I'm part way through book 4, with a group of 11th level PCs, and they've gone down an extremely stealthy and deceptive route for their character builds. We have a rogue who's stacked stealth and can regularly roll in the 40s when she's had Invisibility cast on her by the party mage. And we have an Investigator with a disguise-based archetype who can perfectly impersonate any character he wants.
They're having a lot of fun with it, but I'm struggling to give them proper challenges and to not let them just bypass most of the adventure. With the abilities they have, the rogue should be able to sneak into just about anywhere and skip most of the fights. And the Investigator is able to succeed at impersonating Barzillai Thrune himself and just ordering the Mayor's goons to leave wherever he goes.
Does anybody have any suggestions on how to throw a wrench in their plans every once in a while, to add some challenge? I've had enemy magic-users start to cast Alarm spells on their lairs so that they at least notice when an invisible PC has arrived. Occasional enemies with True Seeing can mess them up, but it's not a spell that someone can have permanently without a LOT of wealth.
A couple of ideas that I've had so far:
See Invisibility can be made permanent for 5000gp. It's reasonable that some of the Mayor's high-level allies will have gotten this performed on them. Corinstian Grivenner, Alucada Zhol, etc. This requires casting the relevant spells on YOURSELF, so they would have had to get scrolls and pass Use Magic Device checks in order to do so. It can't be done on non-spellcasters.
The Mayor could have instructed Grivenner to keep a bunch of Detect Lies or Zone of Truth spells ready, in case anyone tries to impersonate him or another ally and issues any strange orders. The Investigator is likely to beat the Will save, but it'll at least put a bit of added fear into him.
Plenty of devils have true seeing permanently (erinyes, off the top of my head, have them in 1e).
Unfortunately this is just kind of aa consequence of 1e being a game where it's easy to never, ever fail at something you choose to be good at. I wish you the best of luck. Honestly, you may be best off choosing some of the harsher retaliations instead of randomly rolling - not as a punishment, but just to have *something* negative happen to them that they have to deal with in a way they can't solve just by sneaking around.
(Also, if I was Barzillai and I heard someone was impersonating me, I'd start giving underlings passwords and other things to prove identities.)
Book 4 is out and out war. After the first such incident, there should be passwords and counter signs for any kind of military or dottari unit to accept new orders. Their opposition has access to divination, are mostly all high wisdom, and are LE. They have backup plans and lots of information.
And, yes, some of these encounters are going to be battles where the PCs walk all over the other side. The lich, the Records Hall, the dragon, and the Temple will emphatically not be those kind of battles.
And true seeing is why my party still loathes erinyes.
roguerouge wrote: The lich, the Records Hall, the dragon, and the Temple will emphatically not be those kind of battles. My PCs had a very easy time with the Records Hall and the Bleakbridge so far. In the Records Hall they snuck inside and cornered Tiarise in her office. They managed to kill her before she could even get a turn off to try to Dimension Door to safety. They then used Wall of Force to trap the Inquisitor Troop in half of the building and then lit the entire interior of the building on fire.
Bleakbridge was a similar story, with high stealth to get a bunch of surprise attacks on the general, Disguise to peel off a troop away from the fight, and then Wall of Force and flight to herd the soldiers into a group and airbomb them.
I'm expecting that they'll mostly be able to bypass Kyrre Ekodyre if they want, but the Lich should prove to be a bit more difficult. And I'm planning on ignoring the Tactics section for Rivozair that says that she lands and engaged in melee, because that seems idiotic for a dragon. She has enough speed and range to kite them from a distance and to just repeatedly do breath weapon strafing runs, so I'll see how they handle that.
I just noticed that the Temple has a permanent Invisibility Purge effect, which is very helpful. Although with their existing Stealth and Dimension Door-ing ability I still think it's possible that they'll be able to do a fairly surgical strike against the Mayor and bypass lots of the encounters on the way.
My players are just too darn clever :P
The Aasimar took Heavenly Radiance at 9th level, which gives her a single Sunbeam once per day. She used it in the Opera House to just melt the Vampire Jilia in a single hit, and I'm certain she's going to use it again on Alucada Zohl. That's also going to be a pretty anti-climactic fight, although the scene of a PC just one-shotting the scary vampire that I spent all this time building up will probably be pretty hilarious and memorable.
xTheJim wrote: I just noticed that the Temple has a permanent Invisibility Purge effect, which is very helpful. Although with their existing Stealth and Dimension Door-ing ability I still think it's possible that they'll be able to do a fairly surgical strike against the Mayor and bypass lots of the encounters on the way. The forbiddance effect on the Thrune suite (a separate entry for areas 39, 40, 41) really wrecked my table. They couldn't dispel it. And Thrune ruthlessly used each room as a retreat area to force them to take damage, forcing them to engaged in a ranged fight for a while, which is tough for them.
So, your infiltration specialists could end up with several nasty surprises if they try to corner Barzillai... if he's even there as they take the damage.
If you look elsewhere on the boards, there's stuff on thwarting the scry and fry tactics with the Temple. I used some of it, but I forget what right now. They were able to do some divination, but getting Thrune directly was fairly well-thwarted.
And remember--in book four, minor mook clerics are 7th level and have access to Divination. At my table, the party's clerics were engaged in a war of Divination once they reasoned that their Divinations would change once the other side did a Divination on the same topic and instituted counter-measures.
Ohhh the Forbiddance effect is fantastic, I'd forgotten about that one. You're right, he should be able to kite them super well if he's cornered here, and he'd definitely want to retreat to this room to try and mess with them if they manage to find him in a different location. I like that a lot.
And good tip on the Divination, you're right that I should be using that a lot more and assuming that the enemies have good information on the PCs.
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