*turns off your players that aren't monks of level 6 or higher, and the ones who are level 6 or higher monks only get to punch, unless you go with rai, so your party are just ducks to be hit
Sul Khatesh was the main antagonist of my spelljammer campaign. They encountered her tangentially when she broke out of the planet she was trapped in and used her "nuke" option when the party was level 10 (she was decimating an army on her way off planet). The party then had to spend most of the next 10 levels of the campaign going to tu'narath, overthrowing Vlaakith the queen lich of the githyanky, and gaining a spark of divine essence from the dead god the city is built into in order to use it to make themselves count as dieties so the anti magic wouldn't turn them off.
I love how one ability just recontextualises completely insignificant abilities and reshapes the entire fight. It’s a really good way to design a monster.
This is why I am looking forward to MCDM's release of "Flee Mortals!", where they are rebuilding many of the traditional monster encounters to have more dynamic options to make combat more engaging on both sides of the DM screen.
@@zinogrevz7389 Yes it does. Read the Artificer feature, its not magic but *Science.* They can "narrative" their spells to be whatever they want cause its super OP to do so.. Ergo my Catapult Acid. Is actually a Gatling Gun with acid rounds. *Spellcasting.* 1st-level artificer feature You've studied the workings of magic and how to cast spells, channelling the magic through objects. To observers, you don't appear to be casting spells in a conventional way; you appear to produce wonders from mundane items and outlandish inventions.
Wouldn't the monk still be able to do damage? Their damage only counts as magical for the sake of overcoming resistance. That doesn't mean it's magical.
antimagic field also says artifacts are unaffected. So everyone just has to have an artifact and attack with it every round. Even then though I think it’s rough. Another strategy would be to her activate her antimagic field by a first encounter or some bait, and then kill her without it. Unfortunately I think she has too many ways to escape battle. So maybe just get on her good side and conquer the world together :)
The magic of deities and artifacts can still function inside an antimagic field. Assuming the PCs aren't deities, it could be a cool quest/adventure to retrieve an artifact weapon (or weapons) as the only way to possibly win. I think it's fine to have these demigod-level enemies that even a party of level 20s can't face without having acquired the right (legendary) tools first. If you're fighting Sul Katesh, it should be as the culmination of an entire campaign that the characters have time to prepare for. It's not like you open a random door in a dungeon and Sul Katesh happens to be in there just chillin'. You kill something like this with the Sword of Kas, not your Longsword +3.
In the world where Sul Khatesh is from, there aren’t really deities (except arguably those like her) so it’s probably just Artifacts that will be able to do anything.
Aren't the Creator dragons in ebberon kind-of their version of deities? I haven't got the source book, but I know Ebberon is treated as separate from the rest of the multiverse, and has its own creation myths, that are probably not myths
Eberron, Khyber, and Siberys. It's a well known myth, but very few creatures in the setting actually worship them. Unlike Faerun, it's possible to be an atheist in the Eberron setting. The gods don't manifest physically - the closest thing to the Gods is the Overlords themselves.
@@agentchaos9332 that story also seems like it might lean towards metaphorical. The most commonly worshipped “deities” are probably (or definitely) based on real dragons and fiends that fought at the end of the age of demons…and a force that was created by the sacrifice of coatls. Eberron is just great.
Basically, in Eberron, there are no good or evil deitites that are in other DnD settings. Instead, the evil gods are filled by the Overlords. I would still rule that Divinie Intervention works though.
I threw this monster at my players as the BBEG for the campaign. They had to go on a quest and retrieve the Demonomicon of Iggwilv in order to imprison the creature. The only artifact that lets them cast inverted magic circle at 9th level through a field of antimagic.
One cool trick you can do as a dm, is give your lich antimagic field, cast it and just walk after the party while cackling. Cause they are also immune to nonmagical attacks. It makes a powerful moment as the lich just uses paralyzing touch over and over. As it dawns on the party that the lich is invincible, and have to escape. Course, if they truly piss off the lich it can always drop concentration and start spell casting like normal.
You really are taking ques from Overlord, when Ainz did the same thing. Having Paralyse touch while being immune to a whole adventuring party attacking and casting spells on him, dropping them one by one.
I knew it was going to be Sul Khatesh. I'm glad you're giving her some attention; she's definitely not talked about enough when people think of powerful monsters in 5e (probably because she's in the Eberron book). I'm still hoping I get a chance to throw her at my party some day.
If you want something unkillable, yes. Not necessarily going to wipe out the party, but as long as you play her to avoid death, she’ll be pretty much unkillable.
I'm literally building an Ascended Vecna stat block for a 5e adaptation of Vecna Lives and came across this video for inspiration. He is going to have mythic actions, 6 legendary resistances total, immunity to 5th level spells and lower, and older editions spells. He won't have 3 non-concentration antimagic fields that don't affect him, but maybe one like Sul Katesh's that does require concentration
I think the solution here is actually for thr DM to just throw away this ability before combat starts. The ability has a HUGE range. So have the creature appear somewhere in Sharn and have it create the antimagic zones on some of the towers which begin to collapse as the magic that was suspending them is dispelled maybe even with a slight domino effect. This really highlights the terror your players should feel when encountering such a formidable creature. Then the party fights it away from these antimagic areas. If the fight is going in the player's favor, then the creature retreats to one of it's zones which are spread throughout the city. Then you can have the shock factor of it casting spells within the zone. The party is likely forced to retreat here so it will be important for the creature to have some sort of goal that it can't accomplish within its zone, or the party (and the creature) short rest until the antimagic zones duration runs out.
Or to actually apply the rules as they are written. Antimagic field has no effect on class features that arent explicitly spells or magical effects, even if they are magic (and that ignores that most aren't even magic).
I think as long as the players know about the ability it's not too bad. Arcane Cataclysm explicitly comes from above and "plummets to the ground". This opens up a few options: - Fight in the air - The target point is on the ground and there's no indication that they can be detonated before they land. If you're more than 40ft. off the ground then the ability won't affect you. You need a way to stop them from retreating into the area, but that's a much easier problem. - Fight underground - same deal here only it's even easier. The only issue is that it's a more obvious trap. Also, by the wording they might ignore intervening terrain and there's no mention of how high they initially appear, so they might "plummet" from 3 inches off the ground. Still, I think it's reasonable to say that fighting in a 10ft. tall cave more than 40ft. underground would be safe. - Catch the orb(s) - this is about as supported as the suggestion to fight underground, arguably a little more so, but not much. Have the party wizard spend their turn readying a Wall of Force to intercept a falling orb at least 40ft. in the air. "Nothing can physically pass through the wall", so it should block the falling orb and the wall is large enough to guarantee a safe zone, however the issue of it "plummeting" from 3 inches off the ground still applies and you may have to deal with order-of-operations (can the wall block all 3 or does the first one dispel it before the other 2 hit, etc.).
Honestly it is really really easy to make it balanced, simply take away her immunity to the antimagic field. Then the fight would be easily winnable and probably quite fun.
@@agilemind6241 Or have the antimagic field drop either while she's casting (so counterspell/readied spells can work and readied attacks with magic weapons can harm her) or until the start of her next turn if she casts (if you want a more relaxed experience that feels less gamey).
Interestingly -- when a class feature says "you can treat your attack as magical for the purpose of overcoming damage resistance", that doesn't make the attack a magic item, and arguably might not actually be a magic effect. (Depending on the class feature, and DM interpretation) One might argue that means they're unaffected by anti-magic field.
@@hulmhochberg8129 If those class features were allowed then a Beast Barbarian, Monk, Eldritch Knight, Warlock with Pact of the Blade (?), and Arcane Archer would be able to hurt her.
@@agilemind6241 Honestly part of me wants them to bring back the old 1st edition rule for barbarians where they were just so strong they could hit monsters that required magical weapons with mundane ones. Don't care that you are a ghost and I have a normal axe. Here is some dmg bitch!
I think the best tactic is clearly grappling and dragging her out of the area (if able to deal with the flying speed). Yes she can teleport, but only once and so can you once you leave the area. If the barbarian can survive the period of constant assault and make all his saves, and double dash every turn it might work, but still is crazy hard. Damn, this is a difficult fight!
Damn! I was just looking up the grapple (and shove) rules to see if I should make this suggestion but you beat me to it. Here's a question though. If you are grappled and cast a hold spell on the grappler, does that free you, make no difference, or even make it more difficult to escape?
So all you have to do is drag a creature with great saves and tons of cc 40 feet away twice. So 160 feet of movement, that’s gonna cost your 20th level monk at least 3 turns
Though the creature may of course be used by any DM for any reason at all, Overlords in Eberron aren't really meant to be fought, since they're more "plot devices" than anything else. An overlord being released from its imprisonment in Khyber would be a world-altering cataclysmic event. Keith Baker (creator of Eberron) goes into this more in his blogs, but basically think of Overlords as immortal fiendish gods that represents a malevolent aspect. I believe the statblocks are only there to give us something to get a grasp of what the beings are (and have DMs whip up a power fantasy/plot around them) instead of just being a footnote in the book. The Sul Khatesh and Rak Tulkhesh in the book are basically their "I have just woken up and is not at full power yet" statblocks (Keith is on record saying their auras alone could affect an area the size of a nation if fully released), so my take on it is that they're there to wipe the party because they failed to stop the release from happening.
This is the type of situation where 3.5 shined with its Psionics options. I was one of the (apparently few from what I can tell) people that ran or played that Psionics and Magic were different. So anti-magic didn’t effect Psionic powers. But I also made it so most Psionic characters couldn’t reliably use most magic items either.
Except for the vast majority of the better manifestations/powers which weren't due to saying "as _inset_spell_here"... actually almost all good ones except Synchronicity/Temporal Acceleration (aka extra action economy a bit sooner than arcane equivalents), Metamorph (aka polymorph and polymorph any, but not in form of "as polymorph any") and Psychic Reformation (aka respec).
My DM combined the stat blocks of Tiamat, The Tarrasque, and Sul Khatesh for a level 20 one-shot. It had Tiamat’s reactions, which meant it could Counterspell EVERY. ROUND. If we weren’t allowed some magic items, I’m sure we wouldn’t have won. In short: run that for your party if they love optimization and combat.
I can think of one way to make this fight easier. Not easy, but easier. If you can win initiative, cast anti-magic field first. Her arcane cataclysm won't stop your anti-magic field, and your anti-magic field will stop her casting spells. At that point, although she's still got powerful options and is going to be hard to damage, you are on a much more equal playing field. The really powerful part of her power is that she can cast spells while you can't, without that, you're much more likely to be able to kill her with non-magical fire or some other strategy, like grappling her out of the area. In fact, looking at some of the other suggestions people have to deal with this, I think any of them would be improved by starting off with your own anti-magic field. Although as a couple of people have mentioned, deity and artifact stuff isn't affected, something I used to make a boss Lich much more dangerous in my campaign, but something a party might be able to use depending on what's available to them.
yes i wanted to say the same! basocaöly like the you fight beholders, you dtay in its antimagic besm and give a good bonk. just a little more complicated.
I still believe Orcus is the strongest monster in 5e. While the antimagic field is gamebreakingly strong, Orcus has something up his sleeve. Mainly his summons are just ludicrously strong. Firstly, he has time stop to setup his turns. He can also cast Animate Dead as a 9th level spell, which while it can be wiped out by something like a meteor storm, is still very powerful. If he rolls a d4 on Time stop, he can summon I believe 54 Zombies, and then use his wand. What makes him take the cake for me though is his Wand. Orcus can summon Undead whose combined hit points don't exceed 500, as an action. There is no limit to this enemy... 3 Liches, 6 Demiliches... this ability just takes the cake for me. Suddenly a fight vs a CR 26 creature becomes one vs 1 CR 26 creature and 3 more CR 21 ones.
