Hey guys!
I'm hoping for some advice from fellow homebrewers. Currently trying to prepare a 1st-18th level campaign in a similar fashion to Paizo's adventure paths. While doing some work with a CR 19 creature from the bestiary, I noticed that it had multiple uses of Power Word Kill. I'm wondering if I should change or modify that before requiring my players to face it in order to save the world and whatnot.
I know that the creature's CR reflects its difficulty, but the only reason I ask is that Paizo themselves seem to steer clear of insta-death spells EVEN in end-game fights. Even level 20 wizards tend to forgo the spell for things like wish and time stop, and I think I agree with that methodology.
Just wondering what some other thoughts are. Have any of you encountered Paizo villains with the infamous PWK equipped? Or have you used it on an end-game party of players without issue? Or is it a definite no-go and a guaranteed TPK?
you have to have 100 or less HP and you're at the highest tier of play.
I've seen a lv 7(I think) gnome wizard throw phantasmal killer at lv 5 PCs. So instant killing effects are fair game.
So I think PWK is fine, it can't be used early in a fight, and can only be used to finish people off, and there's likely better AoE spells to use to finish people off.
Like if you want your BEST SPELL be something to finish off someone that is somehow down to 100hp, go for it. But wish and timestop will likely help you win the fight by having strong initial effects over being able to finish off 1 enemy mid-late in the fight.
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The basic tactic of PWK is the classic:
Meteor Swarm followed by PWK the next round.
It kills most players built normally and following WBL 99% of the time.
If your players are running around with 200 HP, you probably won't have enough firepower to finish them off to use PWK unless you focus on one guy...which is meh.
8+5*17 = 93
starting con of 14, +6 from belt = 5*18 = 90
That's 183 hp and not factoring in inherent bonuses that they might have for a little more hp nor FCB going to hp nor toughness.
So yeah, if they get hit and fail all saves and have no fire resist up and have no respect of the potential follow up via healing or getting out of range, then the combo can round 2 can kill 1 person. Aim for the cleric so they can't just breath of live whoever you killed.
Do you refer to the Great Wyrm Brass Dragon?
Do you refer to the Great Wyrm Brass Dragon?
Yeah, that's the one. It potentially has 4 uses of it each day, one for each party member. Hence my hesitancy lol
you have to have 100 or less HP and you're at the highest tier of play.
I've seen a lv 7(I think) gnome wizard throw phantasmal killer at lv 5 PCs. So instant killing effects are fair game.
So I think PWK is fine, it can't be used early in a fight, and can only be used to finish people off, and there's likely better AoE spells to use to finish people off.
Like if you want your BEST SPELL be something to finish off someone that is somehow down to 100hp, go for it. But wish and timestop will likely help you win the fight by having strong initial effects over being able to finish off 1 enemy mid-late in the fight.
The main issue is that the creature I'm looking at (Brass Dragon) has 4 uses per day. Which could mean one for every party member. And the key here is that this is meant to be an end-game boss fight, not a punishment for foolishness or anything similar. In my opinion a boss fight should be a grueling test of tactics, teamwork, preparation (equipment), and effort. Giving a boss PWK just seems like it's missing the point. Unless the players specifically prepare for PWK, then it's not a test of skill or strategy it's just an unavoidable death.
Equally high-level spells like time stop and wish give a tremendous advantage but the party still has a chance to counter that with their own cleverness.
I'm wondering if insta-kill abilities and spells have any place at all in a required-to-win boss fight just because they seem to contradict the purpose of the fight in general.
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Save or Die are okay most of the times. They usually have some way to defend against them.
Power word kill for example is nice...but it can be countered by a 4th level spell: Death Ward and I'm not even trying to do any kind of optimization.
It usually comes down to preparation.
Kind of how in Witcher 3, the biggest part of monster slaying was actually gathering information and preparing the right stuffs to fight a monster.
If adventurers go in unprepared...well they usually get what they deserve.
