[PF] Rise of the Runelords Difficulty

[iKira]

I've started DMing for the first time with Rise of the Runelords for a local group of four friends, but they seem to be having a lot of difficulty with it. I'm not opposed to death at all, but there are times when they try parts several times, fail, and then just decide to never to go there again.

Is RotR suppose to be this difficult, and is there anything I can do as the DM to make things more doable for them, without making it too easy?

Thanks!

[Bigbeefie]

RotRL is a Heavy Combat oriented and survival campaign. Usually when players try this adventure path they tend to roll up a good character based on originality and Role play purposes. But this campaign it is in the Players benefits to Prioritize combat and Living over flavor when building your character.

To date it is one of the Hardest I have come across. Our paladin tried to do the flavor thing and ended up dead like 4 times, the Sorcerer died 3 times....and on the final boss in book 6 it was a Total party wipe cause he killed the rogue and sorc in 1 round. because their save just wasn't good enough.

In rise of the Runelords you need a Balanced party. You have to have someone controlling the battle field typically a full caster mage....I recommend a Wizard or Witch.

You need 2 people crapping out damage like no ones business. Good classes are Ranger, Paladin 2 handed weapon or Archery, Fighter, or Rogue. Make sure 2 of the party can deal 1/3-2/3 or better the encounters HP in a Full round attack.

Then you need someone to fix all the status problems that come along. No other fits better then a Cleric for that. In combat healing is not effective but your group should look to end fights as fast as possible. These fights are all deadly and the longer they go more of a chance you will have a death.

Best party make up for Rise of the runelords is:

Full Int caster, Evangelist Cleric, Archer Paladin, and a Switch hitter Ranger. The group does most the fighting at ranged to begin with to keep HP up and not to take bad effects for being hit much. If something happens to close on the group the Ranger will switch over and "tank" (i use the word tank lightly). Stay out of Melee as best as possible but end the fight quickly so you lower your groups chance at Dying.

I will be honest sub par Characters and group make ups will party wipe on this campaign. Half casters blow balls as well compared to the high level casters you will be fighting.

[Ravens_cry]

It tends to be all over the place thematically, though that's somewhat excusable as it was the campaign to introduce Golarion as a setting, so it wants to show as much of the unique features as possible.
It also plays the 'Dang it, we're mature!' card a little hard in my opinion.

[Kudaku]

The RotRL is considered one of the harder APs, though I found that once you get past the first book, apart from a few outliers, it gets a lot easier.

Remember that APs are not set in stone, they're really a template for a campaign - you can, and should, make adjustments to make the path fit your party better.

[Unbalanced]

We've just begun the RotR campaign and we're nearly at the end of book 1.
Unfortunately we're stuck with a party of only 2. I'm an all-rounder ranger (switch hitter with intention to go Mammoth Rider) and my partner is an eidelon focused summoner.
To deal with our small team we both started on level 4 and so far we haven't had any problems.
So maybe give your guys a level or 2 boost to give them that little bit of an advantage??

[ngilop]

Its a very balanced and well thought out adventure path.

BUt i will say trying to come in and brute force your way through every encounter will get you killed. There are more than a couple of fights where youhave to use your brains to defeat an opponent.

The ontl actualy Difficult problem is Xanesha, which is a CR 10 boss fight whe you are supposed to be levle 5 or 6, this is easily rectified by switching out Xanesha for Lucretia ( i think) in book 3. As by the time you get to Lucretia she is beyond a laughable encounter. I think in the revided Rise printing Paizo did indeed switch the placement of those 2


for the guy who claimed the final boss fight caused a TPK, well its the BBEG its not supposed to be easy. Ive yet to play anything close to an optimized party for Rise and other than the 'boss' fights in the game its been at times easy and rarely ever gets to difficult and in all but 1 of those instances it was becuase of the parties own stupidity.


What part are they having trouble with right now?

[iKira]

Currently they are exploring underneath Thistletop. The Yeth Hounds quickly took down their Druid, so they were forced to retreat. This encounter they only had three of their people, so I imagine it will become easier with a full party.

Previously though, the druid outside Thistletop caused them tons of grief, and I ended up having to play him rather poorly after the failed the first time in order to progress with the story.

The biggest trouble by far so far was the Quasit, it killed two of their party members the first encounter, and forced them to flee again after the second time. I ended up having Shalelu assist them, while she was tracking down "Korvous".

Is it bad of me to offer them help, either directly or indirectly? I just want to keep the story moving, and make sure that they have fun, which fighting the same boss over and over again doesn't seem like.

[Kudaku]

My party had issues with the Quasit as well. At the end of the session I explained that RotRL tends to play fair but rough, pointed out that the Quasit was mentioned in Tsuto's journal and that if they'd done a bit of research (learning that quasits can fly and are vulnerable to cold iron) and prep work (better bring some cold iron arrows and nets) they'd have a much easier time.

I'd sit down with the players and point out that RotRL plays rough and they should probably up their game a little - there's nothing wrong in pooling party funds for wands of healing, make sure everyone has a ranged attack etc.

Out of curiosity... How did the quasit manage to kill two party members? Please tell me it wasn't with the throwing dagger.

[ngilop]

Yeah the quasit is a tough fight, but only if you are like i said trying to brute force your way through it.

Im not sure how the druid gave anybody a tough time, let alone with a other druid in the party


and yes havign 3 as opposed to 4 players is going to make everything more difficult.

I almost died to the quasit but her doing that allowed our party to get in melee with her and beat her into submission ( and evetually coup de grace)

id say over all of Rise, the first part (burnt offerings) is by far the most difficult, the next one is the easiest part though so thats good.

not that ive been in this particular game, but i know of a Fighter, fighter/cleric, bard, and rogue/illusionist with a some of the time there druid did managed to complete the whole thing and it was none to difficult for them

[Roncorps]

We are playing (starting, we are underneath the glaziery) RotR right now too and we are a party of 4 :

Monk
Rogue
Cleric
Witch (me)

I'm the only one OPing my character at a certain degree (after cackle, evil eye, misfortune, I plan of going where I want).

I am the only one too that didn't get hit one time, but the monk got to -7, the cleric nearly die one time and the rogue, nearly 2-3 times. I'm playing the debuffer/buffer, going into lots of utility wands, to save the party. In fact, if it was not for my misfortune hex, they would all be dead and me, running to save my skin !

[watchwood]

I'm playing in a Runelords game that's not too far along, we hit Magnimar not too long ago. As long as you don't try to brute force your way through every fight, it's not too bad (I'm playing a witch, so I've got debuff/control abilities in spades, which helps a lot).

[Bigbeefie]

I'd play a witch if I ever play it again. Y'all are gonna be happy all the way through the campaign. I played a cleric when I played through. My party tried brute force and I was stuck fixing problems. Only control style spells the group used where cleric as our sorcerer went dragon disciple and didn't take anything but blast spells and haste it seemed. Basically I did nothing but fix problems the whole campaign and didn't enjoy the combat as much as I typically do.

Rise is a good teaching campaign. Learn from your mistakes and put them to use in your next games.

[Drachasor]

My party had issues with the Quasit as well. At the end of the session I explained that RotRL tends to play fair but rough, pointed out that the Quasit was mentioned in Tsuto's journal and that if they'd done a bit of research (learning that quasits can fly and are vulnerable to cold iron) and prep work (better bring some cold iron arrows and nets) they'd have a much easier time.

I'd sit down with the players and point out that RotRL plays rough and they should probably up their game a little - there's nothing wrong in pooling party funds for wands of healing, make sure everyone has a ranged attack etc.

Out of curiosity... How did the quasit manage to kill two party members? Please tell me it wasn't with the throwing dagger.

Yeah, it's mentioned in the journal. On the other hand, at that point the PCs don't have much money and the journal is rather vague on the locations of what it is talking about. It's clear only in hindsight. That said, the Quasit was a bit tough, but overall we didn't have that much trouble with it.

I'm a player in a RoR campaign right now and I've found it to be rather difficult. It would probably be easier if organizing my party wasn't like herding cats. On the other hand, we have a Magus that can pull out a ton of damage if needed and my Wizard has been focusing on crowd control (since I didn't want to overshadow people with summons). That said there are a lot of brutal fights.

I find PF kind of funny because they act like they want to emphasize flavor, and then this AP really demands that you focus more on min-maxing.

[king.com]

My party had issues with the Quasit as well. At the end of the session I explained that RotRL tends to play fair but rough, pointed out that the Quasit was mentioned in Tsuto's journal and that if they'd done a bit of research (learning that quasits can fly and are vulnerable to cold iron) and prep work (better bring some cold iron arrows and nets) they'd have a much easier time.

I'd sit down with the players and point out that RotRL plays rough and they should probably up their game a little - there's nothing wrong in pooling party funds for wands of healing, make sure everyone has a ranged attack etc.

Out of curiosity... How did the quasit manage to kill two party members? Please tell me it wasn't with the throwing dagger.

If you have 5 people theres a good chance your going to only be level 1 for the Quasit.

The Quasit is a terrible encounter regardless as the fight's trick is incredibly easy to miss if you bomb one roll. The players have bugger all money and equipment to be gearing themselves out with cold iron since they would still be on their starting gear at this point. The thing can fly forever so if your not an archer your going to have real problems trying to hit its 22 AC (19 AC if your using the Anniversary edition) at level 2 with something your not set up to hit.

