Advice for "Sepent's Skull" AP with "special" DM (maybe new character)?


Advice


I am playing the Sepent's Skull adventure path (on Roll20).

Our party consists of:

- Dwarven Cleric [2]
- Halfling Rogue [1] / Sorc or Wiz? [1] (will be Arcane Trickster later on)
- Human Ranger [2]
- Human Barbarian [2] (me)

Up to now, the DM had some "specials" in store for us:

a) He thinks fights are too easy and buffs the enemies.

b) A 20 is not an automatic success if the DC or AC is greater than 20. You need to do a confirmation roll, add it to your result (first roll+skill) and the result needs to be greater than DC / AC. This is also used for npcs.

Last night, my Barbarian (Damocles Guile build) was killed by a yellow musk creeper. The DM had upped the creeper and its zombies with the advanced template. He also added a spore mist around the creeper, that reduced visibility so we only saw the zombies. The mist also reduced skill checks by -2 if you failed your fortitude save. The ranger failed his DC, so we retreated until the effect wore off. The party used wet cloth bound before mouth and nose to get a bonus of +2 against the spores.

The fight and my Barbarian were raging on and most of the creeper zombies were finally defeated. Out of the mist, I was hit with pollen spray and entranced. So my barbarian was forced to run up to the creeper stem and the creeper started inserting its roots into his brain. The other players still could not see what was happening, because of the spore mist. It was ruled that the entrancement stopped the rage and that the barbarian was fatigued.

I was given a will save every round and if I failed, 1d4 intelligence was drained. I was also attacked with 1d4+4 damage on hit each round. The other players tried to rescue me, as soon as they had dispatched the last zombie (one round). My barbarian was able to break entrancement with 4 intelligence left and had to roll for strength ("high DC because it's difficult"), since the DM ruled he was bound by the roots to break free. I failed the check (fatigued!). The next round the DM ruled that my barbarian can rage (even with fatigue), probably because he sensed that character death was imminent. I raged, failed, failed my will save and was drained my remaining intelligence and therefore would have died. Did I mention, that the DM interpreted being a "plant" meant DR5 against pierce and crush?

The DM allowed the other players to save my character with a "deus ex machina" druid living nearby (with a short quest, which nearly took the live of another character). At the moment, the barbarian is in a coma with brain damage, healing from the magic of the npc druid. I am not sure, what will happen next time, maybe even some permanent intelligence drain after recovery.

In sum, this was all nice and dandy from a roleplay perspective. Although I had to sit through two hours of play time, listening to my fellow players trying to save my character. But I felt that the encounter was highly unfair. The encounter before the creeper (skeleton pirates) nearly resulted in a TPK. So I think the DM really has some issues with encounter design and I fear, that this kind of mad combat will occur again ;)

Anyway: If my char suffers some permanent damage I will probably ditch him and build a new one. Any advice? Since high saves and AC seem to be king in this AP maybe some kind of an oracle/paladin build? Since we play biweekly and level slowly, the character should be effective on low level. To complement the party it should probably be a melee oriented character.


neovatar wrote:

I am playing the Sepent's Skull adventure path (on Roll20).

Our party consists of:

- Dwarven Cleric [2]
- Halfling Rogue [1] / Sorc or Wiz? [1] (will be Arcane Trickster later on)
- Human Ranger [2]
- Human Barbarian [2] (me)

Up to now, the DM had some "specials" in store for us:

a) He thinks fights are too easy and buffs the enemies.

b) A 20 is not an automatic success if the DC or AC is greater than 20. You need to do a confirmation roll, add it to your result (first roll+skill) and the result needs to be greater than DC / AC. This is also used for npcs.

Last night, my Barbarian (Damocles Guile build) was killed by a yellow musk creeper. The DM had upped the creeper and its zombies with the advanced template. He also added a spore mist around the creeper, that reduced visibility so we only saw the zombies. The mist also reduced skill checks by -2 if you failed your fortitude save. The ranger failed his DC, so we retreated until the effect wore off. The party used wet cloth bound before mouth and nose to get a bonus of +2 against the spores.

