So, this weekend, I'm going to run an encounter like I never have before.
The set-up is that the players are going into the polar mountains searching for the only known gate to Leng. There are no known maps of the region, so they're going in blind. I'm using that as bait to get them to go into this abandoned cabin they find. The cabin once belonged to some people who got trapped there, but they were since driven mad by the Wendigo that haunt the area. There are indeed maps, so they'll get what they want, but the place is a trap. It's haunted by lingering memories of the horrible crimes committed there as its residents went slowly mad, which will slowly increase in intensity, though they'll start mostly harmless and easy to resist.
The final confrontation will be that Ithaqua (the Great Old One) will be drawn there. There's no chance in hell that they'll be able to defeat Ithaqua, I'm aiming for this to be a survival encounter. In their preparations, the mage in the party managed to find a ritual that involves using a bonfire and some mystic incantations to make anyone who stays in the light of the fire invisible to Ithaqua and its followers. However, Ithaqua already knows that they're there and it will trap them in the cabin with a massive blizzard.
The progression of events that I've got planned is that the blizzard and hearing it howl from a distance (I'm basically using a gargantuan advanced wendigo with more spell-like abilities for Ithaqua's stats), signalling that they have an hour to prepare for its arrival. It will start by basically stalking around the cabin at first, then start breaking down doors and windows to peak in to look for them. If it doesn't find them, it will try to use it's howl to panic them and force them to flee the cabin. If they run out of the light of the protective ritual, it might see them and snatch them up and try to prove their minds to find out who they are and what they want. If they can't do enough damage to make it drop the character before it finishes, it will carry them off to some other location before returning.
The two ways of escaping this encounter are a) doing 200 HP worth of damage (but with epic damage reduction, ridiculous spell resistance and regeneration, that's going to be difficult), or b) finding the root of the haunt (the spot where the first murder happened) and cleansing it, thus breaking the wendigo's ties to the area, or c) simply surviving long enough that Ithaqua decides it's no worth the bother and leaving.
They'll have a cleric in the party who can buff them to resist fear, so they'll have a chance of saving against the howls and I'm going to play the monster as being contemplatively slow in the process of destroying the players. It could destroy them in an instant, but it knows they're not any danger, so it will take its time to find out what it can about them before deciding what to do with them. Doing any fire damage to the beast will surprise it enough to make it drop characters, so they'll be capable of rescuing people who get snatched up.
That said, this beast is . . . well, a beast. It's a CR 25 creature as I've built it and it's only because of the ritual I've given them that they even stand a chance of surviving. The idea is to basically scare the s@~@ out of them with the threat of complete annihilation, while leaving them some opportunities to have some potentially heroic moments. I've been building up Ithaqua (calling it the Great Wendigo) for months now and I think I've got them well-aware that this is not a creature they have the slightest hope of killing, so surviving this encounter is down to how clever their preparations are, how thoroughly they explore the cabin to find out what happened there, with a bit of luck on the saves against fear (boosted by the cleric's buff spells) and quick action to save those who fail.
But something like this could go really out of hand if I do something that gives the players the impression that they actually could defeat it (it's got around 600 HP on top of everything else, that's pretty impossible).
So, just thought I'd check and see if anyone here's run an encounter like this, how it went and if they've got any advice on how to run it.
1. Build an unavoidable end condition into the encounter.
A rather famous encounter in a rather famous Paizo adventure path has the 3rd- or 4th-level PCs encounter a CR 15 creature. The important part is that the encounter is designed such that it only lasts a couple of rounds before circumstances force the creature away, and the creature has ample opportunity to display how formidable it is to discourage PCs from chasing after it, particularly since they're in the middle of doing something else in the area that's much more important than committing mass suicide. That said, in those couple of rounds, it is certainly possible for a PC to die. The default end condition doesn't have to be optimal, but it shouldn't involve a TPK either. Unless this is the final battle of the campaign, anyway. : D
2. Plan for success.
This leads to the other bit of advice, though: Occasionally, well-optimized parties with a heavy dose of luck actually manage to beat the thing in the above encounter! Make sure your scenario accounts for the possibility that the PCs actually win.
