Baba Yaga (Major Spoilers)

[Hogeyhead]

So I'm currently Gming Reign of winter and I've read all the books despite only being on book 3 (close to the end) and I know my players are going to want to kill baba yaga when this is all over, so we're going to do that. However there is a pair of small problems:

1: What happens to Baba Yaga's boons from the 6th book, and the untyped +2 to one stat from the first as they are considered riders, do I let them keep those or does Baba Yaga take them away? The book kind of implies I take them away, and considering they will be going mythic it's not like their power level will really drop, but it still feels like kind of a Dick move. How would you guys aproach the problem?

2: They end the game high lvl 17 teir 1, however I need them to be at least tier 10 lvl 20 to take on Baba Yaga, or very close considering that she is CR 30. Same CR as Cthulhu, though both are too far from my experience to say which is more powerful, though it seems to me Cthulhu would be easier to prepare for, just get immune to fear in some way and you are halfway there, and I think there are a few high level spells that do just that, whereas Baba Yaga is all that is full caster, and thus is prepared for any eventuality, and somehow has more HP because of her hut. I went on a tangent there excuse me, the problem is that I've only 2.5 - 3 levels to up them 9 tiers. How do I do that logically? Do I just make every encounter a trial? That seems a bit extreme. Do I make all tiers only 1 trial each? Seems a bit cheap.

Give me some ideas, and keep in mind I've a lot of time to come up with solutions as this won't be coming up for at least 6 months.

[Ninten]

Honestly, what I would suggest would be to run some sort of other adventure to take them LVL17-20 (The Witch Queen's Revenge might be perfect), and THEN give them Mythic Tier 1 at 20th. Then your Campaign has (surprise!) another 9 Mythic Tiers of content before the fight with Baba Yaga, such as the stuff where you de-power her Winter Collectors or whatever.

I should warn you though, Mythic content in the game dramatically underestimates Mythic PCs, to a pretty scary extent. Before you think LVL20/M10 is a good match for Baba Yaga, take a look at the Wrath of the Righteous forums. LVL17/M7 Characters with 15 Point Buy, average gear, and only ok optimization are each doing over 750 Damage per round. And they aren't missing. The CR system gets really screwy at higher levels, I personally think a very strong party of 20th Level non-mythic Characters could still do a CR30 no problem.

[Tangent101]

The book specifically states that while Baba Yaga takes away the Mantle, they keep the bonuses.

[Pnakotus Detsujin]

Probably the best way is not to make your characters stronger but to find way to weaken Baba. After all, she's just escaped for the confinement she way. Will she be already at top energies or still needs something do to recover all her mythic power?
Good ways may be to destroy her house from inside (sphere of annihilation?), or reviving some death daughter, or ask help to a certain Louhi ...

If pcs wants to slaughter her, fell free to give them a "shortcut" (like, if they craft a dagger with the bones of all baba's zombi daughters, that may actually kill forever the crone)

However, i must say that i'm against her killing for 2 reasons
1) we know nothing about her many, many operations. what if killing her causes more damage than good in other planes or planets?
2)killing her is quite different from reverse the damage she has done to Golarion. I suggest, for helping on that, a diversion to the fey side of the campaign and some mythic trial at the court of summer!

[The Block Knight]

Hogeyhead wrote:

2: They end the game high lvl 17 teir 1, however I need them to be at least tier 10 lvl 20 to take on Baba Yaga, or very close considering that she is CR 30. . . the problem is that I've only 2.5 - 3 levels to up them 9 tiers. How do I do that logically? Do I just make every encounter a trial? That seems a bit extreme. Do I make all tiers only 1 trial each? Seems a bit cheap.

Well, the nice part is that Tiers aren't experience dependent. What I would do is organize the story arcs to fit one Tier per level up to Level 20. At this point, the characters would be Level 20 and Tier 4. Now, just do the remaining 6 Tiers and their Trials as their own story arcs. At this point you can throw as many or as few challenges, mooks, and big bad guys at the party as you want. Experience benchmarks aren't a factor so just write the Trials as you see fit - maybe a Trial involves a lot of Mythical problem-solving without the need for a bunch of combat (and, again, no worry about XP rewards) or maybe they fight of an entire flight of a dozen white dragons on Triaxus. Pace it out as you see fit.

And actually, that same advice applies equally well for the Tiers you assign during the journey from Level 17 to Level 20. You could easily fit two Tiers in at Level 17 or 18 if those Tiers don't have a ton of XP awards associated with them. Again, since combat isn't the only Mythic Trial option, and XP awards for story and/or problem-solving are completely arbitrary, you can completely control the pacing of progression at this point in the game.

That's actually one of things I love about Tiers (and using them as a substitute for Epic Levels), it helps to keep the game sane. If I want to advance the party from Level 20 to Level 22 (aka add 4 Mythic Tiers) I don't have to worry about designing an adventure where they're fighting a hundred mid-range enemies or a few dozen Balors (though those stories have their time and place) just to meet the XP requirements. Also, I don't have to break world verismilitude and say that suddenly their are dozens of level-appropriate enemies now in the world for them to fight in order to progress. Now, I can just build tightly-focused yet cosmically important short stories that their Mythic Trials can revolve around (for example, the destruction of a Nascent Demon Lord, or solving the riddle of a Protean Lord, or negotiating the stolen crystallized love of an Empryeal Lord from one of the Eldest), while allowing the party to muck about and do whatever else they want to accomplish in the downtime. All without ever worrying about whether they're going to advance too quickly or too slowly due to too many/too few quests or side-treks.

[Alleran]

Hogeyhead wrote:

2: They end the game high lvl 17 teir 1, however I need them to be at least tier 10 lvl 20 to take on Baba Yaga, or very close considering that she is CR 30. Same CR as Cthulhu, though both are too far from my experience to say which is more powerful...

Baba Yaga is more "powerful" if she's NPC'd by somebody with the right amount of system mastery. Plus, not only do you need GM permission in the form of artifacts to kill her, you have to shut off her super-immortal ability first (do-able, but irritating, since it'll require burning through at least a couple of wish spells, and there's no guarantee that your players will be able to work their way through the steps necessary).

If you want to run her in a battle, I would suggest taking a long, hard look at what she has, learning every nook and cranny of it, and then familiarising yourself extensively with, well, the entire spell list for sorc/wiz, witch, and most of the cleric/oracle one, because she has all of those spells available to her. Yes, all of them. Given her INT 46 (which, IIRC, doesn't include a +6 enhancement item... so feel free to add one!), she should always have the exact set of spells prepared that she would need to utterly crush anybody who thinks they can take her in a fight short of a full deity. If that means you play with the spell list open in one hand and just cast spells straight from that, well, so be it.

That Rasputin was even able to get the jump on her is immensely impressive, with what Baba Yaga has to work with.