[4E] Level 1 Party facing a Level 7 Carrion Crawler?

[chronoplasm]

OK, just hear me out.

One of the quirks of this particular dungeon is that there is a trap built into the walls that gives anything touching to them a +5 vs. Fortitude 2d6 shock!
This actually works in favor of the party however.

When the players get into this one room, the roof caves in in one section and a Carrion Crawler pops out of the hole!
Now, the Carrion Crawler can't simply jump down from the ceiling and reorient itself to land on its feet. The Carrion Crawler has to crawl down the walls to get to the players. It can't do so however without setting off the trap and electrocuting itself. The Carrion Crawler is forced then to crawl on the ceiling. The ceiling is high enough that the Carrion Crawler's attacks (bite and tentacle) aren't able to reach the players, so I'm giving it a special attack where it dangles a drippy tongue down and another where it tries to drop Baby Carrion Crawler on the players.

The wizard and the warlock will be able to blast the Carrion Crawler from below while the other party members take care of the babies.

What do you think? Doable?

[serok42]

First session I played in 4e there was a fight between us

Dwarven Infernal Warlock (me)
Dragonborn Fighter
Human Rogue
Eladrin Infernal Warlock
Elven Ranger and
Air Genasi Warlord

All level one

and a Carrion Crawler and 2 Ogyltul (butchered the spelling but I can never remember what they are called or how it is spelled) in a water filled cave.

We survived even with the Rogue under the water the entire fight (one of the Os lashed out at him and drug him into the pool of water).

So I think your scenario is doable, you might be able to throw more at them depending on the size of the party.

OK, just hear me out.

One of the quirks of this particular dungeon is that there is a trap built into the walls that gives anything touching to them a +5 vs. Fortitude 2d6 shock!
This actually works in favor of the party however.

When the players get into this one room, the roof caves in in one section and a Carrion Crawler pops out of the hole!
Now, the Carrion Crawler can't simply jump down from the ceiling and reorient itself to land on its feet. The Carrion Crawler has to crawl down the walls to get to the players. It can't do so however without setting off the trap and electrocuting itself. The Carrion Crawler is forced then to crawl on the ceiling. The ceiling is high enough that the Carrion Crawler's attacks (bite and tentacle) aren't able to reach the players, so I'm giving it a special attack where it dangles a drippy tongue down and another where it tries to drop Baby Carrion Crawler on the players.

The wizard and the warlock will be able to blast the Carrion Crawler from below while the other party members take care of the babies.

What do you think? Doable?

[Yakk]

A level 7 carrion crawler has a 19ish defense 21ish AC (I don't feel like looking it up, but that is appropriate for the level of the critter), and about 74 HP.

With a +4 to +5 bonus to hit (+2 if bows), players have about a 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 chance of connecting each ranged attack.

How tall are the walls? The crawler would, logically, just drop and/or crawl down the walls? The walls, at +5 vs fort @ 7 average damage, would hit about 1/3 of the time, doing 2 and a third damage every square. I'd toss in something like "and immobilized until the start of your next turn", or something.

In any case, the carrion crawler is not a carrion crawler, but rather a means of spawning a stream of actual opponents for the PC, that gets deactivated after the PCs do enough ranged damage to it.

If a PC does 10 damage on a hit with a 1/3 chance of hitting, each PC-round of attacks on the crawler does 3 and a third damage. Or 22 PC-rounds of basic attacks (or basic at-wills) to take the target down.

Some PCs will suck at it (low-dex fighters), others will do better (high-dex rangers, warlocks with their curse, etc). In a party of 5, I'd expect that it would be mostly balanced between "cannot hit" and "can hit", giving you an average of 4 to 5 rounds of concentrated fire to take out the crawler.

Ranged daily and encounter powers will, naturally, make things better for the party. (Note that if you aren't careful, the non-ranged characters will feel left out).

Now, how often does it drop a mini crawler, and how hard are they to kill?

Ideally, you want both "kill the mini crawler quickly, then turn on the big crawler before the next one drops, then repeat" and "deal with the mini crawler by distracting it using 1 or 2 PCs worth of effort, and concentrate fire on the big crawler" to both work, as both are seemingly valid strategies that the PCs might use.

With 3 PCs who are good at ranged damage working on the mommy crawler, call that 5-6 rounds to take out the big crawler.

You then need a threat on the ground sufficient to distract 1 or 2 PCs in the baby crawler, and a baby crawler spawn rate such that the 1 or 2 PCs won't be bored.

