| Warmagon |
This is a solo battle test. I want to see how higher level characters perform, no one in my group has expressed interest in trying PF2, and there is a fairly straightforward siege adventure in the playtest. So I'm going to play through the battle in the level 7 adventure and see how things work. Btw, I'm sorry if some stuff makes zero sense. I'm writing most of this on a kindle, and the autocorrect is the most aggressive version I've seen and it hates both gaming terms and acronyms.
Our heroes are a Halfling storm druid, elf healing domain cleric, human might cleric, and human paladin. Everyone has plus one weapons and armor, although the war cleric has the plus 2. As directed for the adventure, the party is two positive channeling clerics, and everyone else can heal. Via feats, the party also has two animal companions. Some of the other items may be useful, others are not likely to be so. It's not like everyone has disrupting or ghost touch stuff or whatever to especially beat undead.
Str 8, dex 16, con 16, int 14, wis 19, cha 12. Hp 83, ac 24, f 12, r 11, w13. Sling 11, 2d6+2
Keen eyes, lucky halfling. Stormborn, call of the wild, animal companion plus full grown. Alertness, assurance nature. Hobnobber, group impress, automatic knowledge, recognize spell.
Storm 6 spell points.
Master nature, trained diplomacy survival acrobatics athletics stealth thievery
Cantrips tanglefoot, electric arc, know direction. One heal heal magic fang. Two, web entangle shape wood. Three, fireball wall of thorns heal. Four, stoneskin heal.
Staff sling was two handed only instead of one plus, so I thought it wouldn't mix with casting as well.
Snake. Hp 55, ac 20, f 9, r 11, w 10. Jaws 11, 2d8+4
I went with snake to potentially get out of melee if pressed.
3*3d8+4 healing pots. Skeleton key, travelers anytool, ring of the ram, plus one sling and hide, 2* feather token bush.
Human cleric, soldier, gorum
Str 18, dex 10, con 16, int 10, wis 18, cha 14, hp 92, spd 20, per 11, ac 25\21, f 13, r 9, w 14
A, class feat, general feat. C, communal healing, emblazon, advanced domain for might, expanded domain for zeal. G, toughness, fleet, heavy armor. Quick repair, assurance religion, powerful leap, battlefield medic
Greatsword 12, 2d12+4, sling 2d6+2
Spell points 7, channel 5
Cantrips, shield, guidance, light, disrupt undead. One, bless heal disrupting weapon. Two, heal, restoration, see invis. 3, heroism, dispel magic, sanctify ground. Four, weapon stormx2
+1 wounding greatsword, +1 sling, 10 cold iron bullets, +1 plate, minor staff of healing, brooch of shielding, 3x moderate healing pot, 2x darkvision elixer
Going for a more classic war cleric with a greatsword and some buffs. Fighter multi was a possibility too, I suppose. Enlarge didn't seem worth it without being able to exploit reach. People have said true strike is good, probably missing a trick by not taking it. But I didn't feel like changing them.
Elf cleric saranae. I was not actually all that enthused about the cleric spells after the first cleric, so for second, I decided to double down on heal botting with both the healing domain and a spell load of mostly heals. Archery would deal damage.
Str 10 dex 18 con 12 int 12 wis 18 cha 16. Per 13, hp 69, as 24\22, f 10, r 12, w 13
Shortbow 12, 2d6+4 r60 deadly
A, weapon familiarity, weapon elegance. C emblazon, advanced domain, communal healing. G alertness, recognize spell. S, forager, battlefield medic, snare crafting
Healing domain 6, channel 6
magic bow, scimitar, studded. Brackets of missile deflection, goggles of night, divine prayer beads. 3x moderate healing, 1 swiftness potion.
C, stabilize, shield, read aura, detect magic. 1, 3x heal. 2, restoration, 2xheal. 3, fireball, 2x heal. 4, restoration, heal
Human paladin acolyte iomadae
Str 18, dex 12, con 14, int 10 wis 14, cha 18, speed 20, per 9, hp 92, as 26, f 12, r 9, w 11
Longsword 2d8+4
A natural ambition awarded touch. C hospice knight, divine grace, channel life, loyal warhorse. Student of cannon, powerful pediatricians medic. Ride, fleet
Powers 6. Fort save mastery effect, retributive strike, steed blessing
Horse hp 74, as 22, f 11 r 11, w 11 hoof 11, 2d6+4
Ring of lesser fire resist,magic plate, magic heavy barding, magic longsword, expert sturdy light wooden shield.