The main difference I feel like is that orcus is still beatable. Everything he does just makes things more challenging, whereas antimagic field just completely breaks the game. I feel like it’s the difference between fighting the Greek pantheon and fighting the Christian god. Sure the Greek pantheon is ludicrously strong and almost no one can win, but Christianity’s god is completely unbeatable. Also a battle master fighter with disarming strike can fairly reliably disarm orcus of his wand with orcus only having a +8 strength save against the fighters 19 save, assuming no magic items to buff the fighter’s strength or dex, and without his wand orcus becomes a lot easier. In fact with only a +2 initiative modifier all you need is a battle master that either is ranged or has the alert feat to beat orcus, you don’t even need both. Actually with only a +2 to initiative depending on your party you can deal serious damage round one and then after the time stop just finish him off and teleport out of there.
@@adamstadick2044 And any bladelock, monk, a good chunk of clerics, droods and barbarians, most paladin builds, soul knife, phantom, arcane archer, etc can completely steamroll Sul (as a 20th level encounter) as a party and thats assuming they dont have any artifacts which instantly makes a single no subclass assumption surging fighter able to get her bloodied happens of in 1 turn.
/\ most of the comment above ke is unintelligible. It just occurred to me...couldn't orcus Use his wand o summon Vecna too? I know the last video shits all over him as a final boss, but he'd make a pretty decent lieutenant as you try to fight orcus and a shitload of zombies. 500 hit points, you could still get a regular lich or demilich in there too. Or yeah just get 3 liches and watch how screwed the action economy gets when four creatures all have legendary actions
@Andrew By dealing between 220 and 280 damage a round to someone who doesnt have a legendary action movement/teleport and whose best DPR option is equivalent to a sorclock (or warlock with illusionist bracers) and hope one a player not in the paladins aura fails a wisdom save.
Was just thinking that. For a one shot: give the players the entire stat block, open feild with no other creatures, and see if they could beat it. Can any artifacts get around an anti magic feild?
With a surprise-round, there should be many Lvl. 20 parties that could stomp her. Surprise round means she gets no reactions, so no Shield Spell. AC 22, 475 HP. At lvl. 20 it's not that hard to deal that damage against that AC in a single round (before she gets a turn and presses the auto-win button).
@@MrMelkor98 this is factually wrong. If Sul Katesh "wins" the initiative and has her turn finish before any of the pc's, she can use her reaction during any of the PC's turns, even in the surprise round. She just cant use her reaction in her own turn in that case. Many people get this wrong, so i dont blame you, but it's still very incorrect.
Key text in Antimagic Field that is often overlooked: "...except those created by ... a deity." The text of Divine Intervention is fairly open-ended, but I would be very disappointed with a high-level campaign that didn't allow some kind of interaction with Antimagic Field.
Would that mean that any magic from a cleric, paladin, or warlock would bypass anti magic cause it’s technically their deity or patron preforming the magic
@@Multistrangedude1 As a DM, I would rule that Divine Intervention would work because the Cleric's ability to call upon their deity is based on prayer, not a spell or similar magical ability. A level 20 cleric would automatically succeed, so this could be a reliable counter to Sul Khatesh...if you have a level 20 cleric.
Is the soulknif blade inherently magical ? if not, we've got our last able dpr, here, i think, after the antimagic blast Edit: after research, the blade is described as magical, so well played, TPK in coming, if you d'ont have a fast hand thief with a lot of acid vials.
@@Spoopball True I think it might hold up, but mostly because the ability is so powerful my instinct is to rule it narrow, not wide. Monks definitely should hold up, ki is life energy not magic.
@@kaemonbonet4931 Monks, path of the beast barbarian, and pact of the blade warlocks, and beast master rangers pets attacks are the class features that let you count an attack as magical without actually making it magical.
Now I want to see you and a couple of other content creators make characters to form a party with the explicit purpose of fighting Sul Khatesh - and then playing a one-shot where you use those characters to fight Sul Khatesh on an appropriate map :D
Collapsing part of roof to her head would bypass her immunity (the stone shape) and collapsing part of the building to the spheres would deny the immunity spot from her but she can polymorph to spirit troll at will and teleport...
I am running a level 11 one shot on Saturday, and I think this is going to be incredibly useful for keeping my story tense yet fulfilling. I was going to have a tarrasque immune to spells lower than 5th level (thank you Chris) that can throw rocks (thank you Dungeon Dudes) and needs to be wished dead. Sul Katesh may make a secret boss appearance.
Maybe Monks?! "Ki-Empowered Strikes - Starting at 6th level, your unarmed strikes count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage." Of get a ray-gun that does radiant damage. Or use torches to try to do burning damage.
She needs to be able to see in order to drop the anti-magic zones and Fog Cloud will block all of her vision. It is heavy concealment that is physical. True sight doesn't allow you to see through objects. If you fill the fighting area with fog right away she won't be able to drop the anti-magic fields. It also says that when she summons those orbs they plummet to the ground which could mean that they cannot be used underground or indoors. Even if they can you can potentially limit the affect to a single room. Then you escape and wait an hour out of sight. Tough for sure but a well prepared party can definitely take her. This is a big bad so preparation for the final fight should be extensive. The bigger problem is preventing her from fleeing. She has Gate and Teleport.
The point about the orbs plummeting to the ground is interesting. Would it mean that if you are flying more than 40 feet above the ground they can't affect you?
@@fenec250 That's what I would assume. 40ft radius in all directions, including up, means at 41ft up and beyond you can cast and have all your magic stuff back. While she may be able to stack them into that nightmare of a field shown in the video, it still only goes 40ft high (and 40ft underground). If you're flying above that range, you also avoid damage entirely.
There are so very few ways to deal damage with mundane items, but among the few that exist: - Torches, 1 fire - Alchemist's Fire, 1d4 fire, and Alchemist's Doom from Strixhaven, 2d6 fire (alchemical fire is in fact non-magical) - Oil. Doesn't deal damage but it does boost the damage of fire, making the above tools more effective. - Caltrops, 1 piercing. (The piercing damage immunity is only to attacks, and setting caltrops is not an attack but a dex save) - Hunting Traps, same with Caltrops but 1d4 piercing and it stops movement. - Explosive Seeds from Wildmount, 1d8 bludgeoning with a dex save, half damage with a success. and, honestly your only chance of winning unless you are able to position her below a flying castle and drop it on her for improvised bludgeoning - Catapult Munition. "The munition can be thrown up to 30 feet and explodes on impact. Any creature within a 15-foot-radius sphere centered on the point of impact must make a DC 14 Dexterity saving throw, taking 35 (10d6) fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. In addition, each object in that area that isn't being worn or carried takes 35 (10d6) fire damage." If you are able to convince the strongest kingdom in your campaign to load these up, you might be able to deal enough damage to...get out of range of the antimagic field and plane shift to a different universe. oh, wait, the arcane cataclysms have a mile range. You're better off with the flying castle. Maybe 10. Hundred.
Absolutely. My first thought reading the statblock when Rising from the Last War came out was "How on Earth did anyone think this is fair?" And yet I'm still planning on using her as the final boss of my campaign. I'll nerf the antimagic fields somehow - probably making them only nullify low-level spells.
If there's a whole campaign of build-up you could consider making the party obtain some kind of artifact-level item that lessens the effect so it's winnable or something. Or maybe they can get a fragment of a deity's power so some or all of their abilities/spells can ignore it.
Just run her pure RAW (or give party access to something like a BGDiA Acidic Bile Sprayer, a antimatter or laster rifle... or plain enough peasants, torches and oil as 6 damage reduced to 3 is still 3 damage to a creature without any way to recover hp without resting so getting some 7-8k soldiers to sacrifice themselves to kill the equivalent of a demon lord isnt that big of a cost... in fact its only around 16 000gp). Jokes about going full on 1e on her ass aside, AMF has no effect on class features not stated to be magical effects or spells. A Ranger with a kitty can have the cat scratches kill her slowly 1 hit point at a time if her own casting gets disabled, smacked a few times by a shadow and then grabbed. Just establish early on how you count border cases where out-of-feature text states something is magical and it creates a effect, but the effect itself doesnt state to be magical (like divine smite, dragon breaths, druids beast form itself rather than the act of transforming which is explicitly magical, tho that can bring into question if its a magical effect what does Moon Druid 6 do at all, etc).
It's Dungeon of the Mad Mage, heavily modified such that she (well, Jhesiyra Kestellharp with Sul's statblock) has been pulling the strings and manipulating Halaster.
The way to nerf her is give her a time limit to accomplish some goal. I.e. the priests of the temple of Good are conducting a ritual that will banish her, and she needs to disrupt it within 8 hours. Then she can only use the antimagic field once. If say, she needs to attack 2 of the temples, she can fire off that effect at the first, and if the PCs escape, they can confront her at the second (with depleted resources if you did it right) without having to fight her in the AM field the second time.
You grapple her and carry her out of the field? I do think a grapple based character has better odds here. The one you built recently for instance. Maybe the Tabaxi version for extra non-magical movement? A single Ki to Step of the Wind, that's an action to grapple, and then 120 feet of movement, not including any monk bonus to speed (which would add up to another 60 movement to this). Meaning even with your movement halved due to carrying her, you're still well outside the field. She has no proficiency in athletics or acrobatics, legendary resistance doesn't help with skill checks, so she's stuck with basically no way to beat your grapple check for a grapple-themed character aside from teleporting back. In which case, it doesn't take long to just do it again (she can only teleport once a day). IF she can even do that, since you could have grappled your wizard on the way out as well, and the Wizard could then counterspell her attempt to teleport back, once you've carried them out of the field. Or, since I recall your grappler had Action Surge, the grappler could just stun her outside of the field with the action surge. Yes, seems like the unbeatable creature is most easily beaten with...a monk. Which I find ironic.
still has a +4 strength mod whilst not great against a dedicated grappler's 4+prof+expertise, means it really isn't an option for anyone not specialized in it. Also, she can just teleport out, hold monster the grappler, or if they don't seem too healthy power word kill them. Grapples also do fuckall to stop her from doing anything, so assuming the monk takes no damage to the spheres due to evasion she can still burst down the solitary monk with normal damage, since he has no magic to increase his AC, hp, or resistances/immunities. Or she just casts mass suggestion to put her down or cower.
A party of five 20th level Chronurgists roll initiative vs Sul Khatesh. They all have the Alert feat and gift of alacrity and, on average, will beat Sul Khatesh by a fair bit, and may use Chronal Shift just in case they don't. Combat begins. The first three Chronurgists use their actions one after another to cast wish, with subtle spell from the metamagic adept feat, duplicating the effects of an 8th-level planar binding with the casting time of 1 action, targeting Sul Khatesh who conveniently has the fiend creature type. They then use Convergent Future to guarantee she fails her saving throw, forcing her to use a legendary resistance to succeed. The other four Chronurgists repeat until she has no legendary resistances remaining, and eventually she will be under control of one of the Chronurgists for 180 days. Plenty of time to command her to stand perfectly still, accept death, and not defend herself while they pepper her with cantrips until she drops to zero. Alternatively, just recast planar binding every now and again and have a permanent Sul Khatesh at your disposal.
All the people assume that the anti magic field is not already active when the party will arrive. With her intelligence, knowledge, resources, abilities and considering the context I'm pretty sure it is ;). Bought to you by "if I were a DM".
Couldn’t a grapple party work for this? The only weakness I can see in her kit is that the antimagic meteors are once per day and then stay there. Like just have a barb grapple her and drag her out of the antimagic field, and preferably through a portal so she can’t run back into it
she can fly though So unless your Barb can fly somehow despite being in antimagic field (basically you need a flying mount or race minimum because summons also don't work) it won't do. And even then that is with the assumption she fails all her str check as well as legendary resistance... And of course this is with knowing the stats block, a blind party like how it's supposed to would just get wrecked.
