[3.5] Fun with Chain Sanctum Ocular Polymorph: a thought exercise

[Uncle Pine]

Imagine a boss fight against a good old human wizard and his low level meatshield mooks that buy him time while he tries to mess with the party from a relatively safe spot. Pretty standard, isn't it?
Now imagine the same wizard with the same mooks, except that he has Arcane Thesis (Polymorph), wields a lesser metamagic rod (chaining) and opens the encounter casting Chain Nerveskitter as an immediate action followed by Chain Sanctum Ocular Polymorph and a Chain Sanctum Ocular Suppress Magic as a full-round action on his first round to turn all his mooks (maybe himself too) into humongous dinosaurs/cryohydras/war trolls/eldritch horrors/elephants and temporarily strip his opponents of some of their magic items at the same time. Better?

My main concern is that as polymorphed creatures retain their hit points regardless of their new form, a bunch of low level polymorphed mooks would still be prone to being killed by a single AoE spell. Do you have any idea to further improve this hypotethical encounter? Let's say that you are aiming for an EL 15 encounter (a challenging encounter for a party of four ECL 11-12 characters).


Note: Arcane Thesis Sanctum Ocular Polymorph and Sanctum Ocular Suppress Magic are both acceptable spell to use with a lesser metamagic rod as outside the wizard's sanctum they are both 4th level spells treated as 3rd level ones. Note that Arcane Thesis doesn't reduce Polymorph below its original level (4+(2-1)+(0-1)=4) and that Sanctum Spell reduces the effective level of a spell outside your sanctum, making both spells effectively 3rd level spells.
TL;DR: Please don't derail the thread trying to argue how Sanctum Spell and Arcane Thesis is or isn't supposed to work. Just don't.

[Troacctid]

I don't see why metamagic shenanigans are something a boss ought to care about--he's an NPC, you can just make him higher level or make up abilities for him or have him research a mass polymorph spell.

Anyway, I'd have the minions surround the PCs. That way any AoE effect that would hit all of them is also overwhelmingly likely to hit the party too. It also constrains their mobility as an added bonus.

[Miss Disaster]

I just wanted to give you big props for suggesting Chain Suppress Magic tactics. Using this spell in the right campaign can be outright devastating. Especially if you have the character or NPC with a sizable about of Essentia to boost it. Which helps to scale the spell's usage well into middle levels.

Since PCs tend to be more overloaded with magic items than NPCs, enemy spellcasters who chain Suppress Magic should be able to massively debuff the hell out of the party with a various minor spell level investment.

[Uncle Pine]

I don't see why metamagic shenanigans are something a boss ought to care about--he's an NPC, you can just make him higher level or make up abilities for him or have him research a mass polymorph spell.

Because I generally prefer to stick to the book when it comes to build worlds and encounters. Moreover, even though this boss fight is hypothetical, as me and my players enjoy doing mildly optimized arms races I've come to the point where I see DM-fiat more like cheating than "bending the system to the law of narrative causality".

Anyway, I'd have the minions surround the PCs. That way any AoE effect that would hit all of them is also overwhelmingly likely to hit the party too. It also constrains their mobility as an added bonus.

Oh, right. How could I possibly forget about this? It's both simply and effective. Thanks!

I just wanted to give you big props for suggesting Chain Suppress Magic tactics. Using this spell in the right campaign can be outright devastating. Especially if you have the character or NPC with a sizable about of Essentia to boost it. Which helps to scale the spell's usage well into middle levels.

Since PCs tend to be more overloaded with magic items than NPCs, enemy spellcasters who chain Suppress Magic should be able to massively debuff the hell out of the party with a various minor spell level investment.

I like big props!
I only recently discovered Suppress Magic since I rarely use Magic of Incarnum, but one of my player decided to play a Totemist so I had to skim over it. I find Suppress Magic very useful even without much (or any) essentia because while you can't use it to dispel buffs from spells as Dispel Magic, Suppress Magic doesn't have a cap to the dispel check and is a level lower. However, if you have Reserves of Strength and immunity to stun effects (Talisman of Undying Fortitude, Banner of the Storm's Eye, being undead/a construct/an elemental), Dispel Magic is probably all-around better.