My experience with the Mass Combat is that many of the fights are cake walks. For all but the Schir army (done everything but the citidel) the PC army was able to take them out in no more than a round or 2 and often they completely destroy the opposing army during the Ranged phase. Has anyone else had this experience?
My experience with the Mass Combat is that many of the fights are cake walks. For all but the Schir army (done everything but the citidel) the PC army was able to take them out in no more than a round or 2 and often they completely destroy the opposing army during the Ranged phase. Has anyone else had this experience?
Pretty much. The way you combat this is to always have the enemy army fight as Reckless and do anything you can to increase their OM. Basically since they are usually cultists under the command of a Demon, and they are going to die in the initial assault anyway, they should try to cause as much damage as possible. Granted, this can be swingy and result in the death of your players army if you aren't careful so don't do it with every army, especially in a combat involving multiple armies.
Yeah they completely cleaned out Drezen in a day and a half. Only scurmishes left before laying seige to the citidel itself
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Had my players finish up the first floor of Drezen this past weekend. They had to retreat twice, the second time they retreated to the old Sword of Valor hiding place due to a nasty set of negative levels from the nabasu.
However, they'd fought the brimoraks before the nabasu and one had teleported back to alert Staunton.
When the PCs didn't show up for a few hours, he grabbed his brother, Nurah (she had escaped), his guards, and the babaus and went looking. I rolled a d10 for what hour in their resting for the negative levels and rolled 10, so just as the negative levels wore off Staunton finally found them. Note, the party hadn't had a full 24 hours rest to recover HP and mythic power.
A minotaur opened the hidden passage.
The party arcane trickster pulled off the highest init and tossed a Web.
The party Paladin and his horse (yes, he was dragging it through Drezen. It fits in most places and makes a good tank, oddly enough) turned themselves into a wall.
The minotaurs were forced to break through the web and squeeze in, basically becoming targets of opportunity.
The babaus teleported in, while Joran invis'd his brother and Staunton stormed his own way in invisibility to get behind them.
Nurah stood in previous room, bard songing and being vaguely useless.
With three babau playing surround the party, things are getting a fair bit of desperate for an arcane trickster, a bow using Eldritch Knight, a Paladin, and a Cleric.
Then another babau appears from Soulshear and Staunton attacks.
This game runs on roll20 online, and I have a script that let's the players announce their use of Mythic Power and auto deduct the amount they use.
"Oh f&!&" was the phrase when they saw "Staunton Vhane makes a mythic effort!"
1d10+9+12 for Mythic Power Attack hurts.
After several rounds of pain on both sides (Glitterdust and Holy Smite saved the day here, blinding the babaus for three rounds total), they dropped Staunton. At -1. They then proceeded to start smacking on the babaus.
Nurah wanders in invis, still singing bard song. And drops a Cure Serious on Staunton.
Cue panic, and Staunton spends a Mythic on Amazing Init to get a standard to stand back up, then uses his spiked armor to full power attack the very low HP Trickster. He drops to 2, the party drops Staunton again into the -20s and realizes he's still breathing. The party Paladin shouts at the Trickster. "Coup de grace him. NOW."
The Trickster only rolls 17 damage. A DC 27 fort? I can make that. Staunton's got a +15.
I roll a 3. The party breathes a sigh of relief.
Joran, seeing his brother defeated, surrenders. Nurah is beaten to within an inch of her life. Literally. She's knocked down to -14, doesn't stabilize, and then the cleric (at 3 of 82 HP himself), makes the stabilize check.
The party now has cleared the first floor, as I'm ruling the succubus duelist teleports off to Avinacus to warn her after warning the denizens of below about who's going to be coming.
The party fully retreats out of Drezen to the army camp. After a nice RP session with Joran, he's at least aware he's been spared and spills the beans on what he knows about the dungeon. The party will be dealing with that next week.
I had everyone sweating, but it did require pulling two encounters together to do it. Everyone either went into single or negative HP realms, burned through every drop of Mythic Power they had, and I literally ran the archer in the party through 150+ arrows just for the first floor of Drezen.
I'm feeling good.
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I only ran mass combat once before deciding it wasn't worth it, as I rolled high and the first tiefling army did a third of the army's hit points. Then came the confusion that an army of paladins can't heal themselves and I looked ahead to see that an army of reckless dretches could easily destroy it in one round.
It took my Pcs two attempts at the top level as well, with Vahne chasing them away the first time and the rematch the next day as the fight was very much against them since they had Nurah and a hidden succubus in their group.
@Lochar: You were taking it easy with Vahne, I had his damage up to a d10+32 my PCs were very afraid of him after he dropped their tank in one round on their first attempt. Multiple blinds the next time through made him more manageable.
12 from Mythic Power attack, 9 base. Where's the other 11 coming from?
