Demons and Demigods and Difficulty

Specifics

Spoiler

Round one: as soon as you 'land', check out the initiative bar and work out which avatar is which. At worst, 4 characters will suffer sneak attacks before you can react at all- this happened on one play-through, taking Alannah down to single figure HP, but no-one should be getting hit again without my say-so so that's okay. First actions: give each avatar something to hit. Alannah (wiz) casts a quickened SM1 followed by SM9 if necessary; Incus summons an elemental, Gethin uses either SM8 or does some healing if necessary, Magda uses her wand of SM1. If needs be, an avatar who will act before a decoy can be sommoned is approached by Njalla or Jovian, who stands off such that Iuz will have to move and thus only get one attack in. Aureleon attacks an avatar that is being menaced by a rat, raven or dog, hitting for ~40HP. Subsequent rounds: any PC decoys run away from avatars (all have max possible tumble skills after an early AoO nightmare in my first game) and get back into position to support. Priorities now and hereafter:
1 keep every avatar provided with something to kill in preference to my PCs
2 keep Aureleon's HP close to max (lay on hands, Heal potions, Heal/ Mass Heal spells)
2a keep Aureleon's skin stony
3 Hasten Aureleon so he's getting an extra hit per round

Because there's a degree of flexibilty in who can do what, it's generally possible to have Aureleon hastened and with at least 150 pts of DR by the time he's being hit in round 2 (if necessary, I could hold him back from combat until he has more stoneskins in place). Elder elementals usually last 2 rounds, 3 if I use a lay on hands, or (if Mass Healing anyway) for 4, giving Alannah time to lay down some buffing on Aureleon (after first casting a quickened SM1). Once he's well enough protected, Aureleon is hitting an avatar 5 times/round (with Haste). Avatar then kills the 1 HD summoned monster that's barking/ pecking at him and cleaves into Aureleon, who hits back with Scather. For some reason, the Iuz avatars preferentially attack the summoned monsters. Occasionally I've had Aureleon take the full force of Iuz's 9 or 10 attacks, but have always been able to get him back on his feet using Heal or (once) Miracle in time to hit back before the avatar hits him again.
With 4 avatars things have to be done pretty tightly (would be easier if my cleric could summon twice a round like the wizard) but once one goes down it becomes easier.
As I say, the whole thing is totally dependent on the fact that the avatars will always stand in place and attack a 1HD monster rather than hunt down PCs, and will nearly always attack a 1HD monster in preference to the fighter doing them 200+ HP damage per round, but there's no way any party could survive if Iuz's AI targetted Answering sword weilder> Divine caster > Other caster > other PC

Apart from (admittedly big caveats) scather and spell selection, this is a fairly organic party build, I think- main reason for 4 fighters and a conjuror was to play the tunnel-fighting in the temple as tactical melee, rather than multiple-fireball-and-mop-up-the-rest. No one is really min-maxed out (could have gone for Human or Dwarf Ftr10 Brb 10 for Scather, for eg, and used rage, and there are probably 10 'better' levels to add to a Pal 10 than another 10 of Paladin)

 

Apologies- have read through my earlier posts and noticed that I have been ambiguous as follows (spoiler)

Spoiler

When I say "Jovian usually hits with a Holy-fied Frostbrand", what I mean is that this is his prefered weapon, and the one that he used throughout the WotGS. I am not saying that he is usually successful in hitting Iuz with this weapon. Indeed, other than a single round the first time I came to this fight, when the dice-roll monitor thing showed me it was futile, I don't think he's ever tried. In this fight, Aureleon and Scather do all the hitting, with conjuring providing damage control. Jovian is an auxillary healer and one-time-only human shield if required.

