building a mechanically strange boss fight

[raelgoranth]

my group of lvl 7s has been hired to kill a man by basically a really seedy thieves guild.Little does the party know this is basically to get rid of them as they were hired to fight what may be an unkillable man.

he is roughly a level 8 fighter(not an exact lvl yey), a few magic items to help counter the flying shenanigans of my party.and It is expected they should be able to down him decently fast. Thing is, its dark souls themed world and he is a cursed undead, so he just gets back up at full health again and is relentless ( a big theme of this game is you cant smash your way through everything) , he could be talked out of combat, but what are some ways I could help allude to the players that he isn't going via smashing, unless of course, they demoralize him to the point of hollowing ( in-game mechanic that if you lose your drive to go on, you hollow and become a mindless zombie. id love advice to keep this from becoming a boring slogfest

[SorrySleeping]

Have the person that hired them say something along the lines of "This person can be easily persuaded out of combat into a parley. I want him dead no matter what. No treaty, no deal, no pact. Dead."

[Cattleman]

I'd say that maybe you have a mcguffin that hints about this somewhere in the area. It could be a journal that says he's ultimately a reasonable person.

You can start the "fight" with a Motive. So if he says "You cannot pass unless you <blah>" or "Give me your <blah> or be ground down by inevitability."

Then your party is aware that he speaks and know of another way to get by him (and possibly haggle/bargin/convince him otherwise.)

It *does* mean they may not fight him at all, but that's fine.

[The Sideromancer]

what level is this?

[thelivingmonkey]

The Sideromancer wrote:

what level is this?

Read the first post buddy

[The Sideromancer]

my bad.

In any case, a scroll of Trap the Soul is not prohibitive at level 7 and prevents your opposition from coming back (note that intelligent undead have souls)

[djdust]

as i'm sure being beaten and revived over and over again is an unpleasant experience, i would have the man trying to talk the PCs out of combat. Why wouldn't he just be honest with them, explain his curse, and ask them kindly to please let him live out his miserable life in peace. Then inform the PCs that they've been duped by the thieves guild, the PCs then have the decision whether or not to go after the thieves guild.