savage tide deaths

[blelliot]

I'm currently running the savage tide adventure path. My group is almost finished with part three, and my players aren't doing so hot. They seem to be dying a lot. Average of one death a session. I've made no changes to the modules, so I'm confused. Has any one else played this adventure and seen this amount of death? Please let me know! I'm afaid they will lose interest in the game!

[Feint's End]

Well I've never played the module but I'll try to give you some general help. First it would be good to know what your party is ... So what your current group setup is. Because tbh the most likely possibility is that your group is on a really low optimization level and/or makes tactical mistakes. Most printed adventures are low-mid optimization and shouldn't be a problem for experienced groups.

[blelliot]

Well, it started off as a half elf scout, an elf druid, a dwarf cleric, ahuman fighter(archery), an elf wizard, and an elf ranger. Then the first session, the rgr dies, replaced with a dwarf rogue, . Then the dwarf dies, replaced with human bbn, then we lose the elf wizard, replaced with a gnome wiz. Then a half elf druid and elf rogue joined and were promptly killed, to be replaced with a human monk, and human bard. Then the bbn goes down, replaced with a human paladin. Finally, the monk goes down, replaced by human druiad, and the gnome dies, replaced by a halfling rogue. Any thought would be appreciated.

[Alleran]

How optimised are they, though? Just saying that they died isn't going to help much if we don't know at least some general elements of their builds.

[blelliot]

In all honesty, there really isn't much optimization involved. The paladin, bbn,and cleric swung at stuff, the scout, fighter and rogue are/were archers. The druid and half;ing rogue focus on dual wielding daggers. The monk does what he does best, punch things, and the bard is trying to be inigo montoya with his rapier. The wizards are. Trying to blow stuff up. That help?

[BWR]

You might want to introduce the Heroic Destiny house rule that my girlfriend's Red Hand of Doom/Shackled City group uses: first death of the session results in the target stable at -9 hp instead of death, and enemies ignoring him until he's on his feet again.

I know that the group complained about SC all the time. On the one had, they were four people playing a 6-man game. On the other hand a number of those encounters seemed made to screw the players over (a bunch of 1st level characters meeting enemies with 2d6 sneak attack, for instance).

As far as the optimization things goes, I can't speak for Savage Tide, but most modules I've come across are designed with some pretty average groups in mind. Unless the PCs are almost intentionally avoiding useful feats and spells etc., they shouldn't have too much trouble due to poor build.

[Zombimode]

In all honesty, there really isn't much optimization involved. The paladin, bbn,and cleric swung at stuff, the scout, fighter and rogue are/were archers. The druid and half;ing rogue focus on dual wielding daggers. The monk does what he does best, punch things, and the bard is trying to be inigo montoya with his rapier. The wizards are. Trying to blow stuff up. That help?

Hm, not really. While not optimal, you can do all that and remain competent.

I've looked through the first part of the Savage Tide campaign ("There is no Honor") and it looked ok.
Maybe it's your players? Some people are just bad at making tactical decisions. Either because they don't know the rules and thus actually can't make informed decisions, or they just don't put the required thought into it.

Could you describe some of the situations where a PC died?

[blelliot]

Well the ranger and cleric both dies inpart one. The ranger was killed by the ragodessa. He just happened to be the first in the marching order. The cleric was killed by the ravenous zombies under parrot island. They just swarmed the pcs. That and the huecuva. Nearly did them all in.

[Seharvepernfan]

I've heard from other people that Savage Tide is brutal and basically requires optimization. The few issues I have that feature it make me agree. I think a lot of DMs make npcs weaker than they could be; they obviously did not do this at all in Savage Tide. Hell, there's a 12-year-old kid who's a 2nd level expert (or was it rogue?).

[Yora]

One thing that might work and is reasonably easy to do would be just increasing the XP for the next two adventures. Do that until they are two levels higher than the adventures expect them to be and then continue playing normally. It seems extremely hard right now, so everyone having two more levels should reduce the difficulty.

[CockroachTeaParty]

I DM'd a group through all of Savage Tide, and although I believe they had a better sense of tactics and optimization than your group, we still had a few deaths, mostly in the earlier levels. In my experience, the campaign is pretty unforgiving until the PCs hit about 9th level.

