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Hello everyone!
I'm currently running ROTR:AE for a group of 4 friends, and am running into a slight dilemma.
My party consists of the following (all at level 4/5, with their relative saving throws)
Race and Class - Fort, Ref, Will
Half-Orc Paladin (Hospitaler) - 13, 7, 13
Half-Elf Slayer - 8, 10, 4
Dwarf Warpriest - 8, 4, 9
Elf Conjurer Wizard - 4, 4, 7
Situation is this:
In the Aldern Estate, I've had to buff some of the DC's of the haunts and such, as they tend to save on anything more than an 8 or 9 on the die. DC's for the haunts are anywhere from 10-14 and without failing some of those DC's the horror-esque nature of the house encounter is sadly lacking and, I find, not as enjoyable. However I may have gone overboard.
The main problem is the Paladin, however I think I've got a counter that's been semi-working out. Immune to fear effects and high as hell saves. The counter to this I've put in place is that instead of fear, he's left shaken for a very short period of time any time a haunt has a fear effect. His aura still grants full bonus to himself and his followers because I don't want to quash the Paladin's moment to shine with his abilities. In exchange I've given a bonus to using channel to dispel some of the haunts.
Up until this point the entire party has pretty much beaten every saving throw in the game. They have been, until now, unstoppable.
As such I decided, with party permission, to raise the DC's of the haunts by 5-10 depending on the haunt. They also tend to spam Bless and Protection from Evil and have an annoying number of wands that do various things. I haven't stopped the wand creation, because I feel that would be unfair for those that want to focus on crafting and I don't want to be that DM who steps on everything. So basically they are almost, by pure buff and meta, immune to the haunts.
This is the apex of the chapter, and I don't want them to miss out on that either by steamrolling it.
I guess my real question is am I going too far? Am I buffing the house too much? The caster level of the Foxglove necromancer was 15,
but no other info on the DC's for the house's spells are pretty much unknown as we don't know the ability scores or feats he may have had to calculate them. So I've basically calculated 10+CL for them, but they've shattered that DC too in one of their attempts.
I feel guilty, but I just want them to experience it. I accidently outright killed a player with Phantasmal Killer even though his saving throw roll was extremely high.
TL;DR: how far should one go in buffing DC's for the pure motive of allowing the players to experience the full horror and evil of the location's encounter?
I had a Paladin in my group running through the haunts, once they figured he was immune guess who was taking point? It really didn't matter though, the haunts are really there to impart a bit of background.
This is a good opportunity to let the players and especially the paladin feel awesome in the face of overwhelming evil and horror - and that their class abilities are relevant. Even with the players permission house ruling away the paladins class abilities cheapens player choices, IMO.
I printed out the individual haunt descriptions and handed them out for my players to roleplay out as I ruled that the haunt still triggered. It can still be impactful for the players, and even with +4 the other players still failed one or two of the targeted haunts. The fear of failure can still lead to tension.
It is not hard to impart the overwhelming evil of the place without the mechanical effects.
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Just my own 2 cents...
I would never remove a paladin's immunity to fear. It's a core class ability. Certainly not for anything less than a deity or a major artifact. Foxglove Manor doesn't qualify.
Having the paladin on point - basically thwart the haunts by going in each room first is a) what a paladin is supposed to do and b) one of the reasons pc groups want/put up with a paladin in the first place. This is exactly the type of thing paladins are built for.
The purpose of the haunts is not to harm the pc's but to tell the story of the Foxglove family and its tragedies/evil. With some danger along the way. If the pc's make all the saves, that's not the end of the world. If they are saving on a roll of 8 or 9, they should be failing about 30% of the time and that sounds plenty dangerous to me. And regardless of buffs, someone's going to roll a 1 at some point. Bumping DC's and creating a character death when that pc would otherwise have saved seems like evidence of an over-reaction to me.
This where the game starts to change - more and more as levels advance, the pc's will more often make saves - their save bonuses (especially with buffs, etc.) will start to outstrip DC's. It's going to take bad rolls to fail. And that's okay - if you've set your expectations correctly. It seems like the OP's expectation is that if the pc's aren't regularly failing, they aren't experiencing the adventure. That's going to be harder and harder to sustain.
Also these players appear to have good system mastery so I'd recommend watching the rules - note that not all buffs stack and that if they are being provided by spells they have a duration. Bless and Protection from Evil last only a minute per spell. So, no you can't explore 8 rooms on one casting. Searching and learning what you can from a room takes some time (did someone 'take 20'? That's two minutes right there.) Protection from evil is a per pc thing, so if all four pc's want it - that's four charges/castings. Watch the caster level of the wands - if they want maximum duration, that's maximum cost. And the paladin's fear bonus is only in 10' radius. Yes, three other pc's can stand next to him and get the bonus but they have to stay close. "Oh, you're moving and exploring in such a way that you are never more than 10' from the paladin? Okay, searching and exploring takes twice as long. Because you have to be careful how you move, etc." And if the pc's are trying to game the haunts - buff up the paladin and send him in alone to trigger the haunt so they can explore the room at their leisure, have the haunts trigger randomly. And remember the haunts target the pc's randomly (or according to their sin) so the paladin's immunity is irrelevant for any haunt not targeting him.
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Thanks for the responses.
