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My own? I never want to gm a scenario with elementals listed as a critter in an encounter, and if I encounter them as a player my first inclination will be to run (unless there is a melee PC capable of absorbing and dealing hefty amounts of damage). These were codified over the weekend when I gm'd #2-23, At Shadow's Door and killed everyone.
Of the two scenarios I have run for folks that include elementals
I would like to know how others view elementals in scenarios. Do you avoid gming or playing scenarios including them? Overpowered, and thus a too low CR? Just right? Also, I would like a peek behind the curtain, if I may, as to how the creative team decides on the use of elementals in encounters. I can't think of a season 3 scenario with one. Hm... maybe I answered my own question.
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I can't vouch for any sort of generalization on the topic, but the specific encounter you mentioned in At Shadow's Door is a player killer. My party ended up fleeing.
The earth elemental in The Devil You Know resulted in a noticeable amount of softballing from our GM, which always leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
I don't mind fire elementals, though. They're pretty wimpy compared to the other types.
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I've never noticed anything special about the lethality of elementals versus other creature types. They do require different tactics from human(oid)s with NPC levels, but so does anything that's non-human(oid). Usually by the time a PC is high enough to expect to fight elementals and other odd critters, they should be starting to diversify their equipment to deal with the odd threat. A few special potions/scrolls and a variety of weapon materials should keep a PC prepared against anything their class features don't provide for directly.
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Maybe I'm not expressing my frustration as articulately as possible. Large earth and air elementals both have two slam attacks. Each have very good to hit bonuses with the earth elemental topping the air for shear amount of damage. Large elementals are CR 5 creatures, meaning it is not unlikely a level 3 PC will face off against one of these critters. Combine a high AC, a ton o' hp, and DR 5/- and you have a rather nasty encounter. Oh, I forgot to add reach. So far, the scenarios listed above have the PCs face the elemental in an environment advantageous to the elemental.
Yes, any critter can be lethal to a party with the right setup. But not every critter you encounter in PFS starts off with the mechanical advantages elementals enjoy. Also, most monsters are vulnerable to a party that lacks an up close and personal fighter. Valeros, from above, is not that fighter.
I do not enjoy being a "competence filter". It is not fun for me to kill multiple PCs. Especially when I know the players are experienced, competent individuals.
To counter my own statement about elementals in recent scenarios, I forgot about
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It reminds me of Jade Regent's first book.
Needless to say, I pulled punches.
Maybe I'm not expressing my frustration as articulately as possible. Large earth and air elementals both have two slam attacks. Each have very good to hit bonuses with the earth elemental topping the air for shear amount of damage. Large elementals are CR 5 creatures, meaning it is not unlikely a level 3 PC will face off against one of these critters. Combine a high AC, a ton o' hp, and DR 5/- and you have a rather nasty encounter. Oh, I forgot to add reach.
And awesome movement abilities (earth glide or super-flying).
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I have run many tables where the player characters are prepared for elementals. I was surprised to know, for example, that most of them don't have any extraordinary senses. Darkness works against many of them (not fire elementals, obviously), and a blinded air elemental is astonishingly debuffed.
Darkness works against many of them (not fire elementals, obviously), [..]
Outsiders (including elementals) have 60' darkvision. Or are you thinking of Deeper Darkness?
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If you hate elementals, don't ever run/play Blood Under Absalom. We played 10-11. With 4 people. One of whom was really only lvl 8. It....was painful. I totally agree, elementals are nasty nasty critters.
Noted, thank you.
It's not that I hate elementals, I just think they are overpowered for their CR. In my fever swamp dreams I picture myself converting The Temple of Elemental Evil to Pathfinder rules. I have a 3.5 fan conversion, but I wanted to do a rooter to the tooter conversion. The Earth Temple room alone would be enough to obliterate most parties.
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My thoughts are earth and water elementals are too powerful for their CR, especially when power attack is included. They do significant damage and have superior DR (that can't be avoided) at higher levels (making 1H and non-clustered ranged attacks much less effective). In addition you can't crit elementals, which nerfs crit builds and sneak attack. They also don't have any special weakness, like golems do. But what can you do? Those are the stats.
I find that fire elementals are rather weak, except for their defenses. Air elementals are weak as well, if you can handle being dropped or have flight.
In one recent high level scenario, the only reason we (barely) won against an elemental was because of the 2H fighter.
No I don't avoid GMing scenarios with elementals in them.
A few special potions/scrolls and a variety of weapon materials should keep a PC prepared against anything their class features don't provide for directly.
Weapon materials won't help against an elemental's DR. Perhaps you're thinking of golems.
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If you hate elementals, don't ever run/play Blood Under Absalom. We played 10-11. With 4 people. One of whom was really only lvl 8. It....was painful. I totally agree, elementals are nasty nasty critters.You're playng Tier 10-11 with a 4 person party with one of you below tier. It's SUPPOSED to be painful. That's the tier where the kid gloves are off and the stops are pulled out.
Oh, I'm well aware. We had a death, and should have been more, but for a few clutch die rolls.
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have a Dismissal spell handy?)This!!
I know that it is part of Pathfinder/D&D but after awhile the set of ccunters that you are "supposed" to have can get insanely large.
I'm already carrying around a library of 30 odd scrolls, 20 odd potions, etc.
Last week when we played in At Shadows Door we chose the "run away" technique. Cost most of us a prestige point but we had no deaths. The group had no ranged specialists and nobody with a reach weapon so the flying reach flyby attacks were just insanely deadly to us
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A few special potions/scrolls and a variety of weapon materials should keep a PC prepared against anything their class features don't provide for directly.Weapon materials won't help against an elemental's DR. Perhaps you're thinking of golems.
