I've got a pretty thoroughly pimped out thief/assassin:

• Maxed archery
  
• Maxed alchemy
  
• Maxed stealth
  
• Dual wielding ebony daggers of paralysis
  
• Combination of Nightingale and Dark Brotherhood armor

As far as I can tell, this character stands little to know chance against a named (undead?) boss and his undead henchmen like Klepr (sp?) the Tongue. Oh yeah, I'm playing on Master difficulty.

Stealth does one no good because the second you step onto his platform, he detects you. Ranged does almost less good as you get two shots at him or his henchman before they close to melee range. I'm not sure if poisons even work on undead? I'm not even sure if paralysis works on undead either. Even if I had some pimped undead killing weapons (blessed, etc.) I'm not sure that those would be powerful enough to work on a named undead and a very high level henchman.

Long story short, this battle was still a bit of a challenge (it took two uses of Sanguine to finish without svcking down dozens of health potions) but I really can't envision a way to solo this fight without summoning a helper or using a tank follower.

I'm not complaining. Just seeking ideas for how to do this without resorting to Sanguine.

Any ninjas out there cracked the code on these situations?

Cheers,
HairTie

I assume you mean Kvenel the Tongue? Because Klepper is the Silver-Blod Inn bartender who kept arguing with his wife (and was blessed with a particularly hot daughter)

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Silenced_Tongues about Kvenel and some strategies about it

If you are talking about that guy in Volunruud, I hid behind a pillar, I shot his Draugr-mage henchman once with my bow and hid again and repeated that till his henchman was dead, lured him away from his throne, casted invisiblity and then backstabbed him with a dagger.

Cast invisibility- One shot the toungue- recast- walk away. If you CANT cast invisibility- make a potion. This is the easiest way, but certainly not the only way.

I have obviously not been using invisibility potions enough. I tend to just "have at it" once I've been discovered while sneaking. Feels a bit too easy to just drink a potion once engaged in combat, but I'll give these strategies a shot. Thanks for the suggestions everyone!

No illusion? I just frenzy those groups and let them kill eachother

I haven't gone through the magic college quest far enough to get decent spells and I haven't put any perks into illusion, so this isn't really an option on Master difficulty. These mobs are levelled.

_{Maxed archery. There's your answer right there. Even though these guys climb out of their coffins when you approach, they still haven't actually detected you. An arrow strike, especially while they are in the climbing out animation, still gets the sneak attack multiplier.}

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Kvenel_the_Tongue has some useful info on diffrent methods of dealing with Kvenel.

when you sneak bow kill his drauger, kvenel will walk to look at the dead drauger..... at that time, i silent rolled up to him and backstabbed him without having to step foot on his platform........

i just killed him last night and didnt know he was supposed to be a hard kill.. i thought the whole dungeon was anti climatic due to how easily i killed him.........

That's it, I'm going back in there tonight to do this right. No follower. No conjured Daedra minions. Just stealth, poison, arrows, and backstabs.

From what I understand Illusion spells are unaffected by moving the difficulty slider, but yeah, if you don't have any perks in Illusion it is not going to help if you are very high level, regardless of what difficulty you play at.

I dohttp://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb319/joniscrazy/ScreenShot13.jpgwith it. I love its aesthetic look.

I had a hard time with this guy also. Hard to deal with 2 pretty tough customers.

I finally did the following:

1) Have follower wait back a ways in cave leading to that room.
2) Go forwards and snipe at one of these guys.
3) When he sees you and comes towards you run back into cave to your follower.
4) Repeat until he eventually comes after you into the cave.
4) You and your follower engage him both at the same time in the cave.
5) I used a shout on the one remaining guy and then killed him as he lay frozen.

I had fireball which worked nicely to inflict damage without requiring precise aim.

I'm no expert on spells, but I think spells like Frenzy, by design, only affect mobs up to a certain level. As you level Illusion, the level at which the spell will affect a mob increases. Perks increase it, as does double-casting. Example, if I'm level 54, the mobs are level 54. With maxed illusion and no perks, a spell which at base level affects level 18 mobs will have no affect on a level 54 mob.

I plan to experiment with Illusion, but I'm not going to allocate perks to it until I have at least 5 or 6 to spare. I'm still working on a few core skills that I only went half way up the tree until now (alchemy).