Hello all, so in prepping for a session, I noticed in the "Roleplaying Bel" section in Bel's Forge that he generally stands down and doesn't fight unless directly attacked, but that his goal if attacked should be to cast his 1/day Imprisonment on Lulu.
My question is: how would he survive combat to do that? I have a table of 7 players, the casting time is a minute, so 10 rounds of attacks from 7 players is possibly 70 concentration checks in a row he'd have to pass to pull this off (let alone tank the damage and survive) while doing nothing else (except maybe legendary actions?). Is this an example of bad writing in the module? Or is it implied that as a legendary creature/ex-archdevil he should ignore casting times?
I've looked into the definition of Innate Casting, and it doesn't seem to grant immunity to casting times (unless maybe as in the case of the Mind Flayer it states "no components" instead of "no material components," but this isn't the wording in Bel's chart). Yet even some simple potions can bypass casting times, so how are we supposed to play this encounter without bypassing the casting time? And of course the ideal situation is that the players just don't challenge him, but since when can you count on a player to not do that?
Bel would typically be too powerful an encounter for most players at level 9 and casting imprisonment is potentially equivalent to an instant kill on a player or a key ally it is not a mistake that he is unlikely to succeed. If you went full force he is going to be doing 64d6 in damage in an area of effect with an average damage of about 224, the party will not survive. Players need to do a minimum of 34 damage in a single hit for him to have a possibility of failing. Casting imprisonment is a handy cap to make fighting possible for a typical party of 4.
In terms of innate casting because it has no components there is no obvious sign he is casting a spell. If he gets annoyed he may simply go silent and as the players rant at him he could be casting it . You can use that to justify reducing the number of rounds they have to stop his casting if you like. Also as you have allot of players you can give him some minions to make it a bit easier. If you have a couple of ice devils already there then they can separate party members with ice walls.
If you do really want to go hard with bel then keep in mind he doesn't want to kill the players but force them work for them. If they are reduced to 0 don't call it a game over because it's not a fair fight. Instead they wake up with lulu imprisoned in a snow globe or something
Hello all, so in prepping for a session, I noticed in the "Roleplaying Bel" section in Bel's Forge that he generally stands down and doesn't fight unless directly attacked, but that his goal if attacked should be to cast his 1/day Imprisonment on Lulu.
My question is: how would he survive combat to do that? I have a table of 7 players, the casting time is a minute, so 10 rounds of attacks from 7 players is possibly 70 concentration checks in a row he'd have to pass to pull this off (let alone tank the damage and survive) while doing nothing else (except maybe legendary actions?). Is this an example of bad writing in the module? Or is it implied that as a legendary creature/ex-archdevil he should ignore casting times?
I've looked into the definition of Innate Casting, and it doesn't seem to grant immunity to casting times (unless maybe as in the case of the Mind Flayer it states "no components" instead of "no material components," but this isn't the wording in Bel's chart). Yet even some simple potions can bypass casting times, so how are we supposed to play this encounter without bypassing the casting time? And of course the ideal situation is that the players just don't challenge him, but since when can you count on a player to not do that?