Auntie Ethel/Combat

Overview

Combat

Auntie Ethel
Medium Fey
Level 5 Fey
Stats
Armour Class	17
Hit points	112 (Balanced) 145 (Tactician)
Movement speed	9 m (30 ft)
Weight	75 kg (150 lb)
Initiative	+7
Ability scores
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 18 (+4) 14 (+2) 16 (+3) 13 (+1) 14 (+2) 18 (+4)
Proficiency bonus	+3
Saving throws	Str +7 Dex +2 Con +3 Int +1 Wis +5 Cha +7
Features
Alert	+5 to initiative and cannot be surprised.
Darkvision	Can see in the dark up to 12m.
Opportunity Attack	Automatically attack an enemy moving out of your reach.
Fey Life	Makes it easier for the wearer to succeed on death saving throws.

This page focuses on Auntie Ethel's behavior during her combat encounter, and tactics for overcoming her. She can be fought as a boss in the Riverside Teahouse in the Sunlit Wetlands if you choose to meddle in her affairs.

Auntie Ethel can be encountered again as a boss in Act 3 within The Blushing Mermaid.

Attacks and abilities

 Auntie's Trickery ()

Now which is which?

Recharge: Per battle

 A Coven of Hags ()

You'll never find your Auntie Ethel.

Recharge: Per battle

 Damsel in Distress ()

Better choose the right one, dearie.

Recharge: Per battle

 Ray of Sickness ()

2d8 (2~16) Poison

Possibly  Poisons the target.

CON Save

 Range: 18 m / 60 ft

 Throw ()   –  Poisonous Slime Bomb

Normal weapon damage Throw a character or item from the world or your inventory. Your Strength affects how much weight you can throw. Heavier items deal more damage. The damage of weapons with the thrown property is the same as the weapon's melee damage.

 Range: 18 m / 60 ft

 Throw ()   –  Flammable Slime Bomb

Normal weapon damage Throw a character or item from the world or your inventory. Your Strength affects how much weight you can throw. Heavier items deal more damage. The damage of weapons with the thrown property is the same as the weapon's melee damage.

 Range: 18 m / 60 ft

 Vicious Mockery ()

2d4 (2~8) Psychic

Insult a creature: it has Disadvantage on its next Attack roll.

WIS Save

 Range: 26 m / 87 ft

Claws

 Hold Person ()

Hold a humanoid enemy still. They can't Move, Act, or React. Attacks from within  Range: 3 m / 10 ft are always Critical Hits. At the end of each turn, the affected creature can make a Wisdom Saving throw to end this condition.

WIS Save

 Range: 18 m / 60 ft

 Break Illusion ()

Fix a broken item.

Tactics

Fight in the Teahouse

Ethel can be attacked in her human form in the Riverside Teahouse, though she will try to make this encounter as brief as possible. +7 Initiative gives her a high turn priority and prevents preemptive strikes. She will priotitize fleeing through her fireplace using Break Illusion in the first few turns. Sometimes, attempting to destroy her here requires bringing her hit points to zero before she can take a single action – all while hostile Redcaps are coming through her front door.

She may further attempt to evade aggression by drinking a Potion of Invisibility; this can be thwarted by pickpocketing or purchasing it from her in conversation. Ethel may use scrolls in this phase, if they are part of her trader inventory. The player can greatly delay her flight and trap her upstairs by casting Arcane Lock on the staircase into her lair.

Fight in the Overgrown Tunnel

The first turns of the Auntie Ethel fight are deterministic. Unless the player launches a preemptive strike while hidden, Auntie Ethel will initiate combat through dialogue when approaching in her lair. Her first turn in combat, when started this way, will always be throwing a flammable slime bomb on Mayrina's suspended cage.

If the player had previously killed or incapacitated her Mask servants (i.e. Mask of Regret), she spends a turn summoning them to her side as allies. If they were already dealt with, she casts Auntie's Trickery instead. Following these opening moves, the midgame of the fight begins.

Midgame tactics

Each clone of Auntie Ethel functions as a duplicate of the hag, having all of her magical abilities but lacking the bombs in her inventory and capable of being dispelled in a single blow. Necessarily, they also cannot summon additional clones of themselves. If they are all defeated, Ethel can refresh their supply with A Coven of Hags - this time, however, the original hag will be invisible rather than in the mix of illusions, and the number of illusions summoned can vary.

The clones can be distinguished from the original by selecting "Examine" on them and looking for the feature Fey Life. This is granted by an item that the real Auntie Ethel is wearing (Tarnished Charm) which is not duplicated for the clones, so they do not have this feature. Another way is to check Ethel's clothing : the real hag has red clothes, while the clones have blue clothes.

