GM Dak - Curse of the Crimson Throne

Game Master karlprosek

Twilight you are up.

@Mirela - I would much rather be focusing fire, but have been unable to.
These zombies are incredibly tough, and that Bull Rush was a very smart maneuver on their part.

@GM - I know that when I came on board, you considered taking another as well (and said you were comfortable with up to 6). I don't know to what extent you have modified the AP from what is written, but I know that Apocalypse Zombies were not even printed when this came out, and the ju-ju zombies also seem like a GM modification. Way tougher than what I would expect to find in an AP at this level, and between the two of those changes they drained a lot more of our resources than basic zombies would have. The toughness of these zombies in particular is really changing the dynamics of this battle. Now, it is the GM's prerogative to do that (but please do keep in mind that we are not very optimized and that, for me, was something that drew me to apply to this game).

If you modified the AP to account for a 6-person party, and we just have 4, might it be time for another ally to join the fight? Drawing one from recruitment perhaps? We could definitely use a bard or a primary arcane caster. I see in the Discussion that a couple of you liked Oriana the bard and the player is still active on the forums, so that would be one idea. (Inspire Courage alone would be huge, let alone everything else they could do.) Or, one of the former PCs who the other players had suggesting keeping around as an NPC.

I know you said we should have rested but I just don't see how IC we could consider "raid, retreat, rest, rinse, repeat" as a viable option. Doesn't really matter because they came out looking for us anyway. And we were all at full HP starting the fight but still had to regroup by Round 2. Given the zombies guarding the casters, we just need more offense, especially ranged.

Do what you think best, and maybe we'd pull out a win here anyway, but I thought I would offer this observation and suggestion. I think you might have overshot the mark on increasing the difficulty of the zombies, but adding another PC at this time could certainly work in terms of the story (if they are sent by the Guard and dramatically come to our rescue).

I think it's a great game and I am sticking with it no matter what happens, so I hope I am not out of line here. Just a guy with some thoughts.

I can say: GM Karlprosec is very aware that this fight is brutal….

I will also say if any old characters were to come back (such as Devan) I would be more then happy to run a second character if needed.

GM???? I think it's your turn.

Yeah, catching up.

Any thoughts on the idea of running?
Take the elevator up, maybe trap them down here until the guard show up.
Though the result of that spell might complicate things.

Twilight is still an advocate of burning the place to the ground.

Happy to run if we can get everyone out, but Artegall won't leave Mirela or Nargun.

Mirela would run if Nargun could get out.
She will morn Whisper, but if the choice is between the wolf and keeping her companions alive, she will choose the people.

So Mirela and Nargun should actually fall prone on their turns (not immediately), and can still act while prone on their turns, and then on subsequent turns will get saves to shake off the effect.

Lamm could delay until after Mirela and Nargun to see if the spell worked on them, but that means giving them a turn to act (Nargun could attack while prone, for example, or Mirela could heal herself).

Edit: actually, they just had their turns, so won't go again until after Davaulus and the zombies. This is good because it means the zombie that Nargun is fighting, as well as Davaulus, won't get the +4 for attacking prone. And Nargun will still be upright if either one provokes AOOs on their turns.

Can you fight from a prone position, with a malus I suppose? A spellcaster's legs offer a tempting target...

From PRD
Prone:
The character is lying on the ground. A prone attacker has a –4 penalty on melee attack rolls and cannot use a ranged weapon (except for a crossbow). A prone defender gains a +4 bonus to Armor Class against ranged attacks, but takes a –4 penalty to AC against melee attacks.

Standing up is a move-equivalent action that provokes an attack of opportunity.

So basically it looks like options are: melee attack, cast spell, crawl, crossbow attack, special ability or item interaction….

Yeah, but crawling provokes and you can't 5' crawl. Of course standing up provokes as well.

Oh I gave the options, not all would be good.
And with the fall command you have to remain prone for one round, so you can not stand anyway.

Yikes, I haven't looked at the map for a bit, I ddint' realize that Nargun is surrounded and we are split up so badly. I can't reach him to heal =(

Should I try healing Whisper or bit of luck on MIrella and hope for a critical? Any thoughts?

Yeah, that Bull Rush by the zombies was very effective at splitting up Artegall and Nargun.