Probably Smite Good
8 from smite (he has 3/day, so 16 on first hit vs pallies and clerics. 3 from bull strength, 1 from divine favor and 2 from the bard. I only gave him 3 from mythic power attack as technically it never says that it does more damage with 2h weapons...or I don't think so. I also changed some of his spells to accentuate his champion-ness.
As for Nurah, don't discount an invisible bard giving all allies a +2/+2 on attacks. She was far from worthless, one of my PCs spent many rounds finding and trying to neutralize her.
Yeah, I tried that. Damn Worldwound walker Paladin.
Yeah I have one of them in my group too. The Cleric took it as well and the Wizard is true Neutral. Not sure if the Warpriest replacement for the dead Bard has it but if not then he is really the only "Good" target left.
Never even heard of that, and guessing from what it does I probably wouldn't allow it. If it masks your alignment there are spells and a mythic ability that does that. Also, I required my PCs to be good to make things easier on all of us.
It's from Champions of Purity.
Worldwound Walker
Your purity always remains a blessing, even when you’re surrounded by creatures that despise it.Prerequisites: 5 or more Hit Dice, good alignment.
Benefit: You can alter the essence of your being to lessen the effects of spells designed to harm good creatures. When affected by spells and effects that behave differently according to alignment (such as unholy word or protection from good), you can choose whether you are considered good or neutral. This ability does not actually change your alignment or fool divinations, nor does it permit you to overcome alignment requirements for the use of magic items, class abilities, and so on.
Ostensibly a character with this feat is so used to surviving in an environment hostile to Good characters that he has learned ways to overcome certain abilities designed specifically to hurt Good. I don't exactly agree with it considering how much immunity it grants, but considering it's from the splat book directly related to the Worldwound I couldn't really justify banning it specifically. It's pretty clear what the intent is, and if the character has spent a lot of time in the Worldwound or fighting its denizens it definitely makes sense.
It's from Champions of Purity.
Ostensibly a character with this feat is so used to surviving in an environment hostile to Good characters that he has learned ways to overcome certain abilities designed specifically to hurt Good. I don't exactly agree with it considering how much immunity it grants, but considering it's from the splat book directly related to the Worldwound I couldn't really justify banning it specifically. It's pretty clear what the intent is, and if the character has spent a lot of time in the Worldwound or fighting its denizens it definitely makes sense.Worldwound Walker
Your purity always remains a blessing, even when you’re surrounded by creatures that despise it.Prerequisites: 5 or more Hit Dice, good alignment.
Benefit: You can alter the essence of your being to lessen the effects of spells designed to harm good creatures. When affected by spells and effects that behave differently according to alignment (such as unholy word or protection from good), you can choose whether you are considered good or neutral. This ability does not actually change your alignment or fool divinations, nor does it permit you to overcome alignment requirements for the use of magic items, class abilities, and so on.
I like it flavor-wise, I would like it better in a campaign where opposing alignments wasn't so important. And it is odd that a third tier mythic ability is only slightly more powerful than a feat. Unfortunately my PCs have shown me how easy it is to find feats and traits that are anti-demon so I am basically only allowing one appearance of those.
I am really liking the story of the AP but its downside is basically only throwing one type of opponent at the PCs. I know there are more types of enemies but demons are a very high percentage.
Yeah it definitely does make it easier for the PC's to optimize against specific types of enemies when the primary enemy is Demons.
I skipped past all the random encounters as they seemed silly with an army around the PCs. I added some advanced templates to several encounters to make up for the missing xp. I did have the incubus leader assault one of the PCs at night while they were sleeping to stir up trouble. It did add some drama as that was also the first time they had suspicions about Aron.
My PCs also left Horgus at home. If you want him along you could stress how challenging it is to organize and feed an army. Then suggest that they could bring along or hire someone to do that.
It says in the book that your army is large enough to ward off any randoms. The only time I had "random" encounters was when the PCs moved away from the Army, say when investigating Vala's Gift or while moving between scermishs in Drezen (they had their army camp on Paradise Hill).
As for random monster questions in general: I roll them up ahead of time. That way I know the whens and wheres of what is happening. I can set the scene better so it doesn't feel random. It also gives me longer to brush up on their abilities and tactics. And best of all, it doesn't slow the game down as I rolled it all up midweek.
Never posted, but the party finished this book a couple weeks back and we're currently in preparation for Book 3. I was also really happy with how the last fight went as it became very challenging with very little adjusting on my part actually.
Protip for Drezen Dungeon: There is a magical circle against good effect in the area so everything down there basically gets +2 Deflection AC, +2 Resistance to Saving Throws, and +4 Turn Resistance. Once I had factored that in to most battles, it made quite a bit of difference.
