How did your magus spot traps without walking right into them? Taking 10 to prod every square in front of you with a 10 ft pole woukd probably cause low level mage armor spells to wear out. I certainly didn't care for finding that pit by WALKING into it.
Suspect that darkvision throughout the party will come in handy.
Take the Seeker and Trap Finder traits on a dex build. Invest in Eyes of the Eagle.
And if the DM wants me to check for traps on a per square basis instead of just moving at half speed, I'll happily roll for each individual square. We might clear one hallway a night. Fortunately, the rules don't restrict the perception check to covering a single 5' square. I announce I am checking a section of hallway, make my roll/take 10, then move. The party moves 30'/round instead of the 40'/round we would be moving if not checking for traps.
RA is a dungeon that punishes party loyalty plays quite a bit. I'm very much a "leave no PC behind" player, and that has cost me 1 death already.
I, however, have no intention of playing any differently, as it's just how I like to be.
I will say this about RA, player vs player deaths happen with surprising frequency. (I will leave it to you to guess the why, no spoilers.) :)
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Look at it this way, I had +8 perception at lv 1(when we encountered the pits). Consider a pit would require DC 20 to spot, I don't think taking 10 would have worked. Again the group was urging me not to take forever since the 1h mage armor would run out. Taking 10 per square would take 1/2 a min per square, that means 120 squares per session.
I see what you mean about spinosaurus. I thought bears had better stats(since their 4th level advancement kicks in), but they actuslly have lower dex, though 1 point higher strength. But bears are more furry!
So: as someone's who DMed Rappan Athuk before, tactics will be the thing to save you. Escape routes are incredibly important, as one of my parties only managed to survive intact because of a lucky Wayfinder roll (which gave them teleportation early). Even teleportation may not save you at some points though, so always be prepared to run away.
Effectively: make sure your character is a kind that can play it safe in combat, and know that you will likely be ambushed more than once. Quick-Runner's Shirts are amazing if you can grab them, especially if you end up playing a reach-based character.
With my foreknowledge of what's going on in the dungeon: I highly recommend either a caster with good evasion abilities such as a Diviner, or simply a character that has good numbers on defense. Offense is a little less important, as if you try to go all alpha-strikey you may take out some of the smaller encounters, but you're much less likely to be able to survive when you charge into an encounter that's beyond your abilities.
EDIT: Also try to be as diplomatic as possible and DO NOT provoke the NPCs. Many of them are much higher level than they appear, and if you screw with them they will be more than willing to murder you off.
Mort,
You need to control the threat mechanisms of the NPC's you face. Because the melees you face may be too deadly, it's important to control who they can base. Thus, summons, minions, pits, reach, etc.
Everyone moving fast is a great idea. Every seeing in the dark is a great idea.
Essentially, can you in 1-2 rounds identify what you're facing, identify it's level of threat and minimize it doing whatever it does to you?
RA takes advice that's good for every adventure and makes it much more critical to survival.
It also presents "unsolvable" at level puzzles.
Everyone moving fast is a great idea. Every seeing in the dark is a great idea.
Essentially, can you in 1-2 rounds identify what you're facing, identify it's level of threat and minimize it doing whatever it does to you?
RA takes advice that's good for every adventure and makes it much more critical to survival.
It also presents "unsolvable" at level puzzles.
All very good suggestions. My players all selected PC's that acquired Darkvision prior to entering RA.
My players went to Endhome, but you could go to Eastgate or Freegate which is the Bards Gate Navy port.
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Sigh. I guess it means no going into Rappan Athuk until I find a group that's willing to sit around and party plan. Most here feel that you should play whatever you want(screw party composition and all that - I've been trying to tell them for a long time, they've never listened). Yet I would roll anything(within reason, no Paladins) that a group required, but people wouldn't do the same.
Where exactly is the line you must draw between personal freedom of expression and the good for the party?
Just a Mort,
Because it is so easy to die in RA the approach my group has taken is...whoever has the most (legitimate) deaths at the end of RA wins the Kenny Award (prize tbd).
What this has done is make the deaths fun. What spectacular way can you go out (that isn't suicide)?
Currently the winner is one player who's character died, was brought back, and died again...in the space of a few minutes (in game time). Mostly just due to random luck but still. :)
It has also taken party composition out of the equation, anyone can play whatever and it will either work, or it won't.
Look at it this way, I had +8 perception at lv 1(when we encountered the pits). Consider a pit would require DC 20 to spot, I don't think taking 10 would have worked. Again the group was urging me not to take forever since the 1h mage armor would run out. Taking 10 per square would take 1/2 a min per square, that means 120 squares per session.
There is no time requirement for taking 10. The only requirement is the move action to make the perception check.
There appears to be a couple of misconceptions regarding searching for traps.