Essentially if you dont have the right group for it the Quasit is an unkillable monster.

[Kudaku]

If you have 5 people theres a good chance your going to only be level 1 for the Quasit.

You actually count xp? Everyone I play or talk with just follow the level advancement track and grant people a level up whenever the AP says it's appropriate - it's so much more convenient when you don't have to track xp individually. Even so, two encounters in the Catacombs should easily give you the missing 1300 xp unless you beeline it to Erylium - which is really just bad luck.

That said, the fight is still perfectly doable at level 1 if you make some preparations.


The Quasit is a terrible encounter regardless as the fight's trick is incredibly easy to miss if you bomb one roll. The players have bugger all money and equipment to be gearing themselves out with cold iron since they would still be on their starting gear at this point. The thing can fly forever so if your not an archer your going to have real problems trying to hit its 22 AC (19 AC if your using the Anniversary edition) at level 2 with something your not set up to hit.

Immediately before entering the catacombs they fight Tsuto, who drops about 1 800 GP worth of loot, including a composite shortbow. In contrast, slings are free and 20 cold iron sling bullets cost 2 SP. While I agree that the typical level 2 party might not be wealthy, I think they can spare a few silvers. They might even go for the deluxe option and grab cold iron arrows, which cost 2 GP per bundle of 20. Most likely not going to break the bank.

I'd say a bigger issue is the combination of a flying monster and invisibility. Except racial spells (Glitterdust, See Invisibility etc) there isn't really a good way to detect flying invisible monsters available for level 2 characters. They could spring for a scroll with the money they found on Tsuto, but that's a big expense for a level two party who's probably looking to pick up a wand of CLW etc. Luckily the way Eryliums tactics are written she'll spend the majority of the fight visible, ineffectually plinking away at the party with a ridiculous throwing dagger.

However, the reason I expressed surprise that people actually died in this fight is that Erylium has very little offensive power. Except Hold Person (which is a risk, granted) and the slumber hex (which is not particularly effective due to the action economy difference), a cold iron returning dagger that deals 1D2 damage, all of which make her visible, and two summoning spells (L1 & L2).

Furthermore the way her tactics (uses flying to stay out of range) and morale are written (turns invisible and runs if brought below 5 HP, then returns immediately when her fast healing has brought her back up but never follows the party outside of the catacombs) she's designed to be played as a pest more than a destroyer of parties - unlike, say, Xanesha. I wouldn't call her a terrible encounter, instead I'd say she's a "low risk/high-frustration" warning to the party that they should pay attention to the AP's clues and need to be prepared for non-standard encounters.

Ironically my party took that lesson to heart a bit too much - during the second AP they stocked up on garlic, silver weapons, a crate of holy water etc.

[Eldonauran]

The party my group took to the campaign was more of a kill-them-quickly type. I ran a multiclassed Sylvan blooded sorcerer / feral child Druid with a panther animal companion. We had a Elven court blade, crit happy fighter And a tiefling rogue. We made ample use of wands (or I did) for healing purposes.

I was optimized to have a stronger than normal companion (hunt master feat + boon companion) and using lockdown spells. Plans on going mystic theurge for more spells per day, not necessarily higher level spells. The panther was built with a focus on tripping and teamwork feats with the rogue. I usually resorted to a longbow if/when I didn't need to cast any spells on a turn. Nothing like casting mirror image on my panther and watching it go to town on an enemy.

I think we nearly had ... two party wipes in the first adventure path. I would have made it out fine, since I have a tendency to avoid melee. Luckily, the character wasn't one to leave his allies behind.

[Drachasor]

Side note: One thing I've found annoying about RoR is the ridiculous difficulty on a lot of knowledge checks. My character has a 20 intelligence and is quite thoroughly invested in knowledge skills. Yet time after time we've had checks where a 25 didn't give you squat nor even a 30. I don't really see the point in tossing knowledge checks that difficult at a 1st-4th level party. And I don't see why they couldn't toss you a bone here and there.

It's also really weird when I've ready some of the basic setting info, like the Inner Sea Guide, and apparently that contains some of this DC 30+ information as standard background for the area. Anyhow, it's weird when having a +13-15 on a check at a low level doesn't let you get any information if you take 10.

[Keldrin]

@ Drachasor. I've found almost all the APs knowledge checks a bitch. And they always want knowledge (local) for the NEW places you go to (the only time I beat that was with a Binder). In Savage tides my character has Trivial Knowledge (two rolls) and maxed ranks, plus a couple of other tricks to make those high DCs. We're still using 3.5 material, natch.

RoRL is combat heavy, but after Age of Worms and Savage Tides, I tend to make sure we have heavy hitters in the party (martial and arcane).

Then of course once you've specialized in combat, they throw a role play heavy chapter at you , and you're scrambling to meet those challenges.

Or vice versa in Curse of of the Crimson Throne.

Yeesh.

[Renegade Paladin]

My party had issues with the Quasit as well. At the end of the session I explained that RotRL tends to play fair but rough, pointed out that the Quasit was mentioned in Tsuto's journal and that if they'd done a bit of research (learning that quasits can fly and are vulnerable to cold iron) and prep work (better bring some cold iron arrows and nets) they'd have a much easier time.
This presumes the party managed to capture or kill Tsuto on their first meeting. Mine didn't; I played his tactics as written, and they say he retreats when all his goblins are killed. The party killed all the goblins, so he hightailed it down the smuggling tunnel, journal and all. That's where we left off, and I'm considering having them discover the journal stuck in the bottom of Tsuto's bedroll (which they used as a stretcher to get Ameiko out) just to not screw them out of the plot exposition and hooks, but his statistics clearly say he carries it on his person.

[king.com]

Side note: One thing I've found annoying about RoR is the ridiculous difficult on a lot of knowledge checks. My character has a 20 intelligence and is quite thoroughly invested in knowledge skills. Yet time after time we've had checks where a 25 didn't give you squat nor even a 30. I don't really see the point in tossing knowledge checks that difficult at a 1st-4th level party. And I don't see why they couldn't toss you a bone here and there.

It's also really weird when I've ready some of the basic setting info, like the Inner Sea Guide, and apparently that contains some of this DC 30+ information as standard background for the area. Anyhow, it's weird when having a +13-15 on a check at a low level doesn't let you get any information if you take 10.

Also the best part about it is that 90% of the knowledge checks seem to give you absolutely nothing in Rise of the Runelords.



You actually count xp? Everyone I play or talk with just follow the level advancement track and grant people a level up whenever the AP says it's appropriate - it's so much more convenient when you don't have to track xp individually. Even so, two encounters in the Catacombs should easily give you the missing 1300 xp unless you beeline it to Erylium - which is really just bad luck.


Firstly, I was talking about the adventure path straight, if you start adding your own stuff and changing how things work then your going to have completely different experiences and its irrelevant to make any comparisons whatsoever.

Secondly, yea its incredibly easy to just beeline it to erylium given at the entrance your choices are down towards stairs (which most people will look at and go 'oh thats the later part lets not to that') or the more reasonable options: left or right. Left give you xp, right gives you the Quasit.



Immediately before entering the catacombs they fight Tsuto, who drops about 1 800 GP worth of loot, including a composite shortbow. In contrast, slings are free and 20 cold iron sling bullets cost 2 SP. While I agree that the typical level 2 party might not be wealthy, I think they can spare a few silvers. They might even go for the deluxe option and grab cold iron arrows, which cost 2 GP per bundle of 20. Most likely not going to break the bank.


Again, what if you dont have an archer in the party like our party. None of that stuff is useful assuming the players even identify what a Quasit is and get the knowledge check to identify that it is weak to cold iron.



I'd say a bigger issue is the combination of a flying monster and invisibility. Except racial spells (Glitterdust, See Invisibility etc) there isn't really a good way to detect flying invisible monsters available for level 2 characters. They could spring for a scroll with the money they found on Tsuto, but that's a big expense for a level two party who's probably looking to pick up a wand of CLW etc. Luckily the way Eryliums tactics are written she'll spend the majority of the fight visible, ineffectually plinking away at the party with a ridiculous throwing dagger.

However, the reason I expressed surprise that people actually died in this fight is that Erylium has very little offensive power. Except Hold Person (which is a risk, granted) and the slumber hex (which is not particularly effective due to the action economy difference), a cold iron returning dagger that deals 1D2 damage, all of which make her visible, and two summoning spells (L1 & L2).


Doing 1-2 damage a turn and the players cant hurt back means that the 10 hp level 1 characters are dropping, even worse if she decides to use her hold/sleep and the sinspawn gets to wonder up and smack down one player off the bat. Cause level 1 players are loaded with good saves for the most part.

Players die because a level 1 character is incredibly dangerous. I had a party of a paladin, rogue, wizard and cleric. Nobody had any way to deal with the ranged and the rogue almost died as he was the only person who had any ability to use a ranged weapon competently (other than a wizard chucking a magic missile). The paladin might have been able to kill her with smiting if she didnt just heal the damage up like crazy. The party would have lost half its members if it wasn't for two healers (though the cleric had gone more of a melee thing so he didnt have many channel energies). Its just overall an incredible unfun encounter as the players just have to sit there being pelted every turn with no way to deal with it. On top of this, except for Xanesha, there is nothing in the adventure path that remotely challenges the PCs if run straight even if they completely ignore any information as to whats coming up.

