So, my Rules Cyclopedia D&D game ended (for now), and we're looking at what to do next, but I realized that I never posted how the final fight went.
So, the game previous to the 'epic boss fight' ended with the PCs on top of the boss' (a thousands of years old lizardman mage) tower, looking towards where the guy was conducting ritual prep, inside the caldera of a smoking, semi-active volcano.
At the start of the game, they rush back down a couple of floors, and exit the tower to the walkway towards the volcano. They take about 10 steps along the walkway when a booming voice (the lizardman mage) activates his first line of defenses. Wherein the railings of the walkway animated as giant stone snake golems, and the carved pillars inside the floor of the tower that they just exited from break loose as more golems and rush them from behind.
This is where the PCs start fucking with me immediately. One of the clerics casts "Protection from evil, 10' radius" and keeps one set of golems at bay because they can't get past him. The rest of the party splits between dealing with the snake golems and shooting the stone golems at the rear (because ranged attacks don't break the protection from evil effect), and over time, take out all the snakes and three of the stone golems (one golem slipped on a rogue-placed oil puddle and fell off the walkway).
Shortly after dealing with that, the rogue (who is up front) notices some sort of incorporeal/energy/magic cloud barreling down the walkway at them (he had a Detect Magic potion active), warns the party, and bungee-jumps (well, not really) off of the walkway.
Cue the second encounter.
By the time he gets back up to the walkway (he thought it was going to be some weird effect AOE magic), everyone else in the party is frozen in place, apparently paralyzed.
In reality, they're all locked in a mental battle with the incorporeal thing, which has an AOE attack, heals off of damage it deals, and other fun effects. Since it's a mental battle, it's actually impossible for anyone to die, and any spells or abilities or items used, weren't really used, and dropping to 0 HPs in the battle means you're knocked unconscious (and would have been open to mental domination in the final battle). Unfortunately for me, the magic-user in the party figures out what's going on (the bastard actually cast ESP during the previous battle and it was still in effect), and helps the rest of the party beat the thing in the mental battle.
So they snap out of it, with the rogue still going "What the fuck?" because he wasn't in the mental battle.
They race down the walkway to the lizardman mage, who, as I mentioned earlier, was going to cast a Mass Dispel on them to get rid of all of their spells (haste, pro vs. evil, bless, etc.), only the PC mage fucking counterspells it. He did admit later, his other option was hurling the turtle (polymorphed stone drake) during the Mass Dispell.
So, more golems, a vast magical energy build-up blasting anyone within a certain range of the end boss, and a "lava tentacle" bashing the party, and what do they do?
The PC Mage (are you seeing a pattern here?) polymorphs one of the other PCs into a Stone Giant to grapple the end boss (and my first response was "Fuck you, I'm not looking up the grapple rules."), so they can stuff his soul into the MacGuffin they retrieved a few games earlier. Said soul-stuffing was done by the same cleric with the Pro vs. Evil STILL UP. And now he has it as a guarded relic in the religious order he's founding.
Mind you, I did manage to bring all but one of the PCs to single-digit HPs, but I didn't even kill one of them.
The most important thing though, was that my players had fun, and I gave them several "OH FUCK" moments.
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