It's only a problem, if you want to do some idea of fair play in encounters...which most of the time, the antagonist aren't looking for fair play.
Aim for the cleric so they can't just breath of live whoever you killed.
Breath of Life won't help someone who was killed by Power Word: Kill, a death effect.
It usually comes down to preparation.
Ah, see there's where my real problem is. My current plan is to leave the party confused and in the dark when it comes to what the final fight is, and then have this big reveal of a (story important) dragon that hopefully they weren't expecting.
So essentially, depending on how it goes, there's a decent chance that party won't know that they SHOULD be preparing for PWK. I understand punishing a party that doesn't prepare properly, but if they didn't know that they should prepare then it's a different story.
Power word kill for example is nice...but it can be countered by a 4th level spell: Death Ward and I'm not even trying to do any kind of optimization.
...and by "countered", we mean "at least you get a saving throw." DC 25. Fortitude, presumably.
Power Word Kill is far from the only deadly toy the Great Wyrm Brass Dragon has to play with. DC 27 Will Dominate Monster is going to hit an unprepared party pretty hard too. Nothing like having your level 17 barbarian become a blender for the other team.
Throwing out Quickened Dimensional Anchor is going to screw up a lot of high level tactics. Particularly since it can Burrow or Greater Teleport away from any given encounter and then start throwing out Demand (DC 26 Will).
Don't forget to give it triple treasure, including a selection of items it can use. A charisma boosting headband seems compulsory.
Do you refer to the Great Wyrm Brass Dragon?Link fixed.
lol whoops; was browsing a few tabs & copied the wrong one - thanks!
XD
To answer the OP's question, though, the closest I've come to PWK in a Paizo adventure path was an NPC primed to cast Circle of Death on a group of level 8 PCs. I had read of other GMs wreaking total carnage on their unprepared groups, so when I ran the path I took pains to give my PCs advance warning of this NPC's capabilities. Nothing blatant, no "PREPARE THIS EXACT SPELL OR DIE" warnings, just hints that Circle of Death was used to kill some of his enemies. The onus was on them to be ready.
You could hint at the need to prepare for Power Word Kill without giving away the identity of your final villain. Just have them come across key figures who were murdered with PWK.
Halfway off-topic:
What's the experience levels in your players and your games?
Because your real issue you should probably consider is player experience/game time.
A lot of the end portion of adventures I've seen then have the trend of "You reach level 16 or 17, here's 2 encounters followed by the final boss who is level 18+."
In effect a lot of people, even veterans end up not knowing anything about what end game monsters are actually capable of since they don't get to play many sessions there.
Individual dragons might have different spells (of comparable power) prepared. Overwhelming Presence might be an interesting replacement, for example.
Beside this, this is homebrew, you don't have to develop everything before the start. I started with a Paizo AP myself, but noticed my players were quite unwilling to be that restricted - they had surprising priorities sometimes. So I adapted the AP more and more - and finally started a new campaign, on Golarion but otherwise homebrew. Now I basically develop on demand, I don't even know the BBEG yet (a few candidates exist, though). In my notes I manage a lot of plot lines, abandon those which don't spark interest and add new ones that have potential. And the players love it...
PWK offers no counters and no fun factor. Yes there are some spells that stop it from killing you. Other than the fact that the monster is a high level caster, there is no indicator that you are about to be killed no save. At least with vorpal weapons the math is that it is extremely rare. Also it offers warnings if you can identify a magic weapon. I would rather give it wish, which is basically any 8th level spell of your choice, or timestop, which helps fix the boss action economy problem. I wouldn't call PWD a TPK monster as it will rarely kill more than 2 party members, but I don't see any good reason to give it to an npc. The only good time I ever saw PWD, as either player or DM, was in 5e where you counterspell as an immediate action. Made it really feel like an epic spell fight while giving my enchanter something to do against the lich
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PWK is fine. When the heroes go against the BBEG, they are supposed to know its identity. This allows them to research it. Also, if they do die, that is fine. But in general, you shouldn't worry too much. The heroes are extremely capable. It is quite likely that you will find that they stop the villain VERY dead in its tracks, possibly dealing several hundred points of damage without the boss even acting.