The fight and my Barbarian were raging on and most of the creeper zombies were finally defeated. Out of the mist, I was hit with pollen spray and entranced. So my barbarian was forced to run up to the creeper stem and the creeper started inserting its roots into his brain. The other players still could not see what was happening, because of the spore mist. It was ruled that the entrancement stopped the rage and that the barbarian was fatigued.

I was given a will save every round and if I failed, 1d4 intelligence was drained. I was also attacked with 1d4+4 damage on hit each round. The other players tried to rescue me, as soon as they had dispatched the last zombie (one round). My barbarian was able to break entrancement with 4 intelligence left and had to roll for strength ("high DC because it's difficult"), since the DM ruled he was bound by the roots to break free. I failed...

That...

That seems like the kind of encounter I could only dream of my GM creating.

Difficult, but with several logical ways of bypassing it, and he was fair in giving you a chance to escape.

My GM would normally just find the biggest thing we could possibly handle, then just put it in an empty room for us to fight. In my opinion, a difficult but dynamic encounter is better than a difficult but boring one.

Admittedly, your GM seems a bit too eager to add additional layers of challenge and complexity...

Does your barbarian seem strong to you? If he does, then changing to a different character won't necessarily solve the issue.

My advice would be to try to figure out what your GM is trying to tell you. Does he want you to approach encounters more tactically? Does he want you to consider noncombat solutions, like stealth or other skill checks? Or does he just think that it's not a real encounter until someone's at negative HP?

If it's his GMing style that's causing the problem, you need to talk to him about it.


Hey, first:
Most AP fights are very easy, for a decently optimised party. Specially if going With more than 15 point buy or rolled stats. Some APs do have Deadly fights, usually early on due to the binary way combat goes and the lack of options characters have.

Second, a template may confer DR, such as plant creatures (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/plant-imbued-c reature-cr-varies-tohc)

Third, assaulting all combats in a RaaaaageAaaaRrrAaaGgGhGH!!! is a Perfect way of dying in fights that are otherwise fairly simple. We dont have much info from Your post about how you went about it so we cant comment much.

You went out of the mist and then re entered, telling us that perhaps fighting those Things was not of inminent priority. If you could have a few rounds to buff, scout or change tactics it may help.

Otherwise, staple paizo Boards answer: talk to Your DM about what you both want and expect from the game. Ask him if he expects you to play different or he does do tough fights.

All in all rather than a new character my suggestion is to improve battletactics. My Group certainly learnt that there are several solutions to a problem, amd usually charge in and kill is the one that hurt themselves most. More information in context could help us understand the problem further.


The template I posted is from a 3pp. However there are a tonne of templates out there that each do very different Things.

Grand Lodge

Honestly that all sounds fairly balanced for upping the difficulty of an Adventure Path.

How many zombies were there? If it's only two or three I'd have to say it's a fair encounter given that you had time to recover/buff and use tactics.

EDIT: Up until the DR 5/ Piercing or crushing.


Your party already has a martial charater and a cleric. So depending on builds should be ok in that area, but only has a part time arcane caster. I would look at that area. If you feel the need to add melee ability, possibly a magus or bard. If you don't like that idea, personally I would pick between Paladin and Oracle and not mix. Love paladns in Pathfinder


I'm of two minds of this. On one hand, APs are pretty easy so upping the difficulty is usually fine. This seems a little excessive, but if you have an experienced party it's doable. The issue I'm seeing is that your DM is being a little excessive and maybe making things up on the fly. (I'm not sure about the DR thing). My advice is to talk to your DM if this is bothering you and explain your concerns. If he refuses, optimize the hell out of your build and make something that's just hard to kill. A paladin with heavy armor and a heavy shield is harder to hit and has high saves as long as you have high Charisma.