I see the merit of your guys' input. It's very much appreciated. I definitely shouldn't have done that to the Paladin. I obviously overdid it and need to make some adjustments. I let my DM meta get the best of me and I should find other ways to make the haunts more story-oriented in their display and not mechanical.
I thank you for your honesty. Gives me an answer to something that's been eating away at my mind this week. Thanks guys! :)
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A semi-related question:
Do you feel that if the party is steamrolling encounters and just rolling through the AP that its A) On the DM for not making the campaign challenging or B) Not something to worry about because it's the PC's prerogative to do what they wanna do? I admit that DMing isn't my strong suit, but I'm the only one in my group willing to try. I certainly don't want to railroad the campaign, but I also feel like there's a rich story to be told and want them to get the most out of it that they can instead of "encounter hopping". If that makes sense...
My question would be how the PCs are built. Commonly when this problem occurs, they're built on high point buys or high rolled stats, making them much tougher than the AP anticipates.
I had a Paladin largely walk through the manor, not a problem it was one of her core abilities. Overall my party was much more powerful than the AP expected
a)5 characters
b)25 pt buy
c)Good System mastery
d) Moderatly kind GM
e)Synthesist Summoner
While much of this was my fault I countered it to keep the players challanged by rebuilding many encounters with better stats or by running encounters together so that instead of fighting npc's in separate groups I changed tactics so often they would end up fighting multiple seperate encounters as one fight or otherwise raising the difficulty.
Nearly got a TPK in the final battle which meant the players felt challenged before they won
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I think I largely did this to myself in some respect because we rolled for stats (4d6 drop, reroll 1's) and they rolled moderately high. I fudged their final numbers a tad (much to the chagrin of the players) cause they had multiple 18's and no scores below a 15. I know that's a dick move, I shoulda done point buy, however I asked permission of the players prior to changing the stats and everyone was cool with it.
Moral of the story is going forward I will always do point buy. I don't particularly like it as a player, but I am learning the difficulty in not having a sure-fire way to balance everyone at character creation.
25 Point buy is very high and gets you most of the problems/fun of good dice rolls as it is enough to be good at the key stats for your class. I recomend that you do things like add the advanced template to a lot of encounters or increase the number of mooks.
I went further and restated most encounters but that is something I enjoy doing and have the time for.
Your party if well built and with good stats will probably punch above their weight so you will have to mix things up to keep them challanged, the main thing to do is to make sure that both you and your players are having fun.
So yeah, with high stats, the players are effectively a level or more ahead of where they should be, so they'll handily crush most encounters.
You can rebalance this in a couple of ways:
- Adjust the characters stats down retroactively, diminishing their power.
- Decrease the amount of treasure being handed out to compensate for their high stats (consider that the characters are already effectively wearing Gauntlets of Ogre Power +2 and a Headband of Intellect and a Cloak of Resistance and the like already from their stats)
- You can level them up slower, putting them a level or two behind where the module expects them to be (this is easier if you're doing story-based levelling - tell the players what's happening and it's done, or you can rebudget the XP)
- You can rebalance every encounter - adding monsters, templating monsters, changing terrain, etc. This is doubtlessly the most rewarding way from the player POV, but the most time consuming from the GM POV.
Some encounters should be easy, some encounters should be hard and some should be just right (just like Goldilocks.) Variation and unpredictability (by the players) is probably best.
You might want to figure out what the ability scores of your pc's would cost if they'd been done via point buy, just so you know how powered up they are. Keep in mind the AP is written for 4 pc's with 15 point buy. PC's with a 25 or 30 (or more!) point buy are going to have an easier time.
I'd be careful about holding them back by level - that makes sense in theory but might have some hard-to-anticipate consequences in practice. One thing to tackle someone who can cast spells 1 level higher than spells available to you/your party, starts to get riskier when they can cast spells 2 or more levels higher than you/your party can. Remember spell level drives DC's and character level plus ability scores drive save modifiers. Putting DC's higher and save bonuses lower can be risky - see the phantasmal killer example in first post above.
Adding an additional mook is a good solution in some cases and easy on the GM - if there are 2 ogres, make it 3; if there are 4 zombies, make it 5. You already have the stats so not much work. Adding the advanced template works too - though takes a bit more effort.
One of my solutions - my pc's also had super scores due to die rolling generation methods - is to change the NPC tactics. The tactics provided in the AP are, to be generous, fairly middling. Not super stupid but not really very smart either. This is to make the AP usable by the broadest set of groups. Put it this way - if someone kicked in the door to your basement and started killing the people on that floor, would you just wait in your room for them to get to you? No. So one answer is simply to have neighboring monsters/NPC's join in the fight after a round or two. Charm of this method - you can turn the spigot off at any time. PC's are fighting a group of goblins and their hobgoblin sergeant? Have the goblins in the next room join in after 2 rounds. If the pc's are holding their own, have the two bugbears from down the hall join in 2 rounds later. But if the first two groups are putting up a good fight, then the bugbears stay where they are (didn't hear the fighting, etc.) Upside of this method - don't need to re-stat any monsters. Downside: you have to prepare more by thinking through alternative tactics ahead of time. Another option along these lines is to update NPC/monster possessions or spell memorization or even simply tactics (by which I mean use of their various abilities, etc.) to be more dangerous for your particular party. This also requires more work ahead of time. Hint: if you were running the NPC as your primary player character what would you do? This can go as far as you would like, up to and including rebuilding the NPC.