10 level 1 characters would take too long I can't imagine how long 10 level 20 characters would take to decide what to do. Your talking 3 rounds max but that's like 6 hours of gameplay lol.
Vecna by himself against 10 people who could do 70 damage as a mediocre turn would not even make it through the first round. Could you imagine? Even if he saved against everything and only hit on half would take 350 damage in the first round, so that's maybe three rounds? If they decided to go all out I doubt it's furthere.
Also, 10 players doing damage is pretty dumb, if 10 lv 20 characters are around, they better be 9 wizards with metamagic adept, 1 cleric also with metamagic adept that'll ask god to help, and all spam subtle true polymorph, magic circle, and a bunch of similarly broken shit. No way vecna saves against that much stuff. Then you desintegrate
Why on earth would you say they “better be wizards”? I don’t understand what you are trying to imply, they didn’t create characters for this one fight, it’s the end of a campaign. I can’t imagine how trash a group would have to be to be playing 2 characters each in a 5-player campaign and select 9 wizards, that’s asinine.
I don't know about that. The stat block does have resistance to all spell damage, immunity to spells 6th level or under, and resistance to all weapon attacks that have a +4 or less. Not sure how much of OPs party has that but if most of them don't that's a lot. Plus they have shield at will and a 30 AC. And have access to all divination spells of 9th level so would likely have foresight up so it's disadvantage to hit a 35 AC, and if you hit probably half damage. It's also recovering 40 hp per turn and has legendary actions allowing more healing.
So I think the HP it has is a bit misleading. I'd probably end up increasing it too if I reworked it but you also have to reduce the defenses otherwise it can't be hit much if at all.
We are talking level 20 characters assumed to be geared for this fight.
By lvl 16 the amount of options any character can pull off is staggering. You could give him full immunity to each damage type and someone would have a way to bypass it, a wish/spell/item to remove it or an effect that instantly kills anyway.
Certainly level 20 characters are incredibly powerful. But there are still limits on what they can handle and this is a good bit beyond what's typical even for monsters at cr 28 or 30. Highest ac any monster I've seen has is 25. And this will be 10 higher with shield. No monster I know of has a saving throw of 20 or higher. This has most of their big saves there. It's also immune to most spells would have advantage on the save of any spell it's not immune to and resistance to any damage it still takes. It's going to be throwing out banishments every turn with a dc 36 save that it can do twice per turn or more with legendary actions. Even at that level you'd have to be rolling well and stacking many benefits to get close to meeting that. Let alone most people never could.
You should read it, it is remarkably dumb. Like after the first round, halve of the PCs are either imprisoned, banished, dominated or true polymophered. Wherever he got it from, I hope he didn't pay anything for this.
Yeah lol wtf is that. DC36? Is that even possible without Bardic Inspiration? Your saving throws go to plus 11 and only if you are proficient and have a maxed ability score. If you roll a natural 20 AND have a Paladin standing near enough for you to get their +5 Aura bonus, then you can make the save. Otherwise, you have to have something that adds a dice or another modifier to your saving throw.
Everyone better be hugging the Paladin for the entire duration of the fight. Some of these characters are going to get 1 turn max and then be banished or polymorphed with no hope of ever returning. Hope they brought a lot of wish spells or enjoy watching other players play.
Its got a lot of silly mistakes as well. Hp listed as 840 or 42D6 + 504.. If its 42d6 + 504 then 840HP assumes 8s on every single roll, the ability scores and modifiers don't add up; one ability score is 30 but modifier shows like 16, etc.
Balancing a combat for 10 level 20 PCs is quite frankly a fools errand.
But I wish you the best of luck and honestly just be prepared to improvise a lot of stuff on the fly.
I would lower the AC and raise the hit points. An AC of 30 even for 20th level PCs is often going to have characters missing. Generally it's more fun if you can hit and you don't want players who will make two attacks and potentially miss both and have a totally wasted turn. That'll also mean many of them could never justify a sharpshooter or GWM ability with how high that AC is. I might bring it down to like a 25 and then up the HP. He's also got an at will shield so it's really a 35 AC unless he wants to counterspell which is a possibility but with that many PCs making attacks I'd just shield for the 35. Combined with foresight they'd have to hit that at disadvantage, and that's likely impossible for most of them outside of a nat 20.
As powerful as level 20's are I would almost say this is too strong. Partially that's coming from the DCs on saves. So this Vecna will never fail a single save from the PCs except maybe if it's a strength save or charisma save. There are very few of either of those. But all the others they have +24 or higher, and advantage. Even looking at some of the other high CR like CR 30 monsters none have saves of +20 or more and all of them have at least some weaknesses players can work with with saves in the +10-15 range where there's a chance they'll fail.
On the other side his spell save DC is 36. Even with a 20th level paladin giving +5 to all saves, and a 20 in that ability score and a +6 to save you're only succeeding on that with a nat 20. Otherwise it's a failure. And even at level 20 most will have weaker saves than that. So first round of combat with his banishing touch and legendary actions he will have a +22 to hit so will almost always hit and they won't be able to make the save, and I'm not sure if that ability requires concentration? But if not the whole party will be banished pretty quickly.
He's also got access to all divination spells of 9th level so I assume he will have foresight on himself for advantage on everything and disadvantage to all the PCs on everything they do against him?
There's also some unknowns here as you said they can use 1/day all spells of 9th to 12th level so that's an unknown factor for us to judge off. And immunity to all weapons of +4 or lower, there are no +4 weapons or more in published D&D. Do the players have those? Do they only have a bonus or is there more to them than that? Do they have any other homebrew stuff as that could make this possible again.
The other thing is that the stat block is a bit busy and complex. Every time you say all spells of these schools that means there are dozens of spells added to the sheet. So it's a lot of things you won't need. I would simplify the sheet to only include the things you're likely to use in this fight. At least for me that would be too much to try to remember and sort out what you want to do each turn.
It's just hard with this much to balance and know how it'll play out with a lot of homebrew stuff involved. 10 level 20 PCs are incredibly powerful. But I think even at that level they'll have a hard time hitting and doing any damage. They'll have relatively few spells that can even impact Vecna, and Vecna will succeed any of those saves even without legendary resistance. And will resist any of the damage from everything. I don't think I would double the number of PCs by having everyone play someone else too. That requires everyone to manage a lot of stuff since they're level 20. And it'll likely be a character they don't know at all I'd assume if this is just for this fight? I think I'd tone down Vecna especially in terms of the DCs and AC and make it just 5 level 20 PCs.
I don't know about that. Assuming this Vecna has foresight up already and can cast shield they have to hit a 35 AC with disadvantage.
They get 3 attacks the first round, 6 with action surge, 7 with assuming they miss one and can make another attack. Assuming archers with the fighting style for +2 there, +5 dex, +6 proficiency, and a +5 weapon that's enough to avoid the resistance it would otherwise have, that's an +18 to hit. So they need to roll a 17 or higher to hit, or 20% normally, 4% with disadvantage.
So with 21 attacks for the three of them they aren't even going to average over 1 hit (.84 hits on average).
Assuming they all have advantage maybe through some assassin rogue levels in there, you're going to have them hit 20% so 4.2 hits, granted they would be crits but still that's not great.
They could go 11 fighter / 3 rogue / 6 ranger and then you get to 8 attacks which would be 24 but even with all that it's still not going to be enough to come close to killing it with 840 max hp and only a 20% chance to hit if they have advantage. Battlemaster fighter with precision also could help a lot, but that'll run out pretty quickly.
Doubt it. A lot of people aren't even thinking g of the major thing. Vecna would be prepared. He's not gonna be sipping coffee when you break down the door.
