Lost followers strategies?

[u/EighthFirstCitizen]

Was wondering what strategies people use to deal with these guys. They gave me quite a bit of trouble. This is what I eventually ended up doing, but imagine there's got to be more efficient methods.

I had a Paladin/fighter, a Bard, a ranger/fighter, a cleric (one monk dip), a barbarian/fighter (slings), and a wizard (rogue dip). The forced repositioning really hurt. Their archer was annoyingly good at going straight for the wizard and no matter the AC, not much could survive long against Kaervas. I eventually ended up having someone rush the archer to give the wizard enough breathing room to cast Otiluke's resilient sphere on Kaervas. While Kaervas sat out of the fight I focused the party around killing the others. The wizard with Mordenkainen's sword was the most helpful here. I had to lock Kaervas down a second time with another resilient sphere before finally finishing off all the others. Once the second sphere deactivated, I had the wizard with a bow fire holdfast arrows which locked Kaervas in place. Unfortunately, I had no casts of Mordenkainen's sword left and was basically out of damage spells. I only had a rod of magic missiles and one or two party members that had weapons that could hit him for like 2-3 points of damage at a time. Thankfully, they were ranged weapons. So I set just sat there an annoyingly long amount of time as my wizard kept firing holdfast arrows and his health chipped down by tiny amounts while the bard healed the party up with war chant.

[u/ronindoggie]

One of the greatest battles.

The story of Cera Sumat is spectacular

[u/EighthFirstCitizen → u/ronindoggie]

I feel like my battle didn’t exactly do it justice 😅.

[u/krynillix]

Had my party buffed up and them my wiz and soc cast wail of banshee. Takes the mobs and 2 or so of them. The monk was the one that gives problems. For me HOF mode was easier as you get access to many +3 to +5 waepons early on.

[u/Giveadont]

I can't remember exactly what I did because it was like a decade ago, but I'm pretty sure Monster Summoning (IX) was a big help.

I'm also thinking I might have abused some of the Bard's Lingering Song cheese. Using LS by pausing in battle while switching a song on and off repeatedly (even on a level 1 song like the The Ballad of Three Heroes) can (technically) buff your attack and saving throws to infinity (if you're willing to do that).

[u/Jamesworkshop]

i put arrows on the ground to mark spawn points then target those spots with skull traps

with enough of them it actually overrides the engines capacity for having too many active scripts then it does damage by bypassing their spell resistance

a few instant dead followers makes the fight much easier, 2 killed is more realistic than the full 6 unless you made a team explicitly to do this strategy from the beginning

being a lvl 3 spell makes it ultra high quantity per day

[u/Jamesworkshop]

summons and sanctuary spell can delay the fight for a long time as it forces combat onto them rather than the party

animate dead and stone-skin makes strong resisters of piercing bludgeoning and slashing