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I’m running a series of 3rd party modules for my group (Curse of the Golden Spear if you are curious) It is a pretty well written series even if it does have a few glaring errors. I’m having some difficulties running with any of the suspense / horror feel to it like it is supposed to have.
Sorry this will be a wall of text, but I’m not sure how else to explain things.
As I see it, I have 3 interrelated issues.
- PC power level and what people call ‘rocket tag’ and how it shortens the encounters. Part of it is on me, I let them talk me into 20 point buy even though the pregens in the module are about 15 point buy. Also, I have 5 players in a module designed for 4. But about 2/3 of the time only 4 guys can make it on game day and a couple of times only 3 guys could make it. So their power level is a bit up for the point buy and sometimes they have an extra PC, compared to design. Also, this is the first time this group all made halfway optimized PC’s and a team that meshes fairly well. I’m much more used to them having fairly badly built characters, don’t have something covered, or get in each other’s way.
But what it comes down to is that there just isn’t time for a lot of what the module expects to have happen.
Monster A is supposed to channel negative to weaken the whole party, then hit each PC once to weaken them with ability drains, then channel negative energy again, when PC’s start falling he animates them to attack their former comrades. What happened is that Monster A channeled negative energy and hit most of the party. Then died in one round of attacks.
Monsters B and C are supposed gain strength by draining from the foes they hit and channeling negative energy to heal themselves and each other. They died before landing a single hit.
Monster D is supposed to poison each of the players in turn waiting for the poison to weaken them all. One PC made the fairly low DC save then it died in 1 round.
Etc… These creatures have all these abilities that are supposed to make them seem unnatural and horrific. But they die so fast that the party doesn’t even know they have all these awful abilities. I’ve been adding about 30% extra hp’s. But that just doesn’t make any difference. The 3 dps builds are each doing like 2x that in damage. Based on other things I’ve read on the boards, I added mooks but they just ignore them. - Player paranoia. This place is dark and foreboding. Almost everyone not a commoner is corrupt if not actively evil. Part of the module is a bunch of attempted mind games. An inviting inn run by a beautiful woman and her daughters (they are monsters to try and kill them). An agent that tries to bargain with the PC’s (while partner gets into position to attack). Since they are constantly expecting the mind games they don’t fall for anything. Couple that with the paladin using ‘detect evil’ on virtually everything and they don’t really fall for anything. Without surprise few of these encounters are even slightly dangerous. There is no horror or suspense because the encounter is almost a non-event. It actually ends up being the exact opposite because it is so easy. I’ve tried adding some encounters where they are not attacked or betrayed, but the paranoia is too firmly ingrained unless I want to bore them with dozens of non-threat encounters.
- Builds (especially the equipment) in the module don’t make sense. The powerful and awful lieutenants of the super powerful and horrific ruler have a couple of +1 and masterwork items. That’s it. These guys are supposed to be so bad-ash they terrify the country side, but they have worse gear than a standard captain of the guard. They should at least be a threat to 7th level PC’s and are equipped like 3rd level PC’s.
I mean on one hand I understand that if they defeat a half dozen guys armed like they are, then suddenly they are incredibly wealthy and powerful just because of the gear they have acquired or can afford to purchase. But on the other hand the bad guys to hit modifier, damage modifiers, AC, and saves are mostly very low (compared to the PC’s) because they don’t have any significant gear to augment themselves. I’ve been giving them some potions to help out, but it still doesn’t seem to ‘make the grade’ so to speak.
These examples are from this series of modules, but I’ve been reading some other published material and I don’t see it being much different. The other things I’ve read have 3-6 rounds of tactics for an encounter but nothing in it looks like they should last more than 1 round (maybe 2 if the PC’s are having a bad day). A bunch of mind games, betrayals, ambushes that I don’t see almost any group of players falling for. Foes with awe inspiring reputations, with crap equipment, that aren’t really a threat.
When I try to beef up an encounter it seems like some or all of the following happen.
1 - Made no difference.
2 - Suddenly too powerful and I have to jump to avoid a TPK.
3 - PC’s get too much loot.
This series is almost complete, but I’d like some advice on how I could improve this for the future.
It is true that the "bad guys" tend to be gear light for their levels. This is because of the obvious problem of over gearing the party if every NPC was equipped like a PC. However, if you are finding that your party is having too easy a time of it, there's nothing that says you can't give your bad guys a "natural armor" bonus to make them a bit easier to hit. In my experience, upping defenses goes a lot further than upping hit points. Likewise, you can give them trait bonuses and the like to their saving throws. Sure, you might be bending the rules a bit, but that's kind of the GM's job from time to time if its necessary to make the game more entertaining.
As for the "PC Paranoia". Yeah, a paladin in the party is going to pretty much sniff out any evil NPCs before they have the chance to "betray" the party. Best case scenario, the paladin will recognize that the npc is evil and thus, doesn't fully trust them. However, you can also turn this around on the paladin. If he's going around detecting evil all the time, put him in an evil town. Everyone is going to detect evil and so he's going to be forced to still deal with some of them, even if he doesn't exactly trust them.
