How did your party kill the mother? [SPOILERS]


Serpent's Skull

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So tonight we had a TPK but I'm wondering how exactly did you or your players actually kill "the mother".

In our 3rd level party we had:
Elf 2 ranger/1 cleric (Archer)
Elf 2 rogue/1 wizard (two wpn fighter)
Halfling 3 rogue (optimized for stealth)
Human 3 fighter (Sword and shield tank, optimized for AC)
Human 3 witch (focused on buffing/debuffing and healing)

We didn't kill the lone lacedon in the one room so he ran and warned the others and while the dice were against us (the cleric only did 4 pts of damage with 3 channel energys) and the rogue didn't get land a single sneak attack, that doesn't change the fact that with a constant darkness effect in confined quarters how does a party without darkvision survive?

We were a fairly dex reliant party so suddenly losing 5-6 pts of AC and not being able to hit our opponents consistently was bad enough, but enemies who could full attack for 3 attacks a round, channel negative energy to hit the group and cause paralysis? WTH?

Anyways since some people obviously have lived through it how did you? It's distinctly possible that we missed something obvious or was this another case of needing to bring the castaways with you to be effective like the cannibal camp was?

(In which case I have to ask why are the enounters being designed for a much larger party than the typical 4 to 5?)

Sovereign Court

I think i'll send my PbP players over to weigh in on this. Worth noting I upped the encounter to account for a group of 6 though.

Scarab Sages

It is a rude encounter with the possibility of 4 lacedons & Mother all waiting for the PCs to arrive. When the PCs arrived, the Mother moved towards them and cast darkness dropping the light level into normal darkness (darkvision still works).

Then it was almost a scene from Aliens... lots of confusion in the dark and claws reaching out and dragging folks away.

Some of the party did manage to break line of sight with the darkness spell (and I allowed their light spells to still function once out of the 20' radius). Unfortunately they decided not to flee which I think was the final nail in the encounter.

Also if the Party had some Knowledge (Religion) to identify ghouls (lacedons) might have been useful (especially to know they have darkvision & paralysis).

Overall an anti-climatic event compared to the lovely daylight raid on the slight reduced cannibal camp.


I'm a player in Alexander Kilcoyne's Serpent's Skull game.

The first time we entered the cave, we were, to put it lightly, hosed. Our 3rd-level party at the time consisted of:

Gnome Bard 3
Human Oracle of Life 3
Human Ranger 2/Barbarian 1
Dwarf Monk 3
Elf Witch 2/Rogue 1
Human Fighter 3

We entered the cave cautiously and were able to engage and destroy the lookouts without them running back to join the main force. We entered the main cave and fought off a wave or two, but then we faced Nylithati. We rolled badly for channel energy, and she rolled very well for channel energy. Also, and our biggest mistake, was when one of our characters knocked her prone and we decided that maybe we would be able to win without retreating. Well, it didn't really stop her. She whooped and death knell'ed the dwarven monk (my character) and our ranger/barbarian was knocked unconscious. We retreated to the surface and sealed the tunnel shut.

I rolled a new character (Goblin Cavalier 3) and we headed back down. This time we coordinated summoned creatures and flanking maneuvers and had our healer spam her channel energy. We killed her, but we basically had to 'go nova' and use up a day's worth of resources on a single battle.

So the lesson here is, "Don't try to squeeze out one more victory when you are facing a boss. Rest, reload, then come back again." Which, of course, is a moot point if your party gets stuck facing all of them at once, but it's the best I have right now.

Liberty's Edge

What Tanner said - I'm the Human Life Oracle in the same party. A few insights from my perspective:

1) My Tongues curse really hurt us in the first fight. The party kept recommending retreat, but I couldn't understand what they were saying, and it's very much out of character for me to flee from undead, so I wasn't really budging fast enough.

2) I was rolling terribly on channel energy during our first go-round. If I could have kept up with her, we might have won, but the dice were not on my side.

3) I think AK might have taken it slightly easy on us in the second encounter - he didn't drop darkness, and didn't use spiritual weapon as he did in the first fight - I have no idea if Spiritual Weapon is a change he made, though, so that might have been a non-core option.

4) We really had no idea we were facing a BBEG (I didn't, anyway), until the gloves were off and she was owning us repeatedly in the face. If we had had any idea that there was a great evil lurking down there, we probably would have been a bit more cautious and less blindly aggressive, but hey, we learned a lesson, which I think will be good in the long run.

