(PATHFINDER) Help with Summoner problems?

[Gruzzle]

So I'm running Way of the Wicked Pathfinder module, for those familiar they're at "Burning Balentyne" scenario.

That party of 4 includes a summoner, a class which I've never previously allowed based on community feedback. But figuring that them being OP given the module it'd be fine. In the big picture, I think it will be, everyone's having fun. But I want to make sure we're running this class correctly and it's really this broken. I guess? I'll set the scene.

So they're sieging Balentyne, since the whole keep went on Full Alert after a Series of Inexplicable Coincidences resulted in; the Dwarves leaving town overnight for "cultural reasons", one guard captain appears to have killed another guard captain and blew town with dead guy's wife the next day, the ranging patrol failed to show back up as scheduled the day after that, and then the messenger raven rookery mysteriously burst into flames, killing every bird and the ravenmaster, the day after the patrol failed to show up.

The PCs are mystified as to why the commander would go on high alert, since all of these events are explained individually. :smallamused: Obviously the Commander and his High Priest are not dumb, and while they don't yet know who is doing all this, they know there's a Problem. They've kicked all civilian locals who work in the keep out, and buttoned up.

So the PCs have decided that anything leaving the keep gets nuked. Reasonable. They're mostly capable of this. A messenger was sent to the nearby town (where PCs are staying) to let the local mayor know of a pending attack, though the messenger says he has no idea when or by who the attack shall come. He promptly mounts up to ride out to the next military outpost to ask for re-enforcements.

Enter the summoner. He's moved to the edge of town, and as the rider leaves town, he summons a Cheetah, 30 ft up on a rooftop above himself, using the aerial template (versatile summon monster feat). The lightning cheetah uses Dash special move and flys 450 feet (I had said "He's probably 150 yards away by now" figuring him to be safe for a round or two?) in a single round making a charge attack and knocking him off his horse. He's then mauled to death within two rounds by the cheetah. Summoner walks over from his hiding spot in an alley and stands with the crowd of townsfolk who'd come to the edge of town to see the rider off, and acts suitably horrified. No one suspects a thing.

Word of this even spreads around town but the townfolk are too scared to send word to the keep about his fate after the first attempt was also killed by a "Flying Cheeta-chu" as the group has come to call it. I begin to realize what Balentyne is truly in for at this point.

That day the party also used a secret entrance and stole most of the food and water stores from the keep, the Witch in the party smartly using her cantrip "Putrefy Food/Drink" on the rest.

The following day, a party of 8 soldiers and a cleric sally forth to town (for reasons that die with them) and the party intercepts them and Blistering Invectives them into oblivion. Mopping up with mundane melee and ranged attacks. The summoner just watches. I'm intrigued. They then see that a figure is on the battlements observing the destruction of the patrol (but is over 400 feet away so out of spell range to do anything to help his comrades), so they "gift" the figure with a Flying Cheeta-chu. The Balentyne Mage is Very Upset. He escapes with his life but uses a lot of spell slots. The summoner has only used one slot. I'm beginning to get an idea of what's to come.

The summoner is then made invisible by the alchemist, and he moves to within 100 ft of the keep wall. Using previous experience being in the keep himself, he summons a group of 4 (lucky roll) small earth elementals and sends one each, via earthglide, to the Kitchen and Pantry with orders to destroy as much food and cookware as possible, and two are sent to the barracks sleeping area to kill as much as they can. Since he's a summoner, even with a few rounds of travel time they last 4 minutes so ample time to cause havoc. He waits 10 minutes, then does this again. And again. At this point he's technically visible but after the wizard got Flying Cheeta-chu'd into hiding, the walls were not being well manned. After the second wave, the keep's defenders were ordered out on to the walls to find the evil caster torturing them, so the summoner just conjured up a Lantern Archon and had it zap any defenders that showed their faces. With DR10, no arrows they shot could kill it. Once the walls were cleared by the archon, he continues earth elemental sieging as previously mentioned. Once he's out of slots for the day, he drinks an invisibility potion and saunters leisurely back to town.

So I now know what the next week of game is gonna consist of, and next session the Commander is going to make some Bold Choices (though he's up for suggestions from his "advisors" aka y'all). But for now I ask you all, fellow DMs and power gamers alike, is any of this NOT within the rules? Have we missed something that limits such shenanigans? Or are they just four sinisterly smart PCs who are using magic and wits to defeat a keep of 150 professional soldiers?

[zlefin]

It looks to all be within the rules.