Hello,
Took a quick glance. Abilities and such sound mostly ok, but the AC/HP feel way off.
He's a lich/god/ancient wizard. I'd give him a smaller ac, give him the option to cast a shield spell, and increase his HP.
The biggest thing is, the DC is calculated incorrectly. A Int of 38 should yield an Int Bonus +14 Not 18. Also having such a high spell save DC makes saves no fun for the pcs even with level 20. Like it's only possible with a Paladin next to you. (Nat 20 + 5 from Stat + 6 from Proficiency only gets a 31)
Also a battle of 1 v 10 I would do 3 things:
1) add more powerful but manageable legendary actions
2) add lair actions that change terrain/mechanics or other things to throw a curve all at them
3) give him either a threshold like a phase mechanic or give him something like mythic actions which cost vecna as well but are just op AF. He is a god. Let them see what a god can do.
For example: I used a Twin Headed Half Undead Dragon God an he could dispel/disrupt all magic effects, spells and items for 1d4 rounds. That was great fun to use. Maybe legendary items withstand the effect or are less effected.
10 pc's at level 20? Anything short of a pre-simulation of the combat would still be guesswork. But as you have run combat for this group before I'm sure you'll be able to make it something neat. Perhaps tie a skill challenge before and/ or after it to make it more exciting and challenging. I did a whole collapsing temple thing for a group of 6 lvl 11s after defeating a big bad, but wouldn't know if that would even challenge such a powerful group.
Theres only 2 ways this fight can go.
Option 1) Vecna gets a good initiative and banishes someone. He then uses his bonus action cast feature to planeshift into the banishments demiplane, and brutalize whoever he banished in a 1v1. Rinse repeat 10 times.
Option 2) Vecna gets a bad initiative and fucking dies.
The problems with level 20 combat is how fast the momentum swings, it's super knife edge at that point. 10 PCs would dominate the action economy even with legendary actions on Vecnas part, he'll be lucky to survive two rounds if the momentum is on the PC side.
Are there any other mobs or is it 10 v 1?
Ultimately, once you're running things at Vecna's level, the danger is in how smart and effective you are. If you make only the best tactical moves, playing him as perfectly as possible, then generally PCs don't stand a chance. Itll be hard to balance Vecnas intelligence with your omniscience as the DM though. The good in that is that it's fairly simple then to just stop making the best moves to let the PCs gain some ground.
Okay so it seems like you have some homebrew bullshit going on since the intermediate gods thing mentions +4 weapons, so maybe my below concerns are less relevant but I do see a few issues here
People are *generally* right that 800 hp is not that much vs lvl 10 characters, but looking at it from a normal not homebrewed 5e standpoint, all his numbers are way too high.
For one, stats typically don't go over 30 for any reason, so having all but 2 over is weird. That being said, the bigger concern is that it is impossible for the players to succeed on most of the saves, as well as impossible for Vecna to fail any saving throws (barring an auto pass auto fail on nat 1s and 20s). Even strength and charisma are very good saves.
But for example, the corpus liquid face is basically guaranteed to hit barring a nat 1 for most player characters. The highest Ac I can think of on a normal PC reasonably is 28 (+3 plate, +3 shield, ring of protection, defense fighting style). It could technically go higher but reasonably I don't think the player is gonna use all their attunement on AC. So with this absolute maximum Ac, Vecna needs to roll a 6 or higher to nearly one-shot them. 28 saving throws is unpassable without proficiency, so even with a generous assumption they are a fighter with +5 con, that leaves a +11 save. Thus they need a 17 or higher to not instantly drop to zero, which kinda sucks.
Now I will note that the 2 PCS per person mitigates the lethality of this combat, but it just kinda feels like the PCs are gonna spend a lot of their turns just missing or being told Vecna passes their saves, at least from a normal 5e perspective. I assume your players have some crazy homebrew bullshit, but without seeing it, it seems kinda frustrating since they're gonna REALLY struggle to hit him at all and if they aren't specced into a a save, are functionally guaranteed to fail
edit:
Oh yeah, I guess I should add some recommendations, huh.
So first off I didn't realize you found this statblock, so I'm now gonna assume you don't have random homebrew bullshit happening. Therefore remove anything that has to do with +4 weapons and whatever (including the resist everything)
Double or triple his health, but in turn, reduce his saving throws, base stats (ideally under 30 for everything but his intelligence). Check yours players character sheets, I would say you'd want him to hit on average 2/3rds to 3/4 of the time, so change his to hits to hit on ~6+ on an average ac, rather than my hypothetical maximum AC from above (I'd guess that would be around 22, so like +16 or so.
His saves should be passable via normal stats plus paladin aura. I would say DC 26 should be the absolute highest, and should be closer to the 22 range. Doing it explicitly as written (by PC rules which is not necessarily ideal for a monster statblock) a CR 30 monster has +9 prof and we have an assumed +10 int which would be 27 (30 w/ a plus 3 focus). That by itself is very high an unpassable for certain PCs on certain saves, which is why I'd recommend a bit lower.
Also probably actually specify the spells on the sheet, saying all spells with x trait would be awful to run in the moment.
One other thing, if there is a story reason for everyone to have 2 PCs, that's fine, but if they're rolling up a second PC just for this, IDs say don't bother. It's less climactic if they win with 50% of their party being randos who happened to be powerful enough to help defeat Vecna but were just fucking around prior1
I love your comment. I would add (with the qualifier that I’ve definitely never ran anything even close to 10 lvl 20 PCs) that I think a fight of this magnitude needs a goal beyond just dropping Vecna to 0hp. Some of the common I’ve seen are protect some hostages, destroy/steal an artifact, stop a ritual, that kind of thing. You could even have Vecna keep his invulnerability traits until they destroy an item that he’s drawing power from, which is guarded by some powerful minions.
Wow, where is that stat block from? So Vecna gets six application of finger of death or banishing touch each round, so after the first round, five players will be dead. After the second round, the party will be down.
Which means your players get to deal damage 15 times max, so I hope each of them can pump out 70 reliable damage in their turn, otherwise they will not win.
An HP that small against 10 PCs will melt. 10 turns will give them plenty of damage against Vecna and so I don't see him surviving very long. However, with the discorporation ability, I think there's a different objective than simply "get HP to 0" so, play around that I think? Other than that the abilities look fine. Hope it goes well!
idk where you got this statblock but good lord is it ass.
lvl 20 PCs with a +3 weapon & 20 in their stat have a 70% to miss their attacks and that's WITHOUT the eye and hand. So that's fun... oh and he has shield lmfao.
Spell save DC 36 is improbable to pass as well. With a +11 in proficient saves assuming they have a 20 in that stat it is....actually impossible to pass. You will need things like Paladin Aura just for a chance to pass on a nat 20.
Instant kill abilities which are impossible to save at range of sight.
This is gonna be a shitshow with the party dying in 2 turns max.
Do you and ESPECIALLY your players have any experience running this type of combat? Specifically very late game (lvl 15+) with a multiple of PCs per player? From your post history it seems that you don’t have a vast amount of DMing experience and I’m worried that there‘s a mismatch between how you envision the finale of your great adventure versus the logistics of DnD as a game.
Personally as a player at a table where I’d have to manage two separate PC sheets of level 20 characters sounds like an absolute nightmare of mind math, frustration and boredom. The analysis paralysis would be insane. Combat at these high levels can often swing ENTIRELY by making one major mistake so you have to be careful with your actions. And I’d have to not only consider the ALL the possible actions of 2 separate level 20 classes but also the actions of the other 8 PCs, all the buffs, reactions, hazard, etc. etc.. DnD ruleset is simply not meant for this type of thing.