It does sound as though for future reference though that you will need to tone down the number of npcs that betray the party. In my experience, the older a gaming group gets, the more suspicious they get and the more they think the entire world is out to get them. This becomes doubly so in a "horror" setting where oft times just about every IS out to get them. Keep in mind though that even evil people generally need the help of others. Furthermore, there's nothing that says evil must mean stupid. In other words, evil npcs will still act in a manner that they believe to be in their best interests. This often means NOT attacking the group of heavily armed and experienced heroes.
It would be nice if you described the PCs, so on could look for a way to make it harder for them. Aka Blaster Sorcerer with bonus damage on Fire spells, might be countered by Fire resistance, an Archer Paladin by concealment or a wind wall spell and a mounted combatant by difficult terrain or small rooms to prevent him from charging.
Things I would do to make encounters harder:
- Add difficult terrain or similar obstacles, if your group is melee based, prventing the heroes from getting close to soon.
-Many big creatures have reach and can get attacks if opportunity if the heroes try to get in.
-If you add some additional enemies to the encounters make shure, the enmies cannot ignore them. You could have them block the corridor or have reach and hit AoOs with trip atttempts. The feat "In Harms Way" allows the little helpersto SOAK the damage from the heroes attacks.
-Give the NPCs Potions and Scrolls and other 1time gear, they can use for buffing themselves before combat. This way you wont increase the heroes wealth, making them even more powerful, while toughening up the NPCs. A scroll of Mirage Arcana could create an entire illusory labyrinth with prison cells for the characters out of nowwhere.
-Ambushes can be nasty. If the PCs have high Perception scores, their enemies could counter that by drinking Potions of Invisbility in advance.
20 pt buy is not a problem if you include two things:
No stat over 18 @ 1st level
No points for buying down a stat below 10.
This tends to produce more well rounded & survivable characters. Less “rocket tag’ less “TPK”. (Note a rocket tag party can go to TPK pretty darn fast too).
A few other points:
“Monster A is supposed to channel negative to weaken the whole party, then hit each PC once to weaken them with ability drains, then channel negative energy again, when PC’s start falling he animates them to attack their former comrades.” I hope you exaggerated here. No module should assume a PC death.
“ the paladin using ‘detect evil’ on virtually everything “ Carefully read the detect Evil spell. Many low level things don’t ping.
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As far as difficulty, I ran into a similar problem running Broken Chains as a one-shot recently. I did 20 point buy, intentionally, and I decently accounted for 20 point buy and a 6th PC in adjusting encounters beforehand, largely by just adding more enemies.
What I didn't account for, though, was that many of the monsters were just not enough threat to the PCs individually; a fight that was supposed to be at-level ended up lasting 2 rounds, with half the enemy dead before they acted.
My best friend in adjusting during the game was the Advanced Simple template. For a quickie, +4 AC, +2 to all rolls (including damage), +2 hp / hit die. It's a pretty easy boost to apply on the fly. When you're preparing, it may make sense to rebuild some NPCs from scratch; for example, I should have worked on the basic slaver thugs in my situation, who were trying to TWF with whips and clubs... but provoked for every attack with a whip.
Advanced Simple is your friend if you just need to bump an encounter up quickly & easily. But when you're preparing in advance, think about also adding in more enemies, especially in tactically interesting ways. Some arrive on round 2, from a different direction (even an unexpected one).
As far as paranoia, I've got two suggestions. One is to brush up on auras in detect evil; while outsiders, undead, and clerics (and similar) pack auras always, there's no alignment aura below 6 HD. Make sure you're not handing the paladin information he shouldn't have. The other is to make sure that there are NPCs who don't betray and backstab the party. Even NPCs who seem like they should. Not only do players tend to get paranoid about every NPC being out to get them, but in addition, if every NPC really is out to get them, they'll really start making those assumptions.
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Maybe your players haven't actually bought into the horror concept?
Horror is about feeling powerless and vulnerable. About confronting things you're not equipped for, not trained for.
But the players brought horror-monster-extermination professionals. Stopping undead monstrosities is exactly a paladin's job. He's fundamentally unable to be afraid - it's a class feature.
Problem 1: These tactics are best-case scenarios. 90% of the time your average monster won't last past round 2. The easiest way to make up for this is to cheat. If they start combat by casting 4 buff spells, make it so they already have all of them on (except in certain situations where the PC's actually surprise them). Don't follow the tactics if they're dumb, be creative. I had a bunch of low level evil clerics get jumped on by a party of level 13-14 PCs. Mass channel negative energy + selective channel still managed to deal 50+ damage to most of them before they all dropped (even when making all the saves).
Problem 2: Non-detection can go a long way to helping that. Other spells can even make the enemies seem aligned in a way favorable to the party. The book is a guideline, not the law. Change things to make it more difficult. Don't do it TOO often, but every once and a while will really throw off PC's.