There are a number of known death-dealers in the early chapters, and there's whole threads in the Paizo forums chronicling player deaths in Savage Tide, and even a few TPKs.

That said, by the time my party reached level 13 or so, they steam-rollered the rest of the game with ease. During the last chapter, they barely took any damage, and killed the final boss in 1 round.

I'll post the following in spoilers, for those of you who have never read or played the campaign. It's a list of monsters and encounters that in my experience proved particularly deadly.


Chapter 1:

The rhagodessa aboard the Blue Nixie.

The entirety of the Parrot Island section. Prime territory for a TPK.

Rhowyn, the guild mistress of the Lotus Dragons, can often be nasty while fighting alongside Guttugger. She claimed the first PC kill of my campaign.

Chapter 2:

Rip claw the Savage Dienychus. That thing is a death machine.

The whole Kraken's Cove section is a pretty brutal meat grinder in general.

Chapter 3:

Again, Rhowyn the stowaway can be deadly. She killed another PC during the trip.

The hydra by the waterfall can be death to the unprepared.

The will-o-wisp at Tamoachan can be nasty.

The mummy-rot trap in Tamaochan can spell a horrible death for parties lacking a cleric.

Chapter 4:

The black pudding and T-Rex in this chapter can be bad news. The ooze killed one of my players.

The temple of Demogorgon can be brutal as well. The demons in this chapter are hard foes for PCs at this level.

[blelliot]

May I ask how they got demogorgon in one round

[Alabenson]

I've just started the Savage Tides with my group, and while we haven't had any PC deaths quite yet almost every character has been knocked into the negatives at least once, with the notable exception of our Dragonfire Adept, who is likely the reason we haven't had multiple deaths. I think part of the reason is that almost every fight (at least up through Parrot Island) is in the CR 2-3 range when the PCs are starting out at level 1.

[Alleran]

May I ask how they got demogorgon in one round
If you do enough of the side-quest stuff you can drag him down from a CR 33 murder machine to CR 23 with 639 HP. An orbizard and an ubercharger together should be able to gank that in one round. Depending on the build, either could do it alone.

[blelliot]

I've heard of orbizard, but not ubercharger. What is that?

[blelliot]

On the subject of orbizard, I can't seem to find a build on the interwebz about it, any idea where one might be hiding? Ubercharger too?

[CockroachTeaParty]

May I ask how they got demogorgon in one round

Our party Swordsage did him in, actually. He was focused on Strength and Tiger Claw maneuvers (I called him a strengthsage), wielding a potently powerful magic great axe. He always won initiative; when the final boss arrived he happened to be in his reach (Enlarge Person had been permanencied on him). He then proceeded to use Time Stands Still, Girrillon Windmill Fleshrip, and whatever the highest level extra attacks Tiger Claw boost is, and hit him with the mother of all double full attacks. Copious use of Power Attack meant even with Demogorgon's DR he simply did not have enough hp to survive (they successfully completed all of the weakening side quests).

I actually wasn't surprised by this; the Strengthsage had been routinely one-shotting most of the major bosses and mini-bosses up until that point. His 1-round kills included Arrendagrozt, St. Karn the Betrayer, Gromsfed the Drowned, and that one spooky glabrezu. Very fittingly, this character became the new Prince of Demons.

I can also tell you that the party destroyed the entire Crimson Fleet base without taking any damage. And there were only three PCs in the party by that point. (The aforementioned deathsage, straight cleric, and a wizard malconvoker)

[Yora]

I vote for Deathsage becomming a new archetypical optimization build on this forum. :smallbiggrin:
Unlike most builds, this one is actually based on gameplay and not theoretical calculation.

[Alleran]

I've heard of orbizard, but not ubercharger. What is that?
Orbizard: Wizard + Orb of X + Metamagic from here to Kingdom Come = save or suck and take hundreds of damage no matter what.

Ubercharger: Take a combination of feats and abilities that result in absurd multipliers to your damage that kicks it up into the hundreds or even thousands (depending on the GM).