After running the scene at the Runewell I have to admit that the Erylium encounter is kind of annoying.
On the one hand she is almost impossible to catch or hurt - invisibility at will, a really high stealth score, DR 5, energy resistances, and fast healing. AC 19, which is pretty hard for most characters of this level to hit.
On the other hand, she has almost no ability to seriously hurt the party. Her dagger does 1-2 points of damage. A full round of attacks from her does 0-7 damage.
The only spells she has that actually hurt party members are her summons, but she doesn't have enough of them to really matter. The only way I could think of as a GM to really threaten the players was to have her use slumber hex on a character engaged with one of her minions, and have the minion then make a CDG on the sleeping character.
Normally a CDG is something GMs should avoid most of the time.
So I was wondering if anyone ever replaced Erylium with a different creature? One with less defense but more offense?
Like an Erylium with 3 barbarian levels instead of witch levels?
Even rogue levels would work as she could do a sneak attack every other round using invisibility on the other round. Or a full round of attacks while flanking with the sinspawn.
Any thoughts?
Given the Lamashtu connection I think it would be best for the creature used there to remain a demon, but there aren't a lot of choices at that CR. The Hala is out since they work for Pazuzu specifically, I think. That leaves the schir, which would definitely be a very tough fight for what is probably a 2nd level party, but losing the regeneration and invisibility-flight would at least make it a much less annoying encounter. It goes well with both the wrath and Lamashtu things flavor-wise.
You could always just slap the Fiendish template on a creature and call it a day. ;P
I made Erylium into a half-field goblinsnake, sorcerer 3. I have a number of things to tweak to make it more appropriate for my homebrew. so I decided to go the aberration route.
After running into sinspawn all over (I ditched the Vargouille for another sinspawn)and Koruvus, the party was a little beat. They walked in on Erylium who popped them with Burning Hands and backed off, and that's where we left it last week.
Not sure how its all gonna play out - I'm pretty sure that the PCs are about to slam the door on her and run, which is fine. Erylium will be slow to follow them out of her domain, so as long as they keep running and don't stop they should be good. =)
This should be the thing that finally drives Erylium out of the Catacombs and eventually to link back up with Naulia. I have a few side treks I want to run prior to them hitting Thistletop.
You could always just slap the Fiendish template on a creature and call it a day. ;P
You could, although I think you should probably track down something that won't die of old age at least. Depends on how hard your players think about that sort of thing.
I made Erylium into a half-field goblinsnake, sorcerer 3.
Love to hear how this turns out!
I'll be happy too update it here, I do strongly suspect that they are going to run. The party has a few things brewing in their pot that may take them a bit to get back to looking at Erylium.
Off the top of my head, I'm sure I am missing some small sub-plots but...
- Belor is still out of town.
- Shelalu is pulling to have them hunt down the Toadstool Goblins.
A couple of pieces of information has gotten them interested in Chopper's Isle.
- Scribbleface is attempting to get the party to help him get some revenge on the Licktoad Goblins and Vorka at the same time and is going to try to push them towards doing the finale of We Be Goblins (which would include fighting off the pre-gen goblins too).
- One of the characters is having some legal troubles (related to torturing a prisoner - Tsuto), he's not well liked in town.
- One of the characters has been waiting on a meeting with the Valdemar's over getting support for building a casino, this will be a big info dump scene.
- A pair of Ranger 1 Ogrekins are about to stumble into the area and cause problems with the sheep herders.
They have a lot going on and honestly I'm pretty happy with the level of player involvement.
The party didn't bail as readily as I'd hoped - even with players missing from the session.
Thinking that they were capable of handling things they engaged my altered Erylium.
Erylium kept her distance and using what ranged spells she had -Acidic Ray (from aberrant bloodline) and Burning Hands, while her offense still pretty weak from the spells, it did serve to keep the fight exciting without killing characters outright.
Erylium called upon a Sin Spawn which (due to a crit from the Great Sword wielding Slayer) didn't last long.
When the Druid dropped to 0 HP, the party pulled the plug on the attack.
The (almost dead from the first Burning Hands) absent players waited at the door waiting to slam it shut to cover a retreat. Even if they had tried to engage, with neither having a ranged attack capable of doing more that 6 hp without a crit, they weren't going to be too effective.
I played Erylium as overly cautious and cowardly - I certainly could have gone much more aggressive, and things would have gone much worse. The revised Erylium had, quite honestly, better offensive and better defense, but no fast heal. With no desire to get in to melee if she didn't have to, the players had a tough time doing much damage to her.
Erylium is actually going to have a bit of a tough time getting out, and probably going to have to rely upon another Sin Spawn.
Which I'm giving a day and a half for her to come to that conclusion and finally risk another sin spawn.
As Latrecis points out in another thread:
Erylium can be tough. Given the pc's power level, it should be nigh on impossible for them to kill her.
Having Erylium be a festering sore in their side causing havoc until they deal with her should be interesting.
I pretty much posted how the final fight against my alternate Elyrium went in my campaign thread, but for completeness...
Round 2 vs Elyrium (half-fiend Goblin Snake, Sorc 3) - FIGHT!
3 PCs present: Slayer 3, Ranger 2/Druid 1, Fighter 2 (+Brodert Quink)
Elyrium and 2 Wrathspawn were guarding the room, Elyrium was trying to keep the Runewell safe.
While the Wrathspawn didn't last long, Elyrium with fly and DR was keeping the party pretty well handled, moving about and using her aberrant bloodline power to keep up the damage, finally a tanglefoot bag connected and Elyrium went to the ground where the party's melee was able to finish her off.
The fight was very tense, and the players were thrilled when Quink came up with the Tanglefoot Bag and pressed it into the hands of the Fighter.
Quink was a complete pain in the behind the whole time, him coming through for them in the end was great.