Problem 3: Give them consumables. Scrolls of greater magic weapon, potions of bull strength, etc. Back them up with a moderate level cleric or wizard for buffs like prayer, haste, large size, etc. Give them the advanced template, or give them 2-3 more class levels. Or just give them items that the party cannot use. Is the party good? Unholy weapons. Make the weapons intelligent and aligned evil. If you're particularly mean, make the items crumble into dust when the enemy dies.
To reiterate something the others have mentioned: Detect Evil should no longer be an "I see you!" button for Paladins; the creature must have an evil intent (or be of the [Evil] subtype) and have a certain number of HD before they even register.
You could also equip some of the more important (but evil) NPCs with a stash of Scrolls of Undetectable Alignment.
Probably the most challenging problem here is to counter what is essentially (intentional or unintentional) metagaming on the part of the players - the constant paranoia. If the players are acting paranoid toward everyone, then start decreasing the attitudes of NPCs appropriately; if they're treating everyone like criminals, why should anyone trust them or help them?
Have shopkeepers refuse to deal with them because of their distrust, or charge them more; normal townsfolk should refuse to speak with them at all; eventually, such a lack of trust could (should) lead to the PCs being shunned\driven out of town. If you can machinate it, set up an encounter with a desirable reward that requires them to trust someone (or a group of people); if they behave as normal, they fail the challenge, and then in-character reveal to them what it was they lost.
As for encounters\creatures, the best thing you can do is assume that the creatures have time to prepare for the party. Have all of their buffs pre-cast; give them scrolls, low-charge wands, and potions, and have them used before the combat begins if possible.
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Group is:
Half-Orc Archer Paladin - huge amounts of damage especially when smiting and the module makes it unlikely they will get all that many more encounters in a day than he has smites. At least not seriously rough encounters.
Half-Drow Gauntlet Witch - has some decent SoS control spells/powers
Gnome Draconic Blasting Sorcerer - lots of fireballs and scorching rays
Dwarf Fighter Shadow Dancer Melee with Waraxe - sneak is high enough almost nothing finds him first then he crushes with the axe
Elf Universalist Wizard - new to pathfinder but played earlier editions so still doing pretty well, he is often buffing with things like haste or adding to the number of fireballs to clear out any mooks.
Almost everything significant (not all the wondering monsters) in the module is better than 6HD, undead, and/or an outsider. So detect evil works on most of them.
The Advanced Simple template might have given some of the encounters a second round but not most of them. The PC's to hit is way beyond the monster AC. The spell save DC's are so high the foes often have to roll a 19 or 20 to succeed so a +2 makes it 17-20 to succeed so they will still usually fail. But it will help some. I had tried adding levels and either it didn't have any real effect or they were suddenly too powerful.
I couldn't seem to find a level of mook that was significant enough that it can't be ignored but didn't TPK the party. The AoO, disarms, trips, and things like that from low level foes just aren't much of a threat to PC's that the lowest AC is a 29. Or if they seem a little bit threatening the shadow dancer runs up to keep them bunched then a fireball wipes them all out, damages the BB, and PC makes his evasion save and takes no damage.
Ambush and surprise is almost the only way the bad guys are getting to make any attacks at all. As soon as the party gets their turn all the monsters are usually dead. Even then the PC are getting good at guessing when to use the see invisibility spell (3 of them have it) and their perceptions are high enough that they are sometimes detected anyway.
Sorry if this sounds really negative, but I'm kinda frustrated and I think some of the players are getting a little bored. The last 3 'hard' encounters were 2, 1, and 1 rounds after the surprise.
Wow - a 29 AC? What level are the characters?
To be honest?
You're going to have to drop them.
Don't kill them, but take one of the challenges that you made that seemed too hard for them and knock a few of them to negative HP. Have the enemies ignore them once they collapse rather than coup de gracing them.
Don't forget that there was a noticeable power increase from 3.x to Pathfinder - all but the most powerful classes got even more powerful. It's especially true if your players optimized, which it sounds like they did.
I would say the Advanced Simple Template would be justified for all 3.x encounters if you have a barely optimized 4-character party of Pathfinder characters. You have more optimization and sometimes more characters, so that template is a good start, but not enough.
You might be surprised how hard it is to TPK the party. You said a couple times that if you alter the encounters a little they're still too easy but just a little more and they will TPK. In my experience, the margin is never that narrow.
Mooks that can be ignored are worthless. To make them less ignorable, have them surround the real bad guys so that the heroes have to spend a round or two plowing through mooks to even reach the bosses. Also, if the frontline guys ignore mooks, let those mooks ignore them too and go right for the sorcerer, witch, and wizard. If they get close enough, they can attack on their round and AoO every time one of those casters tries to cast anything. Have them focus fire, a wizard with 6 mooks standing there hitting him 12 times every round might go down fast, and then maybe the next encounter the group will stop ignoring mooks.
So, template the bosses, add some mooks, use creative terrain, and allow the bad guys to pre-buff with a potion or two - often something like barkskin, bulls strength, or invisibility can go a long way toward making bad guys much tougher, and the best part is, potions that get used by bad guys are NOT loot for the good guys, so let them see the good guys coming and drink some potions (even if the description in the module doesn't give them potions, you will).
