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A question on the advancement of Achistem B'rith for tier 8-9. Using the Janni as the base creature (6HD & CR4) it appears that it was advanced to a 15HD creature. Extrapolating the base HD vs. CR ratio, it becomes a CR 10 creature. Adding the half-fiend template adds 3 to the CR, making it a CR13 creature, not a CR11 as listed in the scenario. Is this correct?
Also, he seems to be an overpowered creature for an average party of PFS players. He has two spells (Blasphemy-7 & Unholy Aura-8) beyond the level that players can ever achieve. As a 15th level caster, he is at least 6 caster levels higher than any PC he might encounter, so dispel attempts are likely to fail. The Blasphemy is especially brutal. With a Will DC21(?) the average PC will only have (at best) a 50% chance of success. If your PC has a slow advancing Will save bonus, it's even worse. For 6-9 level characters, this mean paralysis for 1d10 minutes! Hopefully, whoever has the ability to cure paralysis is not one of the failures. For 5th level PC's, this is an instant kill. Granted 5th level PC's should not normally be in a tier 8-9, but it's not impossible. As it so happens, I played this at a recent convention with an APL of 8, despite having a level 5 in the group. And sure enough, she failed the save...dead. Save or suck, or save or die effects may not be the best choice for a PFS scenario. Personally, I am okay with it, but I expect this mod to kill a lot of characters and will likely get a bad reputation. Hopefully, that will not turn any players away from PFS.
Additionally, he has a 15d6 Horrid Wilting, Darkness (always an irritant), Invisibility 3/day, a fly speed, and is observing the PC's prior to the encounter. IMHO, he is the toughest BBEG to date in PFS. Without a cleric (or someone with a solid UMD) in the group to counter his abilities, this guy will be responsible for many a TPK.
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And where'd that get you?...er, um, nearly killed. But that's beside the point.
Being all alone and pinned by a Salamander over a pit of molten lava was enough to scare a paladin? huh. I thought they were immune to fear. ;-)
I still think that since he was pinning you with his tail, that I should have been able to Flurry of Blows. *BAM*BAM*BAM*BAM* Take that you stinky Paladin!
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Wow I am so glad my fighter had silence cast on him and he followed her on the back of the griffon wondrous figurine all over the board. We did just to prevent her from sending her minions after us. I had no idea she was that powerful.
Wrong encounter. The guy at the end is what they are talking about.
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Him we all won init and just lit him up
Unless you have a very stealthy party, this is not likely to happen. The janni has been observing the PC's as they travel and is fully prepared for their arrival. He will likely get at least a surprise round, or just ready his action and auto-win initiative
Having faction missions that require skills the party may not have is okay since we know that not all PA is expected to be earned. But without a high-level cleric or someone with a maxed-out UMD, this encounter is brutal. You're not likely to be able to dispel due to the caster level, he has invisibility (3/day), fly, etc. Short of some uber-high rolls, I don't think a standard group can win. Since you, as a player, cannot control the party mix when you sit to play, especially at a con, I don't think that it's a good idea to punish high-tier players with a creature that they cannot defeat or reasonable escape from. Since some or all of the PC's are likely to fall prey to the paralyzing effects of the Blasphemy right off the bat, it's almost a guarantee that some PC's are going to be lost. IMHO, this feels like a creature better suited for a high tier at 10-11.
Or maybe I'm just being petty?!?
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Or maybe I'm just being petty?!?
This. I don't know what you're crying about. I got full PA, gold, and XP. ;-)
I think he's tough, but with only two characters left in the fight after two rounds, one of them almost single-handedly took him out. He was literally at 2 hit points after the last attack (before he took the PC out).
I know another "regular" group in Michigan that will have no problem with him. I agree at a Con that this encounter can be lethal for a poorly balanced party, but you're 9th level. A few bad rolls in almost any tier-appropriate situation can mean death. Think you'd survive if a level 11 (CR 10!) wizard cast disintegrate at you and you failed your save? That's 77 damage on average. A level nine d8 class with a favored class bonus and Con of 14 only has 75 hit points.
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But keep in mind that the one PC that nearly defeated it was a truly maximized damage dealer with all the feats, etc to do it. Alternately, a high-level paladin, such as mine, could have made mince-meat of him also. But then the encounter is about one PC battling the monster. Is that the feel we want for the BBEG encounter?
