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Having some World of Warcraft nostalgia and potential plans for a future campaign; Since the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been statted, how difficult would a fight against all 4 be? Should all party members be level 20? Could it be done with 4 members or would 5 or even more be needed? Would they need Mythic abilities? What is the best class/build setup to fight all 4 Horsemen with 4 party members; same question but 5 party members? What are the worst party compositions that have less than average chance of success in this fight? Anything else I should know?
Could it be done without mythic? Probably?
Could it be done below level 20? Probably?
Would that be an appropriate challenge for any but the most munchkinny min max builds? no.
The rest of everything I say I would like to prefix by saying all CR at this level of play is extremely wonky and unreliable.
A level 20 Mythic 10 PC is CR 25. Allegedly.
So imagine instead of CR27-CR30 the horsemen were 17-20. I think easier numbers to grasp.
A roughly equivalent challenge to 4 CR20 Mythic 10 PCs would be
4 level 15PCs vs one CR17, one CR18, one CR19 and one CR20
Worst party compositions for this is hard to answer because A LOT will fail.
A better question would be what does the party need to deal with each horsemen.
Also do they have their 4 CR25 horses?
Could it be done without mythic? Probably?
Could it be done below level 20? Probably?
Would that be an appropriate challenge for any but the most munchkinny min max builds? no.
The rest of everything I say I would like to prefix by saying all CR at this level of play is extremely wonky and unreliable.
A level 20 Mythic 10 PC is CR 25. Allegedly.
So imagine instead of CR27-CR30 the horsemen were 17-20. I think easier numbers to grasp.
A roughly equivalent challenge to 4 CR20 Mythic 10 PCs would be
4 level 15PCs vs one CR17, one CR18, one CR19 and one CR20
Worst party compositions for this is hard to answer because A LOT will fail.
A better question would be what does the party need to deal with each horsemen.
Also do they have their 4 CR25 horses?
let's say yes they have their horses.
Stats for ref?
They're in the Bestiary 6.
Just get four "vacuum"s (the necromancer that won beastmass), all win init, all cast suffocation, they dead.
Non-mythic!
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Based on the XP total it'd be a CR 33-34 encounter.
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I don't see a party winning this fight if a GM is playing them very tacticfully just going by CR alone, but I know that all equal CR fights are not really equal.
One CR 25 or 26 encounter should can be a TPK. To fight a CR 30+ encounter is a hard fight to win unless everyone really optimizes, and plays smart.
Short version: My money is on the NPC's unless I have more information.
It would be a good end of the game battle. Inflate the PC's powers give them powerful artifacts made to fight the horsemen, or something to weaken them. I Did this once for a party to fight Orcus. I had them quest for items made to weaken him before they battled so they would have a chance.
I think its probably possible without min maxing and cheese by 20/10. It would require a lot of care though.
without Mythic it would definitly require heavy min maxing.
The biggest immediate problem is mythic blasphemy. 3 people are probably going to be sent home and they'll kill the 4th at their leisure.
Just get four "vacuum"s (the necromancer that won beastmass), all win init, all cast suffocation, they dead.
The bards might prefer to sing about swords swung and fireballs fired, but at the end the monster hunter is better off with targeting the weakest spot of an overwhelming foe.
The DC isn't insurmountable but some builds will struggle in that area.
Would be much easier to do it if you were Evil. And then you could become the horsemen too. Woo
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A simple 6 level build filled with cheese. Lets say figther 1 wizard (diviner) 5
Human for race.
Stuff for iniative
Forewarned +4 and always get to act
Greensting scorpion +4
Improved iniative +4
Reactionary +2
And with my wbl buy a cyclops helm
This means for the encounter i have an iniative of 34 and can always act in the suprise round. The highest a horseman can get is 33 so i get to go first.
I buy a blinkback belt. And pick up with my feats quickdraw. I think we all know where this is going.
I choose a throwing quickdraw shield as my bonded object. I start with a masterwork one and i am treated as having the crafting feats for it. Make it a distance throwing shield.
Baddabing badboom.
I now can make infinite free action attacks. Max damage is 21 on a crit. Just enough to hit past the dr.
From 200 feat away mister kerfullels here spews out attacks until they are all dead.
Never try this in a campaign and this is clearly unintentional.
Honestly there's no real way to make a satisfactory encounter out of it the way Pathfinder is designed. Either the PCs aren't sufficiently optimized/empowered and they get obliterated to various save/dies or the inverse is true and the opposition melts inside 2-3 odd turns mostly due to target saturation.
Pathfinder breaks hard at high levels and whether your PCs use mythic or bleeding edge optimization, it's all just rocket tag which is generally not the stated goal for "epic" capstone encounters.
I'm not sure this is entirely true
Although I think it could be difficult I do believe it is possible to make this fun, it would take some heavy research on the side of characters who were reasonably optimized. Although I don't think it would be maxed optimization.