Yeah, I have been aware about her for quite some time now, I agree that she is the most powerful creature in the game. My only idea for her to be beatable (ignoring the immortality) is the have your simulacrum wish for immunity to the anti-magic field for 24 hrs (I say simulacrum so you don't risk loosing the ability to cast wish again) Then you could maybe imprisson her in a demiplane or something.
I'm interested in the statement that "even class and subclass features that have you treat attacks as magical" are suppressed. I don't think this is the case unless the feature is called out specifically as a magical ability. The monk (ki-empowered strikes) and the beast-barbarian (bestial soul) are not called out as magical abilities. These two features just say that the attacks "count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage." (Contrast the language of these with the arcane archer-fighter, which calls out that the arrows are "being enchanted" and talks about the arrows actually being magic, which would be suppressed; these two features talk about the attacks as being treated as if they were magical for a specific purpose. That seems like an intentional difference to me.) Similarly, the paladin's aura for bonuses to saving throws (and maybe some other features) is not a magical ability. That provides some nice defensive utility to the party. Even without the above interpretation for ki-empowered strikes, there are three monk subclasses that can still pretty easily deal damage to Sul Katesh: the way of the ascendant dragon, the way of the astral self, and the way of the sun soul. The way of the ascendant dragon can change their unarmed strike damage to acid, the astral self monk's astral arms deal force damage, and the way of the sun soul monk's radiant sun bolt deals radiant damage. None of these are specifically called "magical" abilities. There might even be a non-artifact-non-deity way around the whole antimagic field problem found in the ultimate prep class. The wizard casts Simulacrum and directs the simulacrum to use this feature of the Wish spell: "You grant up to ten creatures you can see immunity to a single spell or other magical effect for 8 hours." The immunity, of course, would be to the arcane cataclysm or (if more specificity is required) the antimagic part of the cataclysm. That would be up to some level of DM interpretation, but I might be inclined to allow it. Of course, I am happy to hear other input and discussion indicating I am mistaken.
Don't forget that everything the party does will be at disadvantage and all her attacks and saves will be at advantage since she has Foresight. That Monk will never get a stunning strike off. Only option for winning this fight is getting out of the area and trying to taunt her to follow imo
By this level, you should have at least 1 artifact. It would be an entire campaign trying to get enough artifacts to make this fight manageable. Additionally, it can be noted that clerics at level 20 get to auto-succeed on a divine intervention, which is also usable in an antimagic field(since gods are immune to it). With some clever verbage, the cleric can lawyer their way to an even playing field at the very least.
This attack absolutely feels like its meant as a narrative tool, not something used in an actual fight, but the party encountering a town or city street decimated by the arcane cataclysm.
In Tasha's there are "play as a side-kick" rules. If you pick the sidekick warrior class you can pick any creature of 1/2 cr or lower which can level up to 20. I pick sidekick warrior shadow. At level 20 it can attack with strength drain (its racial weapon) 3 times. If you get 2 or 3 shadow sidekicks, they could easily do a lot of damage to sul katesh quickly.
1. her spells mostly depend on line of sight and line of effect so it seems like all you need is a corner to hide behind and wait out the antimagic effect 2. optimized parties are usually all ranged, making it harder to cluster the spheres like that and thus easier to escape not saying she's not powerful, but it's not that different from the Tarrasque puzzle: just like the T can be "solved" by flight+ranged, SK can be solved by cover and by not clustering the party
@@20100langlois I agree, though if you get past the hurdle of getting out of the anti-magic fields there are spells and magic items that can create cover (wall of stone, folding boat...) independent of DM fiat
This is why you send in the simulacrum party first. Then the real party arrives an hour later. Of course, as soon as the antimagic hits, she'll know she's been played and she'll teleport the heck out of there.
This is also why Beholders, played correctly, are so dangerous. The central eye creates an antimagic field in a 150-foot cone identical to the spell. Sure, the eye beams don't work in that area but that's a wide beam and anything that get's behind or around it can now be targeted with the eye beams. Also they are smart so would make sure to have melee focussed allies that can fight within the beam and use their hover in their lair to put themselves into positions they can't be attacked. For example, fly above the party and target the antimagic field down onto them, perhaps angling it to keep spellcasters inside the beam whilst leaving melee characters out but vulnerable to the eye beams. They should also have traps set up they can activate with their telekinesis beam.
Wow, you have a very clear and calming voice my friend, and good job over-all on the video ❤️ Sadly a lot of people just slap tarrasque as the strongest and call it a day. So, i am happy that you looked up your stuff and that you care.
I once used Sul Khatesh. But since it was some timetravel stuff I silently ruled that she already used it with the same party an hour ago and they escaped to the astral plane via a portal Sul used to attack the players. I gave them a grace period of 4 turns in which Sul wouldn't be able to use Arcane Cataclysm. Within those 4 turns they learned how the portal worked, so when she used Cataclysm, they escaped to the astral plane with no way back. The party monk refused to use the portal and died, the rest survived, stranded in the astral plane.
Potential new content idea: creature features that punch above their weight. Talk about individual monsters with features that make them deadlier than their CR (Shadow's strength Drain, Black Pudding's Corrosive Form, Rakshasa's Limited Magic Immunity, etc) and discuss ways that these features can be incorporated into fights to make them more interesting or challenging. Basically a "how-to" guide for making combats more fun than the DMG suggests, whether using stat blocks as-is or kitbashing some of your favorite monsters. Hell, I would especially watch the crap out of a video of "change this one thing, and these creatures you probably never touch become way more fun".
The best counter I can come up with is a grappler with enough ways to boost movement as to be able to grapple and drag her out of the field in one turn. So like, a tabaxi with cunning action or another way to dash as a bonus action, and probably fighter for action surge for a second dash, and then maybe monk for increasing base movement speed, and feats such as mobile. Even without the aid of magic items, it wouidn't be too hard for a grappling oriented character to beat her athletics or acrobatics, and legendary resistance does not apply. Of course, she can fly, so said grappler needs to be able to get to her. This really depends on the circumstances, but generally there would be -some- way to do it. A 20 strength rune knight with giant's might up (probably only large size, due to all the multiclassing needed for the movement speed) could probably have a running high jump reach of 26 feet (giant's might doubles size, if you started 6 ft tall that's 12 feet. Your reach when jumping is your jump height (8) plus 1.5 times your height (18)). Beyond that, the DM may allow an athletics jump to go higher as per the PHB. She could, of course, be at the top of her 40 foot radius antimagic bubble with a DM that would not allow you to make a check for additional height, but in most circumstances I think you could manage. Maybe with the multiclassing you'd have access to non-magical flight in some fashion as well? She has a lot of ways to escape a grapple. Teleport will always work for one of them, and she has multiple ways to incapacitate the grappler. If you aren't using something like Rune Knight for having large/huge size, she can shapechange into something huge (I'm not sure there are gargantuan options that are valid, it is only beast, humanoid, and giant) as well, though she'd lose her damage immunities while shapechanged, so she'd at least be opening herself up to attack a bit that way. So minimum you have to drag her out twice, and even if you managed to catch her on the ground the first time, she is definitely going to be teleporting to the most awkward place possible for the second go. Ideally, if someone that can cast antimagic field also gets out of her antimagic field, the grappler can drag her into an anti-magic field that would affect her. It'd disable her spellcasting for sure, although it will depend on the DM to determine what beyond that is affected. Personally I'd rule most of her stuff is affected. Arcane blast is a spell attack, and consume magic and maddening secrets directly interact with spells and spell slots, so I'd be hard pressed to argue that those effects are not magical in nature. Even her really bad melee attack does force damage, so I'd perhaps downgrade that to quarterstaff level bludgening damage. Shapechange is also explicitly magical. But how do you damage her there? Non-magical "elemental" damage. So like, real, non-magical fire. Acid flasks. Burn her to death, very very slowly, with the whole party just poking her with torches or dumping acid on her. Holy water would probably be the most effective due to her fiend status. So that's the best I have. First you need a high level spellcaster to escape the field, then drag her with a specialized grappler into a friendly antimagic field, then dump lots of holy water on her. So all that to say, that she is basically impossible to beat if you don't already know her stat block and have made a hyper specialized party explicitly for defeating her.
Smart fighting Sul Khatesh could prepare for fight for example with laying strong adamantine cages around. She can walk through those as a spirit troll and use her spells as herself from inside while party would have hard time to get her from the cage while the area is under anti magic field. Also points of origins of the anti magic fields might be at top of pillars making her even more hard to get. And many panic rooms inside the walls and floors.
Thanks for the great video. Couple of ways to change it. You have a 50% chance each round to be effected by anti magic. Or the party has one item that grants temporary immunity. Or there's a few spots on the map that grants immunity.
One time we fought a few strange Beholder-Knights that had their antimagic cone turned into an aura around them and the DM ruled they could still use their eye rays in the antimagic field since that was their natural ability. This was a conversion from an old 2e adventure. :S My valor bard got our melee fighters connected to 3 big chunks of rubble with rope, cast animate objects on the rubble. Whenever anyone went down or got hit by a disabling ray of sorts, I would just use my bonus action to yank them out of the area and over to me so I or the cleric could lesser/greater restoration them. Near the end of the fight I hovered the rubble over the knights and let it drop on their heads.
Step 1, bring a lvl 20 cleric that has created a Sanctuary via Word of Recall on another plane of existence. Step 2, wait for her to use Arcane Cataclysm. Step 3, divine Intervention a word of recall, deity magic works in antimagic fields. Step 4, the cleric casts gate naming her, afaik she is not a deity or a planar ruler, (even then just save the plan for when she's not in her domain and trying to invade something). Step 5, beat her up. Best plan i got.
I was thinking maybe silvered weapons would be a loophole that would bypass damage immunity but still not be affected by antimagic field, but looks like silvered weapons bypassing immunity only applies when explicitly stated, like for werewolves.
This type of monster requires the party to plan ahead and go on quests to be able to beat. Bosses that the party knows about, choose to confront but also have to prepare extensively in order to beat are fun. Party goes on quest to some other plane to acquire futuristic weapons that do non magical radiant damage is only one of the many options a high level creative party (with a supportive DM has) My favorite time troll the DM moment was when we learned about an aboleth at fourth level that was just there to scare us and decided, lets spend the next good while and build up a coalition to defeat him and his minions and even dammed the river to dry out his lair.
The antimatter rifle deals even more damage, and she doesn't have neither inmunity nor resistence to necrotic either. It does have less effective amnunition.
There's some argument that attacks that "count as magical" for the purposes of bypassing resistances could still do so. Count as magical implies that they are not actually magical themselves, and thus would not be turned off by antimagic field. So basically, everyone hides while the level 20 moon druid tries to slowly solo the fight with beast forms that can barely hit her. ...Until she rolls high on her lair action damage, drops the moon druid below 100 HP before her turn, and uses power word kill. Or maybe she doesn't even wait for that and just puts the moon druid to sleep with Eyebite.
@@TreantmonksTemple Ah, gotcha. Not sure what's left that might count as magical for bypassing resistances while being non-magical. Monk punches I guess? Pretty sure she can punch the monk to death, though.
The 20th lvl cleric just says "Okay" and asks God to fix it👍 "Spells and other magical effects, except those created by an artifact or a deity, are supressed in the sphere and can't protrude into it."
