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I think the better thing that you can do is make those d4 rounds of "preparation" more terrifying. For example:
"When the Ulver Zandalus dies, violent swaths of yellow mist erupts from his eyes, nose, and mouth, quickly engulfing the room, signaling the approach of the Tatterman. This functions as obscuring mist, except the mist is yellow in color and causes all exits from the chamber to become loudly locked, functioning as arcane lock with a CL equal to the Tatterman's Hit Dice. In addition, the mist jeers and horrifies the PCs with glimpses of their forgotten memories, forcing them to roll 1d4 and take the corresponding effect each round: 1: the PC takes 4d6 points of nonlethal damage; 2: the PC takes 1d2 points of Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma damage; 3: the PC is confused for 1 round; 4: the PC is shaken for 5d4 rounds. A PC can attempt a DC 16 Will save to negate this effect.
The Tatterman is immune to the effects of the mist, and they do not impede his vision.
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I ran this encounter and I'm of the opinion that it's a bit swingy. How well he's going to do vs the party is very dependent on how many players fail the frightful presence save.. The difficulty varies wildly if 3-4 members fail it vs. only 1 or 0.
If you're looking for fun changes to make him more memorable you could drop the frightful presence have his attacks or a spell force those who fail the save into the dreamlands. To escape they'd have to beat a low CR creature or two, or maybe even pass an ability/skill check, a la Maze. That would give players something to do when they fail their save rather than just watch their panicked character run away for 10 rounds.
@Spastic Puma: Great idea! Love the falling into the Dreamlands. Definitely stealing this - thanks!
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I'm running this encounter in a couple of days for a group of 6 PCs. So far I've added a mook to mook encounters and added the advanced template to single monsters and "bosses" to scale the CR for them. I wanted the final encounters to stand out, however, so I've given Zandalus the Invincible mythic template so he'll be able to survive a few rounds (without making him deadly) and I've given The Tatterman the Agile mythic template, which seemed fitting. It beefs him up a little and improves his action economy.
I've written an alternate fear system for the encounter based on the Horror Adventures system. I don't like the idea of one or more PCs missing the entire last fight because of one bad roll, and I think the encounter will be deadly if 3 or more flee, so I'm hoping this system makes the fight last and adds an element of suspense, while removing the deadly aspect of "OMG all my friends ran away and now my character is going to get slaughtered." Let me know what you think.
"The mist finally condenses into humanoid form and the Tatterman - the nemesis of your dreams - stands before you. A chill runs down your spine as you relive the horrific nightmares of the past nights, revisiting in gory detail the death you found at your dream-stalker's hands."
When the Tatterman manifests, each PC makes a will save against his Fear Aura. Those who succeed become spooked, while those who fail become shaken. Each round, at the beginning of their turn, each PC must attamept a new save. Those that succeed reduce their fear level by one step, while those who fail increase it. A spooked character who succeeds on one of these saves loses the condition and does not need to continue making saves. A scared character who fails is staggered for one round. When the Tatterman activates his Frightful Presence abilty, all PCs must immediately save or increase their fear level. A character who has already fought off the effect of the Fear Aura but fails to save against Frightful Presence becomes spooked and must save at the beginning of each turn once more, as outlined above. Neither of these abilities can impose a condition of Greater Fear.
"The mist finally condenses into humanoid form and the Tatterman - the nemesis of your dreams - stands before you. A chill runs down your spine as you relive the horrific nightmares of the past nights, revisiting in gory detail the death you found at your dream-stalker's hands."
When the Tatterman manifests, each PC makes a will save against his Fear Aura. Those who succeed become spooked, while those who fail become shaken. Each round, at the beginning of their turn, each PC must attamept a new save. Those that succeed reduce their fear level by one step, while those who fail increase it. A spooked character who succeeds on one of these saves loses the condition and does not need to continue making saves. A scared character who fails is staggered for one round. When the Tatterman activates his Frightful Presence abilty, all PCs must immediately save or increase their fear level. A character who has already fought off the effect of the Fear Aura but fails to save against Frightful Presence becomes spooked and must save at...
