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I played a melee character, but I burned through 12 charges of a wand of mage armor. That was fun. And somewhere around 10 or 11 from my cure (inflict) wand for my Dhampir.
Counting myself and the animal companion, there were 5 of us who could benefit from mage armor. We were at tier 1-2, so I thought it best we be as well buffed as possible. Someone elected not to get a casting each time, and we had to re-cast twice. So basically 4 castings three times. I have no idea how that tracks with what the timeline is supposed to be, but it seemed fair given all the running around and the length of the different sections. For all I know, I was supposed to need 5 castings each to cover the full slot time.
Even with all of that, we almost lost two characters and the animal companion to crits from a hand axe.
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I played a level 4 Arcanist in Assault on Absalom and...
...I said “you guys got this” several times as I delayed and looked at my dwindling spell slots.
...I thought to myself “man, am I glad I just leveled up!” several times.
...I used my final spell slot - and my final reservoir point - in the final fight. It was not the killing blow.
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What level did you play it on?
I played a fullcaster and had A LOT of spells left (all but two of my highest level slots and more than 50% of every other level).
lvl 4 Psychic; had lots of mind-effecting too... It was made worse that this character does not carry a weapon (hence picking up a longspear).
"Does the bull grow fangs to fight off the wolf? No he uses his horns. Warriors carry the tools of warriors, I'm a elder and my voice is my hammer."
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...The GM let me loot a longspear from a dead soldier, so I could contribute in some way.
...I used 15 charges off a wand of true strike.Did you play a caster in 9-00? What happened?
We got a lot of mileage out of that wand! I don't think I've ever come close to using so many charges off of a non-healing wand in a single scenario. My magus was out of spells pretty quickly too.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I played it with a level 11 wizard with 28 Intelligence so I had quite a few spell slots. By not overextending myself I had most of my L5-6 spells left for the final act, but I needed all of them there. Our DPS people had stone cold dice.
I was actually rather surprised and a bit annoyed - many recent specials have more generous resource recharge. Even the ones that happened in a single day often had a contrivance to allow some recharging (Stonelords, Sky Key Solution, Cosmic Captive).
I really liked the more generous recharging regime of Solstice Scar; more normal-length adventuring days means you can bust out more of your big guns per encounter, and so get to actually do more of the encounters in the scenario. If you're slowing down because you have to hold back, and then get the dreaded "high tier tables are always being slow in Specials" / "you ran out of time for this encounter, again", well, that's a bummer.
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At the same time though, if characters hold *back* then they aren't Cooperating fully with their team-mates, who may be devoting more resources to a given encounter.
I played a barbarian in this alongside TOZ's. It got really... dicey... there at the end. Was beginning to wonder if he'd finally qualify for Risen Guard...
Venture-Captain, Germany—Rhein Main South
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Well I played my life Oracle and most of the time I used 1 spell for an encounter -> except the final one where we needed multiple BOLs to save our rogue.
I Think a caster should "know" in a multitable when an encounter is solved -> and then leave the rest to the martials (only possible if you have enough of them)
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I had to get creative with my spell slots toward the end, but it's something you get used to with Specials - you aren't going into a 4-encounter-with-a-rest-in-the-middle-and-one-is-social-anyway scenario.
Not having a weapon at all is a great thematic choice, but at the same time, you should have something to do when a golem shows up, or lots and lots of mooks, or anti-magic.
Pick up scrolls (5 for 2pp of Level 2s) and Wands from chronicles - every little thing helps. Even a single Magic Missile (or Mind Thrust) off a wand is better than doing nothing or even worse, becoming a liability in melee.
At the same time, I find it perfectly reasonable as a caster to sometimes start off combat with a simple buff (Bless off a wand, Prayer off a scroll) then hang back and see how things go. You don't have to take an action each round and delaying for if things go sideways is perfectly reasonable if you're managing limited spell slots.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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In my experience, a high-level bard with the Banner of the Ancient Kings and a few martial characters makes normal adventures trivial; so it's no wonder you don't exhaust the casters.
I think that says more about bards than about whether the long Special format is a reasonable fit for casters.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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I've found that maxed out Bards make encounters almost trivial. Yeah, as cool as it is to buff out your team, there's just no challenge in it. Both for the party as a whole, and for yourself. Every combat's the same. Pop Haste in the first round, then let the melee do the rest. There's almost no choice involved anymore.
