xanthir vangs chambers the ninja nearly died and would have done without a lot of healing from the Oracle when he got hit by Derakni poison. Otherwise they took little damage but used up some resources.
Xanthir Vang proved more troublesome, he had 3 Apocolypse Locusts with him , a summoned Triceratops and 2 of his retreivers, a third one attacked from the corridor to their layer.
The wizard went first and a Phanasmal web took down all three Apocolypse locusts and the Triceratops , the Paladin mythic charged the nearest retriever and the dwarf ranger mythic charged the other , the paladin killed one using foe biter , a crit and smite evil, The ranger injured the other , eyebeams hurt the Paladin and a full attack hurt and grabbed the dwarf. Vang who I had upgraded and was under greater invisibility then disintegrated the Dwarf gunslinger (Maximised Disintegrate and a failed save (the player had just dropped out)) while another Quickened (metamagic rod) disintigrate hit the paladin who saved. The monk and the ninja took on the 3rd retriever with the monk succesfully grappling it (excellent roll) while the ninja stabbed it. Arushalee shot arrows at the retriever.
Next round the wizard hit Vang with glitterdust , the Paladin and the ninja killed the last 2 retrievers while the dwarf and his pet spent the rest of the fight eliminated in the locusts and the Triceratops.
Vang used mirror dodge to avoid several attacks before Arushalee started hitting him with phase locking arrows and the wizard hit him with a dispel magic taking down his fly spell. This allowed the Paladin to get close and hit him with a full attack including a lot of mythic spend on foe biter and unstoppable strike which killed him, they then fireballed his remains to make sure he was not going to reform. He scared them which means I may bring him back later for more fun!
They then cleared out the antipaladins which I sped through as it was getting late and they took minimal damage and used minimal resources.
They found the treasury and the Improved Thanadaemon, that scared them, they were lucky the Ranger managed to disarm the Daemon and his badger ran off with the staff. Again mythic points were spent the the daemon went down after doing 2 negative levels to the Paladin and Ranger. At this point the Ranger has 4 mythic points, the Paladin 1 , the Oracle 1 (I forget the others) the Oracle has 1 level 3 and 1 level 5 spell left plus level 1 and 2 spells, the wizard is similarly depleted.
They went and spoke with the wizards mother who they still failed to trust and threatened on several occasions and had the badger poised to bite if she gave any trouble. Finally they decided to teleport her back to Dreznan and used a sending spell via a mythic point to prepare , as the demon did not fancy its chances of escaping Dreznan with the Sword of valor blocking it , Jerribeth decided to attack shredding the badger in a surprise round and teleporting in 3 Horned demons and Skulgrym to support her.
This will be resolved after Christmas I expect pc fatalities.
This confirms to me the need to engage mythic pc's (and high level pcs in general) in prolonged combat, if they had all their mythic points and spells this would be a pushover for them as it is they may well loose although the Paladin remains a monster of destruction against demons but he will be the first target
This thread should be stickied.
I finally got around to finishing off Book 3 last Thursday. Jerribeth as modified proved very effective, I doubled her HP and she was backed up with Skulgrym and 3 Kalakavu demons.
Use of Power word stun particularly as a swift action was very good for putting pc's out of action and the amount of damage she could do in a rounds full attack dropped most pc's in a round. The Pc's were low on mythic points and their wizard took a power word stun in the first round which put him out of the fight, the pc's concentrated on dropping Skulgrym as his energy drain had hurt them badly in 2 previous fights and managed to kill him in the first round with a Full attacking smiting Paladin, a monk , a rogue, arrows from Arrushalae and an empowered admonishing ray from their Oracle.
The Kalakavu's proved pretty much useless having trouble hitting due to poor dice rolls and the players refusing to waste much in the way of resources on them until after they had taken down Jerribeth, I think I may have won if Jerribeth had cast less spells and made more full attacks but as it was she still killed 1 PC and had another in massive negatives only saved by relentless healing from the Oracle.
One of the decisive factors though was the fact that the pc's were so low on resources after clearing the rest of the Fane and particularly killing Xanthir Vang. Only the Wizard had any mythic points left and the Oracle was down to 2nd and 1st level spells
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Hi everyone,
I'm still Dming this, but after Christmas we haven't played a single session yet. We will continue on March.
I have implemented the following changes (as detailed on my previous post):
- All of Baphomet's minions are under the effects of a mythic heroism spell while inside the prison.
