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So this is mostly a bit of venting and/or ranting, but some insight from GMs who have run this AP is always appreciated.
So our expedition into Fort Rannick has gone horribly wrong. It may be for the best, as the other player and I are both in agreement that we aren’t happy with the way our GM runs things and a TPK might be the best way to end this campaign anyway since the GM is a friend that we have gamed with (he’s usually a player) for decades so we don’t want to upset him too much by just quitting his game.
Originally we were planning on getting in through the tunnels, but the night before we were going in Kaven disappeared and we found tracks going to the fort. We had been a bit suspicious of him and his sihedron tattoo, but his story about just getting it to gamble on Lucrecia’s boat seemed believable enough (we’ve got 2 PCs with high sense motive). With it obvious that he went and betrayed us we radically changed our plans, thinking that they would be ready and waiting for our basement assault. Instead we used invisibility and fly (burning a lot of our spellcasting for the day) to enter the fort from up top. We quickly dispatched the sentries in the tower, but one of them fell to the rampart below when he died (GM fiat) alerting the Ogres down there. We hurried downstairs and jumped another pair of ogres before the group from outside came running in. This is where things got out of hand. Suddenly our 7th level party was in a fight with a few regular ogres, 3 named fighter ogres, the ogre wizard(or sorcerer), and Mammy Graul, who had fled to Fort Rannick when we burned the farm. It seemed out of character to me that the ogres that were guarding the spellcasters would fight defensively too. We were overwhelmed before Lucretia also showed up, and then we lost one of our fighters before we could get out. Our GM then forced the characters player to increase his characters weight (he claimed it was unbelievably low) to the point that our other fighter could not carry him in his armor when we fled, so we had to leave him behind.
Our flight was still up, so we retreated to the giant eagle aerie to get away. There, with nearly zero resources left for the day, we had to fight a trio of Annis hags. We managed to just barely scrape by that fight with a random 5th level fighter joining in (replacement character for the guy who lost the fighter)
We rested up, and with wands were able to heal up enough to try for a body recovery the next day. We did some recon and found a lot of ogres on the second floor where we had fought the day before, but couldn’t get through such a big group of them to find the body of our comrade, so we tried to create a diversion, with an attack outside while our invisible ranger/fighter waited for a chance to reclaim the body and then flee. Instead of ogres rushing to fight us again this time though all we ended up accomplishing was getting even more ogres congregating where we suspected our companions body to be. At least we were able to slaughter several ogres on the ground floor.
We had done pretty well on the bottom floor though and wanted to push for our friends body, so we assaulted the group upstairs again. Almost immediately we had Mammy Graul dimension dooring out behind our group with a heavy hitting ogre and another ogre attacking us from the hall while Lucrecia hurled spells at us.
We managed to kill most of the ogres, but Mammy, Lucretia, and an unknown number of ogres remain. Our Cleric is down, the replacement fighter is 2HP from bleeding out. Mammy just dragged the unconscious cleric inside for who knows what purpose. Shalelu and Jakardros just showed up to help us out, but I don’t think anyone can take a full round against Lucretia (she’s getting high 30s-low 40s on all hit rolls so far) so I doubt that she will miss with any iterative attack. We have hurt her a bit (probably 40ish damage) but she doesn’t seem badly hurt. We were basicly deciding on fleeing now, or trying to take out Lucretia before we escape when we called the session last night, or just going death or glory (I am kinda hoping for death already as I mentioned above at this point, but I might be a bit too hot about this right now to make a good decision)
I guess I’m looking for perspective on this. Does this all seem in line with how Fort Rannick is supposed to work? Is our GM being unreasonable on how he’s running things? Are we just playing terribly that we can’t get through this? Am I just being an unreasonable player thinking that there should be some chance of success? Should we just tell our GM that we are done with this BS campaign, or go for the kill and/or our deaths?
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It's been swingy with encounters. We've trounced a few, and barely scraped by some (xanesha almost TPKed us). I was really content with giving our GM the benefit of the doubt on that sort of thing until this point, even after our disastrous first entry into Rannick. With our second attempt and our inability to get any enemies to go in investigate things so we might recover the body of our main front line fighter I'm having trouble maintaining faith that it's just inexperienced GMing and overcompensating.
I should note that we had Vale, Jakardros and Shalelu with us on our first venture into the fort, but Vale also died in that fight and the two archers did almost nothing in that fight so I have low expectations on what they can do for us now.
Our (dead) fighter and fighter/ranger are built a bit around teamwork with paired opportunists too so our ability to function has been curtailed with the loss of one of them. Not that I expect the GM to go totally soft on us, but making it impossible for us to recover the dead ally so we can raise him is pretty frustrating.
I will agree with what Kalshane said. I am curious, how big of a party do you have?
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I'll agree with Kalshane, also. A few things stand out to me:
- don't know why the Hags would be at the aerie - that's not per AP.
- how I read your description is your GM has changed the default tactics of the NPC's to be more cohesive and effective than the as-provided tactics in the AP. This increases the challenge level. Notably, Lucretia regularly joining in with the ogres is not a feature of the AP write-up.
