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I'm wondering if anyone else is finding danger island far too easy? My group started with 5 people going through AV and we lost one fight and nearly died 2 other times. We lost our cleric and I swapped from swashbuckler to a druid for FotRP. For most of these fights, our fighter and paladin could handle them without the rogue and I.
I accept that our fighters build puts him way above the power most are going to have but is that enough to just break these encounters? We went up against both a Dragon and legendary reptile, these were both four or five levels above us and neither lasted 2 whole rounds. First one I cast haste on the rogue, who missed all his attacks, so neither of us did anything for that fight, the second I wild shaped and moved and that's it.
Our GM has started adding in extra enemies but it doesn't really seem to matter, against two 8 enemy groups that were level -1 or -2 I was able to do some nice aoe damage but still the only damage done to the group was against the rogue and I, the fighter and paladin just cut through everything that comes up to them and they mitigate nearly all damage to them.
So I'm wondering if most of these fights are soft ball stuff compared to things like AV and AoA? Or is having martials that can easily keep frightened 2 and flat footed on their targets just force multipliers that trivialize most encounters? Are the other books more difficult or should I let my GM know he's going to have to scale every fight we do up? On that note won't we eventually level faster if we are fighting harder/more opponents and thus run into more trouble?
So far I think I love these bigger fights against larger groups, I don't know how many my GM is adding to these fights, but they are far more enjoyable then anything in AV or the later half of AoA that I played.
I'm interested in others experience with the fights they have run into. We just finished day 2, so there is likely still more interesting things to come.
Why do you think your fighter is so far above the expected power curve?
My players have fared pretty well in most of the matches on the island. They didn't fight any of the legendary creatures as I built them up to be very powerful. The watchtower banshee I think really messed them up as it gave them a lot of drain.
One thing I often did not do was have the enemies use perfect tactics as I was trying to replicate wild animals or inexperienced teams. As the adventure moves on I'm going to have the opponents start to use better tactics as there is a greater chance that the enemies will be very intelligent or have experience with the PCs team. More grappling, flanking, focus fire, aiding, etc.
But a team of 5 in this AP will probably roll through things pretty well if the GM doesn't make very specific balances. I originally was going to run the game with 5 (thankfully went to 4) and it was tough trying to figure out when to add an additional opponent vs when to bump a character to elite or make other changes.
Why do you think your fighter is so far above the expected power curve?
He can usually keep everything he targets with frightened 2 and flat footed. Same with the paladin. Paladin also gives a reaction attack so they both have attack chains of -0, -0, -5 and then shield/parry. Each have a bonus reaction AoO/shield block, as well. So they work together amazingly well. Fighter also has Your next to keep the fear chain going. Add in dread marshal for damage and more frightened in the off chance the other options don't stick.
As for the comments on team size, I said we had 5 people in AV, and we had trouble there when it wasn't scaled up for 5 people, we lost the cleric and so we're down to a group of four. But the rogue and I (druid) could just stay out of most of the fights and it wouldn't matter. The fighter and paladin took out both the boss fights I mentioned before we could engage.
Good to hear the fights in book 2 might be better. Even with increasing team sizes and giving elite templates our GM is a little frustrated that we just bulldoze everything. He's also starting to come around to the idea of making enemy teams ambush and use better tactics on us I think, heh. More teams need obvious tactics or gimicks, we went against a team that did trips and had bonus damage to prone so that was interesting.
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Does the ROgue have Opportune Backstab? That's probably pound for pound the best reaction attack in the game. PLus Gang Up exists.
Does the ROgue have Opportune Backstab? That's probably pound for pound the best reaction attack in the game. PLus Gang Up exists.
Rogue uses a bow, so none of that applies.
Just did the day 2 event last night. I think our GM put elite on everything, not sure. For the first two thirds of the event, my Dragon form standing in the open surrounded was the only thing taking any damage, but with champion backup it wasn't anything to note. The last section though, the rogue got low from being ranged focused and I got very low from being piled on, but then
Our GM concluded last night that it was made this way to ensure the PCs get into the tournament proper no matter what. But I feel that being handed a victory diminishes its value.
I do wonder how these fights turn out for other groups though.
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Well, no wonder he's doing low damage. He went with a low damage combat style.
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That's pretty typical for haunts. It takes time, skill, and luck to confront them directly to disable them with skill checks. That's to encourage players to explore the narrative around the haunt and not just smash through them.
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That's pretty typical for haunts. It takes time, skill, and luck to confront them directly to disable them with skill checks. That's to encourage players to explore the narrative around the haunt and not just smash through them.
Then just make skill checks impossible on them.
My character (same group as Andrew) rolled an 18 on the dice for an occultism check and failed. Magus with int of 18, master in Occultism (he had multiclassed into witch). That is pretty close to as good as a character can conceivably be. I suppose a witch might have an Int of 20 and a pendant of the occult and be 3 higher but even then the character would fail rolling a 15. My character is a long way from a dabbler.
If a character who has invested fairly heavily in a skill fails on an 18 then yeah, the DC really IS stupidly high.
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Like everything, we just ground it down with brute force, was very frustrating and not fun to be told you have to roll a 20 in a specific skill (only one of us had trained or above in) or damage keeps incoming.
Would love to hear how your battles go, we just finished book 2 last night. Thought we had a challenge with a rather large enemy but a fighter crit followed by rogue critting disintegrate put that hope down.
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Looking at all of the hazards in the temple of Irori they all have an Extreme DC for Occultism and High DC for Religion (and Low DC for Irori Lore) which seems a bit odd to me. Maybe High/Moderate/Low would have been better for this dungeon.
Extreme + the trap being higher level than the party makes it very rough.
Though in general I don't like hazards that much because in my experience there is only one party member that is allowed to interact with it while the others can just stand there (insane Hardness on most of them).