If you don't know, test the battle out beforehand.
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Pretty much, in general that what happens to most bosses and monsters with unusual abilities...everybody is trying to save their powers for a dramatic moment.
the end result:
-Players never sees the boss abilities as he died in 2 or 3 rounds.
General advice:
If your monster has a powerful ability, just use it, as soon as you can.
45 AC seems like a lot until you realize just how deadly characters of that level can be. I wouldn't worry about more than 1 or 2 getting dead from the power word kill. Getting put to sleep and coup de grace'd from its gas breath weapon is far more likely ...
Power word kill for example is nice...but it can be countered by a 4th level spell: Death Ward and I'm not even trying to do any kind of optimization.
...and by "countered", we mean "at least you get a saving throw." DC 25. Fortitude, presumably.
Power Word Kill is far from the only deadly toy the Great Wyrm Brass Dragon has to play with. DC 27 Will Dominate Monster is going to hit an unprepared party pretty hard too. Nothing like having your level 17 barbarian become a blender for the other team.
Throwing out Quickened Dimensional Anchor is going to screw up a lot of high level tactics. Particularly since it can Burrow or Greater Teleport away from any given encounter and then start throwing out Demand (DC 26 Will).
See this is what the deal is for me, there are FAR scarier things the dragon can throw.
Even going to the Meteor Swarm example, if Meteor Swarm got the player's low enough for PWK to be able to work, it's likely strong enough to kill them R2 by using it again, but also hurting others.
PWK at most is a nice to have, but it only works against 1 previously hurt target. And since the game is about rocket tag at that high of levels, I really doubt that PWK will be it's best choice. R1 get them low and be attacked by party. R2, kill off 1 PC and get attacked by all or most of party, depending on how initiative worked. R3, you're likely dead, but you can maybe kill off another PC with PWK. PC's win, no TPK.
Let me relate to you the end of our AoW AP. This was for 3.5, and we were just epic characters. In the end fight, against a truly overwhelming BBEG, the DM threw out its few weaknesses completely, and we still dealt more than three times its max hp in a single round.
Trust me, PWK isn't your biggest hurdle.
Also, aren't Brass Dragons normally good or neutral aligned? Why would you be fighting one?
Well something that complicates the whole endeavor is this. The BBEG is not the dragon. It's actually the mage who has perfected a mind-control spell more powerful than Geas (the plot of the campaign is the villain slowly testing it on more and more powerful creatures in order to perfect it). So the big reveal is that the villain has gained control of a dragon who, until that point, had been an ally of the party.
I'm not worried about the mind-control spell against the party (seven-day rituals and all that), but I am worried as to get to an actual boss-level fight (CR=party lvl + 4) I would have a Great Wyrm Brass Dragon with 4 casts of PWK, and then a level 19 spellcaster who could have 3 more castings of it, and then some minions to fill out the xp budget. So, if I go by the thought-process that I should bring the hardest hitting weapons against the party, I could potentially be dealing with 6-7 castings of PWK.
Also, to address the common statement that players need to be 100hp or lower for PWK to hit, I just want to remind that the boss is a dragon. Almost every attack is >+30 to hit, so damage will be near-constant.
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A well designed CR=party lvl + 4 encounter should be a TPK about 50% of the time. And there will almost certainly be some party casualties even if they win.
If you don't like those odds (i.e. don't really want it to be that difficult of a fight) then build for a lower challenge rating.
Basically, at that level unless you intentionally gimp your encounter (trading out powerful spells for spells that aren't going to be useful for example) the party it going to be at risk.