- Vale and Shalelu (as stat'd in the AP) may not be highly effective against the leader NPC's but fine against the regular ogres. Jakardros however should be on par with the pc's and his ranged attacks and favored enemy of giant should make him deadly to all the ogres. Who is "running" the Black Arrows? Vale and Jakardros should be unrelenting in wanting to re-take Rannick as described in the AP. And hunt Kaven down.
- those attack rolls for Lucretia seem "high" given her AP stats
- the fighter weight issue also seems odd - was the fighter's weight outside the range for a character of his race and gender? If not, why challenge it when (I suspect) it's been in place for the entire campaign?
- Mammy, per written tactics, does not retreat to Rannick. Though if the pc's killed all of her offspring, it's not entirely inconceivable she would seek out the ogres at Rannick looking for a chance for revenge.
- Xanesha is a TPK machine so that item is not a surprise.
Your GM appears to be ratcheting up the difficulty level and taking a particularly hard line. It's not clear why he would take that path. Perhaps, as suggested by Kalshane, he is responding to perceptions of encounters being too easy. Ideally, in such a situation, the GM would discuss that with players...
On the GM's side, attacking any armed installation (Fort Rannick in this case) runs the risk of alerting any or all occupying forces at any moment depending on how the PCs go about this, the defending forces tactics, etc. There is also plain old bad luck, dice rolling or otherwise. This just needs to always be considered before you guys do anything rash.
That said,I don't know how large your party is, what point build etc. I also don't know what your DM's playstyle is like either. According to your OP, the DM seems a little heavy handed.
Based on
It's been swingy with encounters. We've trounced a few, and barely scraped by some (xanesha almost TPKed us).
It seems that encounters have been more or less balanced, in this case the GM seems heavy handed, IMHO (again going by just your side of the story).
Without giving away too much, there are several ways/tactics into the fort that your GM knows about. You guys hit the two best options in, and your wanting to use a diversion or two should help getting in. Seems your GM wasn't having it for whatever reason. As a long time GM, I love seeing players come up with plans and executing it despite how crazy some of these plans get.BTW,
I agree with Kalshane on the Hags and Mammy, as well as the overcompensation thing. Mammy should not be here if run by the book and the Hags wouldn't be here. However, Rule 0 has always been do what you want, so GMs are always free to change things up, YMMV. Additionally if your group has been beating most encounters very handily, your GM might just be trying to up the challenge level and getting carried away, either by inexperience or just that GMs playstyle. Remember having three NPCs helping requires some overcompensation (again imho).
Overall, based on your post, I get that some of your players might already be soured by the campaign or your GMs way of running it. This is the big issue here.
It's a great campaign, but are you guys to far into the negative feelings with your current GM at the helm to continue? With your OP it would be hard to imagine your GM not picking up on the negative vibe by now as well.
Sometimes these things work out when both parties talk about these issues. The tone suggests this might have been coming to a head for awhile now though. In the end, the game should be fun, that's the whole purpose. If it's not, then do what you think would make it fun again.
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Thanks for he advice so far. The other player and I have been discussing the situation and it looks like we are going to push on for now and see how it goes.
To answer some of the questions asked,
Our party has 4 characters. 7th level generalist wizard, 7th level cleric of Asmodeus, 7th (possibly just hit 8th) fighter, and a 5th fighter/ 2nd trapper ranger.
The GM has been running the Black Arrows rangers. We don't have any idea what their abilities are like, but they have been horribly ineffective from my observation so far.
The dead fighter originally weighed somewhere in the 180s range of weight. When my fighter was able to carry him the GM insisted that the other player increase his weight by about 40 pounds, that put him over my maximum carry weight.
You didn't provide the race (or gender) of the fighter. If he is human, 180 sounds like a reasonable weight without gear - add armor, etc. and another 40 pounds might even be on the low end.
It appears you and your fellow player already control multiple pc's - perhaps you could suggest to the GM that one of you run the surviving Black Arrows. It could be the GM is not able to manage them as effectively given everything else he is doing. He may not have wanted to do that given the mystery around Kaven but that cat appears to be out of the bag.
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Yeah, human male. 180ish pounds without gear before the GM alteration, plus nearly 100 pounds gear. Him and his gear (plus my gear) was just within my characters maximum heavy encumberance without the extra 40 pounds, it was after we checked and I said I could carry him that the GM insisted that he increase the character weight
From talking to the other player it sounds like the GM might have something up his sleeve with that characters body since he was told he may have to play a couple levels with a fill in character before we can get him back.
And you are correct, we each play 2 characters in this campaign (just the way our group runs it with only 3 people involved) and have done so for over a decade.
we each play 2 characters in this campaign (just the way our group runs it with only 3 people involved) and have done so for over a decade.
My group toward the end was similar. Our group was four in total with me playing a DMPC as needed (I always played what was lacking, usually a healer class). My original group iof 20+ years is gone now due to RL (marriage, moves, etc). It's been a few years now but I'm in the process of planning a weekend getaway 2x per year with my old Warcraft guildies (we've all met a few times in RL now and have become quite close) which will be all Pathfinder. I'm still deciding between RotR, Carrion Crown, and Kingmaker.
