This is a rant, and a request for better gameplay, not a slam against individuals. Please don't take it as an insult. Paizo has incredible story ideas, but you publish things that don't work in actual game play, and break your own rules constantly.
We just finished running the infernal syndrome. Liebdaga's cage lasted 8 rounds against the PCs due to only one being able to damage it. It hit one time in 24 attacks against the PC's. Liebdaga didn't have an effective -5 levels, he had effectively -17 levels with the penalties to his stats, etc. Add to this losing all his useful SLA's a terrible attack method, and the staggered condition and you have him fireballing for 11 damage against all PC's making the very simple save. With his weakened DR and lowered AC everyone overcame it and he died on round two TAKING OVER 300 POINTS OF DAMAGE in two rounds of full attacks/coup de grace on his unconscious body. This is not even a CR 8 encounter. SUPER DISAPPOINTING.
But I start reading mother of flies to prepare for next week. I see CR 4 monsters with +4 to hit all over the place, they cannot hit a level 9 equipped party with ac's ranging from 25-30. I will have to give them alchemical items so they can make touch attacks. I see tiny creatures relying on flanking for sneak attack. Tiny creatures do not have reach and do can't threaten so they can't flank. I will have to give them reach weapons and house rule that it allows them to flank into the next square. I am seeing an NPC with agile moves with no combat manuever feats and no combat manuever feats. You can argue he can disarm with it, but he has weapon finesse and already uses his dex to disarm! These things are very irritating. He will have toughness instead. These three problems are in one hour of reading through the book. At least use enemies that will have a 25% chance to hit someone so the players are worried that they MIGHT get hit.
Once in a while there should be encounters the party just slaughters, but usually it should be challenging or what's the point? My rant on Liebdaga the Twit is over. Definately not an infernal duke. At least allowing his allies (weaker devils) to have a way to teleport in once the engine was shut down would have provided time for him to regroup for ONE full attack, and he maybe would have hit someone.
Whoa. Difficulty will scale with the number of players you have (suggested = 4), the Xp progression they have (suggested = medium), and the point buy they use for stats (suggested = 15).
If you are that upset, try it again with the playtest characters in the book. See what happens. It'll be one of two things.
a) It's a lot harder - in which case the problem is that your players are blowing the curve. Yes, a 7th level adventure is really easy for the equivalent of a 9th level party.
b) It's just as easy, in which case you are right.
I see you noticed you can edit the adventure path to suit your gaming group's personal preferences on difficulty and complexity.
You may proceed.
Dear AP designers,
I like those ideas because they are capable of terrifying the PCs - if long foreshadowed - as done in the AP. ;)
Kind regards
Dear AP designers,
I like those ideas because they are capable of terrifying the PCs - if long foreshadowed - as done in the AP. ;)
Kind regards
Agreed. My players have been scared smurfless thinking they're about to encounter a pit fiend. I had to metagame tell them that the fight won't be as difficult as they think, and I'm not pitting them against a CR 20 pit fiend. Otherwise, they were thinking of abandoning this ship.
As one of the players:
We are using a 20 point buy, and have four players:
Gnome Alchemist (AC 29)
Elf Two handed weapon fighter (AC 25)
Elf Rogue 4/Fighter 3/Bard 1 (AC 26)
Tiefling Magus (this is my character and probably the most powerful in the group) (AC 21/25* when buffed *with mirror image)
The gnome uses a scattergun from the campaign settings book (3.5 technically) most of the time and bombs the rest -- he doesn't have infusion.
The Two handed fighter uses shield of blows, or bleeding strike if not simply power attacking.
The rogue is an archer -- with no invisibility, as such rarely receives sneak attack damage.
The tiefling spent an exotic weapon proficiency feat to use a small sized bardiche as an one handed weapon with no penalty on the attack rolls.
The cage goes down and we are still sitting ok -- the magus (myself) has spent the time that we bashed the cage buffing and has enlarge person, mirror image, shield and mirror image up when it finally drops, the gnome has barkskin and his mutagen, no one else has any buffs up.
My first action (and I didn't go first) after the pit fiend comes out is to cast haste while attacking. I hit with every blow as did the fighter and rogue and gnome (with one shot so he could reload). After the pit fiend dropped his soul went to heal him and failed to heal enough to get him back up. The will save here was the most dangerous part since we have several characters with low wisdom scores (the gnome particularly).
