Final Encounters in Shackled City

[Michael Darcy]

Hi all,

I'm proud to share that my group is wrapping up our 4-year shackled city campaign, including several of the modules that Delvesdeep and others contributed. Many thanks, which I'll go in to more later.

I had several questions for advice on running Skullrot as it pertains to my party:

1) Skullrot enacts magic circle against good on all inhabitants within via an unhallow spell. Creatures under protection spells are immune to natural attacks from summoned creatures except if it matches the alignment of the caster. One of my party members is a good druid focused on summoning. For the last two chapters, the Cagewrights have been using this tactic against her to defeat summoned creatures and the party's current counter-strategy is to dispel the protection spell. However, with a caster level of 30, it will be extremely difficult to dispel the unhallow, and I'm not inclined to fudge this to work -- Skullrot is a prison for powerful beings and it makes sense that brute-force dispelling its abjurations is somewhat arrogant. Does anyone have a suggestion for deepening the interaction here? It could be as simple as developing a side-quest to disable the unhallow, or an alternative mechanic which provides some counter-play.

2) Adimarchus relies heavily on instant death and negative energy effects. However my party always casts death ward and action economy to dispel death ward is poor. Similar to the above, this is unlikely to yield an engaging encounter. It may be more flavored and effective for his actions (imploding strike and enervating tentacles) to instead cast insanity on hit? I think this is a fair solution but I didn't think about it until I wrote this out...

3) Adimarchus has an apparent weakness to grappling. Two of the characters in my party can reasonably achieve similar grapple modifiers, and one of them is a monk who is highly spell resistant and whom it will be difficult to get away from. I don't want the encounter to devolve after 2 rounds into "we keep him pinned and wail on him", as the party has a few negative energy effects which will drain Adimarchus's strength as the combat proceeds. I think my solution here is to give demon form Adimarchus freedom of movement? Currently, a large fraction of the party damage comes from sneak attacks, so the demonic form will probably lose health quickly.

Any other thoughts? The last few chapters seem to be somewhat lacking in discussion compared to the incredible resources available for the early and mid sections of the story.

[Mykull]

( 1 ) Does the druid summon the same creatures each time? Has he turned a friendship/bond with them? If so, how about the druid calls them for final fight instead of just summoning? The risk of permanent death is real and that should be a good work around.

If they're just generic summons, then he has to beat the DC 30. Effective most of the time doesn't mean effective all the time, even if it's the Final Battle.

( 2 ) Death Ward: +4 morale bonus against all death works and magical death effects . . . does not protect against other sorts of attacks, even if those attacks might be lethal.

Change his Implosive Strike to Implosion instead. It's an evocation, not a necromancy and deals 10/caster level (FOR negates). I think that would bypass death ward. He's 30 HD, so that's 300 hp per hit. Make it CON based and that's DC 32 (10 + 9 [ninth lvl spell] + 13 [CON mod]). He has 11 feats listed, but if you're playing Pathfinder, he should have 15, so that gives you 4 to play with and you could beef up that DC if you wanted. Also, since it isn't an instant death effect, you can give him more of them (unlimited?)

The Enervating Bite could be insanity instead, that's a good idea.

( 3 ) Anyone grappling Adimarchus should automatically take damage from his razor wings (which, imo, should be vorpal). The freedom of movement in demon form is good.