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Each round she uses deeper darkness, you get a round of attacking her. She is dangerous, but to a lvl 20 party? Do you even understand how big their can of whoopass is?How many rounds can you do that?
'Cuz she's not running out of Daylights or Greater Dispel Magics.
Assuming the party is prepared for fighting her? Till the bloody cows come home. One or two in the party spam heightened light spells. Each round, she removes this - but there goes her std action each round. The others in the party can unload on her. And if she doesn't remove those, her 5' step teleport/ultra-stealth ability goes poof.
No SLA makes anyone unbeatable. They COST ACTIONS to use. While she is doing that, she isn't doing anything else with those actions. Note that a prepared lvl 20 party can easily expand their total actions per round. Summonings, gate, etc work fine.
Being on the wrong end of action economy disparity is rough.
Black Butterfly's 5' step tactics and lower than average damage output means she favors a drawn out combat anyway, so stall tactics will almost always favor her. Also, you've failed to address her 3/day Antimagic Field. If she is indeed being overwhelmed by too many casters spamming high-level Bright-light-creating spells, she can just turn it on and let that aura negate bright light wherever she happens to be. Yes, this might lead to the casters being able to estimate the area she's in and nuke it with AoE's (didn't they already fill their spells per day with Daylights, though? :P), but even Daylight spells have an area of 60' bright light. So even Widened, with her in the middle, she can ignore with Antimagic, 5' step 150' (putting her 30' outside the Bright Light, and Full Attack at a -2 penalty for being past her first range increment.
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Black butterfly has no particular defense against acid attacks. Disintegrate works pretty well. SR 39 is clearly beatable for a 20th level caster. Her touch AC of 34 is entirely possible to hit. Fort save +26 can be hit. DR 20 isn't all that much.
There is more, of course. 150' move is a lot, but far from enough. At 20th level, spells reach quite far. If she does flyby attack, she gets a std action, not a full attack. She has haste which doesn't matter much. Her more powerful SLAs are shut down by antimagic field. Note also that AMF likely means no deeper darkness - a single torch can shut down her Silence Between ability, bringing her Stealth down sharply and denying her Hide in plain sight. AMF also costs her her quickened heals, her constant freedom of movement, mind blank etc etc etc. AMF would be an extremely risky move for her.
Black butterfly has no particular defense against acid attacks. Disintegrate works pretty well. SR 39 is clearly beatable for a 20th level caster. Her touch AC of 34 is entirely possible to hit. Fort save +26 can be hit. DR 20 isn't all that much.
There is more, of course. 150' move is a lot, but far from enough. At 20th level, spells reach quite far. If she does flyby attack, she gets a std action, not a full attack. She has haste which doesn't matter much. Her more powerful SLAs are shut down by antimagic field. Note also that AMF likely means no deeper darkness - a single torch can shut down her Silence Between ability, bringing her Stealth down sharply and denying her Hide in plain sight. AMF also costs her her quickened heals, her constant freedom of movement, mind blank etc etc etc. AMF would be an extremely risky move for her.
Sure, her touch AC might be beatable, and 150' isn't a ton... but when she could be anywhere within a 150' radius of where you last saw her (or didn't see her), it becomes a lot harder to aim.
She doesn't need Flyby Attack- she has a ranged attack option, which is only boosted by haste.
Voidsedge is (Ex), meaning she can still full-attack 120' away even in an AMF, and her stealth and movement are entirely non-magical too.
The only way an AMF would shut down Silence Between would be if you're fighting her at noon in a sunny field. It takes bright light to cancel it, not normal (which is the max for most light sources) light.
Besides, an AMF doesn't cancel her Hide in Plain Sight, regeneration, or stealth bonus- and Mind Blank protects against divination, which would be canceled by AMF anyway.
AMF would be an extremely risky move for whoever's fighting her.
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A light source costs her HiPS and Stealth bonus, not AMF. As I stated. As for hitting her, what you do is ready an action to send a disintegrate/whatever back when she throws her starknife.
Only a light source that provides bright light. Her ability functions normally in normal light.
