tdunaj wrote:Anyone managed to bear Pizarra in the Upper Sewers without the surprise round and with standard rules?
Here's what I did (this was before helper bonuses were added for the fight). Note if you don't have the right spells/scrolls available you can get them from the witches assuming you haven't already taken something from that spell level yet and/or haven't killed them yet. I believe in my victory I actually only used scrolls and items that I had found exploring even though I had planned to use some from the witches (but I'm not sure anymore). I wanted to try to do it without using level 8 or 9 scrolls from the witches, hoping I could reserve those for something later. I found a scroll of meteor storm somewhere in the dungeon before that fight that I hadn't used yet.
Don't remember all the details, but this is the gist of it.
1. Get initiative for my wizard. Use scroll of accelerated spell and power to get 2 more spells off. Cast AOE, e.g. fire/lightning ball (possibly empowered with improved empower to be a lvl 5 spell, don't recall) to kill the low HP enemy that stands near Pizarra. This was to create a lower total HD targeting area for Pizarra for my next spell which was a scroll of circle of death (cannot target it only on Pizarra due to range/terrain). Otherwise it would tend to fail due to too many HD. I think it had maybe a 25% chance of killing her? Reload until that works, then proceed. You need to kill her in round 1 to prevent the summon, which otherwise seemed too hard (though you might also be able to luck out on a circle of death or similar, like banish/chaos, possibly combined with Lower Spell and Power Resistance, on it, and just keep reloading until that works, but you have to wait a lot longer to find out so it slows down the process a lot).
2. I believe my sorcerer or warlock used a scroll of Chaos on the main enemy area, and at least one of my other characters used Acorns of Earthquake. I think I may have also used a scroll of meteor storm I found somewhere. It gets 4 separately aimed shots, so you can move it around based on who is still alive, their HP, etc. to get the most out of it. That either debilitates or eliminates most of them.
3. Unfortunately there is one black wizard who is placed in a little nook that is outside the AOE of the main area and of the overhang where Pizarra is standing, you would have to use a spell just to target that 1 wizard, and it is far away so very few spell can even reach it. So you may have to get a bit lucky in terms of what that wizard casts, and/or the turn order with that wizard moving into an area where you can kill or confuse it quickly before it decimates you with some AOE. Or just survive one blast and hopefully have enough HP.
4. I actually had a chance to complete the battle before the orcs showed up, only 2 enemies left, but my melees were too far and I got really unlucky with SR/Save rolls with some spells and didn't finish them off, so I had to deal with the orcs immediately with no save or rest.
5. For the orcs I spammed a lot of webs/clouds/summons to keep them away from me as much as possible, because I had a lot of chars with low HP at that point. I was able to kill some of them from a distance. As some of the higher HP ones got closer, I was concerned about possible deaths, so I used a scroll of mass heal that I wanted to save for later, that emboldened me to charge them with my melees and finish them off and ensured everybody lived.