- All maze effects (those that duplicate the effects of the spell) inside the prison are converted into mythic mazes and maximized. If the spell or effect is already maximized, it deals maximum double damage (the herald, I think, is the only one with a maximized mythic maze).
The party thinks that they should try to complete the prison as fast as possible before Baphomet can come up with a plan and react. To help them do this, I plan on restoring some of their mythic power as they complete quests and trials inside the prison, so they can go on without resting. I think this is better than the passive attitude that Baphomet has in the module as printed, that allows for multiple rests without consecuences even if the party is killing all of Baphomet's minions with ease.
After my last update, the party has done the following:
- Fight the ooze and the demodands at the entrance. A surprisingly challenging fight, I used my advanced demodands (check the document) and they worked great. The party didn't event tried to fight the ooze (it paralyzed one of the PCs, but the rest of the party acted quickly and saved him). They killed the demodands and closed the doors to avoid the tentacles :-)
- They interacted with the prisoners, and gained the astral deva as an ally. Again they had to fight the tarry and slimy demodands that were guarding the area. They did quite a lot of damage with their abilities and the narrow corridors hampered the PCs movements a lot.
- After encountering Alderpash, they tried to lure the warden using Igramalash. They came up with a plan using walls of force to force a fight between the two monsters.
Igramalash killed Arueshalae after being released, and then he died when Ylleshka appeared and made a full-attack against him, scoring several crits. The player's jaws dropped after seeing her damage potential. The warden came accompanied by several demodands.
This combat was hard, the aasimar sorcerer died after taking Ylleshka's full attack, and after injuring her a lot, the cleric revived Igramalash (I think he used mythic breath of life)in the hopes of having a raging monster trying to kill her. Since it seemed fair that Igramalash would focus his first attacks on his killer, I went with it. He rolled a confirmed crit on his bite attack, and killed the Warden by ripping her heads! It was awesome. I think both the paladin and the inquisitor fell unconscious during the fight.
The PCs are happy because their plan worked, and still think that without Igramalash the fight against the warden could have gotten ugly very fast.
This is where we are now. I think their next step will be trying to locate the drow priestess or the vault.
Again I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to post their fights and give feedback on the statblocks document. I will try to post updates as soon as I can.
It's good to hear updates from scorpion. My players lately are nailing everyting even on these statblocks.
My group has just obtained Father's blood and is ready to go to the prison. They use Mythic Heroism extensively so it would be nice to use it against them.
Let me ask you two things:
1. Svendack is strong enough as written and you didnt change her?
2. Regarding Baphomet's Summon Minotaurs. He can summon 3 times per day 8 half-fiend minotaurs. Simple minotaurs with the half-fiend template???
And once per day 4 mythic minotaurs or one labyrinth minotaurs. I guess the mythic minotaurs are like the miners on midnight isles and the labyrinth minotaur is the Ivory minotaur??
@Myrryr,
Thanks for your contribution! I dunno if I'll rewrite Nocticula because frankly I don't think I'll need her and my time is short.
@leo1925,
Mythic heroism is heavily used in my group since Demon's Heresy. They always keep it up. It's an incredible buff.
About your questions:
1- Svendack is certainly NOT strong enough but I didn't have time to rewrite her statblock. I can tell you how I did her encounter, and what changes I applied to her stats.
I gave her two greater slimy demodands, two baphomet iron golems and three ivory minotaurs.
Svendack herself had the advanced template applied, and an additional +2 to her save DCs.
The whole area was protected by a ritual to empower the cleric and her minions. It had two effects: first the entire room is covered with a magical effect similar to a maximized forbiddance effect (DC 31). Second, each player that enters the area is targeted by a dispel magic (CL 27th).
Also, the statues can resurrect Svendack if she is killed. Each time she dies, the pools of blood flash, one statue crumbles and she is revived with all her hitpoints. Her spells stay the same. With 4 statues in the room, she can revive quite a few times.
This protections can be removed if two things are done. First, the altar that serves as a focus must be destroyed. My players used disintegrate, so I gave the altar a huge SR to make it difficult (can't remember, 35-38 should do the trick). They didn't used any "I ignore SR" path ability, but in that case I would rule it gives a bonus to the overcome SR check instead of ignoring. A +4 or +5 should be enough.
Then they'll have to dispel the magic itself. They can use dispel magic, but given that the DC is 38, higher level spells are recommended. It is important to note that we don't use mage's disjunction in my games. In my game the party used a miracle. High-level magic should provide a bonus to the check, in my game I gave the PC a +10, so with average luck and the possibility of using a surge they made it.
