Hi, guys!
I´m planning a big, final Epic-Level encounter for my long time campaign and I´d love some help and input on this.
The final showdown should be againt three Gargantuan dragons (a Black, a Blue and a White - YES! I want to finally put my big minis to work!), so I thought of three Ancient Dragons. Their levels are 24 for the White, 26 for the Black and 28 for the Blue one. If needed be, I could also increase their levels. If possible, I´d love to include an evil wizard in their midst. It work well for the story.
The party that´s gonna face it is quite singular too. It´s a well-rounded 30th-level NINE-PEOPLE party. 
Three defenders (a Guardian Fighter Dwarf, a Human Paladin MC Warlord and a Tempest Fighter Eladrin), three Strikers (a Halfling Rogue, an Eladrin Ranger and a Human Monk), two leaders (a Human Cleric and a Tiefling Bard) and a controller (a Human Wizard).
My question is: will the lower level dragons be too easy for the party (they are several levels below the party level) or the fact that all three of them will be acting at the same time compensates for that? Does the fact that all three are Solo Monsters will increase the chance for a long, boring, "crunchy" battle?
Any help is welcome. I don´t have much experience with Epic encounters and I never used three high level solos at once, so I appreciate any help with that.
Roleplaying-wise, it´s important to have all three dragons and, if possible, the evil mage as their master. But I could easily change their levels to balance this encounter.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Cheers!
My question is: will the lower level dragons be too easy for the party (they are several levels below the party level) or the fact that all three of them will be acting at the same time compensates for that? Does the fact that all three are Solo Monsters will increase the chance for a long, boring, "crunchy" battle?Any help is welcome. I don´t have much experience with Epic encounters and I never used three high level solos at once, so I appreciate any help with that.
I've run a fair amount of epic, including multi-solo fights. None with nine players, though. No matter what else you do, I'd advise playtesting the encounter, either solo (good luck) or with a bunch of other players as a one-off thing using copies of your regular PCs' sheets as crash test dummies.
That said, it looks to me like a hard level 33 encounter for 9 PCs gives you a budget of 279,000 XP to work with. Using the dragons you wanted unmodified is going to make an awfully easy fight, especially the hopelessly underlevel white whose N-4 brute attacks will hardly ever hit. Assuming you want all the dragons to be a real menace, I'd level them all up to 29, which eats up 225,000 XP. That leaves you enough for a fairly nasty NPC wizard, and perhaps some lesser allies (minions, standards, whatever) as well. The easiest approach might be to make the wizard a custom level 32 elite, which puts you right on the mark XP-wise. With so many players you might be better off with a lower level (28-30) wizard and some bodyguards.
Multiple dragons can be a bit of a HP grind, although endgame PC damage output is amazingly high. You might be well-served to modify them to follow the DMG2 standards, which basically means reducing defenses by 2 and HP by 20% while increasing damage output while bloodied. A decent but sloppy way to increase damage is to just tack on the Bloodscaled Frenzy power from Draconomicon. You might also consider making major mods to the black dragon's "lurky" powers, which tend to produce rather static and drawn-out combats.
Think hards about terrain too. You'll want a memorable setting for your climactic battle.
With nine PCs, I would be tempted to somehow seperate them into two teams of "normal" size. Anotehr option would be to go with 3 teams of 3 (each one fighting one of the dragons).
The main problem with 9 PCs, as I see it, is that after any one of your monsters act (or after all of them act, if they all act at once) NINE PLAYERS get to go before that monster gets to react to anything that happened. Cut the number of PCs down, and the fights will move faster, and the dragon will be able to react more, and probably fare better.
Sicne the 3 dragons are of uneven level, you may want to hand-pick the teams in advance to make sure it feels fare to you - but, honestly, that seems like a tough call.
Running with that idea, I'll throw out a more fleshed out encounter:
You could even break it up into two encoutners back-to-back (with no short rest between them). First, the wizard uses his awesome epic plot-spells to split the team up, and seal them in a magical circle with a dragon. In order to get out and fight him, they need to slay the dragon to break the circle.
Trick is, if one team is unusually faster than the others, they will enter the second encounter before the other teams have finished the first - which, assuming that last encounter (the awesome wizard, plus a bunch of new smaller monsters he'll summon in) is balanced for a full party of nine to go out in style, will mean the end of them.
You could either leave everyone in their "rooms" until all 3 dragons are dead - or you could just drop some hints, like have the wizard summoning in his allies while the PCs fight the dragon, and if one team seems to be pulling ahead, the wizard even begins to root them on, or something - or his minions cheer as the PCs do somethign awesome.
It *might* give your players pause to consider why the BBEG would want them to finish with his distractions quickly. You could also make it very obvious that the magic fueling the circles is tied to the dragon - maybe ask for a simple arcana check (for epic people) to note that when the dragon dies, that fuel will run out.
I dunno, maybe its a bad idea, but it sounds like an interesting encounter to me - especially since your players are probably not used to having to fight in normal-sized groups.
Also, having an even Bigger Bad waiting for them outside of the dragon-circles will mean your PCs will hold off on unleashing their worst dailies - because they will expect the mage to be the real threat and the dragons to simply be buying him time to call in reinforcements. This will probably make those fights more challenging - but less climactic, since there is an obvious worse-threat just around the corner. If its obvious that they will immediately enter anotehr big fight, they will probably want to ration their encounter powers carefully, too - since they won't have 5 minutes to regain them.
