Firstly, I want to apologize because I'm probably about to lay down three threads at once unless the forum policies stop me, but I have three distinct things to bring up from my last two sessions. Rather than clog one discussion, it makes more sense to just have three.
So, I'm running a non-AP game. I know, the AP is the stuff they are intending to test, but it's also useful to try out new things. I've been running really difficult encounters because I find that the guidelines make everything far too easy (another post on that later), so I threw four Animated Armors at my 5 Level 2 players last night.
This was an impossible encounter. Luckily, this encounter was more of a puzzle, with the ability to stop the Armors with the right choices. Still, for some players doing over 9 damage was actually impossible. For others, it was pretty darn close - he could do 10 if he got the two highest rolls.
Level 2 creatures with Hardness 9 isn't okay, and really Hardness for creatures as a whole is broken. Other creatures like Devils can get away with it because you can bypass it with their weaknesses, but in this case it's not possible.
The player who could hurt it on the two highest damage rolls had a +4 attack roll using a Warhammer, so at AC 18 he has a 30% chance to hit period. He then only has a 25% chance to do ANY damage after that (1d8+2). If my math is correct, each attack only had a 7.5% chance to do ANY damage.
After that first hit, his chance to hit it would increase to 50% (AC changes to 14 because it gains the Broken condition). However, that's still only a 12.5% to do any damage, which would be either a 1 or a 2. This thing has 20 HP.
Our party is a a Halfling (reflavored to Kobold) Rogue, an Elf Paladin, an Elf Alchemist, a Half-Orc Monk, and a Human Bard. Alch and Bard can't hurt them period, the Rogue could on a lucky Sneak Attack, and the Monk was in a similar boat to the Paladin where they could hurt them, but it was stupidly difficult.
Oh, and for comparison to this Level 2 monster, a Lemure (Level 2 Devil) has 3 Physical resistance and even then only to non-Silver. Despite lower DR, they have lower HP.
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So first off, it seems weird to throw a an encounter that rests between severe and extreme because fights are too easy and then complain that the fights are too hard.
As for the animated armors, they are an unusual example. It's basically the inverse of a melee character against a flying enemy. This is the heavy hitter's chance to shine.
It also only takes 2 dents to break the armor and absolutely cripple the thing, causing it lose its hardness and 4 points of AC. Did you overlook that it loses the hardness once it is broken? It sounds like you might have. Although looking at the ability that isn't as clear as it could be. I assumed the hardness goes away when it is broken just like the hardness of a shield can no longer block damage for you, but it might be worth Paizo clarifying this.
Also, the thing has a TAC of 12 and +2 Reflex. Your alchemist should have good odds to crit the thing with an alchemist fire which should dent it on slightly below average damage, 2d8+1. The alchemist can also hamper the thing with a tanglefoot bag or perhaps liquid ice, not sure if it applies hampered on zero damage. Given it has no range attacks, it just became extremely vulnerable to hit and run. I feel like persistent acid damage should hurt these things too, but I'm pretty sure they don't by FRAW.
...Also, your Paladin has 14 strength? Good lord that is bad. I've seen plenty of folks put a 16 in their key stat and be OK but 14 seems asking for trouble. And no expert weapon yet, either, which doesn't help. This also feels like a good example of why packing multiple weapons is a good idea. A back up maul or great axe would have done much better.
A blasting spell or cantrip should also crit the thing pretty easy.
Basically, you have a bad fight for a very ill-equipped party, but it isn't unwinnable even for them. Unless I'm wrong about losing the hardness when broken, but I'm pretty sure I'm not. Otherwise, you've also got a lot of contradictions between having a badly optimized party that didn't cover a lot of bases, finding the game too easy, and finding this encounter too hard.
I agree with Captain Morgan on most points {I think the one thing we may slightly differ is with the whole stat thing, as I've seen a couple of off-stat characters work, although I will admit its alot harder to do that in 2nd then it was for 1st. And it also depends on the definition "key stat' as a lot of those builds I've seen changed the focus of there key stat to another, thereby making the new focus the 'key stat'.)
The other thing I would like to point out is the Animated Armor lack of Int and Wis. They would most likely run off of very simple programing and commands, something that a party could take advantage of. {for example, they always attack the nearest target, meaning the {lack for a better word} tank can always be up-front taking the hits, while everyone else takes pot shots from the back, as the Animated Armor would not be smart or wise enough to think for itself, beyond its basic programing.)
Captain Morgan wrote: So first off, it seems weird to throw a an encounter that rests between severe and extreme because fights are too easy and then complain that the fights are too hard.
As for the animated armors, they are an unusual example. It's basically the inverse of a melee character against a flying enemy. This is the heavy hitter's chance to shine.
It also only takes 2 dents to break the armor and absolutely cripple the thing, causing it lose its hardness and 4 points of AC. Did you overlook that it loses the hardness once it is broken? It sounds like you might have. Although looking at the ability that isn't as clear as it could be. I assumed the hardness goes away when it is broken just like the hardness of a shield can no longer block damage for you, but it might be worth Paizo clarifying this.
Also, the thing has a TAC of 12 and +2 Reflex. Your alchemist should have good odds to crit the thing with an alchemist fire which should dent it on slightly below average damage, 2d8+1. The alchemist can also hamper the thing with a tanglefoot bag or perhaps liquid ice, not sure if it applies hampered on zero damage. Given it has no range attacks, it just became extremely vulnerable to hit and run. I feel like persistent acid damage should hurt these things too, but I'm pretty sure they don't by FRAW.