@@Apfeljunge666 Divine Intervention isn't a spell, nor is it a spell effect. It's the cleric literally calling on their deity to directly intervene in whatever's happening, and at 20th lvl the deity WILL answer 100% of the time. This ability doesn't just give a spell as the cleric can request pretty much whatever they want. I'd argue that it's infinitely better than Wish, partially because it represents the deity coming to the aid of what is likely their ultimate champion. They'd have an incentive to ensure that the cleric is protected in a fight of this magnitude and scale. A DM should also have a harder time twisting the request as well, considering it's a deity doing the work as opposed to some impersonal arcane force, i.e, Wish. The type of god/goddess in question would likely matter, but even an evil god would be compelled to defend their 20th lvl cleric. Basically, there's nothing stopping the cleric from asking their deity simply remove the antimagic fields. As a DM, I can't imagine a legitimate reason why this wouldn't work that doesn't involve me simply wanting to make things hard on my players.
@@SpearHeadTheAssault a deity is in no way required to grant anything the cleric wants. I would argue that anything that isnt a spell is a gamble, similar to wish.
You know what is really ironic, while in the antimagic field the only class that (I'm aware of) can deal damage to her, is the monk. It's Ki Fueled Strikes count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance or immunity, but are themselves not magical, in the same way a dragon's breath weapon is not magical. Thus it's the only thing that works here. And their evasion might allow them to survive the initial hit. I find that kind of hilarious.
This really embodies the fear of magic though. A massive magical backlash that ruins magic for everyone while the big bad still gets to not only do whatever she wants, she effectively has the ability to concentrate on multiple spells (let's be honest, did Mass Suggestion really need to not need concentration?) and massive saves to everything that's not Fireball (still a +5, and good luck getting the Fireball to work inside the field). The lighter version is to do this with a Lich. It has the same immunities to nonmagical weapon damage (and poison because duh), it's certainly a high enough caster to have that option, and more fairly it will still use Concentration (although, good luck when you can't hurt it with weapons or magic and Sleet Storm won't work in the area) and it can't use its Paralyzing Touch as it's a Spell Attack. But a Lich is smart with a ton of time on their hands, so between the Lair Actions and Legendary Actions, the battlefield could be LITTERED with traps both magical and mundane that it spends its time activating. "Oh no, everyone in this 10ft-wide line needs to DEX save against poisoned bolts. I sure hope you guys have immunity to these damage types like I do!"
Great Video! Funny thing is: Since she has Gate as innate spellcasting she can just summon Rak Tulkhesh or any of her minions, which might be very strong!
Options: 1. Have a friendly dragon grapple and drag them out of the anti magic field. 2. Have all players play subclasses that deal damage in a way that bypass the anti magic (ex. Soulknife rogue’s attacks, etc.)
These videos are always interesting. Power can be measured, but there is one type of video that I haven't seen yet. I would like to pitch: the most complecated monster statblock Ever. Given the lifespan of the game I wonder how many pages it would be.
The monk would be key (pun intended). Using Empty Body + Stunning Strike + ki-fueled attack, a level 20 monk can get the necessary stuns in. And can use Empty Body + Diamond Soul + Evasion to survive. Let's say that's a total 19 ki points to get the first stun in while surviving. On the next turn, monk can grapple and uses step of the wind to drag this lovely lady out of the antimagic field. The party can then resume their Silence + Grapple shenanigans.
This really is a doomsday fight. With the foresight it can't be surprised an it has advantage with initiative rolls. Sul Khatesh shape changing to spirit troll is a big deal: 1) spirit troll is immune to magical weapons and therefore is practically immortal in the anti magic field. 2) it is immune to grappled and prone conditions 3) it regenerates Sul Khatesh's own hit points since the monster keeps its own hit points even if it shape changes. So it has practically infinite hit points. 4) It can walk through the walls and leave if things get dicey.
The only way I would see for that creature to not use it immediately if it is afraid of something other than the party. Like, "Yeah, there's a few level 20 characters here, and they would be absolutely shut down by this thing. But, what if, 2 hours from now, an archlich decides to come kill me ?" A good way of doing that would be to have a big, real or not, threat to it, like maybe a god, a demonic horde, or a flight of Greatwyrms. Having the party set that threat up, as preparations for the fight, would probably be the best way to do it.
Having read through Sul Khatesh's stat block, the only moderately effective strategy I was able to come up with was this: win initiative, and limit her vision with obscurement (Fog Cloud, Sleet Storm). She does need to be able to *see* to use Arcane Cataclysm, so if you can deny her truesight, you can prevent her from using it. Now, she does have Teleport and Dispel Magic, and can still escape from any obscurement you place her in, but those do use her action - meaning she didn't use Arcane Cataclysm that turn. Depending on where she ends up positioned, you may be able to try again. She also has at-will Counterspell, which will itself need to be Counterspelled by someone. If she Changes Shape into something with Blindsight, and Blindsight fulfills the "can see" requirement of Arcane Cataclysm, and if she can cast Arcane Cataclysm while Change Shape'd (I'm not entirely sure if she can), then she can poke a hole in this plan. It does, however, buy the party a turn, and a party of 20th level characters can potentially deal 475 damage in 2 turns.
I was tempted to run this boss as a campaign ender of an Eberron campaign. Kinda glad now that campaign fizzled out because I didn't connect all these dots
I'm pretty sure a beast barbarian/champion fighter could still have a chance. The beast Barbarians natural weapons only count as magical for the sake of overcoming resistances and Immunities, but aren't magical themselves, so they work more like the flight and breath weapon of a dragon than as the flight and fireball of a wizard. That means a fighter/beast barbarian could technically still damage her under normal conditions, ant least based on RAW
It seems to me that the key is to win initiative and immediately apply some form of total obscurement such as an upcast massive fog cloud imposing the blinded condition to confound and negate the 3 points she can see. Ergo the arcane cataclysm would be uncastable in those fully obscured areas or for that matter by Sul Khatash whilst blinded within the obscurement to areas outside the obscurement.
My initial thought was some enemy spellcasters piloting the mighty servant of leuko. Thing has a tonne of hp, a load or resistances, spellcasters could mend it to heal it up from total cover inside. It has 120ft of ranged attacks and can jump real good. On top of all that it can explode for an obscene amount of damage. Unfortunately I don't think it competes with the near invincible god who might only be vulnerable to a pack of pcs with torches chanting burn the witch.
A Divination wizard casting prismatic wall (unaffected by anti magic field) maybe can save the day with some portent rolls if the legendary resistances were used.
I think you are right, this is deadlier to a party than Tiamat. So the question is how to beat it. I prefer the strength monk. Sulky is large so any medium creature can try, and she only gets a +5 to resist versus your 6+str to initiate a grapple. You get two tries with multiattack, not awful odds. When you eventually succeed, you bonus action dash and can get her out of the field. Then you need someone ready to counter spell her teleport and her counter spell. If she hovers in the field, you might be completely boned. With maxed out strength, you can only jump 16 feet high with step of the wind. Assuming you're six feet tall, you can reach 25 feet off the ground, and Sulky is still out of reach. Harengan can jump 30 feet up, the reach rules say you can reach something 1.5 times your height. So to be certain that you can reach her, you need to be 6 feet 8 inches tall. So a 6'8" max strength rabbit monk is probably the best bet at saving the world. Or artifact weapons. You know, either one.
I'd argue monks could still hurt this creature and anything that similarly had a feature that says their attacks count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance or immunity to damage. It is not saying their attacks are magical, just that they count as it for that singular purpose.
I ran a high level game where the villains were a lich and an immortal swordsman. At one point the heroes were horridly unsneaky while spying on them from a room down the hall of a hotel. Since they were so bad, I had the duo counter-ambush them. The combo was anti-magic field and letting the swordsman go to town. Most of the PCs survived by running out of the hotel as fast as they could.
![Kodak Black - Sharp Vibes [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/oEV0OoLJeIs/mqdefault.jpg)
What's your worst nightmare?
Treatmonk: imagine a wizard, who turns your entire party into low level monks, but still gets to be a wizard
*turns off your players that aren't monks of level 6 or higher, and the ones who are level 6 or higher monks only get to punch, unless you go with rai, so your party are just ducks to be hit
Sul Khatesh was the main antagonist of my spelljammer campaign. They encountered her tangentially when she broke out of the planet she was trapped in and used her "nuke" option when the party was level 10 (she was decimating an army on her way off planet). The party then had to spend most of the next 10 levels of the campaign going to tu'narath, overthrowing Vlaakith the queen lich of the githyanky, and gaining a spark of divine essence from the dead god the city is built into in order to use it to make themselves count as dieties so the anti magic wouldn't turn them off.
Seems like very well done high level campaign you got there love it ❤️
@@NeuralNotes5 thank you :)
I'm a huge fan of epic high level campaigns.
That sounds soooo good! Well done
@@opposumness3107 thank you :)
Now that was well thought out
I love how one ability just recontextualises completely insignificant abilities and reshapes the entire fight. It’s a really good way to design a monster.
This is why I am looking forward to MCDM's release of "Flee Mortals!", where they are rebuilding many of the traditional monster encounters to have more dynamic options to make combat more engaging on both sides of the DM screen.
@@pranakhan Thanks for the info! That sounds really interesting, I’ll definitely check it out.
Sul Katesh is just the stat-block for "Rocks fall - you all die."
Artificers with Catapult Large Glass Containers of Acid = 100s of d6 Acid Damage a turn per Artificer.
catapult doesnt work
@@zinogrevz7389 Yes it does. Read the Artificer feature, its not magic but *Science.* They can "narrative" their spells to be whatever they want cause its super OP to do so..
Ergo my Catapult Acid. Is actually a Gatling Gun with acid rounds.
*Spellcasting.*
1st-level artificer feature
You've studied the workings of magic and how to cast spells, channelling the magic through objects. To observers, you don't appear to be casting spells in a conventional way; you appear to produce wonders from mundane items and outlandish inventions.
At least the monk will be able to run away faster than the rest of the party within the Antimagic Field.
The Monk might actually be the most effective in this fight, ironically.
Playing a monk gives you two choices, die first or die last.
Wouldn't the monk still be able to do damage? Their damage only counts as magical for the sake of overcoming resistance. That doesn't mean it's magical.
@@coranbaker6401 I would rule that, but Jeremy Crawford disagrees with us. Also, a 20th level monk would not be able to solo Sul Khatesh.
A Banshee at level 1, as I've learned the hard way.
Don't forget foresight, advantage on her rolls and disadvantage to attack her, love that spell.
antimagic field also says artifacts are unaffected. So everyone just has to have an artifact and attack with it every round. Even then though I think it’s rough.
Another strategy would be to her activate her antimagic field by a first encounter or some bait, and then kill her without it. Unfortunately I think she has too many ways to escape battle. So maybe just get on her good side and conquer the world together :)
My players first though was to grapple her and drag her out of the field. She then shape changed into an Ancient Gold Dragon and broke the grapple.
Artifacts are how I’m going to get my party members able to succeed.
I gave my players a mighty servant of Leuk’o but nerfed it by tying it to the island they’re on. Would be an epic battle if she visited
@@justthecraft That's a great idea and an even greater DM response
Run you fools is my first thought
The magic of deities and artifacts can still function inside an antimagic field. Assuming the PCs aren't deities, it could be a cool quest/adventure to retrieve an artifact weapon (or weapons) as the only way to possibly win. I think it's fine to have these demigod-level enemies that even a party of level 20s can't face without having acquired the right (legendary) tools first. If you're fighting Sul Katesh, it should be as the culmination of an entire campaign that the characters have time to prepare for. It's not like you open a random door in a dungeon and Sul Katesh happens to be in there just chillin'. You kill something like this with the Sword of Kas, not your Longsword +3.
In the world where Sul Khatesh is from, there aren’t really deities (except arguably those like her) so it’s probably just Artifacts that will be able to do anything.
