I'm thinking of running a (heavily modified) version of Tomb of Annihilation as my next campaign and I wanted to ask how your adventuring parties managed to end the fight with Acererak because that boss fight is the worst bullsh*t I have ever seen.
Azzy has an AC of 21 with no justification aside from "His bones are tough I guess, IDK" and can cast both Counterspell and Shield at will and as Legendary Actions. As far as I can see, there is no reason for him to not pop Shield as his first legendary action each round to get AC 26 except for maybe if he wants to do Disrupt Life. Then he can save his reaction to fire of Counterspell against anything that might stand the slightest bit of threat.
I can really only imagine this fight going down as a war of attrition. Players will have a very hard time damaging Acererak, and Acererak doesn't have high enough damage output to do any meaningful damage above 50, even if I gave him better spells.
In the game I played, Acerak went down surprisingly quickly.
The moon druid transformed into a quetzalcoatlus which he'd seen since it is ToA. Flew over, grappled Acerak, dragged him back to one of the side platforms. Ranged rogue/warlock with magical pact weapon attacked from range. Acerak was held and then pushed prone in front of the melee warlock who proceeded to eldritch smite Acerak more than once including an opportune crit (Party was around level 11 at this point). The paladin was also in the melee smiting away. Most of us had the assistance of the spirits which made surviving easier. Acerak did use cloudkill but with the paladin in the melee most made their save. The rest of the party was a monk and I think a sorcerer. The sorcerer was trapped outside the room for a large part of the fight. Acerak went down in two or three rounds since they just aren't good at escaping from grapples (no strength or athletics to speak of).
We found the Atropal and Soul Monger along with the other creatures the DM put into that part of the encounter (the remaining dwarves and a couple of oither things) to be the more challenging encounter.
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I'm thinking of running a (heavily modified) version of Tomb of Annihilation as my next campaign and I wanted to ask how your adventuring parties managed to end the fight with Acererak because that boss fight is the worst bullsh*t I have ever seen.
Azzy has an AC of 21 with no justification aside from "His bones are tough I guess, IDK" and can cast both Counterspell and Shield at will and as Legendary Actions. As far as I can see, there is no reason for him to not pop Shield as his first legendary action each round to get AC 26 except for maybe if he wants to do Disrupt Life. Then he can save his reaction to fire of Counterspell against anything that might stand the slightest bit of threat.
I can really only imagine this fight going down as a war of attrition. Players will have a very hard time damaging Acererak, and Acererak doesn't have high enough damage output to do any meaningful damage above 50, even if I gave him better spells.
In the game I played, Acerak went down surprisingly quickly.
The moon druid transformed into a quetzalcoatlus which he'd seen since it is ToA. Flew over, grappled Acerak, dragged him back to one of the side platforms. Ranged rogue/warlock with magical pact weapon attacked from range. Acerak was held and then pushed prone in front of the melee warlock who proceeded to eldritch smite Acerak more than once including an opportune crit (Party was around level 11 at this point). The paladin was also in the melee smiting away. Most of us had the assistance of the spirits which made surviving easier. Acerak did use cloudkill but with the paladin in the melee most made their save. The rest of the party was a monk and I think a sorcerer. The sorcerer was trapped outside the room for a large part of the fight. Acerak went down in two or three rounds since they just aren't good at escaping from grapples (no strength or athletics to speak of).
We found the Atropal and Soul Monger along with the other creatures the DM put into that part of the encounter (the remaining dwarves and a couple of oither things) to be the more challenging encounter.