I´ll seriously consider splitting the party three-ways, even though I was looking for one big battle in the end. Anyway, the three-parter sounds as a better designed encounter.
And the idea of playtesting it before is perfect. I´ll certainly do that!
I´ll post again when I have some more solid numbers.
Once again, thanks a lot!
Cheers,
Marcio
On top of that make the wizard encounter another hard encounter (not just the wizard by himself). Look at some of the terrain features in DMG2 for added flair. Things like Fey Circles and Energy Nodes can make for a very interesting encounter as the players race the monsters to the vital areas.
Additionally, when the party gets split up, have the terrain in each area become suited to the dragon housed there. The white is in an extremely cold terrain, the blue is in an electrical storm (which can conveniently damage the party as well), the black is in a swampy area that perhaps makes it difficult for the party to move around. Essentially, make sure that the dragons are reduced to pretty much sitting still and meleeing all fight as that greatly reduces their effectiveness. For more fun, place terrain elements that the PCs can use to their advantage as well. If you design the encounter areas properly, it won't feel like a grind even with the massive HP grind involved. A fight can last several hours and be exciting and fun the whole time so long as its designed right.
I DO see this as a problem for the finale, but my fear of splitting the party is watering down the last encounter. It´s supposed to be the climax to a campaign that started years ago. I´m actually thinking about it. I´m not afraid of the party size (since we´re used to it) but how that will influence the final encounter.
And I DEFINITELY plan on using special terrain for that extra flavor! ;)
As a matter of fact, we´re rather used to such a large party. I won´t say it´s a pleasing experience 100% of the time - it does work against us sometimes - but what started as a 3.5 six-people campaign kept adding more and more players, and since we´re all friends who love their charcaters, I wouldn´t dare leaving anyone out of it.
I DO see this as a problem for the finale, but my fear of splitting the party is watering down the last encounter. It´s supposed to be the climax to a campaign that started years ago. I´m actually thinking about it. I´m not afraid of the party size (since we´re used to it) but how that will influence the final encounter.
And I DEFINITELY plan on using special terrain for that extra flavor! ;)
I suppose there's two ways of looking at it (as with most situations), but if you do split the party (realizing of course that you need not do so) you turn one big final fight into essentially 4 big final fights taking place more or less simultaneously. This is particularly true if the magic circles with the dragons (or whatever you want to call the split areas) are broken by the death of the dragon, thereby letting the PCs in that area get to the area where the wizard has been summoning more allies and preparing his defenses. Of course, with each group likely to not finish their dragon fights at the same time, this also adds more tension. The idea here is that the first group to defeat the dragon can't simply start taking a short rest because they are immediately set upon by more enemies. If it works right, I could see something like this:
P1: Remember when we had that fight against the evil wizard?
P2: Oh yeah, the one where first we got split up and had to fight three dragons in order to get at the wizard?
P3: Yeah, except by the time we had killed the dragon, the dang wizard had summoned an army of undead.
P1: Wouldn't even let us catch our breath after taking out a dragon!
P4: What are you complaining about? At least you weren't having to hop from rock to rock in a lava river!
P5: Oh, and it was great that when we got to the wizard finally, the rest of you hadn't made it yet, so it was only 3 of us trying to hold him off.
P2: Heh, I was wondering why you guys cheered so loudly when we finally showed up. :P
P3: Stupid wizard wouldn't go down either, and kept recharging his powers with those dang node thingies.
You: Hey, now you guys got to recharge some of your powers too. I thought it was a very fair, balanced, and fun encounter
P1-P9: Screw You! You're just evil. Man, I don't how you're gonna top that for this campaign, but I can't wait.
It's really not much different than if you just put the three dragons and maybe some minor support in the same fight with the wizard, but it will feel a heck of a lot different.
How about a variation on splitting the three groups geographically: have the wizard offset each group through time, with each trio facing a different dragon in their "time bubble". The difference being that these "time bubbles" occur sequentially to each other, so any changes in the environment in one encounter actually persists into the other two encounters. So play would go: -
Player A's turn, Player B's turn, Player C's turn, Dragon 1's turn.
Then they all disappear until the next round, replaced with Player D, E, F and Dragon 2 taking their turns in the same environment. Then again with Players G, H, I and Dragon 3. After which they swap back to A, B, C and Dragon 1.
The wizard and the rest of his minions are safely in a fourth "time bubble" (so you may see affects from his ongoing plan in the other bubbles). When a trio defeats their particular dragon, they break back into this time bubble with the wizard. Again, this means that changes in the environment caused or seen by one group is also experienced by the other two.
While having similar benefits to the idea of splitting them into three "force fields", it provides a bit more of a unique take, helps explain not being able to teleport into the other trios areas, and gives the players a way of helping the other groups with some smart tactics, even when some have moved on to the final battle.
You may want to give the party some magic item that lets them communicate between their time prisons if you want them to purposefully be able to know exactly how to work optimally between the groups. There's the other option of actually splitting the group, but for the climatic battle I think I'd prefer the former situation.