Just an update in case anyone was interested in saving Raj's life: The "go tower shield and full defense" suggestion was dead-on.
It's a *slight* Carrion Crown spoiler, so I'll spoiler it, but that shield saved his life at least three times in one day...
We approached a castle we didn't know was unfriendly, and a troll promptly planted a (very) large crossbow bolt in our sorcerer. One "use tower shield as total cover" advance later, and the tower was full of fireballs and burning trolls.
Going upstairs, Raj pinned a troll in a small room. Using total defense and the tower shield, the troll couldn't hit his AC of 27 and couldn't push past him, so the druid simply dropped a Burning Sphere in the room and we watched the trapped troll toast.
Going across the bridge, he got double-whammied by a flesh golem, but one attack missed thanks to the tower shield, so he only lost half his hit points. (The druid queued up a ton-o-healing and just kept Raj vertical for the fights, so he'd lose half his hit points, and the druid would put 'em back.)
Opening the door on the other side, he was attacked by a huge air elemental. Once again, the tower shield contributed to a miss and losing only half his hit points. Yeah, he and the druid went for a long and bumpy ride, but the GM ruled that as long as Raj was getting smashed against the druid, the druid could heal him, so he eventually brought it down and fell in a heap.
So we ended up with a spectacularly scary day, where poor Raj was the only one who could do any damage to most of the enemies so he had to be in the front lines, but where his hit points were a life-threatening issue. The tower shield was the big difference, and gave us success for one more day.
(And yes, I'm going to multiclass him into barbarian to give him the extra rage HP -- at this point, anything that boosts his HP is critical. We'll worry about Will saves next...)
Hmm... Isn't there a Barbarian Archetype that lets you use their abilities in Heavy Armour?
armored hulk, but you lose a few abilities, like uncanny dodge
This is odd.
We play "low magic, high difficulty" and so didn't notice the lack of treasure. Of course no one in any of my groups complains of that.
But I did, as DM add two magic swords that aren't in the AP.
These were provided (indirectly) from the Esoteric Order of the Palentine Eye, which it thought was cool and very "sherlock holmesy" so I made it more prevalent, made the Judge their secret go between (sort of leading a double life) and one of the players is an inductee to the order (part of the characters background) as an inquisitor of Pharasma.
The weapons were: Shifters Sorrow (reskinned as a non-double sword)
ugh and something else of similar power I can't recall, nothing huge, some +1 special purpose sword.
Edit: Shatterspike, reskinned as a katana! that was it, the katana was still in play test version and was just a bastard sword at the time, I thought shatterspike made a good katana, so I handed that out to a katana weilding character...
No biggie, small swords, but fun to own, put some backstory behind them, who owned them before, took some roleplaying time etc...
Leave it to Pendagast to have excellent ideas.
Well, I'm not the GM, and as I mentioned previously I'm in an incredibly-selfish group (example: The druid took Lopper's axe to use for a while, then sold it and kept all the money for himself instead of splitting it up).
But while I'm getting no monetary love, the whole group is finally realizing, "Hey, Raj is the only one who can damage these things! If he dies, we're all dead!"
So suddenly I'm getting buffed, and healed, and having all the life-saving magic focused on me. The druid even deigned to give me some potions of Barkskin and Cure Moderate Wounds in exchange for enchanting his new axe.
It's improving. We've started selling all those magic items we kept but never used. Everyone's got the mindset "buff and heal the fighter first. Everyone else second." And the tower shield and total defense puts me at AC 27 for the critical first round while we're figuring out what today's baddie does.
So I'm hopeful that if he makes it to 7th level, a level of Barbarian, some Toughness, and a belt of CON+2 will get him to decent HP...
For our next "Save Raj's Life" update: Those who suggested (even tongue-in-cheek) that a level of barbarian might help, +1 to you!
Raj took his 7th level as a barbarian, and not only did he get +2 to his Fort save and +10' to his move, he rolled a straight-up 12 for hit points, so he's up to 54 (68 when raging), which is only *mostly* pathetic. At least he's passed the bard and the sorcerer! Now to start working on those Will saves...
For those interested in how the castle is going:
The second flesh golem in the great hall (just past the air elemental) beat the crap out of the druid's bear and the paladin, but Raj pulled the paladin to safety and then one-shot the golem (well, one-rounded it. He does do a LOT of damage...)
We were all gaping in wonder at the amount of valuables in the castle; we didn't take any in case the castle's owner is still alive, but it's thousands and thousands of g.p.; more than making up for the poor treasure so far (if we get to actually keep it. We're all convinced it's going to vanish before we get it.)
