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[neogenetica]

If me and Greenday get around to doing D&D I probably choose the most overpowered class for a psion, an Ascendant.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

The fantasy RP or actual D&D?

[neogenetica]

Actual D&D.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 Just checkin.

[Whd]

Anyone gonna play The Old Republic?

[Zaleramancer]

Yet another humorous DnD thingy.

Demiliches are basically very powerful liches who condense themselves into a single bone, as apposed to a whole skeleton.

In the first and only epic campaign I've run with my group back home, the party was steamrolling any monsters I threw at them and were asking to fight "the most powerful epic bad guy I could make."

Bad idea.

I introduced an epic organization of necromancers, and for a while the mooks the party faced each appeared to be a single, simple, jeweled skeleton--obviously just a demilich with a body to move it around, right? After facing a few battles with them, the PCs started whining again, when they walked up to another one like all of the others...and died. They were rezzed...and died. It kept screwing with them for 4-5 sessions and 16-17 rezzes. A basic demilich is CR 21, and these guys were ECL 70-ish. What was the trick? It's a fairly obvious idea, but it took them a while to figure it out.

Jeweled bone = demilich, yes, but how many bones are there in the human body?

206.

Here's how everything went down:

Basically, to make a memorable boss fight, I keep as many abilities in reserve as I can to be surprises. The first fight was simply a single widened disjunction from the head and 205 widened maximized empowered twinned energy admixed (acid) energy admixed (sonic) energy admixed (cold) energy admixed (electricity) fireballs from the others. Nice, blunt brute force that didn't reveal any tactics. That was easily doable for them and did upwards of 29000 damage, blowing through what little protection was left after the disjunction (though all the PCs had immunity to at least 2 energy types from templates) and KO'ing them in 1 round.

For round 2, after the contingent resurrections and teleports kicked in, they realized they were seriously outgunned. They looked up the demilich's (they still thought it was just 1) immunities (many) and vulnerabilities (few), specced up on anti-undead spells and items, and headed out again.

Predictably, they focused on offense and forgot some defenses. Like protection against disjunction and the fact that death ward doesn't matter after you're hit by one. One disjunction and 205 fingers of death later, it was back to the drawing board.

DING DING DING! Round 3. They finally got immunity to disjunction and headed out again. They had been winning easily up to this point, so none of them had needed to nova. They looked up the best nova strategies, "surprised" the demiliches, unloaded a nova, and destroyed them...only to find out that all demiliches know astral projection. Death number 3.

At this point, the party realized that destroying the baddies (now they knew there were multiple demiliches) would do no good if they didn't find and destroy the phylactery, so the casters brute-force divined the phylacteries' locations (yes, locations, plural), and nova-d and rested in a timeless plane until all were destroyed...only to be ambushed at the last spot by the BBEG. Death number 4.

They headed out again, and were promptly nova-d by the BBEG. Death number 5. Mind you, the lich hasn't regained spells since death #1 at this point.

Round 6. They find the BBEG, figure out it's astral projecting, go find the bodies, and prepare to take out the defenseless BBEG...only to have the projected form ambush and kill them from behind.

Round 7. This time they took a timeout to plan and figure out what went wrong. (The BBEG regained spells here.) They summoned some solars to go with them (12, I believe) and found the BBEG again...only to find that there weren't a dozen or so demiliches like they thought but 206 baddies. The solars were easily wiped and the party died again.

Round 8. They found the lich again, avoided the astral projection, found the body, and avoided an ambush until they could take out 5 of the demiliches. Then they died again.

Round 9. Repeat of round 8--they finally figured out how to hide from the BBEG. Took out 5 more demiliches. The BBEG now has no toes.

Round 10. Almost-repeat of round 9. However, one of the 7 they "destroyed" actually went invisible and split up from the rest. Remember that.

Round 11. The demilich followed them to home base and nova-d them.

Round 12. The PCs try for a war of attrition, hoping to wear down the spells until they could just kill them at leisure. They chased and were chased all over that world's equivalents to Mechanus and Acheron, but eventually they were cornered and killed.

Round 14. They discovered, to their chagrin, that the demilich that escaped in round 10 had restored his phylactery and was using illusions to swap out with some of the others and let them rebuild theirs. By the time the PCs figured it out, the remaining 189 all had their phylacteries back. Death #14.

Round 15. Thanks to attrition and guerrilla tactics, the PCs were able to wipe out the new phylacteries and kill another 106 demiliches, bringing them down to 83. This was the entire second-to-last session right here, and it was amazing. They still died, though.

