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I saw a thread similar to this awhile back but couldn't find it on here. I ran the majority of the fight on the Nixie with Vark and his thugs last night and had to fudge at least 3 rolls to keep it from being a TPK. Now granted, I had hot dice and the players were ice cold, but wow. I run a group of 6 and ran the encounter pretty close to as written. They had a decent plan and made it to the ship without being spotted, until they tried climbing the rope and failed miserably, alerting the guards (!splash!). I'm writing it off as fluke, but did anyone else's group struggle with this encounter?
Virtually a cake walk for my group but they got on-board without being spotted. Not all the crew were on deck so they weren't out numbered (five players in my group), the only minor trouble they had was with the critter in the hold, but that's to be expected.
This is one of those fights that party make-up and approach can really make a difference to the encounter. Stealthfully attacking the ship seems to help. Not having difficulties get to or on the ship help a bunch since I know some folks have had armored people fall in the water and such. The other part is whether the party takes it's time and stays together. If the rush around the ship with chicken with their heads cut off and then split up while some go down into the hold, there will be problems. My groups main problem was getting the minotaur on the ship and the cleric jumping down into the hold alone.
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My group of 3 2nd level characters had very little problem with this encounter. Remember that the thugs are supposed to jump ship as soon as they are injured, though with their low hit point totals, some of them still went down for the count. Oh yeah, and Soller Vark rolled a 1 on his save vs Sleep. The Blue Nixie fell very quickly.
Now the Iron Cobra on the other hand...
AC 17, more hit points than any two characters combined. SR 19. DR 5/adamantine. Holy shoot - I thought that one creature was going to TPK my party. It's a good thing it only has three doses of poison!
We had a TPK our first session.
http://paizo.com/dungeon/messageboards/savageTide/archives/firstSessionTPKF irstAdventureSpoilers
My players pretty much stormed the ship in a frontal assault. One character got dropped by the rhagodessa, but other than that, Vark and his men got utterly creamed.
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My group handled it pretty well, and only had one PC even drop into the negatives. They did have a big, burly, greatsword-wielding thug, but the other characters in the group were just not built to deal damage. Of course, things might have gone quite differently if the grappled, disarmed fighter hadn't gotten a nat 20 on his Handle Animal check against the rhagodhessa...;)
Now the Iron Cobra on the other hand...
Oh yeah, that one could have been a problem. Most of my players made lightly armed and armored characters for the swashbuckling feel of the game, which made that combat especially tense.
It's amazing how much it comes down to sheer luck. One party's cakewalk is another's TPK...
I've got five players with action points. Too hard? Shoot, I'm giving Soller's men muskets--well, at least one! And that rhagodessa? It's bursting through the deck the moment the fight with Soller ends. Make'em sweat!
the Blue Nixie Fight was... long, but not really threatening, mostly because the two main PC fighters did soak up a lot of damage (warblade with 19 HP, Ranger/wereape with DR ), and a lot of scrambling and use of cover
The Iron Cobra on the other hand went down quickly - 3 rounds and only the wereape getting bitten...
A fighter and a ranger in my group took on the entire crew by themselves, and the party of four easily handled the critter below.
However, we have had two total party kills so far... We have had one in the Crucible, and one from Rowyn and Gut Tugger. Those were from insanely bad rolls, though.
Man our team blasted through that mission like it was nothing. I being the rogue used my hide and move silent checks to check below before we went down under and reported back to the rest of my team and we just stood on the top deck and peppered it with arrows while the fighter snuck downstairs and slaughtered the beast.