Campaign Ending Battle

[cranewings]

This is a pretty straight forward question:

Could a party ranging from 6-8th level, consisting of a Transmuter, Gunslinger, Monk, Healer Cleric, Paladin, and Ranger Archer fight a CR 11 Red Dragon and 10 5th Level Switch Hitting Orc Rangers?

[ThreeEyedSloth]

That's going to be rough... But it really depends on how smart of players you have. I've been in games of four-player parties that were able to survive encounters APL+4. I've also been in six player tables that couldn't hang against an APL+1 encounter.

Your encounter though ranks far beyond an "epic" level APL+3 encounter. You might want to scale back the number of Orcs or something.

[Buri]

Assuming an even spread of levels, so 2 level 6, 2 level 7 and 2 level 8, that's an APL of 7 for a minimum adjusted encounter of +4 CR. According to the GM section in the CRB you're asking for a TPK.

[Buri]

Echoing TES, you should either scale it back or give the PCs a temporary boon that's designed to get them just far enough through the fight so the odds even out by the end of the encounter.

[Sylvanite]

How powerful are the characters? Are we talking 25 point buy? Rolled stats?

What's the wealth looking like? They have good items that directly increase the potency of their builds?

Are they fairly optimized? Do they work well as a team normally, or are their tactics only mediocre or flat out bad?

If you plan on having the rangers focus fire on one character at a time....then you're probably going to lose a few characters. If the rangers are fairly disorganized, and the PCs are fairly optimal and tactically sound, then they might be able to do it.

All that said, fights like this often come down to luck. If you crit with a mighty composite bow fired by a 6th level orc...and the other orcs are also hitting the same character, get ready to say goodbye.

Also, how much warning do the PCs have? If they have time to shop for this, buff for this, and can come in with all guns blazing like a souped up SWAT unit...then they might be ok.

[cranewings]

It feels borderline. One reason I think it is doable is because the party has practiced this fight, this campaign, before. They have dropped fog spells on archers to neutralize them and they ambushed a larger dragon (this things mother) with an invisibility sphere. Granted, that fight the dragon was indoors while this one will be outside, but the gunslinger musketeer does enough consistent damage to kill it with just four full attacks.

The party SHOULD be the ones picking this fight, as this is the command unit for the enemy army.

[cranewings]

Sylvanite wrote:

How powerful are the characters? Are we talking 25 point buy? Rolled stats?

What's the wealth looking like? They have good items that directly increase the potency of their builds?

Are they fairly optimized? Do they work well as a team normally, or are their tactics only mediocre or flat out bad?

If you plan on having the rangers focus fire on one character at a time....then you're probably going to lose a few characters. If the rangers are fairly disorganized, and the PCs are fairly optimal and tactically sound, then they might be able to do it.

All that said, fights like this often come down to luck. If you crit with a mighty composite bow fired by a 6th level orc...and the other orcs are also hitting the same character, get ready to say goodbye.

Also, how much warning do the PCs have? If they have time to shop for this, buff for this, and can come in with all guns blazing like a souped up SWAT unit...then they might be ok.

The party should be starting this fight, but they are going to be warn down a little by five or six fights with minion orcs, trolls, crap like this. The party healer is SO EFFECTIVE that they should be able to enter the main battle without any resources expended at all.

I honestly don't know how their wealth by level is because I haven't been keeping track. I FEEL like it is pretty spot on because I use the charts for determining treasure, but I haven't kept track. The party is actually sitting on about 50,000 unspent gold and will be able to burn through it in preparation for this battle.

The party has 15 point buys and yes, the are optimized decently if you can call a Combat Reflexes Spear Paladin and a Healing Cleric... and a Maneuver Master Monk optimized.

[Glutton]

Throw it at em, heck with em I say.

[Midnight_Angel]

Brr... a 6 person party of APL 7 is semi-officially counted as effective APL 8.

10 x 5th level NPC (who, being 2 levels behind the individual characters, still contribute enought to not be handwaved) is 10 x CR4, or roughly CR10 in their own right.

CR10 + CR11... goes for an effective CR of somewhere between 12 and 13. Which is a tad over the top for an effective Party level of 8.

I think the battle will be extremely dependent on the party's preparation, how much the environment is skewed in their favor, and what the enemy's tactics are.