[Renegade Paladin]

Wait, how are your characters level 1 after the raid, all the social stuff that's supposed to happen before the Glassworks, and then the Glassworks? :smallconfused: They should be well into level 2 before ever getting near the Catacombs of Wrath in the first place.

[Drachasor]

@ Drachasor. I've found almost all the APs knowledge checks a bitch. And they always want knowledge (local) for the NEW places you go to (the only time I beat that was with a Binder). In Savage tides my character has Trivial Knowledge (two rolls) and maxed ranks, plus a couple of other tricks to make those high DCs. We're still using 3.5 material, natch.

RoRL is combat heavy, but after Age of Worms and Savage Tides, I tend to make sure we have heavy hitters in the party (martial and arcane).

Then of course once you've specialized in combat, they throw a role play heavy chapter at you , and you're scrambling to meet those challenges.

Or vice versa in Curse of of the Crimson Throne.

Yeesh.

Technically Knowledge(local) is supposed to cover all local knowledge everywhere. It's an odd skill. My DM decided I'd get a penalty until I brushed up on local stuff.

I guess like a lot of PF stuff the design seems bizarre. Some good stuff, some awful stuff, with not a great deal of rhyme or reason.

Is it just me or does Sandpoint come across as a town run by people who are at best barely competent?

[Kudaku]

Since you're quoting my posts without using tags, I guess the spoiler train has left the station. iKira, can you put a spoiler tag in the thread title?


Firstly, I was talking about the adventure path straight[...]

If you run the adventure path straight, a party will gain a minimum of 7765 XP before encountering Elyrium, even if they take the shortest route possible - more than enough for a party of 5 to reach level 2 and 35 xp short of dinging 2 for a party of 6. That amount assumes minimum interaction, going straight through the catacombs to Erylium, not earning any roleplaying bonus rewards or optional tasks at all - just the stuff the AP throws at you along the way.


[...]if you start adding your own stuff and changing how things work then your going to have completely different experiences and its irrelevant to make any comparisons whatsoever.

While I agree that following the level advancement progression chart found in the AP itself (page 11 of Burnt Offerings) is certainly racy, I'm not sure I'd describe it as "adding your own stuff"... If anything, I suppose it could qualify as "reading the AP" or "following the advice outlined in the AP" :smallsmile:

As for the XP comparison you requested, see above.


Secondly, yea its incredibly easy to just beeline it to erylium given at the entrance your choices are down towards stairs (which most people will look at and go 'oh thats the later part lets not to that') or the more reasonable options: left or right. Left give you xp, right gives you the Quasit.

Those stairs lead up, not down. Otherwise, I absolutely agree. It is entirely possible to come to Elyrium's room before clearing the rest of the dungeon. Personally I think that is a feature, not a bug.


Again, what if you dont have an archer in the party like our party.

I repeat, you don't need an archer. Slings and cold iron bullets will do the trick nicely.


None of that stuff is useful assuming the players even identify what a Quasit is and get the knowledge check to identify that it is weak to cold iron.

If the players fail the knowledge check to puzzle out what a Quasit is, I think that's an excellent opportunity for them to meet some other residents in Sandpoint! Ameiko might be able to help them out, either by having the knowledge (though I seem to recall she's a fighter- knowledge (planes) is an unlikely skill check) or by directing them towards some of the knowledge pools in Sandpoint. This is a great chance to introduce some other notable NPCs: Abstalar Zantus, Sabyl Sorn, Chask Haldan and Vorvashali Voon are all NPCs that could be able to shed some light on the topic. It's also a good chance to set Brodert Quink up as a red herring for the second part of the AP.

Digressing to my own party for a second, my players made some long and lasting friendships (and at least one rivalry) in Sandpoint by interacting with NPCs while searching for information just like this. They even brought Chask to the Catacombs at one point to have him look over the statue and study the meditation room.

They also made a point of visiting Chask whenever they were in Sandpoint, sending him research journals of their discoveries etc. I think he might be one of the most beloved NPCs I ever introduced that party to, actually.


Doing 1-2 damage a turn and the players cant hurt back means that the 10 hp level 1 characters are dropping, even worse if she decides to use her hold/sleep and the sinspawn gets to wonder up and smack down one player off the bat. Cause level 1 players are loaded with good saves for the most part.

Like I've outlined above, if a 4/5 man party was level 1 when they encounter the quasit, either the party screwed up encounters or the GM screwed up the XP math. Again, the party is expected and should be level 2 by the time they meet Elyrium.

As for the spells: Hold/Sleep and a sinspawn is a risk... As is combat in general. That is the danger with fighting spellcasters in general. She could have been level 1 with color spray and the result would most likely be far more dangerous for the party. slumber can be ended with a move action (and the action economy is solidly in the party's favor), and Hold Person gives recurring will saves each round in addition to the original save (dc 14 will).


Players die because a level 1 character is incredibly dangerous. I had a party of a paladin, rogue, wizard and cleric.

Was your party level 1? :smallconfused:


Nobody had any way to deal with the ranged and the rogue almost died as he was the only person who had any ability to use a ranged weapon competently (other than a wizard chucking a magic missile).

It's almost like they were unable to compete because they were not carrying basic ranged weapons...


The paladin might have been able to kill her with smiting if she didnt just heal the damage up like crazy.

She has fast healing 2. I'm not entirely sure I'd consider that "healing the damage up like crazy".


Its just overall an incredible unfun encounter as the players just have to sit there being pelted every turn with no way to deal with it.

Apart from ranged weapons, nets, spells... There are plenty of ways to deal with Elyrium. Your party didn't take basic steps to prepare (ie all characters should have some kind of ranged weapon) themselves. The AP sucker punched them for it.

I still stand by the fact that Erylium is an essentially low-risk but potentially very vexing fight. That doesn't mean it's a badly designed encounter.

Again, using my own party as a reference: The first time they encountered Erylium they were unable to put her down (though in their defense I played her according to her intelligence instead of using the tactics listed in the AP). Being forced to flee from a 6 inch tall flying demon in a little black dress created so much animosity I seriously considered making her a recurring villain - however the plan they hatched to kill her on their second try was too much fun not to let them go through with it.


On top of this, except for Xanesha, there is nothing in the adventure path that remotely challenges the PCs if run straight even if they completely ignore any information as to whats coming up.

I'd say Malfeshnikor has a good chance of killing the party if they "completely ignore any information", ie don't use the room's binding to their advantage. A full attack comes with 3 attacks, all with +16 to hit and 1D8+8, 1D6+8, 1D6+8 damage (average of 36 damage) has a good chance of downing a 4th level character. If played according to the tactics listed in his writeup and the party doesn't have a druid of their own, Gogmurt has a very good chance of challenging the party simply by using the terrain to his advantage.


This presumes the party managed to capture or kill Tsuto on their first meeting. Mine didn't; I played his tactics as written, and they say he retreats when all his goblins are killed. The party killed all the goblins, so he hightailed it down the smuggling tunnel, journal and all. That's where we left off, and I'm considering having them discover the journal stuck in the bottom of Tsuto's bedroll (which they used as a stretcher to get Ameiko out) just to not screw them out of the plot exposition and hooks, but his statistics clearly say he carries it on his person.

This is a good point. And don't get me wrong, this AP has some issues. For instance I think it would be better if the journal was specifically written as lying on the bedroll or in his office instead of being carried on his person in the first place.

I'm also not crazy about the sheer information dump that journal represents - it references Thistletop, Tobyn's casket, Ripnugget, the quasit, "the freaks", Bruthazmus, Malfeshnikor, repeated references to Nualia as "my love", Lamashtu, and succubi. There's a decent chance your players will struggle to digest all of it. I printed out copies of the journal and gave each player a handout when they came to this point.

Breaking up this information into multiple sources would have made it easier to digest and make it less "hit and miss". Shayliss does touch on some of these names in her dinner if the party ask the right questions, but it's still an awful lot of stuff to take in at once.

Another example of poor planning is that the first time the party encounters thassilonian ruins and themes, it's the catacombs of wrath - which ties the entire adventure path to the wrong runelord. My party thought the main villain of the AP was Alaznist (the runelord of Wrath) for quite a while - to the point where they pretty much ignored references to Karzoug.

Finally, the entire first AP is more or less unrelated to the overarching story. While I wouldn't recommend it, you could start RotRL with a 4th level party on the second book and miss out on very little of the overarching plot.

[king.com]

Wait, how are your characters level 1 after the raid, all the social stuff that's supposed to happen before the Glassworks, and then the Glassworks? :smallconfused: They should be well into level 2 before ever getting near the Catacombs of Wrath in the first place.

Its pretty easy to miss a bunch of that stuff entirely. Players avoided the Shayliss stuff and a couple other minor things which means they are all on the verge of level 2. Essentially you have the option of needing about 400xp to level to 2. This is using the Anniversary edition and fast XP you need 5200xp for the party to level up. You can be sitting at around 5000xp after taking out the first sinspawn at the Catacombs entrance. It hence became pure dumb luck they go up against the boss right off the bat. This is worse if you have more than four players of course.



Is it just me or does Sandpoint come across as a town run by people who are at best barely competent?

Yea its pretty funny, Sandpoint is the worst place on the planet as you learn about the bunch of really bad nobles.