Also the difference between this and a Disintegrate is that is only HP damage. Yes, it could be a save or die, but you can still act if you're above zero. With Blasphemy, and in this instance, the PC has to hope to be out of the AoE, but since the platform is only roughly 30ft, all of the PC's will be in the blast. At best they are paralyzed & dazed for one round, and lose 1d6 STR (likely followed by the Aura to drain more STR). With the Will DC22, you have to assume that at least half (or more) of the PC's will be affected and effectively out of the encounter.
I'm just saying that an average party of PC's, especially without a cleric, are more than likely, a TPK. That's not to say there are some groups out there that can't handle this encounter with neigh impunity.
I plan on running this for my local group in a couple of weeks. I will report on how it goes once I see the encounter from the GM perspective and with a different group of players.
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Him we all won init and just lit him upIt's GMs like this that lead to future problems for competent GMs. Characters "grow up" with experiences like this and cry foul when can't completely dominate scenarios later with a more prepared GM. Make me sick.
Kyle, you give us all something to strive for :P
Director of Brand Strategy
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Smite Good (1/day) (Su) +2 to hit, +15 to damage, +2 deflection bonus to AC when usedI do not believe the monster's version of smite works the same as a paladin's. Monsters with smite good get a +1 bonus to damage per HD, but no attack bonus nor deflection bonus.
This is one reason we don't use HeroLab when generating statblocks for our adventures. As I said before, I'm reexamining the math behind the NPC in question and will be going over it with Sean tomorrow to really pick apart how all the advancement and templates fit together in practice, but if the CRs are indeed off, I don't believe they're off by as much as the above posts indicate. I've double checked everything and see where a few things may need to be tweaked, but the statblocks above are significantly different than those generated by our in-house statblock generator.
We'll definitely be looking at this tomorrow. :) Hero Lab has generally passed all of our internal tests and is approved for society play, so we need to find out where the error is coming from.
Hyrum.
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I would like to add one thing:
The BBEG for an entire series of scenarios should be an epic challenge.
For example, the final fight for the Echoes of the Everwar series is a major let down. :( It's a shame that some people around here have retired their characters with that "fight."
agreed - I was disappointed that it was down to 1 on the entire party by the middle of the first round
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Aha so I'm not the only one that thinks his CR is calculated wrong! Yes my 8th level character by himself took him down to only 2 hp so killing the Janni isn't a difficult task in a toe-on-toe confrontation. It should be mentioned that our party had no cleric which would have certainly helped to buff/de-buff our party. Also Kyle took it easy on me when I was the only one left taking one round to buff the fiend rather than all-out slaughtering me ;)
As for sneaking, Kyle was the DM and he did a great job in that the Janni had been watching us the whole time then suddenly at the end goes WHAM and surprises us. Granted we were rushing due to time constraints but seeing as how we are invading his base he should be aware of our movements. It will also make crafty groups start realizing that at higher levels they will need to mask themselves from divination spells.
What really irked me about this encounter was the whole idea behind Blashpemy. Putting aside the fact that no matter what level you are it is essentially a save or die (being paralyzed for minutes at a time is death for a party with no remove paralysis), it seems like a cheap move to the players. They go through 3 entire adventure modules leading up to an epic battle, only to fail a single d20 roll and sit there useless for the encounter. I think scenarios should avoid these "save or die" moments at all costs and instead focus on heavily debilitating spells that apply penalties to AC, attacks, ect. so that the players will be less effective but can still play.
Even if my character had survived and saved the party, it would have been a single victory, not one we all could share because there wasn't any team work behind it. To me Pathfinder (and all RPGs really) is about working together to accomplish your goals. Now if only the wizard had cast haste instead of jumping ship on me... ;)
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As for sneaking, Kyle was the DM and he did a great job in that the Janni had been watching us the whole time then suddenly at the end goes WHAM and surprises us. Granted we were rushing due to time constraints but seeing as how we are invading his base he should be aware of our movements. It will also make crafty groups start realizing that at higher levels they will need to mask themselves from divination spells.
In future events, now being better prepared, he will engage the party in some taunting dialogue first. I probably won't even have him attack if the party buff's up because he's that confident. But with the first hostile intentions, WHAM, welcome to Blasphemyville.
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Plinking with a bow was doing nothing. With me out of offensive spells, two characters paralyzed, two dead, and you standing toe to toe with the beast that hit me with a spell I couldn't think of casting for another seven levels, I made sure half the party survived instead of a TPK. I had to save my paralyzed venture captain. ;-) The other VC at the table chose his sacrifice.
