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My gosh Quasits are so OP for lv1 party. We're half way through the first module and that fight was SOOOOO deadly. The quasit having 15 AC made them so hard to damage, and all damage is so low that it's hard to kill them. And then because of lack of AoOs they can turn invisible and then run off to heal up and harass the party non stop. Unlimited healing and invisible is too much. Ugh, we even got lucky and the fighter of the party was able to AoO 1 of them trying to turn invisible and then we got a lucky crit too that round while everyone was attacking it, otherwise it wouldn't have gone down in 1 round, then the other realized to not try next to the fighter and proceeded to last for so flipping long until we finally got some crits and hits to line up on the same time. And the +7 makes it quite accurate especially against some of the lower AC characters and the poison is quite high.
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To be fair, Quasits were f&&%ing deadly in PF1 too. I still remember that part of Rise of the Runelords. Who will win? 3 lvl 2 PCs or 1 demon pixie thing? The answer might surprise you.
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Our party finished off the first Quasit quickly, then the second went invisible and healed itself. Because they are set to fight to the death however (or our GM interpreted that way), we knew it had to become visible again, so the two members of our party with the ability to charge readied that action once it became visible, and similarly with the ranged attackers and their actions.
I don't actually see a way to ready a charge. You can ready a single action, and Sudden Charge is two actions. I haven't been able to find a one action method to move and attack. It seems you'd have to ready an action to Strike, and stand together hoping when the Quasit appeared it's within reach of your better melee fighters.
Where are the rules on Readying an action?
You spend two actions on your current turn in order to take one single action you specify on a trigger that you specify. When that trigger happens, you expend a Reaction and take the single action.
So let's say you have a bow, and know there's an invisible Quasit. You spend two actions to Ready a single action Strike with a trigger of "when something appears from invisibility." As soon as he reveals himself, you take your Reaction and make a Strike at him.
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Where are the rules on Readying an action?
You spend two actions on your current turn in order to take one single action you specify on a trigger that you specify. When that trigger happens, you expend a Reaction and take the single action.
So let's say you have a bow, and know there's an invisible Quasit. You spend two actions to Ready a single action Strike with a trigger of "when something appears from invisibility." As soon as he reveals himself, you take your Reaction and make a Strike at him.
You can also extend this by using another action for your ready to get off a two action, though I don't know off hand if you could ready a move and attack or only things like casting that need two actions.
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You can also extend this by using another action for your ready to get off a two action, though I don't know off hand if you could ready a move and attack or only things like casting that need two actions.Where are the rules on Readying an action?
You spend two actions on your current turn in order to take one single action you specify on a trigger that you specify. When that trigger happens, you expend a Reaction and take the single action.
So let's say you have a bow, and know there's an invisible Quasit. You spend two actions to Ready a single action Strike with a trigger of "when something appears from invisibility." As soon as he reveals himself, you take your Reaction and make a Strike at him.
Do you have a page reference for that? The only index reference is to the ready rules on 308, which don't say anything about readying more than a single action.
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So ready is Concentrate, does that mean a raging barbarian can't do it?
Correct, they can't.
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I don't actually see a way to ready a charge. You can ready a single action, and Sudden Charge is two actions. I haven't been able to find a one action method to move and attack. It seems you'd have to ready an action to Strike, and stand together hoping when the Quasit appeared it's within reach of your better melee fighters.Our party finished off the first Quasit quickly, then the second went invisible and healed itself. Because they are set to fight to the death however (or our GM interpreted that way), we knew it had to become visible again, so the two members of our party with the ability to charge readied that action once it became visible, and similarly with the ranged attackers and their actions.
Update: The Rogue 6th level feat Skirmish Strike allows you to Step (but not Stride) and Strike as single action, but at -1 penalty. It's not much, but it's some melee mobility as a readied action.
I forgot about the quasit's healing when I ran it. However, it took an action, and they followed a 3 action routine: Strike, Cast invisibility, and Sneak...which now that I think about it should have been 4 actions. Ooops.
In any case, the quasits rarely hit with their claws, never poisoned anyone, and at least one failed their Sneak check each round and remained at least Sensed so the party was not lacking for a target.
We had the opposite experience with the quasits. We released them, and our fighter managed to get a lucky crit on one that turned it to a smoke-stain on the wall. :) the second one was more difficult, but even with invisibility and healing, we were still able to out-damage it over three or four rounds. Without the crit, though, it still would have been harder, but do-able.
We had the opposite experience with the quasits. We released them, and our fighter managed to get a lucky crit on one that turned it to a smoke-stain on the wall. :) the second one was more difficult, but even with invisibility and healing, we were still able to out-damage it over three or four rounds. Without the crit, though, it still would have been harder, but do-able.
