I've been running the Skull and Shackles Adventure Path with my gaming group, and I have noticed that the module seems to enjoy placing the party up against very difficult caster enemies.
The last encounter we ran was against Vakarla and her Wreckers in the third module, and following the tactics laid out in the encounter, she killed one of my characters with Phantasmal Killer, and forced them to use a combine total of 4 hero points in order to force her out in the open. If we had not been using hero points, I shudder to think what would have happened.
In fact, I had to slightly modify the tactics a bit or she would have easily TPK'd the party. As an Illusionist, she has Greater Invisibility for 9 rounds, which is more than long enough to kill one character with Phantasmal Killer and use Scorching Ray, Fear and whatnot to wreck the surviving members.
Is anyone else finding that the Adventure Path encounters have some exceptionally difficult encounters using tactics that could very easily cause a party wipe unless you pull punches and modify the enemies? If so, how do you combat this, and what tricks do your players use to get around these encounters?
In the case of the above encounter, I used Fly and Invisibility Sphere on her Familiar, and used standard Invisibility to move her into position, but once she attacked it gave them a glimpse of her position while she retreated back to her Invisibility Sphere and let them attack her with readied actions. The Wizard in the party ended up tracking her back to where her Familiar was, and used his readied action followed by a Hero Point to cast two Fireballs and kill the Familiar, revealing her to the rest of the party. Next round he used Blindness to incapacitate her, and the Fighter (Corsair) trained one of their ships siege weapons on her and took her out in a critical hit, but not before she had killed the ships captain and forced him to use two Hero Points to stay alive. It was a brutal encounter, and had they not had Hero Points, and had I not modified the tactics slightly, they could have all died very easily.
"Boss" encounters against spellcasters can definitely be very swingy.
See invis, perception checks to hear her verbal components, dispel magic. All should be available to PCs. If your PCs are only prepared to fight non casters, a caster will curb stomp them. If she does not use those defenses she would get curb stomped herself.
My players are a Ninja, a Wizard, a Fighter (Corsair ACF), and an Oracle. The Wizard is the only one that has access to See Invisibility and I'm sort of surprised he does not have it, as he could easily purchase a scroll and add it to his spellbook.
Dispel Magic must have a target, and as far as I know you cannot target what you cannot see. It would have most certainly helped, though in that situation the Oracle that readied an action to dispel ended up on the wrong side of a Fog Cloud spell, and never got the chance. Honestly, one spell I am surprised the Wizard has not gone out of his way to learn is Glitterdust. That spell targets a 10 foot area, and it was relatively obvious she was using an Invisibility Sphere, so the chances of it hitting her AND her familiar would be pretty high.
As for perception checks, I did give them a chance for that, though they failed to hear it. It was unlikely anyway because they were on a boat in the middle of combat off the coast of an island with waves breaking around a coral reef, and she was flying 60-100 off their starboard side, using a well placed Fog Cloud spell to split up the party and help conceal her movements when she got close.
To be honest, most of my players seemed to deal with it well enough, and the final blow of firing a cannon at her, rolling a critical threat, and confirming for probably the coolest boss-kill-move I have ever seen lifted their spirits. But there is one player in the group that has a serious fundamental problem with the mechanics of invisibility and fly in a game like Pathfinder, and he is very vocal about his opinion. I finally told him that he had better get used to it, because there are a number of spell casters in this adventure path, and many of them use tactics similar to what I used in this fight. He should not expect enemies to line themselves up to be attacked and executed by the party.
It doesn't sound so much like the casters are set up as being too hard as written (no worse than any caster NPCs from the other APs, IMO). It does sound like your group is not preparing themselves properly. That's not the fault of the NPC tactics; that's the fault of player tactics.
I've only ever seen Wizards not bother with See Invisibility when they're in a party with a Cleric (access to Invisibility Purge). It's not just casters that turn invisible. Plenty of creatures, especially Evil Outsiders, have invisibility; and Golarion is full of Evil Outsiders. Talk to the Wizard's player about spending some money on learning a few new spells next time the group pulls into port. Is this the player's first time playing an Arcane class? If it is, you may want to help him/her by giving occasional bits of advice until they catch on.
With the party composition you described they seem to be a very well-rounded group so they shouldn't have any problems with casters beyond the ordinary unless they're not staying prepared.
As for the player with a problem against Invisibility and Fly: he is aware that this campaign reaches into the mid-teens for levels, right? 'Cause if he isn't aware, you should manage those expectations now. Golarion is not a low-magic setting and there are much more powerful spells than just Fly. Which class is he playing? Perhaps you could suggest ways he can supplement his class to better deal with these problems.
We had a similar encounter but in the Serpent Skull path. We're playing Part 2 and had come across the giant ape-thing
That one ended up sadly being a "gimme". The thing could have TPK'd us nearly at will the way it was explained to us. We did have access to protection from evil to protect ourselves from possession. Our DM let us huddle and come up with a plan to lure it where it could be trapped somehow for a brief moment. When we had something pretty sound, the DM basically narrated that we went about a week (I think? A few days, anyway) of being harassed with poor quality sleep while being plagued with telekinesis, illusions and a daily possession attempt as we trail-blazed our way through the jungle.
We have good skill sets for the AP. We're 4 players with a basic cover of classes (Barbarian/cleric/rogue/wizard). Our DM just came out after a while and lay bare the conundrum of running that encounter to its most terrifying potential (enjoying all the horror elements in Serpent Skull so far) without TPKing us. She explained the "weakness" of the creature's personality and its love of violence. Still, as we are all DMs in our group, we could see how she could easily have the spirit kill us even with the tactics laid bare and our freely pooling the characters' resources. (Admittedly, none of us have actually read the encounter and maybe - hopefully - something was missed.) Tough one to see how the party was expected to survive it.
@ Uri Meca:
In your defense, that specific encounter in Race to Ruin actually is somewhat poorly designed. Depending on how the GM handles certain events and clues leading up the encounter it can easily lead to a TPK. That specific type of Demon has a very specific niche in which it should be used. It shouldn't be scripted in events outside certain settings or themes, let alone as a "random" encounter (it's not actually random but it may as well be the way it's treated).
(edit: sp)
Thanks, Sir Block, that makes me feel better. We did have
Even still, our "victory" was only barely allowed. "Barely" not due to GM-oppression but rather the opposite: we *all* (GM included) toiled at how we could come up with a win scenario. If we had to trial-and-error our way to success, I don't think we'd have made it. Plus, that encounter's success seems very hinged on the outcome of a previous encounter in the spoiler above.
Anyway, we took it and are forging onward. Apart from that bit of railroad exposed, we are still quite enjoying the AP so far.
No reason at all why the wizard should not have at least one scroll of see invis and glitterdust. Keep hitting them with spellcasters until they learn.
That makes about as much sense as saying "keep hitting them with antimagic fields and dead magic zones until they learn to give up on having spellcasters altogether". I.e., not much.
|
Well hogarth, your right I could have stated that better. If your group has a glaring weakness or common patterns they follow and they ever earn the ire of a 18+ intel creature there would be no reason not to take advantage of this. Invisibility is quite common in game, from imps and spell casters to potions, ect. Pathfinder is meant to be dynamic, and what you see in the AP's is a snapshot that should in my though, develope organically after the PC's get involved. It is in the players best interest to have a answer to a common threats. As a GM I would advocate you not to pull punches. Let the dice land as they will and try to make the combat dangerous and exciting. Force the players to play smart or accept the consequences of their actions.
Tangent @Uri Meca
All that being said, it's the only real issue I have with the second module. Hope you keep enjoying Serpent's Skull.