And the next ape will be "Henry the Eighth".
Folks, Mark and I took a look at the CR 8 and CR 11 versions of this monster, and according to the "Monster Statistics by CR" table in the Bestiary, he's within acceptable parameters for his CR in terms of damage, saving throws, AC, and hit points. There are several reasons why some parties are having trouble with this encounter.
1) The CR 11 version's caster level stems from the half-fiend template's rule of "the caster level for these SLAs is equal to the monster's HD or the base creature's SLA CL, whichever is higher." Because HD doesn't scale linearly 1:1 for HD to CR, this means that some monsters end up with much higher HD than their CR, which means a half-fiend of that monster can have a pretty big CL. While that's not a critical issue for most monsters, it significantly affects the half-fiend because of the blasphemy spell, which increasingly harms lower-level opponents (the paralysis effect in particular is a problem for this one). For this monster, the combo of tier 8-9 plus CL 15 means a level-appropriate group is always going to face that paralysis problem. Mark's going to adjust the caster level lower in the CR 11 version, as he doesn't really need a super-high caster level based on HD, and that'll mean that a level-appropriate group won't get stuck in that situation. Also, Mark's going to add DCs to all of this monster's attack SLAs so you're sure to be using the correct ones (for the CR 11 version, that's blasphemy DC 19, horrid wilting DC 20, which is perfectly normal for a CR 11 monster). However, see point #2.
2) If one PC is a significantly lower-level than the others, you're really going to have to protect that PC because they're prone to getting hosed from APL-appropriate monsters. Blasphemy is a high-level example of this, but you can look to color spray as an equivalent low-level issue--a monster using that is just an annoyance to a 5th-level PC, but his 2nd-level buddy is out for a minimum of 4 rounds. And higher-level spells don't pull punches because characters are much less fragile. In other words, yes, bringing a 5th-level PC on in a group of 8th-level PCs means the level 5 guy is probably going to be murdered by a "boss" encounter for a tier 8-9 scenario. Give the lowbie some extra buffs, put him in the back of the party, and so on. If your APL is between tiers, you should probably play it safe and do the lower-tier version of the scenario.
3) If you're putting together a table and you see that you are lacking a significant class type, such as "we have no healer" or even "we have no class that can give us temporary buffs," you'll need to be very careful, and expect to use more consumables than you normally would. If your APL is between tiers, you should probably play it safe and do the lower-tier version of the scenario.
4) Use your buffs. Use spells and abilities that block or negate common monster abilities. At level 8, you should be prepared to fight in darkness, or fight invisible creatures (see invisibility ignores enemy caster level, as does invisibility purge, as does glitterdust), or fight flying creatures, or fight casters. Drop some money on consumable items, they're worth it when you need them.
5) A CR-appropriate challenge is an easy encounter. The PCs are expected to win those and only use 20-25% of their resources (spells, consumable items, hp). "Boss" encounters should be tougher than that, and riskier than that, and sometimes the dice don't swing your way. Sometimes PCs are taken out of the fight early and the rest of the team has to struggle to keep up. And this specific monster is the final encounter of a 3-part scenario arc... he should be a memorable and difficult challenge.
Anyway, let me repeat point #1: The CL from the half-fiend template doesn't need to be as high as it is, and changing that (and specifying the DCs for his SLAs) should make the encounter less swingy.
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Thanks SKR and Mark looking into this. I don't expect to many have played this scenario yet and to have the developers react so quickly is why we support Paizo so strongly.
One additional point that was discussed during this series is that Invisibility/Fly/Deeper Darkness are becoming increasingly common. Obviously, they are powerful abilities, and as such, it makes sense that they are used against the PC's. However, as more players experience this, eventually everyone will have a cache of fly potions and scrolls of See Invis/Glitterdust/Purge/Daylight and that could swing the encounters the other way and make them too easy. Just my 2cp.
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If your APL is between tiers, you should probably play it safe and do the lower-tier version of the scenario.
Sean, thank you for the very quick and amazingly detailed reply!
I do want to point out that in my experience, most of the lower level scenarios and early high-level ones have taught players that playing up is fine, and doesn't usually present a challenge. They often complain about how easy playing within their correct tier is (let-alone playing down).