Remember that NPCs don't detect as evil unless they're higher level, and it should take the paladin several rounds. Also, if he doesn't have Still Spell-Like Ability, his effort to "cast" his Detect Evil is OBVIOUS to everyone within line of sight. Maybe they don't like having heavily armored and dangerous people walking around their town casting spells on them? Maybe they might even just do something about it.
Forget sneaky little townsfolk plotting to kill the PCs in a sneaky way. Plan one giant encounter where the whole freaking town comes out to kill them. 100 townsfolk, especially if some of them have levels, especially if they have ranged weapons, rooftops, alchemist fire, whatever, can quickly mow down the PCs - a few critical hits a round with crossbows can eliminate one of those spellcasters every round. Too much? Make the townsfolk a little slower, only some of them begin the fight on round one, some more on round 2, etc. - you figure out the pacing.
You have a problem we've all faced (or will at some point). I don't have any silver bullets, but I do have a few suggestions.
First, re: the gear of the bad guys, you can always increase it but make some part of that increase evil. There are rules (or at least there were in 3.0 and 3.5) for crafting magic stuff using sacrificed souls. No paladin worth his or her salt is going to want to use anything like that. Additionally or alternatively, it's not actually aligned, per se, but that cloak of resistance +2 DOES have the holy symbol of Asmodeus prominently displayed, or maybe it's the heraldic emblem of Sir Challenge-on-Sight. A party member could get into entertaining trouble if she decided to wear it anyway.
Second, templates can be your friend. Throw some templates on the monsters. And remember, you can stack on more than one. If Monster A is simply insufficient to do the job and for some reason you don't want to make it two or three Monster A's, then you can at least make it an advanced, dire, giant, fiendish, gnarled Monster A they won't soon forget.
Third, make the environment hostile to the PCs. Fights are a lot scarier when they take place in a cloud of poison gas and the exit has has slammed shut (Stinking Cloud and an Open/Shut cantrip). Underwater fights in which at least one nonwaterbreathing PC or valued NPC is grappled. Darkness or (if they're mostly tieflings and dwarves) magical darkness that makes Darkvision useless. There IS an ability available to monsters called See in Darkness that works even in this situation. See how good the players are at fighting slithering things they can't even see.
Don't let the standard tactics always work. There are usually one or two sorta squishy people in most parties. Have some of the villains do the smart or instinctive thing and target them, perhaps coming in from behind or up from the floor while the heavies are busy with what is now revealed to be the far lesser threat. Also, vs. casters it's worthy of note that Silence is only a 2nd level spell and there is no save against its indirect effects if it doesn't directly target you.
Traps. If the PCs are all super-specced for combat, they may be lacking in the trap-detecting/disabling department. Why should they get away with that? Because you're kind? Please. Don't forget to put some flesheating oozes down there at the bottom of the self-closing pits. That way the remainder of the party will at least only have to hear muffled screams.
Not to be overdone, but overwhelming evil filling an area, so strong that the paladin's senses are nearly overloaded, should make it difficult or perhaps impossible to distinguish lesser evils within it.
All of this, by the way, is unfair. That's perfectly all right, within limits, as the players signed up for a horror campaign and that is one of the signature aspects of such campaigns. In them, players can never truly plan or prepare for the awful things that will happen.
PC power level and what people call ‘rocket tag’ and how it shortens the encounters. Part of it is on me, I let them talk me into 20 point buy even though the pregens in the module are about 15 point buy.
20 PB over 15 PB is largely insignificant. Shouldn't be an issue, in truth.
Also, I have 5 players in a module designed for 4. But about 2/3 of the time only 4 guys can make it on game day and a couple of times only 3 guys could make it. So their power level is a bit up for the point buy and sometimes they have an extra PC, compared to design.
This also doesn't make too much of a difference, especially since party size fluctuates.
Also, this is the first time this group all made halfway optimized PC’s and a team that meshes fairly well. I’m much more used to them having fairly badly built characters, don’t have something covered, or get in each other’s way.
This right here is your problem. And to be clear, YOUR problem, not the PCs.
The fact that they've made good characters that mesh together well is a GOOD thing. The issue is, it seems, that you have not compensated for this at all over time. APs generally assume a fairly unoptimized party and minimal amounts of teamwork (and the teamwork thing has even more of an effect than individual power).
You need to beef up encounters just a bit. Preferably by putting more "cannon fodder" on the field or by giving bosses another 1 or 2 "lieutenants" that are a couple CR below them.
But what it comes down to is that there just isn’t time for a lot of what the module expects to have happen.
Monster A is supposed to channel negative to weaken the whole party, then hit each PC once to weaken them with ability drains, then channel negative energy again, when PC’s start falling he animates them to attack their former comrades. What happened is that Monster A channeled negative energy and hit most of the party. Then died in one round of attacks.
No, that's what the monster is supposed to TRY to do. If the monster were supposed to succeed on all of these tactics (especially one that utterly relies on PCs dying in the combat) you'd be headed through the PC Replacement Revolving Door.
