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Is there a communal mind blank spell?
In 3.5, I played in a group with many paranoid epic and/or nigh epic campaigns, and everyone got mind blank items as soon as possible.
I wasn't as paranoid and not as used to very high level campaigns, so my druid got his name wrote in the dead book but quick. My replacement character, an epic level warlock, got an auto-mind blank ability, which was nice.
It does. http://www.archivesofnethys.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Mind%20Blank,%20 Communal
Unfortunately my party was a bit too effective so we were hold back a level throughout the most of the adventure path. So we never got access to level 9 spells.
We played it as a 5th Edition conversion, and reached Big K when we were 13th level.
My group almost completely ignored him and smashed the Soul Lens with a Dominant, Adamantine Holy Dwarven Waraxe (plus Power Attack). Hell, Karzoug killed more of them through the Projected Images in the Pinnacle than he did face-to-face. Major anti-climax.
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*dusts off thread*
It took awhile, but I finally managed to get into a RotRl campaign and we killed Karzoug last night. It was super disappointing.
It basically went like this: Party of Magus, Witch, Arcanist, Rogue, Paladin with Svevenka and a Planetar angel tagging along vs. Karzoug, Rune Giant, 2 Storm Giants, Adult Blue Dragon + 2 huge Magma Oozes the GM thought would increase the challenge.
Round 1:
Round 2:
I felt really let down, but the entire campaign was like that. Every fight was over in 1-4 rounds. The witch or the magus probably could have soloed the entire campaign after they hit level 12. We got to the point where we were so sure of winning fights, the GM just skipped a bunch of encounters and said we killed everything. I'm sure a ton of it has to do with our GM's lack of experience (this was his first campaign,) but I can't help but think this campaign would have been a lot more fun if we had been restricted to CRB. Nothing we encountered seemed prepared to deal with the obscene levels of power creep unleashed after this adventure was written.
I know this is an old-ish thread, but it seemed like a good place to vent.
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It's a harsh statement but... that is GM incompetence right there.
Why are Svevenka and a planetar tagging along? Why did the party need that kind of assistance? It's already oversized for the AP (which assumes 4 pc's not 5.)
The magma oozes are useless. This GM doesn't seem to understand CR.
Karzoug is supposed to tailor his actions based on what he knows about the pc's - and he should have multiple fights with them in the Pinnacle via his images to learn all about their tactics. I'm guessing Dimensional Dervish is a common tactic for the magus - Karzoug should have done something to stop it. Examples would include dimensional lock, being inside a prismatic sphere, etc. Also of note: he's a transmuter - he should be in a form immune to critical hits. Example: fiery body.
And how can you hand wave entire encounters? That's the only way you as a GM are going to get better - actually trying to defeat the pc's with the NPC's at hand - or added to toughen up the encounter.
I'm not sure blaming post-CRB content is the problem. High level CRB classes kick all kinds of butt too. If the GM doesn't know how to cope/respond, the specific classes in question don't matter all that much.
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I'm not putting all the blame on post-CRB stuff. I know the GM wasn't knowledgeable enough or invested enough to tweak the encounters to match our abilities. I also know he either didn't read through all of the encounter conditions or abilities of the monsters. As an example, he decided it would be a great idea for one of the images of Karzoug to cast Mind Blank on the Magus because he assumed it was an offensive spell. When I told him what the spell did, he shrugged it off and let the call stand.
I also get that the GM didn't know the abilities of our party well enough to counter them...even after we pretty much telegraphed every move over dozens of fights. Clearly, his lack of preparation and skill had a huge impact on the campaign.
I know the writers couldn't have known what classes, abilities, etc. were going to be around several years later, and I'm not disappointed in the adventure as written. I also don't have a problem with new options for characters. It's just that it's kind of like playing Skyrim with mods. Sure, there are ways to make an immortal, invincible Dragonborn in vanilla Skyrim, but mods give you the option to make your character even more powerful while your enemies remain locked into the limitations of their programming. Maybe somebody out there has engineered a CRB-only wizard who can solo a competently played final encounter with Karzoug and his buddies, but it's so much easier to make an even more powerful wizard when you can Frankenstein a character together from a dozen new splatbooks that were published after the adventure was released.
