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First: Thanks for all the answers!

Second: I my opinion, we did not charge headless into combat. We were following leads into this area. We saw movement the first time we entered the mist (could have been the person we were looking for). The second time we protected ourselves against the spore mist and stealthed into the mist, but the cleric failed the stealth check. We were just a few steps into the mist and were jumped by the zombies.

The Zombies were tough but doable. IMHO the real problem was the "death trap" of the "invisible" pimped creeper (+ advanced template, + additional bonus HP, + DR). My barbarian has an intelligence of 14 (for the combat expertise build), that gave me a few extra rounds of survival. But not enough for the party to rescue. With upgraded zombies and a normal creeper (maybe a few extra HP) the fight would might have been close, but doable.

Except in this case the martial had been crippled, and all his buddies needed to cut him out, and the typically unforgiving low wealth/loot at the start of an adventure means something needs to be left out.

This! Resources are extremely limited at the start of this AP (shipwrecked). Actually it's fun to have to scourge for food and stuff! But I still think the GM is slightly overdoing things with making every single encounter harder. When I GM, I usually make boss battles harder by draining party resources beforehand instead up just upping the boss opponent. It's easier to scale IMHO and "accidental sudden death" at low level is less probable.

Third: I'll talk to the GM and my fellow players. I would have done this in any case! But since this is the first "official" AP I play, I wanted to get some feedback first. Thanks again!

I am playing the Sepent's Skull adventure path (on Roll20).

Our party consists of:

- Dwarven Cleric [2]
- Halfling Rogue [1] / Sorc or Wiz? [1] (will be Arcane Trickster later on)
- Human Ranger [2]
- Human Barbarian [2] (me)

Up to now, the DM had some "specials" in store for us:

a) He thinks fights are too easy and buffs the enemies.

b) A 20 is not an automatic success if the DC or AC is greater than 20. You need to do a confirmation roll, add it to your result (first roll+skill) and the result needs to be greater than DC / AC. This is also used for npcs.

Last night, my Barbarian (Damocles Guile build) was killed by a yellow musk creeper. The DM had upped the creeper and its zombies with the advanced template. He also added a spore mist around the creeper, that reduced visibility so we only saw the zombies. The mist also reduced skill checks by -2 if you failed your fortitude save. The ranger failed his DC, so we retreated until the effect wore off. The party used wet cloth bound before mouth and nose to get a bonus of +2 against the spores.

The fight and my Barbarian were raging on and most of the creeper zombies were finally defeated. Out of the mist, I was hit with pollen spray and entranced. So my barbarian was forced to run up to the creeper stem and the creeper started inserting its roots into his brain. The other players still could not see what was happening, because of the spore mist. It was ruled that the entrancement stopped the rage and that the barbarian was fatigued.

I was given a will save every round and if I failed, 1d4 intelligence was drained. I was also attacked with 1d4+4 damage on hit each round. The other players tried to rescue me, as soon as they had dispatched the last zombie (one round). My barbarian was able to break entrancement with 4 intelligence left and had to roll for strength ("high DC because it's difficult"), since the DM ruled he was bound by the roots to break free. I failed the check (fatigued!). The next round the DM ruled that my barbarian can rage (even with fatigue), probably because he sensed that character death was imminent. I raged, failed, failed my will save and was drained my remaining intelligence and therefore would have died. Did I mention, that the DM interpreted being a "plant" meant DR5 against pierce and crush?

The DM allowed the other players to save my character with a "deus ex machina" druid living nearby (with a short quest, which nearly took the live of another character). At the moment, the barbarian is in a coma with brain damage, healing from the magic of the npc druid. I am not sure, what will happen next time, maybe even some permanent intelligence drain after recovery.

In sum, this was all nice and dandy from a roleplay perspective. Although I had to sit through two hours of play time, listening to my fellow players trying to save my character. But I felt that the encounter was highly unfair. The encounter before the creeper (skeleton pirates) nearly resulted in a TPK. So I think the DM really has some issues with encounter design and I fear, that this kind of mad combat will occur again ;)

Anyway: If my char suffers some permanent damage I will probably ditch him and build a new one. Any advice? Since high saves and AC seem to be king in this AP maybe some kind of an oracle/paladin build? Since we play biweekly and level slowly, the character should be effective on low level. To complement the party it should probably be a melee oriented character.