To spice up this boss fight (and some rule questions)

[Wasum]

Hello everybody,

I am looking for some advice to make an interesting combat out of a rather unfortunate setup (at least when it comes to encounter design). This is one of the final battles in long going campaign (72nd session over about six years, 12-16 hours each). The party is at level 13 and there are the following characters involved:

- elven transmuter in the body of a human bard

- half elven oracle of life

- dwarven inquisitor of torag

- infernal sorcerer

- a ghaele azata NPC (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/azata/ghaele/ )

- a mystic theurge NPC (CR 12) carrying a bag of holding which is rather important (see below)

- (soulless body of a human bard)

The enemy is a single (thats why I said "unfortunate") lich of 17th or 18th level (I didnt finish his stats so far)

The exposition:

The BBEG of this story arc is a high level lich (wohoo). As the party discovered the secret source of his powers said lich had to risk everything not to lose grasp on his plans. In a last attempt to prevent the party from destroying an atifact which holds the weapon he depends on to conquer kingdoms he casts the spell magic jar through said artifact on the partys bard who held it. My approach here was: when the lich has its soul and therefore phylactery at hand he is able to cast the spell but puts the one thing at danger that keeps him from dying. So the bard fails the save and is possessed. The party tries to negotiate without success and the lich threatens to kill the bard. Thats when the partys wizard does something rather surprising. He himself casts magic jar on the bard and as you probably all know: sometimes the dice tell the best stories. The lich fails its save rolling a natural one (even though his bonus alone exceeded the DC) and his precious soul becomes trapped in the wizards soul jar while the wizard on the other end possesses the bards body.

Now the constellation is rather freaky. Its kind of a stalemate; both fractions remain with a soul of their enemy.

Now the thing is how magic jar works. As both bodies are too far away from their respective soul jars, crushing those instantly sends them to the afterlife. Both parties know the other side is ready to negotiate somehow as otherwise they would have released the souls already but they expect deceit and cheating - somethings on the line here after all.

The PCs figured out they are somehow in the better spot as the lich will be desperate to get back his soul while at the same time the bards sacrifice seems like an option to save their kingdom. They made up a plan and created a demi plane, rather small, greenish and of circular shape where they gathered and invited the lich for a prisoners exchange. They know the lich will come as he needs his soul and the magic jar spell is soon to end. They also install a teleportation trap to only let in the one enemy they want to face and back that up by threatening to kill his soul as soon as someone else enters their demi plane. Quiet a bad spot for the lich to be in I guess. They stored the soul jar containing the liches soul inside a bag of holding, ready to crush it from within, killing the soul as it cannot travel between planes - the extradimensional space inside the bag is insurmountable no matter how close the lich is to the bag of holding.

The scenario:

So the lich enters a small demi plane where the party awaits him and first thing he does is casting a quickened time stop (using a rod) - thats when last session ended (nice cliff hanger!).

While he has lots of allies who could reasonably help him fighting the party, a teleportation trap doesnt allow creatures to enter the fight and even if they manage to bypass the trap the lich might not want them to risk his soul (see exposition).

The lich is buffed up from toes to teeth but now I need to know what

is reasonable for him to do and

makes for an interesting boss fight.

So what are the spells he casts during his rounds of time stop?

My first idea was: Mages Disjunction. I am not exactly sure wht the consequences will be but I think it will dispel the demi plane as soon as time stop is over and it will also render the bag of holding containing his soul useless for its duration and therefore safe. If he combat will be relocated - they will all be spat out somewhere in the astral plane (due to create demi plane) which actually makes for a nice location. But what next? The lich will be largely outnumbered and usually these kind of fights dont work well in pathfinder. I need him to get support somehow, he needs to survive the first rounds of combat and then challenge the party. I have no clue how the battle could go on from there and I'd appreciate every single idea you can come up with. I want this to be remarkable! Also - it doesnt have to end there. It would be rather fine if the lich is able to rescue is soul somehow and flee or even flee without his soul. But at this point a final battle might as well be the perfect ending to this story arc.

