With four mythic ranks and the abilities of his Robotic Body how likely is Hellion to TPK a character party?
All I can say is that my party survived. The Explode ability on the large arachnid robot chassis was an unpleasant surprise, but the one PC caught in the explosion survived both the explosion and the minor cave-in it triggered.
And I had increased Hellion's abilities by adding the spells from the Strength domain and Competition subdomain to it spell list, too. The battle occurred in room S1, the Cavern Overlook, rather than T3, Hellion's Redoubt, because Hellion objected to the PCs gaining control of the excavator's central processor in room S3. Hellion cast Greater Animal Aspect to be able to climb, so it gained terrain advantage by climbing on the cavern's walls. Hellion had sent all his remaining allies to the room first, before showing up in S1 and starting to cut through the wall to S3.
In response, the party crippled Hellion. Boffin, the gunslinger/rogue, went into gadgeteer mode, jumped onto the arachnid robot, and jammed the Inhibitor memory facet into its circuitboard. Then she pulled the Aggression and Ego memory facets out. My wife used a lot of system mastery to create a character who functioned as a gadgeteer, but such abilities have been very valuable in the campaign. Boffin still wears all those facets, and others acquired later, in a necklace.
My guess about other parties is that if they are not prepared to battle robots, which would be quite clueless after the robots of Fires of Creation, then they will be in deep trouble. The mythic abilities are just extra nastiness expected in a boss battle.
Mathmuse, how did they know to pull the facets out? And how did they do that? Jumping on the giant robot and tearing out his gadgets sounds awesome, but ruleswise how did they do it? Grapple checks? Climb and acrobatics? Did Hellion really have exposed circuit boards and visble USB ports?
We survived, barely.
I learned to always have at least Resist fire and resist electricity on when dealing with robots. Fortunately we also had applied protection from electricity to some party members so Hellions plasma lance was not that effective. His claws and spells on the otherhand were nasty. Fortunately (!) we had a cleric of Desna with liberation domain and could operate even though some of us were confused.
Later I learned to add sonic to the resistances, thank the stupid Warden robot... That remimds me to buy more 2nd level pearls of power.
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Mathmuse, how did they know to pull the facets out? And how did they do that? Jumping on the giant robot and tearing out his gadgets sounds awesome, but ruleswise how did they do it? Grapple checks? Climb and acrobatics? Did Hellion really have exposed circuit boards and visble USB ports?
Jumping on and hanging on the robot were Acrobatics skill checks, DC 20. Grappling is for trying to immobilize a creature. The memory facets were under transparent service panels on its back. The picture on page 53 shows small glowing glass panels on the robot's back, so I decided that was the appropriate place for memory facets. Boffin spotted the facets with a DC 25 Perception check. It took a Disable Device check, DC 35, to open the access panels. Boffin had been routinely opening doors in the excavator with the same DC.
The arachnid robot's claws could not reach its back, but its tail-based plasma beam could. Fortunately, Boffin had a Resist Energy spell from the party's bloodrager, protecting her from half the beam's damage.
The party had already used the Inhibitor memory facet to lock Hellion out of the excavator's central processor. Boffin had retrieved the facet while the arachnid robot fought the rest of the party, a small disadvantage to Hellion starting the fight next to that room. They knew that the facet could lock out Unity, and hence Hellion too, due to a vision I added to room P5, the bridge of the wrecked spaceship. I wrote the vision down beforehand, so let me copy and paste it here.
A man in Androffan uniform entered the room. He plugged a crystal into the control panel and hit switches causing the panel to light up and display glowing text in Androffan. A smile crossed his weary face.
He touched a device on his throat and recited as his fingers return to the control panel.
“Final report of salvage module Chrysalis, Captain Yurian Valako
reporting. Chrysalis is lost, to both the Dominion monsters and
the Divinity AI Unity. The surviving crew of Chrysalis are
boarding the tug Caterpillar. We will attempt an emergency landing
on the unknown planet. I’ve secured an inhibitor facet to disable
Unity’s security and enable us to fly free. I will append further
reports after our successful landing.”The curved wall in front of him suddenly illuminated as a window to outside, showing the ground and clouds rush by at a thousand miles per hour from ten miles up. Above the ship hangs a complicated metal structure. Urgently, Captain Valako announced, "Ralis, clear the door. I'm launching immediately. We can't wait for Bick."
