When we played it, we were split up so he couldn't focus on any given target, with party buffs like Breath of Life, Stoneskin, and others on full-bore.
This also limited what sort of things like Chain Lightning and Meteor Swarm he could hit the party with.
We had Orik VanCaskerkin as the cohort of our sorcerer, who held down one flank while our 'kitten bone oracle of doom' charged in at the top of the initiative and hit him with something big enough to throw off his entire game plan when it came to his turn.
Beyond that, we were getting pretty mauled and it wasn't an easy fight.
There's another thing there, too, but if you don't know about it, revealing it would be a massive spoiler.
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About half of our party got taken out in the first three rounds. I basically took out most of the enemies as an invisible dragon with Mind blank.
Oh and the Dimensional dervish feat line so that I could full attack him/minions every round. And an AC buffed to the hemisphere so that his pets could not hit me in melee combat.
Oh and I was using Spell Immunity and Spell Immunity, Greater to be immune to the most dangerous arcane spells.
Btw Cleric of Zog-Sothoth using a couple of methods of getting arcane spells on my spell list.
Chuckle.
We faced a Karzoug which had been buffed and enhanced because the original one was too wimpy according to our GM.
Did you buff yourselves appropriately? Spell Immunity, Protection from Energy, etc, etc?
We had all of our buffs taken down by a trap spell on the portal and Karzoug then opened up with Timestop to lay a pile of Delayed Blast Fireballs on us. My wizard died before I got an action and was Breath of Life'd immediately. Then it went downhill for a couple of rounds while Karzoug killed both my wizard (again) and the cleric who was keeping me upright. We were both counterspelling most of Karzoug's spells but some got through.
Meanwhile the Paladin, Synthesist Summoner and cohort Paladin tore through the minions and just managed to drop Karzoug the round before the GM thought they would - or he would have stepped into his Prismatic Sphere and healed up and then finished them off.
It was fun, but a very close-run thing.
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It's just a crazy hard battle, when we played everyone in our party except me and our wizard died. I was a barbarian orc with 350+ hp and we systematically moved through the enemies killing them one at a time while our wizard kept karzug busy then by the time it was just karzug left it was only me and our fighter left in mele with a combined 20 hp. Our wizard was a coward concerned with only self preservation so he wasn't much help really. But anyways me and the fighter got right up to him and he killed the fighter and backed away and I barley escaped death cause I was a crazy save tank. Then our wizard went unconscious and it was just the lone barbarian standing among his dead friends. At that time he had negative 6 hp from the last attack but because he had orc ferocity he got one more turn. He used his quick runners shirt to pick up his friends body and move up to karzug. Then in the most epic use of the body bludgeon rage power ever to exist he smote down karzug with the dead body of his comrade with his dying breath and scored a critical to finally bring the wizard down. It was ridiculous and i don't know how we actually managed to win.
I'm trying to to grasp what's in this fight and I'm really struggling but I think one way round it would be to try and bait out his meteor strike against a swarm of summons lead by an illusion of the wizard.
baiting out his opening volley or having someone waiting to counter spell his time stop would be good lol.
We had a larger party which helped: it meant we had 1 additional martial at our disposal. Our GM did up his HP to compensate, but action economy, etc.
What really mattered, though was:
1. Everyone had fly or air walk (some had both), and some had true seeing.
2. There was group communication via Telepathic Bond, which was key. Obviously we had to all be on the same side for it to be fully effective, but without this we would have lost a round getting our bearings. You can't afford to lose a round in this fight. If it gets to Wail of the Banshee, you are in trouble.
3. We were buffed heavily going in.
4. We spread out and did not clump together when we went through. His AoE spells were not able to hit more than two of us at a time (except Meteor Swarm, but that's a pretty lame blast spell).
5. Our martials had Improved Critical for their runeforged weapons. This is a huge advantage.
We had one piece of huge luck: the sorceror who tried Greater Dispel and got hit with karzoug's Spell Turning was not the one who had buffed our martials. That bit of luck saved us.
You do have Runeforged weapons, right? I hate to ask "did you plug it in?" type questions, but I read one campaign journal online from a group that went through Runeforge and apparently missed that bit. Without those, this battle is exceedingly difficult.
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Just to note, Karzoug is meant to be customized against party since he has had enough chances from scrying to know what will be effective against the party and he knows all the spells so he has a lot of choices to prep from. The book's default statblock for him is "If you are unsure what to do, here is example", Karzoug is kinda meant to be different for each party.
Mages disjunction is an AOE that could target one of his minions hit him and potentially strip him of all his buffs including spell turning, if I'm understanding things correctly.
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The character I played in this game was an incredibly prideful and pragmatic elven wizard.