Raj was covering the lab with his bow, hence managed to avoid the rust monsters. They did eat the rogue's brand-new mithral armor entirely, and the player was just about ready to leave the session (the rust monster followed him through the rest of the group just to fully destroy his very-expensive armor).
Then came the bridge with the erinyes trap. The rogue, pissed off at the GM, went solo across the bridge, daring him to kill him. The erinyes appeared and obliged. That player has apparently quit our game entirely, as he feels the GM singled him out unfairly just to kill him. The bard blinded the erinyes as the paladin Smote Evil, and that was the end of the erinyes.
But Raj was not the first PC death of the campaign!
The mummy room was hilarious. The paladin charged the mummy and got eaten by the mimic. Raj biffed his Will save and spent the entire combat paralyzed in fear. (Though the GM insisted that it wasn't a fear effect so the Bard couldn't cast Remove Fear.) With the frontline fighters down, it was up to the druid, his bear, the bard, and the sorcerer to save the day. Raj got dropped to 1 HP, the sorcerer got dropped to 1 HP, nobody died or got Mummy Rot, and the bear was the hero of the day.
We rested and leveled up, and are proceeding through the rest of the castle down our rogue. Though even with 6 PCs this was a nasty dungeon crawl, so with 5 and no rogue we're expecting more deaths soon...
Well, I'm not the GM, and as I mentioned previously I'm in an incredibly-selfish group (example: The druid took Lopper's axe to use for a while, then sold it and kept all the money for himself instead of splitting it up).
But while I'm getting no monetary love, the whole group is finally realizing, "Hey, Raj is the only one who can damage these things! If he dies, we're all dead!"
So suddenly I'm getting buffed, and healed, and having all the life-saving magic focused on me. The druid even deigned to give me some potions of Barkskin and Cure Moderate Wounds in exchange for enchanting his new axe.
It's improving. We've started selling all those magic items we kept but never used. Everyone's got the mindset "buff and heal the fighter first. Everyone else second." And the tower shield and total defense puts me at AC 27 for the critical first round while we're figuring out what today's baddie does.
So I'm hopeful that if he makes it to 7th level, a level of Barbarian, some Toughness, and a belt of CON+2 will get him to decent HP...
Maybe it's because I'm very tired and just drank a ton of caffeine, but this story makes me so happy. I kept expecting your character to die, but it's like your whole group is coming together, all success story and such.
I don't have any advice for you that hasn't been given, but I wanted to give those thoughts right away.
Final notes before closing this thread for good:
- Raj survived Trial of the Beast! Huzzah, and thanks to this thread for saving his life!
- We finally got some serious cash (over 10,000 apiece), so he's finally getting some 'real' equipment to get his AC up. It's still crappy because of his two-handed weapon focus, but at least it's in the 20's, and in the 30's when he switches to tower shield and fighting defensively to keep himself and his comrades alive.
So, to sate Sirokko's curiosity (and maybe anyone else's), here are the final gory details:
OK. First and foremost, let me say as a GM/player of over 30 years, Schloss Caromac was the single-most sadistic, PC-hating dungeon crawl I've ever seen. "You open that door? Save or die. You open the next door? Save or die? Oh, you open THAT door? Take 4 negative levels..."
And then a "TPK unless your GM lets you figure out what do do" BBEG? Ouch.
We had a hopelessly non-optimized party of 4:
- A newbie player who was playing a paladin, but hadn't bought her ANY gear, so she was sitting there in masterwork chainmail, no shield, a +1 keen longsword we'd found, and something like 5000 g.p. in the bank)
- A fairly well-optimized bard
- An intentionally non-optimized sorcerer who'd finally relented to the rest of the party yelling at him and taken Magic Missile and Fireball as his only damage-dealing or battlefield control spells. Yes. At 7th level.
- Raj.
So to say we proceeded cautiously would be an understatement. The paladin opened each door and then scurried back and hid behind Raj's shield. So we explored the tower, dispatched the flying medusa heads without much trouble (Raj made two Will saves in a row!!), I made everyone stand outside of the room when the paladin set off the Acid Fog trap so only she got hit, and then we went to the water-filled rooms. Raj took the lead, so when he fell in the pit-with-leeches trap his Swim roll of 25 (including the Armor Check penalty no less) was more than enough, and we had a backpack full of alchemical ice to freeze the darn things. (Happy we didn't sell all those vials we got from the alchemist's). The vargouilles were a non-issue. Then came the sheer sadism. Every single room: "You open the door? OK. Save or die."
