Greetings Fellow Gamers,
My PCs are going to be defending Sandpoint soon, but I wanted to get your advice on adjusting the encounter levels.
My Party consists of 6 PCs all 10th level:
Andrew: Human Ranger/Fighter. Archery afficianado.
Alys: Half-Elf Sorcerer. High mobility and moderate damage output. Battlefield manipulation.
Kiirn: Human Bard. Knows ALL the things.
Shavalga: Half Orc Druid. All the buffs on the animal companion all the time.
Fagan: Dwarf Inquisitor (Desna). Effective, but not much of a team player.
Torulf: Dwarf Fighter/Barbarian(Titan Mauler). Will probably be able to drop a giant a turn. but has little to no way to get around the village quickly. (Lots of running)
So, what I am thinking of doing:
* Add 2 more giants to the raiding party
* Add 1 more Dire Bear to the raiding party
* Give Teraktinus 2 more levels and/or rebuild him as a Slayer
* Increase Longtooth's age category by 1, or give him levels in sorcerer.
Which of them should I do? Any? All? Other?
No one in the party can fly. Which makes the archer target numero uno for the dragon. Teraktinus should be able to deal with one of the dwarves, but maybe not both.
Any other ideas? would it be wrong for the raid to take place at sunrise so the PCs will have to spend time getting their gear on?
Very Respectfully,
--Bacon
When our party fought this, we won pretty easily despite the GM increasing the baddies in all the ways you described.
My wizard was flying, to act as battlefield controller when Longtooth invisibly stealthed down to him and almost killed me with a single surprise attack. I wasn't much use thereafter, but our paladin shot him with her pistol, dropping him to a handful of hit points in one round so he fled. Meanwhile, our melee fighters and arcane trickster killed all the giants.
I'd suggest having the giants attack just before dawn, before the local farmers/workers get up. Then they get to have a few rounds achieving mayhem while the party either put their armour etc on, or choose to fight without any.
Longtooth doing hit and run tactics is sound - he needs to avoid melee. Grabbing the archer and dropping him in the sea is probably a good idea too or flying in, breathing fire and getting out of easy to shoot range might work. If there is decent cloud cover, that would be deadly.
If you use this sort of tactics, then I wouldn't beef up the bad guys. Meanwhile, the giants will fall to the party and Longtooth is likely to leave once he lacks allies on the ground. That way the party can have the fun of fighting him again later yet feel like heroes for saving the town.