Owning Rappan Athuk

[shadowlodgemember]

DM says it's a 25 point buy, starting level is 3. What sort of build would shine in this sort of dungeon crawl?

[cmastah]

I've never played it but knowing FGG, I'd say pump up your saves and perception (so possibly a paladin). Some of their creatures from their tome of horrors are nightmarish against will saves and fortitude saves. Expect traps, reflex will help with that, if you can get improved evasion (I think it raises from successful reflex save halves damage to successful reflex save negates all damage) then perfect, perception will also help to see the traps (darkvision will probably also take you far).

[XMorsX]

First of all, you need to know the composition of your team and what it lacks. Secondly, you need to decide what kind of PC you want to play, based on the needs of the team and your preferences. Finally, you need to optimise your general idea well enough to make it effective.

With 25pb, even monks can contribute as long as they are built right.

[XMorsX]

XMorsX wrote:

First of all, you need to know the composition of your team and what it lacks. Secondly, you need to decide what kind of PC you want to play, based on the needs of the team and your preferences. Finally, you need to optimise your general idea well enough to make it effective.

With 25pb, even monks can contribute as long as they are built right.

More specifically, you need someone with high Perseption that can detect traps and disable magical traps. Fortunately, you do not need a rogue for this, you just need a proper trait. You should also have a dedicated arcane caster in the team and a cleric. The lack of magic shops in the dungeon will make martials less appealing, and prepared divine casters more appealing than spontaneous (as the latter will not have easy access to situational but essential condition removals like scrolls).

[Jaunt]

Having played it, but only the beginning floors, I'd say that the most important thing to have is a lot of expendable resources. Summoners are great for the amount of monsters they can create in a day, or even just a summoning-based wizard or cleric. A necromancer wouldn't be bad either, although there may not be awesome corpses to reanimate that often, and minion attrition is, I suspect, high.

Why have I concluded this? Well, on any given floor you'll have a lot of encounters that are roughly on par with you, a few that are easy, a few that are difficult, one or two that are very difficult, and then one that will be completely out of your league and will wreck you, possibly costing you one or two party members before you can even react to how terrible it is. With an army of mooks, you can feel it out before half of you are dead.

High perceptions as well as Trapspotter are both really good. I'm making up this trap, but it's in line with some of the ones I did see. Imagine a trap where you walk in, and after 2 rounds, the door seals itself shut. The next round, the ceiling opens up and the entire room fills with molten lava, killing you in a round or two unless you have fire immunity. It's not the trap you'll see the most, but on any floor the one ridiculously out of your league encounter could be the trap, and you'll be lucky to see it coming, unless you're have a dedicated trapfinder.