Rappan Athuk, a big battle ahead. Wish us luck (Spoilers)

[Gevaudan]

It's been a while since I posted about the darkness monsters that my party was trying to bypass after the Gut in what we thought was Rappan Athuk.

Long story short: my 5th level party is about to try to take on Saracek, the darkness monsters and possibly a Babau all at the same time. Wish us luck!

To get to this point, we left through the Gut, sold some loot, and entered through the front door of RA. After dealing with some traps and a horrid poop mimic, we discovered that Saracek's floor is only a couple down from the surface. We only know of a couple of other ways into the complex and they all seem worse, so the party has voted to take on the BBEG.

For those who forgot how we ended up here or know about Saracek:

After fighting Marthek and lugging him back to town for a rescue, our party engaged some creatures in impenetrable darkness on the same level. We built a giant wooden barricade on rails and used it to press the darkness creatures back while we flailed at hitting them. During this escapade, one of the monsters went and got Saracek, who along with a babau, came to visit invisibly.

There was a flurry of party butchery, desperate spells and knowledge checks, mainly punctuated by failed fear saves. We fled, recovered and the scared players voted to enter the main door of RA.

We have a clean read on the Babau, a good idea that Saracek is both a skeleton warrior and an anti-paladin of 10ish level and suspect that the darkness monsters are Black Skeletons.

[Gevaudan]

Geeze, that didn't go well at all.

Lowlights:
1.) So Saracek can lend his unholy smite to allies. Wow. Bye Bye paladin.
2.) The Babau can cast Dispel Magic at will. Bye Bye, magic improved light source.
3.) Saracek crits VERY hard. 74 points against a CN Barbarian. Bye Bye, Barbarian.

Highlights:
1.) Level 6 Druid wildshape into earth elemental, with Master Summoner earth elemental guides. Hello, PC corpse recovery.
2.) The more times we get beat by Saracek, the better I feel like we know how he can beat us. *shakes fist of vengance*

[brvheart]

Giving him a Babau also makes him REALLY tough. DM must have thought it was needed for balance. Me, I would just give him his armor back from 3.5.

[MMCCOO171]

Lol, I remember Saracek. I play a 10th level paladin in our party, and my holy longsword combined with smite evil, and our slayer and zen archer focus-firing him down was just to much for the old bag of bones. If he had confirmed a crit on me though, I think I would have died. Our party was around level 9 at the time, and i think I was the only one who was level 10. We only had to fight him though, and he was in a tomb by himself, with two locked doors we had to get through.

[Jader7777]

Rappan is suicide to rush the bosses. You basically want to get every sort of edge and advantage, don't be afraid to run and regroup before taking on some of the nasties. Remember that some of the encounters and locations are secretly not supposed to be attempted until higher level- which is usually discovered after a few PCs die. That said, if you stall for too long there are some other things that can show up to ruin your day.

And yeah, try to get as many 'crit negating' abilities as possible, the longer you can draw out a fight the longer you can deliberate how far you will run away. Iron Skin is an amazing ace up the sleeve in some fights.

But don't be too down about dying in Rappan, it is the nature of the beast to kill PCs.

[Skeeter Green]

Good Luck in all your future endeavors lol