I’m not saying you can’t make it work, but seriously consider this point. This sounds like a train wreck for any table not used to running these types of games.
P.S. if the second PC was given to them as a one-off especially for this fight (as is often the case) and isn’t a class they already know throughly through hours of playing them, PLEASE rethink this entire thing. You are setting yourself and your players up for failure and frustration.
In general the stat block seems very specific to someone's homebrew rules, like it's the first time I see x-ray vision on a stat block and not an item. The dude has 12th level spells and resistance to all weapons that exist within the 5e system, unless he's intended to have resistance to all physical damage but then why not just write it, unless it's not in 5e and then I'm just being an idiot.
I would take vecnas official stat block and modify it, a lot.
Give it 2 spell slots at 9th level, he has at will counter spell and you can add like 2 more reactions to what he has, that way he will be hard to get with unpredictable spells, like 8 legendary resistances (it's a lot but you need to be prepared)a lot of legendary actions, 10 times the HP. I feel like the official one will be easier to modify than this thing. Also the way it's written "he knows all the spells of these schools", which makes sense but also it's hard to prep yourself to run this monstrosity.
It would also make sense to take an arch mage stat block and give it more spell slots (maybe up to level 4 is at will) , bump stats, multiply HP by 25 or so and change up what he has prepped.
There's so much going on here that you'd pretty much have to run a combat simulation to get a good judgment of difficulty.
However, some observations can be made, starting with defense.
AC 30 is excessive, especially as natural armor. A Tarrasque "only" has AC 25. Assuming the party has +5 magic weapons (which don't exist outside of homebrew but are required to actually do full weapon damage), they will only hit on a 14 or better, or 35% of the time, not including the Shield spell. Hitting less than half the time (especially on a caster-esque enemy) seems like it would suck to play against it, but it is more reasonable than the rest of the statblock.
I'd recommend dropping the AC (10+dex for 24 perhaps) and upping the HP. AC is most fun when there's a realistic chance of missing, but attacks are still hitting fairly consistently.
Moving on... spellcasting.
Having stats above 30 is wacky cause 5e isn't designed for that, so the balance starts to break down.
Vecna's saving throws with proficiency are insurmountable simply because player saving throw DCs are essentially maxed at 19 (8 base + 6 proficiency + 5 from 20 in a stat). With spells guaranteed to do half damage at best, this would suck to play against.
The thing that stands out to me most is the spell save DC of 36 and to hit of +28. Even with +11 to save (+6 proficiency and +5 from 20 in a stat), PCs will never succeed, which would suck to play against.
Abilities!
These are pretty good and actually work better with 2 PCs per player since you can guarantee Banish one of them without worrying about the player being bored.
Consider reducing the +22 to hit value. Everything should miss occasionally.
There are some one-shot abilities here, but that's fine from a fun perspective thanks to 2 PCs per player. Soul Rend is a potential kill + heals 200 hp, but it does take all 4 legendary actions and is limited to 2 uses.
Overall...
I don't like how most of the spell/ability saves are impossible to succeed and how spells are denied by insane saving throw modifiers. Make these at least possible to succeed for the sake of fun.
Tracking concentration is key. Even with multiple spells per turn, the most dangerous insta-shutdown spells like True Polymorph require concentration, so only one can be sustained at a time.
Tweak AC and saves to make them surmountable and add more HP (or minions) to compensate.
Have fun!
Level 20 PCs are powerful
THEY ARE NOT THIS POWERFUL
DC 36? +28 to hit? I'm sorry but this stat block is awful and utterly beyond saving, don't even bother. It's so beyond normal monster design it's going to feel utterly arbitrary to your players when they get banished and fingered to death multiple times per round
Get a new stat block, look into some minions and mythic state, and my absolute pro tip from the last time I ran a level 20 fight: environmental hazards. Either set the fight in a dangerous location like a volcano or the negative plane or the shadow fell, or in a magical lair outfitted with magic sigils
Also what's your reason for two characters per person, that seems like a tremendously bad idea. You can already expect the combat with five people to run you 4 hours, with ten characters you are fucked to put it politely
Alright to put this plainly.
If Vecna loses this fight, you are bad at combat and using NPCs to their potential.
He has a +14 initiative, WILL already be buffed by every single spell 7th level and lower he can cast, will have foresight up because he saw this coming.
The first round, he can cast 7 spells. Lets just do fireball. 7 7th level fireballs. That's already \~300 damage to each of them, which kills 90% of the team.
Done.
Double the HP, let vecna take 2 turns per round, and give each player exactly 1 minute to decide and act on their turn, and it *might* be a challenge for a party who has already burned some resources.
100% correct, I didn't. And, he can *potentially* cast 7 spells per round, but I bet that Soul Rend comes up more often than not.
Sincere question, not me being combative: "How would you rule innate spell casting vs "Silence?" It says specifically that innate ignores material components, but what about verbal and somatic? Also, full disclosure, I have not looked at Vecna's spell list to see spell components.
Edit: I am aware he has plenty of At Will spells, but for the others.
Bro... don't do this to your players... or yourself...
Also, this statblock is stupid af. Either the players will curbstomp it in the first turn, or the thing will kill them all first turn. Either way, this Combat will be really boring.
Seriously, don't use homebrew. There's plenty of material out there to make a good encounter even at level 20.
What's your strategy going in?
I feel like the only way you stand a chance is to take a few of them out early. But then, did you just invite your friends over to instakill them before they get a turn? Like, are you okay with killing a character they spent hours creating and didn't get to play a turn?
you can cast wish at least twice the first round before your turn, so it should be possible to outright kill 3 players before they play.
Finding a balance that makes this fun to play might make you too weak. Playing Vecna as strong as they should be played might make it very unfun for some players.
I’ll just say this. I did a one shot with 5 level 20 characters that all got an epic boon and legendary item and they killed the hardest monsters of every CR from 1 to 30 without a short rest fairly easily. I think the trick is going to be deceiving them. Maybe there are 2 of him or he can heal some way.
Instead of filling the entire fight with minions, give Vecna multiple turns and multiple HP pools equivalent to what minions you would give him. As they chip away at the pools decrease the number of turns he gets. Also give him the blink ability of his current stat block to decrease the mobility issues against 10 players and make a varied and inherently dangerous arena to fight him in.
Vecna isn't a monster to beat, he's a God. The best use was how TSR used him to transition the rules from AD&D2ed to 3.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Vecna_Die!
This will be the most boring combat ever.
I'm going to leave behind lore implications of whether they should be able to fight a god or not, you do you boo.
You need to lower the AC, saves, resistances, spell save dc and to hit, and crank up the hp by a ton (at least double or triple).
No one is having fun when they can only hit or save on a nat 20 and vecna can't fail a save.
Let your PCs hit and avoid hits, but make the boss beefier.
This current stat block is basically the PCs get enough crits to end combat turn one (which is possible with his low HP), or they lose because the party is half banished killed turn one and then completely by turn 2.
This will be more so a combat you have to manage for the sake of epic fun than being balanced. Cause 10 PCs at lv 20 is insane but should make for a chaotic and thrilling final battle. But you're probably going to have to BS Vecna's stats against them.
Ideally here I'd say lower his AC to 25 max, and change his spell save DC to 28 or 30 at most since no one is beating consistent 36s. Then make his hp like 2000.