3. Telegraph its power.
Have the creature demonstrate its ridiculous awesomeness in a manner the PCs can see without immediately killing them. The above creature, in addition to being far larger than anything the PCs have seen up to that point, has numerous NPCs in the area to efficiently murder during those rounds. If your creature does any damage to NPCs or structures, make the attack and damage rolls (and any NPC rolls against it) out in the open so the players get a realistic idea of the odds of not dying in a frontal assault. Have it wreak visible destruction far beyond that displayed by a mere epic encounter. Set up the lore behind the creature well in advance--Ithaqua, Wind-Walker, devourer of giants, unstoppable as the raging hurricane, enduring as the glacier. Or something like that. Get it into their heads. If all else fails, have a powerful NPC ally (or enemy) try to hold it at bay (or command it) only to get carelessly slaughtered before the PCs' eyes.
4. Encourage player agency.
If the PCs have to do something to survive, make sure they have some reasonable ways to know it. If they don't know fire damage will cause the monster to drop a character, even odds are that a snatched character is going to die. If they have to solve a haunt, give them everything they need to figure it out, preferably three times (remember the Three Clue Rule).
Addendum: Scaring Pathfinder players is hard. Good luck.
blahpers wrote: adviceadviceadvice
Lots of good advice there.
For telegraphing its' power, like I said I've been hyping this thing up for months. It was still early winter when I first started dropping hints. The first time they heard of it, they heard of the Wendigo, which the northern tribesmen talked about constantly with pure dread, talking about how they can turn you into them by driving you insane, how their howl fills you with fear (the PCs know that fear is one of it's most powerful weapons, so the cleric will probably prepare lots of anti-fear and will save buff spells). They also listened in while the shaman told of a Great Wendigo that was responsible for the ice age until they found the rituals needed to drive it all the way back to the polar north. They talked about this thing as being similar to the wendigos, but MUCH BIGGER and MEANER. For size, I described how some people have seen it peaking out over the polar mountains on cold nights (specifically evoking the image of the abominable snow monster from that old Rankin-Bass special), so they've got an idea of its size.
Then I had the mage stumble on a book specifically about this creature (how he found the ritual that can make them invisible to it). So, he knows the specifics of its major powers (it's spell-like abilities are still a mystery, but it's not a huge leap in logic to think "tons of ice related spells").
They also suspect it will be vulnerable to fire, so they've bought lots of fire-related equipment. The rogue in particular has a flaming burst longbow, and the monk got a special ability from a prestige class that lets him use ki to breath fire as a ranged touch attack. They'll have plenty of time to figure out that fire will make it drop a player if grabs someone.
The halfling cleric with the protection domain has the most absurd will save for her level (+21 against fear before she applies buffs from her spells), so she's almost guaranteed to save against its fear. The monk is immune to fear, so he'll only get shaken instead of panicked (great old one's fear can partially overcome immunity), so that's one character to grab a player who does panic, and another to cast remove fear. That means she'll be able to cure them if they do move fast enough to find them (I've made sure it's doable, they just can't delay).
And even if it does carry someone off, I've left clues for them to find that will lead them to people who will be able to guess where Ithaqua will most likely drop them off, so if they hurry, they can find the players before the wendigo psychosis destroys them.
They are, I think, about as prepared as they can reasonably expect to be.
Although, "devourer of giants" does give me an idea. They could find a half-eaten giant corpse discarded somewhere to give them a sense of what they're dealing with. Especially when they see the bite marks are so big they suggest the beast's mouth is almost as large as the giant's upper torso.
The chance of killing it is minimal, as this thing's CR is 10 above their level, but I do have a win condition planned. Of course, Ithaqua, like all great old ones, is immortal, so it won't die, but if they do by some miracle manage to reduce it to 0 HP, it will become inactive for 1d4 weeks, giving them lots of time to explore without fear. That's a super longshot, though. Mostly, if it comes to combat, the best they can get is doing 200 HP of damage and making it decide it's not worth the bother.
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