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Hi,
As part of my quest to get more high level games running locally, I have decided to run the Mantis Prey.
I will be running it at 10-11 and have a few concerns
A) How do I keep the Warriors alive longer? Im concerned they are very fragile for the Tier (Also Warriors? Should of been Fighters!)
B) In the 'Prison/cage' scene, does anyone have any tips on running this 'encounter'?
C) Ideal location for the Alcemically charged BBEG?
Any suggestions are gratefully accepted, I have major concerns that some optimised local characters are going to mincemeat my monsters
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So is this really the only GM thread for this scenario? I'm prepping this for next week, and figured I'd do the obligatory "read the GM thread for advice" routine here on the forums, and I can't find one, other than these unanswered questions from January. Is my search fu just really off today or what?
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All I have to say is that from reading it, I can't believe they made knowledge (history) so important in the opening series of tests. Three out of four rely on that one skill, which is kind of surprising. You'd think they'd have varied it more. Given that this is now a secondary mission objective, there's actually a prestige point for the entire party riding on having someone in the group with that skill trained.
That last fight looks insane. I suppose the PCs will need readied actions to catch him, once they realize what he's doing. Players at this level should be able to figure that out. I honestly don't remember how we handled it when I played this, since it was over 2 years ago.
The main thing I remember from playing this myself are getting bull rushed off the cliff into the waterfall and not really caring about the damage, because my barbarian had insane HP. And I remember hearing the fort save DC against turning to stone from the medusa, realizing my barbarian could succeed on a natural 2 and had a reroll available, and deciding not to bother with precautions.
I haven't been playing/GMing much at this higher level lately, so even though I know some of my players who are signed up for this, I don't know what their PCs in this range look like. We've got 5 signed up currently, but that could change before next week. Three of them are levels 7, 8, and 10, and the other two didn't specify a PC/level when they signed up.
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The final fight can be particularly nasty, the needle has 5 minutes of invisibility, I let him study the party for a minute or two, watched the cleric use a wand of CLW to fully heal a Barbarian which took about 2 and a half minutes then waited for the healer to desperate himself, that's when he attack. Dropped the healer with a haste full attack which sneak attack each time cause the cleric was flat footed. The player didn't die which I'm glad for, would have been crummy. Then I had him run around laughing and stabbing till they finally boxed him in, in the upper caverns.
Yeah the medusas were rough, I at one point had 3 party members stoned, a big thing to not forget too is that their allies can also get turned to stone, there is a 50% chance each round to see if they need to save against it.
I allowed some substitutions if they had them, but the group I ran it for had a magus with like a +15 to most of the knowledges so it ended being a non-issue.
Yeah the cliff side fight is a hard one because in the upper tier there is like 9 bad guys for a walkway that can hold two shoulder to shoulder. It was more of a slaughter for my group in that they slaughtered the warriors and mantis's.
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The last guy has 20 dex, but his AC calculation is based on a +4 dex bonus. So his normal and touch AC should both be 1 higher in both tiers.
I don't spot math mistakes very often, because I rarely recalculate things, so I never know if I should just go with the stats that are there, or use the proper math. His AC isn't very challenging for this level, so I may give him the +1 just to make him a tiny bit tougher.
Also, I just noticed his Summon Mantis ability. They aren't that tough, but he can bring out a few of them. I'd think he'd do that while invisible before making his own first attack.
For the medusa, should they have a chance to avert their gaze or close their eyes on the first round? I'm thinking I should make them roll their fort save immediately before they can do anything else on their first turn. Then closing their eyes/averting their gaze would affect their chance to have to roll a fort save at the start of the following turn.
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He's only invisible at the start of the fight. It's the fact that he has fast stealth, 70 ft speed, and spring attack that lets him keep hiding after every attack. That gives him a sneak attack every time he can start from stealth, but he's only getting one attack per round. He also has Vital Strike at the higher tier for an extra 1d8.
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Man there is a surprisingly low amount of GM discussion on this fun but complicated scenario, and no shared prep. Running tomorrow and I have a few questions and observations, mostly about the bbeg.
1) He doesn't qualify for entry into the PrC, missing alertness and TWF. Doesn't matter I suppose, though TWF would have helped him out a lot. (observation)
2) Does his concealment effect from alchemical quickness allow him to retain stealth without cover? Logically it doesn't seem like it should but I'm not great with stealth rules and if the fight goes long he will need to use them for sneak attacks.
3) In the high tier, can he make sneak attacks and retain his buffs while in blood mantis form? If so, silently observing the party to identify the casters/healers then breaking invisibility for a sudden strike in the surprise round followed up by another normal full attack vs flat footed(pending initiative) could be a devastating open.. Exactly what feats and class abilities does he retain while polymorphing? So much stuff in the stat block..