You need a spell to produce bright light (unless you're in a sunny field), which she can dispel, teleport away from, move away from, or engulf it in an AMF.
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AMF has a radius of 10 ft from her. It should be pretty obvious where in the daylight spell she is. At which point she is entirely grapple-able. Remember that the daylight spell is fine except in her area. And she isn't casting any dispels anymore. Okay. maybe not grappleable, CMD 78 is pretty good, but a good meleer should do fine.
Heightened Daylight.
heightened continual flame rock.
Even if you know where she is based on the area of no bright light, her Stealth still provides total concealment vs. spells and other attacks. Most spells won't be able to hit her, even if you ready them for when she shows herself, since an AMF negates them.
The readied action tactic you mention is probably the only to nab her, mostly with a dedicated ranged attacker, though if I'm not mistaken, you can only ready a Standard action, so the best you could do is something like Gravity Bow + Vital Strike.
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You could still deliver the heavy hitter to her for a full round attack. Another strategy is to get up close and dump a prismatic sphere, negating the AMF.
Look... I am not saying she is a pushover. Taking her down would be difficult in any case since she can easily poof away to Akiton or so. My point is only that the things you describe as unbeatable are anything but. She has weaknesses, several of them in fact. The biggest is that she still has no action economy to face several opponents. These arguments are usually pretty telling as to which of the posters have actually played at level 20, and which have not.
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Another way to handle her is to keep on the move and use area attacks; if you end your turn far enough away from her, she can't step and full attack you with the starknife, and if she always has to approach to attack you, she won't be able to also step out of the spot that turn so you'll know where she ended up. Either way, it's a highly mobile fight, and you'll probably have to change up your tactics from the norm to handle her.You'd have to end your turn really far away from her though, at least 250 feet if I understand right, and I'm not sure of many (any?) ways to move that fast in Pathfinder without also sacrificing your offensive potential for that turn because you've spent your actions moving instead of attacking/casting.
Monks can. Had a PFS monk in 2010(ish?) in my group who could cross three longbow distances and still hit you if he blew Ki points. (note 7 years ago+ the fact that it wasn't my character, i don't remember the build.)
Worst-case scenario for her is that she doesn't get a free 150' move, and instead has to teleport away, withdraw, or use some other form of defensive measure. You can't ready a full attack, and Bright Light (which is hard to achieve over long distances- the furthest distance I could find is 60 feet) is the only real way to negate what amounts to free action move 150' (no provoking)+non-magical invisibility (that's not broken by attacking). Saying that lighting a torch and standing next to her breaks her powerful move economy isn't doing it justice.
Another neat idea is to disintegrate her starknife when it comes. It probably shouldn't work, but I can't see why not. It is unattended, meaning the save it gets is pretty bad. Without that, the battle changes drastically.
I agree with you on that. However, you may be surprised at how many threads you can find about builds designed to stomp CR 30 monsters like Cthulhu, who are also considered Demigods. I started this thread for two reason, the amusement/joy that Black Butterfly was actually a demigod that didn't seem beatable, and also to see if anyone was interested in pitting her against OTHER statted demigods as a comparison. Fighting another demigod at least - I feel - is a believable way for a demigod to die.I find it odd that so many people are up in arms over something that is literally a minor deity. Something that would give an optimized power gamed PC a run for its money.
It's a CR 28 demi-god lol.
I mean, to put it in perspective, this thing is +8 higher than a level 20 party. They *should* get beaten into the dirt for fighting it.
She is definitely intended to truly feel her weight as a CR 28 creature (theoretically a smidge too high level for even a 20th level nonmythic party to have as a boss, though CR is very theoretical when you get that high). I have no doubt a level 20 MR 10 party would be able to defeat her, simply because the damage math gets a bit out of control by that point, so they could do something like have two characters ready a dimension door+mythic vital strike to attack her when she starts her full attack and reveals her position, and the MVS might very well one-shot her.
Hmm I'm not sure if it counts as unattended mid-attack, even if it's no longer touching her. You're right about one thing, though - take away her Star Knife, and she basically becomes a distraction at best.