TPKing in Serpent's Skull must really suck. There's really no good "in" for a substitute party. One or two characters, sure, but a whole party? Ouch.

Edit: Oh, and the worst thing that happened in the first fight was that our fighter was forced to flee due to a compulsion of some sort (I forget what it was). So we were like one man down the whole time.

Sovereign Court

Oh I didn't go any easier on you, the dice weren't rolling well for the Lacedons though. They DID attempt an ambush and would have got a surprise round if you hadn't been using Detect Undead, before you even entered the room Bless and Desecrate were up on an altar (double effect of Desecrate)... But in the end she ran out of minions and out of juice.

Scarab Sages

Well the 4 ghouls make up a CR 5 encounter... tough but doable. Unfortunately adding Mother (CR 4 by herself) bumps this to either a CR 6 or 7 encounter. Which against 5 lvl 3 guys... is probably too high.

I think if the Party took Jask they might have been able to keep up on the channel positive energy side of it, or at least enough to flatten a couple of the ghouls (for my game Jask was level 3 at the time) which might have been enough to shift the balance of the encounter, especially as with undead you just have to bring them to 0 hp to kill them.

I think 2 things conspired against my players:
1) no full cleric (2d6 channel positive energy, could reduce the ghouls in 2 rounds on good rolls), and
2) no darkvision really sucked against the darkness spell.

I suppose I could have continued the adventure with the party being slightly ghoulish... hmm, maybe I should give them that option... :)


One of the groups I'm running, Mother Truefang's fight had such an epic end I posted it in the Obituaries thread. The party lucked out that I rolled high on her delay entering the fight, so were able to clear the ghouls before she showed, but her channel negative energy plus being effectivly invisible to all but one of the party due to darkness made her very tough even without any support.

In hindsight the group realised the thing to do was tactical withdrawal: Slow her down with a tanglefoot bag or some other means to get away, and try to wait out her darkness, then track her and engage her again before she can rest and regain spells.

Sovereign Court

Er... Invisible due to Darkness? You know its basically just a 20% miss chance right?


Darkness reduces ambient natural light to dim, but if there's no natural light, like the cave she's in, it trumps non-magical artificial light sources and magical light of equal or lower spell level, which is all what the party at this level would have, leaving them in the cave's full darkness. She's in that she's invisible. They're in that, they're blind (except the one guy they had with darkvision).

She cast it on her unholy symbol so it emanated from her wherever she went, but they did a great job of figuring out the square she was in by the perimiter of the effect, though.


Alexander Kilcoyne wrote:
Er... Invisible due to Darkness? You know its basically just a 20% miss chance right?

I think the devil's in the details:

From the 2nd level darkness spell:

"Nonmagical sources of light, such as torches and lanterns, do not increase the light level in an area of darkness. Magical light sources only increase the light level in an area if they are of a higher spell level than darkness."

The way we played it last night was that underground the regular light was none, the darkness spell trumped the 0 level cantrips we were using as light sources and even if there had been torches they wouldn't have worked.

From the way I read it today about the only time you'd only get the 20% miss chance is outdoors during the day. Anywhere else you'd pretty much be blinded unless you have darkvision.

I could be wrong but it seems pretty straight forward in that respect.

(I wonder if it was intentional to put the PCs up against invisible undead like that or if it was an oversight of how it would change the fight dynamics.)


That's how it works, yup.

I think it's just meant to be an epic fight. She's a major boss of the island that a whole side of the story of the shiv pivots around. Honestly, she could even be run tougher than her listed tactics, considering she could drop spells for inflict harm to heal herself. After darkness she could just dive right in the middle of the party and spam channel negative energy from the dark like a living repeating hand grenade, rather than use up the first rounds prepping spells, then have those slots later to heal.


Third player from Alex's Serpent's Skull PbP here (Gnome Bard).

One other detail from our game worth mentioning: the first time we faced the mother and her children was right after we defeated Klorax and the remainder of his cannibals up top, so our resources were already somewhat depleted. With that said, our second attempt the next day (minus our ranger/barbarian and monk, but bolstered by our new goblin cavalier plus Jask and Ishorou) was still touch and go for a while.

We're still waiting to see if my gnome bard succumbs to ghoul fever though...


Fourth player from Alex's game (fighter)

Ghoul cleric seems nasty but her damage output looked average and it seems like it will take her a while to chew through a party. Her plus the lacedons seems like the killer. The later were my main concern in our second fight. Multiple creatures with multiple attacks and paralysis = people dying quickly.

