Forcing the party to wait as you roll attacks for 60 CR 1/4 creatures in a boss battle is a good way to get dice thrown at you. It's not a good way to actually accomplish anything in the battle, they've only got +4 to hit for 1d6+2 damage, so it's likely that you're going to need to roll a nat 20 to hit most of the party.
There are ways of dealing with hordes, fpr example:
As the Lich commands the skeletons (and has to give the same command to each one anyway) the lich should to command them to attack the best target, this is unlikely to be the AC24 fighter. More likely to Wizard or maybe the healer if they don't look too hard to hit. Lets say they are commanded to attack an AC20 wizard, on average 15 of those will hit with 3 crits so 18d6+30 damage. Treat tham as having 1 HP each and mark them on the map as say 6 groups of 10 and damaging AOE spell on a group wipes all that group out.
Forcing the party to wait as you roll attacks for 60 CR 1/4 creatures in a boss battle is a good way to get dice thrown at you. It's not a good way to actually accomplish anything in the battle, they've only got +4 to hit for 1d6+2 damage, so it's likely that you're going to need to roll a nat 20 to hit most of the party.
There are ways of dealing with hordes, fpr example:
As the Lich commands the skeletons (and has to give the same command to each one anyway) the lich should to command them to attack the best target, this is unlikely to be the AC24 fighter. More likely to Wizard or maybe the healer if they don't look too hard to hit. Lets say they are commanded to attack an AC20 wizard, on average 15 of those will hit with 3 crits so 18d6+30 damage. Treat tham as having 1 HP each and mark them on the map as say 6 groups of 10 and damaging AOE spell on a group wipes all that group out.
Or you could just use a smaller number of higher CR undead as minions, like beholder zombies or wraiths.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Forcing the party to wait as you roll attacks for 60 CR 1/4 creatures in a boss battle is a good way to get dice thrown at you. It's not a good way to actually accomplish anything in the battle, they've only got +4 to hit for 1d6+2 damage, so it's likely that you're going to need to roll a nat 20 to hit most of the party.
There are ways of dealing with hordes, fpr example:
As the Lich commands the skeletons (and has to give the same command to each one anyway) the lich should to command them to attack the best target, this is unlikely to be the AC24 fighter. More likely to Wizard or maybe the healer if they don't look too hard to hit. Lets say they are commanded to attack an AC20 wizard, on average 15 of those will hit with 3 crits so 18d6+30 damage. Treat tham as having 1 HP each and mark them on the map as say 6 groups of 10 and damaging AOE spell on a group wipes all that group out.
Or you could just use a smaller number of higher CR undead as minions, like beholder zombies or wraiths.
I prefer hoards, I don't like the idea of special enemies like beholder zombies being reduced to common mooks either the unique mechanics distract from the boss or are trivialized making them just a larger bag of hit points. I prefer monsters like the zombie clot which feel more like a mechanic of smaller enemies or running hoards as a hazard by replicating the effect of things like Black Tentacles or using the troop rules from pf2e .
When I designed an encounter for orcus I removed most of his summoning and gave him effects like entangle which were described as zombies grabbing the players.
When I designed an encounter for orcus I removed most of his summoning and gave him effects like entangle which were described as zombies grabbing the players.
Well, Orcus can just spawn 6xdemilich on top of the party, no horde mechanics required there.
When I designed an encounter for orcus I removed most of his summoning and gave him effects like entangle which were described as zombies grabbing the players.
Well, Orcus can just spawn 6xdemilich on top of the party, no horde mechanics required there.
He can but he shouldn't. Demilich's at least aren't really meant to be named speaking characters but that is too many save or die effects and I don't recommend the summoning rules for Orcus. Firstly, they kind of don't do anything because as written you just cast time stop to summon undead that he could have just had with him as part of encounter design. Conjure undead doesn't have any elements to make the summoned undead act like summons for example requiring concentration or being repeatable in a combat. So as I see it, about a third of his stat block is the equivalent of filler text that says " include undead minions". They're also not good rules for picking minions for an encounter with Orcus because hit points aren't a great measure of balance.
If you want a summoner Lich probably make an actual summoner mechanic where the lich concentrates on controlling a powerful monster or continuously summons new enemies and choose monsters that make a good encounter.
Wow, I didn't expect this to blow up as much. Thanks everyone for your kind and great suggestions! Quick follow-up: What spells would you remove from the lich's level 10 encounter to keep it challenging but give the party a chance? Also, what spells would you add to make the lich a more formidable BBEG for the final battle?.
