RtToEE Advice

[TomTheRat]

Hi there! I hope this thread isn't in the wrong place.

That said, I'm in dire need of advice from experienced DnD players. I'm currently at the beginning of playing through the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. The party is well balanced (fighter, cleric, rogue, mage, paladin, monk, ranger) and the players are clever and for the most part well experienced with DnD 3.5.

That said, we've been getting our arses handed to us, and bad. We've had 6 character deaths in the first 15 sessions, and the Raise Dead costs and level hits are starting to seriously bog us down. The GM decided that he didn't like twinking at all, and has limited our Feat selection to ones from the the PhB.

I'm playing the rogue, I'm currently level 5, Ghostwise Halfling. I'm pretty close to level 6, and I have the skills to take levels in the Thief Acrobat prestige class. Ghostwise favored class in Barbarian, which would be good for my horrible hps and Fort saves. Also... feat. I have Point Blank and Precise shot.

Advice?

Thanks :-)

TTR.

ps... no spoilers if you know whats coming up please

[illyrus]

We're towards the end of the adventure. We pretty much only use stuff out of the PHB for everything so we're at a similiar power level to your party.

1. Change from a dungeon crawl mindset to a raiding (and no, I don't mean WoW) mindset. Enter an area with bad guys, fight a couple of battles, have an easy escape route, and pull back to rest. I'd have the wizard keep a rope trick prepared for when you're trapped.

2. Make sure your party is tossing around buffs. If you're only engaging foes for a battle or two, your casters have enough spell slots to throw out one or two buffs and still cast in-combat spells. Mage armor, enlarge, bless, and shield of faith are all great first level buff spells. Haste is godly as well for your group composition.

3. Look at who is getting hurt the most that is not the fighter or the paladin. If the monk is always dropping in combat, have the paladin(thru scrolls) or the cleric put shield other on him. Alternatively stick on aid so they have a small hp buffer.

4. If you're fighting enemies that do not have a long range nuker, withdraw as you fight them, forcing them into a bottleneck. If they have to get past your fighter and paladin to get to the mage and cleric, then you've done your job.

5. Make sure all of your party stays within a movement range of the cleric so they can be healed if needed.

6. Focus fire those deadly targets and make sure they die first and very quickly.

7. Tanglefoot bags and smoke sticks do an excellent job at battlefield control in larger battles. Keeping that ogre with class levels away from the party while you finish off his wizard friend is often worth more than dealing a round's worth of sneak attack damage. As you're playing a halfling with some ranged attack feats, you could probably afford to throw one with each hand and eat those heavy twf penalities. Ranged touch attacks aren't hard to make on most of the things in that dungeon.

8. Resist energy is a great friend when you know you're going to be fighting energy specific creatures. I'd recommend a wand of it (cheapest way is to get a ranger to make one for you as it will only cost 1500 market).

9. Wands of CLW are godly. After a combat is over, there is no reason for your cleric to be expending spells healing people up. We're still using them for after battle healing at level 12.

10. This is just in general, but potions, wands, and scrolls are great to have. You paladin should keep a few scrolls of shield other, divine favor, bless weapon, bull's strength, and if he can afford it, holy sword. A single holy sword scroll can turn a rout into victory.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

15 sessions...

Not sure where that puts you in things, but it's probably safe to say you've finished the moathouse by now, yes? What have you been doing since? There are some directions you can go that are really tougher than a party fresh from the moathouse should be expected to handle. If things seem too tough for you right now, maybe you're going the wrong direction.

That said, I have to stress how important it is to follow the second piece of advice illyrus gave. There are some sections of the dungeon you might be able to camp out in, but you really need to avoid the active sections. But really, it should all be considered hostile enemy territory. Treat it as such.

I'd also like to mention that my second character in the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign was a halfling Thief Acrobat. (Though I'm not familiar with the Ghostwise Halfling). Had quite a bit of fun. He's the first character for which I made extensive cheat sheets for keeping track of relevant rules. He was only one of two survivors of one particularly nasty incident. Since it got so tough, he retired from adventuring, and I made Shhalahr (the source of my screen name) to take his place. So, yeah, you got me feeling nostalgic.

[JaronK]

A great downtime healer is an Eternal Wand of Vigor... 10,000gp, but it works 2/day with no limit on charges, and each use heals up 30 hit points over 15 rounds. Very handy.

JaronK

[marjan]

A great downtime healer is an Eternal Wand of Vigor... 10,000gp, but it works 2/day with no limit on charges, and each use heals up 30 hit points over 15 rounds. Very handy.

JaronK

This would be good if ToEE was in Eberron.