[Kudaku]

Its pretty easy to miss a bunch of that stuff entirely. Players avoided the Shayliss stuff and a couple other minor things which means they are all on the verge of level 2. Essentially you have the option of needing about 400xp to level to 2.

If your party reached Erylium with 4900 XP total they avoided well over a third of the XP rewards up until then.

Even so, the AP suggests when parties should level up in the advancement track found on page 11. Your party avoided XP opportunities and you avoided taking the advice presented in the book itself.

That your party was level 1 when they met Elyrium was not the fault of the book. It was the fault of the players and the GM.

[king.com]

If you run the adventure path straight, a party will gain a minimum of 7765 XP before encountering Elyrium, even if they take the shortest route possible - more than enough for a party of 5 to reach level 2 and 35 xp short of dinging 2 for a party of 6. That amount assumes minimum interaction, going straight through the catacombs to Erylium, not earning any roleplaying bonus rewards or optional tasks at all - just the stuff the AP throws at you along the way.


I'm not seeing how you got this, I'm using the Anniversary Edition for reference, I'm sitting at around 5000 mandatory xp.



While I agree that following the level advancement progression chart found in the AP itself (page 11 of Burnt Offerings) is certainly racy, I'm not sure I'd describe it as "adding your own stuff"... If anything, I suppose it could qualify as "reading the AP" or "following the advice outlined in the AP" :smallsmile:


{{scrubbed}}



I repeat, you don't need an archer. Slings and cold iron bullets will do the trick nicely.


Had a level two party running it, they were unable to hit the target it let alone deal damage and so they ignored it and left after running out of healing.



Digressing to my own party for a second, my players made some long and lasting friendships (and at least one rivalry) in Sandpoint by interacting with NPCs while searching for information just like this. They even brought Chask to the Catacombs at one point to have him look over the statue and study the meditation room.


I'll be honest here outside of Aldern most of the players quickly lost interest in Sandpoint though given it doesnt have much to do with anything for the majority of the campaign thats not a huge deal.




Like I've outlined above, if a 4/5 man party was level 1 when they encounter the quasit, either the party screwed up encounters or the GM screwed up the XP math. Again, the party is expected and should be level 2 by the time they meet Elyrium.

As for the spells: Hold/Sleep and a sinspawn is a risk... As is combat in general. That is the danger with fighting spellcasters in general. She could have been level 1 with color spray and the result would most likely be far more dangerous for the party. slumber can be ended with a move action (and the action economy is solidly in the party's favor), and Hold Person gives recurring will saves each round in addition to the original save (dc 14 will).





Was your party level 1? :smallconfused:


Run it and played in it seeing both levels. Even had a level 3 part come back and just completely ignore the quasit because it wasnt worth it.



It's almost like they were unable to compete because they were not carrying basic ranged weapons...

She has fast healing 2. I'm not entirely sure I'd consider that "healing the damage up like crazy".

Apart from ranged weapons, nets, spells... There are plenty of ways to deal with Elyrium. Your party didn't take basic steps to prepare (ie all characters should have some kind of ranged weapon) themselves. The AP sucker punched them for it.


Every character in the party was carrying a bow/crossbow and shooting after 10 rounds of ineffectually firing at the sky the party ran out of healing and left. Nobody in the party had a Dex over 14 which made range combat pretty hilariously bad. You seem to be saying that unless the party immediately goes out and gets cold iron as opposed to getting any other piece of equipment against the tonnes of stuff that the journal COULD be suggesting. Or they could have bought a bunch of holy weapons because of the undead they killed in the crypt or maybe they spent their money on getting stuff to go deal with the goblins that 90% of the game was involved with so far. Your making pretty huge expectation on preparing for that one specific thing.

They all had ranged weapons and the group all looked at each other and said 'yeah lets end it here this is dumb, we all leave'. Running the game I had the thing just leave after throwing its spells and gave the party xp so they could murder it as level 3/4 characters on thistletop.



I still stand by the fact that Erylium is an essentially low-risk but potentially very vexing fight. That doesn't mean it's a badly designed encounter.


Its a very badly designed encounter to throw AC19, flying, invisible creature at the party when they are at best going to be level 2 (unless the bypass and do it later).



Even so, the AP suggests when parties should level up in the advancement track found on page 11. Your party avoided XP opportunities and you avoided taking the advice presented in the book itself.

That your party was level 1 when they met Elyrium was not the fault of the book. It was the fault of the players and the GM.

Wow, so literally nothing else causes any remote problem but this encounter, therefore it must be the players and the GM. There cant be anything wrong with sending first time players or a GM against an AC19/flying/invisible/save or suck flying monster right off the bat against the player. Nope, must be the players fault.

[Kudaku]

{{scrubbed}}

I suggest you read (or re-read) the board rules. Once you've edited the quoted section I'll respond to the rest of your post.

[nobodez]

RotRL was a lot of fun, but yeah, it did teach my party a lot of things. One of the things it taught was that the party needs to be Mage/Cleric/Melee/Ranged, and one of those needs some sort of rogue skills. The Melee and Ranged characters need to be able to do both burst and sustained damage (we used a combination of Earthbreaker/Vital Strike and Flanking/Sneak Attack with a Greatsword). We also had two of the party members pick up Leadership ASAP (luckily the AP gives you ample bases of operation to send your Leadership score soaring so even average Cha characters should max their cohorts until well in the final part).

We're playing CotCT now, and a few things I learned from RotRL greatly influenced my characters (I'm on my third or fourth PC). First, I have access to all of the special materials (adamantine, silver, and cold iron) for weapons. I have the best bow I can carry and use effectively. My fighter has max ranks in Acrobatics and UMD. Our mages prep Haste, Fly, and See Invisibility. Any special magic item (as in not in the core rules) is kept, no matter how much we might want the gold. Unless we absolutely need the dead PC for plot purposes, bring in a new character on death; not only can you build them better to suit the lessons learnt so far, but it's an inclusion of gold into the party.

[Kudaku]

RotRL was a lot of fun, but yeah, it did teach my party a lot of things. [...]We're playing CotCT now, and a few things I learned from RotRL greatly influenced my characters (I'm on my third or fourth PC). First, I have access to all of the special materials (adamantine, silver, and cold iron) for weapons. I have the best bow I can carry and use effectively. My fighter has max ranks in Acrobatics and UMD. Our mages prep Haste, Fly, and See Invisibility. [...]

This is part of why I actually think Erylium is a fairly well-designed fight. You encounter mechanics that new players probably won't be familiar with (flying, DR, invisibility) in an encounter with very low actual risk - it's specifically noted that she won't use her claws or poison attack, she won't chase the party out of the catacombs due to her agoraphobia, and her default attack (throwing dagger) is laughably bad.

The party will most likely be frustrated, but alive.

If you remove or replace Erylium with a monster that doesn't have these qualities (which you're perfectly entitled to do) the first time the party will encounter invisibility or damage reduction will most likely be Malfeshnikor, and the first real flying monster not encountered inside a cramped space is either Barl Breakbones at the end of book 3 or Longtooth at the start of book 4.

[ngilop]

The quasit fight was rather easy if rather extremely annoying.

We bought flour to counter the invisibility and my wizard plinking away with a cantrip every round effectively negated her fast healing.


the over all fight though was hard.. we fought her, 2 sinspawns and a couple of her summons, which seemed to be much stronger than my own.

we managed to down the 'adds' after a tough battle, but had to deal with the annoying quasit in a dress. Eventually she realized that her throwing dagger was ineffective and came down to inflict wounds upon my character putting me at 1HP.. her doing that was the wrong thing to do as nowm our party barbarian could smack her with his weapon and another could get a grapple on her to keep her in place.



also, why well not so much why but HOW did your party skip so much of the adventure to notbe lvl 2 by the time you got to the catacombs of wrath?

between the initial raid, saving foxglove, hunting boar, and the glassworks you should be well into second level.

unless your party decided to not do any of those, did you just send them straight into the glass works and skip everything else in the adventure so far?

[Kudaku]

Ah, there we go.

I'm not seeing how you got this, I'm using the Anniversary Edition for reference, I'm sitting at around 5000 mandatory xp.
Let's see (Anniversary edition):

Initial Assault 405
Goblin Pyros 605
Die, Dog, Die 1005
The Vault 270
Monster in the closet 200
Against the Goblins 1880
Story award for rescuing Ameiko 1200
Guard Cave 600
= 6165 XP


That leaves out the boar hunt (600), Shayliss/Vender's rather awkward seduction scenario (600), Lonjiku's fight in the bar (600), and various optional RP awards. A thorough party will net about 7500 XP before they even enter the catacombs.

I'll be honest here outside of Aldern most of the players quickly lost interest in Sandpoint though given it doesnt have much to do with anything for the majority of the campaign thats not a huge deal.
Your party liked Aldern and lost interest in the rest of Sandpoint? Well, that might become a problem around book 4. Not sure how long you've been playing...?

You seem to be saying that unless the party immediately goes out and gets cold iron as opposed to getting any other piece of equipment against the tonnes of stuff that the journal COULD be suggesting. Or they could have bought a bunch of holy weapons because of the undead they killed in the crypt or maybe they spent their money on getting stuff to go deal with the goblins that 90% of the game was involved with so far. Your making pretty huge expectation on preparing for that one specific thing.

