What could we have done in this encounter?

[Story]

In our last session, we had our first PC death, at least since I joined the group. However, looking back, the encounter seems pretty unreasonable, so I'm left wondering if there was anything we could do differently, or why the DM would give us such an apparently unfair encounter.

Here's the information as best as I can remember
Party:
Human Ranger 2/ PF Beastmaster 2
Hill Giant Barbarian 4 (ECL 8 since the DM isn't counting the racial hit dice)
Elven Duskblade 4
Necropolitan Fire Elf Wizard 3 (me)

I'm pretty optimized, but I don't think anyone else in the party is, and none of my spells seemed particularly applicable, though Glitterdust helped a little.


The enemies were 5 "Red Drakes", presumably a modified version of the Pathfinder monster. They attacked with Fireballs (18-35 damage, reflex half DC17), though they didn't Fireball every round. They did a total of 5 fireballs over the 4 rounds the fight lasted IIRC.
Will save <= 6. I didn't bother trying to keep track of HP, but the barbarian and ranger managed to take them all down over 4 rounds.

The encounter took place on an airship. The deck was big enough that each Fireball only affected one side of the ship plus the middle. The ship had 3 ballistas (3d8, 125ft increment) but they were on different sides of the ship, so only one or two could be used at once.

Our ranger spotted one of them from around 800 feet away IIRC, but as soon as we rolled for initiative, they teleported to 100ft away and started spreading out.

The ranger used Rapid Shot to fire the ballista twice per round, while the giant used his strength to just throw the bolts at the dragons. The duskblade couldn't do anything at all since his main spell is Kelgore's Firebolt. On the last round, they killed him from full health with a lucky Fireball.

I wasn't able to reverse engineer the CR from the XP rewards, but I can't see any way that this is anything other than an "Overpowering" encounter. How is sending 5 monsters that are each capable of potentially one shotting most of the party remotely reasonable? And they attacked us, so it's not like we randomly bumped into a set piece encounter that we should have run from.

I might have been able to distract them briefly with a Silent Image if I had thought of it, and if we were allowed buffing rounds I could have Enlarge Person'd the giant for +1 dmg, but I don't think it would have made much difference. Is there some trick the DM expected us to use that would have made things a lot easier?

The only explanations I can think of are

The ballistas reduced the EL a lot (admittedly it was the only way we were able to damage them)
The Hill Giants ECL led to us fighting a much stronger encounter than we should have
We steamrolled the previous two encounters (with different players and against weaker enemies) and the DM overcompensated

[hymer]

I haven't analyzed the data you've brought forth in depth, and I don't know what spells the DM may have thought you'd use - or what you guys had in items that someone forgot about, e.g. So these are more general:

The DM made an honest mistake and overestimated you guys or underestimated the drakes.

Players or PCs overlooked or forgot something (equipment, terrain, allies, etc.) that could have made a difference.

You missed or forgot clues that it could be a difficult encounter, and avoiding it might have been better.

The DM is sick and tired of the players, the PCs, the campaign or being DM, and is trying to kill you off to make that feeling go away.

[Zombimode]

5 enemies that can shoot 10d6 fireballs look like a miscalculation or oversight from the DM. You can see that he probably realized the mistake by not shooting 5 fireballs in the first round (what normally should happen if the creatures are played up to their abilities).

The DM will probably have learned his/her lesson. Of course it sucks to be on the receiving end, but oh well, its only a game. "You will adapt."

A party with three ECL 4 characters and 1 ECL 8 character has a party level of 5,6 , so an EL 9 encounter would still be considered "very difficult".

[OverdrivePrime]

The Hill Giants ECL led to us fighting a much stronger encounter than we should have
We steamrolled the previous two encounters (with different players and against weaker enemies) and the DM overcompensated


I suspect it's a combination of these two. What in the world is that giant doing in your 4th level party?