Aren't the Creator dragons in ebberon kind-of their version of deities? I haven't got the source book, but I know Ebberon is treated as separate from the rest of the multiverse, and has its own creation myths, that are probably not myths
Eberron, Khyber, and Siberys. It's a well known myth, but very few creatures in the setting actually worship them. Unlike Faerun, it's possible to be an atheist in the Eberron setting. The gods don't manifest physically - the closest thing to the Gods is the Overlords themselves.
@@agentchaos9332 that story also seems like it might lean towards metaphorical. The most commonly worshipped “deities” are probably (or definitely) based on real dragons and fiends that fought at the end of the age of demons…and a force that was created by the sacrifice of coatls. Eberron is just great.
Basically, in Eberron, there are no good or evil deitites that are in other DnD settings. Instead, the evil gods are filled by the Overlords.
I would still rule that Divinie Intervention works though.
Yeah, right there with you, facing the TPK. The DM and the players realizing it at about the same time.
The dm new before...
I threw this monster at my players as the BBEG for the campaign. They had to go on a quest and retrieve the Demonomicon of Iggwilv in order to imprison the creature. The only artifact that lets them cast inverted magic circle at 9th level through a field of antimagic.
One cool trick you can do as a dm, is give your lich antimagic field, cast it and just walk after the party while cackling. Cause they are also immune to nonmagical attacks. It makes a powerful moment as the lich just uses paralyzing touch over and over. As it dawns on the party that the lich is invincible, and have to escape.
Course, if they truly piss off the lich it can always drop concentration and start spell casting like normal.
This is evil... And liches do be like that
You really are taking ques from Overlord, when Ainz did the same thing. Having Paralyse touch while being immune to a whole adventuring party attacking and casting spells on him, dropping them one by one.
@@zanamarigold6073 huh, is that a tv show or book? Im unfamiliar, but it certainly sounds cool.
@@zanamarigold6073 I’m literally running an overlord inspired campaign with Ainz as the villain
@@vadaritis it’s a light novel/anime
I knew it was going to be Sul Khatesh. I'm glad you're giving her some attention; she's definitely not talked about enough when people think of powerful monsters in 5e (probably because she's in the Eberron book). I'm still hoping I get a chance to throw her at my party some day.
What I'm hearing is that I should replace Vecna with this instead. Sounds great
If you want something unkillable, yes. Not necessarily going to wipe out the party, but as long as you play her to avoid death, she’ll be pretty much unkillable.
I'm literally building an Ascended Vecna stat block for a 5e adaptation of Vecna Lives and came across this video for inspiration. He is going to have mythic actions, 6 legendary resistances total, immunity to 5th level spells and lower, and older editions spells. He won't have 3 non-concentration antimagic fields that don't affect him, but maybe one like Sul Katesh's that does require concentration
I think the solution here is actually for thr DM to just throw away this ability before combat starts. The ability has a HUGE range. So have the creature appear somewhere in Sharn and have it create the antimagic zones on some of the towers which begin to collapse as the magic that was suspending them is dispelled maybe even with a slight domino effect. This really highlights the terror your players should feel when encountering such a formidable creature. Then the party fights it away from these antimagic areas. If the fight is going in the player's favor, then the creature retreats to one of it's zones which are spread throughout the city. Then you can have the shock factor of it casting spells within the zone. The party is likely forced to retreat here so it will be important for the creature to have some sort of goal that it can't accomplish within its zone, or the party (and the creature) short rest until the antimagic zones duration runs out.
Or to actually apply the rules as they are written.
Antimagic field has no effect on class features that arent explicitly spells or magical effects, even if they are magic (and that ignores that most aren't even magic).
I think as long as the players know about the ability it's not too bad.
Arcane Cataclysm explicitly comes from above and "plummets to the ground". This opens up a few options:
- Fight in the air - The target point is on the ground and there's no indication that they can be detonated before they land. If you're more than 40ft. off the ground then the ability won't affect you. You need a way to stop them from retreating into the area, but that's a much easier problem.
- Fight underground - same deal here only it's even easier. The only issue is that it's a more obvious trap. Also, by the wording they might ignore intervening terrain and there's no mention of how high they initially appear, so they might "plummet" from 3 inches off the ground. Still, I think it's reasonable to say that fighting in a 10ft. tall cave more than 40ft. underground would be safe.
- Catch the orb(s) - this is about as supported as the suggestion to fight underground, arguably a little more so, but not much. Have the party wizard spend their turn readying a Wall of Force to intercept a falling orb at least 40ft. in the air. "Nothing can physically pass through the wall", so it should block the falling orb and the wall is large enough to guarantee a safe zone, however the issue of it "plummeting" from 3 inches off the ground still applies and you may have to deal with order-of-operations (can the wall block all 3 or does the first one dispel it before the other 2 hit, etc.).
Honestly it is really really easy to make it balanced, simply take away her immunity to the antimagic field. Then the fight would be easily winnable and probably quite fun.
@@agilemind6241 Or have the antimagic field drop either while she's casting (so counterspell/readied spells can work and readied attacks with magic weapons can harm her) or until the start of her next turn if she casts (if you want a more relaxed experience that feels less gamey).
@@ANDELE3025 but they still couldn't damage cause anti magic makes magical weapons that are not artifacts mundane
Interestingly -- when a class feature says "you can treat your attack as magical for the purpose of overcoming damage resistance", that doesn't make the attack a magic item, and arguably might not actually be a magic effect. (Depending on the class feature, and DM interpretation)
One might argue that means they're unaffected by anti-magic field.
That's how I interpreted it myself.
Yeah, treat is wrong on this. Monk is fine to hit.
WotC once again showing how literally everything good a high level character can do is based on magic
Rogues, Barbarians and Fighters can do plenty of non-magical things, she's just immune to non-magical damage, so it doesn't matter.
isnt there some class thst has your attacks count as magical gor overcoming resistance as a classfeature? wouldnt that still count
@@hulmhochberg8129 That is the Arcane Archer subclass for Fighter or Monks in general.
@@hulmhochberg8129 If those class features were allowed then a Beast Barbarian, Monk, Eldritch Knight, Warlock with Pact of the Blade (?), and Arcane Archer would be able to hurt her.
@@agilemind6241 Honestly part of me wants them to bring back the old 1st edition rule for barbarians where they were just so strong they could hit monsters that required magical weapons with mundane ones. Don't care that you are a ghost and I have a normal axe. Here is some dmg bitch!
I think the best tactic is clearly grappling and dragging her out of the area (if able to deal with the flying speed). Yes she can teleport, but only once and so can you once you leave the area. If the barbarian can survive the period of constant assault and make all his saves, and double dash every turn it might work, but still is crazy hard. Damn, this is a difficult fight!
What about winning Initiative and using your own anti magic field?
@@galenbruner2440 It doesn't specifically say that her flight is magical, so she could just fly away and out of your AMF.
@@LesbianWitchAcademia She doesn’t have wings so it’s obviously magical.
Damn! I was just looking up the grapple (and shove) rules to see if I should make this suggestion but you beat me to it.
Here's a question though. If you are grappled and cast a hold spell on the grappler, does that free you, make no difference, or even make it more difficult to escape?
So all you have to do is drag a creature with great saves and tons of cc 40 feet away twice. So 160 feet of movement, that’s gonna cost your 20th level monk at least 3 turns
Though the creature may of course be used by any DM for any reason at all, Overlords in Eberron aren't really meant to be fought, since they're more "plot devices" than anything else. An overlord being released from its imprisonment in Khyber would be a world-altering cataclysmic event. Keith Baker (creator of Eberron) goes into this more in his blogs, but basically think of Overlords as immortal fiendish gods that represents a malevolent aspect. I believe the statblocks are only there to give us something to get a grasp of what the beings are (and have DMs whip up a power fantasy/plot around them) instead of just being a footnote in the book. The Sul Khatesh and Rak Tulkhesh in the book are basically their "I have just woken up and is not at full power yet" statblocks (Keith is on record saying their auras alone could affect an area the size of a nation if fully released), so my take on it is that they're there to wipe the party because they failed to stop the release from happening.
Yep. Overlords are basically apocalyptic. In lore they’re supposed to be able to solo armies of dragons…
This is the type of situation where 3.5 shined with its Psionics options. I was one of the (apparently few from what I can tell) people that ran or played that Psionics and Magic were different. So anti-magic didn’t effect Psionic powers. But I also made it so most Psionic characters couldn’t reliably use most magic items either.
Except for the vast majority of the better manifestations/powers which weren't due to saying "as _inset_spell_here"... actually almost all good ones except Synchronicity/Temporal Acceleration (aka extra action economy a bit sooner than arcane equivalents), Metamorph (aka polymorph and polymorph any, but not in form of "as polymorph any") and Psychic Reformation (aka respec).
My DM combined the stat blocks of Tiamat, The Tarrasque, and Sul Khatesh for a level 20 one-shot. It had Tiamat’s reactions, which meant it could Counterspell EVERY. ROUND. If we weren’t allowed some magic items, I’m sure we wouldn’t have won. In short: run that for your party if they love optimization and combat.
Is there mayhaps a link to said stat block? Also how did y'all defeat it?
I can think of one way to make this fight easier. Not easy, but easier. If you can win initiative, cast anti-magic field first. Her arcane cataclysm won't stop your anti-magic field, and your anti-magic field will stop her casting spells. At that point, although she's still got powerful options and is going to be hard to damage, you are on a much more equal playing field. The really powerful part of her power is that she can cast spells while you can't, without that, you're much more likely to be able to kill her with non-magical fire or some other strategy, like grappling her out of the area. In fact, looking at some of the other suggestions people have to deal with this, I think any of them would be improved by starting off with your own anti-magic field. Although as a couple of people have mentioned, deity and artifact stuff isn't affected, something I used to make a boss Lich much more dangerous in my campaign, but something a party might be able to use depending on what's available to them.
yes i wanted to say the same! basocaöly like the you fight beholders, you dtay in its antimagic besm and give a good bonk.
just a little more complicated.
just a little error i want to mention. In eberron tiamat is an overlord aswell so we have 3 overlord monster sheets.
I still believe Orcus is the strongest monster in 5e. While the antimagic field is gamebreakingly strong, Orcus has something up his sleeve. Mainly his summons are just ludicrously strong. Firstly, he has time stop to setup his turns. He can also cast Animate Dead as a 9th level spell, which while it can be wiped out by something like a meteor storm, is still very powerful. If he rolls a d4 on Time stop, he can summon I believe 54 Zombies, and then use his wand.
What makes him take the cake for me though is his Wand. Orcus can summon Undead whose combined hit points don't exceed 500, as an action. There is no limit to this enemy... 3 Liches, 6 Demiliches... this ability just takes the cake for me. Suddenly a fight vs a CR 26 creature becomes one vs 1 CR 26 creature and 3 more CR 21 ones.
The main difference I feel like is that orcus is still beatable. Everything he does just makes things more challenging, whereas antimagic field just completely breaks the game. I feel like it’s the difference between fighting the Greek pantheon and fighting the Christian god. Sure the Greek pantheon is ludicrously strong and almost no one can win, but Christianity’s god is completely unbeatable.
Also a battle master fighter with disarming strike can fairly reliably disarm orcus of his wand with orcus only having a +8 strength save against the fighters 19 save, assuming no magic items to buff the fighter’s strength or dex, and without his wand orcus becomes a lot easier. In fact with only a +2 initiative modifier all you need is a battle master that either is ranged or has the alert feat to beat orcus, you don’t even need both. Actually with only a +2 to initiative depending on your party you can deal serious damage round one and then after the time stop just finish him off and teleport out of there.
@@adamstadick2044 And any bladelock, monk, a good chunk of clerics, droods and barbarians, most paladin builds, soul knife, phantom, arcane archer, etc can completely steamroll Sul (as a 20th level encounter) as a party and thats assuming they dont have any artifacts which instantly makes a single no subclass assumption surging fighter able to get her bloodied happens of in 1 turn.