The research aspect would be key for me, so the PCs could learn how to mitigate the horsemen's rockets as it were, before the fighting started.
Well like I said, you'd need to be reasonably optimized, and to add to what I said earlier with decent party comp.
You'd know to avoid certain things like keep people without strong will saves out of range of Charon for his Blaspheme being CL30, or to protect against sonic. But like I said your optimization wouldn't have to be too high. Take a Sorc or wizard for example will is gonna be decent but not great, 12 base + 5 cloak + 1 Pale green prism + 3-4 from wise(assuming a headband and starting wis of 10-12) and your save is 22, with mythic giving you re-rolls and surge D12 you should be able to make that save. Really just martial who neglect will would be in danger.
Your scenario doesn't work.
For one thing, Blaspheme is a 40ft radius centered on the caster, so they couldn't just point to a PC. For two you're confusing Concentration and CL, the only one with a CL of 30 is Charon, none of the others can kill a level 20 with blaspheme. For three I see no way for any of them to cast wish as a swift without a Greater Quickening Rod(I may have missed something). Which none of them explicitly have and even if you gave them one I'd call b#*%$$#~ on any planned encounter by the PCs initiating with the Horsemen all having their rods drawn and in hand on their first initiative roll.
Although I'd suggest this line of conversation won't lead anywhere helpful.
And yeah I was assuming the PCs would be Mythic for this. For them to do this none mythic would require massive cheese.
EDIT: would be significantly easier to Evil PCs me thinks.
actually the rod wouldn't work cause their Spell like abilities.
Are we also assuming that all of the horsemen are going to be riding their CR 28 mythic apocalypse horses?
Mythic blasphemy adds mythic rank (IE 10) to their CL if you're targeting non mythic targets (which I specified).
And I had specified, before you even posted in the thread, that for this to work I thought Mythic was necessary without it being an exercise. Given I also said in my reply to your first comment that it could be done with reasonable but not massive optimization, that I obviously meant mythic.
Without Mythic to do this would just be an exercise in cheese.
Mythic wish's save set is also an immediate action so it's perfectly in their bounds to just walk up to the PC blob and cast.
So these PCs that have researched and planned for the encounter are initiating it grouped up within walking distance of the one man in the encounter who can potentially one shot them?
I feel like you're not giving the PCS much/any credit.You are right about Mythic wish however.
It's all very silly but mythic is ICBM rocket tag like I said. Having the PC's be mythic just results in the Horsemen folding like card tables before they can do anything.
this is just hyperbolic, there are hundreds (I've made 16 myself) of ways of building for mythic that don't walk over 8 CR25-30 creatures.
Aside from heavily optimized Archmage and maybe Heirophant builds. Champions could potentially one round an enemy if they can set up an engagement that doesn't involve them being one rounded in return or are archering. But even doing that would require at least 6 mythic tiers for most builds.adding Mythic does not automatically nullify any and all challenges, despite the rhetoric to the contrary which surrounds it.
PCs could be using the Marshal, Trickster or Guardian paths.
Are we also assuming that all of the horsemen are going to be riding their CR 28 mythic apocalypse horses?
I already asked the OP this upthread and yes we are.
For the record the horses are 25, not 28.
First off all like I said there are plenty of mythic martial builds that don't do that. Its just the ones that do are easy and obvious and mostly revolve around using the Foe Biter legendary weapon ability alongside pounce like abilities or Mythic Vital strike and Amazing initiative and obviously mythic power attack.
Drop Legendary weapon and DPS drops off massively, and anyway, you can't take Foe biter it till at least mythic rank 3 anyway. So adding mythic doesn't mean horsemen immediately fold.
Anyway with this encounter the problem isn't the full attack, its not dying after you make the full attack.
And yeah, high tier blasters can one round a horsemen or two round multiple horsemen (with battering blast or chain lightning respectively). I don't think a kineticist could reliably hit their AC without Mythic. Unless they used energy in which case they couldn't reliably beat their SR.
Archer Paladin might do it pre mythic, Cavalier doesn't have enough damage to one round them pre mythic I don't think, maybe with some very high rolls. Also they're definitly die if they charged the horsemen pre mythic. It would be suicide.
Anyway my point is not and has never been that the horsemen cannot be defeated pre mythic. It is and always has been that to fight them without mythic and win one would have to be part of an extremely heavily optimized party but if you allow for mythic than the fight could be less rocket taggy (counter intuitive I know) and require a lower degree of optimization.
Even though its been mentioned that high lvl Pathfinder is rocket tag (I believe specifically ICBMs were mentioned) I have enjoyed readign this thread.
My only regret is that my lack experience with mythic tiers leads to my lack of contribution to the thread.
I can only think of AP stat blocks, where the creatures have DURING COMBAT sections about how they proceed, buff, retreat etc.
