Qonas's page

I'm currently with a group who are all experienced tabletop gamers but we haven't gamed together before (odd since we've known each other for years) and none of us had played Pathfinder. We're going through Rise of the Runelords, once a week for about 4 hours or so. It's been incredibly fun but what has really grabbed me about 1E is PC building. 1E hit a passion or sweet spot in my brain I didn't know existed; I have spent far too many hours since starting 1E just writing up character builds (my favorites are the Captain America Shield Champion Brawler, which just screamed obvious once I read the archetype, and the Nightcrawler Spell Dancer/Kensai Magus). It is so much fun to dive into all of the class mechanics and put builds together that are fun AND min/maxed at the same time. The only downside is I'm now left with very little appreciation for lower level gameplay!

I did look into 2E out of curiosity, knowing we'd started 1E very late (or past the end) of its cycle. It does not hit me the same at all; it all seems very cookie-cutter cut-and-paste, not enough room for individuality and originality in the PCs. I'm sure it may be fun for some but it is not my thing.

Last night we faced Jaagrath Kreeg who hit our tank 116 hp in one hit almost instakilled then I took 49 two characters down in on turn!

Just prior to that our rouge was insta killed by one of the other mid level Ogres.

Holy wow. Not directly following the OP, but my group is starting our fort assault at the beginning of our next session. The sheer number of ogres was already concerning, and now there's this damage output? I am very worried about a TPK here. My character is the only one somewhat min-maxed, and even then I made some sacrifice because at the beginning our party had no healing/support capabilities - going warpriest-sacred fist instead of monk. My compatriots are not optimized for combat at all - a rogue/cleric (only taken last level), a fighter/cavalier/cleric (again, only taken last level thus rendering my choice to go warpriest fairly moot), and a sorcerer built for debuffing.

We have never hit triple digit damage in a round ever. My character is built for AC/saves, with the DM replying with a strangely high number of crits against me. We're also on Roll20, which seems to hate letting our attack rolls hit. If we get 15 damage on our turn, we consider ourselves lucky. I do not see this going well.

My party faces Xanesha tonight, so these obits may be expanded further haha. Pray to your preferred deity for us!

Level 7 Sacred Fist/Monk (MoMS), Rogue, Sorceror (aberrant), and Fighter/Cavalier

That's exactly what we try to do, and attempted to do in this situation. We just run into the combined problems of:

- The only person in our group with good Charisma and related skill rolls is our sorcerer, who is most decidedly not a face as he is a chaotic neutral tumor familiar'd agent of burning things.

- Our rogue player's insistence on RPing the halfling version of "Shoot first, ask questions later".

How exactly did your trigger this never ending encounter of guards? And what were they? Do you mean city guards or sawmill guards? How were they described?

Well, we knew that the information or next hook in the main storyline was going to be found in the sawmill. We tried to recon it first - guards wouldn't let us close, so we got out of sight and our sorcerer let his tumor familiar loose to go and scout. We got a layout of the main floor, lower floor, and the first 2 of the upper floors before it was spotted and had to scramble out. Knowing he got caught, our plan was to use their sighting of him and spread rumors around in tavern about creepy strange bugs showing up. We'd then print out a number of pamphlets (my character is an Irori devotee with a penchant for handing out self-help pamphlets) advertising our group as exterminators specializing in this creepy strange bug. We had a couple of side things to do, so we'd go off and do our side things then come back & let the tumor familiar run loose in a random public building at night while also leaving one of our group to scout the sawmill. Never saw a reduction in guards at the sawmill during the evening, so we figured it was going to be rough (our group is not stealthy nor especially charismatic outside of the sorcerer). But the sawmill was practically outlined in yellow as an important area like a video game, so we approached them as this exterminator group. We got let in, got as far up as the familiar did but a guard was posted specifically at the stairs up to bar entry. Our rolls to convince him we needed to check everything out failed. So sorcerer hid and launched his familiar again, the familiar scrambled up the stairs, guard was freaked but wouldn't let us up, so 3 out of the 4 of us attempted Acrobatics rolls to leap the gap to get past him and go up. We go up, guards there are all looking around for the now-hidden familiar (he latched onto the ceiling and Stealthed), they are dismayed at us being up there and press the case. Failed rolls again, and a guard pulls a sword and swings. Our halfling rogue has a temper issue and demands blood for any slight against our party, so it was off to the races from there. Sorceror elected to Fireball blast the guards on the floor instead of burning the stairs up to our level, and due to poor initiative I was unable to move to block the stairs so in came an endless stream of new guards that took hits and wouldn't go down. At first they all seemed 'city guards' but the endless stream were definitely special 'sawmill guards'.

And what do you consider "massively HP'd?". You focused fire but how many actually hit and damaged?

We use roll20 so we were definitely having issues landing hits, but when we hit it's for double-digit damage unless it's from me (Dex-based sacred fist). We finally took one of the 'sawmill guards' down after about 60 damage or so but that took us all those rounds.

What was this "end boss"? What did it look like / how was it described?

Well hahaha, the GM didn't really hide him once he busted out from his office after the familiar crawled in there and discovered him on accident. It was

Our group has entered Magnimar after "solving" the Skinsaw Murders in Sandpointe. After other diversions, and an extended stake-out of the sawmill on the island, we finally made our entrance to try and investigate. We skill check/RP'd our way to the topmost floor but triggered an never-ending encounter of massively HP'd guards (we focused fired one and couldn't even take him down after 7 rounds), as well as devils and an 'end boss'. In order to escape our wizard basically burned the building to the ground. We got zero information out of this encounter except that it appears a justice of the city is evil & a part of the cult we're hunting. We are all only level 6, FYI.

Just how badly have we ruined the campaign? Is it even possible to continue from here? No spoilers if at all possible, please.