/\ most of the comment above ke is unintelligible. It just occurred to me...couldn't orcus Use his wand o summon Vecna too? I know the last video shits all over him as a final boss, but he'd make a pretty decent lieutenant as you try to fight orcus and a shitload of zombies. 500 hit points, you could still get a regular lich or demilich in there too. Or yeah just get 3 liches and watch how screwed the action economy gets when four creatures all have legendary actions
@@agentchaos9332 Orcas would be almost be better off summoning dracoliches.
@Andrew By dealing between 220 and 280 damage a round to someone who doesnt have a legendary action movement/teleport and whose best DPR option is equivalent to a sorclock (or warlock with illusionist bracers) and hope one a player not in the paladins aura fails a wisdom save.
I had this monster requested so very long ago and I laughed in the way you know the "party is dead walking in" laugh while reviewing the CR.
Might this be achievable if the party gets the relevant intel beforehand, a bunch of prep time and possibly a surprise round?
Could be epic. 🙂
Was just thinking that. For a one shot: give the players the entire stat block, open feild with no other creatures, and see if they could beat it. Can any artifacts get around an anti magic feild?
With a surprise-round, there should be many Lvl. 20 parties that could stomp her. Surprise round means she gets no reactions, so no Shield Spell. AC 22, 475 HP. At lvl. 20 it's not that hard to deal that damage against that AC in a single round (before she gets a turn and presses the auto-win button).
@@satubock Yes, all of them.
Artifacts are unaffected by anti-magic field
Foresight severely limits the ability to surprise her ...
@@MrMelkor98 this is factually wrong. If Sul Katesh "wins" the initiative and has her turn finish before any of the pc's, she can use her reaction during any of the PC's turns, even in the surprise round. She just cant use her reaction in her own turn in that case. Many people get this wrong, so i dont blame you, but it's still very incorrect.
Key text in Antimagic Field that is often overlooked: "...except those created by ... a deity." The text of Divine Intervention is fairly open-ended, but I would be very disappointed with a high-level campaign that didn't allow some kind of interaction with Antimagic Field.
Would that mean that any magic from a cleric, paladin, or warlock would bypass anti magic cause it’s technically their deity or patron preforming the magic
Your not canceling the gods power your canceling the Cleric ability to call on it
@@Multistrangedude1 As a DM, I would rule that Divine Intervention would work because the Cleric's ability to call upon their deity is based on prayer, not a spell or similar magical ability. A level 20 cleric would automatically succeed, so this could be a reliable counter to Sul Khatesh...if you have a level 20 cleric.
@@Swimavidly alright what one cleric spell gets through?
Just keep in mind that one week cool down and her 30 INT, im not that smart but id still avoid any level 20 clerics that have that available
Is the soulknif blade inherently magical ? if not, we've got our last able dpr, here, i think, after the antimagic blast
Edit: after research, the blade is described as magical, so well played, TPK in coming, if you d'ont have a fast hand thief with a lot of acid vials.
Astral self monk astral arms may be the only weapon that can hold up
It depends if the DM uses the [magic/psionic transparency] optional rule, which states magic and psionic are the same thing but just a different name
@@Spoopball True I think it might hold up, but mostly because the ability is so powerful my instinct is to rule it narrow, not wide. Monks definitely should hold up, ki is life energy not magic.
Anything that reads "count as magical for the purpose" should work. Monks, barbarians, paladins, and warlocks have options like this I think.
@@kaemonbonet4931 Monks, path of the beast barbarian, and pact of the blade warlocks, and beast master rangers pets attacks are the class features that let you count an attack as magical without actually making it magical.
Now I want to see you and a couple of other content creators make characters to form a party with the explicit purpose of fighting Sul Khatesh - and then playing a one-shot where you use those characters to fight Sul Khatesh on an appropriate map :D
Collapsing part of roof to her head would bypass her immunity (the stone shape) and collapsing part of the building to the spheres would deny the immunity spot from her but she can polymorph to spirit troll at will and teleport...
I am running a level 11 one shot on Saturday, and I think this is going to be incredibly useful for keeping my story tense yet fulfilling. I was going to have a tarrasque immune to spells lower than 5th level (thank you Chris) that can throw rocks (thank you Dungeon Dudes) and needs to be wished dead. Sul Katesh may make a secret boss appearance.
Sul Katesh for a party of Lv 11 right after they fought the Tarrasque?
Your players might die from the shock alone..., lol
@@scrotymcboogerballs6756 Same thing with Tarrasque who needs a wish to defeat, they'll need appropriate artifacts (above level 11!) to win.
Maybe Monks?! "Ki-Empowered Strikes - Starting at 6th level, your unarmed strikes count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage."
Of get a ray-gun that does radiant damage. Or use torches to try to do burning damage.
How to beat this thing in its own anti magic area: throwing acid vials,
It just works
You still have to beat it’s AC though, with improvise attack this gonna be tough, and you can’t use the same vial again
I thought of this too!
@@honahamomoru151 a whole party of tavern brawler alchemists
@@honahamomoru151 we’re level 20 now, money is no object. Bring forth the artificer’s acid launching siege machine!
@@honahamomoru151 It was mostly an remark to how to be able to damage it, half sarcasting because of course it wont hit realiably and deal good damage
This video is old, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned casting wish to be immune to the anti-magic fields.
She needs to be able to see in order to drop the anti-magic zones and Fog Cloud will block all of her vision. It is heavy concealment that is physical. True sight doesn't allow you to see through objects. If you fill the fighting area with fog right away she won't be able to drop the anti-magic fields. It also says that when she summons those orbs they plummet to the ground which could mean that they cannot be used underground or indoors. Even if they can you can potentially limit the affect to a single room. Then you escape and wait an hour out of sight. Tough for sure but a well prepared party can definitely take her. This is a big bad so preparation for the final fight should be extensive. The bigger problem is preventing her from fleeing. She has Gate and Teleport.
The point about the orbs plummeting to the ground is interesting. Would it mean that if you are flying more than 40 feet above the ground they can't affect you?
@@fenec250 That's what I would assume. 40ft radius in all directions, including up, means at 41ft up and beyond you can cast and have all your magic stuff back. While she may be able to stack them into that nightmare of a field shown in the video, it still only goes 40ft high (and 40ft underground). If you're flying above that range, you also avoid damage entirely.
There are so very few ways to deal damage with mundane items, but among the few that exist:
- Torches, 1 fire
- Alchemist's Fire, 1d4 fire, and Alchemist's Doom from Strixhaven, 2d6 fire (alchemical fire is in fact non-magical)
- Oil. Doesn't deal damage but it does boost the damage of fire, making the above tools more effective.
- Caltrops, 1 piercing. (The piercing damage immunity is only to attacks, and setting caltrops is not an attack but a dex save)
- Hunting Traps, same with Caltrops but 1d4 piercing and it stops movement.
- Explosive Seeds from Wildmount, 1d8 bludgeoning with a dex save, half damage with a success.
and, honestly your only chance of winning unless you are able to position her below a flying castle and drop it on her for improvised bludgeoning
- Catapult Munition. "The munition can be thrown up to 30 feet and explodes on impact. Any creature within a 15-foot-radius sphere centered on the point of impact must make a DC 14 Dexterity saving throw, taking 35 (10d6) fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. In addition, each object in that area that isn't being worn or carried takes 35 (10d6) fire damage." If you are able to convince the strongest kingdom in your campaign to load these up, you might be able to deal enough damage to...get out of range of the antimagic field and plane shift to a different universe.
oh, wait, the arcane cataclysms have a mile range. You're better off with the flying castle. Maybe 10. Hundred.
Absolutely. My first thought reading the statblock when Rising from the Last War came out was "How on Earth did anyone think this is fair?"
And yet I'm still planning on using her as the final boss of my campaign. I'll nerf the antimagic fields somehow - probably making them only nullify low-level spells.
If there's a whole campaign of build-up you could consider making the party obtain some kind of artifact-level item that lessens the effect so it's winnable or something. Or maybe they can get a fragment of a deity's power so some or all of their abilities/spells can ignore it.
Just run her pure RAW (or give party access to something like a BGDiA Acidic Bile Sprayer, a antimatter or laster rifle... or plain enough peasants, torches and oil as 6 damage reduced to 3 is still 3 damage to a creature without any way to recover hp without resting so getting some 7-8k soldiers to sacrifice themselves to kill the equivalent of a demon lord isnt that big of a cost... in fact its only around 16 000gp). Jokes about going full on 1e on her ass aside, AMF has no effect on class features not stated to be magical effects or spells.
A Ranger with a kitty can have the cat scratches kill her slowly 1 hit point at a time if her own casting gets disabled, smacked a few times by a shadow and then grabbed.
Just establish early on how you count border cases where out-of-feature text states something is magical and it creates a effect, but the effect itself doesnt state to be magical (like divine smite, dragon breaths, druids beast form itself rather than the act of transforming which is explicitly magical, tho that can bring into question if its a magical effect what does Moon Druid 6 do at all, etc).
It's Dungeon of the Mad Mage, heavily modified such that she (well, Jhesiyra Kestellharp with Sul's statblock) has been pulling the strings and manipulating Halaster.
One rune knight with the grappler feat beats this
The way to nerf her is give her a time limit to accomplish some goal. I.e. the priests of the temple of Good are conducting a ritual that will banish her, and she needs to disrupt it within 8 hours. Then she can only use the antimagic field once. If say, she needs to attack 2 of the temples, she can fire off that effect at the first, and if the PCs escape, they can confront her at the second (with depleted resources if you did it right) without having to fight her in the AM field the second time.
But even this monster trembles before… the mighty Vecna! 💀
You grapple her and carry her out of the field? I do think a grapple based character has better odds here. The one you built recently for instance. Maybe the Tabaxi version for extra non-magical movement? A single Ki to Step of the Wind, that's an action to grapple, and then 120 feet of movement, not including any monk bonus to speed (which would add up to another 60 movement to this). Meaning even with your movement halved due to carrying her, you're still well outside the field. She has no proficiency in athletics or acrobatics, legendary resistance doesn't help with skill checks, so she's stuck with basically no way to beat your grapple check for a grapple-themed character aside from teleporting back. In which case, it doesn't take long to just do it again (she can only teleport once a day). IF she can even do that, since you could have grappled your wizard on the way out as well, and the Wizard could then counterspell her attempt to teleport back, once you've carried them out of the field. Or, since I recall your grappler had Action Surge, the grappler could just stun her outside of the field with the action surge.
Yes, seems like the unbeatable creature is most easily beaten with...a monk. Which I find ironic.
she can fly though. That makes it pretty hard to get her in a grapple unless you happen to play a flying race (which are banned at many tables).
@@jonassanoj3045 That was my first question lol. "How high can your monk jump?"
still has a +4 strength mod whilst not great against a dedicated grappler's 4+prof+expertise, means it really isn't an option for anyone not specialized in it. Also, she can just teleport out, hold monster the grappler, or if they don't seem too healthy power word kill them. Grapples also do fuckall to stop her from doing anything, so assuming the monk takes no damage to the spheres due to evasion she can still burst down the solitary monk with normal damage, since he has no magic to increase his AC, hp, or resistances/immunities.
Or she just casts mass suggestion to put her down or cower.
Eagle totem tabaxi barbarian with mobile? Would the totem features count as magical?
Beast barbarian monk for expertise in grappling and a super non magical jump!
Oh, no! Suddenly your high level monk is the most powerful member of your party!
Um still no.
You're best bet against this would probably be to do some time/space travel adventuring wherever the Mighty Servant of Leuk-o is from.