The key seems to be a priest/life oracle who can channel 2d6 damage turning lacedons into potential one hit kills for the meleers. If a group doesn't have one well Jask is conveniently there and if they've pissed him off well too bad. A party who can't kill the ghouls quickly enough seems doomed.

Edit: I'd add that the OP groups seems pretty badly set up for this fight. Low AC aside from the fighter. No dedicated cleric. Witch likely fairly limited use with mind affecting hexes. I'd say the GM should have sent Jask with you.

Scarab Sages

Dan E wrote:
Edit: I'd add that the OP groups seems pretty badly set up for this fight. Low AC aside from the fighter. No dedicated cleric. Witch likely fairly limited use with mind affecting hexes. I'd say the GM should have sent Jask with you.

It was the players call on whether they wanted to bring any NPCs with them. They choose to have the NPCs fix the lighthouse while they explored. As the DM for the group, I try hard not 'push' NPCs on the party. Unfortunately none of the PCs had Knowledge (Religion) to identify the ghouls (lacedons) and they didn't take any of the bodies up top to see if Jask could id them.

As for the witch, the player realized right near the end of the fight that the healing hexes could have been used to damage the undead... oops!

Party composition might have been slightly better... however they had managed thru a lot of other stuff with only one character death due to a critical hit, but overall a party with no dedicated healer should still be viable imo (although it definitely is harder).

Edit'd for punctuation and grammar... doh!

Sovereign Court

As one of the PC's had been taken captive and one had died, Jask and Ishorou who have a particularily good relationship with the group, volunteered to go with them. I didn't push them onto the group, but it made sense for the two of them to volunteer- although both were put to within 1HP of death...


My party got mangled by the mother as well, but we pulled out a win at the end. We only had 3 PC's. (summoner, druid, witch) Negative Channeling hurt a lot in the rounds it took the ghouls to go down. Mother herself was a lot tougher in the long run, especially when the Eidolon got paralyzed. (it was the only darkvision) Witch burning hands and summoning earth elementals finally did her in. Group was all in single digits at the end though. Memorable encounter.


This was a rough fight for my party as well. There were only 3 PCs, too (Fighter2/Rogue1; druid3; sorcerer3), but we also had the druid's leopard animal companion, Ishirou, Aerys and Shasha with us.

We blindly stumbled into her room and all failed horribly on perception checks. Got hit with darkness then 2 ghouls came out of nowhere. I think our GM stagger the ghouls entries into the fight... seemed like the second two came with Mother a few rounds into the fight.

Over the course of the fight every PC was dropped below zero or paralyzed at one point or another. Only Aerys, the leopard and Ishirou were standing at one point. Luckily both the druid and I (the fighter/rogue) had the paralysis wear off. I leap over the pool in the floor to get behind mother and got a flanking sneak attack with my bastard sword to drop her. Pretty sure I was around 1/4 HP at that point and that's better than anyone else in the party. It was a very close fight.

Sczarni

If I recall correctly, our group of:

Gnome Illusionist (me)
Dwarf Ranger (Guide Variant)
Human Bard (basically an archer)
Halfling Witch (our healer)
Elf Rogue (mostly ranged based)

Managed to stealth in pretty well (very sneaky throughout the party) and get the drop on the first couple of undead.

Throwing up an illusion of an "exploded orc wall" prevented a charge down the tunnel, and we played a "I miss you, you miss me" game for a while.

Finally, Momma ran out of mooks, and we were able to move in once the darkness dropped (Dwarf ranger took her on almost singlehandedly...very close fight between them) and gank her. Vanish & Invisibility on the Rogue (and Ranger) allowed them to move around a bit and put the final shots in.

So, by being sneaky and using delay tactics, we forced the first couple of mooks to fight on our terms, which allowed us the time to take them down. The Witch was MVP, since she had healing spells, Healing Hexes, and Evil eye to make the job so very much easier.

Sovereign Court

Evil eye is mind-affecting and thus should have had no effect. Happily, misfortune isn't.

Sczarni

Alexander Kilcoyne wrote:
Evil eye is mind-affecting and thus should have had no effect. Happily, misfortune isn't.

I may be misremembering how it went down...I do remember her touching the ghouls with Healing Hex all over the place, and they kept failing their saves.


For those of you who've played on in the AP(without being too spoilery) is it an ongoing trend then that the PC's can't succeed without NPC intervention or being heavily optimized with a near ideal party composition?