Moving in and healing someone with the CMW wand may be a good idea. Either Mirela or Whisper. Note that both are within a 5' step of the enemy priestess so that is a challenge as she can just step and attack on her turn. Not sure if Whisper would get to act if you revived him.

Mirela will have to fall prone on her turn, so won't be able to shoot (and won't get a second save until at the start of her following turn). Bit of Luck won't do her any good.

Sorry this week has been unexpectedly heavy at work. I'm planning on posting tomorrow.

Artegall is now at 15/48 HP.

Started with Aid for 61/48
Took 22 from Channeling, down to 39/48
Hit for 11, down to 28/48
Hit for 7, down to 21/48
Hit for 6, down to 15/48

I went there to provide Artegall a flank.
I will take a closer look and let you know later today.

It would be good if you could prevent them from flanking me, since I am getting quite low on HP. However, that would put you at risk from zombie Whisper (as you wouldn't have cover from the tank anymore).

Yes, not super thrilled about any of my options, but at least I am next to you with the wand of cure mod for next turn and with some luck avoiding the flank lowers your chance of getting hit.

I will do that, step up beside Artegall.

Twilight, if push comes to shove you can use that wand to damage the zombies. It’s a touch spell so it shouldn’t be hard to hit in their plate armor and even with a save it should do decent damage.

Anybody who has Harrow Points left may want to consider using the option to gain DR 3/- (and really should have been done at the start of the fight, but not too late now).

Artegall was not present for those readings so doesn't have any.

I was in fact considering stabbing the zombie with the cure mod wand when we had it flanked, but after much consideration I decided to help Mirella fish for a lucky shot.

And although she did get that crit threat, the dice bot is not friendly to us =(.

Also, thanks for reminding us about the DR Artegall! I only remembered the fort save aspect. I will in fact use one of my points now.

Nargun gets another Will save to shake off the Greater Command, does he not?

I think so. It’s worth the AOO to stand up.

Well, I guess that's it.

Nargun was at 19 HP (when out of rage) and just took 28 (20 from the Enervation, 8 from the rapier).
We can try to keep playing it out but I think this is a TPK.

Each of those Grey Maiden zombies had AC, HP, attack, and damage comparable to Artegall (who is in fullplate with an 18 Str).

@GM - if you made modifications to increase the difficulty, I would suggest that you overshot the mark. It would not be unreasonable to rewind to when the doors burst open, but with whatever was in the AP as written. If this is what was written, then I guess I should have optimized harder.

I really do not understand how the undead had so many HP. You implied at one point that there was an Aid spell tied to an Unhallow, but Aid cannot affect undead.

The place in time that would really make a difference to go back to is when Mirela went to tell Kroft what was going on and you had to wait an hour for her to get there and come back. If you had been able to take the rooms one by one they wouldn't have had time to reinforce everywhere and collect all the zombies and cultists into 2 strongpoints. You might have gotten downstairs before Davaulus had time to double back and could have caught Lamm in one of the rooms before the vat room, which would have left the last fight as just Andaisin with her 4 zombies.

If you guys want to rewind and make a different choice there, I'm amenable to that. Could be Calistria or Erastil giving a vision of what might happen.

I don't think enough time has passed for Kroft's guards to assemble and show up yet but maybe we could pull Devan and Atticus out of the discard pile and have them go out heroically saving you guys.

Something needs to be done, because even trying to withdraw we were still outmatched.

I'll also ask that why did you move the Unhallow spell and changed the spell attached to it? It takes 24 hours to cast, and multipleK gold to do that, so it's not like something that can be moved quickly when everything went on alert.

I don't think Artegall is capable of handling the foes in this AP, if those mega-zombies are representative of the challenges we can expect to face.

AC 24-ish and 40 HP means it would take Artegall about 10 rounds to drop one. I think Andaisin + 4 mega-zombies would also be a TPK, just slower. Whereas Anadaisin + Lamm + Davaulus + 4 regular zombies might be doable once we clear out the undead and get Whisper and Artegall into melee with the enemy casters.

So I have to ask - did you boost the AC and HP of the zombies?

If this was your decision, I'd rather just try the AP as written with my happily mid-optimized PC. Sure, he's meant to be a skill-monkey and secondary combatant, but ten rounds to drop a mook means he is just way too weak.

If this is the AP as written, then I badly underestimated how tough PCs need to be and would ask to make some changes to Artegall. Drop a lot of the clever tricks in favor of just bigger numbers.