Furthermore I would really appreciate some feedback on the whole mess of magic jars in place. I feel like we sticked as close to the rules here as possible but now it seems pretty hard to figure out what a mages disjunction will add here. As well as dispelling the demi plane it will probably end the magic jar spell on all participants. So the magic jar spell cast by the transmuter to trap the liches soul will and and as the respective soul jar is stored in the bag of holding the soul will not be able to get back to its original body (or here: phylactery), right? How could the lich prevent that from happening? Is there a way for him to force his soul out of the bag of holding wjile in time stop? Is there anything he can do about it? And is there something I missed about all those interactings of spells (namely two magic jars, time stop, mages disjunction and create demiplane)? Are there certain spells the lich can use to his advantage for this specific situation?

Thank you a lot in advance! I cannot wait to read your ideas :)

Best wishes,
Wasum

PS: Bonus points if you have an idea how this can evolve the transmuters hidden agenda; the player whants the character to become currupted more and more (he already drifted some steps away from his NG alignment at the campaign start).

PPS: Also bonus points if the following chain of events sticks to the pathfinder rules as close as possible. Not because I love those rules (man, at times this feels so outdated) but because this forms the ontology of the world we agreed to play in and itself has been part of this games narrative

[TxSam88]

roughly 1000 hours of gaming and only 13th level? I've heard of slow XP, but that takes the cake. As for the rest, it sounds like the party is screwed...

[Pizza Lord]

Let me make sure I have this correct:
In your game, a lich's phylactery always houses the lich's soul? This is how I am reading it, and also how I view it in a Pathfinder 1st Ed. game. In Pathfinder 2nd ed. the phylactery specifically says it only houses their soul when their body is destroyed, basically acting like the soul's destination. But in 1st edition it can be read that the phylactery just has the soul in it and the lich therefore wouldn't be affected by soul attacks like magic jar. Hence why you say he needs the phylactery with him.

I am only adding this to make sure we're on the same page. First of all, that is incredibly foolish of the lich. I just can't see why he'd do that.

So there's an artifact that the lich has, that the PCs are going to destroy, and he casts magic jar through it. So it must be a gem or a crystal worth at least 100 gp or it has one incorporated into it.

So basically, the lich chose to bring the one safeguard against utter destruction to within range of the magic jar gem, then cast a spell that leaves his body 'lifeless' and go into the gem. From there, he can attack a life force (but can't target which one unless its living, dead, or 4 levels different. So apparently he randomly got the bard). And that's just hoping there isn't a protection from evil spell on the target or a circle of protection from a paladin or the ghaele or something (who should have a holy aura that covers a 20-foot radius) aaaand that they'll fail the save. Even if they failed, if there was a protection from evil effect up... it would stop any control even once established.

spells:

------------------------------------------------

Holy Aura wrote:

...

Third, the abjuration protects the recipient from possession and mental influence, just as protection from evil does.
...

Protection from Evil wrote:

While under the effects of this spell, the target is immune to any new attempts to possess or exercise mental control over the target. This spell does not expel a controlling life force (such as a ghost or spellcaster using magic jar), but it does prevent them from controlling the target. This second effect only functions against spells and effects created by evil creatures or objects, subject to GM discretion.

So possibly you don't consider the lich evil or if the artifact is casting the spell then maybe you don't consider it evil or maybe you rule the artifact to trump this 'evil' stipulation.

---------------------------------------------------

All in all, a pretty iffy choice of strategy. So the lich's body goes lifeless, it's just laying there as he moves his soul from the phylactery to the gem (unless you're saying that a lich doesn't need his soul to maintain control over his body because he still controls it while his soul is in a phylactery). Next round he randomly targets the bard who fails and there's no protections at all in place. The bard is now in the magic gem/receptacle and the lich's soul is in the bard.

There's some conversation, then the PC wizard casts magic jar, falls lifeless. Then the next round he targets the lich's soul (which is discernable, since it's a negative life force, so luckily he doesn't have to choose from amongst everyone). The lich fails and his soul is put into the wizard's gem receptacle and the wizard is in the bard's body. The bard's soul is still in the lich's receptacle. If that's what happened than you would have a lifeless wizard body and a 'lifeless' lich body, a bard body with the wizard in it and a magic gem with a bard's soul in it, and a magic gem with a lich's soul in it. The bard and lich can basically do nothing.

