We're going to TPK tonight, probably.
I'm part of a group of (mainly) newbie gamers, and we've reached 2nd-level. (Actually a few of us just reached 3rd-level, and the DM allowed us to gain the level immediately, rather than wait for a rest.) We are a cleric 3 (me), bard 3, sorcerer, alchemist (grenadier archetype), and two rangers (one of whom might have a level of rogue). We aren't the sort to share character sheets, and at least two of the players seem to have no real idea what is on their character sheets to begin with.
The bard and alchemist are very well optimized, I'm somewhat optimized and the others aren't. For instance, the "pure" ranger apparently did not take Rapid Shot (and apparently not Two-Weapon Fighting either?) and has a higher Dex than Strength, but doesn't seem to have Weapon Finesse.
As you can see, we are not good at melee. Our bard is our most proficient melee guy, and sometimes the pure ranger too. (My cleric stays back and uses spells. I had wanted to use the air and water domains. The water domain gives lots of icicle beams, but the DM wanted me to use a cleric of Pharasma who gets water but not air, so I don't get to zap things 14 times per day, only 7 times per day.) I'm basically a strangely variant archer with pretty good channeling, but would obviously be outpaced by a ranger with Rapid Shot, which we don't seem to have.
We found out about a group of enemies holding our only food source (long story) and really don't have more time to prepare as they themselves are running low on what should be our food. We have about one day's worth. (Water is no problem, my cleric can now make 6 gallons every six seconds.) There are more of them than us (many more), so the food goes faster as they hold it.
The day before, we captures one of the bad guys. This morning (morning of the day in-game), we charmed and interrogated him. I think the DM made a mistake with some of his answers. He said there were 25 bad guys, but none were spellcasters and only one was any good at combat. They are poorly equipped (eg padded armor) while we have our full equipment. None of them have ranged weapons. 25 1st-level warriors we could handle, and that's what I was thinking when we planned our combat tactics.
The game went over time, so we've only done one round (plus the surprise round). We got the charmed guy to get everyone to gather around him in a clump (surprise!) and while our grenadier threw a grenade, everyone who has good ranged attacks tossed alchemist's fire. This was disappointing. Our alchemist does maybe 7 splash damage alone,* but even the target directly hit by the bomb did not die. Each enemy seems to have 15-16 hit points. These are probably 3rd-level warriors or 2nd-level fighters.
Our alchemist has some kind of "frost bomb" that should at least slow down the attackers, while our sorcerer has Burning Hands, but there's still 21 bad guys left, mostly uninjured, and we only have so many arrows, that can be fired once per round at most each, so I think we're going to lose, badly. Now I'm thinking of just doing a fighting retreat. Our only potential backup are some low-level warriors with padded armor (probably not enjoying 15 hit points apiece) who are far away, probably gnawing on shoe leather that they won't share if we come back empty-handed.
Our bard is played by the most experienced player, and in addition to doing the charming, also played a trick with Silent Image. I'm not entirely sure if this should work, though. We're hiding behind a silent image of a closed door (the charmee went through the open door, but the bad guys think the door is now closed) and firing attacks through said illusion. The bard player believes that the bad guys have to directly interact (eg touch) the door before they realize it's an illusion, but this is a world with magic, and whatever their Will saves are like, arrows and grenades and icicle beams are going through the doors. There's also 21 bad guys left alive who would be rolling Will saves, so someone is going to save.
*This is part of the whole "not sharing sheets" problem. We have two core books with us, so we at least know the basic capabilities of each character... except the alchemist, who is using the APG. There is no physical copy of the APG at the table. (I hadn't brought a computer with me to the previous game as I only need the core book to run my character.) I thought the alchemist would be dealing full damage in an AoE, with Reflex saves for half. Instead, they're basically throwing super alchemist's fire. Had I known how the bombs worked I would have proposed a piecemeal attack strategy instead.