Is there any kind of timeline about how many mass combat encounters the army can have per day during the siege of Drezen? We have all those mechanics about siege points and loss of those per day, but there is nothing in the book which says that the party cannot have the army do all the battles (and do their own small-scale skirmishes) in one day.
Is there any kind of limitation on that, so as to make the whole siege points mechanic even meaningful?
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My group hit this trap this weekend themselves.
CG Rogues seem to have bad luck at this, don't they? He was the only one to fail it. I pull him aside, explain what happened, and had him roll a Will Save against his insanity. 19 and he surged it.
However, the paladin had triggered the trap by hitting it with Detect Evil, so when the rogue was the only one to fall the paladin got really confused when the rogue started pinging. They immediately disarmed and tied him up, retreated, and had a fun little conversation.
They decided to wait for the next day to try to fix it with an atonement or something else. Not sure, we called it for the evening at that point.
I limited the battles to only one a day. But I also just RPed through them and didn't roll dice. The PCs could handle as many skirmishes in a day as was natural. Which ended up being the crypt and the bridge on day one. Then the watchtowers, followed immediately by Soltengrebbe for a very challenging encounter.
I found the last fight to be very boring. As I suspected magic circle vs evil made his spells highly ineffectual. And my PCs will saves were on fire, so good for them. The will save of the fighter in my campaign is nearly legendary. He's been able to resist many succubi and the shadow demon's magic jar twice.
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I limited the battles to only one a day. But I also just RPed through them and didn't roll dice. The PCs could handle as many skirmishes in a day as was natural. Which ended up being the crypt and the bridge on day one. Then the watchtowers, followed immediately by Soltengrebbe for a very challenging encounter.
I found the last fight to be very boring. As I suspected magic circle vs evil made his spells highly ineffectual. And my PCs will saves were on fire, so good for them. The will save of the fighter in my campaign is nearly legendary. He's been able to resist many succubi and the shadow demon's magic jar twice.
He's got at will Summon 1d3 Shadows at 75% chance. If they attacked the babaus they should have warned him as well as the vampire, then there should have been at least 6-8 shadows pumped out unless the party retreated for over the hour.
Although, honestly at will I can see him summoning a few and just sending them forward after a while if the PCs did retreat. "Go kill stuff."
For my group, they hated that last fight. Every battle in the dungeon was sprinkled with 2 to 6 extra shadows since he had no reason not to (and with it at will, why not?). He really screwed with them with spell-like abilities and they're convinced the makers of Wrath of the Righteous are out to make them miserable...
Heh.
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For my group, they hated that last fight. Every battle in the dungeon was sprinkled with 2 to 6 extra shadows since he had no reason not to (and with it at will, why not?). He really screwed with them with spell-like abilities and they're convinced the makers of Wrath of the Righteous are out to make them miserable...
Heh.
Idea!
Vampire spawn don't have shadows. Except... now they do!
I had the vampire and some mythic shadows ambush the PCs at night after they pulled out from the dungeon which made for a good fight. I also had some shadows start in the room with him. Technically they couldn't hurt the PCs because of magic circle but I forgot that part at first. Nor do shadows have much of a chance to hit 2-3 of my PCs.
Thanks for the tips about the frequency of mass battles, guys. I'll probably keep to Lochars suggestion, which has a decent frequency of encounters while still keeping the pressure of the siege events up. The party hasn't caught on to Nurah yet (who kept her feet mostly still after the Paladin immediately noticed Arons addiction), so it'll be interesting how the siege goes. :)
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After reading Sword of Valor, I knew I’ll have to rework a bit certain parts of this module in order for it to be more appealing for my players.
First, in my opinion, the army feels like an anonymous mass of faceless stormtroopers. Only one soldier has a name and a face (Arles). The Queen gave them an army which would help them to accomplish an important mission, making them responsible of the fate of these guys. I knew my players would want to know them and would care for them. I’ve read that the army isn’t supposed to be the center of the experience but it feels odd to not have at least several soldiers’ names. It feels like the players aren’t supposed to interact or even care for their army. My guess was that my players would interact with them and that I have to prepare myself for this.
In order to “humanize” the army, I split it in 4 groups of 25 men, each leaded by a captain.
- Friedrich, an heir of an old Sarkoris family. A really pious and serious paladin with a burning hatred for demons. At 1st unfriendly with the players.
- Celina, a young female paladin. Very friendly, dynamic and enthusiastic girl.