The mythic heroism effect that extends to the prison also has its origin here, so if the magic is removed, so is the buff for the rest of the module.
If the players can remove the protections or not will most likely depend on how you describe the situation and what kind of information you give based on the skill checks the players will likely make.
The encounter went well, svendack died twice before my group came to the conclusion that something could be done about the resurrections. She revived her minotaurs and one golem after they were destroyed by using a miracle (I changed her spell list).
The minotaurs and the golems put quite a lot of pressure on the group, and Svendack did good damage with mythic flame strike. Remember to give her some nice path abilities if you can, to empower her spells.
2- The only minotaur he will summon is the ivory minotaur, so I left the rest as in the module. The half-fiends and the mythic minotaurs are cannon fodder at this level, but your suggestion to use the miners is a good one.
Aside from the Svendack encounter, we also have done Plorig-Stagul and Uffrandir the linnorm. The first one was a funny fight against a lot of demodands, and the second one caught the PCs by surprise when after defeating Uffrandir a swarm of vescavors (verbobezzor) appeared and started devouring the PC's Charisma scores :-)
For Uffrandir I used some simple changes that made him a little more difficult: 1- advanced template 2- on his turn he could made two turns full of actions. Each breath weapon takes one standard action to use. 3- resistance 30 to every element. 4- he could curse whoever did damage to him (character has to save against the curse each time he/she damages Uffrandir).
And that's it. Next time we'll do the Vault, and the players will decide if they want to face Baphomet after dealing with the herald so I can prepare accordingly.
I am currently half way through the assault on the crystal mine and should have some opinions about that after tommorrow.
The dragon put up a good fight , but I had made her a Wyrm and tripled her hp so that she could actually last long enough to achieve something.
Tommorrow the players fight pretty much everything in the mine in one go, as they had warning of the players arrival and have massed for one big battle.
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Time for a new update. Yerterday we finished Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth, and here you have a description of the last fights:
The vault:
The main modifications I made to the encounter were (aside from using improved statblocks for the ivory minotaurs and the baphomet golem) having Inger-Maggor and his two ivory minotaur bodyguards lie in wait inside Baphomet's tower and appear through a gate inside the vault to attack the characters; and Baphomet striking a deal with Erum-Hel the lord of Morghs to let him try to kill the iomedaean inquisitor and his pals to increase his mythic power. (Erum-Hel is described in Undead Unleashed).
To understand this better, I need to explain what is Baphomet's plan in my game. I consider the premise behind the module (rescuing a herald) a bit weak considering Iomedae is asking the characters to put themselves in grave danger by invading Baphomet's realm. So I changed that part into this: Just as he did with Asmodeus (stealing his labyrinth and learning how to draw power from the infernal brand), Baphomet wants to use the Herald and his connection to Iomedae to absorb part of her divine power and ascend. To do this, he needs to fully corrupt the Herald. Iomedae fears this is what Baphomet wants, and passes this information to the PCs when they encounter her. This puts the PCs in the difficult position of having to move fast to get to the Herald and kill/redeem him.
Since the players killed Shamira in Alusinyrra and allied (momentarily) with Nocticula, Baphomet fears they may be powerful enough to put an end to his plans in the worldwound. He has increased his minions in power and numbers, and looked for beneficial alliances. One of these is with Erum-Hel. Baphomet convinced the undead lord that helping him drain Iomedae will allow him to increase his mythic power. And since Erum hates Iomedae with a passion, I supposed he should be interested in facing one of the mythic followers.
Erum-Hel is a well built character, with abilities that complement each other. The fact that he can hide in plain sight in shadows and turn invisible makes him a good assassin. Of course I changed some path abilities and feats, and increased his DCs as usual by including his undead hit dice into the formula (as explained in my firt post) but as I said his statblock is quite good. Unfortunately his paralysis was useless because the characters have a 24 hours freedom of movement thanks to enduring blessing, but event without that he proved to be quite the challenge.
So basically when the party entered the vaul Erum was already there, buffed with some scrolls courtesy of Baphomet. Can't remember the specifics, but one of them was mind blank.
The party took damage from the maximized forbiddance and everyone lost a buff to a dispel magic (same effects as in the Svendack encounter).
The vault was surprisingly hard for my players. Instead of trying to use the golden orb they went for one of the treasures and triggered the golem, maze trap and other enemies that were waiting for them to make a mistake and take advantage of it.
