Aberrations for beginners

[sambouchah]

I'm DMing a small group(maybe four people including myself) on Friday night. I told everyone to be ready to fight Aberrations. I suggested a Paladin, Wizard and Ranger as good choices. So far I know there will be a paladin(relying on mounted combat), and a phrenic wizard. I am(as DM) using lords of madness for a lot of ideas. I allow the players to have a +2 LA and all material for them is open.

I was planning a Neogi encounter for their first quest/adventure and was going to do 'Wreck of the Spidermind' from LoM but realized the players aren't optimizers like the wizard's player is. But I know the paladin should be good in melee combat and the wizard should kick major ass with his high amount of spells known. I think they could fight a CR 4 and win easily. So a spectator maybe, or a single Neogi with a few goblin slaves?

Also any good books for strange aberrations would be wonderful. Thanks, Sam

[danzibr]

Wait. 1 HD with +2 LA against CR 4? They'll get stomped unless there's heavy optimization.

[Flickerdart]

Paladins and Rangers aren't good choices for anything, except maybe dying.

[rockdeworld]

Wait. 1 HD with +2 LA against CR 4? They'll get stomped unless there's heavy optimization.
I think he meant +2LA for free. In which case, a Saint Paladin wouldn't be killed off so quickly. Saint Mystic Wildshape Ranger would be a suitable choice too.

[Draz74]

Wait. 1 HD with +2 LA against CR 4? They'll get stomped unless there's heavy optimization.

Really? :smallconfused: CR 4 is a reasonable boss fight for a Level 1 party even if they don't have the abilities granted by LA +2 races/templates. Assuming the OP had a 4-on-1 fight (plus or minus one) in mind.

[Phelix-Mu]

Since the DM isn't in control of what the players play (albeit those might not have been sparkling suggestions...paladin?), I'll just say that a higher-op wizard will boost the degree of threat neutralization, and it seems like there may be people with hp to stand in front of the wizard. Beware the goblins, though; sending a party against a superior CR that also close to outnumbers or outnumbers the party might not be wise, and definitely avoid ambush or other factors that might circumstantially increase the difficulty.

Also keep in mind that the durability of this party might be low, as I don't see a cleric or other person with easy access to healing (paladin aside...mounted, the pally stands to be apart from the other characters during combat).

[Toy Killer]

I'm DMing a small group(maybe four people including myself) on Friday night. I told everyone to be ready to fight Aberrations. I suggested a Paladin, Wizard and Ranger as good choices. So far I know there will be a paladin(relying on mounted combat), and a phrenic wizard. I am(as DM) using lords of madness for a lot of ideas. I allow the players to have a +2 LA and all material for them is open.

I was planning a Neogi encounter for their first quest/adventure and was going to do 'Wreck of the Spidermind' from LoM but realized the players aren't optimizers like the wizard's player is. But I know the paladin should be good in melee combat and the wizard should kick major ass with his high amount of spells known. I think they could fight a CR 4 and win easily. So a spectator maybe, or a single Neogi with a few goblin slaves?

Also any good books for strange aberrations would be wonderful. Thanks, Sam

If you have access to their Character sheets, I recommend making a chart of the following:

AC(FF/Touch)/FRT/REF/WILL/HP
A 19 (17/12)/+6/+2/+2/18
B 11 (10/11)/+4/+1/+4/8
C 13 (10/13)/+2/+5/+4/13
D 16 (15/11)/+5/+1/+4/12

What this does is it gives you a good base line for what the party can reasonably handle. When you make encounters, it's easy to go with the CRs of Monsters and presume you're safe (It's designed to do so, right?) but sometimes, especially when monsters have unusual abilities, things go awry on you. Pretty drastically, sometimes.

In the party above, I can throw down 7 goblins and expect them to win under the circumstances that I design the encounter right for them to win. People don't crank up their saves so that they won't get to use them right? same with armor and HP. Now, you could, say, drop 7 goblin wizards with the proper ACFs and have them color spray the party to death. But what's the point of rolling a campaign together if you're just going to try to kill the party?