Our game was similar. I don't think the quasits even got a chance to do anything. Our big damage dealer was the Greatsword weilding Cleric of Gorum. He got first initiative, he used Weapon Surge and then crit the first quasit. So that quasit was like a watermelon at a Gallagher show. His thrid action hit the other quasit and hurt it pretty bad. I can't remember who was next but it was damaged enough that I finished it off with my alchemist by hitting it with a sling bullet.
We just steamrolled the whole module in fact. That Gorum Cleric was a total murder machine and the clear MVP. He did get a lot of good lucky rolls though. My alchemist was pretty much a non-entity as was the wizard. Monk and ranger did a decent amount. We had 5 instead of 4, but the GM did do the adjustments as recommended for an extra player.
I'm not sure if we're just lucky outliers, had really good builds and or tactics, or maybe the game is just really variable at low level. Well, that's what the playtest is for.
Why didn't someone just grab the little buggers? They've only got a Fort Defense of 12.From my take, if the game is meant to be "new user friendly" knowing to do that single particular activity... is not new user friendly.. .especially if you don't know what their fort defense is.
Just my 2 coppers
If I were a player, I would make some basic deductions to realize that their fortitude defense isn't particularly high.
-Small creatures usually had weak CMB/CMD in PF1, and their small size did help contribute to this, which means objectively, a small-sized creature will have less than an identically attributed creature of a larger size.
-Demons are outsiders, which means things which affect humanoid creatures (such as enlarge or reduce person) won't (typically) affect them. I can rely on this information to judge that they won't be extremely difficult or impossible to grab due to their unlikely ability to change sizes.
-Quasits, or Imps/Mephits, are known mostly for being mischievous and cunning, similar to being an evil wizard's familiar. They have magical capabilities like other demons, but that is their main feature. They are most certainly not physically dominating compared to demons of other types (which for several are their most important feature), meaning their physical abilities are probably lacking in comparison to other demonic entities, suggesting that their ability to deal with physical threats such as grapples and dirty tricks aren't particularly great.
Granted, the last one is going off of metagaming knowledge, you can still make a similar deduction by simply asking the physical build of the creature and seeing if the GM (perhaps through a perception check) will tell you if it appears physically underwhelming or not, thereby giving the information needed (that it doesn't seem to particularly excel at physical Athletic activities).
The imps wrecked out party. Lost initiative and they turned into wolves then went invisible move hit repeat [or hide/heal if we managed to hit]. Knockdown caused prone caused flatfooted caused crits caused dying checks...
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Just want to point out a couple things I noticed while prepping this encounter. First, he quasits have to use an action each round to Change Shape as it has the concentration trait. Two, knockdown is not automatic with each Strike and requires a followup action. Thus, to attqck in wolf form, the quasit can either make two Strikes or a single Strike and then Knockdown.These were not very obvious.
They also have to use an action to heal damage, it’s not automatic like regeneration. The quasits are mean, but they aren’t built to be murder machines.
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I stand corrected. Mark Seifter has stated on another thread that quasits do NOT need to co concentrate to maintai change shape.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2vbif?Yet-another-playthrough-of-The-Lost-Star# 4
Hopefully this is somewhere that Recall Knowledge would be useful in a game: 'You figure they would be real easy to grab and pin down'
Also, as far as I can tell invisibility gives no bonus to stealth. So you can Seek then and then attack at 50/50.
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I'd also like to mention, for those who didn't take the time to read the second level invisibility spell (which I do believe is what the quasit have), that you reappear if you make hostile actions without reappearing. Which means no invisible wolves attacking more than once per casting of the two-action casting spell.
Also, if the quasit doesn't move after casting invisibility, you can still hit it, and if it does, you can Seek to make it sensed so that you can hit it. That is something I think the GMs should remind their players, as it is written right in the spell description, and is quite simple logic. So if the quasit turns invisible, it can either move, healing on the next round (which gives you a whole round to find it and hit it before it heals anything at all), or heal right in that spot and risk getting hit too. It's not an easy fight, but it's certainly not impossible to manage if everyone talks about the possible rules that apply, whether it's a player or the GM that remembers how invisibility works.
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right, but seeking gets really hard, especially if it's triple moving because you double move and seek will eventually lose track of it. Also seeking has a risky chance of working. Our Rogue spent one round seeking all 3 cause he kept rolling okay, something like 7-11 not particularly low, and that wasn't good enough.
