My level 9 party was supposed to fight Fafnir last week, but they spent too much time strategizing before entering the lair that they’re going to fight him today.
Since every single ttrpg out there is hell bent on giving the “MC” a completely different name in each and every one of them, we’ll just grab the most popular term and roll with it.
Also, this ttrpg concerns Tiamat, that one calls it a DM
Story time! Okay so long sequence of things by the players.With feng, a lizardfolk that lived in the slums on sigil. In the backstory of this player, he once wore a ring of multiple personalities, creating a second persona of himself inside. Originally they would periodically swap, and coexisted without issue, but one day they had a fight and one of him killed the entire family. Soon the ring was thrown into the fire and never seen again. After joining the party and enjoying this time with everyone he and the party fought against moloch an arch-devil who had the ability to instantly send someone to the nine hells upon being slain. Upon being defeated by the party he exploded sending both himself and feng into avernus. The party healer casted resurrection on him but instead of bringing the feng back, it brought back the evil twin. Being with the party it allowed him to slowly collect dangerous items from the party to become more powerful, including a tablet of summoning tiamat, ball of negative energy and a few other things. Eventually the “evil” one started having visions of the other one in the nine hells. After one vision he was standing in a room with his girlfriend and blanked, only coming back to his party yelling at him with having himself covered in blood. Upon further inspection they found that his “souk container” was a little more than half empty so they hypothesized that his soul is incomplete and they must collect the pieces. After triangulating the locations they found the pieces were in sigil and on the nine hells. Upon traveling to sigil and scrying for his soul they made their way to a lizardfolk baker. Upon asking a few questions they were stumped, unsure what to think and unable to finding anything. When they were about to leave they realized he had a super buff child and checked him figuring it was a match. They asked if the kid could come with the father said “sure life is short and I have another 30” so a poor decision was made. Let’s just say they aren’t the greatest parents. They also figured out that if either of them take damage while standing close to each other they both take damage as if transmitted. A while later they realized they needed to ask Asmodeus (the king of hell) for a set of artifacts to gain the ability to navigate through a dead magic zone so they made a trip to the nine hells. After getting a ride from a Chaoron, they were dumped on the 8th layer and made their way to talk to mephistopholes and making a deal they proceeded to the 9th layer. Unsure of what to do they tripped into a minefield, they were force teleporter into a dungeon. After defeating a squadron of it fiends and other dungeon inhabitants the healer once again decided to walk off again in the opposite direction of the party. He heard someone’s ethereal whispers and decided to investigate leading him to a series of teleporters. Yolo he said and went into one adventuring once again at the worst time. He heard a voice behind himself, “Hey! Sandervich? What are you doing here?” the player turned around to see an identical copy of the party member they have been with but slightly off, a dark shade coloring and a pair of horns. Soon they had a short conversation and while the other feng was busy fighting as a front liner he heard over their communication “hey guys I think I found other feng” to which feng responds with “kill the other feng!” Charux responds with “the two of you have some explaining to do when we are done here, so no fighting” slowly making his way over to the horned Feng. After a few minutes of fighting through the dungeon feng makes his way over and sees the horned feng, makes a disgusted look and runs away. Feng finds a hiding spot to pull out the Tiamat summoning tablet, breaks it and an enormous dragon appears. The dungeon rumbles with a chorus of roars, she asks feng “what are your demands?” he says “kill feng but the rest of the party is irrelevant” She responds with “so be it, HERE I COME FENG PLEASE DONT MAKE THIS DIFFICULT FOR THE TWO OF US” The session ends and one player says “well this fight is going to suck……fighting the avatar of tiamat……we are fighting the avatar right? Not the manifestation…….right?” :concern: You asked and i shall deliver!
I recall Asmodeus’s physical body occupying the majority of the plane it’s located on. I’m up for Asura’s Wrathing a being that would appear monolithic even at planetary scale, but travel time might kill all the humans and some of the older fey in the party.
True. I guess my point is that there isn't a statblock for it and you can only encounter an actual deity in their divine domain. But they effectively write the rules of that layer of their plane, or their demi-plane, so it's kind of wild to try to figure out what they can't do.
Tiamat might be the only one that's feasible because she lives on Avernus but doesn't rule it' she's imprisoned in hell. So she can probably only warp the area right around her. But even her aspect's stat block is CR 30 so who knows how you'd run her.
The problem here is that deities are bound by the plot, not the rules. If your DM tells you “no spell or weapon of mortal make could ever pierce the Queen of Dragons’ hide”, that means there is nothing you can do to hurt her. End of conversation. But, if your DM tells you “only a blade forged by the divine smith Watsisnaim could slay such a mighty foe”, it’s time for a fetch quest.
That’s the best way to take a single campaign and make it into a long-running universe. The last multi-year, same-story table I was a part of wound up spanning outwards specifically because one of the players did some shit way back at the end of Campaign #0 to spawn a demigod or two, which resulted in a world-seeding of demis on some Exalted-type shit. I miss it some days.
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