Nemesis?

Has Nemesis been beefed up recently, or is he subject to the random buffs system?

I ask because lately I had only been doing DR with casters, but just started playing my berserker again.  After over a half hour of wailing on Nemesis doing 80 damage per roudn or more, I could not get him down to even barely injured, meanwhile he was wailing away on me for 150 to 200+ damage per round which is simply insane given Alice has a total of 10 physical resists and 15 class damage reduction stacked on top of 60% slash immunity.  For him to do the 20+ damages he's doing now per hit, he has to be wailing away with over 70 per hit, at 6 or 7 hits per round.  Last time I had taken Alice through the dark realms, Nemesis was lucky if he could get 15 or 17 damage off on her.

If he was changed, or subject to the random buffs, I would STRONGLY recommend just... no.  He's already insanely difficult for meleers as is, and it was BEYOND frustrating to have blown through 7 stacks of full heals in as many minutes with a PC that's nearly tough to damage as Alice is..... and not even get him down to barely injured?  Even if he had 60 regen, at 80 or more damage per round over the course of a half hour.... really.... that's just wrong.

I dunno if changed him, but I did want to remind of something you discovered once before - Nemesis' axes are vampiric. So I think he has something like 30 regen natively, but if he is hitting you, that regen is increased significantly.

I agree he seems to be hitting higher AC and hitting harder than I made him (which was the extreme upper limit of what I could ever consider a 'reasonable' challenge for a PC) - so I have to agree, if he is getting random buffs - please please exempt him from that system. Otherwise if his stats were edited (I highly doubt would do that - I am willing to bet just the model was changed), well, that may not be a good idea.

So yeah, if Nemmy could get reduced in size, and not get random buffs it would be good.

The reasons I susect buffs or stat changes is I've previously taken Alice through there and did not have that much trouble with him (he went down pretty fast).  Her build has changed, but not sigificantly... more AB, only 3 less barbarian DR, more damage... if anything she should have been wearing him down faster than ever before.

The model does need tweaking.... Found my monk/sd/champ ran into the same issue as Blink and my PM.... can't get close enough model wise to actually attack, but can be attacked.

I'm thinking he's gotta be subject to random buffs.... Took my asis cleric down to him last night, the battle was alright. I didn't really have to use my divine shield (ac 78 without), only had to heal up 3 times.

Tonight, nothing changed gear wise or spell buff wise except that I had my AC ioun activated (+1 more ac), but this fight, I had to constantly keep my divine shield up (88 AC with it on), and I was still getting hammered like crazy, and had to blow through all my heals except for the paragon healing (40th level asis cleric with loads of heals and mass heals, plus the granted spell curing/heal spells).

Also... the XP was different.  Last night it was a little over 3K for killing him.  Tonight it was nearly 1K less despite it being a MUCH harder fight

Any change in amount of treasure value? Carrying more gold, or lots more loot?

Only extra item was a AC ioun.  Less gold (about 1.5 million less), and about 20 food items (bread).

Any extra party members? Difference in PC level, changes to XP penalties? Trying to think what else could affect the XP gain, because I doubt modified the CR rating on the creature...

I don't want to post screenshots (because they might give away too much), but I just performed some checks as , and yes the Nemesis is *absolutely* getting the random stat bonuses.... two iterations I spawned had a difference of 12 in their strength scores, and this made a difference of +6 on his already extremely high AB.

The other stats varied as well...

This also begs the question if the Challenge Rating used to calculate XP is randomized in some way.... it would appear from Manny's reported empirical data that it is possible for the creature to gain boosts to stats, but also have their XP award reduced. Obviously this is not desirable.

no extra party members or summons.  Both romps were mightnight/early morning solo grinds, Just Aerith and her co-pilot Asis

Seems Horaxonna's got random buffs too. Last night chopped her up with my paladin no problem (+60 AB on the lead before dark realms penalties). Tonight with my rangnor demonspawn cleric, +71 on the lead, whiffing on everything by 20 rolls, and taking far more hits (101 AC vs the paladin's 66)