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subject42
2009-07-20, 01:20 PM
My D&D group is currently playing the Rise of the Runelords module and we've hit a bit of a stumbling block. I'm outlining the background below, with the question below that. Any advice would be helpful.

Four of us went to kill a Quasit under a local glass works. We made it through several sinspawn and a mutated goblin pretty easily, but once we made it to the Quasit's lair things started to go wrong.

All four of our characters are level 2 (druid, psychic warrior, wizard, warlock/rogue), so we don't have a wide selection of spells on hand. As such, we pretty much resorted to trying to beat the tar out of said Quasit.

Once we started attacking the Quasit (Erythia, maybe?), we learned two important things. The first is that she has a *stupidly* high AC (at least 23). The seconds is that she has at least one level of Cleric, as she can cast inflict spells.

After about three rounds of fruitlessly slap-fighting her, I (the druid) ended up getting frustrated enough to grapple her after she had burned her AoO. I beat her touch AC (with an 18, so a touch AC of <= 18) and made the grapple.

The fight continued for a while with her going between a pinned and grappled state, repeatedly doing HP and Dex damage to me with her natural attack as the other party members tried (mostly fruitlessly) to attack her.

Eventually she got loose and cast a Shatter spell on our single cold iron weapon.

Between her summoned monsters and our inability to hit her we were pretty messed up at this point and decided to run for it. The session ended with us still fleeing for our lives.


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Given the information above, how can a 2nd level party of 1/2 or 3/4 progression BAB characters take down something with a high AC (23ish), high touch AC (14 - 18ish), a good reflex save (tiny Quasit), a good will save (cleric levels), DR x/cold iron, fast healing, Cleric casting, flight, invisibility, and an unknown number of energy resistances?

My only idea right now is using things that attack an area, rather than relying on a target. A net made of a metal mesh and some acid vials might get the job done, but I can't think of much else.

Irreverent Fool
2009-07-20, 01:51 PM
Seal the room.

obnoxious
sig

Person_Man
2009-07-20, 01:53 PM
Given the information above, how can a 2nd level party of 1/2 or 3/4 progression BAB characters take down something with a high AC (23ish), high touch AC (14 - 18ish), a good reflex save (tiny Quasit), a good will save (cleric levels), DR x/cold iron, fast healing, Cleric casting, flight, invisibility, and an unknown number of energy resistances?

You were very close.

The Warlock/Rogue should use Eldritch Blast every round. It's a touch attack, and deals untyped damage. And when the enemy is Grappled, they lose their Dex bonus. So it counts for Sneak Attack as well.

The Druid uses Summon Nature's ally every round until he burns every spell he has. The Druid also has an animal companion. And the Wizard also has a familiar. So your party should be 6-9 beings strong.

Everyone except for the Warlock/Rogue and the Druid (until he runs out of spells) should Grapple, every single turn. Alternatively they can all use Aid Another to give the Psychic Warrior a bonus to hit, which stacks.

Another good option is to use tanglefoot bags to reduce it's Dex and slow it down, and soot (from the glass furnaces) fill the air, cling to the Quasit, and negate Invisibility (by RAW that doesn't work, but I'd be willing to bet that a DM would allow it).

HamsterOfTheGod
2009-07-20, 01:54 PM
My D&D group is currently playing the Rise of the Runelords module and we've hit a bit of a stumbling block. I'm outlining the background below, with the question below that. Any advice would be helpful.

Four of us went to kill a Quasit under a local glass works. We made it through several sinspawn and a mutated goblin pretty easily, but once we made it to the Quasit's lair things started to go wrong.

All four of our characters are level 2 (druid, psychic warrior, wizard, warlock/rogue), so we don't have a wide selection of spells on hand. As such, we pretty much resorted to trying to beat the tar out of said Quasit.

Once we started attacking the Quasit (Erythia, maybe?), we learned two important things. The first is that she has a *stupidly* high AC (at least 23). The seconds is that she has at least one level of Cleric, as she can cast inflict spells.

After about three rounds of fruitlessly slap-fighting her, I (the druid) ended up getting frustrated enough to grapple her after she had burned her AoO. I beat her touch AC (with an 18, so a touch AC of <= 18) and made the grapple.

The fight continued for a while with her going between a pinned and grappled state, repeatedly doing HP and Dex damage to me with her natural attack as the other party members tried (mostly fruitlessly) to attack her.

Eventually she got loose and cast a Shatter spell on our single cold iron weapon.

Between her summoned monsters and our inability to hit her we were pretty messed up at this point and decided to run for it. The session ended with us still fleeing for our lives.


----------------

Given the information above, how can a 2nd level party of 1/2 or 3/4 progression BAB characters take down something with a high AC (23ish), high touch AC (14 - 18ish), a good reflex save (tiny Quasit), a good will save (cleric levels), DR x/cold iron, fast healing, Cleric casting, flight, invisibility, and an unknown number of energy resistances?

My only idea right now is using things that attack an area, rather than relying on a target. A net made of a metal mesh and some acid vials might get the job done, but I can't think of much else.

Not sure how the quasit let all 4 of you get within melee range with its superior mobility. But if that happens again, some of you might be better off using aid another than trying to hit. Holy water and tanglefoot bags might also be handy. As will preparing faerie fire for when it goes invisible.

Maybe its best to leave it alone for now...

Mongoose87
2009-07-20, 01:56 PM
You were very close.

The Warlock/Rogue should use Eldritch Blast every round. It's a touch attack, and deals untyped damage. And when the enemy is Grappled, they lose their Dex bonus. So it counts for Sneak Attack as well.