Sovereign Court

I've found my group hasn't needed either mass optimisation or NPC intervention to succed- the Lacedon cleric in question was only such a hard encounter because they went after her the same day they defeated the rest of the tribe and Klorax.

Not sure beyond book 1 though.


Petrus222 wrote:
For those of you who've played on in the AP(without being too spoilery) is it an ongoing trend then that the PC's can't succeed without NPC intervention or being heavily optimized with a near ideal party composition?

i recommend a rogue (or someone that can disable traps like an archivist bard or urban ranger) and maybe someone that can help with diseases and sickness (not a cleric or oracle per se, we've been doing just fine with a witch and alchemist sharing arcane and healing magic) beyond that you should be fine.


Petrus222 wrote:
For those of you who've played on in the AP(without being too spoilery) is it an ongoing trend then that the PC's can't succeed without NPC intervention or being heavily optimized with a near ideal party composition?

As far as i know, neither NPC intervention nor heavy optimization/party composition are required as common hurdles.


My apologies for venting like this, but I'm not sure where else to address it. My DM and I have talked, my issue isn't with him, but rather the module.

Overall I've been really unimpressed by the big encounters in the first part of the path. The big ones (and admittedly it's only been two) don't seem at all balanced to me, and the module itself has a couple of elements I just find annoying: Traps on the path our rogue can't seem to see and diseases that basically nerf characters into uselessness. Add in that the NPC's seem to be critical to beating the big encounters... and why am I playing again? (Even in Alexander's group, two NPC's were nearly killed on top of a 6 man party: if the damage they took had instead been on the PC's I'm guessing that would have been a few more deaths in the party.)

To be honest if the rest of the AP is more of the same, I'm better off bowing out. I've got other better things to do with my time and I don't want to ruin the DM's and the other players' game if they are enjoying it.

So in short I guess what I'm asking, is the rest of the AP more of the same? Do we need to have NPCs with us every step of the way or need to have generic summon's in the party to soak damage or do the PC's actually get to take credit for "winning" down the road?

Anyways any thoughts are appreciated. (And AK honestly I'm not being snarky with you, just pointing out an apparent contradiction.) If other people are having fun with it, I don't want to ruin it for them and I also don't want to waste time I could be doing something that I'll enjoy more or taking care of other responsibilities in my life.


Petrus222 wrote:

My apologies for venting like this, but I'm not sure where else to address it. My DM and I have talked, my issue isn't with him, but rather the module.

Anyways any thoughts are appreciated. (And AK honestly I'm not being snarky with you, just pointing out an apparent contradiction.) If other people are having fun with it, I don't want to ruin it for them and I also don't want to waste time I could be doing something that I'll enjoy more or taking care of other responsibilities in my life.

I'm not sure what you are looking for with this one. I don't feel that even part One requires NPC help for survival. The natural hazards are part of the gauntlet you have to deal with for the shipwrecked/lost island/haunted scenario part One uses as its premise. Part One ends with you getting off the island and back to the city. Further adventures involve jungle exploration, and searching through the Mwangi for a lost city. Your individual group makeup and dynamic will determine if you feel you can "take credit" or not i suspect.

If the thought of an outdoors heavy exploration through hazardous jungles and ruins with overland travel also isn't appealing to you, then yes, it may be best for you to bow out.

Sovereign Court

Petrus222 wrote:

(Even in Alexander's group, two NPC's were nearly killed on top of a 6 man party: if the damage they took had instead been on the PC's I'm guessing that would have been a few more deaths in the party.)

Bearing in mind I up the encounter difficulty to account for the 6 players, the challenge should be about the same. Two NPC's (both 2nd level compared to he party's 3rd) came along the second time as the group were down to 5 members, and both made very limited contribution as they couldn't keep up with Nylithati's channel energy (damage on all 6 so the damage hit everyone anyway).

Petrus222 wrote:

Anyways any thoughts are appreciated.

Generally though, I have to disagree. The encounter's don't assume the help of the NPC's. It is quite a difficult first chapter, and it sounds like you've just had a particularily rough time with it- you SHOULD be able to easily reduce disease chances down to 5%, and using heal checks to give that +4 bonus really helps.

None of the four main diseases encouraged to be inflicted on characters are particularily potent, but your DM could be using some other ones (I do this in my game, essentially I roll on a table of appropiate jungle diseases).