Holy weapons? Please. I'm saying a party that's forewarned that at least one quasit and possibly a succubus is on the opposite team and that purchasing some incredibly cheap assets (I repeat, cold iron arrows are two GP for 20 - holy weapons are 8 000 GP for one) in case they encounter those creatures is sound thinking.

Actually the only thing mentioned in the journal that leaves enough information to be identified, and requires specific materials to counter, is a quasit and a succubus. Both require cold iron weapons.

On the other hand, if they don't buy cold iron ammunition and/or bring ranged weapons, Erylium is specifically written to A: Not be particularly dangerous to a typical party and B: To stick around in case the party needs to retreat, regroup, and rearm.

Coincidentally, if the party were to buy some holy water doses (water, not weapons), those will come in very, very handy on what's probably the most lethal fight in the entire first book - the three shadows in Thistletop. Guaranteed surprise round and touch AC means the first PC into the room will probably receive Triple 1D6 strength-damage, and if the player rolls badly on his initiative, a decent chance of another 3D6 strength damage in the next round.

They all had ranged weapons and the group all looked at each other and said 'yeah lets end it here this is dumb, we all leave'. Running the game I had the thing just leave after throwing its spells and gave the party xp so they could murder it as level 3/4 characters on thistletop.
Wow, that sounds anticlimactic. My party had a complete blast taking Erylium down using a series of tactics including flour, nets, grappling, and a crap-ton of zombies. Each to his own I guess.

Its a very badly designed encounter to throw AC19, flying, invisible creature at the party when they are at best going to be level 2 (unless the bypass and do it later).

I've outlined why I actually think this encounter is pretty well-designed earlier.



Even so, the AP suggests when parties should level up in the advancement track found on page 11. Your party avoided XP opportunities and you avoided taking the advice presented in the book itself.

That your party was level 1 when they met Elyrium was not the fault of the book. It was the fault of the players and the GM.Wow, so literally nothing else causes any remote problem but this encounter, therefore it must be the players and the GM. There cant be anything wrong with sending first time players or a GM against an AC19/flying/invisible/save or suck flying monster right off the bat against the player. Nope, must be the players fault.
Was I not clear? I said that if your players reached Erylium without making it to level 2 someone screwed up along the way and it wasn't the adventure path. The PCs screwed up by ignoring plothooks and/or failing to earn the XP along the way, and the GM screwed up by not following the suggested progression track and giving the PCs the chance to earn the XP the AP expects them to have at this point.

[king.com]

To explain I've played in a game that hit her at level 1 (first version) and run a game that hit her at level 2 (anniversary edition) with similar results experiences. The level 2 party was not so much at risk of dying (given the two healing sources) but it didn't exactly make it enjoyable. As the level 1 player of a cleric I felt pretty bored during the fight after one of the party members got dropped in the first round due to some big hits.



Let's see (Anniversary edition):

Initial Assault 405
Goblin Pyros 605
Die, Dog, Die 1005
The Vault 270
Monster in the closet 200
Against the Goblins 1880
Story award for rescuing Ameiko 1200
Guard Cave 600
= 6165 XP


Was the Vault the two skeletons Tsuto left in the crypt or something else? Monster in the Closet I remember us dealing with it by just calling the town guards funnily enough.



also, why well not so much why but HOW did your party skip so much of the adventure to notbe lvl 2 by the time you got to the catacombs of wrath?

between the initial raid, saving foxglove, hunting boar, and the glassworks you should be well into second level.

unless your party decided to not do any of those, did you just send them straight into the glass works and skip everything else in the adventure so far?

Ah now I see what I was missing, we didn't rescue Ameiko at that point. We had gone to try and figure out if the father had taken her and we had met and been relatively friendly with Tsuto so were operating under the assumption that stuff was about the father and delayed for a fair bit doing other things so she was moved to thistletop at the time hence where the 1200xp was missing from.

I finished the adventure for reference and funnily enough literally ever character they got along with stabbed them in the back (Aldern, Tsuto, Justice Ironbriar) such that by the Hook Mountain they essentially threw Kaven in prison as soon as they met him as saw his tattoo.



That leaves out the boar hunt (600), Shayliss/Vender's rather awkward seduction scenario (600), Lonjiku's fight in the bar (600), and various optional RP awards. A thorough party will net about 7500 XP before they even enter the catacombs.


Skipped the boar hunt until later (they were big on ignoring stuff until they had the goblin problem dealt with given first thing they had done was to search the crypt and run into two skeletons), Shayliss tries to hit on the character with high charisma or something if I remember correctly. That was the paladin who not the least bit interested in talking about it. To be fair that encounter is a bit weird. The Lonjiku encounter had the party look at each other and leave while the family was left to argue. I want to say there's one other encounter that happens but I can't remember it, maybe its not an xp given one.



Your party liked Aldern and lost interest in the rest of Sandpoint? Well, that might become a problem around book 4. Not sure how long you've been playing...?

We finished the adventure in about 6 months? The return to Sandpoint was more about being given the note about it coming under attack. Even though they didn't really care about the place they had no problem coming back. Honestly if you have zero connection to Sandpoint its not a problem given your not there for very long if you dont want to be (plus returning home with the rescued captives lets you move into part 5). Making Magnimar the go to base of operations for the party works perfectly fine. The group ended up getting Justice Ironbriar to join them and help take down Xanesha so he kept his position and helped them out as was needed. Turned him into a character who wanted to get revenge more than be an evil cultist given the party really needed someone to latch on to.

I want to say they got along with Shalelu but that wasn't until Part 3.



Holy weapons? Please. I'm saying a party that's forewarned that at least one quasit and possibly a succubus is on the opposite team and that purchasing some incredibly cheap assets (I repeat, cold iron arrows are two GP for 20 - holy weapons are 8 000 GP for one) in case they encounter those creatures is sound thinking.

Coincidentally, if the party were to buy some holy water doses (water, not weapons), those will come in very, very handy on what's probably the most lethal fight in the entire first book - the three shadows in Thistletop. Guaranteed surprise round and touch AC means the first PC into the room will probably receive Triple 1D6 strength-damage, and if the player rolls badly on his initiative, a decent chance of another 3D6 strength damage in the next round.


Holy Water was what I was saying yes. They saw the undead and even though it was a magic cloak thing that had expired they took the assumption that there could be a lot more of it. They also put two and two together and realised that the aasimar child that nobody found a body of but her father's tomb had just been robbed was likely involved and were assuming more undead/necromancy was coming. That and nobody had blunt weapons in the party so they figured grab some holy water to take down any skeletons.

The journal only points at the Quasit as being something that exists and given the amount of other potential problems its incredibly easy to go over even if you then think to stock up on cold iron stuff. The succubus reads along the lines of 'Tsuto wants to sleep with a succubus' rather than she was becoming one. It seemed pretty obvious she just wanted to be some kind of demon so the party went 'oh good thing we have a paladin, lets buy you a masterwork weapon and bigger armour since your going to need to take it down with some smiting'.

I feel like all of that was pretty logical reasoning. When I was running the game the I knew what Erylium was like and after the players entered and took out the sinspawn I had a much bigger focus on them being able to just take out the runewell and then leave. Once its gone I had Erylium go to thistletop where the players were able to deal with her. Yeah they probably could have gone back to deal with her but they had no fun with the first encounter and wanted to just move on to something else they enjoyed.

I mean lets be honest the highest to hit chance was the paladin smiting and still needing a 15+ with the bow. He was probably a bit unlucky but the cleric/wizard were on 18+ and the rogue on 17+ so its fairly silly as a thing to. Her Fast Healing negated the wizard using ray of acid wasnt helpful against her Resistances so the rest of the party ineffectually flailed until they lost interest and left. I want to say a net wasnt an option but I forget how big the room was so I don't know if she could just say out of range. Essentially the whole fight was down to the paladin being able to hit (since he could bypas the DR) or not, which when using a ranged weapon didn't go so well.

I don't have the book on me at the moment but this was her original stats I assume: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/unique-monsters/cr-5/erylium

She could pop a shield of faith on herself and be running around with AC 22 which is interesting and terrifying.

When you have an encounter like this, dont add higher AC + Flying + Invisibility + Fast Healing + DR + Resistances, its all a bit too much. What is much more entertaining to deal with would be to drop the Invisibility and have her all about dropping 1-2 turn paralysis and have her try and coup de grace (shes a bit crazy so charging in ever time seems like something she would do). That gives the players some opportunity to ready actions and hit in melee or alternatively if they make the save they can try and bluff to pretend to be frozen and swing at her when she comes close. I think that was the intention from the original path given she has a bunch of inflict wounds.

EDIT:This doesn't do much to teach players how to deal with these abilities. If you want to teach players stuff you give the encounter and environment a way to deal with it. Like if you want to teach them about invisibility have Tsuto be carrying a potion of invisibility and chug it once the he meets the players (separate him from the goblins) so he can stalk around the room and have perception checks like 'oh you hear glass break or some of the embers from the furnace bounce off of thin air'. That prompts the players to start trying to throw glass around and try and have it shatter on top of him or near him which might have them carry around flower or the like.

Its the same reason Xanesha is a huge pain to fight if your not ready for it with SR + Reach + Invis + Multi Attacks (which I think maybe be the first time an encounter has something with a high enough BAB to do it). It dumps lot of new functionality and not a lot of explanation on what your supposed to do with this knowledge. The sinspawns have SR but they tended to not last long enough for players to realise it.