Plan of retreat is dependent on terrain. If it were forest I would suggest everyone climbing 1 tree and shooting whoever climbed up. It does however sound like you guys are in a building behind a doorway. If that is their only path getting to you guys and they only have melee weapons bottleneck like a boss. 1 guy with a melee weapon(bard probably). You next to him behind cover(the wall) firing around the corner or healing when necessary. Sorcerer directly behind him using burning hands from the square directly above the melee. Everyone else throwing ranged damage out at the people behind the enemy in the front
IE:
Bad Guys
_____ _____
CB
S
A R
C= cleric
B = bard
S = sorcerer
A = alchemist
R = ranger
Running is a terrible idea in most situations. Most everything has 30ft move speed meaning once the fight breaks out it is impossible to get away without preparation beforehand(caltrops, beartraps, etc) or a superior form of movement(flight, burrow, etc all unlikely at lv3). If forced to someone pick up the alchemist and everyone double moves. The alchemist then throws his ice bombs at the front of the bad guy pack. This effectively pushes the bad guy pack back a half move as the people behind them who aren't slowed overtake the bombed people
He is right about the illusion by RAW however I have never seen a dm who uses that ruling. I guess you could justify this by being in a magical world. Do the enemy know that you can't fire arrows through a door? Phase arrows are a thing
Alchemists are primarily utility based characters with reasonable single target damage and a little aoe. Their main ability bomb has ok damage but is best when applying aoe debuffs. They have limited healing and buffing ability, a good range of skills, and massive bonuses to crafting alchemy items which provide another(but expensive) layer of utility. They have a huge variety of potential builds so that's just the general idea behind them
I don't know what your GM is like but if it was me and my players had attacked a much more powerful force because I had told them the wrong thing I would do something to fix it. Let you take back the attack or somehow arrange for things to work out OK.
Try talking to them, politely.
If that does not work [and I somehow think it won't] a fighting retreat seems indicated.
Bolting and using some kind of illusion to misdirect.
The campaign seems chaotic. Newbies not knowing what they are doing, no full rules, communication problems with the GM and between players. Maybe you can add that to your appeal for GM correction, or mercy. Then try to sort it out so its more fun.
If I was GM I would let the players who knew what they were doing help redesign the characters of those that did not. If they want it.
Kimera757 wrote: Our bard is played by the most experienced player, and in addition to doing the charming, also played a trick with Silent Image. I'm not entirely sure if this should work, though. We're hiding behind a silent image of a closed door (the charmee went through the open door, but the bad guys think the door is now closed) and firing attacks through said illusion. The bard player believes that the bad guys have to directly interact (eg touch) the door before they realize it's an illusion, but this is a world with magic, and whatever their Will saves are like, arrows and grenades and icicle beams are going through the doors. There's also 21 bad guys left alive who would be rolling Will saves, so someone is going to save. Unfortunately, the 21 bad guys don't even need to make a will save against the Silent Image.
Saving Throws and Illusions (Disbelief) wrote: Creatures encountering an illusion usually do not receive saving throws to recognize it as illusory until they study it carefully or interact with it in some fashion.
A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false, but a figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline.
A failed saving throw indicates that a character fails to notice something is amiss. A character faced with proof that an illusion isn't real needs no saving throw. If any viewer successfully disbelieves an illusion and communicates this fact to others, each such viewer gains a saving throw with a +4 bonus.
So with the door down, I'd bottleneck in place of a better plan*. But that would only work if the bad guys are played as fools who wait in line to die. You'd want another solution fast before the enemy has a chance to act, so I guess frost-bomb-run after taking out a few is as good as a plan as any.
*Remember that the enemies should have cover against everything you throw at them if you fight over the frontliner.
Chillel wrote: I don't know what your GM is like but if it was me and my players had attacked a much more powerful force because I had told them the wrong thing I would do something to fix it. Let you take back the attack or somehow arrange for things to work out OK. The battle ended right as we discovered their hit point total, so I haven't had the time to talk to the DM about this yet, actually.
Quote: The campaign seems chaotic. Newbies not knowing what they are doing, no full rules, communication problems with the GM and between players. Maybe you can add that to your appeal for GM correction, or mercy. Then try to sort it out so its more fun. I think I need to turn myself into a sheet-checker, yes. Also talking to the DM. The issues didn't actually cause a problem until now, even when we faced some hard opponents while unequipped.
Dastis wrote: It does however sound like you guys are in a building behind a doorway. If that is their only path getting to you guys and they only have melee weapons bottleneck like a boss. 1 guy with a melee weapon(bard probably). You next to him behind cover(the wall) firing around the corner or healing when necessary. Sorcerer directly behind him using burning hands from the square directly above the melee. Everyone else throwing ranged damage out at the people behind the enemy in the front
IE:
Bad Guys
_____ _____
CB
S
A R
C= cleric
B = bard
S = sorcerer
A = alchemist
R = ranger
I like this idea, except the cleric would have to switch with one of the rangers (the "pure" one) since that ranger has Strength 14 and the cleric has Strength 10. I can area channel for 2d6 now and can actually be exactly 30 feet behind whoever is in front to avoid healing the bad guys too.