I'm thinking in general for prep against the unknown. Though you could get weapons which deal energy damage to bypass an elemental's DR.
If you just want to bypass it, Protection from Alignment spells go a long way.
(a) Those spells don't hedge out neutral summoned creatures.
(b) Even if the elementals weren't neutrally-aligned, they usually aren't summoned anyways.
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have a Dismissal spell handy?)This!!I know that it is part of Pathfinder/D&D but after awhile the set of ccunters that you are "supposed" to have can get insanely large.
I'm already carrying around a library of 30 odd scrolls, 20 odd potions, etc.
Last week when we played in At Shadows Door we chose the "run away" technique. Cost most of us a prestige point but we had no deaths. The group had no ranged specialists and nobody with a reach weapon so the flying reach flyby attacks were just insanely deadly to us
While I have yet to play any of the later modules in question, this has always been a concern of mine.
I remember in a post that James Jacobs wrote about traps, he said something along the lines that traps need to be in places that make sense, and/or be hinted at by NPCs ahead of time (with certain checks, I imagine, like local knowledge). We should avoid just randomly hiding them all over the place. If they're just placed randomly, then the players are constantly slowing the table down with perception checks.
I think the same goes with monsters that are very powerful with specific counters/weaknesses. If game designers for PFS continue to throw this kind of stuff at the players, with little or know warning ahead of time(so they can buy the correct counter-scroll or change their setup/spells ahead of time), then they're going to get paranoid. Then, they'll want to buy counters for everything (I already see it in my groups...I have players buying blunt, cold iron and even silver at level 1). A lot of the fun of the game will drain away as they feel like they have to spend much of their earnings on scrolls and potential counters rather than cool gear that makes their character more powerful and fun to play. Keep in mind, even without nasty surprises, in PFS you're supposed to be prepared as if you don't have arcane or divine in the group (because you may not sometimes).
So, I'm not sure making players paranoid to that degree is a good thing. The normal rule of thumb is 10% of a character's wealth should be in consumables. Its already higher than normal because most characters have more wands and potions of CLW than normal knowing that they can't always depend on a permanent healer. Asking them to be prepared with anti-undead consumbables, anti-elemetnal, anti-DR, anti-invisiability, etc. just sounds a bit on the un-fun side...just like having them check EVERY door and corner for traps.
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Some tips for those characters who hate elementals:
1) invest in an elemental bane weapon
2) there is a necklace in UE that allows you to bypass all DR of elementals
3) carry a blaster-caster
4) move to where it no longer has ther terrain advantage
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Funny, I've always wondered if I spend enough on consumables. I mean, a single 750gp Happystick will last you for several levels (we're talking half your career - my 9th level fighter has barely tapped into his second one). Most of the situational stuff you buy once and then carry for a looooong time without actually using it. My Eldritch Knight, for example, has been carrying the same scrolls of glitterdust and dispel magic for a few levels now. If I had to guess, I'd say that my expenditures on consumables are substantially less than 10% of my wealth.
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A large Air Elemental intelligence score is 6. I don't understand why modules are written with them using perfect tactics for their environment. Flyby attack to always return to cover, scooping up PCs and dropping them from max height, these are not tactics that a child-like mind would come up with on it's own, or remember well if ordered to do so.
It's because INT 6 isn't as dumb as you seem to think. Ettercaps have INT 6, and can craft traps - "cunning" ones, even!
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Though you could get weapons which deal energy damage to bypass an elemental's DR.
Kind of. You cannot bypass the DR of a fire elemental with a frost weapon, but since they are vulnerable to it, you will do more damage that is not affected by the DR. Note, however that the other three standard elemental types do not have vulnerability.
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A large Air Elemental intelligence score is 6. I don't understand why modules are written with them using perfect tactics for their environment. Flyby attack to always return to cover, scooping up PCs and dropping them from max height, these are not tactics that a child-like mind would come up with on it's own, or remember well if ordered to do so.
Most creatures have instinctive attacks that are not necessarily tied to their intelligence. Just look at animals for examples. A wolf is only INT 2 and knows to trip an opponent. Also, even an INT 5 PC knows to flank. Oh, and I have played a lot with kids. You would be surprised what they come up with in a gaming environment.
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Though you could get weapons which deal energy damage to bypass an elemental's DR.Kind of. You cannot bypass the DR of a fire elemental with a frost weapon, but since they are vulnerable to it, you will do more damage that is not affected by the DR. Note, however that the other three standard elemental types do not have vulnerability.
Any energy damage will bypass, or otherwise ignore, any DR. As it is the only ones you have to worry about are fire vs fire elementals. Other than that you're good. Carry acid flasks, or flasks of alchemist's fire for the non-fire elemental if you have to.
As for weapons with energy damage, the energy portion will always ignore the DR. DR never applies to energy damage.
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A large Air Elemental intelligence score is 6. I don't understand why modules are written with them using perfect tactics for their environment. Flyby attack to always return to cover, scooping up PCs and dropping them from max height, these are not tactics that a child-like mind would come up with on it's own, or remember well if ordered to do so.
With perfect tactics, a large air elemental in favorable terrain should kill a party that lacks feather fall or a meathod of flying.
Anything above 2 INT is sentient, and sentient can mean crafty, clever, cunning and otherwise "smart" regardless of the INT score. I'd go so far to say an INT 3 character can easily be a genius (despite possessing little knowledge and skill) while an INT 18 can easily be an idiot (despite possessing vast knowledge and skill).