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No offense, but it looks like that pit fiend fight should have been edited a bit by your DM. Your party looks very well-optimized for AC and damage - as an enemy who attacks AC and relies on hit points for defense, Liebdaga was particularly ill-suited to fighting your party.
Optimized parties will need tougher encounters than non-optimized parties, and there's really no way around that. I am under the impression that Paizo's adventure paths are intended to be difficult for non-optimized 15-point buy characters. This means that a proper optimizer will find many of their encounters to be a walk in the park unless the DM optimizes the enemies as well.
No offense, but it looks like that pit fiend fight should have been edited a bit by your DM. Your party looks very well-optimized for AC and damage - as an enemy who attacks AC and relies on hit points for defense, Liebdaga was particularly ill-suited to fighting your party.
Optimized parties will need tougher encounters than non-optimized parties, and there's really no way around that. I am under the impression that Paizo's adventure paths are intended to be difficult for non-optimized 15-point buy characters. This means that a proper optimizer will find many of their encounters to be a walk in the park unless the DM optimizes the enemies as well.
No offense taken -- I believe that most of the characters in the party are competent in their area, with a few more so than others.
We looked at this guy and it didn't seem likely to use that he would hurt anyone in truth -- the staggered condition simply puts too huge of a strain on the already taxed action economy -- and he's listed as a CR 14 -- which he doesn't come close to meeting by the table in the back of the bestiary.
This followed by numerous rules flaws in the campaign such as spirit attack, whirlwind vital striking monks, the above tiny creatures that needed to flank but couldn't, and more simply have us rolling our heads.
Granted our GM will need to step things up some for our party -- and he is doing that (I can assure you of this).
However we are also of the opinion that paizo is a professional company that should know the rules of its own system especially when the AP presented is the launch AP of a brand new system they just finished making.
The lack of professional standards being met on a (strictly!) mechanical basis in CoT is very unnerving to us. We do not expect perfection, but when the major boss of an entire book doesn't even meet the CR the developers gave him it's a bit more than a little worrisome -- more so with all the earlier flaws on top of it.
Fortunately I have looked over kingmaker and found fewer such problems there and have heard good things about the other upcoming APs.
******
I want to stress that we do not doubt paizo's creative abilities, or their ability to create story and presentation that is of very high quality -- but when the rules fall apart in their products like they have in this one -- especially when the rules involved are rules they just finished writing it is highly disturbing.
I will not presume to tell paizo how to run their business -- after all they are successfully running it and I am not a professional quality designer working for a firm producing what they do -- however I do feel that they need and just about must get a rules lawyer or something in there to look over these products before they get to the presses to stop this sort of -- mindless mistakes -- from happening again.
We looked at this guy and it didn't seem likely to use that he would hurt anyone in truth -- the staggered condition simply puts too huge of a strain on the already taxed action economy -- and he's listed as a CR 14 -- which he doesn't come close to meeting by the table in the back of the bestiary.
He's listed as CR 12, actually, but the staggered condition does seem like a bit too much (especially considering he's alone). Looking over the monster creation guidelines, Liebdaga would fit decently as a CR 12 if it wasn't for that bit.
I think I'll remove the Staggered part of his stat block when I run this. Even as a player, it wouldn't feel good to be able to pummel a Pit Fiend while he spent a round "focusing his thoughts".
We looked at this guy and it didn't seem likely to use that he would hurt anyone in truth -- the staggered condition simply puts too huge of a strain on the already taxed action economy -- and he's listed as a CR 14 -- which he doesn't come close to meeting by the table in the back of the bestiary.
He's listed as CR 12, actually, but the staggered condition does seem like a bit too much (especially considering he's alone). Looking over the monster creation guidelines, Liebdaga would fit decently as a CR 12 if it wasn't for that bit.
I think I'll remove the Staggered part of his stat block when I run this. Even as a player, it wouldn't feel good to be able to pummel a Pit Fiend while he spent a round "focusing his thoughts".
CR 12? Ok I could almost buy that -- I think the spell-likes could have use a little less tweeking at that point, but with the staggered condition I really don't see him there at all.
