Hi. My colleges and I are trying to think of a creative solution to outsmart our campaign BBEG. Some info about our campaign:
We are playing a Dark Souls similar campaign. We all have multiple lives. Each time we die our stats decrease a little until they reach 0 and we die permanently. The BBEG is a drow king whom I presume is this monster. Additionally he seems to have a means of remote view us basically at all points in time, so plotting against him is very difficult. we have determined that he cannot do this ability though while he is in combat and that it is some type of divination magic.
We have a summoner (trip master), a ninja, a slayer, and a wizard. Any recommendations of a conceivable situation where we can win this fight?
Our current plans are for the wizard to use invisibility on himself and his familiar. give the familiar a scroll of silence and send the familiar with the ninja for a sneak attack. as soon as the ninja attacks, the familiar will cast silence on the ninja as the Drow seems to be fairly weak vs martial. Then have the eidolon, whom we can probably also make invisible get within range and constantly trip him to keep him inside the silence effect. Summoner uses haste and we hopefully dish out enough damage to kill.
I'd like something a little more certian than that. Wizard uses divination and enchantment magic to basically ensure whatever situation we want to get ourselves into happens. So we could reasonably get close enough to get a surprise attack on the drow king.
Haha I like what you're preaching, David. Forgive me then for asking advice on how to kill an enemy on the advice forums.
But you're right, I'd probably be greeted with more recommendations if it wasn't a part of my current game.
I dont know that this is the monster but his abilities seem very similar to what out BBEG has demonstrated he is capable of doing, and rather than list out every single ability he seems to have that we have seen him do, i thought it might be easier for yall to give advice with a monster sheet.
But instead I guess the other players and I will simply... figure it out.
Against someone who knows you're coming and who has scried you extensively, the only reason for him to fight you alone is to show off/GM pity. He might not even fight you at all - giving you a handful of lower level minions to fight instead seems reasonable in and out of character for the GM.
If you're right about the enemy and somehow end up fighting him in person alone then remember 1) cast silence ASAP, in advance even, because word of chaos will wreck any non-chaotic party members otherwise, and 2) channel negative energy is good for wiping out mooks like you guys even within an area of silence, boost your will saves any way you can.
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Uh, I'd go the traditional route.
Go get yourself a bunch of levels before facing him.
Or look for the magical McGuffin.
Otherwise, just save yourself some time and create your replacement characters. Unless you get absurdly lucky, the GM is being absurdly nice, or he is REALLY, REALLY bad at creating CR 15 characters you lose.
Time after time after time.
There was a story that in World of Warcraft a bunch of horde players (like 500 of them) got together and kited a huge monster into an alliance stronghold where it wreaked havoc until the mods came in with a deus ex machina to save the alliance ... What I'm trying to say is: "Find a bigger monster - make them fight".
All of you gave great advice!
@avr That is all insightful... assuming im playing into his hands and im actually always where he wants me to be at every step of the way is marvelous plot construction and a factor i had not considered. Additionally i had not thought about the possibility of a channel energy effect while silenced.
@MrCharisma... That is a good idea as well and one i had not considered. Potentially a solution though that many a GM would disapprove of, or simply make the bigger stronger entity a bigger and stronger BBEG, but definitely something to consider.
@meirril We believe there are limitations to his divination. such as he cant do it while in combat, and he seems to have no means of countering invisibility as of yet, but it cant be hard for him to accomplish if the need arises.
Our method of prepping involves blinking our eyes at yes or no questions and using Secret messages via [url = https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/secret-speech/]this spell[/url]
And wow.... that dust is something. :O
And the pyrausta is an improved familiar unlockable at level 3. correct me if im wrong about it being able to use scrolls. figment familiar archetype evolution to give it +8 to UMD
No, that's good. Dragons with spellcaster levels can use verbal & somatic components, they should be able to provide those to complete the spell on a scroll. UMD to actually do so can work, though with +8 racial, 4 ranks, +3 class skill & +1 Cha vs. DC 23 (taking 10 not allowed) the familiar has a 30% chance of failure. That's a bit low to base a plan on.
The skilled evolution gives a +8 racial bonus to one skill. Omagi's last post mentioned it.
Good points on the other stuff though.
First, let's consider some Dark Souls bosses that have easy outs:
* Undead Chariot in DS2 becomes much easier with a certain lever that gets pulled
* Abyssal Demon tells you to plummet-attack it for most of its HP
* Taurus Demon gets much easier if you remember to plummet-attack from the previous encounter, and look at your surroundings so you're not being shot at the whole time. They even hint at plummeting with the Archers that you naturally want to kill to make it easier.
*
* etc..
Consider looking for environment kills that you could Bull Rush the opponent into or otherwise interact with:
* Pits, Lava, Acid, etc
* Giant grinding gears
* Pillars that could be broken to bring a stone ceiling crashing down
* etc.
Consider that the boss may be entirely avoidable, like dozens of the DS bosses. If it's optional, the DM is simply daring you to kill yourself. Just like DS, if you do something stupid, it's your fault.
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If it's really a straight up fight, the drow's biggest weakness seems to be Grappling. Silence will help, but grappling should basically neutralize him extremely easily; as his CMD is comparable to CR5
NOTE: to do this you'll probably still need to silence him.
You could even go nuts and have others readied-action-grapple if he escapes yours, giving you guys 3-4 rolls to grapple each turn against his 1 roll to escape. As soon as he fails to escape and you guys feel safe, have 1-2 members (the grappler and someone else) start hitting him for damage, poisoning him, or otherwise finishing the fight.
if he does have an unholy symbol, use Steal to grab it away (if it can be. The DM may require you to ask if it's held on or something and allow you to screw yourself.)
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Given the multiple-death thing, I'm guessing he's expecting you to die a couple times trying to figure out the fight. But now you have an idea of a couple routes you could go.
Unfortunately it looks like this guy has a few too many ways to insta-gib you. Blade Barrier in particular deals enough damage to straight up kill someone of your level on a failed save, and Summon Monster 8 will be a major threat given the level discrepancy. But I think this guy does have a serious weakness: 20 ft move speed and almost no spells with greater than 60 ft range. If you can somehow deal with SM8 and Blade Barrier there's largely nothing he can do to you in combat if you keep your distance. However, there's a big caveat there: clerics can change their spell loadout every morning. If the GM switched up the list, that weakness could disappear entirely.
If it's more unconventional strategies that might work, if you could somehow fight him in an antimagic field he'd essentially have non-existent offensive capabilities and could be mobbed to death. However, I think elaborate plans like that have too many points of failure, especially when you know you're being scried upon. Of course, the best way to thwart a scry-happy villain is to detect when they're doing it, then feed them misleading information.