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That aside, yeah, this special is a bit hard on the resources. I played it with Lau at tier 10-11, I ended up mostly empty, but that's all due to my Hexes. In general though, if you're worried about spell slots, I find it easier to just jump in when needed. Usually the frontline has things covered, and the casters are usually there to grease the wheels. You don't need to sling a spell every turn if the battle's already going in your favour, IMHO. Also, don't use a higher-level spell when a lower-level one will do. Especially for casters, it's a resource management game. Don't use a Burst of Radiance when a Burning Hands will suffice.
That said, I think tiers 1-2 and 3-4 are the hardest on casters for specials. You just don't have enough spells to get through it comfortably, and they usually don't really have backup options. If a Wizard is out of spells, all he can do is plink away at the enemy with a crossbow.
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Casters can kinda cover their lack of spellcasting stamina with wands and scrolls at lower levels.. other than that everything has already been mentioned.
And yeah bards with the accursed banner do tend to sweep away encounters... not thrilled by it, but players seem to be unwilling to stop.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Thanks for all the comments on spell / resource use in #9-00! If I'll get to write another special, I'll definitely give the PCs a chance to rest (or otherwise regain their daily resources). :-)
Actually just dropping a couple of consumables might be enough.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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If you've played or run 'Solstice Scar A' the pacing there seems about right for the first two chapters, imo, the third chapter really starts stretching consumable/daily resources pretty quickly.
Out of all the specials, that one had the best resource/pacing setup I've seen so far. I think partly because it stayed close to the CRB model of a typical adventuring day.
However, I did notice that its difficulty was very much tied to how mobile the party was. Our party had two people with DimDoor; the other high-tier party had none. That led to a very different experience, especially if enemies were making it hard to close in melee.
Each class has a different nova/marathon balance. Martials tend to be more marathon-oriented, relying on weapons that keep going when spells run out. Theoretically they'd be limited by daily healing, but wands of cure light wounds (and at higher level, lesser restoration) can pretty much break that limit. Pure casters don't really have that luxury (wand CL and DC isn't that brilliant offensively) unless they have a "weapon" like Hexes that is measured in per-enemy uses rather than per-day uses.
Conversely, "nova" classes like magi and fast-bombing alchemists are notoriously unbalanced as NPCs who have only one appointment on their monster adventuring day.
Straining the endurance of casters a bit is fun and exciting. I like the "module" adventure format as a player because it's less predictable how much will happen in a single day so you really have to think before you cast. But in all things there's a balance, and Assault was maybe a bit too taxing.
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Thanks for all the comments on spell / resource use in #9-00! If I'll get to write another special, I'll definitely give the PCs a chance to rest (or otherwise regain their daily resources). :-)
Although the experiences are real, I started this thread as a joke. I enjoyed the scenario.
Running out of resources was entirely my fault. I had become accustomed to recent specials having a rest period or some kind of recovery and used resources faster than I should have. I was also playing a GM credit character, so I failed to buy some of the essentials (low lvl combat wand).
I really like Sebastian's recommendation, a tier appropriate wand in the loot would have made all the difference.
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Everybody can make that error. A couple of times I can get greedy and end up with nothing, or another time I'm forced to spend resources quicker than expected. I can understand the need for an extra stick.
For the nova/marathon paradigm, that's why I played with my swashbuckler 11. I didn't want to permanently pace myself watching my resources.
Lol, I signed up with a swashbuckler! Jumped tiers though to round out tables :(
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Played with my time oracle in tier 3-4. We had three full casters at the table - me, my wife’s cleric of Desna (both level 3), and a level 4 wizard (conjuration), who spammed Create Pit to great effect. My time oracle (haunted curse) is a halfling jinx, focused on debuff spells and knowledge skills (he’s a librarian, and can’t understand why he keeps getting sent on these missions), and the biggest problem he has is most of his abilities and spells require close range or melee touch attacks, and at that point he had a 15’ move speed (which was a much bigger problem in The Solstice Scar the next night). Even so,I think he was tapped out by the end of the evening, although he could still use his jinx.