But again, a single monster is hardly a threat to even an unoptimized group. They simply get more actions in a round than the monster does, which is a HUGE advantage.
Monsters B and C are supposed gain strength by draining from the foes they hit and channeling negative energy to heal themselves and each other. They died before landing a single hit.
Probably luck of the dice here, I'll ignore this one.
Monster D is supposed to poison each of the players in turn waiting for the poison to weaken them all. One PC made the fairly low DC save then it died in 1 round.
Poison is sloooooooow. Especially when it's one dude trying to poison 4-5 people.
Here's where the cannon fodder idea comes in handy. Have a bunch of skeletons or whatever with syringe spears filled with "Chemical X" and chuck them at the party.
A good way, as well, to turn enemies that are no threat into something they have to watch out for.
Even better is having a few more powerful enemies on the field, and perhaps making the boss a smidge weaker to compensate.
Etc… These creatures have all these abilities that are supposed to make them seem unnatural and horrific. But they die so fast that the party doesn’t even know they have all these awful abilities. I’ve been adding about 30% extra hp’s. But that just doesn’t make any difference. The 3 dps builds are each doing like 2x that in damage. Based on other things I’ve read on the boards, I added mooks but they just ignore them.
The issue is you're solely adding "mooks", things that CAN be safely ignored because they have such a low chance of hitting the player and don't do significant damage anyway.
You need enemies that aren't overwhelmingly powerful (they couldn't make an encounter by themselves) but are enough of a threat that ignoring them is a baaaad idea, especially if they have some sort of special power, like a Stench Aura or an on-hit effect.
Also, remember, the encounter doesn't end just because the PCs killed the boss. If the "cannon fodder" are good enough they could very well still be a solid threat after the main man goes down.
Player paranoia. This place is dark and foreboding. Almost everyone not a commoner is corrupt if not actively evil. Part of the module is a bunch of attempted mind games. An inviting inn run by a beautiful woman and her daughters (they are monsters to try and kill them). An agent that tries to bargain with the PC’s (while partner gets into position to attack). Since they are constantly expecting the mind games they don’t fall for anything. Couple that with the paladin using ‘detect evil’ on virtually everything and they don’t really fall for anything. Without surprise few of these encounters are even slightly dangerous. There is no horror or suspense because the encounter is almost a non-event. It actually ends up being the exact opposite because it is so easy. I’ve tried adding some encounters where they are not attacked or betrayed, but the paranoia is too firmly ingrained unless I want to bore them with dozens of non-threat encounters.
Tell them, straight out, to tone it the f#$~ down.
Unless the characters (not the players) have been burned repeatedly by trusting strangers, it is complete metagaming to be wary of some of these things.
However, if they've had 3 encounters in a row where supposedly innocent people try to screw them...it's entirely justified. Don't punish them for genre savviness if the savviness is justified.
Builds (especially the equipment) in the module don’t make sense. The powerful and awful lieutenants of the super powerful and horrific ruler have a couple of +1 and masterwork items. That’s it. These guys are supposed to be so bad-ash they terrify the country side, but they have worse gear than a standard captain of the guard. They should at least be a threat to 7th level PC’s and are equipped like 3rd level PC’s.
So make them better. You're the GM, you can do that.
If the PCs are roflstomping your enemies and are getting bored because of it, beef them up until they're a threat again.
It's what I do for Carrion Crown. I have PCs with rolled stats (which I made sure were good) and Gestalt classes, so I beef up, change, and tweak encounters to make them better suited for that level of power.
It works well. Don't be afraid to change things, and don't think you need to abide by strict RAW to do so either. Just saying "I add +2 to his AC, 5 HP, and +3 to-hit" is just fine, you're not building a PC, you're building a character who is supposed to die in this fight and never turn up again. Save yourself some effort on that front.
I mean on one hand I understand that if they defeat a half dozen guys armed like they are, then suddenly they are incredibly wealthy and powerful just because of the gear they have acquired or can afford to purchase. But on the other hand the bad guys to hit modifier, damage modifiers, AC, and saves are mostly very low (compared to the PC’s) because they don’t have any significant gear to augment themselves. I’ve been giving them some potions to help out, but it still doesn’t seem to ‘make the grade’ so to speak.
If they can pre-buff, they should. You said you give them some potions to help out, but they should really be downing them BEFORE combat starts, so when the PCs arrive they've found enemies with +4 AC from Shield, Resist Energy, and other effects.
As well, don't be afraid to give them better arms and armor. WBL is A.) a Guideline, and B.) Supposed to be made up of loot rather than hard cash (unless the PCs sell the stuff).
Just take away some of the straight up gold and such and then feel free to beef up the bosses' armor and weapons until they're roughly on par with what the PCs have.
That's really all I've got for you. It works for me, though it took a bit of trial and error, and some disappointing boss battles/near TPKs while I was tweaking to find the sweet spot, but it does work and makes the game more fun for all involved, as you can giggle in anticipation of what fresh hell you've cooked up for the party and the PCs can be excited for whatever monsters you're gonna chuck at 'em next.
