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A sort of particular question about scaling the final encounter of this scenario (I'm running the series in a Play-by-Post right now): if a party is playing up with the 4-player adjustment, which version of Zaril do I use? If I apply the 'Scaling the Aspis Attacks' rules on pg 17, it says "Replace the Aspis mercenaries in both Wave 1 and Wave 2 with the Aspis mercenaries from Subtier 1–2."
Is Zaril an Aspis mercenary? There are actual combatants listed as 'Aspis mercenaries', so I don't know if the scaling only applies to them, to everyone but Zaril, or to all the Aspis-associated folks in the two waves. I tried to look at it from a CR standpoint, but it seems that it will either make it too easy or very hard. (My players got many of the defense points, so I'd like to reward them for that, but it's no fun for anyone if it's too easy.)
What have others done, if you placed this particular situation? Or if not, what would you do?
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A sort of particular question about scaling the final encounter of this scenario (I'm running the series in a Play-by-Post right now): if a party is playing up with the 4-player adjustment, which version of Zaril do I use? If I apply the 'Scaling the Aspis Attacks' rules on pg 17, it says "Replace the Aspis mercenaries in both Wave 1 and Wave 2 with the Aspis mercenaries from Subtier 1–2."
Is Zaril an Aspis mercenary? There are actual combatants listed as 'Aspis mercenaries', so I don't know if the scaling only applies to them, to everyone but Zaril, or to all the Aspis-associated folks in the two waves. I tried to look at it from a CR standpoint, but it seems that it will either make it too easy or very hard. (My players got many of the defense points, so I'd like to reward them for that, but it's no fun for anyone if it's too easy.)
What have others done, if you placed this particular situation? Or if not, what would you do?
I would stick to the story and Elaborate that they are very... very sick but still greedy haughty racist aspis .
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Hmm, as often happens, I think asking the question helped me to answer it. Given that the final encounter at high tier is CR 7 (before the adjustment) and CR 4 at low tier, and the party's APL is 3, I kind of have to go with the low-tier version of Zaril. I had been focusing on Zaril's CR, rather than the CR for the whole encounter (which, frankly, I just forgot to look at).
But I'd still be curious to see how others read this, especially given that there are the two tiers and then lots of adjustments based on Defense Points. I could see reading it either way, and there could be a lot of dead PC's, I think, if one read it to mean go with the tougher version of Zaril.
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Zaril is not an Aspis Mercenary. If they are playing up with the 4 player adjust you run high tier Zaril, replace the Aspis Mercenaries as described in scaling the encounter, and then apply the defense points which adjust the encounter again. If they max defense points it won't be equal to a CR 7 encounter since they lose a mercenary, the other two are injured and sickened, and Zaril is sickened and has used up his shield of faith as well as a round of several other abilities. Could still be rough, but I've really never seen Zaril pose much of a threat.
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Zaril is not an Aspis Mercenary. If they are playing up with the 4 player adjust you run high tier Zaril, replace the Aspis Mercenaries as described in scaling the encounter, and then apply the defense points which adjust the encounter again. If they max defense points it won't be equal to a CR 7 encounter since they lose a mercenary, the other two are injured and sickened, and Zaril is sickened and has used up his shield of faith as well as a round of several other abilities. Could still be rough, but I've really never seen Zaril pose much of a threat.
Thanks for the thoughtful, clear answer! Happily, I've just brought Zaril into the fight, so I can make this adjustment.
