Am I going to TPK my players?

[Albions_Angel]

Hi all

This week, I am sending my players into the crypts. The town is being invaided by undead from below and the lord suspects a necromancer deep in the crypt's lowest layer.

There are 6 of them, they are all level 3, they are low to mid teir optimisation, but play with high tier tactics. They can demolish most things. They have one magic weapon and a couple of wands. The typical encounters they come up against are around CR 4 to 6 and they do fine with those. Only the supprise CR6 nighttime attack by shadows came close to killing them, and only because the shadows got lucky and rolled 2 criticals on their first attacks.

For the final boss of this weeks, well I want it to be epic. I want them to see just how powerful the middle tier enemy soldiers are.

So I wanted a level 6 Dread Necro with Undead Leadership and a Deathlock companion that has one level in Warlock (ECL 4). There will be a couple of bog standard cr1/3 skeletons to get in their way for a round.

With the party comp of the Rogue (who doesnt hit anything anyway), Druid optimising her animal comp, pounce barb/fighter, rebukeing cleric, beguiler/wiz, and stupidly optimised tripping monk, am I going to kill them? Is making the dread necro level 6 for the undead companion feat too much?

[Bronk]

I think they'll be fine. The cleric can take care of all the skeletons, and then the other 5 players will gang up on the two main guys. Who knows, they may not even get any actions in! If something goes wrong and you're afraid of killing one of your players, just have the NPCs spread their attacks around to more than one PC at a time. Or, you know, they can sacrifice the Rogue who isn't pulling their weight...

[Theodred theOld]

You can always switch to non-lethal damage if things get hairy. Perhaps the necromancer needs live victims for some ritual or something. TPK only happens if the dm allows it to happen.

[WalkingTheShade]

Or, you know, they can sacrifice the Rogue who isn't pulling their weight...
Put some traps before the main bosses room to encourage the players to disarm them using the Rogue. (And then the Rogue's body.) I've heard Rogues are really good for disarming traps. *drum roll*
...
Back to the subject.
It's OK for players to lose some fights. TPK happens only if players are overtly stubborn and not smart enough to know when to fall-back.
In a comparable scenario (crypt full of undead things, same character level) I ran, the party had to fall back twice before managing to clear the first room. They lost the paladin at the second try. The players still remember it, while it took place a couple years ago.

One question you could ask yourself is this: would the fight be more memorable and dramatic if the party loses on the first try? Would the players remember the bad guy as that evil enemy who killed some of their characters, instead of just generic necro #37?
If yes, don't make them lose, but really don't pull any punches either.

It's always good for an over-confident party to have some set-back. The key thing here is timing.
If the game's too easy, it becomes boring and fights lose any kind of dramatic tension.

[Albions_Angel]

That was what i had hoped as well. The rogue will get lots of traps. Its a tomb, of course there are traps. What right minded middle ages society doesn't make it stupidly restrictive to inter their own dead? So fun for all the family! There will be hoards of undead, enough to overcome the cleric's rebuke, so our barbarian with cleave (who usually just ends encounters) gets to have some fun over multiple rounds AND put the party in peril. There will be larger undead that cant be turned to create shock tactics and situations to run from. There will be ambushes and guardians to fight/run from.

I was just worried that a necro 6 would totally kill them all. It has access to 3rd level spells after all...

[DedWards]

I was just worried that a necro 6 would totally kill them all. It has access to 3rd level spells after all...

Going by what I'm reading in Pathfinder's guide on how to create encounters, etc. I don't think the Necromancer will kill them. You say that you have 6x lv3 PC's? According to what I'm read, that makes them APL is 9 (6 x 3 = 18 / 2 = 9). So a CR 6 (round about what the Necromancer probably is on his own) should be very easy. The extra Undead will increase the CR, but being new at creating encounters, I'm not 100% sure how many and by how much.

[WalkingTheShade]

Going by what I'm reading in Pathfinder's guide on how to create encounters, etc.
There's also this (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/). According to it, one CR 6 alone VS a party of 6 ECL 3 is a Very Difficult encounter.


The rogue will get lots of traps.
No no no... there's a misunderstanding here. The rogue doesn't get to disarm the traps by using her rogue skills. The rest of the party gets to disarm the traps by using the rogue. By such expedients as, you know, pushing the rogue into the trap.

[Albions_Angel]

I never said the rogue gets to disarm the traps. i just said he will get a lot of them ;)

[Arbane]

That was what i had hoped as well. The rogue will get lots of traps. Its a tomb, of course there are traps. What right minded middle ages society doesn't make it stupidly restrictive to inter their own dead? So fun for all the family!

Keep in mind the lord sending them in there probably knows where most of the traps are, and it's in their best interest to tell the PCs.

[prufock]

They've been handling ECL 6, this is only ECL 7. And it's 6 on 4. Give the rogue something to do. The skeletons are negligible, the barbarian will probably one-shot the deathlock. The DN's spells would be the main concern, but he'll have a lot of targets to handle. I think they'll be fine.