Round 16. After their huge defeat in the last round, the liches focused more on defense. With a few epic spells and items (few? okay, lots), their HP shot into the 1000s each (around 1500) and it seemed like they'd never be defeated. One by two by two dozen, the demiliches dropped, until there were only 5 left, the party was down to 80-90 HP each, and both the BBEG and the party casters were down to 1st level spells, except for 1 epic spell each they were saving for an absolute last resort; they couldn't be sure if they would have a chance to regain spells, so they wanted to hold something in reserve just in case. The non-casters of course were just whittling away at the BBEG at this point, and the PCs were out of active contingent resurrections, so this was literally the last battle. The PCs dipped into their reserves, and pulled out every last wand and scroll, their staffs being long since used up at this point.

Working together, they finally got the BBEG down to the last demilich, who still had >1000 HP. Unfortunately for them, the BBEG finally managed to trap the soul of 2 of the PCs. The PCs were literally down to their last wand, with no other charged or otherwise offensive items left, and it was a wand of dimension door. Right before he was trap the soul'd as well, the party cleric managed to get the wand to the wizard, then as his final act cast his only contingent resurrection on the wizard, and wizard used the wand to get out of the demilich's range.

Finally, the piece de resistance: the wizard was out of options and double checked his character sheet...only to find that in all the excitement he'd forgotten that what he thought was an epic mage armor in reserve was in fact his vengeful gaze of god, researched a while back for just such an eventuality. With the demilich only 15 feet away and closing, he cast the vengeful gaze of god, killing the BBEG with only 3 or 4 HP to spare, and killing himself in the process.

When he was resurrected, he regained spells, gated back to the Material Plane, and had the rest of them true resurrected. Then they ascended to be overdeities and the campaign ended. It was the most epic campaign we have ever done, and we haven't played epic since then because we don't think

[Marvelous Miscreant]

I would have quit out of frustration long before that ended.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 You and me both...

[Marvelous Miscreant]

[Zaleramancer]

Why must people once again be idiots?

Why can they not simply grow a brain so as to avoid my stabby rage..

[Celadon's Penultimate]

If the only way to reach you was for them to grow a brain, maybe they would. But they can still bother you without one, so they don't.

[Zaleramancer]

._.

I hate pedantic movie reviewers.

I've found one site that literally counts each and every foul word and violent act in a movie.

And as for what it thinks is violent.. Winnie The Pooh is "Light" violence.

Yes. Winnie The Pooh. The stuffed animal.

The reviews also say that Barney is bad because, "It paints a rosy view of people and their ability to change the world without direct divine intervention."

 

I mean, Really? I can understand some thoughts on certain movies, but still.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Direct divine intervention? Srsly? Do you go BROWSING for the religious crazies?

[Zaleramancer]

Apparently they think that unless God personally intervenes, you will never be able to change anything about anything ever.


It's really not so much the religious crazies as the uber-conservative,  anti-everything you can shake a stick at, people who are an insult to religious people everywhere.


By the way, have you seen/heard of the movie Nanny McPhee?

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Yes, watched it, loved it.

And STOP looking through forums that aren't kid/teen friendly. They are bad for you.

They make you snap at me, and say hurtful anti-religious things.

Which make me want to do many violent things to you.

[Zaleramancer]

It's not anti-religious now.

It's anti-idiot who is taking a good religion with nice values, and using it to fulfill their own stupidity.

I'm not at all angry at you. You're a nice person.

The people who write those reviews are the ones I'm annoyed at. They make everyone of the nice decent Christians look bad.



For example, the rank Nanny McPhee on the same level as horror movies like freakin' SAW.

The reason? The Nanny has magical powers.



I realllllllly should avoid these kinds of sites.  But it's like seeing a train wreck. I can't pull my eyes away...

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Well, then, don't come crying to me when your brain needs Mama's Olde Tyme Brain Bleach.

I mean, srsly, if they think that Nanny McPhee is bad, but have no problem with old time westerns like "Hang 'Em High" and "The Sons of Katie Elder" then I am not shocked one bit when so many atheists become so from being bitter toward their wacky-looney-nutty religious parents. You're right. Makes us look bad.

[Zaleramancer]

Don't worry.
 
There's also wack-job atheists.


And you, me and everyone else with a brain get to watch the wack-jobs tear each other to shreds.

Root-beer?

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 Yah woo yah! Das root bier!

Glad we can come to that agreement. Idiots come from all walks of life. And they are all equally fun to ridicule.

Typically I don't hear non-Christians admit that whack-job atheists exist, so that's a relief. I KNEW we weren't the only ones who could go overboard.

[Celadon's Penultimate]