Johnmatrix1786's page

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?