Tree of Dreadful Dreams (AoA Spoiler Warnings)

[Brightsided]

Made a thread on reddit but figured this would be a good place for discussion as well. Spoiler for AoA Book 3 ahead.

So I am running age of Ashes, we are pushing into book 3 and we just had this encounter with the hazard in the title line and to say the least it went very poorly for my party. Nearly a TPK and probably one PC that should have been dead but I decided the hazard wasn't going to beat on the poor unconscious PC and instead pick him up and move him into one of the beds in the room, making the party have to risk saving him.

I was mostly posting out of curiosity how other people who have played this had it go? The party's comp was Occult Sorc, Cleric of Keyden, Fighter (Sorc dip, using Gluttonous Jaw as their main weapon), and Dragon Summoner.

I ran (and maybe the largest mistake) after they cleared out the night hag in the room below. they approached the room, I gave them a description of the room, and the statue of the tree, I did not auto roll perceptions as the hazard doesn't list anything for them to notice (potential mistake). The fighter and the sorcerer approached the tree out of curiosity while the rest of the group lined up inside the entry of the room. I went ahead and then initiated the encounter describing the tree's branches starting to stir and reach out at the party.

Everything in the fight was an uphill battle for them. It rolled middling and went 1st on initiative and immediately set to work grabbing the Fighter, Cleric, and Eidolon, while dealing impressive damage to them. From there they gingerly tried to combine healing and retreating and trying to escape the grabs. Having 6 AoOs that crit the party nearly 50% of the time (interrupting manipulate actions ([like healing spells]) made it very hard for them to do anything and by round 2 PCs started to fall over to the ~50 damage crits being doled out, in addition to constrictions and mental damage. Since the corridor leaving the room was single file, and the PCs were forced to step to avoid AOOs and subsequent grabs, the entrance to the room became a choke point that ultimately blocked the Cleric from being able to escape the room as the last man inside it. Multiple PCs had gone down, and were in range to go down again if the tree got to strike at them. The Cleric ultimately went down to a critical hit and was on deaths' door. That's where I decided rather than the tree just squeeze the halfling to death it would keep him as captive in his horrific dreams.

Just to give the PCs a way to win I decided the 6 AoOs and 6 being a reoccurring number, was the actual number of dangerous branches, and while it took all of their hero points, and some serious coordination they did manage to fell every branch in time for everyone to stay alive.

Overall the encounter was received quite poorly by the group, they felt pretty poorly about the encounter being so difficult, and potentially unwinnable as RAW without the Thievery skill or the key item that they had not encountered yet. This has continued to sour the party's feelings twords AoA as a whole, seeing it as an AP rife with over-tuned encounters. Hard to disagree when they almost TPK to a "Low" difficulty encounter.

Anyone have some feedback on if I just made this into a tougher fight then it should have been? Anyone have experience from their playthroughs they could share and how this encounter went. I'm scratching my head at what they could have done better other then just know more about this specific hazard before fighting it, which is not possible.

Appreciate any feedback or discussion on the topic.

[Fumarole]

My party was five PCs and I ran it as written and they had a rough time of it, almost losing the party witch who scouted into the room on her own with no one else watching over her. Once they realized the danger and possible solution to disabling it, they put a cursed dreamstone into the tree, which of course made things worse. Luckily for them they managed to disable it with the correct dreamstone the next round. It was the last encounter of the way station, so they didn't have to deal with any other opponents while the tree was thrashing them, though they were a bit beat up going into it.

[xcmt]

Quote:

Anyone have some feedback on if I just made this into a tougher fight then it should have been?

I think you made it slightly tougher by not giving them an opportunity to notice that the tree was a hazard. If noticed, they might take the other waystation path and end up with the correct dreamstone when they circle back around, or they might coordinate their approach and attack a little better, or investigate from afar and identify the easiest ways to disable it before it's trying to actively kill them.

When I ran it, after rolling secret perception checks, the Rogue did notice the branches twitching ever so slightly in a spider-like manner. Incidentally this is the encounter that made me rework exactly how up-front I am with my players about when something is a hazard and when something is a creature, because my group are eager to battle, and charged right in without a second thought, and all ended up grabbed. Spellcasters and the Ranger kept trying to attack the tree trunk itself, like a creature, and I had to describe how ineffective their attacks were while waiting for them to Seek or Identify/Recall to give them more information, but they just wanted to full-attack. Finally they figured out the attacking branches thing, but by this point we're three rounds deep and it's a near-TPK. I did modify the fight by removing broken branches from the AoO pool, regenerating one per round, so that everyone felt slightly less useless.

At this point I let the Rogue know about the runes at the trunk, and the disc-shaped indentation, and he finally got enough escapes and Mobility moves in to spare the actions to disable the hazard. It would never have occurred to him to do anything but stab, so I had to push him in the right direction.

Going forward, I decided that I'd break the fantasy veil and just flat out say when something is a hazard instead of a creature since there's a different suite of expected actions for handling them, and this ended up useful because there are a lot of things in Book 3/4 that could go either way based on descriptions.