Some of the more recent scenarios, especially this series and Rebel's Ransom have been written with well thought out encounters that prove a challenge for tier-appropriate parties. This switch is catching players (and GMs) off-guard. I love the trend, and REALLY hope it continues, but it may be bumpy for a while.
And Mark, please keep the tier 8-9 guy capable of paralyzing at least levels 5 & 6. (and hopefully 7) :)
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Played it recently
Levels (7+6+8+7+6+7)/6 + 1 = 8
Oracle, Rogue, Wizard, Monk, Rogue, Bard
With the party, the best will save was my 7th level monk at +10 (+12 v spells as a dwarf). Most of the party was sitting on less then +9. So odds were that most of the party paralyzed for 1d10 minutes.
But we lucked out. Big time. The wizard won init, got off an enervation of all things and rolled a 4 on the levels (reducing the effective level), and the bard hit him with a glitterdust (DC 14, he rolled a 1). 2nd round, oracle hits him with a bestow curse, and he fails his glitterdust save again.
Still, despite this he had a third of the party (two rogues) paralyzed, with my monk the only hitter. I barely managed to take him out in three rounds with one missed grapple (I think I rolled a 38) and two flurry of blows (with Vicious shenanigans).
We were very lucky to have not been wiped out.
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Him we all won init and just lit him upUnless you have a very stealthy party, this is not likely to happen. The janni has been observing the PC's as they travel and is fully prepared for their arrival. He will likely get at least a surprise round, or just ready his action and auto-win initiative
I've prepped this adventure to run it today, and I can see San-Chez's explanation happening quite easily.
The janni engages in supervillainous taunting at the beginning of the encounter. Sure, he's floating over empty space like Magneto, but not very far over empty space. Once he demands obeisance, the party is likely to respond to violence. And if their casters and archers and flying melee fighters (assuming they've got some of each) beat the janni in initiative, it is very possible that they can "light him up" before he gets to open up with blasphemy.
Reading this thread, it sounds like other DMs expect the janni to completely blindside the party with invisibility and blasphemy, but that isn't how the encounter is written.
Maybe this is because I have the re-written version, and this was fixed?
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Well it does say, "Before the PCs have a chance for an in-depth
examination of the scene, they are interrupted by the
arrival of Achistem B’rith himself...The fiendish janni descends from the occluding clouds of elemental energy above the pinnacle on enormous, batlike wings."
This would indicate that, at least, he waits to confront the PC's until they are on the cliff/landing and preparing to examine the remains of the Jistka elementalist in the glass case.
It also says, "Before attacking, he laughs and says in common, “Have you come to lay in supplication before the destroyer of all, the mighty Cruelest Cut, embodiment of the divine Ahriman? Quiver before me lest I lay waste to you as I have done to this once-mighty citadel!”
Granted he is insane and expects the PC's to worship him, but in my experience, there is usually at least one member of the party who takes that as a challenge and refuses to "bow down" to anyone. But even if the PC's do bow before him, the language appears to indicate he will attack them anyway.
Having run the revised version this week, I can say at least the Blasphemy is a bit more manageable. All the PC's, but one, failed the save, but due to levels, only the rogue-6 was paralyzed (7 minutes). The only PC who could act in the first round (Druid-8) decided to cast summon monster, so Achistem B’rith essentially got another free round to act. With everyone dazed, he took a full round attack with the bow and did some decent damage. The druid's summoned griffon was pretty useless since it couldn't breach the DR10/magic. The wizard-8 failed nearly every caster check and couldn't breach Achistem's SR. Only his use of See Invisibility contributed anything meaningful. Because the party split themselves up around the landing and down the passageway, Achistem had to fly in close to use Horrid Wilting and Unholy Blight. This opened him up for some melee attacks. He took some damage, but still had nearly 100 hps when he prepared to drop Unholy Aura and go to melee-town. Unfortunately, we ran out of time. I'm fairly confident that, given more time, at least one PC would have been dropped before he died.
One of the reasons we ran out of time, was the encounter with Shybbahla. Between her ability to fly 50ft and dim door, she was able to keep some distance from the PC's most of the encounter. Honestly, once see uses the summon swarm, this encounter got boring for me as the GM. Her charms are much less effective once combat begins and she does very little damage. If the PC's succeed at saves vs Cause Fear & Hideous Laughter, the encounter becomes a battle of attrition. After some time, I just had her stop running at take her beating so we could move on.