It sounds like your DM was using a souped-up version of Flame Drakes (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/dragons/drakes/drake-flame) - probably CR6 each - and if he/she had played those fire drakes intelligently, it should have been a TPK. The way Pathfinder's encounter guidelines go, you were up against at least a CR8 encounter.

Which of you died?

[zimmerwald1915]

The enemies were 5 "Red Drakes", presumably a modified version of the Pathfinder monster. They attacked with Fireballs (18-35 damage, reflex half DC17), though they didn't Fireball every round. They did a total of 5 fireballs over the 4 rounds the fight lasted IIRC.
For others' reference, this (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/dragons/drakes/drake-flame) is the Pathfinder monster in question. Fire Drakes are also a 3.5 monster from page 154 of the Draconomicon. The Pathfinder monster, however, is weaker, and the Draconomicon monster does not possess the fireball breath special attack, so you're probably right that you were fighting the PF beastie. I don't know what its CR (and thus the EL of an encounter with five of them) would be once it was converted to 3.5, but plugging PF's CR into a 3.5 EL calculator without any mitigating factors, this is an EL 11 encounter.


I didn't bother trying to keep track of HP, but the barbarian and ranger managed to take them all down over 4 rounds.

...

The ranger used Rapid Shot to fire the ballista twice per round, while the giant used his strength to just throw the bolts at the dragons. The duskblade couldn't do anything at all since his main spell is Kelgore's Firebolt. On the last round, they killed him from full health with a lucky Fireball.
Killing five monsters in four rounds is no mean feat, especially with one, possibly two party members stymied for something to do. The problem can't be with your offense; I can only conclude that it must be with your defense.


Our ranger spotted one of them from around 800 feet away IIRC, but as soon as we rolled for initiative, they teleported to 100ft away and started spreading out.
Do you mean that literally, or did they just move very fast? A Flame Drake can fly 240 feet per round if it wants, and your GM may have added on another 60 feet thanks to their speed surge special quality.


I might have been able to distract them briefly with a Silent Image if I had thought of it, and if we were allowed buffing rounds I could have Enlarge Person'd the giant for +1 dmg, but I don't think it would have made much difference. Is there some trick the DM expected us to use that would have made things a lot easier?
It would help to know what spells you had prepared, as well as the contents of your spellbook. One thing that strikes me as being pretty darned useful in a fight like this is resist energy.

[Story]

I suspect it's a combination of these two. What in the world is that giant doing in your 4th level party?

Which of you died?

He used to be human but got cursed. And it was the Duskblade who died.



Do you mean that literally, or did they just move very fast? A Flame Drake can fly 240 feet per round if it wants, and your GM may have added on another 60 feet thanks to their speed surge special quality.


It would help to know what spells you had prepared, as well as the contents of your spellbook. One thing that strikes me as being pretty darned useful in a fight like this is resist energy.

What I meant is that we had no chance to attack them from a distance. I'm not sure if they were just moving really fast or if the DM decided that we'd have nothing useful to do until they were close by anyway. Unfortunately, this led to some confusion. I didn't bother with Nerveskitter since I assumed there would be at least one round before they got close, and as a result, lost initiative.

As for my spellbook.
1st level:
Mage Armor
Benign Transposition
Blockade
Charm Person
Combat Readiness
Dawnburst
Enlarge Person
Expeditious Retreat
Grease
Hail of Stone
Nerveskitter
Persistent Blade
Ray of Enfeeblement
Sheild
Silent Image
True Strike

2nd level:
Web
Disguise Undead
False Life
Glitterdust

As for which spells I had prepared, I can check my notes later.

[zimmerwald1915]

He used to be human but got cursed.
Some curse.


As for my spellbook.
1st level:
Mage Armor
Benign Transposition
Blockade
Charm Person
Combat Readiness
Dawnburst
Enlarge Person
Expeditious Retreat
Grease
Hail of Stone
Nerveskitter
Persistent Blade
Ray of Enfeeblement
Sheild
Silent Image
True Strike

2nd level:
Web
Disguise Undead
False Life
Glitterdust

As for which spells I had prepared, I can check my notes later.
Hmm...it looks to me like you're specced mostly for interaction (both social and combat) with humanoids. Would that be fair to say? Most of your battlefield control is obviated by your being on an airship and fighting flying monsters. Web is useless, hail of stone will be left behind, and grease can't force trips anymore though you can find other uses for it.

