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I understand why you can think that Jiggy.
But no, I do not want to make it as difficult as possible.
I want to avoid the players to steamroll through this encounter which I believer can bring fun and excitement to the group, if given the chance.Especially considering, that the tactics really make it look like Ganden has the surprise round.. the sense motive before is not written. Putting that in the encounter gives the group a chance.
Of course, through the playtest I am doing right now, the circumstance modifiers to the sense motive, will be vetted.. and I may bring it down a notch.
If you want to make this fight not a steamroll event there's much easier way of doing it.
Simply have him apply some of those oils of invisibility to the hounds. No matter what it is one or two of these things coming out of invisibility in flanking position is a terrifyingly effective act. Especially if there first action is a Disarm or Trip maneuver.Start the fight off with 2 pcs disarmed are prone and the entire fight changes.
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Yes, I know he uses oils of invisibility to move his cerberi / hell hounds out of the kennel.
The oils are used to move the pets out of Caina, after training them in private locally.
But what leads you to believe he would be in the process of moving them out, at the moment the PCs are coming in and that he his in a hurry?
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Yes, I know he uses oils of invisibility to move his cerberi / hell hounds out of the kennel.
The oils are used to move the pets out of Caina, after training them in private locally.But what leads you to believe he would be in the process of moving them out, at the moment the PCs are coming in and that he his in a hurry?
That would be the "in interest of an actual encounter" reason.
Without something to increase the complexity of this fight (ESPECIALLY at the high tier) it wounds up being a 1 round battle (2 for a badly optimized group) where he gets one action then is obliterated. With his poor AC, no defensive abilities, low HP and no magic he's not a challenge at all. The Cerberi CAN be a challenge but usually aren't since they are pretty well designed to be single target threats.The typical encounter will simply be he gets a surprise round attack and does a single solid hit on a target. Then the first round starts and the party will drop him to negatives around the end of the second players full attack. The Cerberi are slow but will get one FA and maybe a rend depending on positioning then they are wasted. THEY may last to the end of the second round but it's usually a foregone conclusion at the end of the first round. (at the low tier the hellhounds are useless, they don't do enough damage to even make a 5th level wizard pay attention so all attacks go at the hellknight).
It's not a bad thing, the party will be sorely taxed as soon as they step through the portal by the Big One but if you want to prepare them for the difficulty to come making this fight harder will get them thinking tactically.
An easy fight like this makes them let their guard down and expect the rest to be this simple. I like to give them a heads up to get their game faces on.
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I know that is not a lot, but I noticed he has a cure serious wounds potion. So he can heal approximately 20 hp by wasting a move (do take it) and a standard action (to drink it).. and he needs to drop his short sword to do so.
Also, he's not bad against humans (+4/+4) and chaotic humans would be a treat (+5 to hit, +8 damage on all attacks).
Also, if circumstances allow it, I will spare a move action to initiate his hunter's bond(companions) so the cerberi get half his favored bonus against humans (+2/+2).
My reading is that he will act on the surprise round, and orders to attack in infernal to the cerberi (free action), then.. depending on position, a charging onslaught with smite chaos (if I have some Chaotic PCs)against a human ideally... while drawing his weapons as he charges.
Given positioning, I may very well have a low AC human PC caught by surprise getting hit relatively hard, with no weapon drawn, and the possibility of doing full attacks after if the cerberi are in good position... but we all know the PC's will kill him soon enough. (but they might not have their weapons drawn yet)
So he is not a huge threat.. but maybe, if played correctly as written, he can force the group to use up some resources before the big fight.
I may even scare them a little bit... who knows.
I don't want to make it harder than it has to be, just.. as hard as it should be.
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Hey, we played the scenario and it went very well.
Thanks all for your advices.
Now looking at the chronicle sheet.
The Paracountess's dept specifically.
So we played in the high tier.
I was the GM and my character is level 7 (out of tier)
My understanding is that I would get the high tier reward (an item of 3000gp or less).
If so, could I ask for a scroll with 2 breath of life spells on it (value at 2,250gp)?
That seems legit to me. . just checking.
Thanks.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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So... Interesting question. If you play this scenario with a lvl 7 pregen, and the table plays up, and apply the credit to a new level 1pc, with the gold reduced to 500. What happens to the boon? Do you just get to start off with a brand new PC with 650 gold and a free 3000 go item?
second question. Is it a violation of paizo's don't be a jerk rules to use my gm star to replay this with a level 7 pregen at a high tier table... :-)
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Last time I GMed this we had a 6 and several 7s in the party, but with an APL of 7.8 they still conquered (without the 4 player adjust to boot). One death and very near to a TPK. They actually had tactically retreated before the TPK but came back for a second shot using the oils of invisibility . They almost TPKed that time also, but eventually downed the beast and saved Zarta.Played at high tier. +16 bab on a "CR 12"?