Bear in mind its the first chapter, and a less free one than groups are used to- no shops, no safe places, and full of danger. I actually enjoy the change, personally, but I can see that a group could find it overwhelming. The second chapter is a lot more forgiving, and at your higher levels many of the types of threats you face on the first chapter are less potent. Can I ask which other encounter you took issue with?

Petrus222 wrote:


(And AK honestly I'm not being snarky with you, just pointing out an apparent contradiction.)

No worries man you've not come across as hostile or anything.


Quote:
The natural hazards are part of the gauntlet you have to deal with for the shipwrecked/lost island/haunted scenario part One uses as its premise.

I guess it depends how you define hazards then. Creatures that try to kill and eat you I have no issue with. (if the encounters are balanced). Catching diseases that nerf PC's into uselessness which you then have to spend days or weeks recovering from I don't see as fun. Nor is it any fun to discover that the party needs less healing if you send the fighter to act as a polish mine detector for traps because the rogue just isn't able to hit the spot DC and his AC isn't high enough to avoid the damage.

Quote:
Your individual group makeup and dynamic will determine if you feel you can "take credit" or not i suspect.

I suspect you're right. In your party's case, the summoned creatures ate attacks and damage so the PC's wouldn't take as much. In my party's case, we couldn't summon meat shields to get in the way and instead needed to rely on the NPC's for help and healing. But the crux of the matter is that I don't partiucularily like the idea that we need the NPC's to be heroic... it kinda defeats the whole point of playing the game for me.


Alexander Kilcoyne wrote:


It is quite a difficult first chapter, and it sounds like you've just had a particularily rough time with it- you SHOULD be able to easily reduce disease chances down to 5%, and using heal checks to give that +4 bonus really helps.

After my first character died, the very first session my next character played he ended up with the red ache and being a halfling rogue with no con bonus couldn't make the save and went from str 10 to 1 over 2 or 3 days. (The dice said I should have been in the negatives, but the DM took pity on me and said the disease couldn't reduce you below 1.)

We also had issues earlier on in the adventure where PC's got sick with it and because we needed them (The dimporhodons were pretty nasty at level one) it meant rather than do any exploring the safe thing was to stay at camp and let them get well and regain their str. Which while logical, isn't what I think of when I think about gaming.

Quote:
Can I ask which other encounter you took issue with?

On one of the days where we were able to get out and explore the cannibals attacked en masse and captured all of the NPC's but one. So we chased them back to their camp with the rogue inadvertantly setting off and sucking damage from every trap along the way because he couldn't spot them, in spite of being maxed out in perception and having rogue bonuses to seeing them.

When we finally did get to the camp a stealth roll was blown because someone didn't think about where they were walking (dumb move on the PC's part to be blunt) and the camp was alerted. Because we didn't get to scout the camp effectively we didn't know how many were home and in spite of the fact that we killed 5 or 6 of the cannibals my first character (dwarf barbarian) bit it big time because everyone was home for the upcoming feast. (Again not the GM's fault, just a combination of the module's design and a few good/bad dice rolls, I took two hits and then got critted by the leader of the Thrunefangs. There's a thread on this some where... something like "the lethality of pathfinder".)

Quote:
No worries man you've not come across as hostile or anything.

Glad to hear it. Its not my intent and plain text isn't always the best at conveying that.


Petrus222 wrote:


I suspect you're right. In your party's case, the summoned creatures ate attacks and damage so the PC's wouldn't take as much. In my party's case, we couldn't summon meat shields to get in the way and instead needed to rely on the NPC's for help and healing. But the crux of the matter is that I don't partiucularily like the idea that we need the NPC's to be heroic... it kinda defeats the whole point of playing the game for me.

As a side note, our party runs about 50/50 on trap detection/avoidance for the outdoors ones(without a rogue even), and i was also missed by traps going off twice.

Again, i'd like to say(IMO of course) that as written you don't NEED the NPC's to be heroic.


none of the npcs in our game even made it to the thrunefang camp.


I've been a long time lurker and this particular conversation has inspired me to actually post.

I'm running Serpent's Skull for two groups and I'm playing in a third. In my experience on both sides of the table, I haven't found the NPCs necessary for survival at all. They're helpful and fun to have in the group but necessary? Not really.

Group A took them everywhere they went and still almost got completely wiped out by Mother Thrunefang. Group B by and large left them to keep up the camp and fought in the caverns without any of the NPCs and actually did better than Group A. The differences in the two combats were based on tactics, preparedness and degrees of caution.

