Yes, my party had a couple excellent rolls, and a couple terrible ones, too. Regardless, they took on head-to-head, and mowed down, the LM's outside Blackwall Keep. Party = Samurai 4, Wizard 4, Ftr 5 (bowwoman) and Monk 5. Any one else seem to think 30 LM's are not that much of a challenge?
I wouldn't pay it too much attention. Let your players kick butt in this straight foward mob-fest. They'll get whats comimg to them in Hall of Harsh Reflections.
Twinsun, I was interesting in hearing how this played out - I'm starting BK very soon. Thanks.
|
Yes, my party had a couple excellent rolls, and a couple terrible ones, too. Regardless, they took on head-to-head, and mowed down, the LM's outside Blackwall Keep. Party = Samurai 4, Wizard 4, Ftr 5 (bowwoman) and Monk 5. Any one else seem to think 30 LM's are not that much of a challenge?
Wowza... they must go through healing potions like zombies go through brains.
Our group hasn't started yet, but they currently look to have little ranged offense beyond Summon Nature's Ally critters from the Druid/Barbarian gestalt and possible ranged attacks from the Rogue/Fighter gestalt. The Transmuter/Bard is forbidded from using Evocation. A large-scale combat will be challenging for this group of three, I think.
The ACs of my party made the Lizardfolk (with their puny attack bonues) poor foes indeed.
Here's a tip: make sure the Lizardfolk "aid another" and flank as much as possible.
Yeah, my party spanked the lizardfolk too. The wild shaped druid and his animal companion took out a bunch (after casting call lightning on the leaders). The archer and the mage took down a bunch from long range. The cleric engaged in close and started to be grappled but by then the druid team cleaned house and ran over to help. It was a slaughter. Poor lizards.
Yes, compared to the rest of the adventures in the series, Blackwell Keep is very easy.
My players mowed through all opposition without breaking a sweat.
Well, all until the final encounter with the Spawn of Kyuss in the basement of the keep.
The way I read it, there were three spawn by the time the players returned to the keep, and the fear aura from three spawn ended up sending the entire party fleeing for 7 or 8 rounds. That just caused even more soldiers to get infected and it was a real challenge for the party to take out spawn with half the party feared at any one time. (Yes, a successful save makes you immune to that particular spawn's fear effect, but not others)
The party prevailed, in the end they had to fight a total of 6 spawn, and I believe the party's fighters spent the entire encounter feared :)
I followed the initial text of the module where it said there where 40 lizard folk laying siege (yes, I know it later says 6 groups of 5 for 30 total, but I already knew that 30 wouldn't be a challenge for my party)
Of course, the "poster map" included with this adventure must have assumed that the proper way to lay seige to a tower was to stand within 20' of it. I had to expand the size of that map considerably to have enough room.
If the party purchases horses (which they can easily afford after TFoE) it takes right at one day to get from Diamond Lake to Blackwell keep, and gives the party a significant advantage in breaking the siege if they stay on horseback. I am fairly certain the author didn't factor that in, as the module seemed to assume it would take several days to complete the journey (complete with "getting to know you" sessions with Alustan, etc)
Ah well, it certainly was fun for the PCs, they really got to flex their muscles and didn't feel like they were up against impossible odds. I believe it was a welcome break from the rest of the fairly difficult adventures in this adventure path.
I'm playing in a group; i was the front-liner, i think i only took damage in that whole adventure from the lizardman king. Those lizardmen needed 20's to hit me; it really wasn't that hard.
I'm not surprised that your party stomped the lizard men.
In fact, this particular adventure in the series is the one I consider to be the least dangerous (even the chieftain was easy pickins after the PC Wizard nailed him with a color spray - his Will saves sucked and when stunned he dropped his trident, which the ranger's wolf companion ran off with).
A fireball or two used in the proper places at the proper times can pretty well do for the lot of the lizardfolk attacking the keep. The rest is just a party clearing out a pretty weakly stocked lizardfolk nest.
I saw this adventure as a confidence building installment of the Age of Worms and nothing more. It is a fairly short and direct adventure where the party kicks some booty, but gets a bit of a scare when they think that all lizardfolk communities in the Mistmarsh could become spawn of Kyuss.
Yeah, the horde of mooks battles were not too hard, in the long run. But that isn't a bad thing.