Grand Lodge

kamenhero25 wrote:
I'm of two minds of this. On one hand, APs are pretty easy so upping the difficulty is usually fine. This seems a little excessive, but if you have an experienced party it's doable. The issue I'm seeing is that your DM is being a little excessive and maybe making things up on the fly. (I'm not sure about the DR thing). My advice is to talk to your DM if this is bothering you and explain your concerns. If he refuses, optimize the hell out of your build and make something that's just hard to kill. A paladin with heavy armor and a heavy shield is harder to hit and has high saves as long as you have high Charisma.

I double checked the Bestiary entry and plant traits, the DR would have been added on the fly.

I've thrown advanced templates on the fly before, but DR is something a GM has to be very conservative with at all times, and especially at levels 1-5.

The fact that he deus-ex-machinaed a druid in to save the Barbarian at the last minute is further evidence of this.

Shadow Lodge

Ms. Pleiades wrote:
EDIT: Up until the DR 5/ Piercing or crushing.

If you are a martial and you only have slashing weapons then you are doing it wrong

Grand Lodge

ElementalXX wrote:
Ms. Pleiades wrote:
EDIT: Up until the DR 5/ Piercing or crushing.
If you are a martial and you only have slashing weapons then you are doing it wrong

Except in this case the martial had been crippled, and all his buddies needed to cut him out, and the typically unforgiving low wealth/loot at the start of an adventure means something needs to be left out.


First: Thanks for all the answers!

Second: I my opinion, we did not charge headless into combat. We were following leads into this area. We saw movement the first time we entered the mist (could have been the person we were looking for). The second time we protected ourselves against the spore mist and stealthed into the mist, but the cleric failed the stealth check. We were just a few steps into the mist and were jumped by the zombies.

The Zombies were tough but doable. IMHO the real problem was the "death trap" of the "invisible" pimped creeper (+ advanced template, + additional bonus HP, + DR). My barbarian has an intelligence of 14 (for the combat expertise build), that gave me a few extra rounds of survival. But not enough for the party to rescue. With upgraded zombies and a normal creeper (maybe a few extra HP) the fight would might have been close, but doable.

Quote:
Except in this case the martial had been crippled, and all his buddies needed to cut him out, and the typically unforgiving low wealth/loot at the start of an adventure means something needs to be left out.

This! Resources are extremely limited at the start of this AP (shipwrecked). Actually it's fun to have to scourge for food and stuff! But I still think the GM is slightly overdoing things with making every single encounter harder. When I GM, I usually make boss battles harder by draining party resources beforehand instead up just upping the boss opponent. It's easier to scale IMHO and "accidental sudden death" at low level is less probable.

Third: I'll talk to the GM and my fellow players. I would have done this in any case! But since this is the first "official" AP I play, I wanted to get some feedback first. Thanks again!


I've GM'ed this adventure path through all six books. I consider Book 1 to be on the short list of best adventures ever (in any edition of the game). That being said, it is not without it's problems. One of those problems is that many of the encounters are weak and don't provide much of a tactical challenge for solid, well-build parties. However, it also has a few encounters that are very tough, as written. It also has some skill checks that are IMO way too difficult for low level characters (notably in the Climb and Swim department). Then there is the equipment issue, which throws a monkey-wrench into the mix. Tweaking the encounters (combat or skill-based) is not uncommon - I made numerous adjustments.

The difficulty is that unlike other APs, Book 1 of Serpent's Skull requires selective tweaking rather than the typical "AP = weak, so bump everything". I can't tell if your GM is being selective or not, but it really doesn't matter since he is obviously making adjustments on the fly. I'm not sure I agree with your GM's "specials" or the adjustments he made to the encounter - they seem heavy handed to me.

Personally, I'd roll with it. If at some point you stop having fun, speak up and say "this is no longer fun for me" and give details. Until then, keep enjoying the roller coaster and hope it doesn't derail.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Advice for "Sepent's Skull" AP with "special" DM (maybe new character)? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.