1) Taking 10 to search for traps takes 1 move action. It does not take ANY extra time.
2) Searching for traps is not per square.
It is one check and that result is compared to the DC for any traps within line of sight, taking into account the DC modifier of +1 per 10 feet.
The rule that made it per square was removed in the port from 3.5 to Pathfinder when Search, Spot, and Listen were merged into Perception. Additionally the action required was reduced from full-round to move action.
Mort, not all players play to mitigate consequences. I personally do, but many players play for many equally valid reasons, some of which are antithetical to consequence mitigation.
In addition, consequence mitigation play lends itself very strongly to character optimization. While I love character optimization, I find that a very large amount of players really do not like it. Again, I respect their views.
The toughest part about RPG's is building a consistent, enjoyable player group for everyone involved.
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I'm running a group of experienced players with highly optimized characters through RA atm. They've just reached level 9, and last session we had the first character death (wizard got hit by a circle of death).
I made sure they fully understood the danger and mercilessness of the dungeon even before they started generating characters. They took it as a challenge to build the most unbreakable party they could think of and took every threat very seriously, which has saved their asses multiple times now already.
However, at higher levels it becomes rocket tag anyway so optimized or not, pc's will die. Just have fun and make sure your party has backup characters or a reliable way to get back from the dead!
I thought taking 10 = making 10 tries to get average, so we're looking at 5 rounds per square?
How do you search more then 1 round per move action for all traps within sight? Don't you need to prod the suspected trap with something as part of your search?
Taking 10: When your character is not in immediate danger or distracted, you may choose to take 10. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, calculate your result as if you had rolled a 10. For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful. Distractions or threats (such as combat) make it impossible for a character to take 10. In most cases, taking 10 is purely a safety measure—you know (or expect) that an average roll will succeed but fear that a poor roll might fail, so you elect to settle for the average roll (a 10). Taking 10 is especially useful in situations where a particularly high roll wouldn't help.
Taking 10 has no time requirement. You are simply choosing to accept the average result instead of relying on luck.
As Gauss stated; the 5' square/search was a 3.5 thing. It does not exist in Pathfinder.
Just a Mort,
These are the two relevant rules that were present in 3.5's Search skill that are not present in Pathfinder's Perception skill:
Check: You generally must be within 10 feet of the object or surface to be searched. The table below gives DCs for typical tasks involving the Search skill.
Check: Perception has a number of uses, the most common of which is an opposed check versus an opponent’s Stealth check to notice the opponent and avoid being surprised. If you are successful, you notice the opponent and can react accordingly. If you fail, your opponent can take a variety of actions, including sneaking past you and attacking you.
Perception is also used to notice fine details in the environment. The DC to notice such details varies depending upon distance, the environment, and how noticeable the detail is. The following table gives a number of guidelines.
The 10' distance limit is not present in Pathfinder.
Action: It takes a full round action to search a 5-foot-by-5-foot area or a volume of goods 5 feet on a side.
Action: Most Perception checks are reactive, made in response to observable stimulus. Intentionally searching for stimulus is a move action.
Instead of a Full-round action now it is a move action and there is no 5'5 area limit.
The result of this is that finding traps is a lot easier and takes less time (both in game and out of game). Back in 3.5 searching was tedious and was often hand-waived.
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I'm running a group of experienced players with highly optimized characters through RA atm. They've just reached level 9, and last session we had the first character death (wizard got hit by a circle of death).
Wow just before they reach the level where that does nothing, lol
No creature of 9 or more HD can be affected
That is common in PF tho. Many times a Creature uses Blindness or some other status effect and the spell to remove it is 1-2 levels away.
Darkness Level 2 spell.....Daylight Level 3.....
Just the nature of the Beast.
Carla,
What are the PC classes if I may ask?
I'm in Carla's group. I posted it earlier, but I'll do so again.
1. Oracle/Paladin combo. Hadn't had the need for typical Oradin shenanigans yet.
2. Goblin Reincarnated Druid with the Monkey domain. Crowd control with debuffs, clouds, and difficult terrain.
3. Slayer with a tripbuild (me). Not made to do damage, just to be scarily effective at tripping. I'm at +19 to trip, and that's only with a Belt of STR +2, could boost it more, both with magic items and Studied Target and the like. Saw a friend's Lore Warden trip build and he's even more insane. I'm probably the least cheese of the party. I just took Power Attack on level 9. >_>
4. Monk/Magus multiclass. Doesn't do a whole lot of damage, but is the party tank. GM regularly has to roll 20 to hit him. He takes both INT and WIS to AC. Is also our trap disabler. Currently has 11 attacks of opportunity. Back when he still had 7, he used all of them to skewer a swarm of Stirges.
5. Diviner Wizard. He's relatively new to Pathfinder, but he's smart and picks things up quickly. Mostly enables our shenanigans through Haste, Persistent Fireballs, and Heroism.