Yeah, some encounters will always be duds, just because of luck of the dice or exceptional coordination from the party, but play those up as triumphant moments, not frustrating ones (for you or them).
Group is:
Half-Orc Archer Paladin - huge amounts of damage especially when smiting and the module makes it unlikely they will get all that many more encounters in a day than he has smites. At least not seriously rough encounters.
Half-Drow Gauntlet Witch - has some decent SoS control spells/powers
Gnome Draconic Blasting Sorcerer - lots of fireballs and scorching rays
Dwarf Fighter Shadow Dancer Melee with Waraxe - sneak is high enough almost nothing finds him first then he crushes with the axe
Elf Universalist Wizard - new to pathfinder but played earlier editions so still doing pretty well, he is often buffing with things like haste or adding to the number of fireballs to clear out any mooks.
The PCs are Level 7 and everyone has AC 29 or greater? Unless they are truly overequipped, there might be something wrong. Did their casters stack Mage Armor with Bracers or something similar?
Many Outsiders are resistant to certain types of energy, which normally isn't noted on their sheet in Pathfinder anymore. All Devils for example are totally immune to fire. Even a bunch of low level devil mooks cannot be gotten rid of with spamming fireballs.
Giving the main guy in the encounter an Item for Wind Wall, will 100% stop the Paladin from raining arrows onto him.
The Dwarven fighter should have quite a low Will save hit with a control spell and send on the squishy casters, he might cause quite some havoc.
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Do this.
Do this.
EPIC.
They do...but a Paladin can gain 3 rounds worth of knowledge as a Move action. But only on a single target instead of the 30 ft. cone.
IIRC, detect evil, like detect magic, also takes 3 consecutive rounds of concentration to detect evil on a specific individual....Is this true? I didn't know that.
Like Detect Magic, it reveals details over the course of three rounds. 1st round just tells you if there are any auras that meet the spell's condition ([Evil] in this case); 2nd gives you number and strength of the most powerful aura; 3rd gives you power and exact location of each aura (if you can see them; if you can't, then you just get a general sense of direction and the power level).
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Things about Horror
It is very description heavy...
I am very aware that I am weak in this area, but I am working on it.
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... Tell them, straight out, to tone it the f~#$ down.
Unless the characters (not the players) have been burned repeatedly by trusting strangers, it is complete metagaming to be wary of some of these things.
However, if they've had 3 encounters in a row where supposedly innocent people try to screw them...it's entirely justified. Don't punish them for genre savviness if the savviness is justified....
Oh, in this module series it is perfectly justified. I do say something if the are too obviously metagaming. But on this island they have been attacked by nearly everyone that looks like they are going to be nice or trustworthy. It is written that way.
... This right here is your problem. And to be clear, YOUR problem, not the PCs.
The fact that they've made good characters that mesh together well is a GOOD thing. The issue is, it seems, that you have not compensated for this at all over time. APs generally assume a fairly unoptimized party and minimal amounts of teamwork (and the teamwork thing has even more of an effect than individual power)...
Agreed, a year ago most of these players made PC's about the same as or maybe a little below the pregens you see in most modules. And then they didn't work well together. (A couple that want to sneak and outsmart and a couple in heavy armor that charge everything howling in rage.)
This time they tried to at least match a bit in basic tactics. And I think 3 of them when to these boards asking for optimized builds for 5-10 level.
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The group is soon going to be heading into some twisty underground lava tunnels. That will help with some of this. Most of it so far has been in the open or at least large enough buildings that they can all focus and target a single guy if they want to (and they usually do).
They have the perception to find nearly all the traps encountered. But they aren't so great at disabling them. So I think I will add some more of those.
I have to be careful about targeting the squishy PC. The only one really squishy is the new guy's wizard. I'm not going to punish the new guy for not optimizing as much as the rest in a system that is new to him.
I don't think I can make it 2 of the big guys, but I can try a bit more dangerous mooks. There are some encounters coming up with guys that do know about the group. So some expendables planned just for them is reasonable. I'll see how it goes.
Thanks for the help and ideas guys.
Clever mooks could be: A lot really low level guys or Undead, quite far away from each other, though an AoE spell won't hit that many. Equip them with Alchimists fire or or touch weapons. They can now can bypass armor quite. With their huge number they might deal some damage.
how i fix rocket tag: double the hp, easy peasy, at least so far
I agree with Xaratherus. You need to risk a TPK.
And honestly, in a game like this, a TPK should be a potential outcome. It's horror, not high fantasy. Bust out a Balrog and kill Gandalf. Or at least knock him down.
Most of the advice above is super sound: mooks with annoying status effects and/or tactics to undermine your group.
If you send a crew of 6 giant vulture/spider skeletons to surround your paladin, he's probably not sniping so well with fliers/roof walkers attacking him. Same applies to your casters.
Have a battle on the site of a genocide and have little skeleton hands that act like black tentacles on the heroes only. So much for casting spells. Also, just have black tentacle traps, this is a japanese horror after all.