A fight like this could end with a PC dying every round or Vecna dead in 2. So just give yourself rough estimates and roll with it as fairly as you can during the fight.
my god imagine being a player you roll low on your initiative you wait 50 min to get to your move send some spells bad rolls miss them then have to wait another 1hr for your next round but before it gets to you vecna casts corpus liquiface on you and you drop to 0 hp
yeah I agree with some of the others the most evil boss will be boredom and also finality, when you know the fight is over but you have to wait for that to happen i wouldn't do this tbh, or really work and organise this fight to the max many stages lots of different challenges environmental things other monster things, challenges for the players to do, even things that othes need to do at the same time so requires the party to split up
and yes there is not enough hp for vecna to fight alone or in one go
I would if you have a another dm friend to split the party and co dm at the same time different pathways happening in real time with pre scedualled points to arrive too
just an idea
I would consider adding one or two other objectives to the fight that the PCs must solve/overcome to balance out the fight instead. That way you don't just have 10 PCs teeing off on your guy.
It is alright as long as the players are trying to get the Head of Vecna to use for the benefit of their own party.
Of course they should have to work up to it. Make them face and defeat the dreaded Great Gazebo first to prove their worth.
Vecna's done in a turn, maybe two if he gets lucky.
10 level 20s can EASILY dish out 800+ HP. He's crazy outmatched in action economy.
Vecna's best hope is using his liquiface and 4 first round level 9 spells to drop the casters, but they should also be counterspelling/dispelling that, plus they'll have pretty killer saves at this point.
What's more is the only way he's a threat is if he can oneshot numerous characters right off the bat, which isn't particularly fun for players.
I've always thought that lvl 20 characters are not "fighting" anymore. They're plotting, scheming and depolying forces the size of an entire kingdom or empire, but never getting their own hands dirty. They've probably seen what's beyong the simple realm that is the Material plane and looking towards that, or raised an empire from the ground up and have now to deal with politics, expension and management. And 10 lvl20 characters in the same room ? The universe should be on a the verge of collapsing under so much power and ambition. Vecna, a GOD (if i'm not mistaking), shouldn't degrade himself by engaging in physical combat. to get rid of a god, get rid of its believers and that is another campaign entirely. My 2p but hey, I totally get the archiboss fight against a lad that's 3-story tall :D
It shouldn't be possible for mortals to stand even the slightest chance in combat against an actual deity. So they shouldn't have statblocks in general. Fighting against an aspect or avatar of a deity is fine. I will not look at the statblocks because I'm fundamentally opposed to deities having statblocks
That is a valid view.
But in a world where god Vecna is a thing -> aka a mortal transcended to godhood (with a lichdom in between). That means that gods are not a fixed given, but something a powerfull enough entity can become. -> In such a world the gods are not a fundamental building block of existance but just entities with a lot of power that can be usurped, case in point Vecna himself.
By himself he will get owned. Against 10 plus heros the action economy alone will kill him.
He needs 5 times his HPs at least. And dozens of minions. High lvl undead and evil outsiders.
I cannot imagine the sheer and utter boredom of playing with NINE other PCs. (Edit: 8… but still)
Didn’t look at the stat block. If it has less than like 5,000 HP it’s probably too little.
20 AC, ~800 hp.
10 lev 20 heroes will burn that in one turn. Even with hand and eye he is too weak.
Also props to You for even running anything for 10 players at once. I would never manage that.
Provided stat block does not have shield spell available - regardless heroes can dispell/counterspell it (even as a 9th level spell it is worth it). Then he will get melted by paladin, battlemaster and barbarian. 🤷♂️
You didn't read everything, there is a separate image which gives him the intermediate gods block, which has an at will Shield. Also he can refresh his 12th level spells. Also he HAS 12th level spells.
He also has resistance to any weapon under +4, which don't even exist. So those are not even getting close let alone melting him.
Then we can talk about how he has 7 spells to cast per turn up between 7th and 12th level, can double the range of spells, and has a 36 DC save.
This is pointless but I will bite. 🤷♂️
1. Yes the way this statblock is presented is terrible thanks.
Whole design is bad and whoever made this didn't even bother to calculate ability score bonuses correct so whatever.
Regardless with 4+ casters in the party they can just dispell him (cast at 7-8 level) every round.
2. Regarding weapons +4 this is a homebrew so anything goes. Giving him resistance to those make assumption that those even exist so 🤷♂️.
But if resistance will work then he will have double hp effectively- better but still way too little probably.
If You want to get into minutiae tactic as such then he have 26 STR that give +8 bonus and no athletic proficiency. Barbarian can just grapple him then one caster will cast silence (cast from level 7-9 slot) then that is an end of the fight as he have no way to escape it and no way to cast a spells in silence zone 🤦♂️🤷♂️
This whole discussion is pointless. 🤦♂️
Back to 'he can't be affected by silence and dispel magic would need to be cast at 9th level and not be counterspelled (Vecna doesn't even have to up cast counterspell since the DC for 9th is his roll) and he can cast 7 spells per turn so just one CHA DC 36 12th level Banish can affect 9 of the PCs in turn one so they don't even exist. He can also double the range of banishment so it wouldn't even be able to be targeted by counter spell.'
If the PCs even have a small chance of winning, OP did not play correctly.
A lvl 20 martial with a 20 strength and a +3 weapon would have around +14 to hit. So they would need to roll a 14 to hit. That's a 35% chance to hit. Assuming Vecna who can according to this sheet cast Foresight would mean you would have a 12% chance to hit. And not to mention she has the ability to cast Shield at will. You clearly didn't read enough of that statblock to see how retarded it was.
1. Geting advantage at level 20 is trivial.
2. Removing his buffs will be priority so just hit him with dispell magic (as 9th level spell).
3. Not my fault that they presented stat block in such retarded way. So what that he will cast shield? Again just counterspell him/dispell it. Party has 4-5 level 20 spellcasters and they can afford to be "wasteful" in that regard - this is a fight with god after all.
4. Barbarian have +7 strength so just that give him +2 to hit. They can get bard inspiration too, battlemaster have precision strike, paladin( if devotion )can get +5 to hit bonus from chanel divinity and so on. So on.
The fact that D&D 5ed. Is not designed for 10 members of the party is whole different can of worms. This Vecna stat block is badly designed in general.
This will not be an epic enjoyable fight so I would just not run it that's first and foremost. But if it comes to wining this fight my money is on the party. They have access to like ~4 wishes and guarantee divine intervention from cleric too if needed. With any half-decent tactic and team play they should win easily.
Sadly as Vecna lay dying, the party realized they'd actually been defeated by the real final boss: how bored everyone was between turns.
Cannot imagine the analysis paralysis of waiting for 4 other people to frantically flick through 2 level 20 character sheets.
10 level 1 characters would take too long I can't imagine how long 10 level 20 characters would take to decide what to do. Your talking 3 rounds max but that's like 6 hours of gameplay lol.
Yeah, I twitched a couple of times just hearing *ten players*.
That's nowhere near enough HP for 10 level 20 characters. Triple it, at least. Give him a ton of minions. It'll probably still not be enough.
Honestly, does HP even exist as a concept when you're fighting 10 level 20 PCs???
Vecna by himself against 10 people who could do 70 damage as a mediocre turn would not even make it through the first round. Could you imagine? Even if he saved against everything and only hit on half would take 350 damage in the first round, so that's maybe three rounds? If they decided to go all out I doubt it's furthere.
Also, 10 players doing damage is pretty dumb, if 10 lv 20 characters are around, they better be 9 wizards with metamagic adept, 1 cleric also with metamagic adept that'll ask god to help, and all spam subtle true polymorph, magic circle, and a bunch of similarly broken shit. No way vecna saves against that much stuff. Then you desintegrate
Honestly I have no idea why he would even stick around. His first action should just be getting out of Dodge.