The encounter with the magma monster is okay, but most groups, especially by level 8-9, can handle most combats against a single (mostly mindless) melee creature. The lava puddle ability would be much "cooler" (lol) if it affected the squares surrounding the creature as well as those it occupied. Even still, a few uses of elemental resistances and judicious use of power attack, this battle is not much of a challenge. Although, it does use up some resources so it does have some function.
The salamander encounter is probably the most fun. Despite not being really clear how he intends to convert them to Ahriman, because he starts playing the pipes, most groups will (and did) panic and attack him. Using flurry of blows and stunning fist is much more fun than using the spear and quickly reveals that he has monk levels. This adds to the fear factor, because the PC's are not sure what he can do to them. Combined with his tail reach and decent grapple, let the fun begin. The Doru Div's invisibility (at will) make them perfect for annoying spellcasters trying to keep distance from the salamander.
As far as the encounter with the "competition," I see this encounter rarely, if ever, resulting in combat. The rope trick is relatively obvious in the room and unless the PC's are raving lunatics, they should be able to use diplomacy or intimidate to bypass any confrontation here.
The dust digger encounter can be fun, but only if at least one PC fails the save against the sinkhole effect and is then grappled by an attack of opportunity resulting from the movement. That sets the stage immediately for a bit of fear on the Player's side. Otherwise, this is just a boxing match and the PC's nearly always win those.
All-in-all, I like the rewrite and think it makes this a better scenario. If Amenopheus was meant to escape, I would have liked to see him at least make an appearance and taunt the PC's. This would make him more of a "real" re-occurring opponent, especially with non-Osirions. Funny thing that my Osirion Paladin has been saying since level 2 or 3 that he wanted to punch the sapphire sage in the head because the missions always seemed to get him into trouble. Heresy just gave him more cause. :-)
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Ack, that encounter with Shybbahla was a huge waste of game time and resources (although far from lethal) My flying monk with a silence aura was the best my party had against her, but she kept on D-Dooring out of my grapples around instead of engaging. 1 or two rounds of that is OK, 10 is not. I guess I need to start carrying around scrolls of D-lock for the casters (which won't break SR) or spend 28k for dimensional shackles?
At will D-Door seems quite overpowered even for a creature of CR 10 (?), especially a caster. The only thing I can think of with that mobility would be a blink dog, but they have to come into melee to engage. In the end we abstracted that combat into a series of rolls to expedite it. Of course, with an archer things would have been different, but you work with what you have!
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my question , not for the stats. but really... the VC won't give us the scrolls for the mission?
we had to shell out the cost for the scrolls... so that they could appear on the chronicle sheet as "access" to them??thanks lol, thanks a lot.
They don't actually appear anywhere in the scenario. The VC just tells the PCs to go to the market and buy them. If nobody in the party has the available fame to do so (an unlikely occurrence), they'll have to do without (not that they are actually necessary at all).
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unlikely? its a 5-9. if they don't have the fame to purchase some <500gp magic scrolls. they've got bigger problems.
but you do see the irony of the players having to buy the scrolls, in order for them to appear as access on the chronicle sheet. right?
they're listed on the chronicle sheet so you can buy them...
but you have to buy them for them to appear on the chronicle sheet...
and they're not at all needed for the game...
so they're just there to get players to waste gold...
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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Tread necro!
I played this a few days ago, and an issue came up. The final boss opened up with an Unholy Blight, and as there were two Aasimars in the party (both of whom were Good-aligned), there was a bit of a discussion. The spell says it deals more damage to a good outsider, but does that mean any outsider with the good alignment (as we were), or with the Good and Outsider subtypes? I've encountered this spell in two home campaigns and in both these groups people corrected me that I should throw d8s, not d6s, and a different Society player agreed with me. But after doing some searching on these forums, I'm thinking it should've hit for d6s anyway. The rulebook is usually pretty consistent in using capitalisation when necessary, and usually calls out subtypes. And now I feel bad for correcting the GM. :(
Also, I took a look at the bad guy's statblock, and I spotted an error in his ranged damage. Maybe it's part of the automatisation process when entering statblocks, but the statblock says he's Enlarged himself for the fight. His arrows deal 2d6 damage, but there's a line in the Enlage Person spell that says projectiles leaving the body of a sizechanged creature revert back to their original size (meaning, 1d8 again). It's not much, but the difference between 1d8 damage and 2d6 is there, especially with multiple attacks in a round.