Wow, I didn't expect this to blow up as much. Thanks everyone for your kind and great suggestions! Quick follow-up: What spells would you remove from the lich's level 10 encounter to keep it challenging but give the party a chance? Also, what spells would you add to make the lich a more formidable BBEG for the final battle?.
There are options
Just quickly here are some defensive ones
Hiding in cloudkill is a good defense for a lich. It make the lich harder to kill in a way that encourages counter play like breaking concentration or dispelling and there are allot of similar options. Choose either a really powerful defense with the goal of it being temporary or choose a weaker one and have dispelling it give only temporary reprieve
greater invisibility is good if you want a stealthy but I think its actually a better idea to use regular invisibility and have it castable at will as a legendary action that way the lich sort of pops in and out of invisibility during combat
I prefer shadow of moil as a constant invisibility like defensive spell for lichs. It gives them advantages similar to greater invisibility but they can still be seen and have a presence on the battle field
spirit guardians is similarly a good defensive choice but is more about keeping players away and good for a lich that wants to keep their distance as is antilife shell
if you want to be really harsh there is maddening darkness combined with mind blank which is the upgraded version of hiding in cloud kill
for a strange one you can also use sanctuary with a lich that acts as a summoner or buffer of allies
mirror image and or blink can be layered on other defenses to add a trickery element to the defenses just don't make your lich spend turns activating it's defenses just have them all trigger at once like a contingency
Wow, I didn't expect this to blow up as much. Thanks everyone for your kind and great suggestions! Quick follow-up: What spells would you remove from the lich's level 10 encounter to keep it challenging but give the party a chance? Also, what spells would you add to make the lich a more formidable BBEG for the final battle?.
This is really dependent imo on how you introduce the lich to the story. I think it's much more important to get the thematic of the fight right than the actual combat itself, because at some point the combat can become redundant enough to where the party is willing to go through the motions. So i'd simply ask you what is the Lich's story you are trying to tell here?
The Lich's story is that he was on Leader of an ancient magical empire that fell because one of the other leaders tried to replace the goddess of magic, and now he is trying to return that empire because he saw that as a Utopia. the problem is that during the fall of said his phylactery got shattered into many shards and he is trying to get them all back, and until he gets them all back he will be weakened, but he can only be destroyed if all the shards are destroyed together
i am unsure whether or not i want the party to fight him in the first encounter with him, he will offer them to work with him and my dilemma is what happens if they refuse him, he either attacks them and they are forced to escape. or he let's them and hunts them with powerful minions. so that they have to get the rest of the shards to destroy him, and save him a lot of work.
So the story itself needs an avenue for these shards to go various different ways to begin with rather than being located in several different areas. Do these shards represent some portion of his power than can be activated by those weilding them while not allowing him to do so? If so i guess thats a good way to make people not want to destroy his phylactery entirely or a shard perminantly.
Perhaps leading the party to a shard by dangling the 'carrot-on-a-stick' to a location that happens to have one will provide them some interest in the shard, and have it happen to run into them after the fact but perhaps before they put 2+2 together on it. That way if he happens to randomly be winning the fight (given i think his CR is completely borked much like a few others, i think he loses 100% of the time against a competent party of level 10's even) he can spare their pitiful existences if they hand over what is rightfully his should they refuse to work with him. If they work with him, or you want them to work with him, they'll need some other incentive since he's likely to want these shards when completed. Usually this incentive would be some sort of assistance against another bbeg, but if he's at the top of the chain then you'll need to sort that out.
I think your strategy leans more towards a rare occasion where the two are in the same place at roughly the same time leading to a fight between an incomplete lich and a mediocre group of underlings versus the party after they've already gotten in a fight, and then other fights can be transferred towards the other holders of the shards that might have their own selfish desires, like an NPC mage that is corrupted by it in his tower or a kingdom who can use the shard to see things before they happen and use that to always keep power using this advantage and underhanded means. These sorts of encounters will keep combat more fresh and diverse.