As far as the diseases go, they can be annoying but they haven't nerfed any of the PCs into uselessness. I have to wonder if, in your case Petrus, a) your DM is being particularly ruthless with you, b) if your party just isn't taking advantages of the resources to decrease the possibility of disease, or c) if you've just been having outrageously rotten luck.

Finally with the traps: Group A had one PC get caught in the trap and was uninjured by the spikes. Group B had two PCs get caught in the traps, neither injured by the spikes. In Group C (where I'm a player) two PCs have gotten caught in the traps, and only one injured by the spikes (ironically, mine). Neither Group A or B has a rogue in the party.

The fight with Mother Thrunefang is definitely a tough one but it largely depends on whether or not the party is rested at the time they enter the underground caverns and how the party reacts to MT's tactics. Group B actually had a tougher time with the cannibals and Group A made the mistake of going down there right after the cannibal fight. Generally speaking the success or failure of a party depends on so many variables (including player skill) that there's just no one correct answer in regards to the difficulty level.


My party has not used the NPCs at all. There was one death and a player is currently using an NPC replacement, but that is it. they are currently jsut entering the last parth of module 1.

The fight in the cannibal camp was long and bloody, but they did fine. I even threw in some extra cannibals to make up for having 5 party members.

One party member died on the way to the mother so they took her on with only 4 party members. That did not go so well. I think my ruling on darkness was wrong as I ruled that it lowererd ilumination 1 step, but I counted the torch as the source. Mother only enojyed 20% miss chance through the fight. The party ended up fleeing, and coming back full strenght. That went much better, mother died to sneak attacks.

My party has had no problem with the traps, the DC is not all that high to find them, the party has found most of them. Dieseses almost took the elven wizard to 0 con (he needed the remove disease potion), but the chance of getting diseased is pretty low (5%) and if any other party member gets infected they have a good chance of making their save.

It's been challenging so far, but tons of fun.


Petrus222 wrote:


I guess it depends how you define hazards then. Creatures that try to kill and eat you I have no issue with. (if the encounters are balanced). Catching diseases that nerf PC's into uselessness which you then have to spend days or weeks recovering from I don't see as fun. Nor is it any fun to discover that the party needs less healing if you send the fighter to act as a polish mine detector for traps because the rogue just isn't able to hit the spot DC and his AC isn't high enough to avoid the damage.

Diseases and poisons really made Smuggler's Shiv for me. It helped it become memorable. I think they're almost necessary-- having someone have to spend a few days recovering after being poisoned by a snake is something we had to do, and it felt very appropriate for where we were.

The rogue's perception... he's level 3, so he has what, a +1 from trapfinding, 3 from ranks and 3 from trained? +7 and the DC is 20. Then, the to-hit bonus is +8 and he should have like a 17 or something. Really, I guess it just comes down to the rogue having bad rolls and the GM having good ones.


Ice Titan wrote:
The rogue's perception... he's level 3, so he has what, a +1 from trapfinding, 3 from ranks and 3 from trained? +7 and the DC is 20. Then, the to-hit bonus is +8 and he should have like a 17 or something. Really, I guess it just comes down to the rogue having bad rolls and the GM having good ones.

+1

My players found all the traps except once when they rolled a 2. I expect the Mother fight to be a hard one for them, but they should be prepared. I LOVE ghouls, so the lacedons probably won't have the element of surprise.

And remember: The entrance to the "dungeon of the Mother" is a pit in the cannibal camp, where they have their "god" (this info should be available to the PCs). If the players don't figure that going in there unprepared will be a bad idea, they got it coming to them.


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NPCs stealing the spotlight has been a bit of an issue, but thing to do is emphasise how it's only because of the PCs saving the NPCs from their own fears that they have them as a resource. In that way they're no different, spotlight wise, than a pet class's pet. No 'I' in "team", anything the NPCs do is a direct result of the PCs being heroic leaders, keeping them from going 'Hostile' or getting to 'Panicked' and rallying their spirits and winning their loyalty, and it's the payoff of that heroism.

For disease, I noted a couple of important details in the AP - 1) it refers to only the PCs when taking about catching disease 2) it says don't over do it.

I had the NPCs never get sick, rolling that many times would make it come up too much. Also there's no minmum chance, so once the PCs get the hint, they should keep enough medic rolls filled that the chance is reduced to zero. Hitting them once was enough, and the wizard getting milaria in the jungle fit the theme perfect.