What level is the party?
What level are the various soldiers in the keep?

It seems to be a mix of smart tactics and highly leveraging the summoner class's strengths (it is a strong class after all). Also the foes do not seem to have as strong or sneaky a graspy of irregular tactics and countermeasures.

A few notes: in my (and some others') opinions, the lantern archon is an under-cr'd creature. Flight + dr + ranged attack is a very powerful combo, and the lantern archon doesn't pay enough for it. With dr 10 it takes a good ranged crit to actually harm the lantern archon. It could get taken down with alchemists' fire or acid vials; or of course if enough of the defenders were caster to afford some blasting spells on it.

Keeps are designed for fighting humanoids, and they're really not designed for dealing with many of the monsters that exist in the world. Ideally keeps in such worlds would be better designed to counter many of the particular monster threats. In particular a keep should be designed to be less vulnerable to earth glide and incorporeal creatures; otherwise it can be more of a liability to the defenders than an asset.

If the foes had an intelligence asset or two (skilled thief, or allied beggar, or just thief disguised as beggar) who could stay in town they'd be in a far better position to counter, as the party is currently relying on stealth by anonymity.

At this point, the logical course of action for the foes is to recognize that they're outmatched, and that whoever is doing this is beyond their ability to defeat; BUT that foe is not so strong that they can simply win outright, or they'd have done so already. So their best plan is to give up the keep and retreat elsewhere (at least if they can do so without being killed by their bosses, they might be better off deserting). Perhaps a mass retreat in the middle of the night.

[Fizban]

Well looks like there's to main problems: the flying cheetah bomb, and the elemental rampage. The former is caused by combining the cheetah (in 3.x a pretty weak option) with a feat that essentially lets you give all your summoned creatures perfect flying. I'd say the feat is busted, though I wonder why the cheetah is being so lethal against these NPCs (I expect it's because of a bunch of other bonuses). The latter is presumably caused by some class feature that turns their round/level summons into min/level, and is an excellent example of why those spells only lasted rounds in the first place. But yeah, it doesn't sound like anything's outside of the rules.

Does the module explicitly say what exact type of walls the keep has? Because reinforced masonry has iron bars in it which would have prevented earth glide, and thus that particular attack.

As for the lantern archon, I'm pretty sure they're not immune to fire, right? They could have tried burning it. If you want to "realistically" re-equip/optimize soldiers, they should each carry a couple grenadelikes for this exact sort of situation.

But again, as you have surmised, it seems pretty clear there's nothing these NPCs can actually do. Standing armies and fortifications are for controlling territory, not fighting adventurers (or adventurer-tier monsters), and this is essentially the perfect use-case for summons vs foes that can't actually fight them, magnified by PF bonuses. Unless PF Clerics have See Invis or some fancy PF solution, the only options I'm seeing are Locate Object cheese (if the cleric saw the summoner when they were visible, they "saw firsthand" their clothing) or Divination. Granted, the existence of Divination means the DM can basically always give a foe with a sufficient Cleric any arbitrary retroactive forewarning they want, but it's a rather nuclear option.

Amusing, since normally I hear it's the Eidolon that's completely busted.

[Kurald Galain]

he summons a Cheetah, 30 ft up on a rooftop above himself, using the aerial template (versatile summon monster feat). The lightning cheetah uses Dash special move and flys 450 feet
Note that the Aerial template caps the fly speed at 10' per HD, and arguably Dash doesn't override that. And also, earth elementals have int 4, so arguably they're not very good at understanding orders.

Otherwise, this sounds like the expected results of a smart mid-level party against a group of low-level grunts.

[graeylin]

Some potential options:

1) stop doing once/day encounters. Force the party to expend resources, with multiple encounters. Don't let them rest. Perhaps the keep has some magic users as well, that can summon things to annoy the party. Or, turn the weather nasty. Can you ruin a night's sleep? Make them horde their spell resources? Even mundane things, like loud noises and drunk dwarves in the next rooms, perhaps, can make life tougher.

2) Force the party to choose: can the keep send out twenty messengers? Everyone bursts out at once, and rides in all directions? Can they get them all?

3) Does the keep have magic? Can they send out illusions of riders? Invisible riders? Blur? Multiple Images? What about the simple message spell? Prestidigitation, and create a bunch of floating lanterns, with notes attached? They fly into the air, and wish for the best? What would your players do, if they were stuck in the keep, with bad guys killing all messengers trying to get out?