I suppose blockade could be used to give partial cover from the fireball attacks and that silent image could be used to provide a distraction (such as making it look like you've summoned an arbitrarily strong air elemental or extraplanar red dragon). False life would no doubt be useful, though you couldn't have buffed the Duskblade.

[nedz]

With the Hill Giant around you have an unbalanced party. In making a challenging encounter for the Hill Giant, everyone else gets to die occasionally. Until this is corrected you are going to see lots of PC deaths, until finally the campaign ends with a TPK.

[Spuddles]

Yeah allowing that hill giant is kinda lame. The DM should be ok with him splattering everything until you all get to a closer ECL.

One thing you could have done was take cover vs the fireballs, for a +2 reflex save. In 3.0 I believe 9/10 cover gave you evasion

[lsfreak]

Sounds like the DM wants to challenge you guys, but is running into two problems. A) a hill giant is ridiculously powerful and has absolutely no business being in this party, and b) whether out of ignorance or something else, is playing the monsters really dumb and trying to make up for it in number, which will never work against something like that hill giant (and possibly getting frustrated because he "threw a level 11 encounter and they killed it!").

[Randomguy]

The duskblades "primary spell" was kelgore's fire bolt? He should have had 3 other spells. If he'd had resist energy then that would have made a big difference.

[Story]

Well I've never seen him cast anything else.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

We steamrolled the previous two encounters (with different players and against weaker enemies) and the DM overcompensatedThis could go a very long way toward explaining it. I know that as a DM, I have trouble keeping encounters reasonable for my players, usually erring on the side of too easy. When there's one of me and five players, it's all too easy to underestimate at least one of them and end having some key part of the fight become trivial. (I've had literally every one of my players do something I didn't realize they were capable of* and throw off an encounter at some point.) I'm always tempted to throw caution to the wind and send them up against a force well beyond what I think they can handle, but I'm too nervous about their reactions (and to be honest, I'm probably too attached to the characters.) It sounds like, maybe, your DM was in a similar place and just decided to throw you a challenge to see how well you could handle it. I'd be worried if it were a regular thing, but it doesn't sound like it is.

*It's not so much that they do things I didn't know they could do; it's that they get lucky or creative with those things to acheive results I didn't expect.

[ArcturusV]

Hmm, like a lot of things just not being there makes me wonder what I may of missed. The only thing that jumps up at me from this is that if your Duskblade (Who sounded otherwise out of this fight entirely), manned the Airship's helm, he would have been out of the obvious fight zone and as a "Non-Combatant" would probably be a secondary target for Fireballing than the Drakes. Particularly if the Helm was situated in such a way that he'd have cover from anything but Fireballs directly aimed at him (Such an an elevated platform the helm is on). And by being on the helm he could have possible directed the airship in such a way to get you extra ballista attacks each round by giving a little evasive wiggling and figure eighting into how the ship was flying.

[Story]

There was an NPC piloting the ship. Anyway, he didn't get targeted until the final round, when we decided to turn the ship. The drakes mostly attacked the ranger and I, since the ranger was the closest one (and the one firing the ballista) and I apparently got caught in the blasts.

[andromax]

Well, atleast now the Duskblade can roll a hill giant pc :smallbiggrin:

From what I gather, your DM is inexperienced and or is not completely familiar with all the rules etc.. this is what happens. Take it or leave it, but hopefully he learns. I understand from your other thread he's not open to reason when it comes to the Hill giant's ECL?

Why is he so stubborn when he clearly doesn't understand the system?

[Story]

Actually, the NPCs were so grateful for us defeating the drakes that they paid to have him resurrected.

