Wait, is anyone *not* having trouble? These guys are absurdly powerful, they outnumber us three to one, and they attacked in a major ambush while we were sleeping, with feats specifically designed to take advantage of the terrain.
...as the resident Illusionist across all boards... pretty sure these things aren't shadows.
EDIT: Unless you meant to disbelieve the players, and not the goatlings. Whoops.
maybe i am being optimistic, but Table 5 seems alright. 4 goats down, and i think only class-feature-critters have been seriously wounded. it did help a lot that we began with a very sturdy shelter that provided pretty great cover.
To beat this fight some form of mass CC (color spray, sleep, grease, entangle, psionic blast(mind flayer), sound burst(derro), confusion(8 magical tails) etc) helps a lot. Alternatively you need multiple members capable of dealing 20+ damage per round without much buffs(no time for buffs). 4+ Natural attacks is the easiest way to do that, but there the certainly other ways. A third alternative could be to get everyone to 24+ AC. Except for the first thing on this list(there is a reason casters are usually called overpowered in PF), none of these things are normally atainable by first level characters, but all is certainly easy to do for the crazy tristalt rules we got. Personally I messed up, thinking it would be fine to not be able to deal with difficult terrain until level 3, but we might still be able to pull through. I think this is a cool first challenge and that it bodes well for the difficulty of encounters to come(even if my mistakes in building my character turns out to be fatal). Most groups have some casters with access to those spells, hopefully they did pick them.
One of my fondest memories is an encouter not unlike this, 4 hobgoblins and a bunch of crows against a 4 member party of normal level 1 characters. The party had some members with crazy high perception, beat stealth, then entangled the hobgoblins and the barbarian with a reach weapon got to use every single of his AoO's due to combat reflexes.
Err, what? Crowd control at level 1? With ambush positioning, a color spray could hit at most 3/12; psionic blast and sound burst take out a small number of enemies for only a single round, grease and sleep could hit one or two, and entangle is pretty much useless on top of difficult terrain. It's a nice thought, but our team was hit really, really hard when the goats started 5' stepping through our reach despite the terrain, and starting the battle surrounded, prone and with no armor took away any defensive options. Still, we'll see I guess. To the best of my estimation, this is a CR 10 encounter...
You are saying taking out 25% of the enemies with one action isn't good enough? You don't need many of those before the encounter is over. And taking out the enemies for one round is better than none, no?
CR10 sounds about right to me.
Taking out 2/12, unless your save DC is crazy high, and only for a few rounds at most—but yeah, it's better than nothing; just the starting positioning means there's no hallways/choke points to block with control spells, reach, or summons, and that's a big disadvantage.
I'm not even sure there's anything my character can do that's worth a hero point right now. I'm only threatening the small fry. Still, now that I've got two of them prone, we should be doing better. I really hate our current tactical position now, though. This battlefield is cramped, and the enemy has healing, which we REALLY need to take down.
Still, I think we've got this, so long as nobody goes for a coup de gras on Tavros.
Casting a spell, or making one extra attack, could likely make more of a difference here than in our next battle...
My spells aren't much help here. I can give someone a +1 to Saves or Mage Armor. Not sure if Teniel really needs it, though, considering his current situation. An extra attack MIGHT be useful, but once again, I doubt it's actually worth it against the enemies I'm currently fighting. I'd really like to get off an Enlarge Person, but I don't know if I'd still be able to take AoO's if I tried it, and that's super important right now for keeping those goatmen out of the fight. If the GM ruled I could use a Hero Point to cast it faster, that would be awesome, though that's probably one of those "do something impossible with a hefty penalty" things, which means I'd probably just end up wasting the Hero Point.
give the mage armor to your best tank, then have them move through the area soaking the AoO's. The rest of you can then fight with reduced risk of AoO's.
Use a battlefield control to provide a flank protection, an area you can put your backs too.
And I'll happily say I told you so.
We should have stuck together and built some defenses before harrying off in all directions!
Figures we landed in someone's back yard.
I don't think you understand. Our group effectively woke up with all of the goats standing over us. One of our team (the person on watch) nearly killed a few with AoOs, but standing from prone with 3-4 enemies standing over every one of us was pretty deadly.
We had a perception check to notice them that only one of our team could have possibly made other than the guy that was already awake.
We're kind of ridiculously high-powered. I'm honestly not surprised that this is the introductory fight.
Group 3 has one dude who's hurting, but the rest of us are alive and responding. We'll see how it goes. :)
@Makoto Hahaha we (4) understand all too well. The goats did really well at stealth so our perception for the surprise round was DC38, which no one made. Our combat started with everyone surrounded and all but one prone. One person was downed instantly, and by the start of round four our poor rolls have only managed to down one goatling and lightly wound another.
