How to run Helskarg's fight?


Iron Gods

Sovereign Court

Hi everyone,

In a few days my group is going to attempt the stage fight with Helskarg.
I like the fact that vehicule combat is a thing as it has the potential to mess up a bit with the usual combat strategies. I love the image of the very mobile opponent (but with poor manoeuvrability) that is taking periodic shots with his grappel when not overrunning people.

However, after looking into the Vehicules's combat rules, I have the following issues:

1) The ogres are intelligent creatures, and so they increase the driving DC, making it a 40 in combat, so Helskarg cannot actually use the charriot.

2) Even ignoring point 1 (maybe by saying as the ogres are accustomed to this task), it's a DC20 check, with a +10 bonus. This means Helskarg succeeds half of the time. If so, he can make the charriot accelerate 15ft. Otherwise, being muscle-powered, it descelerate 15ft. Hence it seems the charriot will not move a lot...

3) The overrun suggested action simply does not work on medium PC, since the vehicule is only large and Helskarg does not have improved overrun. The character can simply choose to "let the charriot pass", no dice rolled and everything is fine.

4) I'm not sure how the autograpnel is supposed to work. It is a +16 CMB manoeuver, but what happens if it succeeds? Is the creature pulled the whole way? 20ft? less to account for the weight (this woud make it very useless)? Also, this is not very consistent with the max 100lb for objects.

Looking for advices on how other people ran this encounter.

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32

I spent a lot of time thinking about this encounter. And when I ran it last month, it was very anticlimactic. In that it was over really really fast.

addressing your points:
1. I didn't even use any of the driving rules. Don't let adherence to the driving rules spoil what should be a cool scene.

2. True, the speed of the chariot will be slow at first, and depending on the relative starting positions (in a 400-foot diameter arena), a ranged PC could easily take out one of the ogres before it even gets within 100 feet of the pcs. I just gave the chariot a speed of 30, and ignored the other rules.

3. The chariot in my game never had a chance to overrun anyone. As soon as it ended its turn within charging distance, the chariot was irrelevant as an Ogre was promptly killed. (I ruled that the chariot spun out of control a bit and tipped on its side, giving Helskarg some cover.)

4. It is unclear how it works. If you search the general message-boards for 'autograpnel" you'll see a couple threads asking for clarification. Had i actually hit anyone with the thing, i was going to have it pull them the full distance (or at least gauge how difficult the battle is going so far to make an assessment).

As far as advice for running it:

1. I had there be a couple battle events happen prior to the PCs battle as a warmup for the crowd. The Pcs then saw that there were some hidden pit traps in the arena that I added. So they had to be careful about charging willy-nilly.
2. I had the starting positions be not too far apart, as ranged attacks can derail the chariot before it gets going.
3. Added MW spiked-gauntlets to ogres. Assuming they pull chariot with one hand and have the other free for punching/AOO.
4. Since this encounter is really just the opener before the grueling slog through their base, I came to terms that it's ok if its a cakewalk to defeat it.

Hope it's fun


Since heroes went to the stadium as invited it was part of the show. I made Helskarg make taunting speech to the audience while circling the stadium on the chariot, which made the chariot get to full speed by the time the actual battle started. Obviously if heroes decided to stop Helskarg mid-sentence and start attacking it wouldn't work out, but I kind of knew my group would want to go "by the rules of the show". I just created the situation so they knew "it's not a fight yet, it's part of show for now, it would look bad to attack now."

The battle was pretty easy for them, but it managed to be exciting enough. There was some overruning, the orcs didn't die instantly, autograpnel went into works. It was more RP fight though than rule one, so, for example, autograpnel line almost tripped 2 other people while they were between chariot and grappled person(1 person won reflex saving throw, and another failed and got tripped).

Remember that this battle shouldn't be overly hard. Afterwards the heroes have few quite big fights under stadium, and if they leave for too long the replacement guardians will probably come. You have chainsaw orc, ettin, possibly outer plane creature, and Helion itself could pose a threat(especially if inhibitor facet is not used).

So, in short, just make it into a show. If heroes get hurt/dirty? Fine. If they stomp over Helskarg make the audience react with awe and cheers, or whatever. I mean, the long-standing champion got killed with almost no effort! All those stories about heroes(assuming they have some scrap-worth) were true!

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Adventure Path / Iron Gods / How to run Helskarg's fight? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.