...Also, your Paladin has 14 strength? Good lord that is bad. I've seen plenty of folks put a 16 in their key stat and be OK but 14 seems asking for trouble. And no expert weapon yet, either, which doesn't help. This also feels like a good example of why packing multiple weapons is a good idea. A back up maul or great axe would have done much better.
A blasting spell or cantrip should also crit the thing pretty easy.
Basically, you have a bad fight for a very ill-equipped party, but it isn't unwinnable even for them. Unless I'm wrong about losing the hardness when broken, but I'm pretty sure I'm not. Otherwise, you've also got a lot of contradictions between having a badly optimized party that didn't...
It doesn't explicitly state that they lose the Hardness when they are Broken, but it DOES explicitly state the drop is AC and TAC, so it wasn't clear to me if they lost the hardness or not. It didn't look like it to me, but looking at it again with fresh eyes I can see how that interpretation makes sense. Would be good for them to explicitly change the text to reflect that.
I posted this on the subreddit as well because I wanted to see feedback, and someone's comment to me made me go and check his stats. He'd accounted for them wrong - this is our first game, so things happen.
Yeah, the acid damage was what the Alch tried. It does apply double dents to things under 5 Hardness (which means it's actually not effective against stone or metal, weirdly?). The encounter lasted two rounds because it wasn't intended for them to fight necessarily, it was a thing where they picked up an item that was actually their sorta "control focus", and players figured it out 2 rounds in. The 2 rounds we had were just crazy enough that I felt the need to post this.
I will say that every encounter before this (we've had four or so?) has been the highest difficulty and they've taken it in stride. It was really jarring for this to suddenly be borderline-unwinnable. Knowing what I do now about the accounting issue and the interpretation of them losing the hardness, this fight makes perfect sense and would have been quite winnable had they not figured out the puzzle.
Siro wrote: I agree with Captain Morgan on most points {I think the one thing we may slightly differ is with the whole stat thing, as I've seen a couple of off-stat characters work, although I will admit its alot harder to do that in 2nd then it was for 1st. And it also depends on the definition "key stat' as a lot of those builds I've seen changed the focus of there key stat to another, thereby making the new focus the 'key stat'.)
The other thing I would like to point out is the Animated Armor lack of Int and Wis. They would most likely run off of very simple programing and commands, something that a party could take advantage of. {for example, they always attack the nearest target, meaning the {lack for a better word} tank can always be up-front taking the hits, while everyone else takes pot shots from the back, as the Animated Armor would not be smart or wise enough to think for itself, beyond its basic programing.)
Yeah, I was running these pretty mindlessly. There was a weird catch to this encounter that caused the party to make this accidentally harder on themselves.
In the room before, there was a skeleton with a silver Holy Symbol they hadn't seen before. The armors all had the same symbol on them, and would explicitly ignore the holder of that symbol. The symbol itself isn't magic, but the armors were all keyed to that symbol so that they obeyed the holder's orders.
So, when combat started, the armors walked in and just basically side-stepped the Paladin. It took them a couple rounds to figure out how it worked, but those two rounds were incredibly rough so I thought I would make a post about it.
If it's correct that you can break the Hardness off, then this is 100% reasonable and I actually have no complaint. Otherwise, they should make it so you can break the hardness (or at least make that more clear in the text of the ability!)
Necrotifice wrote:
Yeah, I was running these pretty mindlessly. There was a weird catch to this encounter that caused the party to make this accidentally harder on themselves.
In the room before, there was a skeleton with a silver Holy Symbol they hadn't seen before. The armors all had the same symbol on them, and would explicitly ignore the holder of that symbol. The symbol itself isn't magic, but the armors were all keyed to that symbol so that they obeyed the holder's orders.
So, when combat started, the armors walked in and just basically side-stepped the Paladin. It took them a couple rounds to figure out how it worked, but those two rounds were incredibly rough so I thought I would make a post about it.
If it's correct that you can break the Hardness off, then this is 100% reasonable and I actually have no complaint. Otherwise, they should make it so you can break the hardness (or at least make that more clear in the text of the ability!)
Ha, I see. Ok, makes a bit more sense (I'm kinda of always in the auto mindset of figuring out what a constructs main routine, due to my 1st DM proclivity to use them, and our group at the time finding it was easier to figure out what they did and take advantage of it, then just face them head on. It got so bad that when we saw a hallway of statues, we would just chuck a chicken down there, and waited to see if any of the statues would come to life. And if they did, what would they do to the chicken. Needless to say, we never grew attached to our chickens.)
Not to sure about the hardness, as it does not state it in the monsters stats, nor in the dent or broken conditions, that it lowers hardness. I can understand Captain Morgan point with the shield, as you can no longer use the shields hardness to protect you when its broken. However this may fall into the catagory of broken items not being able to be used, with animated objects being the exception, as they still do function even when broken. Above all, though I agree with the sentiment that Paizo should get around to the Broken and Hardness question.
Now, even if they retained there hardness, I think its more of a case of a bad set of curcumstances then challenge of creature. {which happens to everyone group, in various unaviodable ways for both player and DM alike. Its just part of the game sometimes, narrtive and actions can throw a curve ball or two.)
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