I really like the sound of this! I'm in the (very) early planning stages for running this AP, and I am intending to use the Horror Adventures fear system as well. I've been toying with ideas of using things like this to make the fear effects interesting and dynamic while still keeping the threat alive. I also agree on using the agile template and some of the lair action ideas from 5e; anything to make solo creature battles viable and interesting without resorting to adding more and more minions or amping up their hp.
Please keep us posted on how this works in play!
I gave him mythic style initiative (gets to attack twice per round) and went with Spastic Puma's idea of disappearing people into the dreamlands. If anyone is curious this (about half way down) is how it panned out.
"The mist finally condenses into humanoid form and the Tatterman - the nemesis of your dreams - stands before you. A chill runs down your spine as you relive the horrific nightmares of the past nights, revisiting in gory detail the death you found at your dream-stalker's hands."
When the Tatterman manifests, each PC makes a will save against his Fear Aura. Those who succeed become spooked, while those who fail become shaken. Each round, at the beginning of their turn, each PC must attamept a new save. Those that succeed reduce their fear level by one step, while those who fail increase it. A spooked character who succeeds on one of these saves loses the condition and does not need to continue making saves. A scared character who fails is staggered for one round. When the Tatterman activates his Frightful Presence abilty, all PCs must immediately save or increase their fear level. A character who has already fought off the effect of the Fear Aura but fails to save against Frightful Presence becomes spooked and must save at...
I really like the sound of this! I'm in the (very) early planning stages for running this AP, and I am intending to use the Horror Adventures fear system as well. I've been toying with ideas of using things like this to make the fear effects interesting and dynamic while still keeping the threat alive. I also agree on using the agile template and some of the lair action ideas from 5e; anything to make solo creature battles viable and interesting without resorting to adding more and more minions or amping up their hp.
Please keep us posted on how this works in play!
Thanks! We played a couple of nights ago and it worked really well. Three of the six (the bloodrager, the swashbuckler, and the archer bard) failed the initial save. Under the regular rules, they would've run away and left the witch, the shaman, and the oracle completely undefended and unable to do significant damage to the Tatterman, who would have easily tpk'd them, so I immediately felt pretty good about the alternate system. After that, the players got into the fear theme pretty well and the combination of constantly fighting off the shaken condition and the penalties for Wound Thresholds (which we've been using since the beginning and are really liking it for this AP) meant they were struggling for their lives the entire time. It was easily the most epic low-level boss fight I've ever run. I nixed the Tatterman's regeneration (the fight would've gone on forever - they had a hard time hitting with his increased AC and their penalties) but otherwise ran it completely as described above. The bloodrager, witch, and swashbuckler all went down but kept getting back up with some healing help from the others. By necessity, they displayed great teamwork and explored rarely-used options for getting bonuses and imposing penalties to get every advantage they could and prevailed in round 15 or so - a pretty long scrap, all things considered. They literally cheered when he finally dropped, so I think it went well.
If anyone is interested in trying out this option, I wrote up stats and made up condition cards for the fear states that I'd be happy to share. PM me.
I don't get the impression he's producing a lot of PC kills.
In a character-driven horror campaign, "PC kills" in the first stinkin' volume of the AP strike me as a bug, not a feature...
I just ran this final battle and I didn't find any issue with the Tatterman's power level. Especially after fighting the bag lady, the Onirogens, and Zandalus he was quite a challenge for my party.
If anything I found Zandalus to be the underpowered one.
The Tatterman's DR, regeneration, fear causing abilities, sleep inducing abilities, and his ability to at one point enter the shadow plane (and take someone with him) gave my party fits.
They eventually overcame him, but it was not an easy fight. He took out two PCs (who re-entered the fray after healing) as well as 2 skeletons created by the party's Occultist.
Most difficult thing for them was figuring out that he was vulnerable to silver. The adventure could have used a better clue in this regard. (Though handing out vials of silversheen and silver daggers should have been clue enough).
He TPKed my party tonight. Three failed their saves to the frightful presence, and the other two were too late in figuring out the weakness to silver. With his regeneration, DR, and frightful presence, no, I'd say he's just fine.