4) Is no one doing spellcraft checks to find hidden casters? Detect magic?

5) I second the idea of the cleric using as much divination as he can, to figure out these mysterious enemies. Maybe the cleric gets lucky.

[Kapow]

The only thing I can think of, that is kind of strange here, is that the (presumably Asmodeus worshiping evil) summoner summons an Archon (wouldn't fly at my table)

When my group played this AP, the keep was no challenge either, they one-shotted the commander, who is actually well above ECL of the party, if I remember correctly.
Had to houserule/nerf some witch stuff afterwards

[Fizban]

Hmm.

Is it possible that PF lacks the rulings that let summoned creatures go beyond the spell's initial Short range? 'Cause it's not mentioned under the spells or summoning descriptor or range entries that I'm seeing. I know in 3.5 it's explicit somewhere, though I don't recall where (could be main book, FAQ, Rules Compendium, etc), but if PF lacks that ruling you could say that every one of those summoning shenanigans is invalid. No cheetah bomb, no elementals walking through walls (which block line of effect) to go wreck a fortress somewhere. And cries foul could be met with the Eidolon feature, presuming it has no tether limit, as the intended long range option, if indeed there must be one.

[Bucky]

The summoner can cheaply beat several of the soldiers per summon.

But can he beat a full company of soldiers who fight with discipline and coordination? A company that keeps eyes out for earth elementals at all times, guarding the remaining food and those currently asleep, and swarms any elementals or cheetahs as they appear? Who are willing to take one hit from a lantern archon so they can first let loose a barrage of powder sacks of putrified flour to pinpoint the invisible summoner and then a barrage of arrows to drive him off? With pikers under cover protecting anyone exposed with strikes readied against a surprise cheetah charge?

The summoner's at such a high level that individual level 1 soldiers aren't supposed to be a threat to him - they're weaker than the things on his summon list. But they have the advantage of numbers, and can threaten him if they bring all those numbers to bear. They also have the training and professionalism to fight in large groups, and they're all intelligent. Use that.

[Finkmilkana]

I‘ve played that adventure a few times over the years (both as player and GM) and I have to say that‘s pretty par for the course for that particular „dungeon“: whether it‘s that someone with all-day flight and 20+ AC snipes any soldier that leaves a building, a Ninja with over-optimized stealth and invisibility kills most of them in their sleep or a summoner just zergs them down over days with low level summons, as written, the soldiers and even the captains are not much of a challenge unless the PC fight them all at once or are highly unoptimized. The only two „challenging“ encounters are the commander (especially if the casters survive and are with him) and the archon (who can quite easily cause a TPK if the players are surprised and exhausted). So I wouldn‘t blame the summoner for this, this is a general shortcoming of that particular castle (and fortifications staffed with low level encounters in general) and any moderately optimized group that doesn‘t just charge in but chooses which encounters to engage should have similar success. This holds doubly so if the PCs are already level 5 (in order to summon a cheetah) which they typically only reach towards the end of the first book. As much as I love that campaign, the difficulty can be quite swingy (there are quite a few very deadly encounter later on, especially if the PCs are a level too low because they didn‘t get full exp in earlier parts) and I generally would suggest adjusting encounters to suit the party.

If you don‘t want them to effortlessly whittle down the garrison to nothing, have the commander force a battle once he becomes desperate: let him order his men to rig the bridge with explosives (or just start wailing at it with pickaxes, even if he can‘t actually bring it down, the PCs don‘t know that), threatening to bring it down if the PCs don‘t commit to combat NOW.

If you are still worried about the summoner in particular, strongly enforce what kind of orders he can actually give the summoned creature, e.g. he needs to be able to communicate with them to order them to do any particular task besides „attack nearest enemy“ (which might not include someone 150 ft always and not currently in combat with you). And the cheetah’s fly speed is only 30ft unless he charges (once per hour), which means a rider has a reasonable chance to escape if he doesn‘t die on the charge.

[Kurald Galain]

So I wouldn‘t blame the summoner for this, this is a general shortcoming of that particular castle
Or, perhaps the point of this castle is not to provide a balanced and challenging combat, but to give the PCs the opportunity to show off what sneaky bastards they are. Perhaps ROFLstomping a troop of soldiers is what the author intended. I'd be more interested in this kind of variety, than in a campaign where everything is a balanced and challenging combat.