After everything we had been through, my wizard came to the conclusion that Karzoug was far too powerful for the group and that victory would lie in doing the one thing the Runelord would not expect. Completely take magic off the table.
Rather than try to match power with Karzoug, my wizard would match wits instead.
as soon as combat started everyone in the hero team dropped initiative to act after the rogue. We ate some meteor swarms and chain lightning as well as some breath weapons but no one was dead after that initial assault.
The rogue then successfully UMD a scroll of teleport. That got the entire group across the intervening space and right beside Karzoug where my wizard could spring his trap and cast Mage's Magnificent Enclosure that pretty much surrounded all of us - including Karzoug.
Sure no one had access to magic spells or their magic weapons, but Karzoug as a level 21 wizard (or whatever he was) vs a Paladin and a Rogue at level 18 is a terrible mismatch.
While the Barbarian and Oracle kept the minions outside from breaking into the globe of force, my allies made short work of Karzoug in a very one-sided melee contest whilst my wizard stayed out of the way.
For us at least, the Runelord was toppled with a single spell.
That sounds fairly reliable
Reliably methods so far to me are
Greater invisibility + mind blank + your method of killing
Mages disjunction after he time stops. (With fire resistance in prep in case of delayed blast fireball)
The Mage's magnificent enclosure thing.
my party never got to fight him. our gm was too frustrated with how powerful we were even at just the end of book 5. he saw each of the 4 of us as being able to take him down in one turn. party had a aether kenitisist, archer magus, fighter, and me the summoning archanist. after 5 sessions in a row of use taking no damage and killing everything on the first turn that kind of broke him.
We did RotRL as a 5th Edition conversion, so it was very different.
My cleric mostly did bless and healing/revivify. We were 13th level, party of six
I think we only fought Kurzaug, the blue dragon, and 4 rune giants. The berserker cape of the mountebanked to full attack the dragon, grappled the dragon, and eventually go forcecubed for most of the fight.
The rest of the party focused on the rune giants. The ranger used his horn of Valhalla to summon a ton of berserkers, who swarmed one of the giants, and pushed/pulled it into the glowy abyss. I managed to banish one of the giants, and the others killed the other 2. The arcane trickster, eldritch knight, and wizard did A LOT of counterspelling, but that only uses up a reaction (AoO/immediate action) in 5th Edition.
It was basically a battle of attrition. Also, in 5th Edition, spellcasters only get 1 spell slot for spell levels 6 through 9, so we weren't being constantly bombarded with high level spells (even though Karzog got a spell slot of level 1d8 each round). So only 1 meteor swarm.
I think readying actions to attack when Karzaug casts would be pretty effective.
Recently completed this as a PFS 4-man with the line-up of Mesmerist, Barbarian, Magus, and Psychic (me). Karzoug had zero information on us that wasn't communicated by his minions due to constant mind blanks on the party. While it's fair to say "yeah, but you only played book 6," he wouldn't have had info from scrying on me since 14 and the party since 16.
Not sure about buff stripping from the teleporter (the GM did not mention or indicate anything about that), but we walked in ready for virtually anything. I had 23 active buffs on myself (I kept the spreadsheet) and, amongst everything else, we used astral projection to enter, so any deaths would have been fake bodies and the real character could walk in shortly thereafter. Some relevant buffs walking in:
Communal Protection from Energy (fire)
Communal Resist Energy (electricity)
Life Bubble
Spell Immunity (Disintegrate, Baleful Polymorph, Polymorph Any Object, and Trap the Soul)
Mind Blank
True Seeing
Aroden's Spellbane (didn't end up working out for us, but it was keyed to Time Stop and Wish)
Divide Mind (just for me)
As a psychic, I didn't care about verbals. There was definitely a quickened silence that wrecked Karzoug's fun, including preventing him from utilizing Wail of the Banshee. As the main caster of the party, I spent my turns acting as a walking countermeasure to anything he did. We completed the combat at the first action of round 5, after I had forcibly removed his glaive from the combat via object possession greater and the mesmerist teleported the magus and barbarian into melee. The dragon had been removed via quickened ill omen + persistent plane shift and we pretty much just ignored the giants once we were able to separate Karzoug from them.
Just to wonder, what is 3.5 version of Karzoug fight like?
I mean, did 3.5 version have the meatshields or did it do the mistake of "solo wizard fight"?
I played the original version of RotR, home-converted by my DM to run early Pathfinder rules, although he did allow some 3.5 stuff still at the time.
He beefed Karzoug up a couple levels (cleric levels, I think he told me after the fact, to give better stats but not any more high end spells), but it was still ultimately a solo battle. Even if it was a solo battle that opened with a Time Stop into Prismatic Sphere and a bunch of other nasty terrain.