I felt that if he had been simply a pit fiend with 5 negative levels, and the exhausted condition with the negative energy levels having a special thing where they managed to reduce NA by 1/2, caster level (and ability access), as well as DC of abilities he could have easily been 'just' a CR 14 with the AP going a bit higher before it ended...
but then I'm backseat designing at this point so...
Abraham, I tend to have larger parties than four (generally six) and have found the Paizo's solo BBEG's to be a problem. It is hard to find a single monster that is tough enough to withstand more than a round or two of optimized attack that WON'T kill the party outright. I have to retool to add minions so there is some feeling of peril/challenge for the group. I also regularly redo stats to full HP and to de-nerf some of the nerfed guys.
If you're a player, you probably haven't read the GM threads, but I made a big post for design issues with this particular adventure -- and we haven't even reached Liebdaga yet! So don't feel alone. Granted, GM's need to tweak adventures, but it can be hard to do a good job since we're not pros. But at least Paizo gives us plenty of practice. I'm getting used to it.
Abraham, I tend to have larger parties than four (generally six) and have found the Paizo's solo BBEG's to be a problem. It is hard to find a single monster that is tough enough to withstand more than a round or two of optimized attack that WON'T kill the party outright. I have to retool to add minions so there is some feeling of peril/challenge for the group. I also regularly redo stats to full HP and to de-nerf some of the nerfed guys.
If you're a player, you probably haven't read the GM threads, but I made a big post for design issues with this particular adventure -- and we haven't even reached Liebdaga yet! So don't feel alone. Granted, GM's need to tweak adventures, but it can be hard to do a good job since we're not pros. But at least Paizo gives us plenty of practice. I'm getting used to it.
Tweak = adding advanced template to monsters to add challenge for high power parties.
Overhaul = redoing entire encounters because they simply do not work.
tweak (darn.. there's no not equal sign) not equal overhaul
Just for the record, looking at Liebdaga's hitroll, he doesn't have -5 levels, he has more like -17 levels. Just saying.
Our party is not particulary optimized and we used the medium point build. They do have a lot of wealth. I did not want to change this encounter, I was really hoping that the fight with the pit fiend would be epic and memorable. It was, just more in the way the lemure cage fight went to the fighter solo without a scratch. Don't worry though, Abe, I won't be making the mistake of running the adventure how it's written anymore. At least I almost got to kill the gnome with madjaw!
I have to admit that when I ran this encounter, Liebdaga went down really easily. He just couldn't match the number of actions being taken against him, and with the party already packing spells and items geared toward taking down a Devil and what you got was a massacre. I even gave him an extra 50 hp and let him get his tenacious soul ability off. The monk got hit once with a vital striked bite for a bunch of damage, only to have it healed just as quickly by the Calistran Cleric. I think the module gives too many ways to debuff him with status effects and the negative levels, and the Staggered condition is huge. I recommend other DMs running this either give him (A) minions, (B) the ability to take a full round action without wasting a turn to do it, or (C) a countdown during the fight that restores his negative levels and other status ailments, giving the PCs a taste of what they might have faced had they not gathered the contract and the talisman.
This reminds me of a slightly lesser version of "Into the Wormcrawl Fissure" from Age of Worms. Spoiler for AOW
In that module, you have to go to different locales in the Wormcrawl Fissure to get pieces of Balakardes's soul, a soul split into three after
he stood agaainst Dragotha. Reuniting the soul fragments doesn't debuff the CR 27 monstrosity, but it does give the PCs a significant edge against him. In this case, the party is given similiar tools againdt Liebdaga, but it ends up being too much.
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I had a similar problem. The reason they took him down so well was due to having a ranged paladin and a ranger with favored enemy evil outsider. The melee fighter was a monk with a high AC.
NONE of the characters are optimized. They did do a lot of research and knew what to expect, however.
***If I had it to do over again, I would take away the staggered condition.
Liebdaga was one of the easiest fights in the whole dungeon. The cage was a little tough, but not very.
Council of Thieves, besides being a rather rotten AP in its own right, was a rather dreadful introduction to Pathfinder due to the aforementioned messes.
I just listened to the Chronicles podcast, and Council of Thieves had to be written before the final rules were out. Can't have been easy. Quality has gone up since then.