I have no weapons and didn't get to refresh spells so I have have two useful spells.
I think we can make it though, haha. It's a good fight, good way to gauge power level of each group and see how they work in dire situations.
These goatlings have some special properties.
The forest is difficult terrain.
Stealth requires half movement or have a penalty.
TO get on top of us, the goatlings would either need a massive base movement, or special abilities to move that fast with stealth. Having a favored terrain is a given, they would be triggering their own AoO's without it.
The base DC to hear someone tramping through terrain is 10, then add sleeping for a 20. favorable conditions for someone might change it by 2.
For someone standing watch, say with a 10 in perception, they should start making rolls as soon as the sneaking party gets close enough to be heard. With a typical move of 30, halved to 15 for full stealth, this can easily be out to 100' or more. Which would mean 4-5 stealth/perception checks.
Running without stealth could be even further out, depending on terrain.
Rolled a 19 on perception and was able to get all of my defensive buffs up, and I have ferocity to fall back on. Next round I'll have Inspire courage, Rage and Power Attack for offense.
I don't think that's quite right, Shaeyl. The "sound of a creature walking" would be if they weren't using stealth. Otherwise it's just an opposed stealth roll, so Stealth+10+2+whatever other bonuses they may have. Unfavorable/terrible conditions/distance for us, with a good roll our perception difficulty check isn't unheard of.
Don't forget.
Stealth and Detection in a Forest: In a sparse forest, the maximum distance at which a Perception check for detecting the nearby presence of others can succeed is 3d6 × 10 feet. In a medium forest, this distance is 2d8 × 10 feet, and in a dense forest it is 2d6 × 10 feet.
Because any square with undergrowth provides concealment, it's usually easy for a creature to use the Stealth skill in the forest. Logs and massive trees provide cover, which also makes hiding possible.
The background noise in the forest makes Perception checks that rely on sound more difficult, increasing the DC of the check by 2 per 10 feet, not 1.
Max perception distance could be as low as 20ft.
Oh thanks, that was the only part I couldn't explain. Also explains the high DC with doubled distance difficulty.
I wish I knew these terrain rules better, it takes so long to look them up for in person games so I always end up skipping them.
Praise be to the marvels of Ctrl+F.
It's really interesting reading everyone's posts about how things went down for their group. It really highlights the way things can go so differently for different parties (or just dice luck).
My character started prone, as many others, with a goatman standing over him. I just readied an action to stand when the big minotaur killed the goatman, so I wouldn't take an AoO. That said, the fact that our shelter was made with heavy logs and good walls really helped, since without the cover i would have been at risk of a lot more AoOs.
But most importantly, don't have comprehend languages and feather fall as two of your three prepared spells when you go on watch ( before I could prepare new ones )
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I had Sleep, Burning Disarm, Command, and Lesser Confusion available, but I figured I would save some to convert to Cure Light Wounds later.
Who needs color spray when you've got Mage Armor 5 times a day?
One reason I think we may be having some trouble might be the disproportionate number of 20's our enemies have been rolling.
Well... it's not disproportionate. Most are getting two attacks, and there's ~10 that can attack, which means you're going to run into a 20 roughly once a round.
It's just that due to the way things were set up, the enemy effectively got a full round as a surprise round (won initiative -and- surprised us), as a direct result, they got to move into position, and then take their attacks of opportunity... which was like a full round for them. Before we even got to do anything.
So... I've been playing catchup on trying to make people just 'not dead'. :P And... one attack from all the goatmen together is pretty likely to crit. I can see why so many people opt for maximizing perception and initiative now; I've always considered it minmaxing, but goodness... minimizing how bad this is would have been wise.
Well... it's not disproportionate. Most are getting two attacks, and there's ~10 that can attack, which means you're going to run into a 20 roughly once a round.
It's just that due to the way things were set up, the enemy effectively got a full round as a surprise round (won initiative -and- surprised us), as a direct result, they got to move into position, and then take their attacks of opportunity... which was like a full round for them. Before we even got to do anything.
So... I've been playing catchup on trying to make people just 'not dead'. :P And... one attack from all the goatmen together is pretty likely to crit. I can see why so many people opt for maximizing perception and initiative now; I've always considered it minmaxing, but goodness... minimizing how bad this is would have been wise.
Welcome to the world where there is no min-maxing, but rather we are just trying harder to survive ;).
I've GOT maxed perception, and I only could have noticed the enemies on a natural 20. I saw a Teamwork feat that allowed everyone who has it to act in the surprise round so long as one person can. That might be a smart choice for our party.
