Kython slaughtered king

[Tvtyrant]

The E6 party I DM for has repeatedly crushed encounters that I thought would be difficult for them, so today I decided to simply throw a TPK machine at them and see what would happen.

I had the party get ambushed by Kythons and Kruthiks, which I had assumed would kill one of them and the rest would flee. 2 Greater Kruthiks, 1 Kython Impaler, 3 broodlings and 3 hatchlings (to lure the party in) and 1 Kython Slaughterking.

My party consists of a Drow Duskblade 6, a Changeling Factotum/Assassin, and a Goliath Barbarian 1/Fighter 2/Crusader 3 (dungeoncrasher.)

The party quickly cleared up the lesser critters by summoning a Manticore (Arrray of the Manticore) and trip locking. The Greater Kruthiks and Kython Impaler came out of the terrain (the impaler had the phasing item) and attacked them from charges. The Impaler missed the first round, the Kruthiks each hit on the Duskblade and began hacking away at him. Both of the Kruthiks got netted by the Factotum that round, and the party began concentrating on killing one of them. The second round the Impaler misses its charge again, wasting two entire turns trying to hit. Titarus (our Goliath) slammed the two Kruthiks together for 30 damage to each of them.

The Kruthiks reduced the Duskblade down to 7 HP, but she killed one of them with a sudden maximized shocking grasp attack with her glaive. The Impaler managed to hit the Goliath on this round, but the damage was insignificant and Titarus slammed it into the second Greater Kruthik. The Kruthik died and the party made an Office Space style beat down circle.

So now I was out of ideas for the encounter and had the Slaughterking break down the wall of a building nearby. It gets caught in a web, they set the web on fire and summoned another Manticore. It breaks free and hurls a round worth of bodies at the first Manticore and killing it. The Goliath and the Duskblade rushed forward to assault the Slaughterking, and hit it using true strike for the Duskblade and dungeoncrashes for the Goliaths. It made a full attack against the Goliath, reducing him to 3 HP.

Undeterred he slammed it into the wall again, reducing its HP rapidly. The Duskblade rolled a 30 in her attack on the beast, and then ordered the Manticore to land between the Goliath and the Slaughterking. The Changeling hit the Slaughterking with a group of bombs and applied a number of inspiration points to the attack. The Slaughterking rolled its 5 attacks against the Manticore and killed it with the last one, but then died the next round with a broken spine.

The party effectively got a free feat from this fight alone, as it amounted to more than 3,000 XP each. This was my big "I am out of ideas" battle, but at least the party enjoyed it. As an aside they entered the battle invisible, which is normally a game winner for them.

[Immabozo]

I wouldn't say slaughtered. 2 of 3(?) party members were almost killed.

try throwing a group of war trolls at them. IMO, they are the strongest of the trolls and extremely effective opponents.

[Yogibear41]

Seems like if the impaler's hadn't missed twice everyone would have died. I'd be happy your group actually knows what they are doing. Trust me its far more painful to sit around and play with people who have absolutely no idea what they are doing.(Ex: after 6 months of playing a barbarian still has trouble figuring out how much damage they do when they use a different type of weapon, or one handing it vs two handing it) Than to have to think up ways to deal with a high powered group.


On a side note, what kinda of bombs did the changeling use?

[ArcturusV]

Prefer rolling deep rather than rolling hard if I want to challenge a party.

For example, you could have an "appropriate" encounter which consists of something like a Drow Raiding Party:

12 Kobolds, 5 Orcs, Level 5 Drow Wizard, Level 5 Drow Cleric. It'd be, if I remember my CR voodoo off the top of my head, considered a "Fair" encounter. But also have 16 more sets of actions per round than the players. Can unleash a tide of enemies with unusual weapons they may not be used to facing (Nets, Bolas, Mancatchers, Tanglefoot bags, Caltrops, etc, things the Kobolds will use to slow down the players), with the Orcs being more "Traditional" beat sticks with hard hitting weapons (Greataxes, flails, etc) and thrown axes. The Drow can go dispel an important buff off the top, or drop some AoE doom after the Kobolds tie up the players... You can probably press them really hard doing something like that.

But it sounds like the worst offender to challenging them is all about the Manticore. Which seems like an odd item set to have an in E6 world. Almost wonder who crafted it as it's pretty much out of reach of E6 as I understand it.

[Emperor Tippy]

If you play smart, have well built PC's, and coordinate well you will be surprised how far above equal CR a party can fight with (relative) ease.

[Spore]

If you play smart, have well built PC's, and coordinate well you will be surprised how far above equal CR a party can fight with (relative) ease.

^ this.

One of my PF groups kills CR 14 encounters with relative ease, and we even took down a CR 18 daemon (with two deaths on the astral plane) before fleeing from his summons. We are a lv 9 group consisting of 5 and we aren't even extremely optimized and undergeared (half starting gold because of the dark fantasy world). We used Holy weapons for the last part, but still.

This has nothing to do with exploiting anything. Just brew up a winnable fight. If they bearly win, make the villain flee, if they struggle, make the villain do the "I don't have to see you die" disappearance. If they are dominating, call for backup.