As for the Lich himself, i'd mostly just let him go in there without a 9th level spell and modify his HP to be more in line with what the party can finish off in 3-4 rounds from your experience of running encounters for them, rather than 135 that most parties at 10 or 11 can likely finish off in 2 rotations even with the most iffy of primary damage dealer.
so the fun thing about liches is that they have a phylactery. a level 10 party can take down a lich because they can destroy the phylactery. if they have the phylactery the lich cant do AoE spells because that would damage the phylactery
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About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
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If a 10th level party can even find and get a lich's phylactery, the lich screwed up.
true, true. but consider... the phylactery was stolen by a high level adventurer(s), who then gave it to their employer(who wanted the lich weakened), who then pawned it(so the lich wouldnt come after them), where it was the bought by a wizard who used it to power an atomotaun, wich was then destroyed by the level 10 party.
dnd sitcom anyone?
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Pronouns: Any/All
About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Fun Fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Wow, I didn't expect this to blow up as much. Thanks everyone for your kind and great suggestions! Quick follow-up: What spells would you remove from the lich's level 10 encounter to keep it challenging but give the party a chance? Also, what spells would you add to make the lich a more formidable BBEG for the final battle?.
give it some thematic stuff. the RaW lich only has a slight tendancy to necromancy. what was the lich before it was lichified? what school of magic did they like? were they a war mage? an evoker? an illusionist? the sky truly is the limit. and.... you can make a spell look like basically whatever you want, like orcus with solarsyphon running him. also. FIREBALL
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About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Fun Fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
I think I want them to go full-on necromancy and maybe add some illusion since for most of their existence, they were a lich, and before that, they were one of the rulers of an empire. But I don't know if illusion can be a strong enough school for a fight
I think I want them to go full-on necromancy and maybe add some illusion since for most of their existence, they were a lich, and before that, they were one of the rulers of an empire. But I don't know if illusion can be a strong enough school for a fight
two words. hallucinatory terrain. warp peoples perception of reality! who cares if illusion spells dont deal a ton of damage, the roleplay on them cannot be surpassed
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About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Fun Fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
There is a reason why the shards are not with him, It involves the fall of his kingdom. and him being banished to an outside realm he cannot return from until he gets all of the shards. The party has a reason to go after him, they were hired by one of his underlings to get one of the Shards (unknowingly) and the underling betrayed them
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There are ways of dealing with hordes, fpr example:
As the Lich commands the skeletons (and has to give the same command to each one anyway) the lich should to command them to attack the best target, this is unlikely to be the AC24 fighter. More likely to Wizard or maybe the healer if they don't look too hard to hit. Lets say they are commanded to attack an AC20 wizard, on average 15 of those will hit with 3 crits so 18d6+30 damage. Treat tham as having 1 HP each and mark them on the map as say 6 groups of 10 and damaging AOE spell on a group wipes all that group out.
Or you could just use a smaller number of higher CR undead as minions, like beholder zombies or wraiths.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I prefer hoards, I don't like the idea of special enemies like beholder zombies being reduced to common mooks either the unique mechanics distract from the boss or are trivialized making them just a larger bag of hit points. I prefer monsters like the zombie clot which feel more like a mechanic of smaller enemies or running hoards as a hazard by replicating the effect of things like Black Tentacles or using the troop rules from pf2e .
When I designed an encounter for orcus I removed most of his summoning and gave him effects like entangle which were described as zombies grabbing the players.
Well, Orcus can just spawn 6xdemilich on top of the party, no horde mechanics required there.
He can but he shouldn't. Demilich's at least aren't really meant to be named speaking characters but that is too many save or die effects and I don't recommend the summoning rules for Orcus. Firstly, they kind of don't do anything because as written you just cast time stop to summon undead that he could have just had with him as part of encounter design. Conjure undead doesn't have any elements to make the summoned undead act like summons for example requiring concentration or being repeatable in a combat. So as I see it, about a third of his stat block is the equivalent of filler text that says " include undead minions". They're also not good rules for picking minions for an encounter with Orcus because hit points aren't a great measure of balance.
If you want a summoner Lich probably make an actual summoner mechanic where the lich concentrates on controlling a powerful monster or continuously summons new enemies and choose monsters that make a good encounter.
Wow, I didn't expect this to blow up as much. Thanks everyone for your kind and great suggestions! Quick follow-up: What spells would you remove from the lich's level 10 encounter to keep it challenging but give the party a chance? Also, what spells would you add to make the lich a more formidable BBEG for the final battle?.
