Playful Darkness Strategy *SPOILERS*

[thelebk]

I am playing normal difficulty (first run) with a Paladin/Angelic Path PC, Seela, Woljif, Nenio, Lann, Arushalae. I have all NPCs set to auto level so their builds are sub-optimal with no teamwork feats, no critical debuffs like evil eye, poor spell selection etc. I play in turn-based mode. Given this setup I did not think I would have any chance of defeating Playful Darkness. The greater shadows that spawn with Playful have mediocre AC so they were dead in a round or two. I kept summons on Playful while I buffed and cleaned up the adds. Key summoning was belt of demonic shadow on Nenio and the tankard of free spirit on Woljif. Every time Nenio cast a 6+ spell, even a worthless one, it spawned a shadow demon. The shadow demon uses touch attacks so it can actually hit Playful, and Playful seems to aggro on him first. I can just re-summon him each round between spells and scrolls. The Azata summoned by the tankard was also boss. It puts up holy aura and summons a bunch of azata adds. The main azata uses some kind of ability each round which would strike Playful for damage twice. Huge earth elementals summoned by Nenio occasionally hit Playful as well.
Lann could use true strike and then hit Playful once the following round, enough to overcome the enemy's regeneration. While I had no party member who can cast death ward, My PC has the mythic ability when casting a heal spell (any kind) while Sword of Heaven is active which eliminates all negative levels on the target. Once I had all buff on my Paladin PC (greater heroism, divine power, divine favor, greater angelic form + all normal combat buffs) his ranged positive energy ray could hit Playful for decent damage up to six times. Arushalae with sense vital up only hit playful every other round but she made it count when she did. She marked Playful as quarry and then shared favored enemy bond with the rest of the party. I used Woljif to cast spells from scrolls, keep haste going, cast displacement on the shadow demon summons etc. With all buffs up, radiance sword, enlarge, weapon bond set to brilliant energy Seelah was able to land the occasional hit from behind summons for good damage. It was also helpful that I had Mark of Justice going and available for recast as needed.
About 2/3 of the way through the battle Nenio got lucky with her mind fog spell piercing spell resistance and Playful rolled a natural one on his save. She then followed it up with a lucky Insanity spell where playful failed with his +17 (debuffed) will save versus DC 30. While this was some lucky CC, I think I would have beat Playful anyway, it just would have taken longer. Once Playful was down I eventually gave up on coup-de-grace and had one of the Paladins pop off channel energy (harm undead). That ended Playful's regeneration and he died. The fight took 45 minutes and was exciting. I'm not sure this strategy will work on Core+ difficulty however. How did you guys deal with Playful Darkness?

[gunman]

Channel positive energy to harm undead does too little damage to him on core. Also single target touch spells are too risky as they can miss or be resisted. I found scrolls of mass heal to be the most effective, also I had in inventory several scrolls of tsunami that works too. Other than that, have Lann use True Strike and attack him every other round (make sure he bypasses DR with Mark of Justice or other means), and another character use the talking weapon (with brilliant energy). The other party members were just hitting air (at least they helped with flanking, teamwork feats, tanking)

[dmitry.khalenkow]

There is very easy strategy to beat this creature and any non undead boss for the Lich. 2nd level spell "Corrupted blood" prevents ANY boss from attacking you for few rounds. Always hits. No spell resistance.
So:
1. Corrupted blood.
2. Quickened true strike from rods. + maximized/bolstered hellfire ray.
3. Channel positive energy to finish.
4. Win in 3 rounds.

[thelebk]

Aye I heard this fight is not as challenging for Lich mythic path.

[chrismyco]

channel postive energy does ton of damage to him. did you take mythic chanelling? and are wearing the positive energy +2d6? killed him easily on hard. he doesn't have a lot hip points.

summon creature. he tries to kill those first. then send your tanks with last stand. make sure they had death ward, and you can just grind him down with positive energy. i had seelah and the oracle. and they ground him to dust.

[T0AD]

Originally posted by アンジェル:

Sapmming channeling positive energy did surprisingly the job for me.

I see a lot of people saying this works. But it's only doing about 14ish damage to him when I use it. Is there something I'm missing?

[Blind Reverend]

Easy strategy, ignore it and kill it after you free drezen a second time. Only strategy is buffing up and AE damage undead the ghost adds. If you have no tank spam it every round with summons.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by Toad:

Originally posted by アンジェル:

Sapmming channeling positive energy did surprisingly the job for me.

I see a lot of people saying this works. But it's only doing about 14ish damage to him when I use it. Is there something I'm missing?

A big boost give those hats which enhance positive channeling. I have my party always equipped those until late game. Also my party is with two characters minimum who do the channeling. Per channel at that level, depending on the difficulty, 20-40 dmg happens quite often while the main effect is negating their regeneration.

[T0AD]

Originally posted by アンジェル:

Originally posted by Toad:

I see a lot of people saying this works. But it's only doing about 14ish damage to him when I use it. Is there something I'm missing?

A big boost give those hats which enhance positive channeling. I have my party always equipped those until late game. Also my party is with two characters minimum who do the channeling. Per channel at that level, depending on the difficulty, 20-40 dmg happens quite often while the main effect is negating their regeneration.

Ah okay, that makes more sense. That'll be a strategy to keep in mind if I do another playthrough.

Originally posted by Blind Reverend:

Easy strategy, ignore it and kill it after you free drezen a second time. Only strategy is buffing up and AE damage undead the ghost adds. If you have no tank spam it every round with summons.

I wasn't even aware you could skip him. I try to go down the other tunnel, but the second I get into a fight he also aggros

[Elnidfse]

"Use summons"[i.imgur.com]

[Babbles]

Originally posted by Elnidfse:

"Use summons"[i.imgur.com]

hang on - he is an undead demon of magic?