Hello Pathfinder community!
I did a few searches on "Malfeshnekor" in this forum and noticed something: what if he's too easy? Ultimately, this thread is about creating a suitable challenge for a group.
Many threads talk about PCs dying because of this enemy. Some groups talk about skipping him or saying he's too hard. While my group isn't comprised of Pathfinder experts, they've been blowing past every challenge I throw at them.
You can skip the backstory and my experience with game difficulty if you wish.
My group has gone through "Hollow's Last Hope," "Crown of the Kobold King" and is now about to complete "Burnt Offerings". They're all level 4. I typically award levels after specific accomplishments rather than individual encounters. I'm not sure if it's better than the standard way but it works.
Here is the party (level 4):
Fighter
Ranger
Monk
Rogue
Bard
Druid
Sorcerer
We've had zero deaths, and a total of 3 incidents where anyone dropped into negative HP. We've been playing with a group of 6 for most of it, and had a new player begin playing for our latest session.
I'm aware that these modules are designed for a group of four players. Technically it says four to six, but from experience it's really four.
Here is an example of something I did to increase encounter difficulty (SPOILERS FOR BURNT OFFERINGS):
In the standard fight against Nualia, it's just her and one Yeth Hound. I added an additional Yeth Hound. I also moved Lyrie (level 3 Wizard) into Nualia's room.
Nualia's AC is 15, but I bumped it to 18. When she casts Shield of Faith, this makes it 20. Her +1 bastard sword attack is at +9, but I gave it a bump to +11. I gave her Aura of Cowardice (from the anti-paladin skill list) and extended the range to the whole room.
When one of the Yeth Hounds howled, it panicked almost everyone, leaving only two people in the room. Those two continued fighting regardless. The whole battle turned around as the rest of the party trickled back into the room. I had hoped for a slaughterfest after that hugely successful fear attempt, but they cleared it without a sweat.
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Actual examination of enemy *spoilers*
We now have Malfeshnekor, which is the "optional boss" of Thistletop. I want him to have a high chance of killing a PC if they decide to enter his room. Even if I can instill a sense of panic and force a retreat, it would be a mission success. I have two reasons for this:
1) The sorcerer in the group uses "detect magic" on pretty much everything out of cautiousness. The magic seal on the door is CL 17. Once they figure that out, they're going to know something bad is behind it.
2) I want to give them a fair warning, and let them know that they take full responsibility for their actions. Perhaps something like "You can detect an immense power behind this door like none you've ever encountered before". I'll figure out the flavor text later, but they'll know what they're getting into. Enticing them to open it anyway should be easy, heh.
So here are Malfeshnekor's strengths:
- 85 HP
I believe this is the highest HP encounter they'll go up against so far. Assuming all 7 players show up, it shouldn't take long to go down.
- DR 10/magic
We have two full casters, and one bard with spells. The monk can spend a ki point to deal magic damage. All of the other melee have +1 weapons to bypass this DR. It's effectively meaningless, unless I misunderstand the rules.
- +10 or more to all saves
I don't foresee my group using too many save-based attacks, but this is pretty solid overall.
- bite +17 (2d6+8) and 2 claws +12 (1d6+4)
His attacks are brutal, but not ultra lethal. Our fighter has AC 23 and over 40 HP. Malfeshnekor gets one attack for every 7 he receives, which might be the biggest issue.
- Blink
The spell description says it adds a 50% miss chance on top of a regular AC check. This might be the biggest hurdle to the party.
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How should I play Malfeshnekor when fighting the group? The module says:
At the beginning, he casts Invisibility Sphere, Bull's Strength and Blink. He casts Rage on the first round.
He prefers melee combat, but saves Crushing Despair and Charm Monster on ranged units who stay outside the room.
I wouldn't be "cheap" and immediately go for the squishiest characters (sorcerer/druid/bard) but I may go for low blows to these PCs if the fight doesn't go well for Malfeshnekor. Aside from this, I would mostly play as written.
Any helpful tips, advice or words of wisdom? Thank you for taking the time to read this!
Greetings, fellow travellers.
What are you expecting? You have seven players! Of course they steamroll through all the encounters.
RotRL was designed with a 4-person group in mind (as you mentioned), using D&D3.5. PF allows for slightly stronger characters in the first place and you have 2-3 people in addition to boost. Action economy will favor them even more.
Your best chance is to use additional monsters, be it of the same kind or underlings.
Throw in 3d6 goblins, half ranged, half melee focused, that should do the trick. It makes the fight a little more interesting and should give everybody in the group a possibility to shine.
Another possibility is to have 2-3 tougher guys (or the goblins) enter the fight 1d4 rounds later.
Let M hide in the shadows and have him cast charm monster on the biggest melee threat, followed by crushing despair and let the players deal with that, then engage in melee.
Melee will be brutal, M has a chance of 70% to hit with his bite, 50% to hit with his secondary attacks and the damage is quite high - is bull's strength and his rage featured in already?
Ruyan.
I don't know that I have any words of wisdom, but a few things to consider:
When I ran the initial encounter for my group, Malfie surprised a strong party of 5 4th-level characters. These were well-built 25-point buy characters. By the end of round 3 (including the surprise round), the wizard and barbarian were down, and Malfie was beginning to work on the cleric. The party had trouble harming him. Round 4, the party dragged their unconscious friends out and ran away. (And Malfie still charmed one of them while they were slamming the door shut. Sneaky bastard...)
With a large Malfie inside, the room gets crowded fast. It's difficult for more than a couple melee attackers to get in position without generating AoO's. 7 characters might not be quite as effective as you fear, and I think Malfie has a good chance of taking down your fighter in 2 rounds.