Don't just accept or build stats for the NPCs, design the encounter for the party to win Ultimately. Not guaranteed, not wistfully easy, just ultimately. Make it so that things you want to go down (But don't Need to happen) require a roll of 12, things you want them to survive need a natural roll of 8, and things you need to go down require a roll of 14 to save against. tailor the targets to the rolls required, and don't let the PCs be the wiser. The chances of a TPK get dropped dramatically (I haven't had a TPK since 3.0 came out, compared to AD&D, this is a cake walk!), the players feel they have successfully navigated their needs and endured a great under taking.

Now, this doesn't mean target things foolishly. A goblin sorcerer using suggestion on the wizard is obviously wrong from the table point of view, but it shouldn't be hard to make a poor sorcerer goblin who has a suggestion spell that needs a DC 14 Will save against his command spell target against the Barbarian (With a +2 to his Will Save). Let the heroes be heroes, not thrashed by common goblin goonies.

Make sense?

[Octopusapult]

Paladins and Rangers aren't good choices for anything, except maybe dying.

This made me lol.


@ OP, I would suggest planning a few boss battles of various CRs (3-5) so you can see how the PCs fare against creatures of an appropriate CR (and give them some resources to spend in the big battles) before actually throwing them into the real fray.

That's what evil masterminds do isn't it? Test their strength with some minions before revealing the real deal? Except in this case the "real deal" will be dependent on how well they handle the "minions."

And if worse comes to worse, you've still got some boss fights you can scale up for future reference, or even scale down as mini-bosses. Not a bad problem to have in my opinion.

[sambouchah]

I assumed a Ranger would be useful for the +2 against aberrations and then possibly go into Illithid slayer(or hunter, I can't remember). But Hey! I don't DM often and I played a ranger in my first campaign(3 years ago) so I don't know them very well. The wizard is insane(I've seen his sheet) and one of the players hasn't rolled yet. I just told the guy who is playing a paladin that it isn't the best choice.

And I've thrown 5th level characters(five of them) against an 11th CR monster and they survived. And that happened to be an ambush. I find everyone who isn't me(mainly cause they don't try) to be a non optimizer in my group. Their character's generally do fairly well against one or two highlly tough creatures. Once I threw two Ogres and 24 goblins at a party of 5 second level adventurers and one fighter cleaved both ogres in half and killed 7 goblins on his own. The bard and sorcerer both passed out but the paladin and OTHER bard kept them safe.


So a boss fight to see their power, then decide how to do things? Okay

[Eman Resu]

Ranger Psion combo for Illithid Slayer would prolly be a perfect match for campaign.......as far as +2 LA go Half Fey template...get the magic in the blood feat so all those 1/day become 3/day (does 1/2 fey get spells I forget?)

Paladin is really only a good 2 level dip anything beyond that is....well weak tbh
again apply the +2 LA template but this time pick Half Celestial template alla the BoED its only a +2 LA

[Man on Fire]

Test them. You have their sheets, or at least copies, right? Take them, take the ecounter and start rolling the dices and see how it works. This way you'll know if ecounter is too high or too easy for the party.

[Draz74]

I assumed a Ranger would be useful for the +2 against aberrations and then possibly go into Illithid slayer(or hunter, I can't remember).
Yeah, Ranger becomes significantly stronger when the campaign will mostly involve one type of enemy, and the player knows this beforehand. I don't think your Ranger will be suffering too badly. Especially if he's aiming to become a psi-gish Illithid Slayer eventually.


(does 1/2 fey get spells I forget?)
Spell-like abilities, yes.


Paladin is really only a good 2 level dip anything beyond that is....well weak tbh
again apply the +2 LA template but this time pick Half Celestial template alla the BoED its only a +2 LA

Paladin's not too bad if you know all the splatbook tricks to spice it up. Battle Blessing, Healing Spirit ACF, etc. But even without those tricks, it's at least a good 4-level dip, if you just know that you can take a feat to put your Turn Undead uses to good use. (Divine Might, Travel Devotion, or Law Devotion, for example.)

IIRC, that version of Half-Celestial can only be used on creatures that are already Celestial, or something like that.