Have the big bads command a terrible creature, like an iron golem or a devourer with a few pals (control undead and lesser planar ally), that hunts the party, like Reecy suggested, and have a sub-quest that gives you an item to finally destroy it. But have 2-3 encounters that demand the party flees from it or perish, to make it scary. And if their 5-10, a CR 11 to 13 should be scary. If it isn't, send two. Give them a means to beat them later, but with a macguffin with plot power instead of character sheet power.
Force an NPC on the group that they need to protect. Suddenly precious resources need to be spent on keeping this fragile thing alive. Other moral dilemmas like this might nerf a parties blasting capacity, especially if you've got a paladin. I'm not big on trying to force them to fall, but using their code to make things harder can be useful at times.
Bosses can always have magic stuff that can't be used by non-evil players. Impose negative levels if equipped by non-evil people. The town folk won't buy evil equipment!
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Next session is meeting next week. I will try some of what is listed here. I'm not going to detail what incase they are reading this. I will try to remember to come back here and let you know what happened. (Hopefully I don’t go too far and kill a bunch of them.)
I will say there is a big bad that they know they can not defeat. Their whole goal at this time is to flee this little empire. The really powerful necromancer daimyo is after them (and he is not as powerful as the shogun or emperor). He has large chunks of the army out looking for them. And there are several powerful re-spawning lieutenants trying to stop them. I’m not sure if they have figured out that they are re-spawning yet.
I don’t like introducing too many completely new things that were not listed in the module. But it is completely reasonable that the lieutenants will bring along some lower level servitors and/or elite elements of the army with them.
There is also a demon that has been trying to get a macguffin from them. That demon will be bringing more low level demons next time.
Both groups have been learning about what the PC’s do. Especially since they have been mostly using the same spells and tactics. It is reasonable for these intelligent enemies to have made some plans and brought some items specifically to deal with known capabilities.
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Alright I read through the thread so I'm not going to repeat suggestions others have made, that being said..
Horror is not about the crunch. Horror, at its core, and annoyingly for a game like DnD is inspiring thoughts of helplessness, being off balance, fear and a general state of unease.
The module apparently suffers from 'Death World' syndrome in that everything is out to get the party, this means instead of unease, the party /expects/ everything to be horrible, and is justified in that expectation. This lets them plan.
If all townsfolk are ratmen, and all innkeepers poisoners, and all clerics really demons, the party is probably going to start living in the woods like Robin Hood.
This also decreases player engagement. A 20th level fighter is going to feel monumentally vulnerable if the child he loves has to go to school everyday away from where he is when the vampire's minions might look like normal school kids. If /everyone/ is evil, he'll just home school his kid.
Increasing hit points, arbitrarilly cranking ACs, and the like are not good solutions. Now conversely, making individual threats, having opponents seem deathless or the like, is infinitely more frightening. Play up the senseless, or the illogical. Make things not make sense to the players, but still seem to follow some sort of arbitrary logic.
If they can't predict it, they worry about it.
Thats much more conducive to the horror game aspect then 'He is a bloody skeleton with blood who bleeds from the heart of bloooooood!'
Creepy adds up. Creepy creates a feeling.
Give the players multiple creepy events, and then lead them to what they think will be a confrontation, then...don't have it happen.
Admittedly, I lean more towards psychological and cosmic horror...
'He is a bloody skeleton with blood who bleeds from the heart of bloooooood!'
Literally lol. While on a conference call at work.
The problem is, your players know what to expect. The bad guys are evil undead, they can be defeated by smite or channel, yada, yada, yada...
So, do the unexpected. Take for example Skeletons: They are easy to kill and largely to be ignored while they go after the BBEG.
But what if they are not skeletons? What if the BBEG has cast Animate object on some skeletons - so they are actually animated objects. Suddenly they are much tougher than they first appeared, immune to smite and channel.
Alternatively, take a leaf out of DDO and make them Blackbone skeletons; immune to fire and generally tougher. Now they cannot be killed off by a well placed fireball. Just watch your your Gnome pcs face as he realises his fireballs don't work, his scorchinmg rays don't work, etc.
Introduce wraiths and spectres. being incorporeal they generally last longer than a few rounds and they have some nasty level drain capabilities.
Have your pcs attacked from all directions by hordes of low level fire-resistant mooks; if they concentrate their fire, some are guaranteed to get into melee, shutting down the paladin. Then the BBEG can appear while they cannot ranged smite him.
Flesh Golem is another creature suitable for a horror genre that is immune to smite and channel. As a bonus it is immune to magic, is only slowed by fire attacks and is healed by lightning - so put it in a lightning trap, which will also negate the slow from fire attack while causing the pcs no end of damage if they run in there to melee it. Make sure there is no clear shot at it from outside the trap (so they have to go in there to defeat it). The damage doesn't even have to be significant, just enough to negate the slow effects from fire.
Add to all these a strong description for flavour and suddenly you have an effective, spooky feeling.