Quote: Alchemists are primarily utility based characters with reasonable single target damage and a little aoe. Their main ability bomb has ok damage but is best when applying aoe debuffs. They have limited healing and buffing ability, a good range of skills, and massive bonuses to crafting alchemy items which provide another(but expensive) layer of utility. They have a huge variety of potential builds so that's just the general idea behind them I knew the general idea behind alchemists. I was once in a campaign where we had three alchemists (all multiclassed) as the mutagen was ridiculous since it stacked with everything (for instance, rage bonuses). Despite being pretty experienced our alchemist never uses his mutagen. Maybe they gave that up to be a grenadier? I printed the relevant alchemist/grenadier pages and I'm putting that in my "character" folder.
Here's a couple of points to consider when next faced with such a situation.
First, find yourselves a good defensible position away from your bolt-hole.
Second, prepare the battlefield. Craft (Trapmaking) can be used untrained. Anyone can dig a pit trap and place sharp stakes in the bottom.
Third, if the party has to retreat, do not let everyone run in the same direction.
Lastly, why is the Ranger not making Survival checks to forage food?
I've spent three years in the Army Infantry many years ago. I hope my advice helps you next time this happens.
John Napier 698 wrote: Lastly, why is the Ranger not making Survival checks to forage food? We're (sort of) trapped in a dimension where the entire outdoors seems to be filled with literal acid rain. I wonder if we could forage indoors? Even so, that wouldn't be enough to keep the civilians alive, only some of ourselves.
I see. Well, that puts an especially brutal spin on things. Is there any possibility of growing food in a glass greenhouse? Glass is resistant to all acids but Hydroflouric.
So, even if you beat these guys, you'll run out of food pretty soon?
Mushrooms could be grown indoors. Just keep the growing area dark and moist. If you can get limestone, powder it to reduce the acidity of the soil, to make it fit for whatever you want to grow.
May I suggest ask the GM are there anything you can use in your surrounding you can use to create cover, slow the enemies down, or top them from approaching. Back when our group had APL 7. we fought a CR11 battle with one man short right after a CR7 battle and had our own individual encounter beforehand. We still won because our group had much better teamwork and tactics than we have now. So talk with your team, talk with your GM and see how you guys can overcome this. When you get to higher level, teamwork and tactics become harder and harder to come by as many spellcasters get crazy powerful spells and drunk in power as players.
If you are really at risk of TPK and want to retreat, the Withdraw action is a thing.
Withdraw
Withdrawing from melee combat is a full-round action. When you withdraw, you can move up to double your speed. The square you start out in is not considered threatened by any opponent you can see, and therefore visible enemies do not get attacks of opportunity against you when you move from that square. Invisible enemies still get attacks of opportunity against you
If, during the process of withdrawing, you move out of a threatened square (other than the one you started in), enemies get attacks of opportunity as normal.
So, withdraw as a double-move in one round, and then run at quadruple or triple move (depending on armor/encumbrance).
Wonderstell wrote:
Unfortunately, the 21 bad guys don't even need to make a will save against the Silent Image.
This is not necessarily correct; what counts a proof that an illusion is real is a grey area and is thus GM dependent. personally I would give them a save each round they shot at the door, although in this particular situation where I had messed up and given them faulty info, I might be even more generous about when the bad guys get to make saves.
Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
turn to cannabalism and turn on each other.
If you assume that the GM was accurate in his answers, it could be that there are 24 1st level warriors and one higher level fighter - say level 3 or 4, maybe higher. It may be that the alchemist randomly hit the boss character which is why hew didn't die. You have also indicated that in the surprise round and 1st round of combat that 4 of the bad guys were killed, were the rest as tough?
Assuming the GM does not auto-fight to the death, then you are probably looking to break the morale of your enemy so they flee rather than kill all the enemy. You may want to ask the GM what their morale looks like to prompt him to think about it.
If the GM takes morale into account then you may want to target the leader first as this will seriously impact the morale of the rest. You may also want an illusion of reinforcements approaching to make your enemy think they do not outnumber you.
Otherwise your main priority is to reduce the number of opponents as quickly as possible. You have to assume that the starting hit points of the 24 warriors are similar so kill the injured first. Then kill those with the most dangerous weapons - better to face a club than a longsword.