I'm not really saying anything that isn't already obvious. I'm just saying that a fundamental flaw of these older adventures is that current character options allow players to so easily circumvent and outclass so many of the challenges that the adventures often need fairly extensive editing to present any sense of danger. A novice GM or even an experienced GM with a busy life may not have time to alter so many stat blocks.
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The Planetar was indeed the bound angel from the tower. It apparently took a liking to the Paladin for reasons that were never revealed. I wasn't at the session where we acquired Svevenka, but I kept asking why she was with us and the GM didn't really have an answer beyond, "The party asked her if she wanted to join them."
The nymph did, maybe, 40 points of damage to Karzoug with her Horrid Wilting spell but, yeah, the magus basically vaporized the runelord in two rounds.
I'm not putting all the blame on post-CRB stuff. I know the GM wasn't knowledgeable enough or invested enough to tweak the encounters to match our abilities. I also know he either didn't read through all of the encounter conditions or abilities of the monsters. As an example, he decided it would be a great idea for one of the images of Karzoug to cast Mind Blank on the Magus because he assumed it was an offensive spell. When I told him what the spell did, he shrugged it off and let the call stand.
I also get that the GM didn't know the abilities of our party well enough to counter them...even after we pretty much telegraphed every move over dozens of fights. Clearly, his lack of preparation and skill had a huge impact on the campaign.
I know the writers couldn't have known what classes, abilities, etc. were going to be around several years later, and I'm not disappointed in the adventure as written. I also don't have a problem with new options for characters. It's just that it's kind of like playing Skyrim with mods. Sure, there are ways to make an immortal, invincible Dragonborn in vanilla Skyrim, but mods give you the option to make your character even more powerful while your enemies remain locked into the limitations of their programming. Maybe somebody out there has engineered a CRB-only wizard who can solo a competently played final encounter with Karzoug and his buddies, but it's so much easier to make an even more powerful wizard when you can Frankenstein a character together from a dozen new splatbooks that were published after the adventure was released.
I'm not really saying anything that isn't already obvious. I'm just saying that a fundamental flaw of these older adventures is that current character options allow players to so easily circumvent and outclass so many of the challenges that the adventures often need fairly extensive editing to present any sense of danger. A novice GM or even an experienced GM with a busy life may not have time to alter so many stat blocks.
So the GM was not willing or able to thoroughly read or understand encounters or monster abilities and did not understand how mind blank works and let two CR 16 creatures join an oversized party of players who's system mastery exceeds his own for no clear reason. And the problem is with post CRB class structures? I don't think that word means what you think it means.
The magus didn't solo Karzoug - the hp of damage you report he did is far less than Karzoug's total. Indeed he could only have killed him if Karzoug failed the save vs. the Horrid Wilting (Fort save DC24 which Karzoug could only fail on a 3 or less.) Furthermore, Horrid Wilting isn't on Svevenka's spell list as printed in the AP and I can't find clear evidence it should be on her spell list at all. Who changed her memorized spells? Let me guess: she was controlled by another player who optimized her spells, perhaps illegally.
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Simmer down there, Hot Rod. I'm not saying post-CRB material was at fault for anything. All I mean is I probably would have had more fun had we gone into this campaign with abilities the GM was better prepared to challenge. Trying to keep up with every new class, feat and spell can be pretty difficult for someone with a busy life outside of gaming, and it's going to be harder for someone just getting into the game.
I love a lot of the stuff that came out after the Core Rules. I'm not knocking it in any way. All I'm saying is NASA doesn't hand the keys to the space shuttle* to a 10-year-old on her second day at Space Camp.
Anyway, Horrid Wilting actually, technically, is on Svevnka's spell list. It's the level 8 Ice Domain spell. I looked up her stats and saw that she has the Ice domain and access to 8th level spells so, while it isn't listed as prepared, it seems she could have it if the GM gives it to her. With 316 pts from the magus + ~40 pts from Horrid Wilting, that's almost enough to drop Karzoug. I'm thinking the Planetar must have done something that actually hurt Karzoug for another 30+ damage and I just don't remember what it used.
* I'm fully aware the space shuttle doesn't have keys. Obviously, psychic whales trained at the Naval War College launch it with pixie dust, happy thoughts and the miraculous power of prayer.