[Finkmilkana]

Or, perhaps the point of this castle is not to provide a balanced and challenging combat, but to give the PCs the opportunity to show off what sneaky bastards they are. Perhaps ROFLstomping a troop of soldiers is what the author intended. I'd be more interested in this kind of variety, than in a campaign where everything is a balanced and challenging combat.

The reason I believe it’s a shortcoming is that it often ends up with 1 or 2 chars with the proper skillset doing all the work, which, if played straight, can take a few evenings. Not much fun for the rest of the group if the tactically most sensible thing to do is having one player effectively solo most of the ‚final‘ dungeon of the first book. There are only so many „summoned monster vs group of low level soldiers“ fights that are fun to play out and at some point it becomes a better idea to abbreviate them or force a pitched battle.

[Kurald Galain]

The reason I believe it’s a shortcoming is that it often ends up with 1 or 2 chars with the proper skillset doing all the work, which, if played straight, can take a few evenings.
That's a fair point, that wouldn't be fun for the rest of the group.

I should hope it's not only summoners who can assist with this task, but it's clearly not all character builds, either.

[gijoemike]

Yeah, that castle is a very easy challenge. I remember our unoptimized party just walked all over it. The hardest part was taking the wizard who was behind a heavily guarded door.


At this point the soldiers know they are dealing with invisible casters with flying summoned animals. All patrols need bags of dust, dirt, and caltrops/marbles. Make sure every door is closed and also place puddles of water in the various halls. Hingles will be twisted to a very slight angle making opening doors really loud. The goal is to make moving about extremely noisy. They can take those broken pans and tins of food, old bones from birds and make bead curtains/wind chimes for the hallways. Buddy system just became the 3 pair system. Everyone everywhere has 2 sets of eyes on them at ALL times. Yes, even the bathroom. Hallways will be absurdly well lit.

A door opening silently, a swinging or missing windchime, a rolling marble, footsteps in flour/mud results in all hell breaking loose.

As mentioned above earth glide shouldn't be able to get through the castle walls but it can get into the rockface below and up into a courtyard area. All open ground areas will now be watched just like the outerwalls. There is a wizard. He understands what is happening to the castle. His main concern is getting word to backup somewhere else. Invisible familiar maybe? No soldier will be visible from the ground again on account of "shot with spells until dead if you are seen"

[Gnaeus]

That doesn't really sound feasible to me for more than a very brief period. You plan to alert every time the wind blows a windchime or a small animal kicks a marble (because the castle has rats or a lot of cats). I'd start imposing fatigue and morale penalties after 24 hours or so if PCs tried that. If you buff upon alert you will be out of buffs by midmorning.

Worse, the summoner, who is obviously thinking, could absolutely use that against you. Set off an alarm here while we go the other way. Or just set off alarms regularly enough that enemy casters can't recover spells.

[AsuraKyoko]

The fact that countermeasures could backfire isn't necessarily a bad thing. The people in the fort could easily go overboard with them, and the PCs exploiting that could make for an interesting arms race of subterfuge and security. Perhaps, after the spellcasters get one night of no sleep, they modify the system in some way, or perhaps they distribute some of their items to high ranking guards, so they can better respond to problems as the casters recover their spells.

Additionally, they people in the fort could try doing some scouting out of the party, to try and figure out who is attacking them, or at least get an idea as to the size of the party. A familiar makes for an excellent scout, and the guards could potentially sprig an ambush on the PCs while they are distracted causing havoc in the keep.

[Wintermoot]

In the world of D&D, the proper response to this is for the powers that be in the castle to hire a group of adventurers 1-2 levels higher than the PCs to take out the PCs. Fight fire with fire, fight adventurers with adventurers.

[Gruzzle]

Note that the Aerial template caps the fly speed at 10' per HD, and arguably Dash doesn't override that. And also, earth elementals have int 4, so arguably they're not very good at understanding orders.

Otherwise, this sounds like the expected results of a smart mid-level party against a group of low-level grunts.

Very good eye on fly speed cap, that's something I'd missed. Thank you all for your help, the adventure shall continue!

If anyone enjoys adventure journals, one of the players has been doing very good posts over on another forum you are probably familiar with. Mild warnings, it's an evil campaign and the witch is a seducer/succubus build so there's some PG-13 sexual stuff in the posts.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/way-of-the-wicked-playthrough.681173/

[Faily]

If you're concerned about summons in the future, using Magic Circle against Evil/Good/Law/Chaos is a legitimate tactic against summoned monsters as it prevents summoned creatures of specific alignments from entering the area.

There's also Anti-Summoning Shield.