In Strange Aeons, my fairly basic bloodrager walked over everything such that the GM was upping the difficulty to compensate, so I do know how to optimize; I was hoping to not have to.

Re-doing the fight with Andaisin and four mega-zombies sounds like a lengthy slog that probably ends in a TPK. They are just that tough. And tactically I think they made more of an impact in this fight than Davaulus and Lamm.

I honestly thought Artegall was pulling his weight okay up until that last fight. It was just so far out of his league.

If I had realized I needed to optimize harder for this game, here is what Artegall would have looked like - almost the same, but more focus on getting the numbers higher and fewer cool tricks.
Base AC 28 (up to 33 with Lastwall Phalanx), better attack rolls, and a couple of scrolls of Haste for boss fights, while keeping basically the same skills and utility:

Switch Cav2/Inv4 to Ftr1/Inv4/Cav1 Take Shield Focus as bonus feat
Switch Combat Expertise to Dodge
Switch Improved Disarm to Armor Focus
Switch Armor Expert trait to Defender of the Society
Switch Extra Investigator Talent to Weapon Focus
Switch Coordinated Maneuvers to Lastwall Phalanx
Switch +2 Int Headband (4,000 GP) for +1 Ring of Protection (2,000 GP), +1 Shield (1,000 GP), with 1,000 GP left for consumables
Net bonus is +5 AC (new base 28)

Ummm there were some changes that made all these fights Significantly harder then I read in the adventure as written.

I can see exactly how he got there. And none of the steps is insane by itself.
That included Applying a template to the Grey Maidens stat block to make the zombies rather then working with the default human Juju Zombie stat block which I think was the intention... But his choice is much more thematically appropriate. However, Added to the aforenoted Aid and moved Unhallow spell.
That as far as I can tell cranked the EL significantly.

As I read the adventure as written, you shouldn't have to be Uber Optimized to have passed this.

Also if we are revealing all... This party is slightly under-leveled for this area. But the flow of the story didn't really encourage a break to level up at any point.

Aid is mind-affecting and so does not work on undead.

The book-standard juju zombie is AC 18 with 15 HP, and attacks at +6. I really think we'd have won handily had those been the meat shields, even against all 3 casters. We'd have dropped all the zombies in a round or two and ganged up on the casters.

The AC and HP just made that much of a difference. The math really matters a lot. Had he wanted to use Grey Maiden Juju Zombies for thematic appropriateness, I would say that one of these mega-zombies would be about equal to four book-standard ones, based on rounds to drop. (CR is more art than science and depends on the role... Ftr zombies as meat shields are way, way tougher than Rog zombies even if nominally the same CR.)

Like I said... I think the GM upped the difficulty to make it more of a challenge, and overshot the mark. It happens. I'd prefer to try this AP as written with my mid-optimized Artegall to see if I have hit the right balance point in terms of optimization, but whatever is decided to happen next, I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this game.

Waiting to see the results of the discussion before posting

To be fair, with or without an honest mistake while prepping the fight , the GM told us a few times that the fight would be hard, and asked us if we wanted to press on instead of waiting for Mirela's return from the guard.

Something needs to be done, because even trying to withdraw we were still outmatched.

I'll also ask that why did you move the Unhallow spell and changed the spell attached to it? It takes 24 hours to cast, and multipleK gold to do that, so it's not like something that can be moved quickly when everything went on alert.

I modified the temple because your team steamrollered every encounter up to here so it seemed like you needed more of a challenge.

For the Unhallow, Mirela, it made sense to me that they would have wanted to bless the vats and stuff going into the vats? And I didn't see what Freedom of Movement had to to with anything so I switched it out for Aid. It wasn't done as a response to the group's incursion it just made more sense to me than where it was in the book.

Ummm there were some changes that made all these fights Significantly harder then I read in the adventure as written.

This is true. Juju zombies plus the Unhallow made the zed bodyguards harder than I was expecting. I also thought there would be some positive energy Channels getting blasted at them, though, which would have been more difficult given the Unhallow bonus but could have helped put them down faster.

Also if you had gone into the next room instead of fighting them in the Unhallow radius that would have made this fight easier. The middle ground you picked instead of retreating to rest or moving on into the next fight really surprised me there.

I still don't think this particular fight would have been this hard if you'd beaten Davaulus underground, caught Lamm in the experiments room, and been able to face Andaisin with just her bodyguards. Nargun was crushing the Maidens until he got penned in by Davaulus and Lamm.

