In our last game session, my group got well into The Skinsaw Murders. We picked up after Habe’s Sanatorium; I took them through the Hambly Farm and on to Foxglove Manor. The manor has to be some of the most fun I’ve ever had as a DM. The Haunts were great, and turned out to be a fantastic, involving way to tell the tragic story of the Foxgloves. Just from the clues gleaned in the house my group has quite the respectable comprehension of three generations of history associated with the place.
Anyway, I have a quandary. One of my players has built a real undead killer – cleric of Sarenrae with the Disciple of the Sun feat from Complete Divine. The long and short of the feat is she burns two turning attempts and any undead normally turned by the attempt are destroyed instead. I don’t have a fundamental problem with the feat, but it makes fighting undead less than scary at times.
The party is about to enter the subbasement section of the house. I was hoping they’d push on after running through the rest of the building, but spells were low, so they decided to sleep for the night. I doubled the carrionstorm in front of the house, but the cleric managed to dust them all in one go due to some pretty strong rolls on the turn check.
Anyway, they’re camping outside the house and will be heading back in to face the caverns below in the next session. I’m afraid that without some bolstering of the undead hordes the whole fight with Aldern will be a real anticlimax. I am thinking off adding or advancing the ghouls, and possibly throwing some ghasts in as well. I want to eat up a few of the turning attempts, but I don’t want this to become a TPK (especially since they have Xanesha coming up). Does anyone have any thoughts about what I can do to make this challenging and memorable, but at the same time keeping it from spiraling into a TPK?
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To be honest... I wouldn't change too much about the encounters. Yes the cleric will most likely blow them all away, but that's what she's built for. It'll give the player a good feeling to make it so easy, and when it comes to later encounters the other players will shine just as much as well.
Also increasing the number of opponents now has larger problems. You're going to be increasing their total XP, putting them above the curve for the AP. At that point you're going to have to start majorly adjusting every encounter from this point on.
Edit: To answer the original question though, if you did want to make it harder (And I'm assuming this is 3.5 not PFRPG since you mentioned the Complete Divine Feat), you can advance them all 1 HD or so, but I would do something to give them a will save boost. You could also possibly put a permanent desecration spell effect in that room if you want, although I don't have the book in front of me to check if it's already there.
The one thing I wish I had done more of with the ghouls was Coup de Grace when the PCs are paralyzed. That would have solved my whiffle-ghoul problems.
Sounds like your problem is Channeling, mostly. Might I suggest lumping a desecrate effect into the general haunting of the Manor, at least as they get closer to the point of Vorel's demise. It seems fair to me that if the house is a thing of living undeath, the undead within would be bolstered by its negative energies.
Good luck!
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I foolishly allowed my players very good statlines, and i've had to bump pretty much everything up as a result. I upgraded the ghouls by adding the advanced template, which made them pretty balanced for my group. For some reason our cleric was reluctant to use channeling, so the ghouls were quite a challenge when they went bumbling after the Iesha Foxglove revenant only to be mobbed by all the undead horrors!
You could also possibly put a permanent desecration spell effect in that room if you want, although I don't have the book in front of me to check if it's already there.
Might I suggest lumping a desecrate effect into the general haunting of the Manor, at least as they get closer to the point of Vorel's demise.
This is a great idea. I think that would make just the difference I'm looking for.
you can advance them all 1 HD or so, but I would do something to give them a will save boost.
I'm thinking that I'll do this as well. We are playing 3.5, so the turning damage is based on Hit Dice. Adding 1 HD to each of the mook ghouls means that it effectively doubles the number of Hit Dice to turn without substantially altering the EL. That coupled with the _desecrate_ effect should make the adventure feel a bit more epic.
As for the potential extra XP that might come from adding some more mooks, I'm not too worried about it. There are five PCs in the party, so they're already a little wonky, and frankly I definitely want them to get to at least 6th before facing off with Xanesha. I'm not planning to pull any punches with that encounter, and it's going to be tough.
Thanks for the feedback and ideas!
As for the potential extra XP that might come from adding some more mooks, I'm not too worried about it. There are five PCs in the party, so they're already a little wonky, and frankly I definitely want them to get to at least 6th before facing off with Xanesha. I'm not planning to pull any punches with that encounter, and it's going to be tough.
I gave them the advanced template originally, but I think desecrate is better, especially if you're worried about extra XP. Just use the spell, it doesn't increase the reward. ;)
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Ah, having 5 people makes a difference, didn't realize that was in the equation as well. To be honest desecrate plus 1 more HD per ghoul should be sufficient. Note that the HD will give them a feat, which I would suggest giving toughness to increase their HP by 3 (it isn't huge, but it's something. Also remember, ghouls are intelligent meaning that you would give them PC class levels, not just another undead HD. My suggestion would be a few with a fighter level and a few with a rogue level.
Now would increasing all of them and plopping down a desecrate be too much? Probably. So what I would do is just have the desecrate there (count it as them being created in it, as they were). This would give each ghoul a +1 to attack and damage, and 2 more HP (in addition to a -3 to the cleric's turn undead roll). Then I'd just make about 2-3 in the group "elite" by giving them a fighter or rogue level (note that their stats increase to the elite array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8). Fighters should probably get Weapon Focus and Toughness, Rogue's just toughness. This would definitely make them more difficult to turn, as each ghoul would "count" as 5 HD for turn undead in addition to the clerics lower turning roll.
There are 2 kinds of "too much."
TPK, and forced retreats. In my experience, forced retreats are alway fun and worth doing if your players are smart enough to fall back now and then. TPKs ought to be avoided, it's true.