Lightless Depths too easy?


Savage Tide Adventure Path


Ok, scanning over the LD, I wonder if it's too easy. Maybe because my party is 6 players who know the rules and work well, but they will steamroller everything until they hit the city. I wasn't even going to run them through the encounter with the trogs, it would be a waste of time. Even then, I don't think they will "blow up" the curtain, they'll just lay waste to the temple.

Really, with the Kopru being limited to 5' base land movement, and all of the players being protected by protection from evil (no domination) the Kopru will die like dogs. The main problem will be with the dark naga's, but other than that, the Kopru's are push overs for 11th level characters.

Anyone else run this and see my dilemma?

I'm tempted to let them steamroller this to make them overconfident for their next adventure as the plateau seems to be a meatgrinder, and I'd love to see them get thier butts handed to them because they are cocky.

Dark Archive

I haven't looked too closely at this adventure, but I'd say up the challenge a bit. Probably just increase the number of koprus and give the trogs some leaders with extra class levels. This would be mainly to make sure they get enough exp before hitting City of Broken Idols. If they steamroll through it, it's no big deal. Part of the fun of playing higher level characters is blasting through large numbers of mooks.


Looks can be deceptive; our 1st PC death in several adventures was in LD. Once they hit the city proper, you've got latitude to throw almost anything at them, especially if they're slightly less than stealthy in entering the pyramid. Massive spoilers... players, DO NOT READ!

Spoiler:
If the bilewretch grabs someone w/o acid resistance and freedom of movement, and dives with that person into the pool... well, that person is dead. Also, the neh-thalggu is no pushover, if you actually play it with a 20 Int: using invisibility before the encounter, then fly in conjunction with dispel magic, and magic missiles, ranged vampiric touches, and finally a vampiric touch bite attack, all against one obvious spellcaster; you'll kill that one character, especially if you give it some mooks to hold off the tanks a few rounds.


Honestly, I see no problem in the adventure being a bit of a steamroller. The PCs are 11th level, which means that they are verging upon becoming legendary heroes - let them feel it. Besides, the underground operation is supposed to be the lesser of two massive evils - let them get overconfident, and let that XP progression sag a bit. When they hit CoBI, they'll be in for a nice shock and sudden realization that they won't be able to sleep through the rest of the game.

That being said, the whole dominate or melee thing of the korpu seems a bit lame. While I wouldn't recommend increasing their numbers (because more useless attacks don't help you and only increase XP for false challenges) I would give the korpu some ranged weapons or abilities. Even just a single volley of arrows will invoke some sense of danger into your players before they turn their enemies into a fine paste.


The trick might be to keep them on their toes. They're in the underdark remember - there's all sorts of nastiness down there. Mix up your random encounters - some walkovers, and some that will need running away from. A beholder might be fun - there's a few mentions of those in the obituaries thread. A beholder in the same room as an advanced black pudding could be even more fun - antimagic gets mean! Delvers are weapon-trashers par excellence. An invisible (or ethereal) gravecrawler? Advanced corrupted leechwalker? Sporebats? Don't be afraid of outgunning them as long as you're not TPKing in the first round or two - a smart party won't hang around and fight to the death when they're obviously out of their league, and there's always someone bigger and badder than you out there. Monitor their light sources/vision ranges at all times, and have deep-dwelling enemies target light sources as a priority, leaving PCs without darkvision floundering.


Oh, I've got such a good beastie for Lightless Depths:

Spoiler:
Take the scrag (aquatic troll). Apply the cave creature template from the Advanced Bestiary, removing their eyes and giving them blindsight much like a grimlock, which is how I imagine them except larger and with some fins and webbing. Now apply the acidborn template from Dungeonscape, and the mutated things are adapted to living in the acidic pools of water in the city.


Sorry, I'm really zahnb...

Neway, I just wondered if it was supposed to be written that way. Kopru's seem pathetic (at best).

It's like a Leucrotta, Fing genius, but no thumbs...

I was wondering about using Kuo Toa and wondering why the pick of the Kopru's in the non aquatic enviroment. I wonder if the author was told he had to use them or he just likes them for some reason.

And yeah, the last fight IS going to be a b+!@~, but I hate the useless rolling of dice on fights with non mobile Kopru's. I guess the players could get board with shooting them to death and then charge, but why?

Bah...trogs and Koprus for a 11th lvl dungeon... need to seriously fix this.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Koprus have been in the role of sinister mastermind behind the scenes on the Isle of Dread for close to 30 years, so that's one reason we chose them for villains in the adventure. The regular koprus and troglodytes, by the way, aren't meant to be a challenge. The PCs certainly don't get XP for killing things this wimpy at the levels they'll be at. The fact that the kopru behemoths have potions of fly makes them the real menace in this area (along with the nagas, of course). But anyway, you'll note that the time spent detailing the kopru mooks is pretty insignificant, compared to the time spent detailing things like brain collectors and behemoths and the kopru bosses. There's plenty in there to challenge 11th level PCs.


To the OP, part of your party's ability to steamroll over encounters is that there are 6 of them. In the mechanics of D&D, there is only one true currency: actions. With 6 members, your party has a 50% increase in the number of actions it can take each round. That roughly means any monster must be 50% stronger than normal (hot points, attack bonus and damage, save bonus, etc) to be "on par" with them relatively.

Heck, if they loose a member to paralysis, they only suffer a 17% power drop as opposed to the 4 man party who looses 25%.

The biggest truth of this is that in my game (which is 4 people, but splatbook heavy) I don't need to add spaltbook material to the various Thrall of Demogorgon BBEGs in the path (Leech, Kopru boss whatshisface). I just use their dual-actions special abilities, and my players feel like they got hit by a bulldozer.

Like the Leech from Serpents of Scuttlecove, a baleful polymorph at the sorceror, followed by a move action to get in melee, then a full attack with a corrupt (auto confirm against good foes) improved crit falchion at the cleric. Two PCs both effectively removed from the fight in one round. Good stuff.

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