The Quasit fight would be much better used to teach players how to deal with a specific thing like maybe just how to deal with flying (by providing a mechanic that lets you force her to the ground such as a desire to kill helpless targets) or alternatively teach about outsiders having resistances and DR which would be a much better explanation and prompting to get cold iron weapons.

[CockroachTeaParty]

My group's been running through the anniversary edition. I'll note where they had some difficulty:

Erylium, the quasit witch, has already been frequently mentioned. She certainly isn't lethal, but they had to retreat from their first fight with her and came back better prepared. Then they destroyed her with ease.

The greater barghest (Nalfeshnekor?) at the end of Chapter 1 gave them some trouble. It's something of an optional fight, but they were thorough with their exploration of Thistletop. He killed one of the PCs, but the survivors fought him to a stand-still. They left him alive, but still sealed in the room.

The only other thing that gave them trouble was Xanesha, the end boss of Chapter 2. A lack of preparation, and the fact that they went straight to the top of her clock tower lair (via Spider Climb) rather than fight their way up might have been a factor in the difficulty they faced. They eventually defeated her, but it was an arduous fight.

Since Xanesha, nothing in Chapter 3 has given them any trouble. They just cleared our Fort Rannick, and they show no signs of slowing down.

[Kudaku]

To explain I've played in a game that hit her at level 1 (first version) and run a game that hit her at level 2 (anniversary edition) with similar results experiences. The level 2 party was not so much at risk of dying (given the two healing sources) but it didn't exactly make it enjoyable. As the level 1 player of a cleric I felt pretty bored during the fight after one of the party members got dropped in the first round due to some big hits.

I don't know what the XP spread is like in the original (3.5) version, it very well be that the XP rewards were tighter in the original publication.


Was the Vault the two skeletons Tsuto left in the crypt or something else? Monster in the Closet I remember us dealing with it by just calling the town guards funnily enough.

That was indeed the two skeletons.


Ah now I see what I was missing, we didn't rescue Ameiko at that point. We had gone to try and figure out if the father had taken her and we had met and been relatively friendly with Tsuto so were operating under the assumption that stuff was about the father and delayed for a fair bit doing other things so she was moved to thistletop at the time hence where the 1200xp was missing from.

Rescuing Ameiko is a fairly significant chunk of XP, if you leave her behind then you will definitely fall behind the XP curve.


I finished the adventure for reference and funnily enough literally ever character they got along with stabbed them in the back (Aldern, Tsuto, Justice Ironbriar) such that by the Hook Mountain they essentially threw Kaven in prison as soon as they met him as saw his tattoo.

Interestingly my party went the exact opposite way - they hated Tsuto on sight and never trusted Aldern for a second. Ironbriar they first encountered at the mill at midnight, mid-sacrifice, so that relationship was kind of doomed from the start. Coincidentally Ironbriar and his merry men was the second fight the party actually had to retreat from - though in their defense I did restat Ironbriar from cleric6/rogue2 to dervish dance inquisitor 8. They never knew what hit them :smallbiggrin:



Skipped the boar hunt until later (they were big on ignoring stuff until they had the goblin problem dealt with given first thing they had done was to search the crypt and run into two skeletons), Shayliss tries to hit on the character with high charisma or something if I remember correctly. That was the paladin who not the least bit interested in talking about it. To be fair that encounter is a bit weird. The Lonjiku encounter had the party look at each other and leave while the family was left to argue. I want to say there's one other encounter that happens but I can't remember it, maybe its not an xp given one.

That makes sense - I played up the town hall angle where Kendra, Hemlock and and Shalelu ask them to hang around town and be visible while Shalelu scouts out the surrounding goblin tribes, so they had plenty of reasons to stick around for a bit instead of haring off to Thistletop straight away. They thoroughly enjoyed being local heroes for a few days :smallcool:

I agree that the Sharess scenario is a bit troubling - the way it's written feels kind of forced or artificial. I found it works better if you space it out over a few days instead of her instantly flinging herself on whoever has a decent charisma. I found it also made her a slightly more sympathetic character.


We finished the adventure in about 6 months? The return to Sandpoint was more about being given the note about it coming under attack. Even though they didn't really care about the place they had no problem coming back. Honestly if you have zero connection to Sandpoint its not a problem given your not there for very long if you dont want to be (plus returning home with the rescued captives lets you move into part 5). Making Magnimar the go to base of operations for the party works perfectly fine. The group ended up getting Justice Ironbriar to join them and help take down Xanesha so he kept his position and helped them out as was needed. Turned him into a character who wanted to get revenge more than be an evil cultist given the party really needed someone to latch on to.

I want to say they got along with Shalelu but that wasn't until Part 3.

Your party, containing a paladin, happily cooperated with the leader of the skinsaw cult? That must have been some pretty impressive bluffing :smallbiggrin:

The reason why I expressed a bit of concern about your party not liking the town is that the whole reason why the first AP interacts so heavily with Sandpoint is that the writer wanted to tie the party to the town emotionally, make them care for its citizens. Otherwise some of the more cut-throat parties will be hard-pressed to find a reason to risk their necks when the fecal matter hits the rotating oscillator in Sandpoint later on.


Holy Water was what I was saying yes. They saw the undead and even though it was a magic cloak thing that had expired they took the assumption that there could be a lot more of it. They also put two and two together and realised that the aasimar child that nobody found a body of but her father's tomb had just been robbed was likely involved and were assuming more undead/necromancy was coming. That and nobody had blunt weapons in the party so they figured grab some holy water to take down any skeletons.

Actually you said holy weapons, not holy water. But wait a second, they had holy water? Why didn't they throw it at Erylium? Quasits are evil outsiders - they take full damage from holy water, same as undead.


The journal only points at the Quasit as being something that exists and given the amount of other potential problems its incredibly easy to go over even if you then think to stock up on cold iron stuff. The succubus reads along the lines of 'Tsuto wants to sleep with a succubus' rather than she was becoming one. It seemed pretty obvious she just wanted to be some kind of demon so the party went 'oh good thing we have a paladin, lets buy you a masterwork weapon and bigger armour since your going to need to take it down with some smiting'.

I feel like all of that was pretty logical reasoning. When I was running the game the I knew what Erylium was like and after the players entered and took out the sinspawn I had a much bigger focus on them being able to just take out the runewell and then leave. Once its gone I had Erylium go to thistletop where the players were able to deal with her. Yeah they probably could have gone back to deal with her but they had no fun with the first encounter and wanted to just move on to something else they enjoyed.

I guess that makes sense for them - I find it really odd that they stock up on holy water, didn't buy cold iron weaponry, and then didn't use the holy water on the Quasit. Were they not aware holy water works on demons?


I mean lets be honest the highest to hit chance was the paladin smiting and still needing a 15+ with the bow. He was probably a bit unlucky but the cleric/wizard were on 18+ and the rogue on 17+ so its fairly silly as a thing to. Her Fast Healing negated the wizard using ray of acid wasnt helpful against her Resistances so the rest of the party ineffectually flailed until they lost interest and left. I want to say a net wasnt an option but I forget how big the room was so I don't know if she could just say out of range. Essentially the whole fight was down to the paladin being able to hit (since he could bypas the DR) or not, which when using a ranged weapon didn't go so well.
I don't have the book on me at the moment but this was her original stats I assume: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/unique-monsters/cr-5/erylium

She could pop a shield of faith on herself and be running around with AC 22 which is interesting and terrifying.

The quasit you linked is the 3.5 version - the Pathfinder version replaced the Thaumaturge levels with Witch levels and lowered her a bit in power overall. I couldn't find the updated version on the SRD so here's the highlights:

AC 19, touch 17, flat-footed 14
35 HP, fast healing 2.
Fort +3, Ref +8, Will +6
DR 5/cold iron or good
Immune to electricity or poison
Resist Acid 10, Cold 10, Fire 10
Spells prepared: Summon Monster 2, hold person, (DC 14)
Command, ray of enfeeblement, summon monster 1 (DC 13)
Bleed, dancing lights, daze, touch of fatigue (DC 12)

Spell-like abilities:
1/day Cause Fear
At will: Detect Good, Detect Magic, Invisibility (self-only)
Note that she has no defensive spells available at all, so the 19 AC is fixed.


When you have an encounter like this, dont add higher AC + Flying + Invisibility + Fast Healing + DR + Resistances, its all a bit too much. What is much more entertaining to deal with would be to drop the Invisibility and have her all about dropping 1-2 turn paralysis and have her try and coup de grace (shes a bit crazy so charging in ever time seems like something she would do). That gives the players some opportunity to ready actions and hit in melee or alternatively if they make the save they can try and bluff to pretend to be frozen and swing at her when she comes close. I think that was the intention from the original path given she has a bunch of inflict wounds.
I agree that the elemental resistances are frustrating (shuts down low level casters pretty hard) but DR, flying and fast healing I have no issues with. The tactics she's printed with are anything but optimal so she should spend the majority of the fight visible. The flying, DR and the fast healing heavily rewards players who do research and prepare well, which is something I'm always looking to reward. Generally I'm for anything that makes the players think and prepare for fights instead of just kicking the door in. Train hard, fight easy.

