Hey everyone the finale of my campaign is coming up in less than a month and I want to make the end fight tough but fun for my group. A little backstory for you all the party is trying to stop an ancient abolith called Ux'ans from awaking a great wyrm dragon. They are currently fighting a huge war like battle against the abolith's army with an army of their own with the abolith not being on the battle field. When the battle concludes (most likely in their favor) it will turn out that the abolith was just using the battle to gather the blood and using it to fuel a gate spell he placed on the battle field before hand. He will teleport to where the dragon will be and the party will have to follow. The stat block below is from when they first fought him at the beginning of the campaign (they started the campaign at level 10 or 11). The party is currently level 18 now with a totem barbarian, a monk/fighter, a paladin, a sorcerer, a blood hunter/paladin, and a bard. The gear that they have acquired at this point make they very strong and can do tons of damage. One thing I was debating on putting on the abolith's mechanized suit was a new beam with an anti magic cone on it. If it is not obvious I used a beholder to help supe up this creature. Any other help would be very much appreciated. NOTE: I do know that the DC's probably should go up, what DC's would you recommend.
Monster AC of 24 for a well geared group of 18's is pretty common - I dislike enslave and banish mechanics taking a player out of a 2 hour fight is no fun - I would make all the saving throw DC's 20 and make enslave be a psychic burst that hits for 10d10 perhaps as a 60' line this will promote better spacing from the players also - you can either give it a minion to keep a few party members occupied or give it a passive regen or an extra attack - lots and lots of ways to toughen it up easily.
I usually toss a hard hitting melee minion in and a caster/healer minion to make the fight very challenging for groups like that.
Monster AC of 24 for a well geared group of 18's is pretty common - I dislike enslave and banish mechanics taking a player out of a 2 hour fight is no fun - I would make all the saving throw DC's 20 and make enslave be a psychic burst that hits for 10d10 perhaps as a 60' line this will promote better spacing from the players also - you can either give it a minion to keep a few party members occupied or give it a passive regen or an extra attack - lots and lots of ways to toughen it up easily.
I usually toss a hard hitting melee minion in and a caster/healer minion to make the fight very challenging for groups like that.
The enslave is actually from the original Abolith stat block actually so I left that alone for that reason. For this fight there will not be any minions and there is a reason for it. To add more context here is the plan. The abolith will close the gate before the party will go in leaving him in the other plane alone for a period of time while they solve the puzzle of getting themselves a way in there (I have a few ways they can do it, its just up to them on how they want to). The abolith's goal is the fuse his consciousness into the of the sleeping/trapped great wrym and rule over the material plane and beyond. So while the party is figuring out a way to get to him he is setting up a ritual in order to do it. The issue is it needs a sacrifice to do it and he knows the party will be there sooner or later and he will fight them. Unknown to them as soon as they kill him after a few moments the spell takes effect and the "phase 2" fight will begin. So I don't want to overdo it on them in "phase 1" so they are completely wasted in "phase 2".
To be blunt, CR 18 against a level 18 party of 6 is totally inadequate. The easiest fix is to have the great wyrm dragon already successfully awakened, that's a reasonable challenge for a level 18 party.
To be blunt, CR 18 against a level 18 party of 6 is totally inadequate. The easiest fix is to have the great wyrm dragon already successfully awakened, that's a reasonable challenge for a level 18 party.
To be blunt, you didn't read the part where I said this was the old stat block from when they fought him at level 10. I want to upgrade it which also means upgrading the CR (which btw means nothing because I guessed on the CR since this is a stat block I made from scratch).
Well if this is just phase 1 I would not give it passive regen - just add 2 melee attacks so it hits hard make 2 of the attacks a range skill for a total of (5) also make them +15 to hit 3 melee 2 range so everyone takes damage but by leaving the hp the same and not giving it any regen other than his psychic drain even with an ac 24 this should be a fast hard hitting win for the group where they took decent damage but it does not become a huge resource suck so they can fight phase 2.
Well if this is just phase 1 I would not give it passive regen - just add 2 melee attacks so it hits hard make 2 of the attacks a range skill for a total of (5) also make them +15 to hit 3 melee 2 range so everyone takes damage but by leaving the hp the same and not giving it any regen other than his psychic drain even with an ac 24 this should be a fast hard hitting win for the group where they took decent damage but it does not become a huge resource suck so they can fight phase 2.
This might be a really good way to go about it, thanks for that idea!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hey everyone the finale of my campaign is coming up in less than a month and I want to make the end fight tough but fun for my group. A little backstory for you all the party is trying to stop an ancient abolith called Ux'ans from awaking a great wyrm dragon. They are currently fighting a huge war like battle against the abolith's army with an army of their own with the abolith not being on the battle field. When the battle concludes (most likely in their favor) it will turn out that the abolith was just using the battle to gather the blood and using it to fuel a gate spell he placed on the battle field before hand. He will teleport to where the dragon will be and the party will have to follow. The stat block below is from when they first fought him at the beginning of the campaign (they started the campaign at level 10 or 11). The party is currently level 18 now with a totem barbarian, a monk/fighter, a paladin, a sorcerer, a blood hunter/paladin, and a bard. The gear that they have acquired at this point make they very strong and can do tons of damage. One thing I was debating on putting on the abolith's mechanized suit was a new beam with an anti magic cone on it. If it is not obvious I used a beholder to help supe up this creature. Any other help would be very much appreciated. NOTE: I do know that the DC's probably should go up, what DC's would you recommend.
Monster AC of 24 for a well geared group of 18's is pretty common - I dislike enslave and banish mechanics taking a player out of a 2 hour fight is no fun - I would make all the saving throw DC's 20 and make enslave be a psychic burst that hits for 10d10 perhaps as a 60' line this will promote better spacing from the players also - you can either give it a minion to keep a few party members occupied or give it a passive regen or an extra attack - lots and lots of ways to toughen it up easily.
I usually toss a hard hitting melee minion in and a caster/healer minion to make the fight very challenging for groups like that.
The enslave is actually from the original Abolith stat block actually so I left that alone for that reason. For this fight there will not be any minions and there is a reason for it. To add more context here is the plan. The abolith will close the gate before the party will go in leaving him in the other plane alone for a period of time while they solve the puzzle of getting themselves a way in there (I have a few ways they can do it, its just up to them on how they want to). The abolith's goal is the fuse his consciousness into the of the sleeping/trapped great wrym and rule over the material plane and beyond. So while the party is figuring out a way to get to him he is setting up a ritual in order to do it. The issue is it needs a sacrifice to do it and he knows the party will be there sooner or later and he will fight them. Unknown to them as soon as they kill him after a few moments the spell takes effect and the "phase 2" fight will begin. So I don't want to overdo it on them in "phase 1" so they are completely wasted in "phase 2".
To be blunt, CR 18 against a level 18 party of 6 is totally inadequate. The easiest fix is to have the great wyrm dragon already successfully awakened, that's a reasonable challenge for a level 18 party.
To be blunt, you didn't read the part where I said this was the old stat block from when they fought him at level 10. I want to upgrade it which also means upgrading the CR (which btw means nothing because I guessed on the CR since this is a stat block I made from scratch).
Well if this is just phase 1 I would not give it passive regen - just add 2 melee attacks so it hits hard make 2 of the attacks a range skill for a total of (5) also make them +15 to hit 3 melee 2 range so everyone takes damage but by leaving the hp the same and not giving it any regen other than his psychic drain even with an ac 24 this should be a fast hard hitting win for the group where they took decent damage but it does not become a huge resource suck so they can fight phase 2.
This might be a really good way to go about it, thanks for that idea!