4) Seems like if the party splits up to find him(a likely scenario), prayer attack could come into play if a PC finds themselves alone with him either outside the college or near the alter to Achaekek. Kind of a mean GM thing to do but it seems reasonable to use such a tactic if given the opportunity. On a failed save I would give the player an index card saying something like "You're fascinated by a RMA's swordplay, you can't do anything but watch. You are on delay until something changes" because it's impossible for people not to metagame if they know someone is 3 rounds from a coup de grace, if they come in on their own and interrupt him then so be it. (observation)
5) I feel like there's a good chance he will find himself at the bottom of an extra dimensional pit, I fully intend to summon a climbing mantis and ride him out.. What happens if he tries to wait out an acid pit with rope trick in the high tier?(both)
6) Does the Red Shroud mist ability mess up invisibility or his ability to stealth in general?
7) Is the final(optional) encounter intended to be merely cinematic? Assassin moves adjacent to Torch during the surprise round then full attacks with two poisoned blades on regular initiative.. If there's an adjacent PC, presumably beating the crap out of her, and the first blade goes right through the image of Torch shouldn't the second blade go after that PC? Following the tactics it seems like there's no way for a PC to get poisoned and this is a glorified social encounter to see if they will save torch or not..
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When playing this our wizard went invisible to hunt the BBEG down. The GM wasn't familiar enough with the Mask of the Mantis he was wearing. Make sure you know the item as well as the prestige class.
The dance was more effective in the crowded room where someone (PC?) cast a cloud to minimize gaze attack. The first one out of the mist was the target of the dance and was two rounds into it before any realized what was happening. Wizard going off to scout did give the BBEG a chance, to use it, but the mantis were already out.
The fight on the ledge kept us murder hobo's from ganging up on a target, so it turned out to be a fun encounter. And what? There's something in there? I forget if the waterfall made the characters deaf, but if not it should have, just to force spell casters to think a bit. IMHO the difference between beating and failing that puzzle check is huge. If you have an optimized party, don't go easy on the puzzle.
Summoning a mantis/es enables flanking and has a good range on it, and is another way for him to split the party (drop them in the room above). When in stealth summoning them doesn't give the PCs a chance totally rest, but buffs continue to tick away. Especially if he has established a hit and run pattern by then.
I see no reason why mist would prevent invisibility, though it does let the characters know which square to attack. I think I saw it ruled as cover in fact. Similarly active buffs stay active in mantis form as long as the mantis form could use it (no longer wearing armor, can't activate the mask, etc. note the exception to the sabres).
Yeah I think the last encounter has a set outcome. Though the players at my table who had been through another prominent high level scenario all hooted and hollered at the reveal (something they kept to themselves to keep from spoiling that one for me).
This scenario was a ball.
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So, the stat blocks in this scenario are a bit...off.
The Beheaders' full attack in Tier 10 is listed wrong.: "+7/2 masterwork sawtooth saber and +7/2 masterwork sawtooth saber" implies they are able to get a primary and iterative attack with each saber. This requires Improved Two-Weapon Fighting...which they do not have. The correct attack should read "+7/2 masterwork sawtooth saber and +7 masterwork sawtooth saber".
Vashian's stat block vs. tactics is off. First, he can't Spring Attack in a Surprise Round. Spring Attack is a full attack action. It can't be used to initiate combat out of invisibility because, by RAW, that is a surprise round. As someone above pointed out, tactically he's better off taking on someone who is isolate from their party initially to start things off. Another solid tactic would be to summon a Fiendish Giant Mantis via his class abilities to distract the PCs (letting it pop in for the surprise round, having him *then* cast haste on himself and it, and waiting the PCs to engage), and then drop from invisibility to full attack or Spring Attack a party member who is hanging back (i.e. The healer/support character) in order to drop them.
You could also Dalsine it via Silent Image and Ventriloquism.
Also, Vital Strike seems out of place. http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9pyy. It's nice if he is cornered, but wholly unnecessary.
It's already been pointed out Vashian doesn't even qualify for Red Mantis Assassin so I'll leave that alone for now.
So, this creates an interesting question for me. The tactics, as written, aren't valid/legal. I can make some small adjustments (initiating combat via the alternatives written above) and allow him to otherwise behave as normal. Is this an OK point to break with tactics? I'm a big fan of sticking to tactics-as-written at lease initially or until they are demonstrated to not be effective against the PCs before going into nastier things but as the tactics are now he'll last maybe a round against a modern PC part of 6 if he is unable to play hit/run.