When I ran it this past weekend, the party fought two battles with the lizardfolk -- one at dusk when they were trying to relieve the fort during the two-pronged attack described in the mod, and a second attack after dark using their portable shields.
I held back the two reserver groups of lizardfolk in the initial attack -- so what they faced in the first attack was 4 squads of 5 regular lizardfolk. The party (6 characters of 4th & 5th level) managed to drive off the first attack, killing about half the lizardfolk and wounding most of the rest.
For the second attack, I made the seige shield things mentioned in the mod into 10' long portable walls. The walls could be moved at half speed by one lizardfolk warrior, and provided complete cover for two, so one could pop out of cover once a round and throw a javelin. For that battle the party had taken up position in the fort, so they were shooting down from the balcony and upper levels at the lizardfolk who had a lot of cover. There was a lot of missing involved, on both sides of the battle, thanks to the high cover modifiers, and a lot of actions readied to shoot at someone popping up to throw a javelin. After a few rounds and a few lizardfolk went down, the LF stopped taking potshots with javelin and just edged forward, trying to work their way up to the fort.
The party dropped a pretty big hammer on the LF at that point -- the druid summoned a bat swarm that broke up a lot of the seige-wall pairs, and a couple of others dropped off the far side of the tower to move around and try to flank the LF. In the end they were tapped out -- had spent all of their spells, used a lot of resources (tanglefoot bags were being tossed around to stop the moving walls in their tracks -- pretty clever use of the TF bag, I thought), but no one had been very close to death -- not many of the PCs had taken any damage at all.
Heh heh -- the one PC I did give a little scare to was the warlock who tried to jump from the walkway to the roof of the barn -- and rolled very badly, ending up on the ground outside the fort. He was attacked by several LF, and by the LF druid's snake. The snake bit him twice, which could have been enough to kill him outright with the poison's damage (Dc 13 fort save, 1d6 con/1d6 con -- two doses of that could have laid him pretty low) but he has Damage Reduction 1, and I rolled 1 for damage on both attacks (so the fangs never broke the skin and the poison was never delivered). The Warlock didn't take much actual damage, but it was still a close enough shave to have been exciting.
Looking ahead, I expect that the LF in the lair -- without the seige walls for cover -- will go down a lot faster. I'm going to do a lot to try to make sure that I'm making listen checks for any LF that have a chance to hear the sounds of nearby combat as the PCs start to fight their way into the lair -- letting them fight their way in piecemeal will be pretty easy. Once the lair is alerted I hope to make it pretty hot for them, and force them to pull back. But, in the long run, players like cutting down a lot of mooks, and it's not a bad thing to let them do once in a while.
-rg
|
I use a houserule for flanking bonuses that you guys might find useful. For every attacker against one target beyond the second, every attacker gets an additional +1 bonus to their attack rolls. This means that a character beseiged by 8 opponents will be attacked by foes with a +8 bonus to their attack rolls. I always hated how someone could just wade through crouds of enemies without an increased threat level. Even the toughest fighter surrounded by a group of goblins should feel fear.
Tam
|
|
I use a houserule for flanking bonuses that you guys might find useful. For every attacker against one target beyond the second, every attacker gets an additional +1 bonus to their attack rolls. This means that a character beseiged by 8 opponents will be attacked by foes with a +8 bonus to their attack rolls. I always hated how someone could just wade through crouds of enemies without an increased threat level. Even the toughest fighter surrounded by a group of goblins should feel fear.
Tam
That's not at all a bad houserule.
In one sourcebook or another, there's a Feat called Swarmfighting that functions similarly. I make life hell for a group of cocky hereos by pitting them against a whole mess of low-level Halfling Fighter/Rogues that had that Feat. One refuses to play Halfling PCs to this day, while another asks, "Is there more than one of them...?" whenever his character meets a Halfling NPC, heheh.
Wizard level 5...
...it means that he casts Protection from arrows, Fly, Ghost Sound for background music, and blasts the enemies away with his memorized fireball (and the fireball scrolls he just made).
A wizard level 5 just loves mass combat.
My PCs also destroyed the Lizardfolk, and when they entered the Lizardfolk lair... well they used diplomacy... they pretty much had the Lizardfolk on their side, with the exception of the Lizard King and his LT.