I'm glad your long time group is continuing. Best of luck. :)
I agree with Kalshane and the others. (I'm currently running two different groups through RotR.)
A few thoughts ...
Re-taking Fort Rannick is supposed to be a gruelling task, one which takes a couple of character levels (and requires the help of Jakardos, Vale, and Shalelu). Out of curiosity, is your GM using the advancement track or going by actual monster/story xp earned? Barring other information, by my estimate your group should be character level 8 by now.
It really would help to have Jakardos (and to a lesser extent Shalelu) run by the players instead of by a GM who has to run every foe in the fort as well. One of my players dubbed Jakardos "Machine-Gun Kelly".
Tactics-wise, does at least one party spellcaster have access to Fireball? Ogres aren't exactly known for their fabulous Reflex saves. Then Jakardos can mop up those who survived.
Yeah, human male. 180ish pounds without gear before the GM alteration, plus nearly 100 pounds gear. Him and his gear (plus my gear) was just within my characters maximum heavy encumberance without the extra 40 pounds, it was after we checked and I said I could carry him that the GM insisted that he increase the character weight
From talking to the other player it sounds like the GM might have something up his sleeve with that characters body since he was told he may have to play a couple levels with a fill in character before we can get him back.
And you are correct, we each play 2 characters in this campaign (just the way our group runs it with only 3 people involved) and have done so for over a decade.
Hmmm... These are always dicey conversations. We don't have the GM's version of the story, for one thing. And I'm loathe to go too far second-guessing another GM's choices... But the weight change seems somewhat draconian. And taken with the comment about "a couple levels with a fill-in character..." suggests the GM has an agenda or is trying to orchestrate a particular outcome. He has some story idea he thinks would be cool. Not the best of GM behaviors, though if we're honest all of us have probably done it to some degree at one time or another.
Oh, and no judgement was implied in the multiple pc per player observation - if it works for your group and everyone is having fun, etc., all good. The play style could be part of the trouble though - the GM may feel more free to target specific pc's if a player controls multiple pc's than they would if the player controlled only one. It's one thing to tell a player one of his pc's will be unavailable for a while, it's another to tell the player his only pc will be gone.
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I'm glad your long time group is continuing. Best of luck. :)
Thanks, we've had a pretty good run of things. Good luck with your campaign. I know we had a blast with the final book of Kingmaker when I adapted it for the campaign I was running. If the rest of the AP is as good then it deserves every bit of praise it gets
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Out of curiosity, is your GM using the advancement track or going by actual monster/story xp earned? Barring other information, by my estimate your group should be character level 8 by now.
Tactics-wise, does at least one party spellcaster have access to Fireball? Ogres aren't exactly known for their fabulous Reflex saves. Then Jakardos can mop up those who survived.
We use XP, but haven't recieved an XP increase since finishing the Graul homestead.
The Wizard does have Fireball, as does the cleric from his fire domain. Both have used the spell to good effect.
Our GM has not in the past ever had us take over running NPCs like Jakardros, so we will see what happens when I ask about running him.
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And taken with the comment about "a couple levels with a fill-in character..." suggests the GM has an agenda or is trying to orchestrate a particular outcome. He has some story idea he thinks would be cool. Not the best of GM behaviors, though if we're honest all of us have probably done it to some degree at one time or another.
Oh, and no judgement was implied in the multiple pc per player observation - if it works for your group and everyone is having fun, etc., all good. The play style could be part of the trouble though - the GM may feel more free to target specific pc's if a player controls multiple pc's than they would if the player controlled only one. It's one thing to tell a player one of his pc's will be unavailable for a while, it's another to tell the player his only pc will be gone.
I really think you may be on to something there. What the other player told me about the conversation he had with the GM it sounds like this is a very real possibility.
I will echo the others, and add that Rannick will mess with player expectations. My group of five overpowered PCs had a mishap covered by the AP when they caused a building to topple. This left half the party still in the tunnel and half separated and trapped/hindered by the rubble of the building. Then the ogres started streaming out. And kept coming. And kept coming. The trapped party members wanted very badly to flee, while the tunnel party members (and this is crucial) assumed that the DM wouldn't throw anything at them that they couldn't theoretically handle, and rushed out of the tunnel to engage the ogres. Rannick is not that. We had a come-to-jesus moment halfway through the battle where I learned of why they decided to attack and was forced to flatly tell them they were not going to going to survive if they didn't run. They still lost two party members, Vale, Jakadros' AC, and Shalelu before they got away. Their second assault was also a near disaster, because reasons, but they pulled it off.
While I absolutely agree with the others that your DM was a bit heavy in the opponent power area, it wasn't completely crazy, and we don't have their side of things to properly assess. Rannick is a slaughterhouse, and there might, perhaps perhaps perhaps, be a little bit of meta that happened on your part or poor party tactics/lack of recon/whatever that contributed to the problem. Just sayin.
That being said; if you aren't having fun, for whatever reason, it's worth having a conversation with the DM about it. We all want each other to have fun, and I'm hoping your sessions get better for you!