Auntie Ethel/Combat

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.

Sister of the Seeing Pearl
Auntie Ethel
Stats
Level 5
STR 18 (+4) DEX 14 (+2) CON 16 (+3) INT 13 (+1) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 18 (+4)
Race	[[Fey|Fey]]
Type	Fey
HP	112; 145Tactician
AC	17
Movement Speed	9m / 30ft
Size	Medium
Weight	75kg / 150lbs
Proficiency Bonus	+3
Initiative	+7
Passive features
Alert  Darkvision  Opportunity Attack  Fey Life
Character information
Location	Riverside Teahouse Overgrown Tunnel
Additional information
Voice actor	Rena Valeh
Hag Model

Overview

Combat

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

Attacks and abilities

•  Auntie's Trickery
  •  A Coven of Hags - need more investigation into this one, summons different amounts randomly or under different circumstances?
•  Ray of Sickness
  • DC 15
•  Throw
  • Flammable Slime Bomb
  • Poisonous Slime Bomb
•  Damsel in Distress
  • Ways to distinguish: Passives, concentration, conditions. Character level. Fake Mayrina doesn't get the tactician health bonus? 8hp, not 10.
•  Vicious Mockery
  • A variation on the spell available to Bards, Ethel can cast this as a bonus action
•  Hold Person
  • DC 15
•  Claws

Attack roll +7

If aggroed in the teahouse

•  Protection from Evil and Good
•  Break Illusion

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. Alert gives her a high chance of going first and prevents preemptive strikes, and she will flee through her fireplace using Break Illusion in the first two turns; if out of range, she will defend herself with Protection from Evil and Good and Vicious Mockery. Attempting to destroy her here, then, requires bringing her hit points to zero often before she can take a single action – all while hostile Redcaps are coming through her front door.

Arcane lock work on fireplace???

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.

Fight in the Overgrown Tunnel

The first turns of the Auntie Ethel fight are deterministic. Unless the player launches a preemptive strike from  Hiding, 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 summoned by  Auntie's Trickery 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.

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  Claws and the cantrip  Vicious Mockery - two attacks she falls back on when out of grenades and spell slots.

Endgame

When brought down to 10% 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.

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.

Act Three

new character box needed for act 3 stats?