I wanted a classic human knight type, although coming from a more humble religious backgroun than a noble one. It looks like I hadn't picked everything when I set the character down, and didn't notice some slots were empty until after I started. Oh well. The shield is not up to date because magic barding took that slot IIRC, which may prove to be a problem.
I started the event with the scholar near the door, the paladin in the hallway somewhat behind - as if to say "no wait, don't open it"- and the other pcs in the dining room standing but without weapons drawn. I let the npc move back roughly even to the dining room door. Order is druid, human cleric, ghasts, elf cleric, and finally the paladin, who went on 11. The druid commands snake to double move, putting it next to sage man, then readies a sling and moves. Hc draws his greatsword and double moves. The ghasts double stride up and take some swings. Most the attacks are terrible, but the snake is hit for 12 and becomes infected. People are exposed to the auras, and the paladin fails. Everyone else succeeds and becomes bolstered. However, I may have run that wrong if the bolster is per ghoul, and not for the aura in general. The elf cleric readies a shortbow, enters the hall, and hits on 7 courtesy of 18 Dec and low level enemies. The paladin readies an s-word, crits a ghast for 16 (terrible roll for damage), and spends an action to save against the sicken. It looks like drawing a weapon would provoke, if the enemies could take aoo.
Round 2 starts off with the druid's electric arc and commanding the snake to crit and move. Hc does a miss and hit, then casts shield. The normal greatsword hit outshines th longsword crit, dropping the leftmost ghast. Noticing that the snake is soft target, the ghasts set up a flank and aim most of their attacks there. The snake is knocked to within 10 of death, and paralyzed, but one of the enemies takes retributive smite which crits and thus diverts its second attack to the paladin to clear enfeeble. And that attack crits back on a twenty. I don't want the animal to die this early, so elf channels for a three action heal to save snake, and mostly top off other scuffed people. And also mess up the ghasts, but one rolls a twenty - most of them are around half now. The paladin is evidently off balance, rolling a two and three. He shields with his last action.
Round three starts. Snake is paralyzed, so druid does electric arc and fired a critical slingshot while adjacent to a pair of enemies. Mr Slithers recovers. They didn't have aoo, so I guess it's okay? Human cleric gets one hit out of two and casts shield to deter the enemies who weren't attacking him from attacking him. But going for a triple seemed pretty marginal. He also killed one adjacent foe. Ghasts now avoid the Palin's reach if possible, and set up a flank chain that goes ghast, elf, ghast, snake, ghast. The snake takes some more hits, but less than it was healed. The elf stands and fires, killing another enemy. Now there are two of them. Paladin steps up, crits and kills another one. The survivor is out of reach. The druid starts and finished the next round by ordering Mr Slithers to finish off the last super ghoul.
So basically three rounds to clear the wave. After the battle, four level 1 heals top off the snake, the center area is sanctified versus the undead, a holly bush is planted, and three barricades are thrown up between the stairs and library column to create a narrow chokepoint. The paladin also brings his horse inside so it could fight in the next battle. So only one high level limited ability was needed, plus some level 1 spells. Could have been better imo, could have been worse. Using the barricades on the door seemed poor imo. The large windows provide extra entrances, and it seems like shooting enemies would be a problem. It seems better to use them to control access to the stairs and the library, and then ranged pcs can shoot over them from the stairs or upper hall. In theory.
I had wanted to start the battle off with web, but was not in position for it. No one in the battle had opp attacks, which was really weird. People could just move wherever - especially with the ghasts ' leap - or just shoot and cast right in monster faces. Kind of a double edge sword there - characters and monsters could move without threat, but at the same time, there was less need for ranged people to move and most of the pcs could take three decent actions against these enemies. Normally ranged guys benefit from looking at enemies movement paths and trying to get out of dodge in advance, or find ways to escape engagement. The ghasts could have dodged back to make melee potentially spend actions moving, but as monsters without a ranged attack, it seemed like the pcs would benefit more. If I made the characters roll for each ghoul aura, I don't think the outcome would have changed much. Although if it comes down to the last low level spell... Not a lot of limited abilities were used, and not much variety of actions taken. But then it is a pretty easy fight. The animals looked more vulnerable than I thought, and there are a number of enemies coming up with spawn type powers to really take advantage of that. I'll probably attempt to have them to hang back initially in the future, instead of having the battle line kind of form around them. Otoh, without aoo, won't enemies without a strong three action turn be able to swarm them anyway? Maybe I should just make sure the paladin can cover one of them.