Digging up my old records of the campaign, we failed to log the final sessions, so I can't recount much. It *was* six years ago. The rogue/fighter managed to make her way out of a Maze spell, the barbarian managed to stick on Karzoug's ass most of the fight, the cleric... probably just spammed cures the entire time, and the only thing I remember the sorcerer doing is casting Magic Missile and taunting Karzoug when it worked.
Yeah counterspelling is a pretty powerful strategy against caster bosses.
Mages disjunction seems like a fun thing to do to him and his buddies. I really want disjucted the f!*$ out of him now xD
Has anyone readied actions to attack when he casts? What's his Concentration checks and DR/energy resistances like?
Has anyone readied actions to attack when he casts? What's his Concentration checks and DR/energy resistances like?
His concentration is massive. He's the only NPC my psychic has come across with a higher Int than him. His concentration bonus is somewhere in the mid 30s, so that readied action better hit HARD. It's also worth noting that he prepares differently based on what he's observed via scrying or what his minions have communicated to him. Fortunately, he does not have access to either the Illusion or Enchantment schools, which limits a lot of his misdirection potential and miss-chance buffs.
We didn't really test his DR much - everyone that attacked had +5 weapons - but he's going to have Protection from Energy and Resist Energy for the most common damage types your party throws out.
What was his contingency? I'm interested in the interaction between contingency and mages disjunction.
Contingency: When about to lose, win.
Or something like that.
It just seems a little odd that contingency would work once the person who cast the contingency was within the area of mages disjunction since the contingency should have unravelled.
Having contingency DDoor when a mages disjunction is identified is the most ridiculous niche contingency I've ever heard of. Fair enough he prepares for the parties common tactics but really how many parties common tactic is Mages disjunction?
What about a contingency DDoor based on a spoken word that is used whenever the caster needs to get out of Dodge in a hurry?
Then, whether he identifies a mages disjunction, or any other impending Bad Thing, he just uses his 'safe word' and voila!
That would require him taking a free action on someone else's turn.
Ok, how would you protect yourself against Disjunction cast by someone who probably has a caster level advantage on you?
Don't know I'm not saying I know how, I'm just saying that the GM is probably taking some unfair liberties to beat Mages Disjunction with contingency.
The most reliable way I can think is to keep the caster close enough to you that should they cast it they'd be caught in the radius, which isn't very reliable.
That would work then. Provided he identifies the spell.
Therefore I think assuming this contingency is in effect the only way to land it would be greater invisibility + mindblank which would be pretty effort intensive.
? I would assume that greater invis + mindblank would be a standard tactic for this battle.That would work then. Provided he identifies the spell.
Therefore I think assuming this contingency is in effect the only way to land it would be greater invisibility + mindblank which would be pretty effort intensive.
I was kinda looking for a way of doing it without greater invis mindblank since it is such a powerful combination it's kinda too easy to default to it.
In this case the dragon would still know where you were potentially if you were within his blind sense but it wouldn't be too hard to avoid that or leave it should he accidentally move to you.
Cool. Thanks for the info.
Can you ready a Greater Vital Strike? With a Huge anything with a x4 crit multiplier....? ;-)
Karzoug has constant See Invisibility so greater invis doesn't really avail you anything until you dispel/disjunction him.
Also his contingencies are way different but I guess he would prepare as necessary for the PC's.
It's funny though, we play by milestone instead of tracking XP and the anniversary addition only brings you to 16th lvl if I remember correctly.
You certainly can ready a GVS as it's an attack action. The question is whether you'll continue to threaten by the time he casts. You can't ready vs Contingency, though, as there is no action associated with it - the spells for Contingency are already cast, but the effect is suspended until the trigger occurs.
As I read it, though, the important thing for the GM to remember is that the destination of a Contingency DD or Teleport is set when you cast Contingency, NOT when it goes off. Whether that's advantageous is questionable at that point.
Strictly speaking, with the resources at Karzoug's disposal, this fight really depends in part on how hard your GM wants to play it. In the 3.5 version, for example, he had 2 wishes prepared and the XP available to use them (see above about the game where he sent everyone to another plane). Fail your save, which is likely given how high his DC is, and you and 19 of your friends find yourselves on the negative energy plane. Game over. Made your save? Do that again. Made your save again? Wail of the Banshee. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Karzoug doesn't have to win, he just has to not lose. He can throw everything he has at you, and he has a lot more than you do.
Karzoug has constant See Invisibility so greater invis doesn't really avail you anything until you dispel/disjunction him.
Also his contingencies are way different but I guess he would prepare as necessary for the PC's.
It's funny though, we play by milestone instead of tracking XP and the anniversary addition only brings you to 16th lvl if I remember correctly.
Mind Blank breaks his See Invis because See Invis is a divination effect. Ditto True Seeing. If Karzoug suspects Mind Blank will be in play, though, it's reasonable that he'll prepare Echolocation, which is transmutation and is only broken by Silence. This happened to our group. Literally all of it.