You have missile weapons and your enemy does not so you would want to avoid melee for as long as possible, even if the attrition rate is low. One less enemy to face in melee could make all the difference. As has already been mentioned by others if melee is unavoidable then you want a bottleneck so they can't bring their superior numbers to bear. Use the terrain and battlefield control techniques such as starting fires or illusions of obstacles to augment the terrain in your favour. If you can lay out booby traps to do both even better. Flasks of oil, set to go up with burning hands or spark being one example.
Working on the assumption that you have killed the leader and can kill 3 per round before melee then if you can hold them off for 3 rounds then you will have reduced the 21 down to 12. I.e. killed over half of the group and the leader and suffered no damage in return. In my campaign that would normally be more than sufficient to cause a rout amongst untrained troops.
If you knew the answer would your character know and could you tell the others???
well - the problem is you are asking to metagame the answer. Probably your cleric and bard and what not are not very good at tactics and will have to muddle through.
So ask your Ranger to ask your GM what kind of knowledge skill he needs to figure a way out so you can survive.
In reality the CR of the challenge is way too high. 20+ 3rd level fighter types vs 5 2nd level PCs? hmmm... that's CR7 and a tough fight should be CR5.
All sound tactics as well.
We played last night, and had a new player (so seven vs 21 surviving cultists). We ended up winning, but the situation was even worse than reported. Apparently the charmee took the words "know how to fight" literally in their mind, and didn't report that the opponents were rogues. They were 2nd-level, so they had Evasion.
So Burning Hands and bombs didn't really do anything. The illusion trick mostly worked, but after a couple of rounds the rogues backed off and some of us came out to chase them. This got our new paladin almost killed by sneak attacks, and our alchemist got beaten unconscious and dragged up the stairs. I had to make a quick decision about who to heal. I rushed up to the paladin and used Cure Light Wounds, then had to remain to clear up the rest of the rogues with Spiritual Weapon spells.
Eventually we charged up the stairs, prompting yet another encounter. I managed to heal the alchemist with a Channel (probably healing the two rogues who kidnapped him, but oh well) right at the start of the second phase of the encounter. Fortunately rogues can't flank in tight stairwells, so it was just a slow push up the stairs. There was a named character here, who took a long time to kill.
At the end of this I sued my last channel (I have six due to Extra Channel) and all of our spellcasters were completely out of spells. Then we found the food. There wasn't much, is guarded by a haunt that I can't kill with a channel, and there's two guards, which shouldn't be an issue except half the party is tapped out.
The rogue's poor equipment did hurt them. They were using crowbars, which can't be finessed, so they were probably taking a -2 penalty to hit that they otherwise shouldn't have. (Their touch AC was 14, total AC 15, padded armor, so they likely had Dex 18 and maybe Strength 14 as they did +2 damage.) Furthermore the DM apparently didn't know about the Acrobatics skill, so there was no tumbling. Maneuvering to sneak attack occurred, but it's slow walking patterns that avoid attacks of opportunity. In effect, we weren't really facing 25 CR1 opponents, as they were pathetic attackers. (I had written the first post before any of the cultists had made any attacks.)
To answer some other questions, there was no leader in the first encounter. They all had the same hit points. I'm not sure how 2nd-level rogues get 16 hit points apiece but they forgot to finesse clubs so I won't complain about that. They were cultists and so fought to the death. I "killed" one who was at 0 hit points by just walking past him. He swung, missed, and fell into the negatives. The DM liked keeping the 0 hit point guys around since he knew I wouldn't dare channel when they would be healed as well.
In the second there was a leader but killing her didn't break morale. We spent several rounds beating the last group down after her death. However, in the next room (we haven't actually fought them yet) along with the haunt there's four cultists, but only two are combatants. The non-combatants threw their hands up but we'll probably have to push the combatants against walls and slowly beat them to death.
Wow! You're really earning that XP. What's the Opponent/ Party CR ratio?
Each cultist was worth 400 XP (as a CR1 creature), so with 7 PCs 1428 XP each.
So, somewhere around 10,000 XP total. Any ideas as to how the party will get out of the pocket dimension?
John Napier 698 wrote: So, somewhere around 10,000 XP total. Any ideas as to how the party will get out of the pocket dimension? Nope. The session ended before we could actually get the food. Presumably once we take the food to the supporters they'll give us some ideas. We already know one person we could kidnap and interrogate for info, but we're out of spells and many of the martial characters aren't at full hit points, so I think we'll deal with that the next in-game day.
I understand. Most pocket dimensions have an "anchor portal" used to connect the "PD" to the Prime. The portal should radiate magic strongly.
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