Hey gang,
I'm going over the Mokmurian battle and I'm trying to figure out how he's supposed to use many of his abilities after casting solid fog? Am I missing something? As I see it, once solid fog goes off he won't be able to hit the party with much more than slow and fireball before he runs out of visible targets in the fog.
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If you're going by his tactics and prepared spells as presented in the AE, he also has disintegrate and scorching ray (in addition to slow and fireball). And you can swap out some of his other spells for a few more ranged attack spells. As presented, he has about 6-ish rounds worth of ranged attack spells he can cast. The heroes will probably escape the solid fog before he's out of spells.
-Skeld
The good news: He has fog-cutting lenses on and can target the PCs through the fog.
The bad news: Many of the encounters before him scream, "Put up Freedom of Movement", especially Mr. Lava Fun Boy.
Watch in horror as your PCs completely ignore the solid fog and turn poor Mokmurian into a pincushion.
That's how my battle went down.
Stupid foreshadowing...
But Skeld is right. *IF* the PCs don't have Freedom of Movement, he can have all kinds of fun dropping them in the fog, walling off the melee characters, and blasting the casters. Makes for a memorable, nasty fight.
Unlike mine...
I missed the goggles!
My party does not have FoM. Monk (drunken quiggon something or other with grapple focus), black blade hexcrafter magus, UMD TWF rogue and a holy defender paladin.
This could be much more interesting than I had expected...
Oh, that's just a WONDERFUL group for big M. Definitely cut off the paladin with Wall of Force so he/she can't go all smitey. And Disintegrate the magus a couple of times. It'll be funny. Trust me. :-P
The paladin traded his smite ability for an ability that cuts damage from his smite target in half unless said target attacks the paladin. It'll be hilarious because it only works within 20'
Annnnnd it didn't matter.
The party used the Staff of Heaven and Earth they found in the wyvern cave to disperse the fog effects then activated their flying abilities and swarmed poor ol' Mokmurian (or Lady Marian as they had come to call him, because that was easier to remember). He was grappled and pinned in 2 or 3 rounds and CdGed in the 4th round.
That was the 13th fight in the party's adventuring day and they're still up for more. I think I may need to make serious edits to the last 2 books of this AP.
Oh, you know your group best, but I wouldn't worry TOO much about it. My group cake-walked through Jorgenfist and had two near-TPKs in the Runeforge. The Runeforge is brutal, AND very easy to adjust upwards if your party seems to be having too easy a time of it.
The Mirrors , the Mirrors. Almost total TPK.
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That was the 13th fight in the party's adventuring day and they're still up for more. I think I may need to make serious edits to the last 2 books of this AP.
My party found Fortress of the Stone Giants easy and then got smacked around in the first two fights of Book 5. Different authors, different challenges.
My players party did not use freedom of movement, and with some back luck on their part, when it was all over, only the party paladin was left standing, and he probably would have died if big M hadn't been hit with bleed from the barbarian.
1 tactic I thought about later and could have used, was wait for the melee guys to enter the room, while the caster waited just outside the room which my party did. Then wall of force over the door, and dimension door to the other side and just beat the party bard, cleric, and shelelu down, then deal with the inquisitor, barbarian, and fighter paladin with spells.
I totally reworked Mokmurian and ditched all the fog spells. Didn't seem thematically coherant. I had him put the wall of force between two pillars, diagonally, about 5 feet off the floor and about 10-15 feet (I think) from the ceiling. He could target AoE spells just under the wall and let them spread, and the party wasted a few rounds trying to figure out why their spells weren't working and how to get around the wall (exactly where it was). It made the fight last a little bit longer, as it should have.