Running Abomination Vaults

[Next Character #]

Hi, I’ve GMd other systems and we are having a blast with the AV adventure but I’m a little concerned. You see the group is at lvl 6 in the Adventure. And everything on this level is like CR8 and the encounters are flagged as moderate encounters… these things are hitting like freight trains… I don’t want to level them up to early but a lot of these monsters can one shot the party it seems. I feel like they are progressing at the correct rate in power, in the past they were able to do multiple encounters without a rest break. But on this level it’s like every encounter they have to give it everything they got to survive… they are even playing 5 players in a 4 player AP without any adjustments… perhaps my dice are on fire to often but I just can’t wrap my head around the math here at this point. Would a level up be good at this point? Some magic items they are missing? They are very hack and slashy group, not a lot of shoves or trip or intimidation checks.

Guardian, magus, wizard, rogue, Druid is the party set up.

I just need some advice… is this the way it is the rest of the dungeon ? I don’t want them to be discouraged but I’ve also seen how if they are too high a level how easy it is to trounce encounters also.

Thank you

[Conscious Meat]

Regarding items, by the time a party has hit sixth level they should have a total of roughly two permanent magic items of 6th level, four each of levels 2nd-5th, and two permanent 1st-level items. You'd also expect that they've seen at least a couple of sixth-level consumables, too.

Weapons should be +1 Striking by this point (4th level runes), and +1 armor potency is also expected (5th level runes).

Regarding tactics, the game certainly expects players to be a bit thoughtful regarding how they use their actions with MAP seriously discouraging third attacks (or even second attacks, if the enemy has a quite high AC and the attacker hasn't been buffed somehow). Figuring out ways to trade actions (e.g. trading a Shove for a Stride) can be useful if there's a single tough opponent that doesn't have good action compression techniques. Demoralize, Disarm, Recall Knowledge, Trip, Aid, Raise a Shield etc. can all be useful.

I will say that the Barbazu that the AP uses in multiple places are a bit of an outlier because "Infernal Wounds" is potentially rather brutal against parties that rely heavily on magical healing rather than, say, alchemical elixirs or the Medicine skill. If *those* are giving trouble, consider substituting their remaster-era ~peer (Vordines).

[Next Character #]

Yeah they all have +1 striking weapons (some have multiple) and +1 armor runes … many wands and the like, to me they are flush with magic items… but with some of these monsters having +20 attack i am criting the guardian… pity anyone else if he went down our didn’t taunt one turn…

I was reading and comparing the barbauzu and vordine and I saw that bleed effect and was like “oh hell no” and went vordine for that… sadly that battle was a complete easy sauce for them … perhaps bad die rolls or more likely a cr5 vs a group of level 6’s doesn’t stand a chance .

It’s weird how the game can have that lvl of swing sometimes…

[magnuskn]

Next Character # wrote:

Hi, I’ve GMd other systems and we are having a blast with the AV adventure but I’m a little concerned. You see the group is at lvl 6 in the Adventure. And everything on this level is like CR8 and the encounters are flagged as moderate encounters… these things are hitting like freight trains… I don’t want to level them up to early but a lot of these monsters can one shot the party it seems. I feel like they are progressing at the correct rate in power, in the past they were able to do multiple encounters without a rest break. But on this level it’s like every encounter they have to give it everything they got to survive… they are even playing 5 players in a 4 player AP without any adjustments… perhaps my dice are on fire to often but I just can’t wrap my head around the math here at this point. Would a level up be good at this point? Some magic items they are missing? They are very hack and slashy group, not a lot of shoves or trip or intimidation checks.

Guardian, magus, wizard, rogue, Druid is the party set up.

I just need some advice… is this the way it is the rest of the dungeon ? I don’t want them to be discouraged but I’ve also seen how if they are too high a level how easy it is to trounce encounters also.

Thank you

Having enemies two levels above the party is okay. Actually, an enemy two levels above a four character party is a normal moderate encounter and should be no big problem, as long as they have spot healing for one or two big hits per encounter, i.e. a heal spell at party level (lvl 3 heal for your current level) and maybe Battle Medicine on one character who has Medicine. Level+3 monster encounters should be handled with more care and there's a level+4 encounter ahead (Froghemoth) which will be a real problem.

If you really don't like enemies hitting hard, you probably should give the weak template to a level +2 monster and then give it either one level -2 minion or two level -4 minions.

Check the encounter building rules in the GM Core for more information about how to build encounters. You also have 5 characters, so there are rules there, too, for adding additional enemies to keep the encounters challenging enough for a bigger party.