Scarab Sages

Asphesteros wrote:

NPCs stealing the spotlight has been a bit of an issue, but thing to do is emphasise how it's only because of the PCs saving the NPCs from their own fears that they have them as a resource. In that way they're no different, spotlight wise, than a pet class's pet. No 'I' in "team", anything the NPCs do is a direct result of the PCs being heroic leaders, keeping them from going 'Hostile' or getting to 'Panicked' and rallying their spirits and winning their loyalty, and it's the payoff of that heroism.

For disease, I noted a couple of important details in the AP - 1) it refers to only the PCs when taking about catching disease 2) it says don't over do it.

I had the NPCs never get sick, rolling that many times would make it come up too much. Also there's no minmum chance, so once the PCs get the hint, they should keep enough medic rolls filled that the chance is reduced to zero. Hitting them once was enough, and the wizard getting milaria in the jungle fit the theme perfect.

The NPCs didn't steal spotlight time in my game, the only time they actually did anything on their own was to break out of the cannibal camp after being captured when the cannibals emptied the camp to go and chase the PCs. The PCs did use the castaways to attack the cannibal camp, but each player was running 1 or 2 of the NPCs (I had more than enough cannibals to run! :)

As for diseases, the PCs got hit early and then devoted 2 medics. Unfortunately after several sessions they again made camp in the bush and neglected to put folks on medic duty. Diseases struck, and some bad rolls had one of the PCs incapacitated due to Str loss. So in the 9 sessions I ran, only 4 PCs got diseased, 2 the first time round, and 2 the second time round.

The really annoying part with the diseases, is that it does take a long time to recover... and sometimes my players did not want to 'wait' until the PC got better... /shrug.


The group I'm running has done fairly well on the Island so far.

The only 'fatality' took place on the first night when the 1st level halfing summoner decided to check out that crashing and bleeting some 50 yards into the jungle (on his own). Turns out it was the giant winged chupacabra. The last anyone saw of the halfling was him being carried off in the moonlight.

Since then there have been a number of close calls and I guess that's where the luck factor comes in.

Of all the encounters so far, the Mother & crew have definately been the worst. Good saving throws and 2 elves in the party helped but now there are four of them waiting to make their saves vs ghoul fever.

Trapwise, after the first trap the ranger cut a long forked stick that he pushes ahead of him to trip the traps on the trails. They move a bit slower but they've avoided all the susequent traps.

Diseases have benefited from:

1)some good saving throws plus a cleric with a high healing skill, the witch's roll two d20's hex and the cleric's bit of luck ability.

2)putting a fair bit of effort into shelters.

I have played light on the diseases, trying to keep it as something they are afraid of, not something that's bogging down the game. Especially since the hafling being carried off on the first night ensured that no one was expecting to find the Skipper or Gilligan.


Our DM was kind of nice since there were only three of us and waited until midway into the combat to use darkness. He also didn't finish frozen people with ghouls as long as they had a live target trying to hurt them.

Here's who we had.
1. L3 Elven wizard w/ mage armor on (me)
2. L3 1/2 Ling rogue
3. L3 1/2 Elf Life Oracle

We're a very quiet, methodical party when we don't have the barbarian, so we managed to keep anyone else from running to warn them.

Early Game (Before mother shows up)
We take out one ghoul, but the other two players get frozen. Mother spawns and heal pulses. I cast grease and all three baddies fall down.

Mid Game
I use mirror image wand. Mother pulses and one of the ghouls gets up and hits me. At 3 hp, I drink a potion. Mother casts spiritual weapon and enthrall on me as I tank one of the ghouls.

Late Mid Game
Our rogue unfreezes and kills one ghoul just as the other one gets up. I land a glitterdust and the mother actually fails it. She pulses damage. Oracle unfreezes and pulses heal.

Mother casts darkness. For like three rounds in a row the oracle and the mother trade pulses while the rest of us suck. Oracle goes down and I get feared.

Late Game
Rogue actually manages to get the mother just outside of darkness and damage her. The other ghoul chases me into her lair but can't hit me. I finally disrupt undead/longsword it to death as the mother freezes the rogue again.

DM is nice and actually has the mother lecture the rogue about joining her army for a round or two as I buff up and return to the combat. Oracle finally stabilizes. Mother corners me in her lair. I tank for a couple rounds until rogue unfreezes again and shanks mommy from behind.

So my tips are to have a nice DM, use grease, and tank with a mirror imaged AC 22 elf.


Our DM pointed us to this thread, since last night (Monday 10/31) we fought the Mother and there are no spoilers here....

