D&D: ‘Phandelver and Below’s Godlet Has a Disappointing Endgame Battle
At the end of Phandelver and Below, players will run into a sliver of divine power refracted into reality. And it’s kind of a let down.
D&D and boss fights are hard to pull off. For starters, the encounter has to be much harder than you think, often. And it generally has to involve more than one creature. Because one big thing often just means it gets curb-stomped.
But then on top of that, the boss has to do interesting things. It can’t just be a race to deal the most damage, or if it is, the damage has got to feel like it could be meaningful. This is why it’s something of a surprise, but not wholly unexpected that the “final boss” of the new Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk is kind of a milquetoast.
Phandelver and Below – Attack and Dethrone Godlets For Breakfast
So spoilers ahoy, obviously. Seriously for real though.
Alright, now that you’re warned. Let’s talk about the end of the adventure. Over the course of the adventure, you learn some pretty amazing things. All in all, the storyline of the adventure is fantastic. It’s one of the better ones WotC has produced in a while.
It’s a ton of fun to play through. The pacing is pretty great. There’s no sense of rushing or flailing about. The adventure breathes and lets you get to know the NPCs that you’ll be trying to rescue. And to the adventure’s credits, there are plenty of challenging, even harrowing encounters in it. There’s a fight with a psionically enhanced goblin that can be really challenging midway through the adventure. Same with a confrontation with Mind Flayer fanatics who are using the powers of the Far Realm.
It all culminates in a confrontation with a refraction of divinity. The godlet Ilvaash, a new deity being worshipped/summoned by these creatures. And it’s supposed to be a big challenge for the 12th level party at the end of the adventure. There’s a very climactic setup, when the PCs think the adventure is over and done with, they run into one last foe out for revenge.
But the Refraction of Ilvaash is kind of a punk.
For a CR 15 creature, it doesn’t deal a ton of damage. It can catch some foes in a stunning blast, and can deal around 50 damage on its turn, pretty reliably. But that’s all it has going for it. Now, creative DMs will mess around with the fact that this being has three castings of the Modify Memory, to try and incapacitate foes and rewrite their memories. But all of that just leads to fewer PCs being able to act. Which can be challenging if you’re also fighting a Purple Worm that you failed to kill in the first place.
But, if it’s doing that, it’s not dealing its paltry 25 damage per attack. And it only has 199 hit points on average, with an AC of 11. This means it’s going to go down to focused fire pretty quickly. Especially since it’s so easy to hit.
At any rate, DMs will find some interesting foes to play around with in the adventure, the final boss just isn’t necessarily one of them.
Of course, it’s just a sliver of the ultimate power. So maybe you can cook it up a little stronger.
