Encounter Difficulty Question

[Xenosa]

Hello,

I have a question about an encounter our GM just threw our way. By the rules it sounds like it is reasonable but I thought the encounter was unfair. I wanted to get the opinion of some other experienced players. Sorry if this is a bit long but it needs context.

We are playing with a 6 person party composed of a druid, wizard, dual weapon fighter, mounted fighter, sword and shield fighter and a cleric. In an earlier encounter the druid lost her hawk animal companion and the quest hasn't allowed the downtime to get a new one. The encounter in question took place underground so the mounted fighter did not have his mount so the damage capacity of the party was reduced. The party just hit level two so we are limited to some basic spells and abilities, otherwise fights are mostly a D20 roll off with basic attacks.

In game we are dealing with followers of Lamashtu who have been kidnapping local children for unknown purposes. We followed clues to an abandoned house and ended up triggering a few traps which used up some of the party's healing to recover. In searching the house we came across a journal that gave us information that the children were probably being used in a ceremony to create Half Fiends. We also came across a potion of Magic Weapon.

We found a underground area and followed it to a door where we heard chanting in Infernal coming from the other side. The party discussed it and decided to go in, my Wizard attempted to converse with them in Infernal but the GM had them immediately attack. From there things rapidly went downhill.

The enemies were four Adepts and one Half Fiend Cleric which the GM said had a CR of 4. The first few rounds of the fight were spent with the Adepts repeatedly sleeping everyone and half the party falling asleep while the waking members spent rounds waking people up. The Half Fiend proceeded to buff himself with Protection from Good and a number of other spells that we failed the spellcraft check on.

We had several rounds of amazingly bad misses on the Adepts. It took about 6 rounds to kill them at which point we started on the Half Fiend. During these rounds it proceeded to repeatedly cast defensively and use the Cleric AOE negative energy attack on everyone nearby for about 1/3 of our life each hit. We started focusing on the big guy but had great difficulty hitting him at all and when we did our weapons did very little damage. We later found out he had DR 5 Magic, SR 15 and elemental immunity 10. We had one of the fighters disengage, apply the weapon oil and start attacking again but he couldn't get any hits in.

Long story short the fight went on for a LONG time because we had great difficulty hitting the bosses AC of 23 or 24 and available attack spells all fizzled on the SR. Party members started going down as a good hit from the boss would do 10-15 damage and we were already hurt from the AOE attacks. I think the GM cheated in our favor but eventually with three people up he said the boss was terribly injured. But he hit and knocked out the last person he was in melee with, then next round he proceeded charge across the room and kill my Wizard from full health to completely dead with a crit. The last guy standing got a hit and did 6 damage which was enough to take the big guy down though I think the GM fudged his health to make us win.

So after all of this, was this a reasonable encounter for a party of 6 level 2 characters? Punching the numbers into an encounter calculator it gives our party an Effective Party Level of 3.2 and the monsters an Encounter Level of 6.5. This should be close enough to make an extremely challenging encounter but I argued that because we are only level 2 we just don't have enough abilities yet to make up for that. Had we been level 7 and fighting such a difference in CR we would have options to fall back on but as is the only thing we can do is a D20 roll off and hope we kill them before they kill us.

This was the third encounter in a row where the party won with only one or two party members left up. Also in every encounter with humanoids to this point, the GM has had all ranged attackers focus on my wizard or the cleric as soon as I cast a spell. With a 12 AC and 15 HP that means most of my gameplay up to this point has been trying to get one spell off and then spending the rest of the encounter bleeding out and hoping I stabilize. I've played a wizard to epic levels before so I know just how broken/powerful they can get but these early encounters of near party wipes every time are putting me off on wanting to continue with this quest.

[Bandw2]

your tank and or anyone with good AC should have kept trying to us combat maneuvers on him, trip him down, dirty trick to blind him, etc.(AOO are worth it if you can eventually stun lock him and debuff him into nothing)

but yeah, one Elemental immunity isn't really a thing. you can have fire resistance 10, but for all of them? WITH SR 15, WITH DR5/magic?

he's obviously throwing high CR encounters at you which can be fine, but they should only be high if they're the only ones happening in a day. if you're doing the 4-6 encounters (traps sort of count as encounters) he should stay closer to your CR.

AH the immunity came from this

He's actually completely immune to poison, acid, cold, electricity, but has only a resistance of 10 for fire.

he threw a level 4 cleric at you with this template? that's just mean. though he probably didn't do it on purpose(try to be mean that is).

if his CR for the encounter was 6.5...

they were all level 2 adepts... technically 6.5 isn't really a thing, it's CR 7. though obviously CR is just a guide, and he only went marginally above 6.

[Devilkiller]

AC 24 is a little high at that level, but a Fighter with full plate +1 and a heavy shield would have around 23, so it doesn't seem nuts. SR15 is around what a CR4 monster with SR would generally have. I'd guess that it was the Adepts spamming Sleep which got the trouble started. Monsters which spam disabling AoE effects at multiple party members often make for a tough encounter. In our 17th level party's most recent fight everybody except my PC got blinded after suffering through a bunch of "don't roll a 1" saving throws. Anyhow, it sounds like a pretty tough fight.

If you keep playing around the edge of TPK one of these fights you're going to fall off (or perhaps the DM will have to perform an embarrassing Deus ex Machina move to save you). If your DM wants to throw very tough encounters at you then I'd suggest asking the DM about Hero Points so that when the inevitable happens you have something to fall back on.

[Friend of the Dork]

Also keep in mind Sleep takes a whole round to get off, during which they can easily be interrupted.

[Devilkiller]

Wow, I don't think anybody I play with has ever noticed that Sleep takes 1 round to cast. I wonder if the OP's DM played it that way.

[stuart haffenden]

It would appear not!

When the DM doesn't know the rules you're going to have a tough time. That encounter was way too difficult for your party.

The adjustment needed for a 6 man party would be increasing a Adepts, not making the boss harder with a hideous template.

[ProfPotts]

Yes, sleep has a 1 round casting time (meaning it goes off at the start of the caster's next turn), and is a 10ft radius burst effect - you can't pick and choose targets, as such. With 5 of 6 characters presumably having some melee skill (three fighters, a cleric, and a druid) simply having four of them charge an adept each should have sorted out the adepts pretty quickly. It sounds like the party was using Spellcraft to identify casting, so knowing that sleep spells were incoming could have also done something to either get out of the way (back out the door as they waste their spells) or maybe even herded the adepts together with bullrush attacks or something, so that they ended up targeting themselves.

The BBEG sounds like he needed to be countered with combat maneuvers too, as Bandw2 suggests above - always a good option if the bad guy has high AC, and doubly so if he's got resistances and such against anything else you can throw at him.

If the bad guys are always targeting you when you start to cast, maybe trying a ready action to cast, or just delaying your place in the initiative order, could be something to look at: let them play their hand first, before you reveal yours. At least it seems like your GM isn't having them attack you before they even realise you can cast spells...

[Kwauss]

The CRs also assume you have level-appropriate equipment.

Also, 'chanting in infernal' may have been the clue to tell your group to buff up for the big encounter, not an invitation to parlay. I assume you're good aligned, and my first instinct would have been 'kill them before they finish chanting' and not 'explain the error of their infernal ways'. This all presumes you know that infernal is the language of evil outsiders...

So that may have gone more roughly for you due to that missed signal.