As for the Racial hit dice not being included in ECL thing, I asked him about it, and he said "Yeah, I opted not to do that because I figured he would attempt to remove the curse."

We've gotten to a city where he can get it removed, so hopefully he'll decide to do so, but the player didn't sound very keen on getting it removed.

Anyway, my spells prepared were
0th:
Acid Splash
Detect Magic x 3
Presitidigation

1st:
Charm Person
Enlarge Person
Mage Armor
Ray of Enfeeblement
Silent Image

2nd:
Disguise Undead (cast every day to disguise myself)
False Life
Glitterdust x 2
<empty> (for use with Alactritous Cogitation)

[Shining Wrath]

There is no way that fourth level characters should be fighting 5 somethings that do AoE for what looks like d20 + 15 or thereabout.

What you should have done differently is put the ship into a dive and tried to get the drakes to crash into the ground when you pulled up. Or something. Standing and fighting creatures with one-hit-kill capability is never wise.

[Deadline]

So you guys fought a difficult encounter, pasted it in 5 rounds, and only one of you dropped? And then that one person got resurrected for free?

Where ... where's the problem again? :smallconfused:

[Immabozo]

A way of balancing that Hill Giant with the party, you could divide up the bonus over the base character and divide that by his LA and gain that increase per LA, although not proper per the rules, it makes balance easier, kinda like he were aging from an adolescent to adulthood over the 4 levels or so

[andromax]

"Yeah, I opted not to do that because I figured he would attempt to remove the curse."


Please sir, can you remove these obnoxious super-powers? They've become such a burden on me emotionally.

Sounds like nepotism :P

[Yahzi]

So you guys fought a difficult encounter, pasted it in 5 rounds, and only one of you dropped? And then that one person got resurrected for free?

Where ... where's the problem again? :smallconfused:
And the one that died was from luck:

On the last round, they killed him from full health with a lucky Fireball.
I'm with Deadline; I don't see the problem. If I were the DM I'd be thinking, "Dang, I guess I need SIX drakes to scare them." :smallbiggrin:

[lsfreak]

And the one that died was from luck:

I'm with Deadline; I don't see the problem. If I were the DM I'd be thinking, "Dang, I guess I need SIX drakes to scare them." :smallbiggrin:

I'd really like to get the DM's perspective on this. Because were they played to their Intelligence score, they would have nuked and killed as many people as they could in the first round, and/or taken out the ballista and killed the rest at their leisure. Like I said earlier, it really feels like the DM is trying to challenge the players, but is trying to do it by relying on numbers and brute force, which is rarely if ever the way to go.

[Matticussama]

I agree with some of the other comments; sometimes characters die. It sucks when it happens, but adventuring is dangerous. Especially since the character was Resurrection for free, I don't see a problem. Well, except for the Hill Giant. That is a problem the DM should definitely fix.

[Sith_Happens]

As for the Racial hit dice not being included in ECL thing, I asked him about it, and he said "Yeah, I opted not to do that because I figured he would attempt to remove the curse."

We've gotten to a city where he can get it removed, so hopefully he'll decide to do so, but the player didn't sound very keen on getting it removed.

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/007/666/_57c8a1a431a592af806925e57258202f.png

[Deophaun]

I didn't bother with Nerveskitter since I assumed there would be at least one round before they got close, and as a result, lost initiative.
Huh? This makes no sense, as the only time you cast Nerveskitter is when the DM asks for initiative. Did you think he was going to ask for a new initiative count in the next round or something?

[andromax]

Huh? This makes no sense, as the only time you cast Nerveskitter is when the DM asks for initiative. Did you think he was going to ask for a new initiative count in the next round or something?

If you read you OP, he probly didn't think initiative would matter and wanted his swift for something else;
Our ranger spotted one of them from around 800 feet away IIRC, but as soon as we rolled for initiative, they teleported to 100ft away and started spreading out.

Shenanigans!

Althought they could have fireball'd you from nearly that distance (long range) without ever putting themselves in any real danger.. so the DM didn't play them as nearly lethally as he could have, in all actuality.