I am brewing up a boss fight for a party where I don't know the characters but have been told that they kick ass. They're Lv 9. I plan one lich based on a cleric with a huge amount of skeletal minions in a desecrated lair. They have a blaster, a wizard, two strong melee characters and a wild card (burglar rogue). If they are too powerful my lich will send a message to a second lich. He will then teleport to the lair. And tbh to be able to adjust your encounter difficulty on the fly is one of the key abilites for a good GM. Just make the changes reasonable. There is nothing more underwhelming like a: "the master mind wizard doesn't cast anything this round, because....reasons."

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Have an encounter with zombies. Void Zombies advanced to CR 6 are 26 HD and 143 hp, +26 attack each. They also strength-drain and are fast. A hard encounter with each one of your group facing one of them ought to be fun.

[Demonic_Spoon]

Have an encounter with zombies. Void Zombies advanced to CR 6 are 26 HD and 143 hp, +26 attack each. They also strength-drain and are fast. A hard encounter with each one of your group facing one of them ought to be fun.

Wait what? Where are these crazy things from?

[Spore]

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/zombie/zombie-void

I am not really sure how you do 26 HD with only CR 6.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

It's in the monster advancement rules in 3.5 edition, I think, so it would apply to an E6 game. If you advance an undead creature by HD, you get +1 CR per 4 hd. So advance the CR 1/2 void zombie by 24 HD for a total CR of 6+1/2, rounded down to 6. The same applies to Elementals, Giants and a couple of other creature types too.

[BeserkerNike]

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/zombie/zombie-void

I am not really sure how you do 26 HD with only CR 6.

Colossal gives it +10 HD and a CR 6 zombie has 10-16 HD

[Immabozo]

Colossal gives it +10 HD and a CR 6 zombie has 10-16 HD

and how much CR?

[Chambers]

An idea for a challenging battle is one where the real challenge isn't the battle itself but the aftermath. Have them fight creatures that poison them or damage/drain ability scores, not to the point where they're crippled in the fight itself but enough that dealing with it becomes it's own challenge (mostly because they don't have a Cleric).

Put this fight in between them and one of their goals/McGuffins. Do they continue on and try to save the McGuffin despite their weakness or do they retreat and heal themselves? It's a more meaningful choice if there's some kind of time limit on the quest, though the time limit should make sense and not be arbitrary. Ex: Red Hand of Doom.

[Immabozo]

another FANTASTIC encounter my first DM (who is a genius with this stuff) gave us, was a divine created disease that was passed on through touch and eventually killed it's victim doing ability score damage per day. The only way to naturally heal it was to make a DC 31 fort save 3 times in a row (even if you didn't make it 3 times in a row, days you did, you took no ability score damage)

Now the only cure (cause magic couldn't do it) outside naturally getting over the sickness, was to concoct a potion out of the blood of a creature who naturally overcame the disease.

As a wildshaping druid with an affinity for running around as a troll with huge fort saves, I was the only one who could heal it on reasonable rolls (read "not a 18, 19 or a 20"). I think I had to roll better than a 10. There were jokes about killing me.

So we ended up tracking down a tribe of Forest Giants and infecting them and then observed them until we spotted the ones who got over the disease and then ambushed them and got their blood and ran back to the priest who could make the potion and then cured us and the entire city we infected. (We had to diplomacy our way out of their quarantine in the first place!)!

Before the disease was gone, we made several vials of samples and saved them.

NOW, since it took us 2 days to get to the Forest Giants, 3 days for them to naturally heal it, and 2 days for us to return, the disease had killed 2/3rds of the city. We saved a lot, but killed a lot more. This was the city we decided to use as our home base (cause we had a habit of pissing people off, so went to the other side of the continent and changed our policy).

To make matters worse, they had enemies. Enemies who were watching. Enemies who were now attacking with a large army to take the city.

So the next encounters were all about setting up the city's defenses, one player taking Leadership and becoming the General, intel on the enemies movements and then moving to counter and destroy siege equipment, etc.

The way we destroyed the largest part of the marching army, was to use one of the vials to spread the disease throughout their camp one night!

Much of this was not about fighting, it was about thinking it through, strategy and wits

[Spore]

This reads like a quite refined and fancy version of standard siege tactics from the middle ages: "You know what? Let's fling dead cows into there. It'll be fun."

[Phelix-Mu]

Fight trolls in an area where the local druid made it hard to start fires. We'll call it...Forest of Haunted Souls Trolls! (Brought to you as an early treat from your local chapter of the All Hallows Eve Puns Guild.)

This would actually be pretty cool. A large area under very-long duration fireward (Spell Compendium), or an effect that self-reset (maybe linked to some kind of magical grove or standing stones...very druidic), might work, though that would just make it impossible to use normal fire (a little bit brutal, depending on the number of trolls). Not sure it could be used in E6, but maybe a lesser effect could be incorporated into some kind of ritual.

Anyway, this is part of one of my favorite tactics. Take an obvious fight (trolls), and do something to mix it up, some unexpected complication. Hostages, limitations on magic, nighttime ambush (rope trick be damned), or split forces, there are a great many ways to manage this. I love some of the above examples, too.

[Tvtyrant]

In an update our drow died to the combination of chasing adults and being unable to move due to strength damage from kython poison. The player wants to play a cleric type next, and we are talking about a cleric 4/war blade 1/prestige paladin 1 with battle blessing for swift action casting and 2nd level strikes. Closest thing I could find to the dusk blade with the sbity to heal.