Meckerdrache's page

The Battle is over.
I'm a little bit disappointed because i didn't challenged my group enough. With all my build-up to this moment (NPCs told them their good bye, feeding interested players lore about Dahak, dramatic music and soundsets and so on) my players thought that not all of them will make it out of there alive, even saying "Buckle up, it´s time to die" - even when the last pc in this campaign died 10 levels ago. In the end, only our paladin was close to 0 HP.

We had so much fun with this campaign over the last 2 years. We talked about Age of Ashes and our hobby in general for hours after the battle and the epilogue. It was a wonderful experience.

I used both of your hazards. I described the cave as the embodyment of Dahak's hate and so my players guessed right that making the Manifestation angry would make this place dangerous. It was fun to use the Fen and the Well and my players seemed to have fun interacting with it. They even used Aid to help with the prayers of the paladin - the only one legendary with religion. I think the DC of 48 was a little to high even for level 20 PCs.
The damage of the hazards were in a good spot. Dahak needed at least 150 HP more to shine though. And i should have used the push ability of the wing attacks to get the flying fighter and paladin off his back to get some spells off.

These are great. Now i need to make some test battles. I don't want to kill my whole group with both of this hazards - at least not before dahak is down :)
They seem to be balanced though. And i love that the adamantine fen one escalates with the wounds of dahak. Thanks again.

Thanks Fumarole. Yeah, 5 players. I don't want to bring other creatures, but the hazard is a good idea. Maybe more the one, getting more dangerous as the fight goes on.
I thought about an encounter with phases like in some PC games too, but i have no good idea about that yet.

I love your session reports btw. Have fun in Kovlar.

In a few weeks it is finally happening: My group will encounter Dahak.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1596

But i'm a bit worried. I've read several times now that some groups experienced this battle as too easy. Especially with my group this could be the case. Their PCs are highly effective and the teamplay is well-coordinated after 2 years. The two dwarven fighters dont allow any spells to be cast against them while limiting or forcing movement of their enemies, the heals of the hellknight oracle and the bard dont allow the fighters to die while buffing and exploiting weaknesses and the paladin protects the spellcasters.
While it is fun to watch them outsmarting even difficult enemies with their powerful abilites, I need this battle to be a real nailbiter. Does anyone have an idea to make this battle really special without using the elite template? It would be fine for me, if some PCs or even most of them don't survive.

For a general ruling, I would only allow Champion reaction to damaged caused by an enemy action. Including sustaining a spell, but not including persistent damage or ongoing effects of spells with a non-sustained duration.

That's how we will play it from now on.

My group fought an Iron Golem last Session, which used his poison cloud ability against our Paladin and Sorcerer.

Breath Weapon Two Actions (arcane, necromancy, poison) The iron golem exhales poisonous gas in a 10-foot radius centered on the corner of one of the iron golem’s squares. The gas persists for 1 round. Any creature in the area (or that later enters the area) is exposed to the iron golem’s poison. The golem can’t use its Breath Weapon again for 1d4 rounds.
Iron Golem Poison (poison) Any drained value from this poison is reduced by 1 every hour. Saving Throw DC 33 Fortitude; Maximum Duration 4 rounds; Stage 1 2d6 poison and drained 1 (1 round); Stage 2 4d6 poison and drained 2 (1 round); Stage 3 8d6 poison and drained 3 (1 round).

Our Paladin wanted to use "Retributive Strike" to protect the Sorcerer against the first damage roll of the poison.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=5

I allowed that, but i'm not sure that this was RAW/RAI. The Golem didn't damage the Sorcerer directly, so that shouldn't be a trigger for the Retributive Strike, right?

Hi,

one of my players wants to play a ranged character using "aid" as an option for his third action to support the melee martials in the group. He even took "cooperative nature" for this. His idea is to shoot an arrow between the feet of the enemy to distract them, rolling an attack against dc 20 to grant the bonus to his teammate.

The action Aid was never used in my group before, so i am happy to see that my players trying to use new tactics.

But the GMG says "... a character usually needs to be next to their ally or a foe to Aid the ally in attacking the foe. "
Normally, aiding an ally in combat is not always easy because you need to consider positioning for this. Im worried that aiding could be too powerful if i allow it through archery. He could be not moving at all in the whole combat and still supporting everyone he chooses on the battlefield.
On the other hand i dont want to get in the way of his character concept.

What do you think?

The fight is over.
I didn´t use the elite-template, because our Battle Oracle wasn´t there.
And i am glad that i didn´t try that.
The battle was brutal. The group cornered Laslunn, but this was to her advantage, because she was hard to flank this way, while the velstrac could freely attack our martials from behind. Both enemies were critting several times per round. Manoeuvring after the initial charge wasn´t a good idea: Both enemies have AoO and using Step isn´t possible in the water/difficult terrain.
The group was confident after the fight against Vaklish, the rakshasa, but now they were growing desperate. Our rogue and our barbarian went down. Healing by our sorcerer got them back up twice, both got to(die-hard)wounded:4.
Laslunn killed our barbarian with a twin-shot shortly before she herself got cut down. This was our first death in this campaign.
Without much hope the group turned to the Velstrac. Luckily, our rogue and fighter both have silver weapons and so the fight was won after 6 rounds.

I should mention that our barbarian and fighter rolled really bad this day and i rolled high (the fighter only hit twice - the player was not amused..).

But even without the luck factor, this enemies are very dangerous, even for their level range. A hard hitting, regenerating velstrac with healing spells and a debuffing aura and a hard to hit archer with very high DPR with feats to be even deadlier in close combat.

Hey,

my 5 Players entered the quarry from book 3 last weekend. With good planning and a good group constellation (Rogue, defensive fighter, battle oracle, barbarian and a divine sorcerer)they did very well in the battles so far. In fact, there was no real nail-biter since book 2. Because there are 5 players i added more enemies and some elite-templates here and there.
I am hesitant to give a level +2 enemy the elite template, but i want to make this finale especially hard to overcome. A dead PC is okay, but i try to avoid a tpk.
What do you think? Is a Elite-Laslunn https://2e.aonprd.com/NPCs.aspx?ID=1560&Elite=true and the Velstrac https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=851 too dangerous for a 5 player party at Level 11?