Artifacts and EL


Advice


I'm running a rather crazy one-off adventure for a weekend-long game with some old friends, and would appreciate some input.

The PC's are all 5th level, but right off the bat they're going to run into a downed Solar who equips them with Major Artifacts so that they can pursue his quest. I want to them drop a handful of enemies on them that should normally be outside their power level but which the artifacts will let them defeat, even as the solar casts spells each round like mass stoneskin and mass fly to help them out.

How would you guys go about picking challenging enemies for artifact equipped PC's? I'm thinking of giving them the Thorncrown of Blasting, the Branch of Life, a staff of the magi, St. Cuthbert's Mace, the Shield of the Sun, and letting one of them grab the solar's +5 composite longbow of slaying.

Do you think three CR 8 Erinyes would be too tough, if the solar's buffing them and healing them each round?


Phil Tucker wrote:

I'm running a rather crazy one-off adventure for a weekend-long game with some old friends, and would appreciate some input.

The PC's are all 5th level, but right off the bat they're going to run into a downed Solar who equips them with Major Artifacts so that they can pursue his quest. I want to them drop a handful of enemies on them that should normally be outside their power level but which the artifacts will let them defeat, even as the solar casts spells each round like mass stoneskin and mass fly to help them out.

How would you guys go about picking challenging enemies for artifact equipped PC's? I'm thinking of giving them the Thorncrown of Blasting, the Branch of Life, a staff of the magi, St. Cuthbert's Mace, the Shield of the Sun, and letting one of them grab the solar's +5 composite longbow of slaying.

Do you think three CR 8 Erinyes would be too tough, if the solar's buffing them and healing them each round?

the main issue is that they will be very vulnerable to counterattack, that 10d6 lightning bolt wont matter if the wizard is dead before he can use it, the main issue here is that they will be very frail and have a hard time making any saves due to HP and Saving Throws being based on level and the enemies being built to deal with the HP and Saving Throws of a much more powerful party


You are tipping the CR system, which is already just a "best guess" in the first place, into relatively uncharted waters.

Hazrond is right, your characters will seem to be able to throw down a TON of damage compared to the same party with standard gear, but they won't necessarily be able to survive much more than usual. So when you start tossing CR 12 battles at them, they might be able to kill those monsters, but those monsters WILL be able to kill the PCs.

An interesting effect of adventuring that very few people ever consider. I call it FOTO ("Fallacy: Only Takes Once" - OK, the name needs some work). The idea of this fallacy is that we all believe that adventurers can infinitely face "fair" encounters. They can't. If they do it long enough, one such "fair" encounter will roll an unusual number of Crits, or the PCs will roll an unusual number of misses, or maybe the monsters will just have exactly the right immunities and attacks to overwhelm a particular party. Etc.

And it only takes ONCE, just one time, and then the TPK happens and everyone is dead.

For example:
Party A defeats 9 encounters but the 10th encounter defeats the party - what is the percentage of TPK?
Party B defeats 99 encounters but the 100th encounter defeats the party - what is the percentage of TPK?
Party C defeats 999 encounters but the 1,000th encounter defeats the party - what is the percentage of TPK?

Answers: 100%. All three parties are dead. FOTO.

By skewing the party into superman levels of damage output, you will also be subjecting them to General Zod levels of attacks being aimed at them, and that inevitable FOTO event will happen much sooner rather than later.

In the end, you're just about guaranteed to TPK this group, or you'll be heavily cheating to save them.


Agreed. It's a precarious proposition, and one I'd only ever dream of risking on a weekend game. My group has been playing together off and on since high school, and as a result we've all become a little jaded when it comes to standard dungeon crawls and the like. I'm trying to put something together that's high risks, high tension, and will bring them right to the edge of their seats.

One way I'm hoping to mitigate their all turning into glass canons is by having the downed solar on hand ready to cast spells like mass stoneskin and mass heal as needed. That and he has resurrection on hand, plus the artifact Branch of Life allows you to cast resurrection and heal as well.

I'm hoping that will keep the party in the mix long enough to down the bad guys, and then heal and resurrect the members that got killed (there's going to be about 5 or 6 PC's in the group.)

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