- The last one is a private joke with my group. During the 1st module, they were joking about posters’ recruitments “We want YOU in the Crusade” with a typical paladin’s image on it (blond, bright white smile, big armor). Well, now, this guy exists :D. Mathis is a local celebrity in Kenabres and now a captain in their army :D
It worked even better than I thought. As soon as my players received the army from the Queen, they wanted to learn more about the captains and the army. My Wizard even made a point to learn each soldier’s name (no I didn’t create all the names, just acknowledged he knew them all) . During all the way to Drezen, they took care of the army, trying to limit soldiers’ loss during the fights (My group feel responsible for the 1st deaths. They gentle repose every dead soldiers in order to raise them later. Don’t know if they will really raise them though) and were really careful to keep the soldiers’ morale as high as possible. During the battles, they worked as a team with the captains, started to create bonds with them and they earned the respect of everyone (even Arles).
Second, I’ve already tried (as a player) the mass combat system with two of my current players. We all disliked it (it felt too random and, as a player, you have no impact on the fight even if your abilities like AoE or Buffs would greatly impact the fight). So I modified it to include the group inside the mass combat fights. It looks like that:
- The enemy’s army has a General. The main goal of the players is to defeat the General in order to lower the army’s morale. Defeating the General is basically winning the battle. If there are several armies during the same battle, each army has his own General.
- I place different types of enemies in the enemy’s army: sorcerers, heavily armored fighters, archers... in order to add more variety.
- When the battle starts, each army rolls their attack. The army with the higher score will have the upper hand during this round. This will determine the “mood” of this round.
- My players roll an initiative. At their turn, they’ll have to react to random situations. As they are in the middle of a battle, it can be anything: “A heavily armored horse runs towards you, how do you react? You spot a sorcerer throwing fireballs at your paladins, how do you react? One of your captains is critically wounded, how do you react? An enemy tries to dismount you, how do you react?”…
- They can also shout orders at their army (I consider that each player is considered a General by the army) and the army can use their special abilities (channel energy, lay hands…) as a normal player. Same for the enemy army (the Dretches can use their Stinking Cloud for example). I use the NPC Codex or the monsters stats to determinate their saves if needed.
- They also have to find the General and make their way to him (Perception checks). When they reach him, a custom-made encounter triggers with the General and several minions (I use the NPC Codex for the generals’ stats). If they defeat the General, it’s a win!
- After the encounter with the General, I stop playing round by round, I describe how the battle ends and I encourage my players to describe what they are doing until the end of the fight.
- Depending on how they handle the fight, I determine how many soldier passed away.
I was a bit concerned about these changes (more improvisation for me and I didn’t know if my players would like to “not follow the rules”) but, we are now in the middle of the 2nd part of the module and my group ADORES my version of the mass battles (They gave me very enthusiastic feedbacks). It feels more dynamic and dangerous, they feel they are a real weight in its outcome and they can use their buffs, spells and abilities. The Wizard can throw his fireballs, the Oracle can heal and buff, the Paladin can charge with the army and give orders. They are living the battle.
Caius: I would play it by ear depending on what your party needs. For my PCs that fight was very boring and unimpressive but they were prepared and made their saves against all of his abilities.
Estre: As I've mentioned before I ditched all the mass combat rules as they don't add anything to the story. I did have a general fight with extra effects vs the vrock. All of the other listed generals would be pushovers without a lot of modifications. I wish that I had added more NPC names as it made certain traitors easy to metagame and deduce.
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Technically, no. There's not a limitation.
However, the demons don't want to rule over a wasteland, which is what it'd be if Eustoyriax did something like that.
Not to mention protection from evil is a first level spell and denies the summoned shadows the ability to touch for long enough for a short Crusade of paladins and channeling clerics.
And according to other threads, Eustoyriax is irrelevant for that theory. Any shadow any where could start doing that and take over the world.
Even with those limitations he could overwhelm most cities and most PC groups. I'd say don't overthink it :)
Most people have added a few extra shadows here and there to hint at his ability. I had a group of mythic shadows attack the PCs while they were resting to represent it.
True, but in actuality its a pretty weak ability...unless you really dislike your PCs.
I actually used it a lot. Soon as they hit the dungeon there was usually 2 to 6 extra shadows every encounter. The PCs were after his...shadowy blood in revenge very quickly especially when they learned it wasn't going to stop until they took him out. Also went a long way to making the dungeon more challenging.
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Granted my players are beyond the dungeon at this point, but I have a question none the less.
The strongly chaotic and evil aligned gives a -2 Penalty to all Int, Wis, and Cha based checks, stacking.
Does that include Will saves, being Wis based?
Does it include concentration checks, since your primary casting stat is used?
Yes, there could be extra shadows in each encounter, that would have only been one extra encounter in my group's case as the took the direct route there. And Kirana was already with the wizard in the ritual room so that encounter didn't need much buffing. I did have 3 shadows in the room with him and they lasted almost a round but did do some damage, although I messed up and they shouldn't have done anything.
Lochar: I do not believe either of those count as checks but I'm not positive. If they do it would make the Display of mythic abilities even better. And it is a relative question as two of the next books take place in the Abyss.