Questions regarding the adventure:
How does the boss guy get intel? He sends the ghasts in to scout, but there are no tactics to try and have one escape to report back. Does that mean he's pulling in info in real time remotely? That's what I'll assume.
What is the reason for using so many waves versus throwing in more consolidated attacks? If you're going to sneak guys in the back, for instance, why not have a frontal attack going as well to cover for them? It kind of seems like there's no in world reason for splitting the forces up in this way. The undead either need more autonomy to create coordination problems, or multiple objectives so guys are being diverted from other areas as sombrefell proved tougher than expected, etc. There should be a reason why his big force is coming for sliced into hopefully manageable chunks.
There are Dcs for climbing up to the lake balcony. Possibly more should be provided for climbing on other parts of the estate like going up to the roof, smashing through interior doors or walls, or climbing up to the second level in the inside without the stairs. Similarly, there is some stuff for pcs to scavenge or abuse in the defense of the mansion. However, someone with snare crafting may want a gp value of stuff they can scrounge to make their traps. Snares seem great for static defense missions like this as opposed to normal dungeon crawling, so the information to support them should be provided imo.
The grounds seem fairly open. What happens if pcs with ranged weapons or spells and night vision start their defense further out than the building itself? It seems like some waves would be quite vulnerable to that kind of thing, since they are not especially fast, lack ranged, and long attack attacks reach to to 500' potentially.
| Warmagon |
I played a bit more today, doing the vampire+ghast battle, and a bit more than half of the next of the next before I had to stop. The first encounter was pretty one sided, even with initiative rolls not having the PCs I wanted to go first. The ghasts could not hit easily, and the vampires couldn't really get into range in the first round. I ended up having the last vampire run away once everyone else died; it didn't seem like staying would do anything.
The PCs dispatched both of the initial wights in 2 rounds before the others showed up, but the next wave hit the cleric and enervated him before I had to clear the table.
On closer inspection, some of the movement rules seemed pretty awkward more than I thought, with transitioning between modes or skill actions basically requiring different actions.
| EberronHoward |
From your experience, did the party absolutely need two positive energy channelers, or would a significant amount of healing from another class be an acceptable alternative?
| Warmagon |
Not sure, so far I haven't finished yet, and it seems like the expected threat of each encounter ramps up. In the second fight where I had the animals play safer, the pcs barely took any damage. The characters had between 24 and 26 base AC and were mostly standing in sanctified ground, so +9 is pretty unlikely, and even if the vampires flank, an effective 13 was still less than 50/50. Pcs without soft targets like animals or low armor wizards with only okay dex could take several such battles without needing even one full cleric for healing.
Around the start of round 5 in fight 3, pcs have used 5 level heals topping off between fights, a level 3 heal as a nuke, and two of their channels, plus they need about another aoe heal because the poltergeist just had a great round. Only 9 channels, 12 spell points, several prepared spells, and 12 potions to go!
I expect the shadows will soak a ton of channels though, since they're resistant against many other forms of damage, and party friendly aoe seems like it could be good against their darkness/hiding stuff as well. 90 hp and resist 8 sounds tough to bring down otherwise. I might have them be evil and hunt down some grad students to create more shadows too!
| Mudfoot |
Sounds like rather a grind. It would be interesting to know how a normal party would stand up to that lot.
| Warmagon |
The encounter mix is two low 7s, 2 high 7s, and a severe boss fight. Per the encounter building rules, if there's going to be 4 or five enemies in the two difficulty sets I'd consider normal,they will necessarily be of somewhat lower level and will have some difficulty hitting armored targets.
It basically just seems that first level groups get screwed because they are already near the floor, so numerous 'weak' monsters are still close to them in performance.
I really have no idea what the expected endurance of a party should be at this level in pf2. So far, I'd guess that a more normal party could do it if they have anti undead in other ways, like ghost touch, disrupting, lots of magic missiles and a decent amount of healing items.