I use a houserule for flanking bonuses that you guys might find useful. For every attacker against one target beyond the second, every attacker gets an additional +1 bonus to their attack rolls. This means that a character beseiged by 8 opponents will be attacked by foes with a +8 bonus to their attack rolls. I always hated how someone could just wade through crouds of enemies without an increased threat level. Even the toughest fighter surrounded by a group of goblins should feel fear.
Tam
It depends on the feeling of your campaign. In many martial arts
movies some charachters are so powerful that lesser beings cannot even dram to hurt them. Think of Pai Mei from Kill Bill 2, for example.High level characters in D&D are similar: they can easily drop armies.
The added danger is the fact that with each new opponent their is yet another chance for the PC to be hit by a crit. So even if the PC has an AC of 50 (Ok, a bit of an exaduration for level 5,) one out of every twenty attackers will hit.
The added danger is the fact that with each new opponent their is yet another chance for the PC to be hit by a crit. So even if the PC has an AC of 50 (Ok, a bit of an exaduration for level 5,) one out of every twenty attackers will hit.
So are you saying that makes it okay to call thirty CR 1 mooks a challenge for a party of 5th-level characters? By your statistics, that means that if the PCs have an AC of over 22 (which, in my party, all but one did), one and a half lizardfolk will hit. Not crit, but hit. (Remember, they have to confirm too.) Two lizardfolk hitting a PC doesn't really seem too threatening.
To add to the other testimonials, my players just finished all of EaBK (with the exception of the Spawn of Kyuss, which should scare them efficiently), and none of the lizardfolk were any sort of a challenge, with the exception of the king (but they managed to get to him while he was alone). Seriously, what was the writer thinking when he put that nonsense about "the PCs shouldn't be able to win this fight"? Honestly, if he'd ever played a game of D&D, he's know otherwise.
So are you saying that makes it okay to call thirty CR 1 mooks a challenge for a party of 5th-level characters?
Played intelligently, 30 CR 1 mooks can be a deadly challenge for a party of 5th-level characters. An AC of 22 will help a lot against 30 spear attacks, but not so much against 30 grapple attempts. Sure, the characters each get an attack of opportunity against the first opponent, but once the others follow up with touch attacks and grapple rolls you are sure to have a bunch of sorry 5th level characters...
|
An AC of 22 will help a lot against 30 spear attacks, but not so much against 30 grapple attempts.not when your party has 2 rogues and 2 monks.. one of the rogues being a kender sorta balanced that out, but as the fighter great cleaved through and entire group in one action, the monks grapples the leaders, and the rogues would sneak attack any trying to ambush the monks... while the druid healed and called lightning on them as they tryied to escape... there were 9 of the 30 dead in the first round.
Played intelligently, 30 CR 1 mooks can be a deadly challenge for a party of 5th-level characters. An AC of 22 will help a lot against 30 spear attacks, but not so much against 30 grapple attempts. Sure, the characters each get an attack of opportunity against the first opponent, but once the others follow up with touch attacks and grapple rolls you are sure to have a bunch of sorry 5th level characters...
I still very much disagree. There will, in no case, be 30 grapple attempts. At most, 8 lizardfolk could try and grapple one PC (if they somehow managed to surround him), but each doing it individually would be pointless, as they would have almost no chance to succeed against a 5th-level Fighter type (+3 grapple check, as opposed to a +8 or higher). The only chance they'd have to grapple is if they all aided, which could allow one grapple check with a +17 bonus (assuming all 7 aiders were able to make a DC 10 grapple check, which will only succeed 70% of the time- and remember, they still each have to make their touch AC, which will add in more possible failures), and then that's all they can do- grapple. And if 8 lizardfolk are devoting all of their efforts to stop one PC from POSSIBLY attacking, then that PC really isn't in much danger (as they can't attack him if they're aiding the grapple, and we all know the ranged penalties for attacking a grappling foe). Basically, that tactic is smarter, but by no means deadly.
Once again, this encounter is not deadly. At all.
It could be deadly if one of the grapplees is an old man with a six strength, as in my party. There's also a skinny rogue and a sorcerer. I don't know what their grapples are off the top of my head, but if the fighter can't protect them, it could get painful.
Even with a +5 grapple advantage, the underdog is going to succeed about a quarter of the time, if I figure it correctly.