Now if you're saying the wizard didn't target the lich's soul in the bard's body, but instead targeted the bard's soul in the other magic gem, I would have to say that's very unlikely. Once in the other gem, he can't distinguish any targets other than positive or negative forces and a difference in power of 4 levels. So while the lich's soul might have been targetable (through virtue of being the only negative soul in range), the bard's soul is probably not, since the wizard would have a random chance of targeting any positive lifeforce in his range (since all PCs are probably within 4 levels of each other). In the gem he can't see or target anyone and he would always roll randomly (possibly even getting the same target over and over that already passed its save and thus couldn't ever be affected and the wizard would have no way of knowing why he failed or even who he targeted (other than by knowing the targets already and deducing which ones might be lower level, like the party mule or an animal companion, and then only if there's a difference of 4 HD).

Magic Jar wrote:

You do need line of effect from the jar to the creatures. You cannot determine the exact creature types or positions of these creatures. [ooc]So you can't even go by distance or proximity

In a group of life forces, you can sense a difference of 4 or more HD between one creature and another and can determine whether a life force is powered by positive or negative energy. (Undead creatures are powered by negative energy. Only sentient undead creatures have, or are, souls.)

But, if you're saying the wizard got the bard's soul, then the wizard would be in the lich's gem, the bard would be in the wizard's gem, and that wouldn't be a very useful situation.

So I'm thinking I need a clarification on how things actually happened. And yes, magic jar is almost impossible to use efficiently as written. In almost any other case, the spell possession will always be better, with the exception that you just get one chance against one target and magic jar could allow multiple targets and switching between numerous bodies.

[Pizza Lord]

I can't tell if the PCs have the artifact now, if they have the lich's soul, if they have the lich's phylactery, or if they have the lich's body.

For the PCs, just killing the bard would probably be the best call rather than letting a kingdom conquering power win. Yes, he dies, but they can raise him. His soul will depart but can come back. The lich's would go to his gem (from the spell), but if out of range, it will 'die'. It would go into his phylactery since that's where a lich's soul goes when it 'dies'. It will have to rebuild a body, which is super inconvenient, with the possible exception that I might rule that if the lich's original undamaged body is already close the phylactery (as close as the new body would reform), then it might just go into that (either immediately or after 24 hours). It should be faster since it doesn't have to reform a new body for the lich's soul, but that's a GM call.

Only if his phylactery is destroyed should a lich ever really have to worry about his soul other than power that very specifically traps or diverts a soul. It could be inconvenient having to wait to reform a body, or replace lost gear. Even without specific wording, I would almost always rule that a phylactery will trump a soul attack on the lich's soul in its possession. The amount of work and detail should make it almost as powerful as a minor artifact in that respect.
------------------------------

So is the lich in the bard's body or is the wizard? Magic jar lasts 1 hour/level, so the lich's will likely last longer if it's a waiting game. What is it that the lich is specifically trying to get that the PCs are holding hostage? The artifact, his phylactery, his body, or the magic jar focus gem?

Wasum wrote:

They stored the soul jar containing the liches soul inside a bag of holding, ready to crush it from within, killing the soul as it cannot travel between planes - the extradimensional space inside the bag is insurmountable no matter how close the lich is to the bag of holding.

While in the created demiplane (an extradimensional space), bags of holding and the like are inaccessible, so yes, it likely can't be accessed. If it were ruptured, all items within would be 'lost forever' (not destroyed). Technically, for a lich that might be considered a boon, since his phylactery technically couldn't really be found... but I think that really reads that it would require an epic or mighty effort to retrieve (wish spell or epic quest and search), otherwise if he died, he reform next to it... and it wouldn't be lost... since he'd be right next to it. So he could destroy the bag.

As for the other part, there's nothing that says a soul can't cross planes. That's what souls always do. You die, your soul goes to your destination, which is another plane in most cases. It doesn't matter if your buried in 500 feet of concrete, lined in lead, within an antimagic field, and surrounded by a dimensional anchor, or in a time stop spell. It might take a soul some time to reach its destination plane (and might get intercepted) in some extraordinary case), but if you die on a demiplane or on the Material Plane your soul isn't trapped on that plane, again unless the circumstance would call for it, like some violent death that turned you into a vengeful spirit and prevented your soul from moving on.