Shamelessly looking in, as I am going to be running that combat soon.
I rarely run bosses as written, and I've taken to adding at least a mythic tier to help balance out the action economy. I'm actually running Rasputin next week for my party, so I'd be interested to see how other people have played him. The group is also doing a E8/P8 + mythic campaign, so they're level 8 and tier 1 right now and handling things admirably. Since it's a party of 6 I've had to buff almost every encounter, even with the level difference, since mythic is so batpoop crazy.
Run him how you like since your group is optimized. I'd take advantage of his UMD to snort a block of incense of meditation, then nuke them until they glow in the dark.
Um...Incense of Meditation pre-dates Oracles...did the devs ever update the FAQ with regards to spontaneous casting? I mean if it works...sounds spiffy.
Trying to address the posts so far.
** spoiler omitted **
Half the PC party will be rebuilds and we have a new player now so this will be interesting (Our group took a long break from this AP to steamroller through Wrath).
Use Magic Device allows him to "pretend" to be a prepared divine spellcaster, do the bit with the incense for 8 hours, then get down to business. ;)
UMD allows him to fool the incense into working for him. He spends 8 hours kumbayay'ing with the truly wondrous [hallucinogen], then gets ready to kick some butt since he has 24 hours' game time to unleash Hell.
I went straight for the big guns, my group was pretty optimized and (by then) working well together. I also had him use his miracles on additional buffs like nine lives and spell immunity (once he learned what was best). I tried to follow the AP with early encounters using astral projection / project image (or both together) although as written the forbiddance effect at the end makes that problematic. All in all he turned into the most memorable villain from the whole AP, him and maybe the necromancer in the first chapter.
Do his ongoing spells persist after he dies and is resurrected?
I'm not sure on the RAW. My group does all spells with (D) on the duration expire when confirmed slain.
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I hope you don't make it automatic that reverse gravity doesn't work on flyers, because that lessens the power of the spell significantly. Flying characters and those that are levitating should get Reflex saves (the same as if they're trying to secure themselves). Considering that you normally don't get a save at all when it goes off, that seems the better course of action, IMHO.
I mixed up his tactics a bit. Hopefully it will be exciting. Though there is a small chance he can talk the PCs out of trying to slay him. :)** spoiler omitted **
My suggestion refers to what I see, especially late-chapter: tons of abjurations. Incense-Maximized spells in combination with Quickened dispel magic gives him a decent chance at chewing through those abjurations fairly quickly. By the time the PCs are closing in on him, they've been seeing plenty of two or three energy types, so the players are plenty wise enough to slather such spells on before kicking in the doors. Given that Rasputin can watch them "buff up" and has been watching them annihilate/drive off/charm/dominate/etc all of his not-inconsiderable minions, he can adjust his own tactics accordingly to preserve his agenda.