Lucretia fled to Barl in the Clanhold. Fight will be insanely harder ?

[Wall Of Terror]

In my game, Kevan had the chance to flee and go to Lucretia, as the party did not found her immediately. In the book, it says that they flee to the Clanhold at Barl's side.

Is this fight not gonna be hard for them once they are there ? I mean Barl, Lucretia and Kevan also a stone giant ?

Any toughts ?

[Karolina Dean]

My group fought barl with Lucreia and kaven and the bodyguard. I had barl sit there and gloat for a few rounds until pcs got too close and they handled it fine. If you play all of them intelligently though it would be really really hard. It made for a really epic encounter though!

[Latrecis]

Yea it might be tough but not any tougher than what they may have faced at Fort Rannick. I would suggest not fixing them in one location at the Clanhold bur rather move them about to reinforce one area or another. If the players are handily winning a fight in any one of the encounter areas, have them join in after a couple rounds. They can retreat to Barl if plausible but they'll have exhausted some resources, taken some damage, etc. and that encounter will be a bit easier.

I can't help but also observe - the tactics for the creatures in the Clanhold are the most foolish in the entire AP. "The denizens of areas D7–D9 do not join battle here, preferring to face intruders in their lairs where they have stronger advantages." And they can maximize the chance the pc's will win. Barl and the hags would be dramatically more powerful if they fought with the meat shields in D5-6 but no, they let their fighters die so they can confront intruders alone. It's not like they should be surprised. The pc's have retaken Fort Rannick, dealt with the Dam and any number of other things in the region - Barl and his minions should be expecting the pc's to bring the fight to them. At least they should consider the possibility and create a more effective response than "let's sit in our rooms so we can be picked off one by one." <rant off>

[Skeld]

Granted, I have a groups of 6, but I would say it was only mildly harder for my group to fight Barl and Lucretia.

-Skeld

[jahvul]

My group fought that same battle, Barl, Lucrecia, Kevan, Stone giant. Kevan sucks and will be completely steamrolled by any party so forget him anyways. I had lucrecia stay back and use her magic most of the time and then had her dimension door away when she was lower on hitpoints leaving Barl to go back to mokmurians base.

It will be too much fun for me to inculde her in the twin lamia fight in book 4 mwhahaaha.

So yeah just have her flee at half life or something.

[Kalshane]

I had a group of 6 that fought Xanesha (using her pre-AE specs) alongside Barl and his guardian (they killed Lucrecia, but Xanesha escaped the Shadow Clock) and they were on the verge of fleeing before they finally took Barl down and drove Xanesha off.

Of course, the fact that their barbarian borked her save against fear in round one and was out of the fight and the Oracle had been transformed into Hypnotoad didn't help. (They also decided to focus on the stone giant bodyguard first, even though that was the only foe the Oracle could use her limited abilities on. The Oracles's player avoided metagaming and just ribbitted angrily at them for the poor tactics, but they didn't get it. :) )