EDIT:This doesn't do much to teach players how to deal with these abilities. If you want to teach players stuff you give the encounter and environment a way to deal with it. Like if you want to teach them about invisibility have Tsuto be carrying a potion of invisibility and chug it once the he meets the players (separate him from the goblins) so he can stalk around the room and have perception checks like 'oh you hear glass break or some of the embers from the furnace bounce off of thin air'. That prompts the players to start trying to throw glass around and try and have it shatter on top of him or near him which might have them carry around flower or the like.
The glass scenario would encourage players to use scenery and RPing to solve a tricky solution at the spot. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't encourage players to do research or realize the benefits of making preparations for hard fights the way Erylium does.

Its the same reason Xanesha is a huge pain to fight if your not ready for it with SR + Reach + Invis + Multi Attacks (which I think maybe be the first time an encounter has something with a high enough BAB to do it). It dumps lot of new functionality and not a lot of explanation on what your supposed to do with this knowledge. The sinspawns have SR but they tended to not last long enough for players to realise it.
I'm guessing you're thinking about the original version of Xanesha? I've heard horror stories of the class Xanesha and she was apparently hit quite hard by the nerf bat. The revised edition was toned down quite a bit.

Ironically my party still had scrolls of Glitterdust prepared after fighting Erylium - Xanesha didn't get to stay invisible very long. I did manage to trick the paladin to declare Smite on the Vrock illusion she created first though, that was pretty damn satisfying - he was taking turns congratulating me and kicking himself the rest of the night.

And the party will have encountered numerous enemies (Skinsaw Man, Malfeshnikor, the Scarecrow etc) with multiple attacks - they're expected to be lvl 7 and fairly close to 8 when they meet Xanesha.

The Quasit fight would be much better used to teach players how to deal with a specific thing like maybe just how to deal with flying (by providing a mechanic that lets you force her to the ground such as a desire to kill helpless targets) or alternatively teach about outsiders having resistances and DR which would be a much better explanation and prompting to get cold iron weapons.
It does all of that as well - the players can try to draw her down by weathering her ranged attacks like a previous poster did, and if they didn't know about demons and cold iron before they met her they certainly know afterwards.

[Kudaku]

Since Xanesha, nothing in Chapter 3 has given them any trouble. They just cleared our Fort Rannick, and they show no signs of slowing down.

Yeah, I can't help but feel that the difficulty rating was dropped dramatically in book 3. My party feater falled down on top of Fort Rannick and attacked from the top down, drawing in every ogre-ally in the area for one massive protracted battle. At the end the party was beat up pretty good but still standing strong.

I did the math for the hell of it and the CR reached a pretty ridiculous number. Granted I spaced it out in waves, but still... 26 basic ogres (CR 3), 6 5th level fighter ogres (CR 8), 1 7th level barbarian ogre (CR 10, 1 8th level sorcerer ogre (CR 10) , AND Lucrecia (CR 10). The party was level 8 at the time.

[Malimar]

My party half-wiped fighting the quasit. Not because of the quasit herself, but because of her summons and sinspawn. Also, there were only two of us at the time. We came back with a full party and kicked her butt.

We just NOPE NOPE NOPE'd and ran away from the shadows under Thistletop. We never even encountered the goblin druid until much later, when he introduced himself and promptly started being unreasonable about my character claiming to be King of the Goblins.

We're at level 12 and only just got around to meeting Malfeshnekor for the first time last session. (We only went down into the depths of Thistletop again at all because my character claimed Thistletop as the seat of his empire and wanted to make Nualia's room into his bedroom.) We're, uh, in a strong position to negotiate a deal with Malfeshnekor.

The only other near-wipe came when we were clearing out the ogres in Fort Rannick. My character only got himself and one other character away because he knew dimension door, the rest of the party wiped.

The Nualia fight was tough, we lost an animal companion there. We lost a druid to the sea troll dude under the dam. We lost the paladin to the dragon in the stone giant raid on Sandpoint, then we lost her again to some zombies under Jorgenfist. I can't remember if we had any other deaths.

In general, we brute force our way through most combats, and with the exception of losing a character or two at a time every few boss fights, we don't have much problem.

[ngilop]

And the party will have encountered numerous enemies (Skinsaw Man, Malfeshnikor, the Scarecrow etc) with multiple attacks - they're expected to be lvl 7 and fairly close to 8 when they meet Xanesha.


Explain the bolded part more please. Ive never had or heard of a group being 7th level when enctouner Xanesha. and a CR 10 with a perfect setup is rather stupid hard for a bunhc of wearied lvl 6s

[Kudaku]

Explain the bolded part more please. Ive never had or heard of a group being 7th level when enctouner Xanesha. and a CR 10 with a perfect setup is rather stupid hard for a bunhc of wearied lvl 6s

It's a direct quote from the advancement track in the AP:

7th level: The PCs should reach 7th level soon after they reach Magnimar. (before they encounter the skinsaw cult)

Concluding the Adventure: The PCs should be close to 8th level at the conclusion of this chapter. (which ends with Xanesha being defeated).

I think the hardest fights for my party (in no particular order) was Nualia, Xanesha, Fort Rannick (though that was really their own fault), Magga, and the skinsaw cult.

I rebuilt Nualia and Ironbriar to more effective builds, anti-paladin and inquisitor respectively.

Xanesha was mostly hard because they expended so many resources getting up there. In addition to fighting the scarecrow and the skin changers they had to fight the leftovers of the skinsaw clan, Ironbriar, AND the party wizard - all suitably buffed.

Magga's confusion breath was pretty lethal - it locked two characters in the confusion damage chain and her spell resistance was nothing to mess with. They were also spread out all over the village trying to save people from the flood waters though.

As for party deaths...

The Undine gunslinger died in the first round of the fight with Orik, he got sucker punched pretty hard though. He was replaced by a ninja conveniently locked up in the prison blocks a few rooms away.

The halfling inquisitor was paralyzed in an unlucky save from the ghouls underneath Misgivings and met a rather grisly end there - the party never spotted the ghouls at the bottom of the pond and got caught in a vice between the ravenous undead on one side and the Skinsaw Man on the other.

The wizard was brought into negatives and left behind when they fled from the Sawmill of the Seven. I had Ironbriar bring his unconscious body to his lady, who swiftly wisdom drained him into a more amenable state and then charmed him and used him as an ally against the party - it seemed like the logical step for Xanesha. The party was able to save him after some excellent roleplaying though.
After that... Hm. I don't think there were any other deaths, though there were some close calls. Black Magga sure gave them a run for their money - the ninja didn't realize she had See Invisibility and drew an attack of opportunity that put him way, way down in the negatives.

There probably would have been at least one more death but the party had a hospitaler paladin who was really pulling his weight as far as keeping people alive goes. Between ridiculously good saves, good AC, decent HP and Fey Touched for excellent LoHs, Ultimate Mercy, AND Paladin's Sacrifice it was a group that was really hard to slow down.

[ngilop]

We must have different versions of the adnveutre paht becuase i have no idea where the 'advancement track' is located and i just read through the entire adventure path to find it.

[king.com]

Rescuing Ameiko is a fairly significant chunk of XP, if you leave her behind then you will definitely fall behind the XP curve.


I'm sure theres a note somewhere that says if you dont get to her soon shes hauled off to Thistletop to be rescued. Thats where we found her.



That makes sense - I played up the town hall angle where Kendra, Hemlock and and Shalelu ask them to hang around town and be visible while Shalelu scouts out the surrounding goblin tribes, so they had plenty of reasons to stick around for a bit instead of haring off to Thistletop straight away. They thoroughly enjoyed being local heroes for a few days :smallcool:


My players seemed to have agreed they thought Hemlock was incompetent and the only capable person in the town was Shalelu (though I had her get into a fight with the bugbear so she wouldn't run with them through the rest of the adventure). As a player our party was



Your party, containing a paladin, happily cooperated with the leader of the skinsaw cult? That must have been some pretty impressive bluffing :smallbiggrin:


I don't really run paladins as pure lawful good follow strict guides or anything. He was a half-orc paladin of Gorum so as long as hes all about the valor and honour to do good things im fine with whatever else he does. Having Ironbriar enter glorious combat against Xanesha was fine with the paladin. Ironbrirar made a convincing enough argument to say hes planning to hunt down and wipe out the people who ended his cult that the paladin was good with him.



The reason why I expressed a bit of concern about your party not liking the town is that the whole reason why the first AP interacts so heavily with Sandpoint is that the writer wanted to tie the party to the town emotionally, make them care for its citizens. Otherwise some of the more cut-throat parties will be hard-pressed to find a reason to risk their necks when the fecal matter hits the rotating oscillator in Sandpoint later on.


Nah its pretty easy to ignore it almost completely NPC wise. After Part 2 is over you only go there for the start of Part 4 and the start of Part 5. I made part 4 about the players going back to Ironbriar and the mayor of magnimar to go face the raid and Part 5 is triggered from the players returning home to Magnimar and stopping at Sandpoint on the way to introduce them to the sinkhole.



Actually you said holy weapons, not holy water. But wait a second, they had holy water? Why didn't they throw it at Erylium? Quasits are evil outsiders - they take full damage from holy water, same as undead.


Yeah I mean't holy water, not applying the holy weapon quality to a weapon. I was being general with it. They did throw it at Erylium, only had four bottles (one each) and had a big swing and a miss 3 out of 4 bottles. Did some damage but not enough to shift the fight. Touch AC is still 17 so its not a huge help.