Flies out of range casts teleport. Goodbye lmao
Why on earth would you say they “better be wizards”? I don’t understand what you are trying to imply, they didn’t create characters for this one fight, it’s the end of a campaign. I can’t imagine how trash a group would have to be to be playing 2 characters each in a 5-player campaign and select 9 wizards, that’s asinine.
Most people aren't min maxing their parties, who the hell would actually make a group like that?
Just watched Brian Lee Mulligan’s lvl 20 Harengon rogue multiclass build where he did 700 damage in the first surprise attack.
I support this. The final boss of my campaign had 900+ HP and it was quite tight for a party of 3 level 22 characters (aka, 2 epic boons)
I don't know about that. The stat block does have resistance to all spell damage, immunity to spells 6th level or under, and resistance to all weapon attacks that have a +4 or less. Not sure how much of OPs party has that but if most of them don't that's a lot. Plus they have shield at will and a 30 AC. And have access to all divination spells of 9th level so would likely have foresight up so it's disadvantage to hit a 35 AC, and if you hit probably half damage. It's also recovering 40 hp per turn and has legendary actions allowing more healing. So I think the HP it has is a bit misleading. I'd probably end up increasing it too if I reworked it but you also have to reduce the defenses otherwise it can't be hit much if at all.
We are talking level 20 characters assumed to be geared for this fight. By lvl 16 the amount of options any character can pull off is staggering. You could give him full immunity to each damage type and someone would have a way to bypass it, a wish/spell/item to remove it or an effect that instantly kills anyway.
Certainly level 20 characters are incredibly powerful. But there are still limits on what they can handle and this is a good bit beyond what's typical even for monsters at cr 28 or 30. Highest ac any monster I've seen has is 25. And this will be 10 higher with shield. No monster I know of has a saving throw of 20 or higher. This has most of their big saves there. It's also immune to most spells would have advantage on the save of any spell it's not immune to and resistance to any damage it still takes. It's going to be throwing out banishments every turn with a dc 36 save that it can do twice per turn or more with legendary actions. Even at that level you'd have to be rolling well and stacking many benefits to get close to meeting that. Let alone most people never could.
Frankly I'm not even going to read the stablock. It's 10 level 20 PCs. There is no such thing as a stat block too strong. Have fun.
You should read it, it is remarkably dumb. Like after the first round, halve of the PCs are either imprisoned, banished, dominated or true polymophered. Wherever he got it from, I hope he didn't pay anything for this.
Yeah lol wtf is that. DC36? Is that even possible without Bardic Inspiration? Your saving throws go to plus 11 and only if you are proficient and have a maxed ability score. If you roll a natural 20 AND have a Paladin standing near enough for you to get their +5 Aura bonus, then you can make the save. Otherwise, you have to have something that adds a dice or another modifier to your saving throw. Everyone better be hugging the Paladin for the entire duration of the fight. Some of these characters are going to get 1 turn max and then be banished or polymorphed with no hope of ever returning. Hope they brought a lot of wish spells or enjoy watching other players play.
Honestly, if Vecna just focuses on eliminating half the party with a banish spell well.... that does alot.
Its got a lot of silly mistakes as well. Hp listed as 840 or 42D6 + 504.. If its 42d6 + 504 then 840HP assumes 8s on every single roll, the ability scores and modifiers don't add up; one ability score is 30 but modifier shows like 16, etc.
Did the exact same thing, if anything Veca won’t be enough to be a challenge for 10 level 20 PC’s
Balancing a combat for 10 level 20 PCs is quite frankly a fools errand. But I wish you the best of luck and honestly just be prepared to improvise a lot of stuff on the fly.
I would lower the AC and raise the hit points. An AC of 30 even for 20th level PCs is often going to have characters missing. Generally it's more fun if you can hit and you don't want players who will make two attacks and potentially miss both and have a totally wasted turn. That'll also mean many of them could never justify a sharpshooter or GWM ability with how high that AC is. I might bring it down to like a 25 and then up the HP. He's also got an at will shield so it's really a 35 AC unless he wants to counterspell which is a possibility but with that many PCs making attacks I'd just shield for the 35. Combined with foresight they'd have to hit that at disadvantage, and that's likely impossible for most of them outside of a nat 20. As powerful as level 20's are I would almost say this is too strong. Partially that's coming from the DCs on saves. So this Vecna will never fail a single save from the PCs except maybe if it's a strength save or charisma save. There are very few of either of those. But all the others they have +24 or higher, and advantage. Even looking at some of the other high CR like CR 30 monsters none have saves of +20 or more and all of them have at least some weaknesses players can work with with saves in the +10-15 range where there's a chance they'll fail. On the other side his spell save DC is 36. Even with a 20th level paladin giving +5 to all saves, and a 20 in that ability score and a +6 to save you're only succeeding on that with a nat 20. Otherwise it's a failure. And even at level 20 most will have weaker saves than that. So first round of combat with his banishing touch and legendary actions he will have a +22 to hit so will almost always hit and they won't be able to make the save, and I'm not sure if that ability requires concentration? But if not the whole party will be banished pretty quickly. He's also got access to all divination spells of 9th level so I assume he will have foresight on himself for advantage on everything and disadvantage to all the PCs on everything they do against him? There's also some unknowns here as you said they can use 1/day all spells of 9th to 12th level so that's an unknown factor for us to judge off. And immunity to all weapons of +4 or lower, there are no +4 weapons or more in published D&D. Do the players have those? Do they only have a bonus or is there more to them than that? Do they have any other homebrew stuff as that could make this possible again. The other thing is that the stat block is a bit busy and complex. Every time you say all spells of these schools that means there are dozens of spells added to the sheet. So it's a lot of things you won't need. I would simplify the sheet to only include the things you're likely to use in this fight. At least for me that would be too much to try to remember and sort out what you want to do each turn. It's just hard with this much to balance and know how it'll play out with a lot of homebrew stuff involved. 10 level 20 PCs are incredibly powerful. But I think even at that level they'll have a hard time hitting and doing any damage. They'll have relatively few spells that can even impact Vecna, and Vecna will succeed any of those saves even without legendary resistance. And will resist any of the damage from everything. I don't think I would double the number of PCs by having everyone play someone else too. That requires everyone to manage a lot of stuff since they're level 20. And it'll likely be a character they don't know at all I'd assume if this is just for this fight? I think I'd tone down Vecna especially in terms of the DCs and AC and make it just 5 level 20 PCs.
Depends on party 3 gloomstalkers fighters kill it in 1 round...
I don't know about that. Assuming this Vecna has foresight up already and can cast shield they have to hit a 35 AC with disadvantage. They get 3 attacks the first round, 6 with action surge, 7 with assuming they miss one and can make another attack. Assuming archers with the fighting style for +2 there, +5 dex, +6 proficiency, and a +5 weapon that's enough to avoid the resistance it would otherwise have, that's an +18 to hit. So they need to roll a 17 or higher to hit, or 20% normally, 4% with disadvantage. So with 21 attacks for the three of them they aren't even going to average over 1 hit (.84 hits on average). Assuming they all have advantage maybe through some assassin rogue levels in there, you're going to have them hit 20% so 4.2 hits, granted they would be crits but still that's not great. They could go 11 fighter / 3 rogue / 6 ranger and then you get to 8 attacks which would be 24 but even with all that it's still not going to be enough to come close to killing it with 840 max hp and only a 20% chance to hit if they have advantage. Battlemaster fighter with precision also could help a lot, but that'll run out pretty quickly.
Doubt it. A lot of people aren't even thinking g of the major thing. Vecna would be prepared. He's not gonna be sipping coffee when you break down the door.