Yeaaah. Hell no. If you're playing high tier, have EVERYONE be high tier or you're going to need a cart for the bodies.
5 players at 7.6, managed to win just barely involving 2 smiting paladins, cleric with resist energy fire, Cav/Rogue with a wand of mirror image (and potion of pro energy fire), full team effort, the water clerics pushing saved the first set by pushing out the dieing folks, to let us heal up and go again. I didn't think we were going to win for most of the fight. Only 1 actual death was a bit of a miracle (too bad it was the Ultimate Mercy Paladin that died).
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5 players at 7.6, managed to win just barely involving 2 smiting paladins, cleric with resist energy fire, Cav/Rogue with a wand of mirror image (and potion of pro energy fire), full team effort, the water clerics pushing saved the first set by pushing out the dieing folks, to let us heal up and go again. I didn't think we were going to win for most of the fight. Only 1 actual death was a bit of a miracle (too bad it was the Ultimate Mercy Paladin that died).Last time I GMed this we had a 6 and several 7s in the party, but with an APL of 7.8 they still conquered (without the 4 player adjust to boot). One death and very near to a TPK. They actually had tactically retreated before the TPK but came back for a second shot using the oils of invisibility . They almost TPKed that time also, but eventually downed the beast and saved Zarta.Played at high tier. +16 bab on a "CR 12"?
Yeaaah. Hell no. If you're playing high tier, have EVERYONE be high tier or you're going to need a cart for the bodies.
As I said at the beginning of this thread, Paladins and clerics seem to be vital for succeeding against Eddy here.
Without a paladin or a good healing focused cleric this critter is a nightmare against the average party. It's not an insurmountable challenge if ran as written but if the GM fails to split the attacks up as they should then it will kill 1-2 PC's every round.|
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The big bad in this scenario melts faces. That is all.Here's the fun part, EVERY big bad at the end of a scenario needs to be about this bad.
So tired of the end of every scenario being cakewalked over by the PC's steamrolling the final fight.
I recently played at a 7-11 table where the big bad was killed outright by the party's archer in the first action of the first round. Surely there's some middle ground here? :)
Maybe all scenarios need a "hard mode" that gets turned on for combat optimized groups.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I just played this and we had some pretty tight moments with the boss monster. On the whole it was fun; even to see the player of a normally nigh invulnerable PC suddenly get nervous when the best hit him with multiple attacks in a row.
That said, we knew we were going down into Hell, so we were buffed to the gills, and made it through. But we had a rather elite 9/9/9/9/8 party.
Beast, Paladin/Monk/Champion of Irori/Misfortune Oracle, rocking an AC in the mid to high 40s did the tanking, although the player actually got kinda nervous :P
Master Sergeant Crinmen, Musketmaster Inquisitor of Gorum. Blam blam blam!
Count Iozif Blakros, my melee striking investigator rocking an evil outsider bane longspear and high on all the extracts available. AC 37, Displacement and lurking annoyingly just out of reach convinced the beast to ignore me despite my attacks Sickening it.
Kenostris, support cleric of Osiris. Blessing of Fervor helped us stand up safely after trips, and the Communal Align Weapon turned the gunslinger and investigator from doing some damage to instruments of righteous vengeance. Also gave us Communal Resist Energy (fire) 20, which let us scoff at the lava and took off some of the bite of the breath.
Kaleel the Unbecoming, elven God wizard. Communal Stoneskin was very effective against a monster hitting 5 times in a row. After he got a Slow through, the tide was definitely in our favour.
Reading through this topic I'm kind of disturbed by how many deviating-from-written-tactics suggestions are made here. "Cut scene" surprise rounds in which enemies attack while PCs get no chance to react, prepare buffs they have no reason to prepare - that's pretty fishy.
Especially with the final boss, I think it's important to stick closely to his tactics. He's pretty OP even for his CR, so it really isn't okay to add in even more difficulty by improving his tactics.
His tactic to attack as many different PCs as possible, is a sort of stealth nerf to him. It takes off some of the pressure off the front-line PC. Meanwhile, the room is small enough that PC tanks can block its path, so basically the PCs can try to dose how much each individual needs to endure.
"Fearlessly wades into the midst" is also a far cry from trying to optimally use Lunge to stay at the fringe of the PCs' formation and make lots of AoOs as they try to keep up.
Venture-Captain, Netherlands
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Acalaphus, you guys were very mean to Eddie :P
But it was nice to make Beast sweat a bit. Last time I had him this close to dying he fell into a 70 foot pit ;)
But on a more serious note, it was very nice to see you guys sticking to your (lawfull) ideals, even if they were not the popular option. There is more to an alighnment then 'good' or 'neutral' and it was refeshing to see you guys play with it.
I had an absolute blast with you guys :)