I've also been looking through teamwork feats. Lookout is very good for surprise rounds, yeah. Also nice is Escape Route, which I am taking for use with cavalier's Tactician ability (grant it to everyone for 3 + 1/2lvl rounds). Any squares adjacent to allies are safe from Attacks of Opportunity, would be SO useful in battles like these.
I plan on taking taunting stance at which point I'll be provoking as many AoO's as possible.
Let's see, a few things:
1. The goatmen's ability to ignore difficult terrain is a very, very big deal–2 or 3 feats worth of stuff. Generally, giving enemies terrain advantage and an ambush both increase CR—even if you assume we're CR 5 equivalent, this is still a very deadly encounter.
2. Forest is really bad for ambushes, especially vs the sleeping. No matter how high your perception, you can't see the enemies until they're a single surprise round's distance away, and so you wind up completely surrounded, with your enemies in a formation that makes crowd control mostly useless.
3. Lookout gets highly recommended, but is honestly very situational. I'm planning on using Escape Route with my mount for a pseudo-Spring Attack, but am realizing sooner is better on that front. It doesn't block AoOs from standing, though.
Lack of armor, multiple weapons, other gear...
In hindsight, running off in many directions in our pajamas probab ly wasnt too smart either.
Im thinking if we survive this we spend some time in one defensible camp preparing ourselves.
Otherwise this can keep happening with us unprepared.
Lookout would have saved our bacon on this occasion. Escape Route was another one I was thinking would be really nice to have.
Lookout wouldn't have done anything, since we only had one character who *could* act in the surprise round... and Escape Artist wouldn't have prevented AoOs standing up. While they might be useful in a similar situation, neither would have helped table 1 at all.
BUT, let's think about the implications of 5 or 6 groups of PCs getting attacked by a squad of 10 goatmen and a big bad battle goat...
There must be a whole tribe, or whole warband out there. if they can spare 5 or 6 big bad battle goats, then they must have something even more fierce in the reserve.
Lack of armor, multiple weapons, other gear...
In hindsight, running off in many directions in our pajamas probab ly wasnt too smart either.
Im thinking if we survive this we spend some time in one defensible camp preparing ourselves.
Otherwise this can keep happening with us unprepared.
What do you mean by "prepearing ourselves"? There is not actually anything we can do by staying grouped up. We can't craft due to lack of funds, we can't generate income and we can't get experience. There might be some merit to staying together for better protection, but that'll run into the same problems as an army without supply lines would...
With a bit of time, we could make rock tools and wood armor, though it wouldn't help too much.
Did everyone light a fire, though, or are these guys tracking us somehow? I'm thinking if we level after a fight or two, Pass without Trace could be a useful general group skill.
I'm not too worried about most of the groups. I see the tide slowly turning. It was a rough start for some given the ambush situation. I intentionally made it pretty hard to fully challenge the groups, and see what you can do with minimal gear and preparation at level 1. Imagine what you can pull off with better gear, some prep time to buff or select appropriate spells, and ability to formulate a plan or tactics. This is effectively worse case scenario.
It's also a buckets-of-exp situation... so there is that, too.
I think a big part of our problems was a lack of knowing who should take on what team roles (or who could), as well as a lack of non-redundant spells/min-maxing on our team (which is fine, but... it's time to get paranoid I suppose).
Indeed. Again almost worse case scenario. No roles established, no coordination. Yup, sort of like how it might be for real. Heheh. Trial by fire sort of. I want to see how the groups shake out, which are stronger and which are weaker.
Eh. If you threw this at us at level 6, table 1 would be able to disguise our whole party as goatmen... ah, well.
Indeed. Again almost worse case scenario. No roles established, no coordination. Yup, sort of like how it might be for real. Heheh. Trial by fire sort of. I want to see how the groups shake out, which are stronger and which are weaker.
Well this is a very specific situation and some build are much better at level 1 without gear while others will do just as well or better once they do get gear, levels or both. Then again, those that are weaker early might not survive to catch up to the 5 natural attack builds or similar.
Group 1 should do fine. We're starting to take enemies out and our healer's invisible. I'm also starting to get my crowd control underway, so these bleating idiots shouldn't last much longer.
I don't think the Goatmen are not immune to the forest difficult terrain. Only the rocks; you know, like, rocks, mountains, hills... just like the goats they have ties to, I'm sure :P
That being said, almost all teamwork feats are useful, but niche. I think that's what scares people off of them. My favorite is definitely stealth synergy, though. 'the more the merrier'.
Err, except actual goats have no racial terrain bonuses, and just take the Nimble Moves feat.
:P I'd give goats terrain stride (mountain), personally, but that's just me. It's like a 2 RP ability, after all. :)
Dwarves have Rock Stepper. I figure the Goatmen have something similar.
Lump has Hotstepper
That the bardic song you're playing during this battle, Lump? Hahaha