Based on what you have said though, there are a few things that can mitigate the risks in this particular encounter. One is, that if they know the Brass Dragon, they likely know what it can do, and even if they don't know ahead of time what they will be facing, when they do realize that they should be able to adapt their tactics. The second is that it seems reasonable there should be ways to figure out ahead of time that facing this is a possibility. If the ritual takes 7 days, then their ally has been missing for several days. Alternatively, if the PW: Kill has been used against others the party might be able to discover that, and know they would need to prepare for the possibility.
One the thing that you don't mention is how this super control ritual works. The CG good dragon might be force to fight the party, but is it forced to employ the most deadly tactics at it's disposal? If it has ways to resist, then that alone can make the fight much less deadly (and thus effectively a lower CR.) Additionally, you don't say if it is possible to dispel the super-Gaes, but I would certainly expect the party to have tried to find that out, given your description of the campaign and be prepared to employ it if possible. If it is possible, obviously dispelling the control over the dragon would dramatically change the fight.
And Lastly, how 'final' this encounter is can make a pretty huge difference. If the PCs have a chance to realize what they are facing, get away and come back another day then it is quite a bit different they if they are going to be unable to leave or if they don't win right now, they lose sort of scenario. Either can be interesting and fun from a game perspective, but they are different.
Ah, see there's where my real problem is. My current plan is to leave the party confused and in the dark when it comes to what the final fight is, and then have this big reveal of a (story important) dragon that hopefully they weren't expecting.
It usually comes down to preparation.
A good party will not let this happen. A group of high level adventurers has a wealth of opportunities for divination, and if they are "confused and in the dark," they should treat that itself as a challenge to be overcome.
Basically, I think that you underestimate the capabilities of a high-level party. It's actually very hard (and rarely satisfying) to try to set up a "big reveal" at high levels -- like running out of water in the desert, that just doesn't happen to a prepared group of sufficiently high level.
Disclaimer: take my advice with a grain of salt, it matters not what you do as long as everyone involved has fun.
If you're writing it yourself, I do not advise scheduling any encounters that are more than 2 levels away. In an ideal game, you would only write each session right before it, so you can account for the developments of the last one but few people have the time for that. In 18 levels, it is very likely the party will take the game off the rails in some fashion. Scheduling a final boss right now will lead to railroading if you get too attached to your brilliant final encounter. Be careful. You can write that a dragon was behind it, just don't schedule the encounter until you get a little closer.
That said, by 18th level I think they should be able to handle it. Do you know their builds? The other advantage to building the encounter closer to the time is that you'll have seen their builds in action and know what they can handle. My advice is that as enticing as it is, hold off on your final boss.
Yeah, come back when the party is reaching lv 16 and see if you still feel concerned. High level play is VERY different from the comical combat of low levels. And as mentioned, having divination, augury and the like available in game are ways for them to know the unknowable. High level play is considered by many "broken" in that smart players of caster's get to "ignore all the rules and cheat and skip the dungeon and boss and succeed at the goal" all within the rules of the game.
I wouldn't worry
You have to not die getting the PCs to 100 health first.
Have any of you encountered Paizo villains with the infamous PWK equipped? Or have you used it on an end-game party of players without issue? Or is it a definite no-go and a guaranteed TPK?
YMMV, but I find Power Word Kill too weak for high-level usage.
As noted, most characters will have far over 100 HP, and the "Meteor Swarm followed by PWK" thing only works if you don't have an Oracle with Mass Heal (which all Clerics/Oracles should take at 18th level) to refill the party's HP to full after that Meteor Swarm.
But again, as you note, you don't WANT party members to die during the final boss fight - you want them to get hurt, but survive. Being dead for the final boss fight is not fun, but being almost killed is lots of fun. Or, as noted per Breath of Life above, being killed and then revived, which requires death by HP damage (since you need an intact body).
My advice? Swap out the Power Word Kill for any other 9th level attack spell. Meteor Swarm is great, but so are any number of other spells. Remember, SAs are TYPICAL spell like abilities - Paizo has presented plenty of examples of variations to individual creature's SAs.