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Finally started this adventure last night and the party got up to the Fire Giant. Party of five characters 2x 8th, 3x 9th.
One was killed, two almost bought the farm.
Did anyone else's party have difficulties with this combat? Cause that Fire Giant could virtually hit on his first two attacks and do obscene amounts of damage (he crited one character and that was the end of that).
I can only imagine a TPK if the party had been 4 PCs instead of 5?
Just curious
Reebo
My group took a beating, but was able to defeat him. The fire giant in Test of the Smoking Eye is tougher - bull's strength, bear's endurance, and little room to manuever almost did in a few party members.
I've run two groups through this combat and nobody died but one did come close. I bull rushed a PC into the furnace which almost killed him (I remember rolling rather low on that damage). It's a tough encounter but not one that's over board.
I ran this encounter last week. The fire giant killed the paladin of Torm with a crit, but after the wizard nailed him with a ray of enfeeblement (9 points!) he went down pretty fast.
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It says he isn't looking for a fight. As he just wants to use the forge, and isn't overly hostile, my players just roleplayed with him, where intrigued by his exceptional skill, learnt a little about the Ebon Triad and his prototype cage.
Basically the players let him be and the mystic theurge is thinking of using him to make masterwork metal objects when he starts making rods or wondrous items. Paying work of course.
Hee. I love having agreeable bad guys. It confuses the heck out of the roll-players. "But... but... he's a bad guy!!!"
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One of the toughest encounters, he bashed the barbarian with a full round attack, leaving the poor half-orc a bloodied pulp.
Quite the surprise, both for me and for the PCs/players.
The other being the crazied sorcerer derro and his cronies, in the first scenes of Foundation of Flame. They put up an incredible fight, eroding almost half of the party healing resources.
Given the choices, I think I would rather talk to the giant then fight him. My party took a beating from that armored half-troll in the first adventure.
This has been the toughest encounter my party faced. 6 PC's all at 8th level. The problem was that two of them seperated from the group and went through the small opening above the portcullis. The rest went around. They were spotted by a hill giant guard who warned the rest of the complex.
Now, they are fighting 2 ettins (took the 3 others out...its hard enough), 4 hill giants and the fire giant. They managed to kill 3 out of 4 hill's and 1 of the ettins. Warmage cast sleet storm to cover an escape. Fire giant follows and bashes warmage down in one turn. The archivist, meanwhile, uses a wand of invis and snuck over to the 3 fallen warriors (rogue/invisible blade, paladin, and scout/dervish). He manages to heal them up and now they are about to finish the encounter. I think they can do it....I think.
The fire giant is just blatantly powerful. Sure, he just took 5 levels of expert, but that upped his will save by quite a bit. He saved against every spell thrown at him...and the bard cast tasha's laughter at least 5 times and confusion twice.
I can only imagine a TPK if the party had been 4 PCs instead of 5?
Just curious
Reebo
We just did the Fire Giant scene, and if not for the Druid, it would have ended very badly. The Druid not only managed to dispel the 'Displacement,' (since the party Diviner/Rogue/Arcane Trickster blew chunks on her roll) they'd've been toast. But, even after that, if not for the Druid summoning arrowhawks, dire wolves, and other creatures to basically be meat shields, it would have been awful.
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My group did this scene last night, sort of. My players had managed to avoid the giant for the most part, instead walking straight through the dungeon to the hags. One of the characters had true seeing on himself and so he saw through their disguise and they entered a fight. Well the party ended up forcecaged just before dropping the hags, and while they were stuck waiting for the cage to drop the Ettins came to investigate. Seeing the PC's and being confused since they couldn't hit them they returned to tell Dugobras what was happening, and he sent them and the remaining giants to wait for the cages to drop and kill the PCs.
A suprisingly easy fight and two firewalls later the giants and ettins were dead. The PCs knew which way the ettins had gone to tell their boss of them, and deciding they didn't want to find out quite yet what a ettin swore fealty to they continued down the path past the fountain and up to the mirror. They fought the nerras there after the nerra leader fooled the most dangerous looking PC into going up to the mirror with him as Alek and then push him through it in a suprise bullrush.
After the fight with the Nerra the cleric jumped through the mirror after their fighter, then after a bit of trial and error throwing pitons in the rogue entered as well, leaving only the warmage and shensen who they had accompany them outside watching the other three. The characters were having a difficult time with the puzzle, trying essentially random patterns with it and trying to find some sort of connection between the posistion of the doors. After several IC hours of attempts I figured that it was time for Dugobras to see what happened to his men.
Hearing the door open down the hallway the warmage had shensen get close to the mirror and readied himself. He wasn't ready for an angry fire giant to come storming in however. Giving a shout for shensen to jump through the mirror he figured he had one shot of getting out of it and threw a phantasmal killer killer at Dugobras. Dugobras failed his will save but passed his fort(had to roll a three or lower to fail it). After one round in front of the firegiant our warmage was down to a handful of hitpoints and decided that it was best to withdraw.
My group pwned the fire giant. Before it was able to react, the cleric cast hesitate from the Player's Handbook II. The giant could only take move actions and was 5' stepping to the fire place. The next round comes around and he gets another Will save to shake it off and he fails. He steps into the fire place, but is quickly dispached after that.
I would be bitter, but I remember how many times my bard has cast Tasha's hideous laughter which has a more severe consequence than hesitate and never ever getting that spell to work.