And so it started a huge melee that included:
- characters trapped inside the maze (taking damage from the maximized mythic maze), pulled in there by Inger-Maggor or the trap.
- Inger Maggor sharing his smite good with the ivory minotaurs. The bodyguards targeted the sorceress and the dwarf cleric of Torag, for a lot of damage.
- The golem died fast, but not before opening the red door and letting the Vilsteth out (I applied the advanced template to it). Both monsters were nearly useless. The golem was dead after a full-attack from the inquisitor, and the Vilteth tried to hit him, failing most of its attacks.
- Erum-Hel used his abilities to move using stealth, full-attacking (fleet warrior), and then moving again to hide using stealth. His high stealth modifier, coupled with his Hide in Plain Sight, invisibility and mind blank made locating him very difficult, almost impossible. I need to point out that the light from the golden glow below the items and the orb didn't have more than a 5-foot radius. All the characters see in the dark so they didn't have any light sources. During the fight they imagined they were being targeted by an invisible attacker, but the need to deal with the other enemies and the means they used to locate him ensured that Erum-Hel was safe. After all his allies died, he stealthed away and fled... I have to think about making him return for another combat.
He alone killed the inquisitor of Iomedae three times during the battle, one of those times by beheading (vorpal effect of his rokha sword).
The paladin and the cleric died once during the fight from Inger-Maggor's and the minotaur's attacks. All of them where revived during the same fight.
After finishing the vault, the players discussed how to deal with the herald and if they wanted to fight Baphomet. This has been a discussion they have had since we started the module. The vault fight had drained them of quite a few resources, and they rested for 1 hour (recuperation) inside Alderpash' cell.
Then they buffed themselves again and teleported to the Herald's prison. After exchanging a few words, the fight started.
For this encounter I changed the tar's attack, damage and CMB/CMD bonuses so it could do something in combat: +35 attack (concealment doesn't affect the roll), reach 15 ft., damage 3d6+20, on hit the tar tries to grapple or pull the character 10 ft. towards the tar if he/she is protected against grapples (as was the case for my group). CMB +35, CMD 45.
This fight was less intense than the previous one but more interesting because the goal wasn't to annihilate the opposition. That, and the fact that the group couldn't be within 15 feet of the tar without being attacked and the herald couldn't be targeted with ranged effects without getting them reflected back at the attacker.
Speaking of the Repulsion Field, I changed this ability to reflect anything magical or physical that he could strike, not only those things with an "attack roll". For example, with this modification, the ability should include fireball (he hits the small sphere) and magic missile (he hits each missile).
In this fight he reflected some arrows back at Arueshalae, and one maximized polar ray at the sorceress (it missed because of concealment, she was greater invisible and mind blanked so true seeing didn't work).
I also added the "mythic spell-like abilities" to the Herald, because he needs it to heal himself or attack without wasting a precious action.
The herald got paralyzed by a hold monster spell and went into the tar. The next round, he got free and resurfaced, trying to kill the sorceress.
The paladin died twice in this fight, even after taking the Servant of Balance mythic ability to ignore critical hits' addittional damage.
The Herald's gaze attack was very effective, and created quite a lot of tension when Malaika the astral deva (who held the Herald's heart) was pulled inside the maze. The paladin's mount died from Int drain inside the maze.
The group managed to kill the herald and revived him with mythic breath of life before a round passed and its soul was pulled by the abyss (they of course didn't knew this). Then they knocked him out with nonlethal damage and redeemed him.
Restored, the Hand of the Inheritor offered them a plane shift to the material plane before Baphomet arrived... The entire labyrinth started to shake as Baphomet approached... and the party decided to flee as they thought the crusade really needed them and the work was done, so fighting Baphomet was a risk not worth taking.
It's a pity I won't be able to use Baphomet's stats, but I think they made the right call.
I have not yet uploaded the document with the changes to the Herald, I expect to do it soon.
The Final battle in the crystal mines was interesting. The players had taken a 1 hour rest to recover abilities after fighting the dragon as they thought that the enemies in the mines would be ignorant of their presence, their ninja was scouting around down their and given his stealth unless he ran into Hepzinarah none of them could spot him.
Unfortunately I made a random roll to see if Hepzinarah chose that hour to scry on them, and they were unlucky.