The Druid uses Summon Nature's ally every round until he burns every spell he has. The Druid also has an animal companion. And the Wizard also has a familiar. So your party should be 6-9 beings strong.

Everyone except for the Warlock/Rogue and the Druid (until he runs out of spells) should Grapple, every single turn. Alternatively they can all use Aid Another to give the Psychic Warrior a bonus to hit, which stacks.

Another good option is to use tanglefoot bags to reduce it's Dex and slow it down, and soot (from the glass furnaces) fill the air, cling to the Quasit, and negate Invisibility (by RAW that doesn't work, but I'd be willing to bet that a DM would allow it).

Doesn't shooting into the grapple have a pretty decent chance of hitting an ally?

subject42
2009-07-20, 02:06 PM
Doesn't shooting into the grapple have a pretty decent chance of hitting an ally?

The DM stated "shooting into a grapple without precise shot gives you a 50% chance to hit either person".

We avoided that.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-07-20, 02:28 PM
Magic Missile.

Power Word Pain.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-07-20, 02:36 PM
The DM stated "shooting into a grapple without precise shot gives you a 50% chance to hit either person".

We avoided that.

Under those circumstances, I wouldn't want to target the quasit either. That must be a Pathfinder-specific change or a houserule, since 3.5 removed the soft-cover-gets-hit rule from 3.0.

Epinephrine
2009-07-20, 02:46 PM
Our group also had a huge problem with this encounter. We had a binder, and the way we beat the quasit was:

Binder linked self to enemy, so that they share damage (Shield Self, Dahlver Nar).
We beat the crap out of the binder while healing him.

Was funny, but we were also curious how anyone else could have managed fighting a flying, invisible, fast healing, DR 5/Cold Iron critter at that level.

subject42
2009-07-20, 03:10 PM
Magic Missile.

Power Word Pain.

What is the spell level and source book on Power Word Pain?

lsfreak
2009-07-20, 03:16 PM
Races of the Dragon, 1st level. May cause your DM to throw books at you. It does 1d6 points of damage per round for 4d4 rounds to someone with less than 50hp, with no save.

Dhavaer
2009-07-20, 03:27 PM
Under those circumstances, I wouldn't want to target the quasit either. That must be a Pathfinder-specific change or a houserule, since 3.5 removed the soft-cover-gets-hit rule from 3.0.

Actually, ranged attacks against grapples hit a random grappler in 3.5 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm).

Serenity
2009-07-20, 07:01 PM
Erylium is a very hard opponent to kill for the level she's encountered at. On the other hand, she's lacking the offensive power to be an especially significant danger to the health of the PCs. Beating her on the first encounter pretty much requires very clever tactics--if you can get hold of her, try drowning her in the pool--and a healthy dose of luck--drawing the right card from the Critical Hit Deck, or having a warlock or Magic Missile spammer on hand, for example. If you can't kill her on that first try, however...that's not a problem. She's the sad little queen of a sad little forgotten complex. She's not going anywhere, and lacks much real power of her own. Beating her is not essential to moving the adventure forward. No shame in coming back with bigger swords next time.

subject42
2009-07-20, 07:18 PM
if you can get hold of her, try drowning her in the pool

I thought of that. The DM adjudicated that demons don't breathe. I can see the logic going both ways.

HamsterOfTheGod
2009-07-20, 07:18 PM
I thought of that. The DM adjudicated that demons don't breathe. I can see the logic going both ways.

By the RAW they do.

Set
2009-07-20, 07:59 PM
We had a pair of scrolls of Align Weapon, and had plans involving tanglefoot bags, a net, grapple and drowning it, etc.

Turns out that the good-aligned weapon of the ranger and some magic missiles from the sorceress blew her out of the sky.

I don't think that the Cleric (me), Binder, Rogue or Druid ever got a hit in on her, but my actions consisted almost entirely of support actions such as an Align Weapon scroll use, a bless spell, etc. Six characters, and only two really affected the Quasit. She may have been hard to hit and hurt, but she had junk for hit points.

bosssmiley
2009-07-21, 07:26 AM
Some of the ACs, DCs and CRs in the RotR adventure path are completely b0rked. They seem to have been written up with the anticipated abilities of CharOp'ed characters in mind, rather than those of the pre-gens or true organic characters.

Get your DM to read the Critical Ankle Bites (http://criticalanklebites.com/) write-up on RotR (though you as a player should try to avoid spoilerage) and pray that he takes their advice on fixing some of the more lunatic mathematical and gameplay b0rkage.

Relevant for your game:
write up on the section you've just completed - the quasit's lair (http://criticalanklebites.com/2008/02/08/pathfinder-3-in-the-quasits-lair/)
write up on the conclusion of part 2 - the clock tower (http://criticalanklebites.com/2008/04/25/pathfinder-10-evil-nasty-clockses-we-hates-them/) (the CR-inappropriate final section and boss fight are LOLarious in their design ineptitude)

@v: I mean organic in the sense of situationally suboptimal, mainly because of picks that made perfect sense at the time of selection earlier in the campaign, but no longer do now. It happens especially with regular-but-casual (aka lazy) players.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-07-21, 07:36 AM
Some of the ACs, DCs and CRs in the RotR adventure path are completely b0rked. They seem to have been written up with CharOp'ed characters in mind, rather than the pre-gens or true organic characters.

How do you define "true organic characters"? Are you saying many of the DCs expect unrealistically optimized characters, or are you saying that optimized and roleplayed characters are mutually exclusive? Because many would argue (myself included) that the latter isn't at all true.