I agree that the elemental resistances are frustrating (shuts down low level casters pretty hard) but DR, flying and fast healing I have no issues with. The tactics she's printed with are anything but optimal so she should spend the majority of the fight visible. The flying, DR and the fast healing heavily rewards players who do research and prepare well, which is something I'm always looking to reward. Generally I'm for anything that makes the players think and prepare for fights instead of just kicking the door in. Train hard, fight easy.


My point is that its all too much since it stops becoming a lesson about how to overcome a specific problem and more about trying to find the one loophole to ignore everything.



The glass scenario would encourage players to use scenery and RPing to solve a tricky solution at the spot. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't encourage players to do research or realize the benefits of making preparations for hard fights the way Erylium does.


Not entirely, they use the scenery and RPing to solve that problem but it gets them thinking about what they would have to do to if they dont have the environment to help them. So they starting thinking about what they can have with them to help deal with someone invisible in the future (like flour). It presents them with a problem and a solution and implies that this same problem will be there in the future but the solution won't. You can even reinforce this fact with Ameiko saying something like 'wow good thing you were in the glassworks, you would have a real problem if you were somewhere else'.



I'm guessing you're thinking about the original version of Xanesha? I've heard horror stories of the class Xanesha and she was apparently hit quite hard by the nerf bat. The revised edition was toned down quite a bit.


The original Xanesha was an ungodly killing machine: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/unique-monsters/cr-10/xanesha

Its very difficult to approach her without alerting her given your climbing a tower with one set of stairs and if shes buffed up your level 7(i think) party is going up against AC 34, high saves, SR 19, 5 attacks, reach, flying, invisible, spellcaster. Its rough to say the least.



Ironically my party still had scrolls of Glitterdust prepared after fighting Erylium - Xanesha didn't get to stay invisible very long. I did manage to trick the paladin to declare Smite on the Vrock illusion she created first though, that was pretty damn satisfying - he was taking turns congratulating me and kicking himself the rest of the night.


As a player I want to say we fought a massively nerfed version of Xanesha otherwise im not sure how we would have taken her by default. Running the game the players had Ironbriar explaining to them whats going on and the paladin was having a decidedly good day as first turn was him stepping up, smiting, criting and dealing a very large chunk of damage.



And the party will have encountered numerous enemies (Skinsaw Man, Malfeshnikor, the Scarecrow etc) with multiple attacks - they're expected to be lvl 7 and fairly close to 8 when they meet Xanesha.

It does all of that as well - the players can try to draw her down by weathering her ranged attacks like a previous poster did, and if they didn't know about demons and cold iron before they met her they certainly know afterwards.

See both times i've been through the adventure the players just seal Malfeshnikor in his room and take the key/dump it in the ocean. The scarecrow is the golem thing downstairs right? I want to say thats the first time you fight something thats starts hitting like a truck (like the ogres next chapter) but it doesn't get 3 attacks like Xanesha is swinging with her reach weapon.

I remember the Skinsaw Man being a mostly easy encounter too and the ghost upstairs being the more dangerous of the problem. Then again playing as a cleric and running it with a cleric made the spooky house really uninteresting as it all boiled down to making the will saves and then figuring out how many lesser restorations to cast to on everyone who failed.


We must have different versions of the adnveutre paht becuase i have no idea where the 'advancement track' is located and i just read through the entire adventure path to find it.

It should be at the start of each chapter, if you have more than 4 players though it means your going to lag behind by default. I had the party hit Xanesha with 5 level 6 players (and ironbriar).

[Kudaku]

We must have different versions of the adnveutre paht becuase i have no idea where the 'advancement track' is located and i just read through the entire adventure path to find it.

Do you have individual books or one big compendium? The AP was initially released in a series of books and then updated to Pathfinder and re-released as the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition. I'm not sure when Paizo started the practice, but most of the later APs include a section detailing expected level progression for a typical party. It's a great boon for lazy GMs (like me :smalltongue:) who don't bother tracking individual XP but instead grant levels when the story calls for it.

The full advancement track for the Rise of the Runelords is as follows:

Advancement Track

STARTING CHAPTER ONE: The player characters should begin as brand-new 1st-level adventurers (preferably with campaign traits selected from those provided in the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition Player’s Guide; see page 7).
2ND LEVEL: The PCs should reach 2nd level after dealing with the situation in the Glassworks, just before they enter the Catacombs of Wrath.
3RD LEVEL: The PCs should reach 3rd level early in the exploration of Thistletop—or perhaps even at the climax of the Catacombs of Wrath.
CONCLUDING THE ADVENTURE: The PCs should reach 4th level by the conclusion of this chapter.

4TH LEVEL: The PCs should be very close to 5th level when they begin Chapter Two.
5TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 5th level relatively early in this chapter, perhaps even as soon as they start investigating the first set of clues left by the murderer.
6TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 6th level soon after they begin investigating Foxglove Manor.
7TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 7th level soon after they reach Magnimar.
CONCLUDING THE ADVENTURE: The PCs should be close to 8th level at the conclusion of this chapter.

7TH LEVEL: The PCs should be very close to 8th level when they begin Chapter Three.
8TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 8th level during their first foray against the Grauls.
9TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 9th level midway through the grueling task of retaking Fort Rannick.
10TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 10th level near the end of Skull’s Crossing.
CONCLUDING THE ADVENTURE: The PCs should be close to (if not at) 11th level at the conclusion of this chapter.

11TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 11th level during (or just after) the attack on Sandpoint.
12TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 12th level by the time they’re infiltrating the interior of Jorgenfist.
13TH LEVEL: The PCs should be 13th level as they finish exploring the pit and caverns below Jorgenfist.
CONCLUDING THE ADVENTURE: The PCs should be close to (but not quite) 14th level at the conclusion of this chapter.

13TH LEVEL: The PCs should be 13th level when they begin this chapter.
14TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 14th level after defeating the white dragon Arkrhyst.
15TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 15th level by the time they begin exploring the sixth wing of Runeforge (since the exact order in which they explore the wings of this dungeon is fluid, they may hit 15th level earlier if they manage to explore and survive the more dangerous wings of Runeforge earlier than expected).
CONCLUDING THE ADVENTURE: The PCs should be well into 15th level by the time they finish this chapter.

15TH LEVEL: The PCs should be 15th level when they begin this chapter.
16TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 16th level just after finishing the wendigo siege—they should not attempt to explore Xin-Shalast at a lower level.
17TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 17th level as they begin exploring the Pinnacle of Avarice, or as soon as possible after they reach this site.
CONCLUDING THE ADVENTURE: The PCs should be close to 18th level by the time they reach the final encounter.

[king.com]

CONCLUDING THE ADVENTURE: The PCs should reach 4th level by the conclusion of this chapter.

4TH LEVEL: The PCs should be very close to 5th level when they begin Chapter Two.
5TH LEVEL: The PCs should reach 5th level relatively early in this chapter, perhaps even as soon as they start investigating the first set of clues left by the murderer.


Thats another part that gets a bit screwy xp wise. They hit level 4 at the end of Part 1 and then immediately (searching for clues is the first thing you do in part 2) advance to level 5. If your counting xp I believe that also becomes a problem.

[ngilop]

I have the 6 part version not the complete thing.

The group I was in was very complete. we did just about every optional combatand social encounter and every 'on the track' one and we ended up just a tad above 6th level when we went against Xanesha If we were 7th r 8th that fight would have been par for the course. We only surived through sheer dumb luck on our parts

But we gained waay more levels in the runeforge that what the advancement track says we were close to gaining a 3rd level by the time we killed everything, being halfway thorugh 16th level by the time we got out.


thats said the final encounter was still hard ( though nowhere near xanehsa difficult) even with our inflated levels. We were just above 19th by the time we fought him.. an extra 9th goes a long way LOL

[king.com]

I have the 6 part version not the complete thing.

The group I was in was very complete. we did just about every optional combatand social encounter and every 'on the track' one and we ended up just a tad above 6th level when we went against Xanesha If we were 7th r 8th that fight would have been par for the course. We only surived through sheer dumb luck on our parts

But we gained waay more levels in the runeforge that what the advancement track says we were close to gaining a 3rd level by the time we killed everything, being halfway thorugh 16th level by the time we got out.


thats said the final encounter was still hard ( though nowhere near xanehsa difficult) even with our inflated levels. We were just above 19th by the time we fought him.. an extra 9th goes a long way LOL

Wow you hit level 19? Huh, you must have gotten a lot of extra xp, our group barely made it to level 18 for the end.

[Malimar]

<parts where we ran into difficulty>

Update: we faced the Ancient White Dragon just before the Runeforge. He killed the druid, my witch's familiar (yes, I know, incredibly dumb of me not to be safeguarding the familiar better at our level; my main safeguard was "I can reincarnate him" -- the monkey came back as an octopus), and the bard's (mundane) horse. It would probably have been another party wipe (aside from, again, my witch, who would probably have teleported out if things had gone too far south) except a.) the DM forgot about the dragon's fear aura, b.) the DM forgot about several attacks of opportunity, c.) the DM's houserule that a critical threat is always an automatic hit (even if not a natural 20) allowed the samurai with the 15-20 crit range to make several more hits than he would have.