Question: Difficulty of combats by book

[Dire Mongoose]

Small bit of background: I'm currently running Legacy of Fire. Curse is next on my list for after that finishes. One of my only difficulties with LoF has been that, as written, its books are a little uneven in combat difficulty, assuming the PCs are the expected levels -- some have several TPK threats while others are more cakewalky.

So: Is this at all a problem with Curse? If so, which books are on the baseline (whatever it happens to be for the AP), which really ramp up the difficulty, and which are too easy? I figure I'll plan to rewrite/reimagine some encounters with APG etc. material to keep things interesting, and if I know which parts (if any) are off kilter I can focus there.

Thanks for any responses. I can eyeball some of these things pretty well by reading the APs but experience running it's even a better gauge.

[Banesfinger]

For my group (just finished 7-days to the grave), the big climax battle at the end of each book has been difficult.

But this is due to party make-up. Our group is really 'melee-heavy' and the final battles have the bad-guys with fly or air-walk spells to get out of reach.

They are (slowly) learning to bring missile weapons along...

[cibet44]

Dire Mongoose wrote:

Small bit of background: I'm currently running Legacy of Fire. Curse is next on my list for after that finishes. One of my only difficulties with LoF has been that, as written, its books are a little uneven in combat difficulty, assuming the PCs are the expected levels -- some have several TPK threats while others are more cakewalky.

So: Is this at all a problem with Curse? If so, which books are on the baseline (whatever it happens to be for the AP), which really ramp up the difficulty, and which are too easy? I figure I'll plan to rewrite/reimagine some encounters with APG etc. material to keep things interesting, and if I know which parts (if any) are off kilter I can focus there.

Thanks for any responses. I can eyeball some of these things pretty well by reading the APs but experience running it's even a better gauge.

I am DMing Curse now and we just started book 5. Previously I DMd Rise start to finish. I would say that Curse is much more appropriate for the suggested party level in encounter difficulty then Rise was at times. From my experience in Curse I see the following:

Book 1: No problems, the encounters were suitably challenging for PCs of the suggested levels.

Book 2: No problems again as long as the PCs are the AP suggested levels. Book 2 has a bit of a sandbox element to it so their are a couple encounters that the PCs could get themselves into before they have the required levels but as a DM this can be handled in story.

Book 3: Some problems here. The PCs may have some problems with the climactic encounter if they are just at or below the suggested levels. If I had to offer some advice I would say to have the party be a level higher then the AP suggests.

Book 4: The encounters were fine, the problem here is it is difficult using book 4 as written to get the PCs to the level required for book 5. While the PCs may get through book 4 with sufficient challenges they will most likely not be at the suggested levels for book 5 yet, so keep this in mind.

Book 5: As long as the party is moderately equipped and at least 12th level they should be fine. If you play a deliberately low magic item game (as I do) or your PCs just have not hit 12th level yet you probably need to make some adjustments.

Book 6: I haven't played it yet but if anything it seem a little underpowered.

Note: My game is 3.5 core only. So if you are using many splat books or playing PF your experience may be wildly different.

[Douglas Muir 406]

The final dungeon in Book 2 -- under the hospice -- is pretty brutal. If the PCs don't finish it in one go, the bad guys regroup and get ready for them. If they do finish it in one go, they hit the final encounter short on resources.

The final encounter has the Priestess of Urgathoa; when you kill her, a round later she jumps back up as an even more powerful undead. I don't love this sort of thing, but I guess it's okay if used very sparingly. However, it may be a real challenge for a party that's already short on spells and healing.

Book 5 includes a demi-lich, which zaps party members with "save or die" every round and may take many rounds to kill.

Doug M.

[hogarth]

I think some people had difficulties with some of the high-AC, high-SR rakshasas as well.

[walter mcwilliams]

I agree with cibet. If you're running core 3.5, or even core PF (and have converted each chapter) you should have few problems if you have a 4 or 5 PC party.

If you allow the plethora of splat books or have greater than 5 PC's then some tweaking will most likely be necessary.

My group has finished 2nd Darkness and this past friday Savage Tide, both under 3.5/PF with 7 PC's. The 2nd darkness ran as written and while there were a few challanges, over all our PC's weren't significantly challanged. In STAP the DM litterlly had to rewrite and CR every encounter.

I begin DMing CotCT in June and have spent an extriordinary amount of time tweaking with the encounters. Based of off my own experience with my group, and the excellent advice of my fellow CotCT DM's here on the message boards.

[Cainus]

hogarth wrote:

I think some people had difficulties with some of the high-AC, high-SR rakshasas as well.

Especially when they cut my characters hand off (grumble,crit deck, grumble).

It's funny, another player got the decapitated crit card and died, and yet that was easier to fix than my servered hand.

I never thought I'd say "Damn, I wish they cut off my head instead."

Interestingly enough, lacking a hand has added an extra dimension of RP and fun (not to mention challenge).

[Blue_Hill]

My Curse group is very melee heavy (barbarian, oracle of battle, bard/duelist, cleric/holy vindicator and necromancer) and I had to beef up enemies about from Seven Days forward (max. hp mostly and better tactics and spell selection). Most of encounters went like: casters buff themselves or debuff enemies and barbarian rage charges closest enemy. Then all others join in and battle is over. (Some players take combat more as tactical challenge than role-playing and some of them take lot of time think about consequences of one 5ft step.. Combats are brutal and they dominate them most of time.) Now we are finishing Skeletons of Scarwall and situation has changed a bit as enemies are either "immune" to combat maneuvers (ya can't trip, disarm, grapple etc. a ghost/incorporeal in my game..), critical hits and necromancer's debuffs don't work on them.

On the other hand now they are returning to Korvosa and I fear that things will go out of hand as they are on their "full power" again. Especially Grey Maidens (8th level cavaliers in my game) will have some serious problems against my party.. So if you think your party will waltz through encounters that should be difficult I suggest you beef them up. Most of players like difficult and dangerous combats, not combats that end after two rounds.

[Dire Mongoose]

Thanks everybody so far for the feedback.

To clarify slightly, my players are veteran enough that if I tell them, "Hey, this AP really throws the heat the whole way through -- better make a tough character" they will and they'll be fine, and if I tell them "The combats in this thing aren't extremely out for blood, you can make more of a fun character and be fine" they'll do that too. My danger zone is them feeling like they need a cranked out character because one book is tough level for level and then being bored when the next one isn't, or vice versa.