Hello everyone
I am currently running a group through this AP. We are on Shackled hut.
I currently have a group of 6 (although almost never get everyone gaming at the same time)
Should the whole group turn up there are 2 Paladins both with +4 or +5 on Charisma. So when Smites are declared they have crazy AC, Saves, Attach rolls and damage rolls
This becomes a problem in boss fights when they both declare against the main foe.
I am especially concerned that Nazhena will only end up lasting a couple of rounds. With bows and smite I will have 2 paladins doing at least d8+6 per shot with an attack roll in the region of +13, ignoring all DR.
Add in two fire toting wizards, a fighter and a druid (if everyone turns up) I really don't see how she will last more than 4 rounds. Even if I add more minions.
I really want to make the final encounter of the book live up to expectations. I have just run Logrivich (amped up) and created an epic fight that my players seemed to like (despite hero points being the only thing stopping 3 out of 4 PCs dying)
Has anyone got any advice on how I can deal with a dual paladin party when it comes to boss encounters?
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I have this problem with Paladins in Pathfinder, period. If there are evil creatures, Paladins are just death dealing machines that cannot be stopped.
However, remember that Nazheena has the flight hex; you can rework her to use obscuring mist, fog cloud.... and then make the on the ground combat so hectic that they're too busy getting beaten, frozen, and sharded half to death by the Ice Golems to consider bowing the flying, concealed witch.
Off topic, how far did you amp up Logrivich? I advanced him by an age category, but my PCs, well prepared, all had potions of fly prepared for the occasion.
I made Logrivich 2 age categories higher.
Forgot fog cloud so he ate a lot of arrow damage.
PCs were not that well prepared although they did go straight up so had fully resources. But no flying.
Also paladin had the plan of challenging it one on one.
Logrivich killed 3 PCs. Two wizards by dragging them off the tower edge. Paladin by full attack dying in the process. Wizards are alive due to hero points
The dwarven paladin in mine ran up to Logrivich with his smite evil activated and scored a crit with his dwarven waraxe! One hit, one kill! It was actually pretty epic and made the encounter memorable!
Our group decided to play Pathfinder AP Reign of Winter as written useing all the rules.
We just finished "The Frozen Stars". My 4 players are: Gnome Sorceror, Dwarf Cleric, Human Barbarian/Fighter & Human Paladin all 12th when entering Ivoryglass.
As a matter of course I maximise all hp. They killed the final encounter in 3 rounds, Malasinder in 2 rounds and I added a Cleric that Healed him 110hp in the first round. Paladin gets +4 AC, +4 to Hit & +24 Damage...this is really really silly. Aura of Justice (@ 11th) gives these bonuses to the Barbarian...<sigh>. During the development of Pathfinder the Paladin had a super-pac lobbyist group...pure sillyness.
I currently use the 4e idea that on becoming blooded the dragon can immediately breath as a free interrupt action. Further when doing a full attack the dragon can swap out its bite attack to cast a spell. It still gets trashed.
The adventure provide a plethora of new items with about 15% of these being recognizable from the base rule book. _ALL_ of these items are immediately sold to provide cash to upgrade items giving: Saves, AC & Stats in that order. These items, while provide flavor, cannot compete against the standard items the players chase.
Paizo really need to look into these issues - and design for balance rather than make fan boys happy.
There's not a lot of opportunity to go to Magic-Item-Mart in RoW. Are they crafting their own items? Where are they getting the downtime? Do they have some means of turning enchanted loot into their own enchanted loot?
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@Sean Foster I've implemented the automatic bonus progression in my home games. The PCs earn 1/2 wealth in all areas, but will automatically receive bonuses to saves, AC, stats, and attacks (not necessarily in that order).
I've removed some of the generic magic item loot as part of the 1/2 wealth bit, but I've kept most of the cooler magic items. Works out pretty well.
Plus, Starfinder fixed a lot of those issues.
It won't work for every GM/group (particularly when in the middle of a campaign), but as a house rule I nerfed one part of of the Paladin class' Smite Evil.
"Smite Evil: now penetrates automatically only DR #/Good and Lawful. You are a representative of Good and Law - but not of Evil, Chaos, Magic, Silver, Cold Iron, Adamantium, Slashing, Piercing, Bludgeoning, Vorpal, Epic, and nothing in particular (—)."
I'm also considering restricting it to work only out to 30'. The Divine Hunter archetype would have to be an exception in that case.
Smite Evil's automatic bypass of DR shouldn't work on any target no matter what, but I'd leave it work on all Evil targets regardless of said target's DR.
Smite Evil on the tarrasque shouldn't work, it's Neutral, not Evil. Smite Evil on Asmodeus should work just fine regardless of his DR. They only get so many per day, and if the player wastes one on a non-evil target, that use is wasted.
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Smite Evil's automatic bypassing of damage reduction DOESN'T work if the target is not evil. The second paragraph of smite evil says "If the paladin targets a creature that is not evil, the smite is wasted with no effect".
It does previously say that regardless of target, the smite bypasses any DR the target possesses, but I'm pretty sure that it's referring to any evil target. In the previous sentence it was talking about specifically evil dragons, undead, and evil-aligned outsiders, and the following sentence is a benefit to any target the paladin successfully smite. You can't successfully smite something that isn't evil.
At least, that's how I read it. I couldn't find a FAQ or developer clarification of that wording.
Think there are some "optimizations" that call out a paladin's DR bypass as working against everything, evil or not. Which is silly, but an interpretation via lawyerball that is not entirely without merit. ;)
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Think there are some "optimizations" that call out a paladin's DR bypass as working against everything, evil or not. Which is silly, but an interpretation via lawyerball that is not entirely without merit. ;)
Relevant text:
As a swift action, the paladin chooses one target within sight to smite. If this target is evil, the paladin adds her Cha bonus (if any) to her attack rolls and adds her paladin level to all damage rolls made against the target of her smite. If the target of smite evil is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead creature, the bonus to damage on the first successful attack increases to 2 points of damage per level the paladin possesses. Regardless of the target, smite evil attacks automatically bypass any DR the creature might possess.
The interpretation turns on the application of the phrase "regardless of the target." Does it specify a subset (albeit a set-encompassing subset) of targets, the way the second and third sentences do? Or does it represent a return to the second sentence's subset of "all evil targets" as opposed to the third sentence's evil outsides, evil dragons, and undead? The first reading is more natural, the second less silly. Turning to intent, the designers clearly wanted to make Smite Evil more powerful than it was in 3.5, where it did not pierce DR except by increasing the damage done on the smite, and was a single-use attack rather than a persistent mark on the foe.
I'd expect a GM to rule that it works against everything.
The Gray Paladin is a good example of proving intent - it takes 2 uses to work against non evil creatures at all
There really is no interpretation that calls for DR being ignored for all targets. It is clearly in the context of the earlier part of the passage where specific types of evil creatures are called out
Smite Evil only works against Evil creatures. If a target is not evil then is has absolutely no effect