There are a lot of spoilers in this post . . . you probably dont want to read further if you plan to play LoF and havent yet completed the ruined monastery and dont want to spoil things for yourself !
Hello all, just looking for some more feedback about the experiences of groups in the Monastery. I can see that another group has struggled with the pugwampis "special gifts", and to my thinking I cant really see how the monastery king pugwampi encounter in particular is supposed to end well.
My group left the chapel to the end - they had explored the rest of the monastery, had gone back to camp to lick their wounds, and were left bright eyed and bushy tailed for the chapel. After having difficulty in getting to grips with the tricky pugs, with the help of oil they set the place ablaze - an enraged King and entourage escape the blaze, and a fight kicks off in the nave. . . .
Now heres the problem. The King has an AC of 19, and with the unluck, this means you need to roll that twice. A character with a +4 on their melee will hit 25% of the time against an AC of 19 - with a double roll and the worst taken this reduces to a mere 6.25%. Add in the king has 20hp, a dr of 2 . . . . and the result is not surprising.
The fight went on, and on, and on and on and on ! Fortunately for my group, they had access to a powerful summoned ally ( precocious apprentice, level 2 summon creature ), which helped them. The other arcane firepower in the group had been expended targetting rudely gesturing and dancing pugwampis in the rafters ( before frustration set in and the lot was burned ... say... that cloth nest looks highly flammable... pass me a flask of oil... ! )
I am currently playing this via boards, so the pace is much slower than table top - making long slog fights like this even worse admittedly - but even so I cant say I enjoyed the King fight much - I eventually took the step of calculating all the odds, and just fast fowarding the combat to a conclusion, rather than everyone roll yet more rounds of unlucky misses.
I like the unluck aura, its a great spanner in the machinery, and a nice bit of flavour, however, because its effectively a square function, the further up the scale you go in either DC or AC, the much more impossible / frustrating the task becomes. A normal pugwampi has a relatively low AC, the unluck makes them much more tricky than they first appear, but ok - the King has a much better AC, and and a result of the square function is very tricky indeed to hit.
In the circumstances, standing off with a bow out of range of the unluck may be the best idea, but tbh its not a completely obvious step - it never occurred to my group.
So, what experiences have other people had with the King fight ? Seemed reasonable ? Seemed unreasonable ? Maybe I am missing some key element ?
Apart from the King fight - everyone is very much enjoying LoF - the group is now out and about beginning to explore the environs of Kelmarane.
My party did okay with King Mokknok primarily because they'd conserved their spells. And then they hit him with the one-two punch of cause fear (making him run into the corner and provoke AoOs) and color spray (when they realized that they couldn't hit with any of their AoOs, thanks to Mobility). Making him use his flat-footed AC -4 for a few rounds definitely brought the balance of power more towards the player's side.
And yeah, they did rapidly adopt the practice of standing 30 feet away from pugwampis and using missile fire. Too bad the ranger's longbow got shattered...
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I found that the fight dragged on just a touch too long in my game, too; I ended up handwaving the last 3 or 4 rounds because it was a foregone conclusion by that point. I can't help but wonder how different the fight might have been if the party cleric had still had her divine favour available, instead of having to expend it for healing early in the monastery.
Our combat session also lasted an awful long time - about 6 hours I think it was. Everything the characters did took twice as long as normal due to the un-luck effect. Most of the players main weapons were shattered soon into the combat, leaving secondary weapons and missile ones where most of the party ran out or were near to running out of arrows/spears. The spells they threw all failed because even with the low SR, un-luck trumped again.
They eventually prevailed but had a lot of healing on their side. There were also 6 characters. I believe that if there were only four characters I would have had a near TPK. Being 1st level, the characters were very hit-table by the pugs. Add in the shatter - yikes.
It took some time for them to clear out enough pugs to be able to tactically take advantage of range weapons and by then they were down to surrounding the king with the entire party, wizard and all, thumping away.
Even with their "apparent" low power those pugs pack a punch.
However as fights go I think this one will be remembered long after some of the other adventures we've played will.
Ah yes - the shatter, my group suffered from that too. All the muscle ended up losing their shiny weapons, which made combat that much more slower - the kitchen in particular, two pugwampis went down with a fist to the face as regular weapons disappeared ! And the rogue was very put out when her bow exploded in a shower of splinters.
After such experiences I allowed the group to haggle with Almah to allow them free weapon replacements as part of their fee - I gave them a limited choice of guardsmen like weapons - no fancy shop as you please weapon stores !
I'm getting ready to start running the first book of LoF next week. Two of my players used traits to acquire Mwk weapons tied to their characters backgrounds. I've been eyeing the pugwumpis shatter ability considering that fact, and as I'm not feeling that mean, I think I'm going to replace their shatter spell-like with something along the lines of grease. Its somewhat less mean, and more entertaining I think to have the PCs falling all over themselves. Make that reflex save or Acrobatics check :p.
I'm not actually running LoF all they way, but a using HoCK and HotB to launch my own plot. They make for a spectacular opening I think. Very well done. I wasn't feeling the genie thing so much though, so have made some extensive changes regarding background and who the real bad guys are going to be.
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With the Pugwampis, any battle can take a while.
However, with the king, it is especially difficult for the AC reason given earlier in this thread.
However, the king's touch AC is only (1) point better than the regular pugs.
And, has anyone tried to grapple the thing? Talk about easy...
CMB DC King Mokknok = 7
Even a first level wizard can grapple this thing.
I am shocked that CMB so rarely gets used. I have perused these boards for a while and rarely see a DM thread that has PC's utilizing this function of combat.
The fact that this thing is tiny should set off an alarm in all melee combatants that this creature is weak against grapple, trip, bull rush and all the other CMB options.
Is there anyone that bull rushes to set off AoO's?
Anyway, that is my 2cp.