A party of five 20th level Chronurgists roll initiative vs Sul Khatesh. They all have the Alert feat and gift of alacrity and, on average, will beat Sul Khatesh by a fair bit, and may use Chronal Shift just in case they don't. Combat begins. The first three Chronurgists use their actions one after another to cast wish, with subtle spell from the metamagic adept feat, duplicating the effects of an 8th-level planar binding with the casting time of 1 action, targeting Sul Khatesh who conveniently has the fiend creature type. They then use Convergent Future to guarantee she fails her saving throw, forcing her to use a legendary resistance to succeed. The other four Chronurgists repeat until she has no legendary resistances remaining, and eventually she will be under control of one of the Chronurgists for 180 days. Plenty of time to command her to stand perfectly still, accept death, and not defend herself while they pepper her with cantrips until she drops to zero.
Alternatively, just recast planar binding every now and again and have a permanent Sul Khatesh at your disposal.
All the people assume that the anti magic field is not already active when the party will arrive. With her intelligence, knowledge, resources, abilities and considering the context I'm pretty sure it is ;). Bought to you by "if I were a DM".
Good day to be late to the party. At least an hour sounds about right 🙄
Couldn’t a grapple party work for this? The only weakness I can see in her kit is that the antimagic meteors are once per day and then stay there. Like just have a barb grapple her and drag her out of the antimagic field, and preferably through a portal so she can’t run back into it
Yeah, her str and dex are among her lower stats so it would most likely work
she can transform into a giant and be too big to grapple
she can fly though
So unless your Barb can fly somehow despite being in antimagic field (basically you need a flying mount or race minimum because summons also don't work) it won't do. And even then that is with the assumption she fails all her str check as well as legendary resistance...
And of course this is with knowing the stats block, a blind party like how it's supposed to would just get wrecked.
The barb would need a natural flying speed to reach her but in theory it should work. I agree.
I could work but beyond fly speed and teleport, she can cast hold monster on your grappler with a DC 26.
Thief with Tavern Brawler and a mundane sack of alchemist fire, acid, and holy water to sneak attack with:
MY TIME HAS COME AGAIN
Yeah, I have been aware about her for quite some time now, I agree that she is the most powerful creature in the game.
My only idea for her to be beatable (ignoring the immortality) is the have your simulacrum wish for immunity to the anti-magic field for 24 hrs (I say simulacrum so you don't risk loosing the ability to cast wish again)
Then you could maybe imprisson her in a demiplane or something.
I'm interested in the statement that "even class and subclass features that have you treat attacks as magical" are suppressed. I don't think this is the case unless the feature is called out specifically as a magical ability. The monk (ki-empowered strikes) and the beast-barbarian (bestial soul) are not called out as magical abilities. These two features just say that the attacks "count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage." (Contrast the language of these with the arcane archer-fighter, which calls out that the arrows are "being enchanted" and talks about the arrows actually being magic, which would be suppressed; these two features talk about the attacks as being treated as if they were magical for a specific purpose. That seems like an intentional difference to me.)
Similarly, the paladin's aura for bonuses to saving throws (and maybe some other features) is not a magical ability. That provides some nice defensive utility to the party. Even without the above interpretation for ki-empowered strikes, there are three monk subclasses that can still pretty easily deal damage to Sul Katesh: the way of the ascendant dragon, the way of the astral self, and the way of the sun soul. The way of the ascendant dragon can change their unarmed strike damage to acid, the astral self monk's astral arms deal force damage, and the way of the sun soul monk's radiant sun bolt deals radiant damage. None of these are specifically called "magical" abilities.
There might even be a non-artifact-non-deity way around the whole antimagic field problem found in the ultimate prep class. The wizard casts Simulacrum and directs the simulacrum to use this feature of the Wish spell: "You grant up to ten creatures you can see immunity to a single spell or other magical effect for 8 hours." The immunity, of course, would be to the arcane cataclysm or (if more specificity is required) the antimagic part of the cataclysm. That would be up to some level of DM interpretation, but I might be inclined to allow it.
Of course, I am happy to hear other input and discussion indicating I am mistaken.
Don't forget that everything the party does will be at disadvantage and all her attacks and saves will be at advantage since she has Foresight. That Monk will never get a stunning strike off. Only option for winning this fight is getting out of the area and trying to taunt her to follow imo
or ask the dm to let you play a party of mystics.
or just wait for an hour, she can only do it once per day
Finally, Sul Khatesh gets some recognition. Going from the Vecna stat block to her is like going from one extreme to the next lol.
By this level, you should have at least 1 artifact. It would be an entire campaign trying to get enough artifacts to make this fight manageable.
Additionally, it can be noted that clerics at level 20 get to auto-succeed on a divine intervention, which is also usable in an antimagic field(since gods are immune to it). With some clever verbage, the cleric can lawyer their way to an even playing field at the very least.
Thats not raw
@@andrecosta8680 why not?
It would be an arguement weather they could intervene with magic, but they might be able to get rid of the antimagic feilds
Arcana cleric to the rescue!
(Even if) Gods are immune to antimagic field but clerics aren’t so they wouldn’t be able to cast divine intervention
This attack absolutely feels like its meant as a narrative tool, not something used in an actual fight, but the party encountering a town or city street decimated by the arcane cataclysm.
I liked this kind of video; you should cover more high CR creatures like the Warforged Colossus :)
In Tasha's there are "play as a side-kick" rules. If you pick the sidekick warrior class you can pick any creature of 1/2 cr or lower which can level up to 20. I pick sidekick warrior shadow. At level 20 it can attack with strength drain (its racial weapon) 3 times. If you get 2 or 3 shadow sidekicks, they could easily do a lot of damage to sul katesh quickly.
1. her spells mostly depend on line of sight and line of effect so it seems like all you need is a corner to hide behind and wait out the antimagic effect
2. optimized parties are usually all ranged, making it harder to cluster the spheres like that and thus easier to escape
not saying she's not powerful, but it's not that different from the Tarrasque puzzle: just like the T can be "solved" by flight+ranged, SK can be solved by cover and by not clustering the party
Yup, came to sameish conclusion, but it is still DM dependent, since it's mostly terrain that beats her.
@@20100langlois I agree, though if you get past the hurdle of getting out of the anti-magic fields there are spells and magic items that can create cover (wall of stone, folding boat...) independent of DM fiat
Just by the video title, I knew we were going to discuss good old Sul Katesh ;)
This is why you send in the simulacrum party first. Then the real party arrives an hour later. Of course, as soon as the antimagic hits, she'll know she's been played and she'll teleport the heck out of there.
This is also why Beholders, played correctly, are so dangerous. The central eye creates an antimagic field in a 150-foot cone identical to the spell. Sure, the eye beams don't work in that area but that's a wide beam and anything that get's behind or around it can now be targeted with the eye beams. Also they are smart so would make sure to have melee focussed allies that can fight within the beam and use their hover in their lair to put themselves into positions they can't be attacked. For example, fly above the party and target the antimagic field down onto them, perhaps angling it to keep spellcasters inside the beam whilst leaving melee characters out but vulnerable to the eye beams. They should also have traps set up they can activate with their telekinesis beam.
Wow, you have a very clear and calming voice my friend, and good job over-all on the video ❤️
Sadly a lot of people just slap tarrasque as the strongest and call it a day. So, i am happy that you looked up your stuff and that you care.
A really entertaining video! I thought the monster would be rather boring but I was very pleasently surprised to see that that's not the case.
Spellcasters: Can no longer cast spells do to being in an anti-magic field.
Ball bearings and alchemist fire: Our time has come.
I once used Sul Khatesh. But since it was some timetravel stuff I silently ruled that she already used it with the same party an hour ago and they escaped to the astral plane via a portal Sul used to attack the players. I gave them a grace period of 4 turns in which Sul wouldn't be able to use Arcane Cataclysm. Within those 4 turns they learned how the portal worked, so when she used Cataclysm, they escaped to the astral plane with no way back. The party monk refused to use the portal and died, the rest survived, stranded in the astral plane.
Potential new content idea: creature features that punch above their weight.
Talk about individual monsters with features that make them deadlier than their CR (Shadow's strength Drain, Black Pudding's Corrosive Form, Rakshasa's Limited Magic Immunity, etc) and discuss ways that these features can be incorporated into fights to make them more interesting or challenging. Basically a "how-to" guide for making combats more fun than the DMG suggests, whether using stat blocks as-is or kitbashing some of your favorite monsters.
Hell, I would especially watch the crap out of a video of "change this one thing, and these creatures you probably never touch become way more fun".
The best counter I can come up with is a grappler with enough ways to boost movement as to be able to grapple and drag her out of the field in one turn. So like, a tabaxi with cunning action or another way to dash as a bonus action, and probably fighter for action surge for a second dash, and then maybe monk for increasing base movement speed, and feats such as mobile. Even without the aid of magic items, it wouidn't be too hard for a grappling oriented character to beat her athletics or acrobatics, and legendary resistance does not apply.
Of course, she can fly, so said grappler needs to be able to get to her. This really depends on the circumstances, but generally there would be -some- way to do it. A 20 strength rune knight with giant's might up (probably only large size, due to all the multiclassing needed for the movement speed) could probably have a running high jump reach of 26 feet (giant's might doubles size, if you started 6 ft tall that's 12 feet. Your reach when jumping is your jump height (8) plus 1.5 times your height (18)). Beyond that, the DM may allow an athletics jump to go higher as per the PHB. She could, of course, be at the top of her 40 foot radius antimagic bubble with a DM that would not allow you to make a check for additional height, but in most circumstances I think you could manage. Maybe with the multiclassing you'd have access to non-magical flight in some fashion as well?
She has a lot of ways to escape a grapple. Teleport will always work for one of them, and she has multiple ways to incapacitate the grappler. If you aren't using something like Rune Knight for having large/huge size, she can shapechange into something huge (I'm not sure there are gargantuan options that are valid, it is only beast, humanoid, and giant) as well, though she'd lose her damage immunities while shapechanged, so she'd at least be opening herself up to attack a bit that way. So minimum you have to drag her out twice, and even if you managed to catch her on the ground the first time, she is definitely going to be teleporting to the most awkward place possible for the second go.
Ideally, if someone that can cast antimagic field also gets out of her antimagic field, the grappler can drag her into an anti-magic field that would affect her. It'd disable her spellcasting for sure, although it will depend on the DM to determine what beyond that is affected. Personally I'd rule most of her stuff is affected. Arcane blast is a spell attack, and consume magic and maddening secrets directly interact with spells and spell slots, so I'd be hard pressed to argue that those effects are not magical in nature. Even her really bad melee attack does force damage, so I'd perhaps downgrade that to quarterstaff level bludgening damage. Shapechange is also explicitly magical.
But how do you damage her there? Non-magical "elemental" damage. So like, real, non-magical fire. Acid flasks. Burn her to death, very very slowly, with the whole party just poking her with torches or dumping acid on her. Holy water would probably be the most effective due to her fiend status.
So that's the best I have. First you need a high level spellcaster to escape the field, then drag her with a specialized grappler into a friendly antimagic field, then dump lots of holy water on her.
So all that to say, that she is basically impossible to beat if you don't already know her stat block and have made a hyper specialized party explicitly for defeating her.
This right here is how you challenge a level 20 party with a single base monster. Now a group I stand by slaad apocalypse.
Smart fighting Sul Khatesh could prepare for fight for example with laying strong adamantine cages around. She can walk through those as a spirit troll and use her spells as herself from inside while party would have hard time to get her from the cage while the area is under anti magic field. Also points of origins of the anti magic fields might be at top of pillars making her even more hard to get.
And many panic rooms inside the walls and floors.