[Story]

The Flame Drake's range is only 180 feet. I suppose they could have still stayed out of the first range increment for the ballista, but it wouldn't have made that much of a difference.

[Deophaun]

If you read you OP, he probly didn't think initiative would matter and wanted his swift for something else.
I did, indeed, read the OP. There's nothing there that implies what you inferred, namely, that he was using his swift action for something else.

In truth, he didn't bother with Nerveskitter because he didn't have it prepared.

But as for the actual question the OP asked, the obvious thing would be you could have bought scrolls of something that would be useful in a mid-air encounter. Even magic missile would have been an upgrade. Earthbind could be useful. Rebuke and Electric Jolt can be fatal, as the targets become stunned, which means fliers without perfect flight stall and then need to make DC 20 Reflex checks each round until they succeed or impact the ground (though the Close range on these is a problem). Wall of smoke is perfect because, again, if the target doesn't have a perfect flight speed, you can force them to fly through it and become nauseated, and it doesn't have to be anchored to anything. If you had appropriate spells, yeah, your teammate might not have died.

[Story]

Where do you find Electric Jolt?

Earthbind looks promising, though I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it allowed now.

[andromax]

In truth, he didn't bother with Nerveskitter because he didn't have it prepared.


Ahh, so you're privy to information that I'm not.

I guess I assumed that he was implying that he didn't bother to cast it as his option.. and why else would he not, other than action economy? The ranger spotted the creatures 800' away, and he wasn't worried about them closing and attacking within one round. What else could I infer?

[Slipperychicken]

This often happens. DM plays monsters with very poor tactics, so they need to compensate with bigger numbers to maintain the challenge.

CR-appropriate is supposed to use 25% of resources, which may include killing off one person out of a 4-man band. So the encounter actually seems pretty reasonable, especially considering you were flattening "appropriate" encounters without much trouble.

[Rogue Shadows]

CR-appropriate is supposed to use 25% of resources,

20%, actually. The idea is that a party can take four CR-appropriate encounters a day (80% resources), but any more and there will be deaths.

[Deophaun]

Where do you find Electric Jolt?
Bah, my bad. Electric Loop. Jolt is a cantrip. Spell Compendium.


Ahh, so you're privy to information that I'm not.
Do you have access to the thread?


Anyway, my spells prepared were
0th:
Acid Splash
Detect Magic x 3
Presitidigation

1st:
Charm Person
Enlarge Person
Mage Armor
Ray of Enfeeblement
Silent Image

2nd:
Disguise Undead (cast every day to disguise myself)
False Life
Glitterdust x 2
<empty> (for use with Alactritous Cogitation)

[andromax]

Do you have access to the thread?
Missed that spot check. My apologies.

[Fighter1000]

That encounter seems pretty good to me. If I was your DM, I would have sent only one drake though and played that drake with more deadliness and lethality. No funny business, you know what I'm saying?

[Story]

Ahh, so you're privy to information that I'm not.

I guess I assumed that he was implying that he didn't bother to cast it as his option.. and why else would he not, other than action economy? The ranger spotted the creatures 800' away, and he wasn't worried about them closing and attacking within one round. What else could I infer?

Sorry I was referring to using a Wand of Nerveskitter (which the DM ruled can be used flatfooted). I figured if there was going to be at least one round before the actual fighting started, then going first wouldn't mean much, so I might as well save a charge.


Edit:


Bah, my bad. Electric Loop. Jolt is a cantrip. Spell Compendium.

Edit: I took a look at Electric Loop, but it doesn't seem very good. Only close range and requires both a Reflex and Will save? Plus you're rarely going to be able to hit more than one creature. Earthbind looks much better for downing aerial opponents.

[Diarmuid]

Did your party know that these drakes existed and were a potential threat on this journey of yours?

[Story]

We had no warning or any reason to expect Drakes. From a metagame point of view, I expected sort sort of aerial encounter along the journey but I didn't know anything else.