| MikaelCor |
I agree on the fact that See Invis and Resist Energy helps a great deal, without these though... Autch!
Even with planning...
° Take 5 will-o-wisps that hover towards an unsuspecting victim.
° Combo attack of 5*2d8 should average on 40 damage in a single round.
° PC stays put as not to risk AOO? => Next round they combo attack after which they vanish with their move action
° PC runs (succesfully) => Turn invisible, start moving (standard > move action)
° Lather, rinse, repeat.Oh, and if one of the wisps get damaged too much, it will obviously retreat and lick its wounds.. INT 15 should be enough to go for hit-and-run-tactics, don't you think?
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My players will have the scare of a life when they first encounter them... Keeping them in the dark adds to the lethality of the Stolen Lands, i believe.
While you can do this, there are a few things you should remember:
One, Will-o-wisps are not social creatures and will not help each other without very good reason. So, this sort of tactics aren't going to happen until the players have really scared the survivors of their first sortie. By that time they should be very aware of the abilities of the creatures and how to counter them. We used speak with dead over months of down time to find out their weaknesses and tactics from the one in the Lizard King's lair. From what we learned, they don't even talk to each other...so making up a string to attack a group of adventurers the first time they travel there is VERY unlikely.Two, the players are going to have see invisible on as many party members as possible by the point they group up like that. The spell lasts quite a while and allows the blasters and archers to see invisible creatures at their normal range of sight. This makes sneaking up on the party difficult, and hiding after an attack pretty much impossible. Add the use of alchemic fire (being on fire negates it's natural invisibility), and their stealth is much less an issue than you think.
Third, Glitterdust. Love it. My Conjurer never goes without memorizing it. Ever. No SR. Save or be blinded (and therefore food for the rogues hungry knives). Aberations are not automatically immune to sneak attack or blindness. Being blind also drops its AC to 17.
Fourth, Tanglefoot bags. It is a small spongelike flyer with strength of 1 (max encumberance 7.5lbs). The 4 lbs a tanglefoot bag adds gives it medium encumberance...that reduces its max dex mod to +3. Effectively reduces its AC by 6 and makes it visible. Two is above its max load and leaves it imobile. Do it over the lake and it will drown in the lake. It needs to breathe, and lacks gills.
Fourth, the encounter above is a CR 10+ encounter. The players can probably handle it, but it is at the top range of encounters they should possibly deal with. It is actually probably the most dangerous encounter in the whole module, as we just finished it and I don't think we hit an encounter over CR10. After the first two we encountered we gathered a lot of information and made serious preperations before working on clearing the island. Of course, we made Helms of Opposite Alignment for them. We are trying to capture them alive. :) It hasn't been as useful as we would like, but it is interesting.