As I read the adventure as written, you shouldn't have to be Uber Optimized to have passed this.

Also if we are revealing all... This party is slightly under-leveled for this area. But the flow of the story didn't really encourage a break to level up at any point.

Also true, you guys are 6th and should probably be 7th but you'd need a rest period to do that.

So it sounds like you guys want to go back to the beginning of the temple, still give the bad guys the hour to prep but keep all the numbers the way they are in the book. I'm fine with that if that's what you want to do.

I see an opportunity to try to disengage has presented itself. The biggest thing holding me back from retreat was just that Nargun was pinned in the corner with no way out, but now that one of his opponents has stepped back it has given him an opening.

If he is allowed to skootch around that corner diagonally, he can withdraw and only take one AoO, otherwise he has to risk three attacks. Mirella can withdraw with no penalty, If Twilight is allowed to move diagonal through the door she can withdraw with no AoO, otherwise the wolf will get on attack on her. Artegall will take one attack from one of the maidens and then depending on the order, may or may not take a second attack from the wolf if it hasn't already attacked yet.

Once outside the room I think we should be good to get to the lift and retreat out of here.

Unless letting the bad guys get away here somehow scuttles the entire AP, my thought is that since we are talking about resetting the encounter, maybe just play it out anyway and see if we can get away and take it from there? If we fail we reset anyway, if we do get away we carry on?

I do recognize that being pbp, playing it through could still take a while and I understand if that is viewed as wasting time.

That's my thoughts on the situation, I'm good to move forward in whichever way the party prefers. I have my spoiler tags with all my resources other than the two cure mods from the wands, it should be easy for me to read back and reset my character to any point in time.

One suggestion though, maybe if we do reset it costs us each a harrow point? It was spent getting visions of the future altering our course to avoid disaster? Just so that there is a little continuity in events rather than a hard reset?

Nargun went negative.

To whatever extent our misfortune was our own fault, I would not seek to have that undone.

I thought we made the best decisions we could with the information at hand.

Retreating to rest was not an option in-character due to the potential for them to summon reinforcements.

The Unhallow was not a big consideration in-character because it was only OOC that the GM hinted it was an Aid spell.

Flanking the door to get them as they come out was the best idea to break line of sight to the casters.

And letting Kroft know was our choice at the time.

But to the extent that our misfortune was due to the GM over-inflating the difficulty, that I would ask to have undone. Not all the extra resources we had to expend up to the last battle (even though some of those were due to slogging through Aid-boosted undead). But just starting there.

I really don't think we were steamrolling everything. We expended a lot of resources getting to that last fight. It wasn't trivial.

Anyway, I'm in favor of going back to when they forced the door open, but playing the AP as written. I really do not want to do the optimization treadmill.

Is that what everyone else wants to do? Have a straight redo of this fight as written in the AP?

What do you propose, GM? How do you wish to handle this?

I don't have a preference, to be honest. I'm here to facilitate what you all want to do. I could run the whole temple over from the beginning if you want, so starting at any particular point within it is no problem for me. If you don't want to re-run the fight or the temple I can also just hand-wave Nargun being down and let you guys retreat.

The simplest thing might be to roll back to the doors being forced open and running it as written.

That was the last big decision the party made.
If will still be a very hard fight, but I’m guessing winnable if players burn resources freely.
If the players can’t win, then we chalk-it up to us making stupid story decisions and knowing we caused our own deaths…

We are down resources (like all my channels) from going through the harder previous fights, but we knew that. When we made the decision to block the door and stay down here.

But I’m open to whatever….

I'm fine with that. Everybody else good with restarting from the beginning of this fight?

Yes for me.

I 'll have to re-calculate HP, spent rounds of rage, but that is doable

OK, looks like everybody's good with that. I'll try to get the restart post out this afternoon but it might be Monday.

I'm good with that as well.

We are resetting to just after the tank monster?

We are resetting to just after the tank monster?

Hey, who are you calling the "tank monster"? I'm just a sturdy dwarf!

Yeah, back to when the zombies break down the door.

Aid on Artegall (6 minutes), Prot evil on Nargun 8/10 rounds

Nargun is under Protection from Evil, which blocks Command. He doesn't have to save! Not sure that by itself would have changed the first fight, but it's something that we all forgot.