Interestingly, when I tried to refind this thread quickly by Googling something like 'Iuz Balors Cuthbert', I turned up another thread which I can't otherwise find on the lists on this site (but is here somewhere) by someone (Wasbear) who had successfully solo'd 4 Cuthberts- with a relatively sensible build who had presumably solo'd much of the high level stuff for the challenge. Respect! Brief details and comment below

Spoiler

Clr 19 Ftr1. Stacked Divine powers and wand-cast stoneskins, plus Scather power-attacking at max (apparently Divine Power can increase your BAB beyond 20!), and the occasional heal.
Apparently he managed to get some buffing in between, erm *boffing* Asherah and being dragged to the arena (possibly a very small party is positioned such that Asherah has to move before initiating dialogue, thus giving extra time- I once visited Imeryd's Run with only 4 PCs and found the fights easier because arriving *only* triggered the 2 frogs, who got my undivided attention before I buffed and went to find the hag and the lizard men when I was good and ready).
This was interesting to me because, although I've heard it said that clerics are overpowered in D&D3.5, I've tended to use them primarily as field-medics to keep my fighters alive. I played through NC6.0 with a party of 6 wizards and a Druid just to see what happened (answer: Fireballs: lots of fireballs), so perhaps I should look at an all-divine party. Might take Ronald along...

Incidentally, when I've returned to Asherah after this fight, sometimes she's been fine and we've ended up married but others, Iuz has popped in in person to kill everyone/ defile her while I've been fighting the Avatars. At first I thought that this was because I delayed to level up my Wizard (20th, yay!), but repeating doesn't seem to bear this out. Is there something to do with my dialogue choices when we first meet, or is it just random? Since my only remaining option in the game is to go and talk about retirement homes to Smyth it makes little difference, but I'd be interested to know

 

Re Asherah's fate above:
Actually, dammit, I must know! I'm Neutral Good, for the love of Pelor! How can I prevent the suffering of the innocent?!

 

Thanks Nightcanon!

Spoiler

I've never tried the summoning bit before. I managed Iuz in the Temple by taking a five foot step away from him after my attacks, and having everyone else fire holy composite bows into him. Needless to say, that tactic was useless against four of them.

 

That .. that's just evil. :sadblinky

 

In previous versions you could raise her from the dead and marry her.
In 7.2 unfortunetely not. She does not want to speak to you after being raised.

 

And what about you, Geear?
Did you find the fight easy?
Partucularly for Lawful Neutral party?
Partucularly without using obvious bugs like Lareth Club or Divine Power?

 

(Regarding Cuthbert Avatars)
Well I'd say that there definitely are parties out there who can do it, and that there are some parties who simply can't and won't ever be able to without a total party overhaul. Took me quite a few tries to figure out what would work and what wouldn't work, and which characters could contribute and which characters were just sacks of meat to the Avatars. Any offensive magic was just a waste of time, and any summoned creatures would get thoroughly stomped within a single turn. Luckily I had a cleric, and he was the one who FINALLY got a victory for me.

Reading previous replies, it seems that clerics are pretty much the staple in fighting off Cuthbert's avatars.

 

WHAAAAAAAAAA? :yikes:

 

No. The slavers were insanely difficult but doable.

4x Iuz was utterly impossible, completely different league than anything else.
On a "I've peeked at a source code, read every walkthrough, and used every cheat and glitch in the system" -level of difficulty.

As a normal player, who's only finished the game a couple of times, this was so hard I have no intention of trying again. In fact it burnt out all the desire to touch the game again.

 

I have defeated 4 St. Cuthberts in 7.2 NC -
2 clerics used meld into stone spell, the rest of a party runned away to a safe spot (boots of speed activation), then I stoneskinned the main DD (brb/rog/fighter with Scather) and I managed to kill 4 Avatars (but the rest of the party still was supporting the main DD with stoneskins from spells/wands).

It was an awesome fight, really long and enjoyable, but also kinda cheap because of meld into stone spell usage, IMHO .
Anyway, I wouldn't change Demons and Demigods difficulty.

 

Re: "Hendrick, Culbert, and Luz"

My dumb question of the month. I have now tried four times to beat the four avatars of Luz, and have not killed even one, much the less four. I have lost my entire party all four times. I have tried Holy words, "4 weapons, and all kinds of spell combinations. Is there a way to win this battle? Am I overlooking something? Any constructive criticism/help would be appreciated,

 

There are some great tactics for this fight in this very thread.

You'll have to highlight the blank areas to show the spoilers.

You can also use the search feature located at the top of every page to search for Iuz and it should give you more, some claim it's an easy fight but I usually if not always get my butt kicked.