All that said, if I were in your position, the first thing I'd do would be to apply the Advanced template to Malfie and see how that looked. That might be all you need to do, especially if your characters don't know what to expect and aren't properly prepared. And don't shy from using Charm early on if the opportunity presents itself. This should be a very crafty, dangerous foe.
Hope that stream of consciousness helps. Good luck!
Why is their success a problem to you?
Answer me that before asking for advice on the encounter.
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I don't think that it is a matter of success being a problem. I think it is having a strong challenge for the players and having a sense of drama...
That being said, I wouldn't aim for a death of a PC, though I would put the fear of death into them...
You need to describe the encounter and put the fear into the characters.
I don't have time for a full description, but I would do a quick hit and run, leaving a message with one of the PCs, maybe the sorcerer... "Thank you, little morsel..." *lick* "Sweet freedom..." *blink*
The Malfeshnakor encounter was a total anticlimax for my party. I have a six-character PFRPG party, all level 3 at the time. I had been converting all of the encounters to PF, and had been increasing the CRs of each encounter by 1 or 2 due to the general toughness of the PCs, and their generally excellent tactics.
For the encoutner, I used a CR7 greater barghest. He was invisible, and used his charm monster ability on the party barbarian during the surprise round to take him out of the combat at the start.
The barbarian made the Will save. Since casting the spell counted as an attack, Malfi was now visible. I rolled a "1" on the barghest's initiaitve, making him go dead last in the first round.
The cleric went first, and cast magic weapon in the Barbarian's masterwork mithril ranseur (the one recovered from the statue of Alaznist in the Catacombs). The barbarian went next, raged, and Power Attacked with the now-magic ranseur. He rolled a natural 20, and then confirmed the critical hit. The ranseur is a x3 crit damage weapon, and the the barbarian rolled max damage on the dice. Since he was raging and power attacking, a normal hit would have done +9 damage, so the crit did 17 hp x 3 = 51 hp damage, all of which bypassed the baddie's DR. {It also forced a death from massive damage roll, but Malfi saved.)
Then the paladin steps in, and Smites Evil, connecting, and doing another 14 hp, again bypassing its DR. Then, the rogue successfully uses Acrobatics to get into a flanking position with the paladin without provoking an AOO, and Sneak Attacks with a +1 dagger, successfully hitting for 10 hp, again bypassing DR.
Then the wizard casts scorching ray, successfully hitting the beasts's 11 Touch AC. Barghests don't have SR, so it automatically does 4d6 damage, and even though it was average damage, it was enough to drop it.
The other wizard then says, "Wow. For a demon, he was a wuss!" ...and delivered a coup de grace.
End of Malfeshnakor, who didn't do a single hp of damage against the party.
Haladir, an untimely "1" followed by a timely "20" is going to swing any combat into anticlimax territory. Hopefully they have similar luck with Xanesha!
It was a sufficiently climactic battle with Xanesha, and the PCs defeated her. Both I and the players really loved that battle.
I drastically redesigned Xanesha, making her a human vampire sorcerer 6/fighter 1/eldritch knight 5 (CR 13). I gave the Impaler of Thorns the "returning" ability, as well.
Anyway, while I was working to convert Ravenloft to Pathfinder, and to shoehorn the plot of Ravenloft into Runelords, I came to the realization that Runelords was a vastly superior adventure: better written, more tightly plotted, better NPCs, and just in general more interesting. So, I abandoned the Ravenloft idea, put the campaign on a three-week hiatus to re-work the plot and convert "Hook Mountain Massacre," and now I'm running a straight-up "Rise of the Runelords" game.
Another thing I added for the fight: Ironbriar, in his auspices as a judge, put together formal dossiers on the Sandpoint Heroes, including observations of their fighting styles from eyewitnesses. The party found these dossiers in his office at the Sawmill, and also found copies among Xanesha's papers. This gave me an in-game reason to have Xanesha use tactics specifically designed with the PCs in mind. (Rule #1: Don't get into melee!) After they "killed" her, as a vampire, she assumed gaseous form and wafted up, above the Shadow Clock, and, through a crack in the masonry, into the Irespan itself. The PCs then had to follow her through a short dungeon to drive a stake through her heart and destroy her once and for all! (How'd she get her coffin up there? Shrink item.)
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You don't need to boost Malfeshnekor.
Just convert him to PFRPG and give him a twin.
The massive advantage of your 7 man party is action economy.
A more powerful foe is not going to counter that as effectively as a second foe will.
2 Malfeshnekors will be more of a challenge because of action economy will boost them above the standard encounter (1/4 vs 2/7).
Thank you all for posting. You've given me some very good ideas.
To reply to a previous poster, I have no problem with the success of my party. I do have a problem when battles become so trivial that people can use wi-fi on their laptops to do something else while waiting for their turn. Hearing an "Ok, so what happened?" when someone zones back in on their turn is discouraging.
In a nutshell, there has to be a risk involved or people will unconsciously tune out.
I'm going to use some of the ideas and prepare some backup tricks if the group gets a lucky critical or Malfeshnekor gets that unlucky "1" initiative. Thank you all for your support!
Give monsters the advanced template and max their HP. If that doesn't work, give them a 'mate' or 'twin' as listed above.
Give bad guys about a 1-3 level boost, and add some mooks a few levels below the PCs. Gestalting the bad guys (as in Unearthed Arcana, 3.5 sourcebook) could also help give a boost.
Then, only give them credit for the original CR of the encounter. Or make them use the slow xp progression.
Eventually you'll find what challenges them.