And the fact that it can get low and then get back to full for free before engaging again means if you don't get lucky and kill it right off it'll get back to full. Meaning even if you do ready to hit when it appears, next round it can turn invisible and move and then run until it's safe to heal up to full and then keep fighting. And with it's high accuracy compare to players and it's poison it's quite likely to do some damage each time it attacks.
Also when sensed it still has a 50% miss chance so even if you get lucky and roll high enough to hit you could still miss.
Like yeah, getting lucky with some high die rolls for hitting or seeking can make this not that bad. But just some average luck and I don't see how this isn't a super hard fight.
Why not group up and ready actions to attack/grab them when they attack out of invisibility?
You mean the prone ones? And it's a medium creature so the idea of 'lets grab it while I'm prone' never came up.
Second, grapple needs a free hand, something the two handed reach players and sword and board players don't have. The people that are best at athletics are the ones that are the least likely to have that free hand. Secondly, quasits have Acrobatics so they have the Escape option so you're at best trading non-attack actions.
Or back off into the one square wide corridor with a relatively tanky character at the front, with reach and ranged weapons behind?
Is this a viable tactic against invisible creature that can fly/climb/change into a tiny creature, ect...? IMO, they could just pop up behind the tanky guy and then chew on the prone guy at the back that now has to try to get through the 5' hall to get to them....
While I think the playtest document should have given more guidance to GMs to encourage players to think about new ways to use the action economy, players don't seem to be doing much of anything to help themselves in these reports.
'GRAB IT' is a lame tactic for most people and not one that comes to mind. And if you complain about player tactics, creatures with shapechange and invisibility have MUCH MORE tactical opportunities that the players do. As int +0 creatures, they aren't dumb and should use their abilities to their fullest.
When I ran it last night, the quasits were the third worst encounter for the group, but probably would have been the worst if they used their usual tactics.
I had a 5 person group, (cleric, sorcerer, bard, alchemist, rogue) (had a 6th player at the first session (druid) who couldn't make last night.
So we have a distinct absence of front line fighters, with the cleric taking the role of tank. They often ended up bottlenecking creatures in a passageway, which meant the cleric was taking all the attacks (and almost dying multiple ties), while LoS/Cover meant most of the party had a hard timing hitting all but one of the creatures. At least in the pool room they were spread out, which let the rogue actually flank for once.
My quasits poisoned two of the party and spent most of the combat in wolf form after that repeatedly tripping people. Think we had 2 pcs dying (but recovering) in this fight.
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Okay, I was juat reviewing the Sneak action, and realized that the quasits should, when invisible, automatically get a 20 on their die role (and thus have an auto success against Lvl 1 PCs) when Sneaking.
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The quasits were pretty brutal on the party in my game, too. 3/4 of the PCs got poisoned and no one was rolling well on their Fort saves (even the barbarian). The wizard probably would have outright died if she hadn't had a potion to drink to fix some of the damage the poison was doing. (I didn't even use their change shape ability because at that point it just seemed cruel.)
Our group ran this combat, and it was actually fairly easy. Only one person got hurt for minor damage, and nobody got poisoned or anything. We burned a few things of ammunition and Alchemist "consumables," but nothing too major.
The group composition was Elf Alchemist, Dwarf Fighter, Goblin Ranger, Halfling Rogue, and Gnome Divine Sorcerer.
When they emerged, we were able to focus-fire and destroy one of them right away before it could go invisible (the Fighter with his D12+4 Maul did a lot of the leg work, even though he got scared right away). The second one, on the other hand, managed to get out and make a few attacks. It hit the Fighter a couple times for low damage (one of them didn't do any damage, actually), and otherwise didn't pose too much of a threat (though quite an annoyance with their relatively high AC and "bad" rolling). Between cantrips and ammunition, we didn't really burn much on this fight.
The biggest things that helped were that, if the imp was flying, it had to take an action to maintain flight or it would fall, a universal rule of flying. In short, if the imp wanted its mobility, it would be cut down to 2 actions instead of 3 (and with how imps usually are, this makes sense for them to constantly do), which is a big impact between what it can do with Invisibility and such, since it cut its action economy down significantly. (Which means flying monsters in general aren't extremely difficult or powerful anymore as a result, unless they get abilities to make "free" Flight actions, which is a whole other mosnter.)
Furthermore, we had plenty of ranged options, which means even if they decided to prance around and attack (which breaks invisibility, and couldn't go Invisible again while flying due to being limited to 2 actions, effectively, so no "chain invisibility"), everyone had an option to strike back and hopefully inflict some damage (Fighter had Sudden Charge to compensate). That, and combined with the GM having some bad rolls for the imps, resulted in a fairly easy victory with minimal expenditure of resources.