The ship lurched and the metal ceiling shot upward. Then the ceiling dropped down again and slammed into the ship. A voice called out, "Captain, what...?"
Captain Valako replied, "The Chrysalis rammed us. Unity won't let us escape easily." His fingers race and the view outside spins. The ship shudders from strain as it ducks away from the metal structure. Another flick of a switch and the viewscreen image splits, one revealing the metal structure above them as another spaceship the size of a mountain, and the other focussed on the approaching ground, now rapidly moving backwards close beneath them but slowing down.
"Chrysalis, you maneuver like a garbage skow," Captain Valako muttered as he dodged out from under the other spaceship.
Then the Chrysalis hit the ground and exploded into a cloud of debris miles wide. "S+++!" the captain said. The ship spun as it intercepted the debris.
The vision ends. Captain Valako's body crumbles to dust. And from the dust arises a phantom darkness.
Besides, many PCs had maxed out their Knowledge(engineering).
Nice! Was the DC flat 20 to hang on or could Hellion try to dislodge him with some maneuvers of his own thus increasing DC?
I have been thinking of ways to handle this kind of Legolasesque/Shadow of the Colossus style combats where smaller characters climb on a huge/colossal monsters instead of standing there and stabbing their toes with their 2 handed toe nail clippers +5.
Great fight effect, not likely to happen in most games for that encounter though. Those DCs and actions are a gift so that his wifes character could excel. Granted I don't mind at all, but sounds like the character and the encounter were matched perfectly. Can't think of many groups that would have dragged a specialized gadgeteer along. Seems like a great group of friends with a GM that made the AP fun for them, congrats.
Nice! Was the DC flat 20 to hang on or could Hellion try to dislodge him with some maneuvers of his own thus increasing DC?
Hellion did not try any combat maneuvers. It was going to try submerging in the nearby toxic pond, but the party's fighter jumped down and intercepted it on the way there. Climbing off the wall was foolish.
I have been thinking of ways to handle this kind of Legolasesque/Shadow of the Colossus style combats where smaller characters climb on a huge/colossal monsters instead of standing there and stabbing their toes with their 2 handed toe nail clippers +5.
In another adventure path, the party was attacked by a dragon while climbing a mountain. The highest climber, a rogue/duelist, jumped off the mountain onto the dragon's back. The dragon did try a combat maneuver to dislodge the rogue, but the rogue make a Reflex save to catch ahold again. The dragon finally dimension-doored away, leaving the rogue in midair. The wizard saved him with Feather Fall.
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Run this twice now.
First time, Hellion died like a chump due to a blue flame blast critical from the party pyrokineticist.
Second time, party was very melee heavy, so Hellion climbed the wall with his climb speed and spent the fight sniping with his plasma cannon. The one archer in the party who could have countered this failed his save against confusion, and spent the entire fight rolling "do nothing but babble incoherently" on the d% roll. Eventually, the casters wore Hellion down with spells.
In general, having ranged feats, melee feats, and SLAs means Hellion has a lot of tactical options, but he's not super-strong at any one thing except possibly melee. If the party has a optimized melee guy though, they'll likely outpace him in damage, especially if they're using the new toy they got from Kulgara.
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A note on his mythic initiative: if he gets turns back to back, he can become really nasty. Then he can move up to a squishy PC and then take a full attack before the PC gets to react.
This happened because my players used Delay/Ready actions a lot, which caused his turns to collide. I would advise against letting this happen. Always keep a few player turns in between boss turns.
This encounter was almost a TPK for my group, and they ended up facing him alone and pre-buffed while he was still suffering from the effects of the inhibitor facet. The difficulty was definitely exaggerated by his turns colliding, as Ascalaphus mentioned. The other difficulty was that the party cleric was the first one to fall. The adamantine lucerne hammer-wielding bloodrager was able to make enough of a difference before he ran out of hit points that the one remaining party member, the bard, was barely able to finish him off while on his last legs. Fortunately all of the party members survived by being unconscious, instead of dead-dead, and far enough away from the explosion that it didn't push them over the edge.
Because he was the last man standing and the one to land the killing blow on a "god," the bard's ego has never recovered, though.
When I played LoR, the penultimate fight with the chainsaw welding orc barbarian was actually the deadliest. That encounter ended with a near TPK that wiped out all of the other PCs. My Pathfinder seeker sorcerer with the impossible bloodline was able to survive thru clever thinking and quick action.