There are options
Just quickly here are some defensive ones
Hiding in cloudkill is a good defense for a lich. It make the lich harder to kill in a way that encourages counter play like breaking concentration or dispelling and there are allot of similar options. Choose either a really powerful defense with the goal of it being temporary or choose a weaker one and have dispelling it give only temporary reprieve
This is really dependent imo on how you introduce the lich to the story. I think it's much more important to get the thematic of the fight right than the actual combat itself, because at some point the combat can become redundant enough to where the party is willing to go through the motions. So i'd simply ask you what is the Lich's story you are trying to tell here?
The Lich's story is that he was on Leader of an ancient magical empire that fell because one of the other leaders tried to replace the goddess of magic, and now he is trying to return that empire because he saw that as a Utopia. the problem is that during the fall of said his phylactery got shattered into many shards and he is trying to get them all back, and until he gets them all back he will be weakened, but he can only be destroyed if all the shards are destroyed together
i am unsure whether or not i want the party to fight him in the first encounter with him, he will offer them to work with him and my dilemma is what happens if they refuse him, he either attacks them and they are forced to escape. or he let's them and hunts them with powerful minions. so that they have to get the rest of the shards to destroy him, and save him a lot of work.
So the story itself needs an avenue for these shards to go various different ways to begin with rather than being located in several different areas. Do these shards represent some portion of his power than can be activated by those weilding them while not allowing him to do so? If so i guess thats a good way to make people not want to destroy his phylactery entirely or a shard perminantly.
Perhaps leading the party to a shard by dangling the 'carrot-on-a-stick' to a location that happens to have one will provide them some interest in the shard, and have it happen to run into them after the fact but perhaps before they put 2+2 together on it. That way if he happens to randomly be winning the fight (given i think his CR is completely borked much like a few others, i think he loses 100% of the time against a competent party of level 10's even) he can spare their pitiful existences if they hand over what is rightfully his should they refuse to work with him. If they work with him, or you want them to work with him, they'll need some other incentive since he's likely to want these shards when completed. Usually this incentive would be some sort of assistance against another bbeg, but if he's at the top of the chain then you'll need to sort that out.
I think your strategy leans more towards a rare occasion where the two are in the same place at roughly the same time leading to a fight between an incomplete lich and a mediocre group of underlings versus the party after they've already gotten in a fight, and then other fights can be transferred towards the other holders of the shards that might have their own selfish desires, like an NPC mage that is corrupted by it in his tower or a kingdom who can use the shard to see things before they happen and use that to always keep power using this advantage and underhanded means. These sorts of encounters will keep combat more fresh and diverse.
As for the Lich himself, i'd mostly just let him go in there without a 9th level spell and modify his HP to be more in line with what the party can finish off in 3-4 rounds from your experience of running encounters for them, rather than 135 that most parties at 10 or 11 can likely finish off in 2 rotations even with the most iffy of primary damage dealer.
so the fun thing about liches is that they have a phylactery. a level 10 party can take down a lich because they can destroy the phylactery. if they have the phylactery the lich cant do AoE spells because that would damage the phylactery
Pronouns: Any/All
About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Fun Fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
If a 10th level party can even find and get a lich's phylactery, the lich screwed up.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
true, true. but consider... the phylactery was stolen by a high level adventurer(s), who then gave it to their employer(who wanted the lich weakened), who then pawned it(so the lich wouldnt come after them), where it was the bought by a wizard who used it to power an atomotaun, wich was then destroyed by the level 10 party.
dnd sitcom anyone?
Pronouns: Any/All
About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Fun Fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
give it some thematic stuff. the RaW lich only has a slight tendancy to necromancy. what was the lich before it was lichified? what school of magic did they like? were they a war mage? an evoker? an illusionist? the sky truly is the limit. and.... you can make a spell look like basically whatever you want, like orcus with solarsyphon running him. also. FIREBALL
Pronouns: Any/All
About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Fun Fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
I think I want them to go full-on necromancy and maybe add some illusion since for most of their existence, they were a lich, and before that, they were one of the rulers of an empire. But I don't know if illusion can be a strong enough school for a fight
two words. hallucinatory terrain. warp peoples perception of reality! who cares if illusion spells dont deal a ton of damage, the roleplay on them cannot be surpassed
Pronouns: Any/All
About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Fun Fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
There is a reason why the shards are not with him, It involves the fall of his kingdom. and him being banished to an outside realm he cannot return from until he gets all of the shards. The party has a reason to go after him, they were hired by one of his underlings to get one of the Shards (unknowingly) and the underling betrayed them