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I recently started running "Rise of the Runelords" for my gaming group. Without an exception, every member of the table is in love with the adventure path, and I'm very excited on what's going to happen in the future to our brave band of adventurers.
However, last night we ran the "Catacomb of Wrath" area where the party encountered Erylium (Quasit Thamaturge) in the Cathedral of Wrath. The party was able to deal w/ the sinspawn and Erylium's summoned monsters, but encountered real problems with tackling the quasit herself. The party had ranged weapons that made it possible for them to attack her, but her AC was so high, no member of the party could actually hit her. Also, leading up to the Cathedral, almost every one of the party's spells had been expended getting to the Cathedral so this avenue was tapped. And when they did actually hit her w/ ranged abilities, her DR and Fast Healing abilities made it almost impossible to do any real damage to her.
As the party sustained 50% of them going down, they had to withdraw from the area. As Erylium attempted to go through the door, our Ranger/Barbarian caught her off-guard as she opened the door and grappled her. Still, even w/ the help of the party rouge/bard, they were unable to significantly injure her. In the end, the only solution they could come up with to overcome this issue was to drown the quasit in the pool of water in the room. Although this led to a memorable experience where several of us haven't stopped chuckling about it 24 hours later, it did make me wonder about the following:
1.) Erylium's stat block did not mention she could breath water or survive in a oxygen-deprived environment. However, her sub-type did not include water, so I ruled for the purposes of the encounter that she could be dronwed. For future reference, can an outsider (demon, devil, celestial, etc.) without the "water" sub-type be drowned?
2.) Did anybody else see that several of the encounters in Rise of the Runelords Pt 1 was a little overpowered for Level 1 characters? Any suggestions for future groups I run this for?
3.) Any encounters in future products I should keep in mind in order to intentionally avoid a TPK (Total Party Kill)?
Kevin
She is toughish but my group didn't have too much trouble with her...they had a tougher time with the mutated goblin down below...but they went to the Catacombs after Thistletop so had a bit more juice at that point.
Yes, some of the encounters are a bit tough. Are you playing with the 3.5 rules or Pathfinder? The new rules make PCs a bit more beefy and we haven't had a lot of troubles so far (we're in the caverns below Foxglove manor now).
If you're sticking with 3.5 rules you might want to consider lightening up a little bit. I always play a little loose with the encounters as written, adjusting them as necessary to make them as difficult as they need to be (subtracting or adding a few hp, adding or removing some of the "extras", "forgetting" about fast-healing for a turn, or maybe pulling punches a little). The rules are important but the story moreso, in my view. I do what it takes to keep the story going. That said, I'm not opposed to making them retreat and regroup when necessary.
Some of the other tougher ones in volume 1 include Bruthazmus at Thistletop, Malfeshnekor (of course), and probably Nualia (though she escaped and they never met her). Now my guys did Thistletop without having gone through the catacombs so they might have done a little better with that under their belts. In volume 2 we haven't run into anything too horrible yet but I expect Foxglove to be relatively tough and I hear the BBEG is pretty killer.
M
[edit]On item 1: Yeah, I'd let her be drowned unless there was something specific against it in the creature/type description. It was a creative solution to a tricky problem. I'd probably give my guys a little reward for something like that: we track XP as a group so I give out personal reroll cards when they do something cool.[/edit]
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This has come up before. When it has, James has mentioned that he put thie in for the specific purpose of makeing people think outside of the normal 'wack it with your weapons' mentality. Grappling and then pinning her, and allowing others to hit the pinned creature, is one way around this obstacle as is drowning them, as your party did. other groups have just left and come back at level 4 or 5 just to kill her. The only thing with drowning her in the runewell, is that whomever else was in the runewell should have been taking cold damage I think too (which also made it easier to drown her)
On item 3, if you're worried about TPK, take a good look at the last scene in book #2. The main BBEG is VERY difficult at level.
I had 7 or 8 characters of level 6 in my group (a couple of folks were running 2), and I wanted to get down to 1 per character. She was able to do this for me very effectively, and could have taken the entire party if I player her to the hilt. She 1 shotted the wizard with ease.
Currently, we're in the 4th book, and that's the last really good shot at TPK that we've found, unless the party doesn't pay attention and rushes ahead when it shouldn't.
On item 2, after the sets in town and the glassworks, my group was at level 2, which made the catacombs easier.
On item 1, I'd assume she could be drowned as mentioned above too.
Sorry for the ramble and backwards approach.
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It's been mentionned that Erylium was tough to beat. Not really TPK but more a pain in the arse.
Just coz its cool I would allow the drowning. For most players, the only way was the grapple although it wasn't easy as the Cathedral is 20ft high.
Nevertheless it was quite frustrating at some point for my players as they couldn't really hit her and it took them almost 2 hours to think of something else. The aim was to think outside the box and I think it's a cool thing. Thanks James.
The rest was OK in RoTRL
Except the Barghest in the bottom of Thistletop which dealt 32hp damage to the scout in 1 round. They all decided to flee. Otherwise it would have been a TPK.
The end boss of skinsaw murders can be a real TPK if you do not care. I am in the middle of Skinsaw and the only spell guys is a beginner sorceress. So I will give them at some point a wand of "dispel magic" and will give them good advices of how powerful she can be. May be through one of her minions
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My group had the opposite problem, they only had one crossbow and one shortbow among 8 players, and none had magic missile.
