Advice on defeating an Aboleth [UPDATE on what happened]

[Altamont Ravenard]

Hello all,

Our party consists of:
Human Monk1/Cleric6
Elven Fighter6/OotBI1 (I think)
Half-Orc Barbarian1/Sorcerer6 (don't ask)
Human Bard7

And we've been given a mission to destroy an aboleth in its lair. We've pretty much killed the servants, and we're now facing the aboleth. We've fought it twice now, and both times, we got fooled by the illusions and probably didn't even damage the damn thing. Last time, the bard was dominated by the aboleth and we had to knock him out and drag him away.

The setup is so: Its "pond" is at the end of a "U", ie there are 2 ways to access the "pond" from dry land. We have access to Water breathing (from the cleric).

If you need more info, I'll provide what I can...

Any suggestions on how to get rid of the damn thing?

Thanks in advance...

AR

EDIT: Related question: Can a true neutral cleric cast Good / Evil / Lawful / Chaotic spells?

 

[CRGreathouse]

Related question: Can a true neutral cleric cast Good / Evil / Lawful / Chaotic spells?

Yes.

 

[Storm Raven]

And we've been given a mission to destroy an aboleth in its lair. We've pretty much killed the servants, and we're now facing the aboleth. We've fought it twice now, and both times, we got fooled by the illusions and probably didn't even damage the damn thing. Last time, the bard was dominated by the aboleth and we had to knock him out and drag him away.

Summon some fiendish monstrous scorpions. They have tremorsense and should not be fooled by visual or auditory illusions. Follow where they attack.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Summon some fiendish monstrous scorpions. They have tremorsense and should not be fooled by visual or auditory illusions. Follow where they attack.

I'll probably indeed follow the Summon Monster route, but Scorpions won't be helpful, since the Aboleth stays underwater. 2-3 Large Fiendish Sharks and even more Medium Fiendish Sharks should tear through the Aboleth and its Illusory twin. They'll each have 6 rounds to do their job . Thanks again (to both CRGreathouse and yourself).

AR

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

When you've pin-pointed it, use lightning bolt. Maybe wait for the sharks to die first, and hope it doesn't dominate the sharks. (It says it can Dominate any living creature.)

Water doesn't block lightning bolt - instead, the bolt spreads out to a 20 foot radius from where it hits the water.

Are you sure the aboleth is even in the pond? It can hide servants in illusions and the like, of course. Nasty.

 

[GiantInThePlayground]

Summon some fiendish monstrous scorpions. They have tremorsense and should not be fooled by visual or auditory illusions. Follow where they attack.

Be careful: I have seen DMs rule that an illusion that has an auditory component can fool tremorsense and blindsense based on vibrations. I'm not saying it's right, but I've seen it.

My last character had to fight a whole bunch of these suckers, and this is what we did (it actually can work with the scorpion idea, as a backup): Have your cleric cast Owl's Wisdom and Protection from Evil on everyone, boosting your Will saves by +4 agains the aboleth's evil psionics and preventing the Domination from being exercised. Then have the cleric/monk (who presumably has the highest Will save) touch everything you see to force a Will save for "interaction". Since you know the thing uses illusions, this is not an unreasonable course of action. Once the cleric finds an illusion, he tells everyone else, granting a bonus to their save.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Hello all, thanks again for your input. We'll probably have a chance to try it later, since 3 of the 4 party members died last night.

We got fooled by the Aboleth... AGAIN. The OotBI wasn't with us, but we had a Paladin who repaced him. Both the Paladin and the Cleric used Detect Evil to find the Aboleth (since illusions don't detect as evil), but the Aboleth use Project Image, and we followed the image, forgetting to check if it was the actual Aboleth or not. We all failed our saves... AGAIN. None of us detected the illusion by interacting with it.

Everyone was beefed up with Protection from Evil. I summoned Shark after fiendish Shark, who did a good job of killing the illusion. After the fight with its image, we proceeded to Detect Evil again, and that's when we noticed that the aura was coming from an illusory wall (Veil ability).

So, for the THIRD TIME we retreat out of the cave, and proceed to rest for the night, during which we are attacked by 3 displacer beasts. Combining very poor rolls with less than average strategy, the 3 displacer beasts maul 3 of us to death (the paladin didn't have his armor on, the sorcerer did the only reasonable damage with Fireballs, killing 1 beast). Only the Bard escapes so he may tell our story of stupidity.

So, next time, the party will consist of
Elven OotBI
Human Bard
Gnome Necromancer
Dwarven Fighter
Human Monk

*sigh*

AR

 

[kilamanjaro]

When you've pin-pointed it, use lightning bolt. Maybe wait for the sharks to die first, and hope it doesn't dominate the sharks. (It says it can Dominate any living creature.)

Water doesn't block lightning bolt - instead, the bolt spreads out to a 20 foot radius from where it hits the water.

Are you sure the aboleth is even in the pond? It can hide servants in illusions and the like, of course. Nasty.

Lightning bolt did that in second edition. In 3e lightning bolt does the same thing underwater as it does on land. Fireball works under water too.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Lightning bolt did that in second edition. In 3e lightning bolt does the same thing underwater as it does on land. Fireball works under water too.

Thanks, but I'm pretty sure the Fireball would require Spellcraft or something.

Anyway that DM runs aboleths well, but IMO the sharks should have found the real aboleth. Unless, perhaps, it did, and dominated them into attacking the illusion

 

[Shayuri]

Aboleth Woes

Well, when my group encountered an aboleth we were all underwater at the time. This made things tough, since the abbie had full mobility and we...did not.

It tended to hang back out of range of our Light spells, and use projected images to harass us. We finally had to sleep in a Rope Trick where it couldn't get at us.

The following morning we had a Magic Circle vs Evil ready, and some Daylight.

I cast Light on a bunch of arrows and gave them to our resident fighter.

When the aboleth attacked, the Daylight's radius gave us enough time to react. Three separate images came at us...and for wonder of wonders, one of them was real! I guess since we were magically warded, it decided to see if it couldn't transform some of us.

By pure 1 outta 3 chance, the fighter pegged the real abbie with a Light arrow.

Once we knew which one was real, it was over pretty fast.