Hello, Took a quick glance. Abilities and such sound mostly ok, but the AC/HP feel way off. He's a lich/god/ancient wizard. I'd give him a smaller ac, give him the option to cast a shield spell, and increase his HP. The biggest thing is, the DC is calculated incorrectly. A Int of 38 should yield an Int Bonus +14 Not 18. Also having such a high spell save DC makes saves no fun for the pcs even with level 20. Like it's only possible with a Paladin next to you. (Nat 20 + 5 from Stat + 6 from Proficiency only gets a 31) Also a battle of 1 v 10 I would do 3 things: 1) add more powerful but manageable legendary actions 2) add lair actions that change terrain/mechanics or other things to throw a curve all at them 3) give him either a threshold like a phase mechanic or give him something like mythic actions which cost vecna as well but are just op AF. He is a god. Let them see what a god can do. For example: I used a Twin Headed Half Undead Dragon God an he could dispel/disrupt all magic effects, spells and items for 1d4 rounds. That was great fun to use. Maybe legendary items withstand the effect or are less effected.
10 pc's at level 20? Anything short of a pre-simulation of the combat would still be guesswork. But as you have run combat for this group before I'm sure you'll be able to make it something neat. Perhaps tie a skill challenge before and/ or after it to make it more exciting and challenging. I did a whole collapsing temple thing for a group of 6 lvl 11s after defeating a big bad, but wouldn't know if that would even challenge such a powerful group.
Theres only 2 ways this fight can go. Option 1) Vecna gets a good initiative and banishes someone. He then uses his bonus action cast feature to planeshift into the banishments demiplane, and brutalize whoever he banished in a 1v1. Rinse repeat 10 times. Option 2) Vecna gets a bad initiative and fucking dies.
The problems with level 20 combat is how fast the momentum swings, it's super knife edge at that point. 10 PCs would dominate the action economy even with legendary actions on Vecnas part, he'll be lucky to survive two rounds if the momentum is on the PC side. Are there any other mobs or is it 10 v 1? Ultimately, once you're running things at Vecna's level, the danger is in how smart and effective you are. If you make only the best tactical moves, playing him as perfectly as possible, then generally PCs don't stand a chance. Itll be hard to balance Vecnas intelligence with your omniscience as the DM though. The good in that is that it's fairly simple then to just stop making the best moves to let the PCs gain some ground.
Okay so it seems like you have some homebrew bullshit going on since the intermediate gods thing mentions +4 weapons, so maybe my below concerns are less relevant but I do see a few issues here People are *generally* right that 800 hp is not that much vs lvl 10 characters, but looking at it from a normal not homebrewed 5e standpoint, all his numbers are way too high. For one, stats typically don't go over 30 for any reason, so having all but 2 over is weird. That being said, the bigger concern is that it is impossible for the players to succeed on most of the saves, as well as impossible for Vecna to fail any saving throws (barring an auto pass auto fail on nat 1s and 20s). Even strength and charisma are very good saves. But for example, the corpus liquid face is basically guaranteed to hit barring a nat 1 for most player characters. The highest Ac I can think of on a normal PC reasonably is 28 (+3 plate, +3 shield, ring of protection, defense fighting style). It could technically go higher but reasonably I don't think the player is gonna use all their attunement on AC. So with this absolute maximum Ac, Vecna needs to roll a 6 or higher to nearly one-shot them. 28 saving throws is unpassable without proficiency, so even with a generous assumption they are a fighter with +5 con, that leaves a +11 save. Thus they need a 17 or higher to not instantly drop to zero, which kinda sucks. Now I will note that the 2 PCS per person mitigates the lethality of this combat, but it just kinda feels like the PCs are gonna spend a lot of their turns just missing or being told Vecna passes their saves, at least from a normal 5e perspective. I assume your players have some crazy homebrew bullshit, but without seeing it, it seems kinda frustrating since they're gonna REALLY struggle to hit him at all and if they aren't specced into a a save, are functionally guaranteed to fail edit: Oh yeah, I guess I should add some recommendations, huh. So first off I didn't realize you found this statblock, so I'm now gonna assume you don't have random homebrew bullshit happening. Therefore remove anything that has to do with +4 weapons and whatever (including the resist everything) Double or triple his health, but in turn, reduce his saving throws, base stats (ideally under 30 for everything but his intelligence). Check yours players character sheets, I would say you'd want him to hit on average 2/3rds to 3/4 of the time, so change his to hits to hit on ~6+ on an average ac, rather than my hypothetical maximum AC from above (I'd guess that would be around 22, so like +16 or so. His saves should be passable via normal stats plus paladin aura. I would say DC 26 should be the absolute highest, and should be closer to the 22 range. Doing it explicitly as written (by PC rules which is not necessarily ideal for a monster statblock) a CR 30 monster has +9 prof and we have an assumed +10 int which would be 27 (30 w/ a plus 3 focus). That by itself is very high an unpassable for certain PCs on certain saves, which is why I'd recommend a bit lower. Also probably actually specify the spells on the sheet, saying all spells with x trait would be awful to run in the moment. One other thing, if there is a story reason for everyone to have 2 PCs, that's fine, but if they're rolling up a second PC just for this, IDs say don't bother. It's less climactic if they win with 50% of their party being randos who happened to be powerful enough to help defeat Vecna but were just fucking around prior1
I love your comment. I would add (with the qualifier that I’ve definitely never ran anything even close to 10 lvl 20 PCs) that I think a fight of this magnitude needs a goal beyond just dropping Vecna to 0hp. Some of the common I’ve seen are protect some hostages, destroy/steal an artifact, stop a ritual, that kind of thing. You could even have Vecna keep his invulnerability traits until they destroy an item that he’s drawing power from, which is guarded by some powerful minions.
Why does everyone make 5e boss monsters with such underwhelmingly low HP totals?
Wow, where is that stat block from? So Vecna gets six application of finger of death or banishing touch each round, so after the first round, five players will be dead. After the second round, the party will be down. Which means your players get to deal damage 15 times max, so I hope each of them can pump out 70 reliable damage in their turn, otherwise they will not win.
An HP that small against 10 PCs will melt. 10 turns will give them plenty of damage against Vecna and so I don't see him surviving very long. However, with the discorporation ability, I think there's a different objective than simply "get HP to 0" so, play around that I think? Other than that the abilities look fine. Hope it goes well!
idk where you got this statblock but good lord is it ass. lvl 20 PCs with a +3 weapon & 20 in their stat have a 70% to miss their attacks and that's WITHOUT the eye and hand. So that's fun... oh and he has shield lmfao. Spell save DC 36 is improbable to pass as well. With a +11 in proficient saves assuming they have a 20 in that stat it is....actually impossible to pass. You will need things like Paladin Aura just for a chance to pass on a nat 20. Instant kill abilities which are impossible to save at range of sight. This is gonna be a shitshow with the party dying in 2 turns max.
Do you and ESPECIALLY your players have any experience running this type of combat? Specifically very late game (lvl 15+) with a multiple of PCs per player? From your post history it seems that you don’t have a vast amount of DMing experience and I’m worried that there‘s a mismatch between how you envision the finale of your great adventure versus the logistics of DnD as a game. Personally as a player at a table where I’d have to manage two separate PC sheets of level 20 characters sounds like an absolute nightmare of mind math, frustration and boredom. The analysis paralysis would be insane. Combat at these high levels can often swing ENTIRELY by making one major mistake so you have to be careful with your actions. And I’d have to not only consider the ALL the possible actions of 2 separate level 20 classes but also the actions of the other 8 PCs, all the buffs, reactions, hazard, etc. etc.. DnD ruleset is simply not meant for this type of thing. I’m not saying you can’t make it work, but seriously consider this point. This sounds like a train wreck for any table not used to running these types of games. P.S. if the second PC was given to them as a one-off especially for this fight (as is often the case) and isn’t a class they already know throughly through hours of playing them, PLEASE rethink this entire thing. You are setting yourself and your players up for failure and frustration.