I should be able to post the write up for the currently played stuff tomorrow.
| Warmagon |
Onward! Where we last left the pcs, they had defeated the first wave, applied sanctified ground to their chosen holdfast, and built some barricades. Now the second wave of ghasts and vampires busts through the door. I decide to treat the pcs as not having weapons in hand since they had all been involved in making barricades and doing other stuff and not doing the 'on guard' exp!oration . I was hoping the party could drop a fireball or a bunch of ranged attacks before the monsters closed from the entrance to library area.I
Oh yeah, I definitely played the battle wrong because I treated use of climb speed as interchangeable with normal movement, which is not the case. Climb 10 move 10 is two actions even if both speeds are 20+
Initiative: war cleric, paladin, ghasts, druid, elf, vamps. All the melee people went first, and then the ranged after most the enemies. Thanks Murphy.
Cleric draws his sling, shoots with it ( hit for 8), and then drops it to ready his sword. The paladin delays. The ghasts double stride and then bite three times at the cleric and once at the paladin - these in the pcs at the front holding the gap. The best roll is 16, which missed because the cleric had the +1 from the ground buff. The paladin goes now that monsters are in his face, readying blade and making two slices. His normal bonus is 13, so rolls of 14 and 19 result in two crits because of sanctified ground. I think that killed one, but I don't always record when monsters die because I'm great at logging stuff. The druid readies and used his own sling, hitting for 11 despite screening and cover. The snake used its climb speed to come down over the side of the stairs and then move around to flank, but it's two missed regardless. The elf critically fails versus stink ( this time I had each person roll versus each ghast at the beginning of their turn, this is still the first failure),readies bow, and aims perfectly with a 20. There have been a lot of crits this battle. The vampires finally go, and between starting behind the ghasts and having only 25 speed, they can't attack this round. One triple moves up the right side, the other doubles and takes cover using the door off to the left.
The gorumite tried a bold triple attack to start round two, one swing hits and crits. Two ghasts are left; one moves around to the snake's side to escape the flank and class twice futilely. The other used leap to go a top the barricade and swipes twice at the horse - I want these guys to draw out as much healing as possible by hitting the softest targets. It hit once, but the special mount is not paralyzed or infected. The paladin moves up, crits again, and then had the horse attack and move away so the vampire couldn't flank it. I screw up the shared multi attack penalty and have the druid shoot twice and order the snake to bite twice, so ghast who does to these attacks probably should still live. The elf gets in to The stairs over the banister (no check) and shoots twice with a hit. Since the paladin attacked the ghast, there's a flank for vampire, but she misses. Then she moves around, putting the pillar between her and most of the party. The other one double moves with climb to reach the elf on the stairs, but rolls a 1.
Human cleric moves and shoots disrupt undead since it didn't look like he could make a melee attack. The last ghast moves up to the horse, hurts its jaw on the barding, and then leaps over it in a hopeful bid to set up another sneak attack. The paladin regrets speed 20 and triple moves. The druid has The snake climb back in the stairs to peel for the elf (8 more damage to that vamp) and casts electric arc on the ghast and vamp. The ghast fails critically and takes 22. No more flank for that vamp. Elf burns a level 3 as a touch attack, which drops the vamp menacing him. At this point, there is one unfounded vampire left, so I have her run. I don't think just the range people could drop her in a round, and their pursuit ability is constrained by the situation, so there will be an extra vamp in the final wave, probably trying to take another path. With no one to flank with, staying just seemed futile.
Between waves, the elf drops heal 1 on the horse, restoring the party to full hp. Then I bust out snare crafting and set up alarm wires in the upstairs balcony doors. The rear downstairs windows were supposed to be small, and all the mentioned big windows downstairs will lead in front of the chokepoint (which restricted the party more than the enemy this time, since climb speed and special half speed leap made it nearly pointless). So the upstairs is the big vulnerability left. One room is left to go when the first wights smash into the dining room. These alarms will of course be totally pointless, since the zombies are both obvious and a minimal threat, while the incorporate shadows should be able to ignore them. False sense of security, go!