Edit: and of course a vampire acquires gaseous form once reduced to 0hp; it then becomes a race against time to find and eliminate the vampire before it heals up 1 hour later - and comes back again. remember Ravenloft? Nothing speaks horror more than the creature you cannot kill - especially if you get the feeling that you are being hunted by it.
As far as the feeling of horror goes I find that a lot of it is less about the combat itself and more about the setup. If your players are going from one fight to the next then it's more adventure rather than horror (in my mind anyway).
Giving the players incomplete, incorrect and otherwise vague information should help them to feel unsettled. You want them to be unsure of exactly what is going on and slowly ramp up how much actual information they have. Doing things like having townsfolk describe things as they saw them (what little they did see), see things from the corner of their eyes, hear odd sounds, having people act in unexpected ways (not necessarily attacking but just acting "off"), etc can help. The more you can avoid describing things clinically the better off you'll be.
And finally there is the ghost: incorporeal means it is immune to many attacks and can walk through walls to ambush the pcs.
Malevolence means it can take control of the fighter. Now the pcs can't destroy it without destroying their team-mate (which the paladin would never do).
As a bonus, if they do kill it - it reforms in 2d4 days. If they don't deal with what is causing it to be a ghost, they haven't got rid of it, so just smashing it with an axe/smiting it with an arrow or 4/dropping a fireball on its head will not deal properly with this encounter.
All this is just the mechanics. Horror is about the atmosphere. Generating a sense of horror is about making the pcs feel there is something "out there"; control their information, have the BBEG keep sending things against them, while they catch glimpses of him/her/it. Have them feel that they are being watched; confront them with situations where they are helpless to help some non-evil npc, give them a race against time, make NPC's know things they will not reveal to the pcs (because they are Evil), etc.
Use some of the Haunts as well. Harder to deal with and spookier versions of traps, basically.
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Ok, we finally had the next game session (scheduling delays). Just wanted to let you know what happened.
I really amp'd up the fight quite a bit beyond what is printed in the module.
Module only has an ambush by 2 level 8 necromantic warriors.
I added 8 level 3 basic warror/archers, a level 4 wizard, and a level 4 cleric. And I gave everyone the advanced simple template stated above.
The necromantic warriors had each consumed a potion of blur before the fight and were hidden in the rocks above the cave mouth. The rest were hidden by invisibility circle scrolls and stones with silence cast on them. And mass protection from elements fire (the sorc has been burning everything.
The necromantic warriors started the fight my concentrating archery fire on the party archer paladin. He took enough damage that he went to cover so they couldn't keep hitting him reliably.
The level 3 warriors were divided into 3 groups that just held fire to shoot (or throw alchemist fire) at one of the casters when he started to cast. Or close to grapple if the melee types left them an opening.
The wizard and cleric just cast things like web and obscuring mist or threw the silence stone amongst the casters to wreck coordination (and stay safely invisible).
Everyone ran when they had less than 1/2 hp left or were out of spells. So about half of the badguys got away.
I added one thing just for the horror factor that had no real effect on the combat. The BBEG has these shoadow walkinging shadow assassins (pretty weak) that have be just annoying to the party. But I had them jump in to pick up the bloody arrows that had hit some of the PC's and jump out again. Now they are wondering how that will come back to haunt them. (I haven't really decided yet.)
It actually worked out very well. The reinforcements weren't just level 1 or 2 mooks (that many people keep suggesting to me in the past) and they were buffed enough that the party couldn't ignore them or just brush them aside. No party members died. But the surprise attacks from invisibility meant most took apprecable damage. And it worried them a bit.
It also wasn't overkill that caused a TPK (which often worries me). But I was surprised how much I had to add to the module just to make a major encounter challenging.
Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions!
Thank you for coming back and filling us in on what happened! :)
The necromantic warriors had each consumed a potion of blur before the fight and were hidden in the rocks above the cave mouth. The rest were hidden by invisibility circle scrolls and stones with silence cast on them.
Be careful here, this can appear cheesy. How did the archers know to consume their 1 minute potions right before the enemy appeared and same with the scrolls?
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The necromantic warriors had each consumed a potion of blur before the fight and were hidden in the rocks above the cave mouth. The rest were hidden by invisibility circle scrolls and stones with silence cast on them.Be careful here, this can appear cheesy. How did the archers know to consume their 1 minute potions right before the enemy appeared and same with the scrolls?
I do watch for that kind of thing. In this case, it was legit.
The bad guys knew where the party was going and could see them once they got fairly close. The part was riding horses and since they were in a hurry, they had done nothing to try and hide themselves. So the bad guys had plenty of time to prep before they started shooting at the party.
Boy, is that elf wizard going to be pissed when he reads TreantMonk's guide.
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The shadow assassins got away with arrows that had blood from 2 of the PC's.
Scrying on them certainly.
Some sort of ritual to bestow a curse on them from within his castle on the other side of the island. I think I would need to limit the range to 100 miles or so. Otherwise the daimyo would just keep cursing them for the rest of his (shortened) life.
Those are the only 2 things that came immediately to my mind. The series is almost over (prob just 1 more session tonight) so nothing long term. Any other ideas?