Johnmatrix1786's page

I agree with just about everything you said, DM Blake, but the entry for Raise Dead reads: "A creature who has been turned into an undead creature or killed by a death effect can't be raised by this spell."

My interpretation of that wording is that even once the undead creature has been killed, the spell still will not work because...

Resurrection says specifically: "You can resurrect someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed."

Johnmatrix1786 wrote:

Charlie Bell wrote:

Not broken, working as intended. If you can't stand the heat, take a level in commoner and give up adventuring!

with no legitimate options for res.

Umm... by the time MY group hit Vaults of Madness - we had legitimate options for a res that would have worked - granted you have to go kill the spectre that was formerly your friend first.

Maybe your GM is running it different - but the relationships that you built with the faction your helping should get you the resources if your group itself doesn't have it.

... Then again - if your group keeps getting killed then it may be your GM is playing things harder than they are written.

A Resurrection (the lowest level spell that can deal with someone who got ganked in this special way- Reincarnate and Raise Dead will not do the trick) costs 32 CPA according to the faction guide. We have 12-14 CPA and are not allowed to pool points. The other alternative is teleportation. We don't have that spell in the party.

Although...Eureka! If the others somehow kill the spectre, we can spend 10 CPA in order to teleport to the nearest city a few hundred miles away..and then...we can hire a cleric to cast resurrection...for roughly 10,910 GP..and then the fighter can live. Better than a dirt nap I suppose.

Madame, I salute you.

Not broken, working as intended. If you can't stand the heat, take a level in commoner and give up adventuring!

I get the idea that there should be some things out there that the PC's fear. I really do. What I don't get is designing an encounter as room #1 of a dungeon that (if run by the book by the GM) will kill a PC and make him/her dead for good- with no legitimate options for res.

Nothing is more infuriating than dying in an encounter in which the PC's: 1) Do nothing wrong in planning.
2) Do nothing wrong in execution.
3) Are not impacted by bad dice luck.
4) Are clearly not intended to be murder-balled (dying in boss fights=cool!)

These adventure paths have to balance lethality with fun, don't they? Isn't the point still fun?

I'm just incredibly frustrated because my group has gone through adventure path after adventure path in which we just die. This is a group of intelligent, veteran players (some of whom power build the duke out of their PC's). It doesn't seem to matter. We always die, and it's rarely because of a boss-fight. We're not idiots (or at least the others aren't).

And Charlie, I find your viewpoint frustrating, because when you say, "If you can't take the heat, take a level in commoner," I hear, "Dude, it's okay. You're supposed to die EVERY time you play this game."

Brain. Explodes. From Rage.

Johnmatrix1786 wrote:

The question that I come away with is this: What three CR7 creatures other than these could have done such a thing so quickly?

Medusas.

Touché. But consider the fact that a PC can choose to avert his/her gaze and that a DC 16 Fortitude save is involved (Which is very hittable at APL 10). I don't want any part of medusas, but spectres still take the death cake for me.

It looks like they have a save DC 16 according to d20pfsrd

That save is for removing the negative levels after 24 hours.

They're not broken. You got killed that's all. That is supposed to happen sometimes.

That's a fair point, and I acknowledge that part of my reason for posting comes simply from the frustration of losing a beloved character (which does and should happen), but I don't think I was specific enough. Let me address what everyone said.

First off, Neo makes a good point about Death Ward. I was reading that wrong. And all of you make good points about how party composition and/or preparation could have saved the day. But for the sake of my burning rage, let me walk you through exactly what happened.

The party enters the first room of this particular vault of madness, Rogue/Bard first. R/B checks for traps, clears the room. We see one open sarcophagus and one closed one. Naturally, we don't mess with the closed one because that's tempting undead shenanigans. (At this point, there are no animals around so the unnatural aura is not an issue, and detect evil/detect undead cannot penetrate the 1 foot of rock that the spectres are behind) Having cleared the room, we move on.

We come to a hallway where there is a secret door. The R/B finds a symbol of weakness on it, and we all start to back outside so that we will not be canned if he botches the DD. Before we can get back outside, the three spectres emerge from the walls (between us and the exit) using 5 foot steps and get their surprise round.

The spectres then win on initiative and get another round off on us. That's twelve negative levels before the PC's even have an opportunity to go. That's somebody already dead in most situations. Thankfully the GM opted to have one of the spectres target a different PC than my fighter. I would argue that with a 14 INT they'd know it might be best to all attack the same person)

Regardless, on my first turn I cannot get away even using a full withdrawal because of spacing on the board, so I total defense (getting the spectre hit % down to 50 (because of ranks in acrobatics), and try to escape. Nope. Dead Town. DeadVille. Bridge over the river Dead.

Then the Sorcerer pops a wall of force to slow down two of them (they go into the walls to pursue us), and the rest of the party runs like crazy.

Also, my fighter cannot be brought back by anything less than a Res (Because I rose as a spectre), and we don't have access to that with faction points in the middle of the Mwangi Expanse.

The question that I come away with is this: What three CR7 creatures other than these could have done such a thing so quickly?

Sneak attacking rogues? Maybe, but they die as soon as the PC's retaliate. Most of the time, Pathfinder Monsters balance hit power with what I call "killability". I just feel like a no save energy drain that does 2 levels per hit is too powerful especially if there's going to be a group of enemies that do it.

I just got ganked by 3 spectres in the "Vaults of Madness" adventure path, and as I sit here thinking about how the encounter went down, I'm pretty upset.

These things are CR7 individually, so on paper it's feasible that an APL 10 group should handle them, but their touch attacks and energy drain make them BROKEN. They attack at a +10 (to touch) and automatically do 2 levels of energy drain with no save. My fighter had a 14 Touch AC (tied for the highest in the party), and anyone other than a monk is going to have trouble getting out of that ballpark. That means these things are going to have a really solid chance of hitting (80% BEST case for our party), and with ten hit dice, we need to suffer only five hits to straight up die (with a D).

In this particular encounter, the spectres waited in the walls so that they could 5-foot-step out and get a surprise round. The things have a 14 intelligence, so it makes sense that they would all attack the same person (in order to kill him). That's a likely 6 negative levels. Then these things are probably going to go ahead of many PC's because of their +7 to initiative.

Have another 6 negative levels and die.

My issues are these: Death Ward is a level 4-5 spell depending on class, and even it only smothers the penalties for negative levels. If your negative levels reach your HD, you still die. Couple that with the fact that a ghost touch weapon is a frivolous investment in most campaigns (8,000 gp is a lot of money to spend for a weapon you may never need), and you're dealing with an incorporeal creature sporting (effectively) 104 HP.

I get that these things have sunlight powerlessness, but it's just incredibly frustrating that the VoM adventure path would put three of them in a room in an ambush situation and expect someone not to die.

Have you guys had similar experiences with energy drain and incorporeal creatures? Thoughts?

I'm GMing for a group of high level PC's who just came up against an equally high level cleric. The cleric cast antilife shell, and the party wizard's answer was to summon a monster within the shell's 10ft radius.

The spell reads that it "hedges out" creatures within the radius, so that's what I had it do. (Note: The PC didn't summon an outsider, elemental, or undead creature. It was a Dire Tiger.)

I suppose an argument could be made that the creature popping up that close to the gentleman cleric would make the shell pop, but that seems like too much of an exploit. To me, the spirit of the spell is that it cannot be used offensively, and letting someone negate the spell with a level one summon would be cheese and crackers.

Thoughts?