Next on the smorgasbord of trickery is Damsel in Distress, a wily illusion where she teleports Mayrina into her proximity and adopts her appearance. Distinguishing between the two requires a careful examination of the two's statistics, looking for key differences that reveal the true victim.

When not playing mind games, she barrages the party with poison damage via Ray of Sickness and her limited supply of poisonous slime bombs. She mixes in melee attacks and Vicious Mockery - two attacks she falls back on when out of grenades and spell slots.

Endgame

When brought down to 30 health or lower, when she takes her next turn, Auntie Ethel will bargain for her life in exchange for a piece of Auntie Ethel's Hair. She will not do anything else on this turn; if the party declines her offer or fails a conversation ability check, the turn will immediately pass to the next character, allowing the hag to be rapidly dispatched. Any surviving Masks become docile on her death.

Honour mode

Auntie Ethel gains Legendary Action: Weird Magic Surge on Honour mode, punishing the player for casting spells by multiplying Ethel's presence with more illusory copies. The legendary action can be triggered during the bargaining conversation (for example if a character casts Guidance for a conversation skill check), causing the conversation to exit as if the party had declined the offer.

Silence

Auntie Ethel is very vulnerable to being silenced, limiting her moveset to just melee attacks and grenades when under its effect. Striking her with silencing weapons, like the Sussur Dagger, is the best way to inflict this condition, preferable to the spell Silence, which she can rather easily walk away from. Preemptively attacking her in the teahouse flips the equation, as the much smaller arena gives the hag little room to manoeuvre. Of note, she will not bargain for her life when silenced.

Act Three

Act Three differences
Level 11
Stats
Weight	90 kg (180 lb)
Initiative	+7
Proficiency bonus	+4
Conditions
Lair Magic	While in their lair, the hag and her doubles have Magic Resistance.
Fungal Resistance	+5 bonus to Saving Throws for each nearby Pearlspore Bell.
Hag Pregnancy	The hag has eaten the child. Killing the hag will lead to the child's death.
Legendary Action: Weird Magic Surge Honour	Ethel can use her legendary action Magic Surge.
Features
Alert	+5 to initiative and cannot be surprised.
Darkvision	Can see in the dark up to 12m.
Opportunity Attack	Automatically attack an enemy moving out of your reach.
Fey Life	Makes it easier for the wearer to succeed on death saving throws.
Legendary Action: Weird Magic Surge Honour	Use a legendary action to create illusory duplicates when hit.

Auntie Ethel is encountered once more in Act Three. She can be fought upstairs in The Blushing Mermaid, where she is disguised as Captain Grisly, or in her lair in the bar's basement.

Her abilities and tactics are much the same, simply scaled-up with the levels, with several additional twists:

Pearlspore Bells

In order to truly kill Ethel, players need to destroy her Pearlspore Bells. These lustrous mushroom clumps will revive the hag each time she is felled, if left unchecked. The Pearlspores will automatically heal to full at the end of each round, requiring them to either be burst down with massive damage in a single turn or for the player to employ heal prevention, e.g. Arrows of Ilmater. Party members with the Sharpshooter feat should fire at the Pearlspores with the "Sharpshooter all-in" passive toggled on, as hitting is guaranteed and thus the extra damage will always be applied.

Hag Pregnancy

For full details, see Save Vanra

Ethel has eaten Vanra, hoping to transform the girl into a hag to grow her coven. Killing Ethel kills Vanra as well, locking the player out of any quest rewards later on. To avoid this, players can enable non-lethal attacks when dealing the killing blow, prompting instead a cutscene where Vanra is manually freed from an unconscious Ethel's belly. Alternatively, progressing through Help the Hag Survivors can provide players with Hag's Bane, which when thrown will force Ethel to vomit the kid. Being pregnant does not imbue any inherent combat bonuses, other than the tension of potential quest failure. If released, Vanra will run into a corner of the room -- the party must thenceforth be cautious about stray area-of-effect damage nearby.

Invisible Copies

After her first group of illusory copies has been summoned, any future groups that Ethel summons will also now be  Invisible, making their dispatch trickier and increasing the likelihood they will survive to deal extra damage. The straightforward way to deal with this is area-of-effect damage such as smokepowder bombs/arrows, void bulbs, alchemist's fire, etc. However an additional albeit cheesy technique involves activating the jump ability with a party member (preferably one with high strength and therefore more jump range), and moving the target cursor slowly across the floor: places where the cursor won't allow a jump but which are not otherwise obstructed indicate the presence of an invisible baddie.

Haste Spores

A minor but useful feature of Ethel's lair in Act 3 is the barrelstalk fungus on the upper platform (near a patch of smaller mushrooms). Standing directly adjacent to the barrelstalk will confer  Haste Spores on any party members who do so, allowing them an extra action per turn.