Hey,

I’m running Call of the Netherdeep for a party and have some potential final boss cheesing I need help with. Members of The Inevitable should leave now!

I have been looking at the final boss fight and it tries to have the players talk the boss down for damage/debuffs and finally surrender in different phases. These are set at increasing DC’s of 15/17/19 for the 3 stages.

The tricky part is I have an Eloquence Bard in the party and at level 8 his minimum floor for a persuasion roll is 22 😬

How do I play this or alter this to make it more challenging? Obvious strategy would be to attack/silence the bard after hearing their silver tongue the first time.

I could just up the DC’s but that feels like I’m diminishing the player choices and restricting other players from joining in the efforts?

Ideas/thoughts welcome!

One possible solution would be to have the boss require each player to pass a persuasion check at some time?

Individual party member bonuses for Persausion are: 0/+2/+5/+7/+12 (min roll 10, min persuasion 22 😬 ).

  • phrankygee@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 year ago

    So I just went and checked out the specifics of this battle, and the key phrase is “speak with empathy and compassion”. If the player doesn’t approach the character in question with actual “empathy and compassion”, then they don’t get to make the persuasion check.

    If your party actually figures out that someone needs to talk to this guy, and HOW they need to talk to him, then it’s perfectly fine that they automatically succeed on the roll, as long as they let the most eloquent person in the group do the talking.

    I imagine most parties will go into default “boss battle” mode and not try diplomacy at all. If you want a party to stop shooting, smiting, and casting, and instead start talking about feelings, in the middle of a boss fight, that’s going to probably take some pretty big hints by you that it’s even a possibility. If they figure it out, then they deserve to win that way.