My ranger character, Traine, died, as well as the barbarian character, Crusher, died. We stupidly entered the darkness that she cast and then proceeded to fail almost every disease and paralyze save and she just took turns chomping on us. The 3 others in the party, Ishirou, cleric and sorcerer could not hit anything. We *had* killed all the other undead, so they ran, regrouped with all the other NPCs (less Gellick as died earlier) and came back to finish off the weakened Mother.

Jask used the raise dead scroll on Crusher, and I am bringing in a new character.

Oh, the DM was rolling 20's darn near all night long. His dice were smoking!, while we couldn't hit or save worth anything. With the way we were rolling last night, the only way we could have beaten her without deaths is if we had an elf tank in the party who was immune to the paralyze.

-- david
aka Traine dan Torcan


Our group had darkvision. The main wizard in the group, my character, is a wizard/sorcerer (orc/dragon). So I had Darkvision, thus the darkness did not effect me as a lower level darkness spell can't cancel darkvision.

I'm an evoker with magic missile Spell Specialization. I blasted her quite a bit as she advanced. I guided the cleric to the general area so he could use his channel energy to harm her.

It's a pretty tough encounter without darkvision. That's why we won. If we hadn't had darkvision, probably would have died.


Petrus222 wrote:
For those of you who've played on in the AP(without being too spoilery) is it an ongoing trend then that the PC's can't succeed without NPC intervention or being heavily optimized with a near ideal party composition?

Without spoiling it for you, the NPCs you get later on working as our pack slaves and camp guards right now. I could care less if they died. If you've ever watched a Tarzan movie, the current NPCs are the no named natives carrying baggage for the foreigners. The NPCs in the first module are important. But after module one, they are more background than help.


I have Souls's For Smuggler's Shiv (Serpent's Skull part 1); I think some of the DC are a bit too high for a low level Party.

In another thread, this is one of the few AP where players wish to start at a higher level.


Petrus, it sounds like your party had astonishingly bad luck. If the dice are trying to kill you then yes, you're going to have a very hard time of it.

The later NPCs aren't nearly as important - and two of the NPCs that are important are so poorly written that they're practically liabilities to take with you. There IS an NPC you'll get in book 6 who is completely bad-ass, though. We liked him.

Mother: Our group had a 5 man party, and 4 of those characters had darkvision. So the darkness spell wasn't really an issue.

Mother was still really nasty fight - I think we successfully killed all her mooks before we engaged her, and then were a bit floored by the lone monster givng us all a run for our money. My rogue and the bard were paralyzed, but the other frontliners managed to keep passing their saves. So we got her, but it was close.


My PC's all lacked darkvision except the summoner/synthesist, whom promptly got paralyzed and coupe de graced. Things where looking pretty grim indeed when the druid had some quick thinking and started summoning earth elementals, who where surprisingly good and finished her off faster than I anticipated so she wasn't as liberal with the self healing as she should have been.

Scarab Sages

My party had a half-orc and thus darkvision. It was still a challenge.

Life oracle, cavalier, paladin, rogue and sorcerer/bard all level 3. They dealt with the encounter ok, and it was a boss encounter after all.

In the end the rogue sort of suicided to try to flank the mother. Mother has quite a high CMD. This got her paralyzed, then she died to the next attack.

It was rather epic.

As for the rest of the island. The PCs managed to kill the chieftain of the cannibals before the planned face-off in the village. This meant that they were able to loot the big necklace. They then strode into the cannibal village and intimidated the crap out of them with the half-orc cavalier: "Stef the green one, slayer of your previous chieftain!" That was an interesting twist.

Malikadna did not agree though ;) It was fun and some of the cannibals are now 'slaves' for the cavalier. The paladin is not pleased with that move.


In our group, I play a Kitsune Gunslinger with a blunderbus. Concealment mattered very little to me.

But we had an Aasimar Rogue, who countered darkness with Daylight. Before that, I had an Ion Torch, which uses a level 3 spell thus hurting the level 2 darkness spell.

It was hard, two characters.. Our serpent folk druid and human fighter, were paralyzed from the gouls and she retreated into an area that made it hard to reach her and kept spamming that damn channel energy.

Eventually though, we defeated the knee-knocker as we called her.


Ævux wrote:


But we had an Aasimar Rogue, who countered darkness with Daylight.

.

.
I'm not sure this is supposed to work, but anyway...


http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/d/daylight

Aasimar are far stronger than tieflings.

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