Aware from reports by the ninja that the demons knew they were upstairs they attacked immediately, the Minotaurs and demons assembled to defend Hepzinarah in one of the large caverns downstairs. In total I had 8 Minotaurs, 3 Succubi, 2 Hezrou (teleported in from the river gate), the Glabrezu(using Jerribeth's stats), 8 Kalavaku demons and 3 demonaics (level 12 warpriests) 6 more warpriests had run into the party before they could join up with the main force and died in a hail of fireballs.
Hepzinarah and the Glabreu were at the back of a long room with everything else lined up in front of them, the plan was for them to bombard the pc's with spells while they hacked their way through the ependable minions. The players came very close to a frontal assault but instead came up with a cunning plan.
The Wizard used greater teleport and put them all down next to Hepzinarah and then Quicked (with a metamagic rod) a wall of force screening off almost all the rest of the enemy.
Hepzinarah put up a good fight but stood no chance against a Paladin , a ranger and a ninja in close combat (Even with triple hit points). She did manage to get a good hit on the Paladin which would have dropped him (until their oracle hit him with a mythic heal anyway) except Arushalee threw herself in front of the blow (GM fiat which helped with character development).
Hepzinarah died, Baphomet started to manifest , the pc's got worried, then Nocticula killed him. Sometime during this conflict either Nocticula or Baphomet drained the souls of all the minions to avoid a long anticlimatic fight.
This meant they ended up back in Dreznan a session earlier than I expected. The meeting with Iomedea went well, the Evil ninja kept very quiet and they left the talking to the Iomedean Paladin. They answered her questions well enough and then she rewarded the Tiefling Paladins faith by removing the Diabolic taint from him and he was an Aasimar, as he had just proposed to Arushalee following her saving his life she also married them
I like the idea of adding Erum-Hel, I used him in the Porphryr city as an assassin coming after the pc's because of their ties to Iomedea. He did quite well there killing the Paladin(at least twice, he kept rolling 20's) and the Wizard(if you have a bad fortitude save his poison is certain death) before finally going down when they managed to keep him visible long enough for a good stabbing.
Cool story, JohnHawkins. Your players came up with a good strategy for the situation, and that's great.
Erum-Hel is a cool monster, and I have always liked Mohrgs :-)
BTW, I have uploaded the document again, adding descriptions of the svendack and herald encounters, and changing the herald's statblock a bit.
I have updated the document with a finished Areelu, a hekatonkheires titan and some small notes about the encounter. These changes are not set in stone, so as I advance through the module I may adjust them to provide a better challenge for my group.
I also changed some small stuff in the demon lord's traits (making their resistances more relevant in their abyssal layers). I kept Baphomet's ability to use the pentagram to make him fire immune for 10 rounds against mythic abilities, so he can use it when outside his abyssal layer.
Reading my notes I think the only stablock I have left is the favored of Deskari, and seeing if I adjust the environmental effects in the module.
Hi Ben Bleich, and welcome.
Thanks! It was a huge effort to modify/create all these statblocks, but I would say it's more than worth it.
Hard questions... let's see... first you need to take into account how experienced is your group, how many players you have, if they optimize or not... the usual things. And then if you want to devote some time developing this AP
I'm not sure what to say about using standard PCs against these statblocks... my group uses mythic rules and the statblocks are made assuming that. So far it's working great for me, the challenge is still there. Maybe you can try the statblocks as printed in the modules and see what happens before changing anything.
About balancing: honestly I don't have a problem in my game with balance. In my game I allowed 20 point-buy, core rulebook, advanced player's guide (only classes and the specific spells and feats that appear associated with that class) and mythic adventures. Whatever game element that has a mythic version can be used, with my approval. If you allow every book to be used, IMHO you'll need to adjust more things.
Take a look in the thread, I'm fairly sure I have made some comments about my group and using the statblocks without mythic.
Maybe others can give you a more detailed opinion.
I think the best advice I can give you is: talk to your players. Voice your concerns about balance and come to an agreement, let's see what they think. I did this with my group to be sure we were on the same page.
I limit options because I don't have all the Paizo books and I hate rules bloat (I already suffered it with 3.5, not again).
If you think it's better to ignore mythic, then go for it and good luck! when the players approach a point where you might be able to use one of my statblocks, take a look at the enemy and try to imagine how the PCs would fare against it regarding hitting its AC, the monster making saves or the PCs being able to withstand a round of damage.
Sorry I can't be more specific. Maybe others can give a more detailed and helpful answer :-)
Thanks buddy. I guess i will open a new thread for that.
(Just dicovered the "Alias-option in here) :D