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So I have this player who is something of a power gamer, but moreso a real rules genius.  He can look at rules and envision synergies the way most people breathe.  Anyway, in a discussion the other day he claims to be able to negate Orcus in a level appropriate encounter.

His scenario entails a domination effect on Orcus (who doesn't have Immortal Resilience in his write up), and ordering him to drop his wand.  Since Orcus' most potent powers are weapon reliant it would pretty much neuter him especially in a party with necrotic resistance.  Then a PC would just pick up the wand and keep it from him for the rest of the fight, and since there is no disarm maneuver in the game any longer, there isn't any way for Orcus to get it back short of killing the character.  Even if I were to add Immortal Resilience to the write up, this player has an answer to that.  I can't remember which power his bard would be using to dominate, but apparently the way it works is it dominates (save ends) on a hit, but on a miss it dominates until the end of the target's next turn, so if the bard drops her impliment making her automatically miss, the end result is pretty much the same.

I have been looking into the dominate effect and can't really find anything to refute this.  Back in older editions there was wording to dominate effects that stated targets could not be forced to do something they wouldn't reasonably do, or that would cause them great harm.  I would say this falls under that circumstance, but 4e doesn't seem to have that wording anymore.

Any thoughts about how a DM might deal with this scenario?

Anybody can beat anybody with a little planning and foreknowledge of what's on the stat block. So, change the stat block. I would most certainly use the Worldbreaker rules to beef him up and make him interesting in addition to addressing the outdated stat block. First adjustment: Immune dominate. Or write up something that says, "If Orcus is subject to a dominated effect, Orcus moves his speed and makes a basic attack against a target of the dominating PC's choice. The dominated effect ends after the attack."

Disarm can be done in 4e. It's an improvised action (though some would disagree with me). If that's the crux of their tactics, it's going to be like a game of hot potato or Keystone Cops as everyone smacks each others' hands and hackey-sack that wand around. Which is to say, hilarious. I'm not sure that's the flavor one wishes to evoke when fighting a major iconic villain. And as Pluisjen pointed out, the wand might have something to say about this.

Nov 15, 2011 -- 7:05AM, Pluisjen wrote:

Your best bet would be to redesign Orcus entirely, because his old statblock is from the original Monster Manual, the oldest 4e book in the game. So it's probably not going to be very good anyway.

I would do this.  Rebuild him (or re-flavor something appropriately nasty) as a level 30 or so solo, using the guidelines established since MM3.

Sure, that works.

But Orcus knows that the PC has that power. How did the PC get close enough to the real Orcus to be able to use it?