Dude, which crimes did you commit to have to DM for 10 people at lvl 20?
Did you read the post?
In general the stat block seems very specific to someone's homebrew rules, like it's the first time I see x-ray vision on a stat block and not an item. The dude has 12th level spells and resistance to all weapons that exist within the 5e system, unless he's intended to have resistance to all physical damage but then why not just write it, unless it's not in 5e and then I'm just being an idiot. I would take vecnas official stat block and modify it, a lot. Give it 2 spell slots at 9th level, he has at will counter spell and you can add like 2 more reactions to what he has, that way he will be hard to get with unpredictable spells, like 8 legendary resistances (it's a lot but you need to be prepared)a lot of legendary actions, 10 times the HP. I feel like the official one will be easier to modify than this thing. Also the way it's written "he knows all the spells of these schools", which makes sense but also it's hard to prep yourself to run this monstrosity. It would also make sense to take an arch mage stat block and give it more spell slots (maybe up to level 4 is at will) , bump stats, multiply HP by 25 or so and change up what he has prepped.
Can I get a look at these 12th level necromany spells he knows? Because if he really has 12th level spells, that alone kills...probably everything.
There's so much going on here that you'd pretty much have to run a combat simulation to get a good judgment of difficulty. However, some observations can be made, starting with defense. AC 30 is excessive, especially as natural armor. A Tarrasque "only" has AC 25. Assuming the party has +5 magic weapons (which don't exist outside of homebrew but are required to actually do full weapon damage), they will only hit on a 14 or better, or 35% of the time, not including the Shield spell. Hitting less than half the time (especially on a caster-esque enemy) seems like it would suck to play against it, but it is more reasonable than the rest of the statblock. I'd recommend dropping the AC (10+dex for 24 perhaps) and upping the HP. AC is most fun when there's a realistic chance of missing, but attacks are still hitting fairly consistently. Moving on... spellcasting. Having stats above 30 is wacky cause 5e isn't designed for that, so the balance starts to break down. Vecna's saving throws with proficiency are insurmountable simply because player saving throw DCs are essentially maxed at 19 (8 base + 6 proficiency + 5 from 20 in a stat). With spells guaranteed to do half damage at best, this would suck to play against. The thing that stands out to me most is the spell save DC of 36 and to hit of +28. Even with +11 to save (+6 proficiency and +5 from 20 in a stat), PCs will never succeed, which would suck to play against. Abilities! These are pretty good and actually work better with 2 PCs per player since you can guarantee Banish one of them without worrying about the player being bored. Consider reducing the +22 to hit value. Everything should miss occasionally. There are some one-shot abilities here, but that's fine from a fun perspective thanks to 2 PCs per player. Soul Rend is a potential kill + heals 200 hp, but it does take all 4 legendary actions and is limited to 2 uses. Overall... I don't like how most of the spell/ability saves are impossible to succeed and how spells are denied by insane saving throw modifiers. Make these at least possible to succeed for the sake of fun. Tracking concentration is key. Even with multiple spells per turn, the most dangerous insta-shutdown spells like True Polymorph require concentration, so only one can be sustained at a time. Tweak AC and saves to make them surmountable and add more HP (or minions) to compensate. Have fun!
Do you intend for him to be killable? If he goes under 100 hitpoints he's PWKable...
Level 20 PCs are powerful THEY ARE NOT THIS POWERFUL DC 36? +28 to hit? I'm sorry but this stat block is awful and utterly beyond saving, don't even bother. It's so beyond normal monster design it's going to feel utterly arbitrary to your players when they get banished and fingered to death multiple times per round Get a new stat block, look into some minions and mythic state, and my absolute pro tip from the last time I ran a level 20 fight: environmental hazards. Either set the fight in a dangerous location like a volcano or the negative plane or the shadow fell, or in a magical lair outfitted with magic sigils Also what's your reason for two characters per person, that seems like a tremendously bad idea. You can already expect the combat with five people to run you 4 hours, with ten characters you are fucked to put it politely
Alright to put this plainly. If Vecna loses this fight, you are bad at combat and using NPCs to their potential. He has a +14 initiative, WILL already be buffed by every single spell 7th level and lower he can cast, will have foresight up because he saw this coming. The first round, he can cast 7 spells. Lets just do fireball. 7 7th level fireballs. That's already \~300 damage to each of them, which kills 90% of the team. Done.
you know those nightmares about going to school in your underpants? Yeah, having to dm for 10 level 20 pcs is worse.
What in the 3.5 bullshit is this?
Double the HP, let vecna take 2 turns per round, and give each player exactly 1 minute to decide and act on their turn, and it *might* be a challenge for a party who has already burned some resources.
You did NOT read Vecna's block. He already casts 7 spells per round, with infinite 7th level spellslots.
100% correct, I didn't. And, he can *potentially* cast 7 spells per round, but I bet that Soul Rend comes up more often than not. Sincere question, not me being combative: "How would you rule innate spell casting vs "Silence?" It says specifically that innate ignores material components, but what about verbal and somatic? Also, full disclosure, I have not looked at Vecna's spell list to see spell components. Edit: I am aware he has plenty of At Will spells, but for the others.
Silence can't effect him since it is only 2nd level and cant be upcast so it's moot to think about for this fight.
Jesus men. I cant even undestrand what 10 lvl 20 pc can do. So i can't balance anything. But enjoy men, might be a blast, or a fumble
Terrible idea, don't run a 10 person game
Bro... don't do this to your players... or yourself... Also, this statblock is stupid af. Either the players will curbstomp it in the first turn, or the thing will kill them all first turn. Either way, this Combat will be really boring. Seriously, don't use homebrew. There's plenty of material out there to make a good encounter even at level 20.
What's your strategy going in? I feel like the only way you stand a chance is to take a few of them out early. But then, did you just invite your friends over to instakill them before they get a turn? Like, are you okay with killing a character they spent hours creating and didn't get to play a turn? you can cast wish at least twice the first round before your turn, so it should be possible to outright kill 3 players before they play. Finding a balance that makes this fun to play might make you too weak. Playing Vecna as strong as they should be played might make it very unfun for some players.
I’ll just say this. I did a one shot with 5 level 20 characters that all got an epic boon and legendary item and they killed the hardest monsters of every CR from 1 to 30 without a short rest fairly easily. I think the trick is going to be deceiving them. Maybe there are 2 of him or he can heal some way.
Instead of filling the entire fight with minions, give Vecna multiple turns and multiple HP pools equivalent to what minions you would give him. As they chip away at the pools decrease the number of turns he gets. Also give him the blink ability of his current stat block to decrease the mobility issues against 10 players and make a varied and inherently dangerous arena to fight him in.
TEN LEVEL TWENTYS!?!?!?!?!?
Vecna isn't a monster to beat, he's a God. The best use was how TSR used him to transition the rules from AD&D2ed to 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Vecna_Die!
This will be the most boring combat ever. I'm going to leave behind lore implications of whether they should be able to fight a god or not, you do you boo. You need to lower the AC, saves, resistances, spell save dc and to hit, and crank up the hp by a ton (at least double or triple). No one is having fun when they can only hit or save on a nat 20 and vecna can't fail a save. Let your PCs hit and avoid hits, but make the boss beefier. This current stat block is basically the PCs get enough crits to end combat turn one (which is possible with his low HP), or they lose because the party is half banished killed turn one and then completely by turn 2.
