A Battle of Wits

[Taedin]

My group is currently playing through Life's Long Shadows and are just making their way through the first aeon tower. I've been giving a lot of thought to the character of Thessekka, the xulgath in charge of local tower business, and I feel like I really want to play up her intelligence and curiosity towards such intriguing test subjects.

When they find her chambers in the forest tower it will be filled with calculations and analysis of their combat styles. Diagrams of the barbarian's theorized muscle structure. Attempts to recreate the alchemist's frozen ooze pops. Everything dissected and examined.

The conundrum I face is how to actually reflect this in combat? Give her a bunch of items specifically designed to counter them? That seems like a cop-out, and not terribly fun for them. Plus, she's all about mutagens and genetic manipulation, so something themed that way. I'm already running a four-person campaign with five players, so I don't feel like a little something more would throw them in the dumpster. And maybe it'll show them that hey, they can do more than just one thing!

The idea my brain keeps coming back to is giving her a special action (possibly a bonus action or reaction?) called Countermeasures, where she picks one of the heroes and gets some kind of bonus against their most common attack style for one round.

Rogue- resistance against precision damage. Barbarian- spikes to discourage grappling.
Alchemist- half-damage from periodic effects
Oracle- I dunno, he mostly animates dead and uses telekinetic blast
Monk- resistance to slashing (tiger stance)

The trick is that I want this to be memorable, like 'Holy crabapples, this thing knows everything about how we fight!' but I don't want them to feel like they're being punished for playing the way they are. Also, learning to adapt to an unfavourable situation is important.

Any thoughts? Advice? Is this a no-good bad-dumb stop-it kind of idea?

[Zapp]

I can't tell you if it's a bad or good idea but I *can* tell you that Alchemist attacks are noticeably weaker (even from NPCs).

In other words, as long as you keep having her throw her flasks and bombs and what not (and not switch to her far superior physical attacks*) you should be fine.

Good luck with your game.

*) In my game the heroes made the "mistake" of cornering her. A very natural move against a ranged area attacker. A big mistake against this particular attacker! (Letting her target you with her splash damage is far preferable than having her act like the brute her stats allow for)

[Dragonriderje]

This is a brilliant idea and I am 100% stealing it for my game.

I probably won’t give her special combat actions, but will just leave this as flavor. I don’t want to disadvantage the PCs too much in the boss fight, but maybe make sure that she fights intelligently to show how much she knows.

I also want to show that not only is she studying them, but that she also wants to USE them, or at least their abilities. Since she so focused on mutagens and xulgath genetics. For example, I have a dhampir in my group so I want to show her trying to figure out how to make a undead anatomy mutagen, or my cliff scaler iruxi could inspire her to try making his climbing ability a genetic trait in some xulgath.