Strictly speaking, with the resources at Karzoug's disposal, this fight really depends in part on how hard your GM wants to play it. In the 3.5 version, for example, he had 2 wishes prepared and the XP available to use them (see above about the game where he sent everyone to another plane). Fail your save, which is likely given how high his DC is, and you and 19 of your friends find yourselves on the negative energy plane. Game over. Made your save? Do that again. Made your save again? Wail of the Banshee. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Karzoug doesn't have to win, he just has to not lose. He can throw everything he has at you, and he has a lot more than you do.
Scrolls of Aroden's Spellbane fix that problem.
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Our group has similar experiences to those above, suffering two Wail of the Banshee spells that cost us a player each. But what we had to deal with that was the most frustrating was our melee guys could not get past the Repulsion spell so could not close with him. I seem to recall the DC being high enough that it was gonna take a nat 20 to get past it.
Mind Blank breaks his See Invis because See Invis is a divination effect. Ditto True Seeing. If Karzoug suspects Mind Blank will be in play, though, it's reasonable that he'll prepare Echolocation, which is transmutation and is only broken by Silence. This happened to our group. Literally all of it.
I'll be damned. Good thing my players are very straight forward in their approach.
Wouldn't Glidderdust still work? Albeit at the cost of an action.
It basically depends on what he knows to prepare, if he has seen you cast GI before then he reasonably preps see invisibility. If he knows you like mind blank he reasonably preps echolocation.
But how does he know you cast mindblank on yourself? That's the question for me. Also dimensional anchor might be a spell worth casting.
The other option is to have someone with high UMD cast a scroll of Mages Disjunction, baiting the DD then have the wizard/sorc/Arcanist/psych ready a second for post contingency.
Or time stop and dimensional anchor him and then mages disjunction him, that's probably the simplest way.
Mind Blank breaks his See Invis because See Invis is a divination effect. Ditto True Seeing. If Karzoug suspects Mind Blank will be in play, though, it's reasonable that he'll prepare Echolocation, which is transmutation and is only broken by Silence. This happened to our group. Literally all of it.I'll be damned. Good thing my players are very straight forward in their approach.
Wouldn't Glidderdust still work? Albeit at the cost of an action.
If he knows where he is
One very obvious way he'd know that you Mind Blank is if you open doors and he doesn't see anyone through an image, assuming those work via divination effects. I've assumed they functioned off of clairaudience/clairvoyance, but I'm not 100% on that as I haven't run or read the AP. In a longer-term read, the second he stops being able to scry on you (he's been doing it for a long time by the time you get to Xin-Shalast), he's probably got a good guess. My party went in Mind Blanked, so it was pretty obvious when his minions started dying and he couldn't see why.
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Aye the Mind blank + Greater invisibility is a very strong one. And if you have a sneaky mage they would most likely also have Dampen presence. Aroden's spellbane should work for taking care of glitterdust/ Invisibility purge/ Greater dispel magic and Mage's Disjunction.
Oh and consider becoming undead so that Life sense no longer works.
So there. If you really, REALLY, do not want someone to find you have those abilities and you should more or less be impossible to find.
This is an interesting thread. Often the theme of Karzoug threads are that he's too easy to kill.
Are we talking about mind blank for all the pc's? That's a lot of 8th level spells...
Time stop is a devastating spell for Karzoug but that works for the pc's too. So is mage's disjunction. Really the pc casters should be using many of the same spell combo's as Karzoug is.
Just in case...
One secret the pc's should realize just after arriving is they can get some instant allies by dispelling the dominate affect on the Wardens of Wind. They should have already learned the Rune Giants compel the other giants to serve with magic.
The AP has some assumptions about the pc's encountering Karzoug on the same day as they have disrupted his images, but that seems a dangerous assumption since the pc's might be spell depleted as well by the time they get to the Anima Focus.
I would agree with some of the comments above - the pc's need flight, high save bonuses, and a lot of energy protection. The pc's need to take out his minions as rapidly as possible so they can hammer Karzoug with their advantage in action economy. This can force Karzoug to use his resources to keep them functioning like using wish to heal their damage, etc. One item that strikes me about the OP's story is his group seemed to always be on the defensive - Karzoug was setting the pace and driving them to react rather than the other way around.
At these levels, fights are often a matter of luck and system mastery. And one slip or one bad save and things can go bad in a hurry.
Is there a communal mind blank spell?
In 3.5, I played in a group with many paranoid epic and/or nigh epic campaigns, and everyone got mind blank items as soon as possible.
I wasn't as paranoid and not as used to very high level campaigns, so my druid got his name wrote in the dead book but quick. My replacement character, an epic level warlock, got an auto-mind blank ability, which was nice.