Sorry if this has been up before but i didn't find an awnser to my question when i searched the old threads (doesn't mean it isn't there though).
The group i'm DM:ing resently had a fight with 3 shadows. Because of decisions that was made it was only the wizard and barbarian who walked into the room the shadows occupied. The shadows went for the barbarian and quickly drained all the life out of him, abit faster than i imagined. Which has me thinking that i've missed something. Does the shadows really do 1d6 strenght damage on a hit, no save?
We looked through the SRD (much easier to carry around than the actual rule book) but couldn't find anything to indicate that in the beastiary or the core rules.
And one more thing, in their reduced groupsize they didn't stand much of a chance against the shadows (in hindsight i feel quite bad that i didn't nerf the encounter a head of time instead of running it as written :( ) but with the shadows taking only half damage from magical weapons and spells, is there any way that the full party would have been able to defeat the shadows? The other characters that make up the party is a lvl4 elven monk and a lvl4 human paladin.
Yup, 1d6 STR/hit. Shadows are nasty, especially if you don't have a cleric on hand. Best way to deal with them is Channel Energy, which does full damage. Magic Missile also does full damage. Everything else will be cut in half at that level, I think. Power attack and gang up on them to try to drop them ASAP, I suppose.
If you have time to prepare, Mage Armor and/or Shield would help against their touch attacks.
Shadows are one of those creatures that are either extremely dangerous or extremely easy, depending on your party and preparedness. Incorporeality is their only real defense, and they don't have a ton of hit points. They drop quickly if you have a cleric or any kind of force or ghost touch damage, and they struggle to hit characters with a decent touch AC (like rogues). On the other hand, they can drain non-melee characters dry in two hits.
Oh, ok. Thx for the answers!