Pcs had good luck with crits. The monsters had bad luck with most of their rolls. And Sanctify ground helped a lot. Otoh, the monsters need pretty good luck to hit the Pcs. By preventing them from ganging up on an ac 20 animal this time, I drastically reduced their ability to do well, anything. The fight was easy even with playing climb speed in a way that mostly favored the enemies. These are level 3 and 4 monsters against level 7 pcs in a system with strong automatic level scaling like 4e or 13A. Without a good set up and available soft targets, it's hard for them to do a lot.
_----------------------------------------------
Wights have just burst through the dining room window! Most of the party is hanging around their baricades, keeping watch while priest pretending to be a ranger improvised a warning system up stairs.
Naturally, said elf reacts first to the noise, and triple moves without reaching a good firing position. Then the battle Humphrey gorumite goes, and has to delay again. The poltergeist would be next but is forming. Wights move up, one opening the door, and the other taking cover (last action still couldn't quite reach). Cleric undelays, stepping forward and firing disrupt undead so as to stay in the blessed area. The druid spends all 3 actions to cast web, hitting the wights. The paladin riding around indoors this time, and just had the horse move because I Didn't give the character a ranged weapon (one, because I was pretty slapdassh about making him, and two because I realized that I didn't fix it because ime someone always forgets various secondary weapons when starting at higher levels.).
Elf starts the round by moving next to the halfling on the stairs, readying the bow, and finally using the bow which hits through cover. The wights go. The first one moves, makes the athletics check to clear a path, moves again because of the difficultterrain, and then attacks the cleric but a roll of 12 misses. The next wight has a clear path I think, but rolled a 19 if needed, and spends two actions moving to flank but does no better on its attack. The surrounded cleric retaliated with Weapon Storm, both enemies fail, one critically. Four weapon dice roll 28 so now both enemies are almost dead. Electric arc from the druid finishes one, and then he slings the other down.
Hmm, just realized I don't think I was handling the multiple attack penalty correctly there. The spell has the attack trait, so the follow up sling attack should be at -5. Otoh, there's no roll for electric arc, so using the sling and then the spell would be fine?
That's the first set of enemies down. The wights break into the study zone on the other side at the end of the round, as the poltergeist appears in the dining room. No one is in sight at the start of next round, so another character delays until after the enemies. The second wights are no faster than the first and move up while opening the door and taking cover. The ghost flies through wall and TK storms (I hadn't seen that it should be slowed, serves me right for assuming I knew how incorporeal works). Rolls of 3-5 miss. I thought the poltergeist would now be visible, so the elf shoots it (pay back for it taking too many actions phasing through the wall). It's a crit for 11 after resistance, and the shield spell goes up. The paladin orders his mount for a stride up to a wight, makes two attacks rolling a one and twenty (22 damage), and bravely advanced to the rear. The cleric also moves and disrupts undead for an amazing 4 damage. The druid closed the round with wall of thorns between the wights and the party. Setting that up was a big reason why the two bruisers stayed back.
Ghost throws another aoe storm, it hits the elf and snake for 4 damage. This is also when I notice that lucvi, hiding in the back hoping she can drop the chandelier on attackers, is in range of these attacks. The adventure cares about her, as opposed to the other students, so she is permitted to reach dying. Then the geist vanishes. The wights double move to set up a flank and avoid The paladin. The wall of thorns is also pretty worthless. They hit The cleric twice, and a two on one of the saved means enervation time! Without restoration, no more level 4 spells and channels. The elf can't see poltergeist, and so drops a triple action channel to save lucvi and hurt it. Haha, the save is a 20. Pally up - command for movement and strikes twice, one and nineteen result in only a normal hit. The human used shield, missed, and moved to break flanking and hug the pally. You can tell the druid doesn't live here - the cleric's movement means an aoe can be placed without friendly fire - so fireball it is! One wight is shielded by the other as the saves are 20 and 1. One down.
At the start of the next round, I notice the poltergeist stays invisible after attacking, so it moves to hit more people and aoe storms again. Everyone but the elf is hit, and the animals are crit.
That's when I had to clear the table. The web and wall of thorns were really disappointing in effect, and take 3 actions. Even trying to push people back into the WoT seemed dubious.
Enervation seems worse than I thought, since the casting time means its impractical to remove during the adventure.
Battlemap pictures by round are here
Not everything was taken at the top of the round.
Human Cleric is the spear using person (3 spears from Gloomhaven)
Elf is silver+purple gun robot from Infinity