Thanks for the great video. Couple of ways to change it. You have a 50% chance each round to be effected by anti magic. Or the party has one item that grants temporary immunity. Or there's a few spots on the map that grants immunity.
Finely a high level creature with unique "epic" abilities. There should be a looot more of those
One time we fought a few strange Beholder-Knights that had their antimagic cone turned into an aura around them and the DM ruled they could still use their eye rays in the antimagic field since that was their natural ability. This was a conversion from an old 2e adventure. :S My valor bard got our melee fighters connected to 3 big chunks of rubble with rope, cast animate objects on the rubble. Whenever anyone went down or got hit by a disabling ray of sorts, I would just use my bonus action to yank them out of the area and over to me so I or the cleric could lesser/greater restoration them. Near the end of the fight I hovered the rubble over the knights and let it drop on their heads.
12:22 "Standing here... I realize..."
Step 1, bring a lvl 20 cleric that has created a Sanctuary via Word of Recall on another plane of existence.
Step 2, wait for her to use Arcane Cataclysm.
Step 3, divine Intervention a word of recall, deity magic works in antimagic fields.
Step 4, the cleric casts gate naming her, afaik she is not a deity or a planar ruler, (even then just save the plan for when she's not in her domain and trying to invade something).
Step 5, beat her up.
Best plan i got.
I was thinking maybe silvered weapons would be a loophole that would bypass damage immunity but still not be affected by antimagic field, but looks like silvered weapons bypassing immunity only applies when explicitly stated, like for werewolves.
This type of monster requires the party to plan ahead and go on quests to be able to beat. Bosses that the party knows about, choose to confront but also have to prepare extensively in order to beat are fun. Party goes on quest to some other plane to acquire futuristic weapons that do non magical radiant damage is only one of the many options a high level creative party (with a supportive DM has) My favorite time troll the DM moment was when we learned about an aboleth at fourth level that was just there to scare us and decided, lets spend the next good while and build up a coalition to defeat him and his minions and even dammed the river to dry out his lair.
The antimatter rifle deals even more damage, and she doesn't have neither inmunity nor resistence to necrotic either. It does have less effective amnunition.
There's some argument that attacks that "count as magical" for the purposes of bypassing resistances could still do so. Count as magical implies that they are not actually magical themselves, and thus would not be turned off by antimagic field. So basically, everyone hides while the level 20 moon druid tries to slowly solo the fight with beast forms that can barely hit her. ...Until she rolls high on her lair action damage, drops the moon druid below 100 HP before her turn, and uses power word kill. Or maybe she doesn't even wait for that and just puts the moon druid to sleep with Eyebite.
Would Wildshape work in an Anti magic field?
But the moon Druid can’t wild shape because wild shape itself is magic
twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/907784172990636032?lang=en
Also, wildshape is described as a magical transformation so you can't wildshape
@@TreantmonksTemple Ah, gotcha. Not sure what's left that might count as magical for bypassing resistances while being non-magical. Monk punches I guess? Pretty sure she can punch the monk to death, though.
The 20th lvl cleric just says "Okay" and asks God to fix it👍
"Spells and other magical effects, except those created by an artifact or a deity, are supressed in the sphere and can't protrude into it."
thats one spell you can throw at her though. unlikely to win the fight on its own.
@@Apfeljunge666 Divine Intervention isn't a spell, nor is it a spell effect. It's the cleric literally calling on their deity to directly intervene in whatever's happening, and at 20th lvl the deity WILL answer 100% of the time. This ability doesn't just give a spell as the cleric can request pretty much whatever they want.
I'd argue that it's infinitely better than Wish, partially because it represents the deity coming to the aid of what is likely their ultimate champion. They'd have an incentive to ensure that the cleric is protected in a fight of this magnitude and scale.
A DM should also have a harder time twisting the request as well, considering it's a deity doing the work as opposed to some impersonal arcane force, i.e, Wish. The type of god/goddess in question would likely matter, but even an evil god would be compelled to defend their 20th lvl cleric.
Basically, there's nothing stopping the cleric from asking their deity simply remove the antimagic fields. As a DM, I can't imagine a legitimate reason why this wouldn't work that doesn't involve me simply wanting to make things hard on my players.
@@SpearHeadTheAssault a deity is in no way required to grant anything the cleric wants. I would argue that anything that isnt a spell is a gamble, similar to wish.
You know what is really ironic, while in the antimagic field the only class that (I'm aware of) can deal damage to her, is the monk. It's Ki Fueled Strikes count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance or immunity, but are themselves not magical, in the same way a dragon's breath weapon is not magical. Thus it's the only thing that works here. And their evasion might allow them to survive the initial hit. I find that kind of hilarious.
This really embodies the fear of magic though. A massive magical backlash that ruins magic for everyone while the big bad still gets to not only do whatever she wants, she effectively has the ability to concentrate on multiple spells (let's be honest, did Mass Suggestion really need to not need concentration?) and massive saves to everything that's not Fireball (still a +5, and good luck getting the Fireball to work inside the field).
The lighter version is to do this with a Lich. It has the same immunities to nonmagical weapon damage (and poison because duh), it's certainly a high enough caster to have that option, and more fairly it will still use Concentration (although, good luck when you can't hurt it with weapons or magic and Sleet Storm won't work in the area) and it can't use its Paralyzing Touch as it's a Spell Attack. But a Lich is smart with a ton of time on their hands, so between the Lair Actions and Legendary Actions, the battlefield could be LITTERED with traps both magical and mundane that it spends its time activating. "Oh no, everyone in this 10ft-wide line needs to DEX save against poisoned bolts. I sure hope you guys have immunity to these damage types like I do!"
That's the "Eff you, I win" button, that is vile.
Tpk time! Awesome review. Thanks for your insight and passion !
Great Video!
Funny thing is: Since she has Gate as innate spellcasting she can just summon Rak Tulkhesh or any of her minions, which might be very strong!
Options:
1. Have a friendly dragon grapple and drag them out of the anti magic field.
2. Have all players play subclasses that deal damage in a way that bypass the anti magic (ex. Soulknife rogue’s attacks, etc.)
These videos are always interesting. Power can be measured, but there is one type of video that I haven't seen yet.
I would like to pitch: the most complecated monster statblock Ever.
Given the lifespan of the game I wonder how many pages it would be.
The monk would be key (pun intended). Using Empty Body + Stunning Strike + ki-fueled attack, a level 20 monk can get the necessary stuns in. And can use Empty Body + Diamond Soul + Evasion to survive. Let's say that's a total 19 ki points to get the first stun in while surviving.
On the next turn, monk can grapple and uses step of the wind to drag this lovely lady out of the antimagic field. The party can then resume their Silence + Grapple shenanigans.
Why have I never noticed this? I'm in love...
This really is a doomsday fight. With the foresight it can't be surprised an it has advantage with initiative rolls. Sul Khatesh shape changing to spirit troll is a big deal: 1) spirit troll is immune to magical weapons and therefore is practically immortal in the anti magic field. 2) it is immune to grappled and prone conditions 3) it regenerates Sul Khatesh's own hit points since the monster keeps its own hit points even if it shape changes. So it has practically infinite hit points. 4) It can walk through the walls and leave if things get dicey.
The only way I would see for that creature to not use it immediately if it is afraid of something other than the party.
Like, "Yeah, there's a few level 20 characters here, and they would be absolutely shut down by this thing. But, what if, 2 hours from now, an archlich decides to come kill me ?"
A good way of doing that would be to have a big, real or not, threat to it, like maybe a god, a demonic horde, or a flight of Greatwyrms. Having the party set that threat up, as preparations for the fight, would probably be the best way to do it.
Having read through Sul Khatesh's stat block, the only moderately effective strategy I was able to come up with was this: win initiative, and limit her vision with obscurement (Fog Cloud, Sleet Storm). She does need to be able to *see* to use Arcane Cataclysm, so if you can deny her truesight, you can prevent her from using it.
Now, she does have Teleport and Dispel Magic, and can still escape from any obscurement you place her in, but those do use her action - meaning she didn't use Arcane Cataclysm that turn. Depending on where she ends up positioned, you may be able to try again.
She also has at-will Counterspell, which will itself need to be Counterspelled by someone.
If she Changes Shape into something with Blindsight, and Blindsight fulfills the "can see" requirement of Arcane Cataclysm, and if she can cast Arcane Cataclysm while Change Shape'd (I'm not entirely sure if she can), then she can poke a hole in this plan. It does, however, buy the party a turn, and a party of 20th level characters can potentially deal 475 damage in 2 turns.
I was tempted to run this boss as a campaign ender of an Eberron campaign. Kinda glad now that campaign fizzled out because I didn't connect all these dots
I'm pretty sure a beast barbarian/champion fighter could still have a chance. The beast Barbarians natural weapons only count as magical for the sake of overcoming resistances and Immunities, but aren't magical themselves, so they work more like the flight and breath weapon of a dragon than as the flight and fireball of a wizard. That means a fighter/beast barbarian could technically still damage her under normal conditions, ant least based on RAW
It seems to me that the key is to win initiative and immediately apply some form of total obscurement such as an upcast massive fog cloud imposing the blinded condition to confound and negate the 3 points she can see. Ergo the arcane cataclysm would be uncastable in those fully obscured areas or for that matter by Sul Khatash whilst blinded within the obscurement to areas outside the obscurement.
To quote a Redditor about if Sul Khatesh was ever released:
“This is not the Avengers. This is Avengers Endgame.”
This is where quivering palm comes in handy.
My initial thought was some enemy spellcasters piloting the mighty servant of leuko. Thing has a tonne of hp, a load or resistances, spellcasters could mend it to heal it up from total cover inside. It has 120ft of ranged attacks and can jump real good. On top of all that it can explode for an obscene amount of damage.
Unfortunately I don't think it competes with the near invincible god who might only be vulnerable to a pack of pcs with torches chanting burn the witch.
And there’s always the tried and true open a gate to the feywilds sun after getting out of the anti magic fields
A Divination wizard casting prismatic wall (unaffected by anti magic field) maybe can save the day with some portent rolls if the legendary resistances were used.
I think you are right, this is deadlier to a party than Tiamat. So the question is how to beat it. I prefer the strength monk. Sulky is large so any medium creature can try, and she only gets a +5 to resist versus your 6+str to initiate a grapple. You get two tries with multiattack, not awful odds. When you eventually succeed, you bonus action dash and can get her out of the field. Then you need someone ready to counter spell her teleport and her counter spell.
If she hovers in the field, you might be completely boned. With maxed out strength, you can only jump 16 feet high with step of the wind. Assuming you're six feet tall, you can reach 25 feet off the ground, and Sulky is still out of reach. Harengan can jump 30 feet up, the reach rules say you can reach something 1.5 times your height. So to be certain that you can reach her, you need to be 6 feet 8 inches tall.
So a 6'8" max strength rabbit monk is probably the best bet at saving the world. Or artifact weapons. You know, either one.
So... run away, heal up, wait an hour and then go say hello to her again?
Or wiser still: Just keep on running.
I'd argue monks could still hurt this creature and anything that similarly had a feature that says their attacks count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance or immunity to damage. It is not saying their attacks are magical, just that they count as it for that singular purpose.
Crawford says no. Effect works as magic and is therefore suppressed.
I ran a high level game where the villains were a lich and an immortal swordsman. At one point the heroes were horridly unsneaky while spying on them from a room down the hall of a hotel. Since they were so bad, I had the duo counter-ambush them. The combo was anti-magic field and letting the swordsman go to town.
Most of the PCs survived by running out of the hotel as fast as they could.
This is exactly why you spend the 100 GP to silver all of your weapons.
Looks like its time to ask the local silver dragon for some assistance.
Someone who'll be excited about me the way Treeantmonk is excited about concentrationless anti-magic fields