The final boss battle (advice / potential rebuild)

[MaxTheDM]

Hey everyone! I'm running the final battle for my group this week. We have a:

Gunslinger 17 (Pistol style! Never misses)
Rogue 14/Shadowdancer 3 (Rapier critical build. Uses his shadow to set up flanks)
Cleric of Desna 17 (Mostly spams healing spells)
Unchained Monk 12/Paladin 5 (Flying kick and jabbing style, high mobility & damage).

Single enemies die so quickly to this party! Against the nemesis devil, rivozair, mangvhune, etc, I have had to almost double the HP of the enemies to give them a chance of winning. Also, every party member has a method of flying (carpet, boots, wings of the gargoyle, and Tengu wings feat for the monk.)

From what I have seen, the final battle looks really easy, especially compared to our last finale (Rise of the Runelords.) It's worth noting, I am not familiar with Mythic rules and not comfortable with using them, so it's possible that the Mythic levels make Barzillai more dangerous than it looks on paper.

It's also important to note, my group needs to expedite the finale, so I'm skipping most of the tower of bone's combat encounters and just doing the lore stuff, which might be why this fight looks easy to me; it seems like it's designed for a well drained party, which mine will not be in this case.

I am currently considering rebuilding it thusly; Weakened Barzillai with the Advanced template, Rivozair (adult horned devil bound blue dragon but I've added the Broken Soul template,) Nox (Bearded Devil Fighter 10,) and 2 hounds of Kintargo. To compensate for upping the difficulty in case I go too far, I'm going to let my party maintain the benefits of the Song of Silver even in hell, and they will be going in at full resources (I expect they'll cast a few buff spells before as well, assuming they realize they are about to fight big B.)

The lore behind it is that these two both signed a devilbound contract with Barzillai, and the meta reason for choosing these enemies is that these are the two villains my party hated the most, and seeing (and killing) them one last time will be a fun send-off for these guys. Do you think this is going too far? Is there something I'm missing about this encounter as written that makes it harder? Every time I've seen this fight mentioned, most people said that it was underwhelming.

[Pnakotus Detsujin]

Hello. Here's my suggestions:
1 - Have Rivozair being transformer to an adult planar hell dragon
2 - Have Nox be at least level 14. The bearded devil gives here too little option to matter in this fight. She cannot even fly.
3 - Have Barzillai be able to further evolve during combat into a more brutish, melee oriented being (i would suggest a malebranche from old 3.5) to express how much fighting with the Pc's has broken him body and soul.

Maybe the pit fiend appears and ask Barzillai if he wishes his help, Barzillai replays a desperate yes, shredding his pride ... and the Pit fiend promotes him by fusing him with another being.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Mythic definitely helps, far more than an Advanced Template. If you're sure the PCs are going to stomp him I'd spend an extra half hour or so just reading up on the abilities he has. Barz is only rank 2 but that still gives him a few useful abilities. Note that he has Mythic Blade Barrier which can be cast as an immediate action and deals more damage. That should hinder the monk and the rogue somewhat. Mythic Barz can summon a pit fiend, which should help. OTOH if you feel there is too much to remember, just inflating his numbers is better than Mythic because you won't forget to use his saves or DC or attack rolls that are already modified.

A variant mythic rule I used when I couldn't be arsed to remember all the little abilities was this: Mythic Power uses can be used to autosucceed a saving throw, dodge an attack or gain an extra standard action which can be used to cast spells. Barz has 7 uses per day so this should keep him afloat for an extra round or two at least.

Of course, you know you party better than us, and it may be that mythic Barz would be too much to handle if all these others are there as well.

This reddit thread has a few useful ideas for tactics, mostly relying on prep work Barz & co. can do before the PCs arrive.

[MaxTheDM]

Thanks for the advice! I didn't realize how much of a bump mythic gives him. I'm not very familiar with the rules but I'll give them a second pass and see how I feel after that. Looking at his stats alone, the difference between Advanced and Mythic didn't seem that big, but with bonus abilities I imagine it's a lot more. I'll have to look into that!

I didn't know about Hell dragons, but that sounds like a much better option for her. Also a good point about Nox; maybe I'll see if there's something else I can do with her, since she would be the only combatant not capable of flight, and thus mostly useless in the grand scheme of things. I will have to see if there's another way to include her. I chose bearded devil because that's the contract type she had, but I suppose she could be promoted to a more powerful type, such as an Ice Devil or Erinyes.

[Pnakotus Detsujin]

MaxTheDM wrote:

Thanks for the advice! I chose bearded devil because that's the contract type she had, but I suppose she could be promoted to a more powerful type, such as an Ice Devil or Erinyes.

Made her a Bearded devil, but have her riding on top of the dragon, using a long polearm, so she can Aoo people striking at Rivozair.