The "Diamond Lake Deadwoods" finally made it to Blackwall Keep last night, where they had a nasty little surprise. Instead of 30 mooks, they faced 18, augmented by 5 blackscales who were knocking down the door, 6 poison dusks providing cover, and two dragonkin strafing the keep. The mooks were basically standing around waiting for the keep to crack.
The group consisted of a 6th level rogue, a L5 warlock, a L3/L3 cleric/wizard (a weak old man), a L5 fighter, and fairly adept lizardfolk NPC guide (I replaced Allustan with him to avoid the "he's deserting us" scenario). I told the PCs that their experience from this battle depended solely on the number of keep survivors.
Their 'plan' consisted of having the elderly man move about 50' away from the group and attempt to Enthrall the dusks and one squad of mooks. The others, well, I'm not sure exactly what their plan was other than 'hide behind this log and watch what Randalf does'.
Long story short -
Randalf ended up dead (see the Obituaries thread),
the sorcerer ended up in a tree, duking it out with one of the dragonkin while four mooks attempted in vain to climb up after him,
the fighter, seeing the blackscales knock the keep door down in round two, charged across the battlefield alone, shaking off numerous grapple attempts, dragonkin flybys, and arrow attacks from the dusks,
the rogue and the NPC were left to fight off two squads of mooks, which they managed to do quite well.
The fighter really saved the day. With Shield of Faith in place, everybody but the dragonkin or a flanking blackscale needed a 20 to hit him. The keep soldiers managed to whack three of the latter before the fighter got there, so he had little trouble with them. Unfortunately, 10 of the 15 keep soldiers were slaughtered, so the xp awards were rather small, and we lost our last surviving original party member. My guys don't believe in Raise Dead much - sort of an honor thing with them. I now have five AoW scalps on my screen.
Only thing I wish I had done differently was have some kind of magic power with the bad guys, either the druid or some type of sorcerer. That might have made it a little tougher on the fighter. All in all it was a good fight, and a lot of fun.
Well, my players just faced the LF at Blackwall Keep and it was a slaughter. All told, one PC suffered 10 pts of damage. Now, I must admit that they are higher level than they should be: swash 2/wiz 4, spirit shm 5, warlock 6, clr 5, and scout 4. The warlock used Fell Flight and eldritch blast while the others rode about on horseback attacking at range with magic missile and 4 summoned hippogriffs. The cleric was the only one to melee with the LF and he suffered the damage, but with an AC 20 he didn't get hit often. In the end, 8 LF fled into the Mistmarsh after their leaders were brought down. The battle was a bit difficult to run, as I didn't have my normal grid-board and the map of the keep is quite small. The LF would have been marginally more successful had I stuck more closely to the rules, but even then they wouldn't have stood a chance. Still, a fun night and a good opportunity for the PCs to shine.
The lizardfolk druid in my group is a former member of the Twisted Branch tribe, and is the only surviving heir to the original lizard king (who was killed by Shukak), so I might try to make it more of a diplomatic situation, where swords are draw and tooth and claw come to bear, but the druids and shamans strive for some peace or truce amidst the confusion. Could be tense. The group leans toward a love of nature and finding that balance, so there shouldn't be any hasty hacking.
I've been thinking of splitting the tribe into two groups: the pre-Shukak brood and the post-Shukak brood (who consist of draconic lizardfolk brought in by Shukak (who is also draconic). There could be a brief chaos of civil strife before the winners emerge. Perhaps the lizardfolk druid PC might be able to unseat the usurper and become king himself...
All in all, it won't be a simple cleaning. The PC lizardfolk druid knows his people are in duress, and wishes to free them. It won't be until around level 5 that he'll be able to accomplish this with his new companions.
It's cool that you built in this roleplaying hook with one of your PCs.
I've got a slightly different situation after a PC romp at BK. They captured the shaman and four others. Two are badly wounded, but the PCs are going to set off with the shaman and two able bodied prisoners into the Mistmarsh next session, to do a prisoner exchange. I'm still deciding how to deal with this one. My sense is that the lizard king is both violent and perfidious. He won't come out of the lair to negotiate, but will invite the PCs to his throne room instead. Once they're in his clutches, he'll refuse to turn over his human prisoners, and perhaps try to kill or capture the PC emissaries. We'll see if the PCs take the bait and enter the lair, and what precautions they take.