Fortunately, with a paladin opening all the doors, the basilisk and the plant thingies were just, "Open the door. Make a save. Close the door," events. The black pudding was nasty, but the bard Greased everyone and the sorcerer burned all his Fireball spells taking it out. The paladin used all her Channel Positive energies to kill the wights without even opening the door. (We heard 'em, cast Detect Undead, and just spammed 'em with positive energy without even looking.) We spent another night resting (Raj carries a LOT of supplies on him.)
The bridge guardian was hilarious: We tied a rope to the paladin, sent her across alone with instructions to open the door and then jump off the bridge. She went in, lost over half her hit points in the surprise round, but rolled good Initiative and ran away. It chased her and knocked her down even more, so she took our advice and jumped off the bridge. So did it. We cast Feather Fall on her. It grabbed her. We Greased her. It finally fell. We peppered it with arrows as it climbed, then it reached the bridge only to suffer a full-round Hasted attack from Raj. That did it in.
In the final tower, we met the homonculous, Raj used a potion of Spider Climb (I know APs -- never throw away any potion given to you by the AP), got to the tower, and started controlling the Beast. The GM was kind enough to give the Beast a greatsword. With Raj's full greatsword focus, a potion of Displacement in the Beast (yep. NEVER sell potions given to you by the AP), and the rest of the party helping, the Protean died without doing a whole heck of a lot of damage to anyone. (He hit the Beast 4 times and got under 50% every time, so the potion of Displacement rendered the Beast AOK, and Raj's greatsword feats plus the Beast's strength just did hilariously-stupid damage.)
So we got our reward (the GM beefed it up significantly because we hadn't looted ANYTHING from the castle) and we're moving on to Module 3.
Gish it out. Take some sorc levels and boost your def with spells. Start heading toward elk.
So, Raj Sklaarson had dreams of becoming a great warrior.
Unfortunately, fate was unkind and hit him with an unspecified disease that meant that he was knocked over by a breeze. Having seen several of his colleagues pass on to the next world, Raj reconsiders his ambition and, with a heavy heart, heads back home to work in his father's forge; bored & unfulfilled, but alive and not a corpse rotting in some creepy prison. Or worse, another of its undead denizens.
This AP and your DM's harsh hp rolling rules are basically the ultimate 1-2 punch of "don't play a martial character here!"
I would suggest welcoming death as an opportunity to reroll as a Druid, Synthesist or regular summoner, or pretty much any other caster class that can tank and doesn't need gear. Better still is to not be the tank at all. Seriously...rolled HD with no rerolls or min. values...I would never want to be the tank in that sort of game... Then again, I refuse to play anything above a d6 HD in a game with rolled hit points, so my views may be more extreme than most. But a high HD is supposed to actually give you a benefit... If you just roll for it, you have no guarantee of it actually giving you a benefit, the rolls for hp are far too rare for the law of large numbers to equalize things. I have seen a Barbarian with less hp than the same party's sorceror, and this was back in 3E where sorcs had a d4 HD. It's total bs.
I know I said I was calling this thread "dead", but Sunday's game continued the hilarity to a point I felt I should share.
Remember Raj's Will save? Well, we're all still 7th level, so it's no better than it was before.
And with that, we started the final battle at the lodge...
The vencaso spirit (or however it's spelled) had possessed one of the NPCs and used him to murder another. Unfortunately, the possessed NPC had been suspect #1, and our sorcerer had drained him to 3 h.p. earlier in the day. So the druid's bear hit him and took him out in a round. Cue the vencaso possessing the bear. Raj crit the bear and took it out in a single round, nearly killing the bear in the meantime (sorry, bear)! Cue the vencaso possessing Raj.
Needless to say, Raj failed his Will save and became the vencaso's latest tool, and the only fighter left to take him on was the low-damage-output paladin. Looked bad for the party!
So the bard used her wand of Charm Monster on Raj. The GM pondered for a moment, then decided that since the vencaso was possessing Raj, he was indeed a monster at the moment, and Raj would have to make a Will save for the monster, using its bonuses.
I rolled for Raj and...
Everyone rejoiced as I rolled a natural 1 on Raj's Will save! Way to go, Raj, your pathetic Will save is so bad it even seems to affect the demons that possess you!
Long story short, the party took their time recovering while the now-friendly vencaso played fetch with the bard, then they all gathered around to 'Thank' the vencaso, asked it to come out of Raj so they could 'thank' it properly, and beat the living bejeezus out of it while Raj ran away from its possession skills. (It went for the paladin, much to its disappointment.)
So very soon now Raj is certain to get Dominated and told to kill the rest of the party, so his next few purchases are all going to be Will-boosters, but for now his low Will save made him the hero of the party.
Go figure!