I am enjoying RA a ton.
I feel like RA functions as a difficult dungeon less by "breaking the rules" and more by constantly subdividing party actions and options to reduce effectiveness. This creates many overlapping spaces with very narrow methods for success. All Pathfinder does this, but RA seems very ramped up.
Having seen several encounters now that stack severe disabilities on player output, I was wondering what others thought.
Examples:
1.) Enter combat, DC 20+ will save. All who fail are out of combat and will imminently die. Those who succeed must fight in a tight space with a creature that does high damage and has strong spell resistance and immunity to mental control.
meta: Break party formation, thin party actions, remove spell caster control options.
2.) combat starts with a heightened deeper darkness effect, blinding all party members. enemies are immune and have high + complex DR, fear effects, strength damage and great acrobatics.
Meta: Break party formation, lower action efficiency, eliminate skill checks for ID, cripple all combat options other than AoE spellcasting and single strike DPS.
3.) Fight is in a fully toxic environment, forcing significant rolls again both poison and disease. Primary enemies have complex DR, SR can teleport, go invisible, stack additional debuffs and fly at will. additional enemies are summoned at random rounds in great numbers.
Meta: Break party formation, lower AoE effectiveness, debuff, overwhelm.
4.) BBEG. Has many elemental immunities, High DR, SR, massive fear aura, deadly close AoE, extra deadly melee, can go invisible.
Meta: Break the party formation, hard to harm, requires heavy action output just to manage the battlefield.
Seems like the blind-fight feat is essential. :)
Honestly, in 3.5 that was a feat I never took. This past session someone had it and it's pretty strong in PF. A fighter automatic in my opinion.
I went through Rappan Athuk as a player when it first came out for 3.0.
Even though my paladin perished (R.I.P. Sir Benjamin!), it was a blast to play.
I think perishing is par for the course. Running very very strong characters, we've been on the edge of death constantly and have had our first fatality as well.