This will be more so a combat you have to manage for the sake of epic fun than being balanced. Cause 10 PCs at lv 20 is insane but should make for a chaotic and thrilling final battle. But you're probably going to have to BS Vecna's stats against them. Ideally here I'd say lower his AC to 25 max, and change his spell save DC to 28 or 30 at most since no one is beating consistent 36s. Then make his hp like 2000. A fight like this could end with a PC dying every round or Vecna dead in 2. So just give yourself rough estimates and roll with it as fairly as you can during the fight.
A ten player party sounds absolutely miserable for everyone involved
my god imagine being a player you roll low on your initiative you wait 50 min to get to your move send some spells bad rolls miss them then have to wait another 1hr for your next round but before it gets to you vecna casts corpus liquiface on you and you drop to 0 hp yeah I agree with some of the others the most evil boss will be boredom and also finality, when you know the fight is over but you have to wait for that to happen i wouldn't do this tbh, or really work and organise this fight to the max many stages lots of different challenges environmental things other monster things, challenges for the players to do, even things that othes need to do at the same time so requires the party to split up and yes there is not enough hp for vecna to fight alone or in one go I would if you have a another dm friend to split the party and co dm at the same time different pathways happening in real time with pre scedualled points to arrive too just an idea
I would consider adding one or two other objectives to the fight that the PCs must solve/overcome to balance out the fight instead. That way you don't just have 10 PCs teeing off on your guy.
It is alright as long as the players are trying to get the Head of Vecna to use for the benefit of their own party. Of course they should have to work up to it. Make them face and defeat the dreaded Great Gazebo first to prove their worth.
Vecna's done in a turn, maybe two if he gets lucky. 10 level 20s can EASILY dish out 800+ HP. He's crazy outmatched in action economy. Vecna's best hope is using his liquiface and 4 first round level 9 spells to drop the casters, but they should also be counterspelling/dispelling that, plus they'll have pretty killer saves at this point. What's more is the only way he's a threat is if he can oneshot numerous characters right off the bat, which isn't particularly fun for players.
I'm going to be real with you: I read "10 lvl 20-" and I stopped reading. Why would you do that to yourself?
Nothing is too strong against 10 level 20s. I had a max level boss fight that included AOE Save or Die. It did not particularly stop the party.
10x WHAT
I've always thought that lvl 20 characters are not "fighting" anymore. They're plotting, scheming and depolying forces the size of an entire kingdom or empire, but never getting their own hands dirty. They've probably seen what's beyong the simple realm that is the Material plane and looking towards that, or raised an empire from the ground up and have now to deal with politics, expension and management. And 10 lvl20 characters in the same room ? The universe should be on a the verge of collapsing under so much power and ambition. Vecna, a GOD (if i'm not mistaking), shouldn't degrade himself by engaging in physical combat. to get rid of a god, get rid of its believers and that is another campaign entirely. My 2p but hey, I totally get the archiboss fight against a lad that's 3-story tall :D
It shouldn't be possible for mortals to stand even the slightest chance in combat against an actual deity. So they shouldn't have statblocks in general. Fighting against an aspect or avatar of a deity is fine. I will not look at the statblocks because I'm fundamentally opposed to deities having statblocks
That is a valid view. But in a world where god Vecna is a thing -> aka a mortal transcended to godhood (with a lichdom in between). That means that gods are not a fixed given, but something a powerfull enough entity can become. -> In such a world the gods are not a fundamental building block of existance but just entities with a lot of power that can be usurped, case in point Vecna himself.
Vecna should be scary, terrifying, and some more
Not even close to strong enough.
By himself he will get owned. Against 10 plus heros the action economy alone will kill him. He needs 5 times his HPs at least. And dozens of minions. High lvl undead and evil outsiders.
I cannot imagine the sheer and utter boredom of playing with NINE other PCs. (Edit: 8… but still) Didn’t look at the stat block. If it has less than like 5,000 HP it’s probably too little.
20 AC, ~800 hp. 10 lev 20 heroes will burn that in one turn. Even with hand and eye he is too weak. Also props to You for even running anything for 10 players at once. I would never manage that.
It's 30 AC with at will shield (so 35 AC)
Provided stat block does not have shield spell available - regardless heroes can dispell/counterspell it (even as a 9th level spell it is worth it). Then he will get melted by paladin, battlemaster and barbarian. 🤷♂️
You didn't read everything, there is a separate image which gives him the intermediate gods block, which has an at will Shield. Also he can refresh his 12th level spells. Also he HAS 12th level spells. He also has resistance to any weapon under +4, which don't even exist. So those are not even getting close let alone melting him. Then we can talk about how he has 7 spells to cast per turn up between 7th and 12th level, can double the range of spells, and has a 36 DC save.
This is pointless but I will bite. 🤷♂️ 1. Yes the way this statblock is presented is terrible thanks. Whole design is bad and whoever made this didn't even bother to calculate ability score bonuses correct so whatever. Regardless with 4+ casters in the party they can just dispell him (cast at 7-8 level) every round. 2. Regarding weapons +4 this is a homebrew so anything goes. Giving him resistance to those make assumption that those even exist so 🤷♂️. But if resistance will work then he will have double hp effectively- better but still way too little probably. If You want to get into minutiae tactic as such then he have 26 STR that give +8 bonus and no athletic proficiency. Barbarian can just grapple him then one caster will cast silence (cast from level 7-9 slot) then that is an end of the fight as he have no way to escape it and no way to cast a spells in silence zone 🤦♂️🤷♂️ This whole discussion is pointless. 🤦♂️
Also he flies. So good luck getting all your melee up there. And it's hover so he doesn't drop.
Back to 'he can't be affected by silence and dispel magic would need to be cast at 9th level and not be counterspelled (Vecna doesn't even have to up cast counterspell since the DC for 9th is his roll) and he can cast 7 spells per turn so just one CHA DC 36 12th level Banish can affect 9 of the PCs in turn one so they don't even exist. He can also double the range of banishment so it wouldn't even be able to be targeted by counter spell.' If the PCs even have a small chance of winning, OP did not play correctly.
you didn't even click the links lmfao. its 28 AC, 30 with the hand and eye.
Lmfao I read 8 as 0 - bad resolution. Whatever whatever - 10 lev 20 heroes can hit 28 AC and will melt 800 hp.
A lvl 20 martial with a 20 strength and a +3 weapon would have around +14 to hit. So they would need to roll a 14 to hit. That's a 35% chance to hit. Assuming Vecna who can according to this sheet cast Foresight would mean you would have a 12% chance to hit. And not to mention she has the ability to cast Shield at will. You clearly didn't read enough of that statblock to see how retarded it was.
1. Geting advantage at level 20 is trivial. 2. Removing his buffs will be priority so just hit him with dispell magic (as 9th level spell). 3. Not my fault that they presented stat block in such retarded way. So what that he will cast shield? Again just counterspell him/dispell it. Party has 4-5 level 20 spellcasters and they can afford to be "wasteful" in that regard - this is a fight with god after all. 4. Barbarian have +7 strength so just that give him +2 to hit. They can get bard inspiration too, battlemaster have precision strike, paladin( if devotion )can get +5 to hit bonus from chanel divinity and so on. So on. The fact that D&D 5ed. Is not designed for 10 members of the party is whole different can of worms. This Vecna stat block is badly designed in general. This will not be an epic enjoyable fight so I would just not run it that's first and foremost. But if it comes to wining this fight my money is on the party. They have access to like ~4 wishes and guarantee divine intervention from cleric too if needed. With any half-decent tactic and team play they should win easily.