There used to be a Witch, but he had to drop out due to schedule clashes. We were about to replace him by someone who would play an Evangelist Cleric, but he had to drop out as well.
We've got all our bases covered. I'd really like a Bard at the table for more support, or a Cleric for emergency healing, but so far we've been doing pretty well. We've had a lot of luck in some fights and our Druid is really, really good at crowd control, to the point where some of us think he's cheating with his amount of spells (if you're reading this, I'm sorry we didn't tell you), but I like to think the majority of it is just a well-balanced party. I trip pretty much everything before it can reach us, and if it does, the Magus can tank the hits, Oradin hits really hard (not even Oath of Vengeance, but a different Oath, can't remember), and I can deal decent damage if I get into a flank, Druid can hinder opponents, and Wizard is general support and blasting guy.
We're at 20 point buy, with a few small changes:
- Started at level 4, with 8000 GP to spend on gear.
- No ioun stones, no Summoners, we had a single Wand of CLW and I think a Scroll of Resurrection in case we died early on. Wand is largely untouched 8 sessions in.
- 1 extra stat point if you're a Core race (to prevent Aasimar cheese, although I think they're still the better option).
- 1 skill point per level extra if our background had tie-ins to the Worldwound/Crusades and stuff. Mostly roleplay-related.
- +1 to all your saves if Iomedae is your deity. Everyone except for me picked up on that offer. I'm Sarenrae, otherwise I couldn't take Whirlwind Attack at level 6. >_>
So far I feel Rappan Athuk is mostly fair. There were some interesting fights, but mostly telegraphed or with clear avenues of approach. I've noticed there's a tendency to throw lots of low-CR creatures at you, in the hope of just wearing you down and getting a few lucky hits in. A few CR1 creatures are just a hassle to us, but if you throw 35 at us, with a climb speed, that's going to cause problems. We didn't exactly focus on AC, so if they get past our tank, we're screwed. And, every once in a while, a big unfair fight. The last fight, where the Wizard died, was one such a fight. We won that through sheer luck, because that was a wildly CR-inappropriate encounter at level 8. A CR11 creature, a thing that could cast Circle of Death, and roughly 15 CR 1 and 2 mooks. I'd love to tell you what happened, but that's spoilers. We won through lucky positioning, two lucky crits from a smiting Paladin, and a very good spell by the Druid who might not have had that spell available anymore due to bad bookkeeping.
Still, we're 8 sessions in and we only have one death. From what I've heard so far, that's a fairly decent score.
Can't remember the name of the level, but it's the level with the "Halfway Inn." Would like to tell the route we took, but that's a spoiler, so I won't.
Well, as of last night my (level 10) group had another 2 deaths bringing them to a total of 27 deaths with three TPKs accounting for 16 of those deaths.
Page 1 of the obituaries is now full.
Quentin,
Circle of Death is good stuff. It gets much much worse.
I didn't realize you were in her party. We dealt with the single tank issue, but our outcome was the tank getting obliterated in one round.
We started at level 1. I suspect that many of the early deaths would have come from parties who start at 1. I think we had 11 "deaths" in the first 3 levels, counting the eidolon taking it for the team, or a heroic roll save from certain death. When someone rolls a clutch 20, that means most parties didn't.
After level 3, I could see parties stabilizing down to a death or two every few levels and some total party wipes. There are simply some total party wipe situations. If you end up in them, and can't run, I cannot imagine anyone would live.
I agree. Early on, I felt like we were slightly too strong for the encounters thrown at us, but every once in a while there's a giant leap in CR, where we're glad we were on level. I really can't imagine how we'd have survived the first few floors if we were fresh level ones. We simply didn't have the firepower or HP to survive some of that stuff.
Rednal,
There is level 1-4 content released, as well as a couple of other module enhancements.
Rednal, that is a misconception based on the following quote:
Rappan Athuk is a difficult dungeon. Even the upper dungeon levels should not be attempted by a party of less than six characters of 4th level. Only truly veteran players should attempt this dungeon with lower level characters. Parties delving deeper than the 1st or 2nd levels of the dungeon should be of 5th level or higher. Entering the dungeon through “The Well” (which leads to level 3A) is dangerous, best avoided by parties of less than 7th level.
Breaking it down:
6 characters and "upper dungeon levels" should be level 4+.But, that still does not include all the outdoors or some of the very close to the surface dungeon levels which are less than level 4.
There are several dungeon levels which are less than Difficulty Level 4 (two are DL 1 and two are DL 3).
Summary: there is no hard and fast statement as to what level you should be doing Rappan Athuk at other than the Difficulty Level statement of each level. There are several areas that are quite suitable for level 1 groups in the main RA book (without additional content).