Total tally was 8 positive energy bursts, two unconscious characters, 3 nauseated characters, 1 character dropped to -13 and nearly killed. Leveling up right after she was killed left everyone celebrating though, since we are using level points in the storyline. All in all, it was about a 20+ round battle, not counting the two rounds in between the melees where they were searching for her. By far the toughest fight they have had so far, and harder than the first time they fought her with 4 sinspawn, where they at least managed to drive her away after nearly killing her with a well timed command and a failed save that had her falling to the ground long enough for a good set of AoO on her.
She is a very hard encounter for the party level, almost exclusively due to AC.
My group also had a tough time with her and FINALLY ended up drowning her in the non-magic pool in the room. It was a very similar fight to what others have recounted.
While I would agree it is tough fight, she doesn't really have tremendous damage potential either, so groups CAN take a long time to work on alternate ideas.
(Note: warlocks make this a MUCH easier fight... ranged touch attacks...)
One of my groups also grappled and drowned the little creep (using a whip to snag her and jerk her down to where she could be reached). The other also grappled her, then beat her to death with a cold iron birdcage they'd found in a side-quest.
When I played that section we drowned the little monster (our GM permitted us intelligence checks to realize that fast healing doesn't apply to suffocation). If I remember correctly, what happened was the dwarf readied his action so that when she attempted an inflict spell he would grapple her. He did so and we actually managed to beat the little bastard unconscious and then shove her in the pool until the bubbles stopped.
However, we were slightly less tapped for resources (because we were playing 3.5, the zombie pit could be more accurately described as the very dusty pit), and there were five of us (a fighter, a rogue, a wizard (me), a sorcerer, and a cleric of Desna). The only thing I really did in that fight was grease the (tiny) +1 dagger of returning out of her hand. All the real combat was done by the rogue, the dwarf, the sorcerer (who had 3 magic missiles left), and the cleric.
If I recall, the quasit is one of the first in many encounters in Rise of the Runelords that is incredibly frustrating, lethal, or both (Lady Zanesha anyone?).
Kevin- I've included some of the encounters I played in Rise of the Runelords that were highly lethal in spoiler tags below:
The two shadows in the lowest part of Thistletop in Burnt Offerings. If you're not expecting them, they might kill you (they almost killed our rogue). Luckily, the cleric was able to turn them and the rest of the group escaped back to town where we regrouped and prepared to fight them.
Lady Zanesha (CR 10) at the end of Skinsaw Murders. She's a Lamia Matriarch with a ridiculously high for her CR and a suite of magical attacks. Our GM swapped her out for the Lamia Matriach Lucrecia from Hook Mountain Massacre. Even then, she gave us a run for our money. We pretty much took her on at full strength because I used 3 scrolls of spider climb, a scroll of invisibility sphere, a casting of spider climb, and a casting of fly to scale the Shadowclock and actually ambush the matriarch.
Black Maga (CR 15) during the flood in Hook Mountain massacre. A Lovecraftian horror creature that is only supposed to stick around for 4 rounds before pissing off. The only problem is that with its high intelligence and impressive suite of abilities, why would it leave? In the end, our GM just swapped it out for a cryohydra (which was almost lethal enough, seeing that our fighter wasn't wearing any armor because he was busy playing lifeguard).
Hope this helps.
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Thanks for the posts, guys. Appreciate the pointers that everybody gave, and I'll be applying them to the Adventure Path as we progress.
Once idea that I liked was giving player rewards. Several of my players are former Living Greyhawk players, and I've seen several of the old "Player Reward Cards". I've developed six of my own one-use Player Reward cards to give players for good RPing or for adding to the gaming experience. I figured these rewards will help them get through some of the tough times ahead.
To create the rewards, I drew inspiration from the old LG Player Rewards, and developed a few of my own to assist, as well. I'll check back in a day to see some of the newer posts as I'm really interested in hearing other experiences running the game. If anybody wants me to post my Player Rewards, or would like to help develop some with me, we could start a seperate list detailing this.
Kevin
My group also ended up doing the grapple and drown method for defeat. Monk did a crazy jump up to grab her, rolled well, and it was over quickly. But before that, she was a most vexing foe.
They skipped the greater barghest, managing to close the door on him once they realized what he was.
Xanesha is far overpowered. I handwaved a bit, had her fight them for a little bit then flee the city, realizing the jig was up. Going to have her turn up later, likely during the Fortress of the Stone Giants.
My two deaths so far - the fighter died fighting the dread ghoul dire bat in the cave under Foxglove manor when he was paralyzed and fell to the bottom of the well and drowned; the monk died when Crowfood caught him flatfooted and stuck him with two power attack blows of the ogre hook.
Death is just a bad roll away everywhere in Rise of the Runelords.
You'd be surprised how useful scouting and advanced preparation is in Rise of the Runelords...
Most of the challenging enemies we've faced have been overcome by extensive planning beforehand and using spells that cripple enemies rather than damage them directly, like grease, glitterdust, shout, etc.
Against the ghoul-bat one web spell ruined that thing's life.
Stinking cloud foiled Lucrecia's escape attempt when she used her invisibility to escape from us in Skinsaw Murders.
Haste and Consecrate made Aldern Foxglove in Skinsaw Murders stupid easy, and haste has made Lucrecia, Xanesha, and Black Maga beatable.
We also were able to kick the crap out of the Father Skinsaw cult with magical SWAT tactics (kick in the door, grease, hold person, glitterdust).
I'd definitely say that the key to staying alive in Paizo's Rise of the Runelords is a lot more about thinking outside the box, despite it's attempts at a classical feel (then again, Gygax did write some pretty lethal stuff).