Mark - I'm not sure if there's anything an optimized level 20 MR 10 party CAN'T do. I remember a MVS'ing Fighter picking Cthulhu to pieces a couple years ago in a game I ran.
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Hmm I'm not sure if it counts as unattended mid-attack, even if it's no longer touching her. You're right about one thing, though - take away her Star Knife, and she basically becomes a distraction at best.
Also, I believe demigods' weaponry is usually a minor artifact, so trickier to destroy. Even if not, Voidsedge is a part of her in a way that most weapons aren't.
Mark - I'm not sure if there's anything an optimized level 20 MR 10 party CAN'T do. I remember a MVS'ing Fighter picking Cthulhu to pieces a couple years ago in a game I ran.
Agreed. In theory, 20/MR10 is supposed to be level 25, and thus fight a CR 28 encounter as a boss, but I haven't found that to be the case (and honestly, even non-mythic parties can usually handle much more than their expected share of challenge by high levels, such that it's worthwhile to playtest encounters against the PCs in advance to get a good estimate); mythic ranks seem to be worth more like a full level than a half level in my group's experience, and even that is an oversimplification, as that very first rank (if spent on the most powerful possible options) is a doozy.
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Another neat idea is to disintegrate her starknife when it comes. It probably shouldn't work, but I can't see why not. It is unattended, meaning the save it gets is pretty bad. Without that, the battle changes drastically.
Snatch Arrows???
Couldn’t a party of two do it fairly simply?
have one cast Daylight and the other ready an action to interrupt her casting.
Seems pretty simple to me...
also getting perception that high with Mythic is probably not that hard.
Spell-like abilities cannot be counterspelled (nor used to counterspell). You can dispel them (ie. using daylight to get rid of the deeper darkness), so technically you could ready to dispel the darkness once it's up, but not counterspell as she's doing it.Couldn’t a party of two do it fairly simply?
have one cast Daylight and the other ready an action to interrupt her casting.Seems pretty simple to me...
also getting perception that high with Mythic is probably not that hard.
I said interrupt not counter spell.
SLA can be interrupted right? I’m sure that’s a thing.
If not then ready an actual to cast another daylight. Not much more complex.
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Unless the arrows are epic and evil, her DR 20 lets her ignore them all completely.
And that, kids, is why you don’t play mythic tier 10 with level 20 characters.All 20,000 arrows miss as Time Stop clearly states that you can't target someone while time stop is active. Also you're assuming that those in your time accelerated dimension are moving fast enough to keep up with you when, likely that isn't the case as your time stop would affect them as well.
Also remember:
You cannot target a frozen creature while time stop is in effect. So no, you can't fire thousands of arrows at her.The time stop doesn’t effect other planes of existance. So it wouldn’t slow down the people in the demiplane. Also, time stop says you can’t interact with somebody while you are under the time stop. The people in the demiplane aren’t in a time stop, so that doesn’t apply to them.
So let me break it down for you.
You cast augmented mythic time stop. You now have 120 hours to do the following, because of your castings of mythic contingency+mythic time stop in prep time.
You open portals to your flowing time permanent demiplane, which moves at a different rate of time than the material plane, for instance, the example it gives is 1 second in the material plane could be an entire year in a plane with flowing time. This is not the limit though, just an example. These portals number in the hundreds, all surrounding Black Butterfly.
People in the demiplane, who are immortal age wise due to being that monk archetype whose 20th level capstone is immortality, thus don’t die when waiting for you to pull this off, fire arrows into the portals at Black Butterfly.
The arrows pass through the portals, then freeze in mid air, as they are both no longer under flowing time, and in a plane under the effects of a time stop.
Time stop ends, arrows resume, and kill Black Butterfly.
Okay.... so I'm just going to ignore the fact you apparently have a million level 20 monks just standing around waiting for this to happen and break down the rest of this. (You don't happen to play with Lady-J, do you?)
- You are correct. The limit for Flowing Time on your demiplane's limit is not 1 year/round. It is twice as fast.
