--- DEAD STARS SPOILER ---

Hey guys, how is your experience regarding the combat encounters with Miss Book?

She has almost ridiculous stats in regard to her defensive capabilities (i.e. a soak of 28 against ranged weapons without any armour (thus making Pen futile) and regenerates 2D5+5 Wounds IIRC). Even a Deathwatch group should have difficulties against her…

My PCs encountered her twice (as she has Fate Points). In the first encounter I somehow thought she regenerated 1D5 Wounds instead of 2D5+5, but still the fight took a whole session. She was finally overcome in melee, after being hit repeatedly by the Guardsman’s Power Fist (including multiple Righteous Fury!).

The second encounter was in one of the mirror realities and I included some Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons in the vicinity of the encounter to give them a chance. After being hit several times by Krack Missiles and finally even an Autocannon, I decided she is dead, though according to the rules she was not by far…

How did your PCs fare against this indestructible Slaught Destructor?

I can only tell you I look forward to finding out

Is that Slaught ***** (sorry, it was too funny to say) equipped with a disintegrating weapon?

InquisitorAlexel said:

Interestingly, her offensive capabilities are modest compared to her defensive capabilities and that is the only reason the first fight took so long. She has some sort of (Ghostlight) bracers that shot "not so powerful beams" (though it penetrates all armour) for ranged combat and "just" her "hands" for melee. Both do not have the Disintegrate special rule and are far from the power of the "nightmare tech" often encoutered with the Slaught.

In the second fight Miss Book disarmed the groups Psyker, who wielded Master Nonsuch's Necrotic Sceptre, and used it herself (three degrees of success…). It was the moment I began sweating and worried about having a total party kill within short notice…

My players didn't fare so well against her. They (eventually) realized her unusual capabilities, and the only action they could think of was to seperrate her from them by bringing the underground stucture down upon her by using strategically placed melta bombs. Almost killing themselves in the process. They asked me if she was still alive, to which I replied:"You don't know. Do you wait to find out?".I think you all know what thier answer was to that. And yes, she will return again…She's a fun villain. Her outward innocent appearance really betrays the monstous insidious alien horror within.

My group had enough trouble with Master Nonsuch, though by Dead Stars they will likely be far more beweaponed. I don't think it is a bad thing to throw the odd gribbly at them that they must think creatively to defeat. Collapsing tunnels has got to be good fun right?

It took my group 2 rounds of melee. Dual strike with two power swords, an eviscerator and wrath of the righteous (faith power from BOM). With all the bonus from grouping/double team, they were hitting every time. I cannot remember if someone git a righteous fury, but probably.

We met her last week… after a few rounds of combat, she reduced the whole party to Critical Wounds. There really seemed no way out of that alive, so I let one of the Acolytes notice that she was carrying some sort of "explosive device".

They took some distance from her, and the assassin sniped the device. Not sure if shooting at it would make it explode, but it seemed a cool way to end the fight. So the antimatter imploder (5d10 x3 dmg, 25 meters radius) went off, obliterating her… and our Cleric who thought a distance of 18 meters would be enough…

Delazar78 said:

Funny. My players did the same with that bomb to kill a horde of Orcs in one of the mirror realities.

Actually, I planned something similar for the first encounter (mentioned above) with Miss Book. As I assumed my players would have a tough time with her, I planned to use one of the surviving Maccabian Janissaries (i.e. Sergeant Macrade) to tackle Miss Book from behind while holding a belt full of primed grenades ("Flee you fools!") and then let then whole structure come down in the ensuing explosion…

To answer the question, I don't know what to say. One of the first boss my PCs met when they were level 3 was a Ascension Magos (corrupted) from the Logicians. They had a tough time but they fled and prepared themselves for their return, which they did at level 6-7 and they killed it (was a hard fight, though).

I think that a boss, if to strong, must be defeated by other ways thant direct fight.

My group's encounter with Miss Book was...well, it felt a little cheap.

Master Nonesuch was with her but we had Herrod and his team with us plus a few stormtroopers. The fight started with Herrod and our gigantic, combat psyker leaping into melee combat with her (since she was just laughing at our attempts at ranged attack on her) and they got their asses handed to them pretty much right off the bat (to put this in perspective this was the first time in many sessions I've ever seen our psyker not annihilate his melee opponent effortlessly. The man is a monster). I was busy hacking through her minions but once I was done I charged in to try and save our psyker who was unconscious at this point. What followed was basically me wailing on her for a while (I'm a double power sword assassin with over 40 strength, I normally pack a decent punch) but caused pretty much no visible damage before she started grappling me and left me on minus wounds.

While this was happening Herrod's assassin, Darkly Hand, killed Nonesuch (who had been wrecking our ranged forces and killed half of Herrod's guys) and stole his one-shotting scepter of doom. He then jumped into combat with Book to help Herrod try and make her stop strangling me to death.

He hit her with the scepter and killed her in one shot.

So yeah, this one NPC killed both bosses. A little anti-climactic but then of course Herrod gave Darkly a nod and he swung the scepter at me, missed and I chopped him into hamburger before claiming his kills as my own. That's how it works, right?