Maybe assuming that the Horsemen (and horses) fight like PCs (suns out, guns out) is what turns it into the aforementioned rocket tag. Is it really fair to assume that's how they would attack? I mean there's four of them, they've got access to a lot of firepower, maybe they last ditch blasphemy.
Just saying, it might help thinking this way so the conversation does go total cheese/power game; where reasonably geared, prepared and informed PCs stand more than a six second chance.
Eh I think the PCs would be more likely to be after ascending to the position of the horsemen themselves. That'd be a way more interesting plot.
Otherwise I don't see why they'd specifically target the horsemen. The Demon lords seem like a much more present and relevant problem to like, all of creation.
Daemons have been at absolute destruction since before Demons were even a thing and haven't done as much damages as Demons have to all of creation and the Demons aren't even trying to destroy it all.
+ the horsemen don't really have lieutenants in the typical sense the most powerful Daemons although agents of them are actually their closest rivals and vying for their position. They'd probably help the PCs. Lord knows they need help, Charon is the original horseman and death and have never been unseated so yeah they need some new blood. xD
Also from a lore point of view the horsemen working together seems unlikely unless they're ... you know... bringing the apocalypse...
and any legendary hero that walks into that 50ft by 50ft room is a moron.
well unless they like have one PC blast down the wall whilst another has a readied action to cast an augmented mythic time stop. In which case sure.... but them augmented mythic time stop is quite insane and requires MR10 xD
I agree though, the horsemen would be going all out. And they can Blaspheme at will sooo... yeah.
Again we are extrapolating like this is a Cthulhu or Lucifer fight but for example Karzoug the Claimer BBEG from ROTRL reads as this.
I'll admit that he has no Mythic abilities so there's no way to know what he would do if he did, but this is a man who has watched the PCs (in some cases before they even knew he existed), so same case as above, the PCs need to die, he knows who they are and what they've done to hinder him.
Yet he doesn't "go guns blazing" but from the start he makes it known that this is a fight like no other (again also AP) but again, that's what I'm talking about.
Eh I think the PCs would be more likely to be after ascending to the position of the horsemen themselves. That'd be a way more interesting plot.
Otherwise I don't see why they'd specifically target the horsemen. The Demon lords seem like a much more present and relevant problem to like, all of creation.
Daemons have been at absolute destruction since before Demons were even a thing and haven't done as much damages as Demons have to all of creation and the Demons aren't even trying to destroy it all.
+ the horsemen don't really have lieutenants in the typical sense the most powerful Daemons although agents of them are actually their closest rivals and vying for their position. They'd probably help the PCs. Lord knows they need help, Charon is the original horseman and death and have never been unseated so yeah they need some new blood. xD
Also from a lore point of view the horsemen working together seems unlikely unless they're ... you know... bringing the apocalypse...and any legendary hero that walks into that 50ft by 50ft room is a moron.
well unless they like have one PC blast down the wall whilst another has a readied action to cast an augmented mythic time stop. In which case sure.... but them augmented mythic time stop is quite insane and requires MR10 xD
I agree though, the horsemen would be going all out. And they can Blaspheme at will sooo... yeah.
Well I guess then its mythic rocket tag and it's a silly thought experiment.
Are we also assuming that all of the horsemen are going to be riding their CR 28 mythic apocalypse horses?
Where does it say what the horses CR is? I've seen it mentioned as a CR 25, but I can't find their CR anywhere.
In bestiary 6 they're listed as CR25.
dotty
By the looks of things, the Geysermancer could take all four of them at once without too much trouble. None of them are immune to Daze or Force damage, and their Will saves put them at a 50% or 60% fail rate. Their Initiatives aren't even close to high enough to get the drop on our Spraybottle Sorcerer.
Geysermancer goes first, drops Geyser, and uses a Quickening Metamagic Gem to drop another one.
All the Horsemen and their Horses need to make 4 DC 45 will saves or be Dazed for 5 rounds. Odds are good they'll all fail at least one.
Now all Captain Spraybottle has to do is maintain concentration. Getting through their regeneration will be more difficult, but with them all standing around unable to do anything, it's just a matter of time.
The main way in which this gets harder is if the Horsemen start spread out with more than 50' between them.
For those unfamiliar, the Geysermancer is about 1/2 way down this page.
Trouble with the Geysermancer vs the horsemen is he simply stalls them until his Geysers run out then dies.
With a party using powerful ranged attacks he should be okay though. Or casting selective dazing geysers? can he do that? so his party can get close.
Geysers don't run out. The duration is Concentration +40 rounds.
Even if Geysermancer decides not to maintain concentration, that's a lot of time to Gate in help.
I don't know how many Solars it's going to take to drop the Horseman, but I can guess how many the Guysermancer's going to use...
Let's not forget the Apocalyptic Resurrection ability they have, so you actually need to be able to find them and kill them again quickly (in like a single round). Otherwise they'll just send anyone home with their abilities after losing the first bout.
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I know a build that can do it at like level six. Anyone want me to post it?
Do not post Pun-Pun