- How are you opening all these portals? Those all take spell slots, you know. And you don't regain spells while Time Stopped (the spell explicitly says this)
-You are correct. Time Stop doesn't affect other planes. It affects you and you only (and the 1/CL that Mythic allows) can actually move that fast. Everyone else either can A) not act or B) act according to Time Stop. There's no real middle ground.
Of course, if you have an army of hundreds of level 20 characters waiting to pull this off, this is likely the least efficient way to go about it.
These super powerful monsters are more worldbuilding than actual encounters.
"This entity is so powerful, it can do something totally unfair stuff like this!"
Hastur for example exists to be a (very deadly) jump scare. Yellow sign exists as a plot hook.
The problem with that argument is that this is a game where we are trained to find ways across the enemy's stat block. This is like telling Mario not to grab coins. It is everything we have been taught to do. We are all foehammer dwarves, and everything looks like a orc-y nail!
The best way to prevent us from worrying about how to kill it is to not give it a stat block. Statblock= something we can interact with mechanically. Something we can interact with mechanically= something we can kill (or at least deceive with bluffs/diplomacy, or control with enchantment spells, until it does what we want).
Okay.... so I'm just going to ignore the fact you apparently have a million level 20 monksFlowing time. Only need one really.
You are correct. The limit for Flowing Time on your demiplane's limit is not 1 year/round. It is twice as fast.This is not true. Flowing time has no limit, especially not a limit of twice the speed of the material plane. I mean, the example it gives in the rules for flowing time is 1 second on the material plane being 1 year on the flowing time plane. That is way more than double speed.
How are you opening all these portals?Scrolls.
There's no real middle ground.Flowing time on a different plane with an open portal between it and a plane under time stop is a middle ground though.
"Flowing Time....." Yes, you are correct. There is no limit in the plane ability. The limit comes from Create Greater Demiplane.
Time: By default, time passes at the normal rate in your demiplane. By selecting this feature, you may make your plane have the erratic time, flowing time (half or double normal time), or timeless trait (see Time).
You can't even do 1/4 speed, interestingly.
Also, I guess we're assuming infinite wealth? That, too, changes things. How are you planning on paying for all those scrolls (which, by the way, still only last for 17 rounds of apparent time)
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These super powerful monsters are more worldbuilding than actual encounters.
"This entity is so powerful, it can do something totally unfair stuff like this!"
Hastur for example exists to be a (very deadly) jump scare. Yellow sign exists as a plot hook.The problem with that argument is that this is a game where we are trained to find ways across the enemy's stat block. This is like telling Mario not to grab coins. It is everything we have been taught to do. We are all foehammer dwarves, and everything looks like a orc-y nail!
The best way to prevent us from worrying about how to kill it is to not give it a stat block. Statblock= something we can interact with mechanically. Something we can interact with mechanically= something we can kill (or at least deceive with bluffs/diplomacy, or control with enchantment spells, until it does what we want).
1.I know you are likely being ironic but just in case, do not generalize.
2. While I agree gods and the like should not have stats, players should not know stats for their opponents either so they can prepare for them UNLESS they found a way to investigate them before confrontation and that should cost considerable resources.3. As a GM, if I know my players have learned the stats for a BBEG (or BGGG in this case) I'm usually willing to change those stats/abilities just to surprise them...
4. Something is "killable" as long as the GM says it is. The GM controls the challanges rate and powerscale of games. The GM also controls the player's access to resources. In my experience more than a few games crash when the GM gets lenitent with players and allows them to have their way with resources/spells and even rules (Player:"Look! I can cast limited wish and I want to use it to cast geas as a standard action! I can control ANYTHING!". GM:"No, in this game you can't, RAI vs RAW and all that"). Depending on your GM, going murderhobo against demigods is rarely a good idea.
Under Celestial Grace it says "She ignores any effect that would reduce her movement speed or prevent her from taking a 5-foot step."
Does that include being Dazed?
Or dead? } : D
Mere lack of actions cannot contain the Black Butterfly! You'll never catch the body! Mwahahaha!
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How about a butterfly net?
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Somewhere in Phlegathon, Belial is hammering out a fine gossamer net made from screaming souls, sovereign glue, and the blinding light of pure hate, muttering about becoming a lepidopterist.