Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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I'm a player who royally got his ass kicked by the final fight of this scenario, and I'm just wondering if other people also had a hell of a time dealing with him. I'll explain how it went with us:
We open the door to find a Blade Barrier in between us. The Wizard decided to DimDoor himself in with two other people (bad idea), while we still couldn't deal with the Barrier. The boss assaulted them with a Flame Strike and the Shards. Eventually we dispelled the Barrier and attacked in full force, but the people in the room were taking heavy hits. He used all his fifth-level spells for Flame Strike (except for the one used for Stoneskin, of course) during the fight, and it was a hassle for my Cleric to keep everyone alive. To make matters worse, he kept sinking into the ground for partial cover, giving him nigh-unhittable AC.
In the end, two of our PCs died, and the rest only barely managed to escape. We decided to flee, leaving us with only 1 PP. While I'm not mad about the missed Prestige, I am kind of disappointed in how the final fight went. Our GM apologized and said he maybe was a bit too trigger-happy about the Flame Strikes, but he was just following tactics. The sinking into the ground for cover wasn't in the tactics, but it made sense, but that's what killed the fight for us. We could barely hit him (we calculated, our best melee guy had a 15% chance of hitting the guy), and the Stoneskin didn't help for our natural attacking murder-kitty.
Our GM also said he had what he dubbed a "Big Boss B@#*#%+& Ability," giving him a +4 on Charisma, essentially negating the penalties of being a Duergar in the first place. Okay, I think we barely made the high tier, so that's completely on us, but I think this boss was too well-statted for us. He saw us coming (okay, Oracle ability, I don't begrudge him that, but it's still an activated ability with limited duration, and he shouldn't know exactly when we'd arrive), so he had the perfect timing to cast all his spells, while we were running on empty after multiple pretty harsh encounters.
Basically, in my opinion, this guy doesn't have a downside and the author did a few cheap tricks to make it even more of a one-sided fight. Maybe it was our GM's fault for playing him a little too aggressive, but three rounds in we already knew this was a lost cause, and it got even worse.
Anyone else have similar experiences, or did we just have terrible luck?
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I think the blade barrier at the door wasn't in the tactics, unless you spent an excessive time outside buffing up.
I think he's actually harder at low tier. When he doesn't enlarge himself he can 5 foot step strait into the ground and heal up,then use tremmor sense to come back up at your squishies Which is just nasty.
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Eh, I'm at two minds about the earthglide. The oracle ability doesn't work with worked stone, which the sanctum obviously consists of, but his tactics mention using it on the ramp.
Can I get some designer intent here, maybe? AC 34 boss using slay living through the floor in tier 8-9: Yay or nay?
Anyhow, the fossegrim finally makes some sense when I read it(prepping this for Sat): His song doesn't work from beneath the water and he can't be transparent when using it and lo! The encounter's suddenly far far less lethal.