Now, creatures "lining up to be killed" are significantly weaker than "creatures swarming all over you" -- the difference is roughly quadratic. 2 PCs should be opposed by 2 equal level monsters. If K is the kill time and D is the monster damage per round, they would take K*(2D) + K*(D) damage over that period, or K*3*D total damage.

If we have them fighting a stream of monsters, then it works out to one level 1 monster every 2 rounds.

...

If you want variety, you can have different kinds of such monsters attack. A soldier, a brute, and a lurker might be an interesting first 3 mini-crawlers.

Now, that makes it a pretty easy fight for the ground-cover players -- a level 1 vs level 1 encounter. You can boost the mini-crawlers up to level 2 or 3 each to make it more challenging, or have an initial burst of 2 crawlers, then 1 every 2 rounds after that.

[erikun]

Yeah, I have to agree. This isn't really an encounter with a carrion crawler; it's an encounter with a bunch of mini-crawlers, and a Gauntlet-style spawn point on the ceiling.

How tough are the mini-crawlers? If we're talking minions, momma will probably want to be popping them out at 2-3 each round. If they're closer to a level 3 monster, it may just be one every other turn.

It sounds like a good idea would be to determine how strong each mini-crawler is, assume the fight will last 6 rounds, and calculate how much XP the whole thing is worth. Oh, and how that you have some ranged characters, preferably the strikers. Nothing would such worse than a fighter, paladin, cleric, rogue, and warlock trying to figure out how to hit the thing with their melee weapons.

Also, there was a 4e "Boss Encounter" thread somewhere. Hopefully someone has that link, because it sounds like that is exactly what you're trying for here.

[Mewtarthio]

Also, there was a 4e "Boss Encounter" thread somewhere. Hopefully someone has that link, because it sounds like that is exactly what you're trying for here.

You referring to these two?

[erikun]

Yep! That's exactly it. I saved the PDF but not a link to the threads.

[chronoplasm]

Thanks guys!

I'm thinking that the walls will be about 8 squares tall. The immobilized idea sounds good.

OK, heres two ideas:

Each turn, the mommy drops a Zombie brute on the players, but the zombie's chest cavity has an egg sack inside. When the zombie is destroyed, its chest splits open and level 1 minion babies crawl out.

When bloodied, the mommy Carrion Crawler drops from the ceiling, so it does become more than just an enemy generator at that point. When it hits the ground though, the floor starts to crack. After a couple of rounds, the floor will collapse dropping everyone who isn't in a corner down into a room below. This room's walls are only a couple of squares high.

[Yakk]

8 square fall = 8d10 damage = 44 damage on average = crawler probably dead from fall.

In short, I'd make it so that the "boss" on the top, when it dies, does the fall thing.

One enemy per round is ... rather insane. Another spawning (I assume multiple minions) when the first one goes down makes it even harder.

Make sure your players have the firepower to deal with that flux of monsters, with spare firepower to attack the crawler.

Make sure that the two options (clear dropped mobs, use leftover firepower on mommy -- and concentrate on mommy, distract dropped mobs) are both somewhat viable, as you don't know which the players will do, and your situation really doesn't make either one seem like a more ideal situation.

[Fuzzy_Juan]

Others have pretty much covered it...depends on the size of the party more than anything else and whether or not they are hurt going into the fight.

Once they figure the 'mommy' is spewing babies, be prepared for the question about aoe effects, do they hit everyone in the creature's square...if so, do all the potential babies come out with the damage from the aoe.

The spawing thing and the talk of zombie babies reminds me of a fun 'trap' a DM set up once. The PC's led a band of city guard into the sewers to fight off the horde of a necromancer...they had been dealing with zombies and skeletons and expected maybe some stronger undead but weren't expecting anything too bad. Well, the problem came when they were beset with a small horde of zombies and the necromancer...they thought the zombies were all there were and didn't check the rest of the bodies floating in the knee deep water. Well, amidst the melee, 3 wights popped up and started laying waste to the guard who were mostly level 1 fighters...it is sometimes hard to distinguish in the dark and we missed the knowledge check to figure out what had happened. By the time we figured it out, we were facing an uncontrolled (necro was slain) mob of wights with only a few guard left and the knowledge that the 1d4 rounds for the rest of the slain to rise was right around the corner...We ran...fast...didn't kill them all...then started the 'zombie apocalypse' style campaign as we tried to contain the wight problem before they got loose...our DMs are always sadistic and take a perverse pleasure in taking a small strategic misstep and creating a new plot element out of it.

[Paul H]

First session I played in 4e there was a fight between us

Dwarven Infernal Warlock (me)
Dragonborn Fighter
Human Rogue
Eladrin Infernal Warlock
Elven Ranger and
Air Genasi Warlord

All level one

and a Carrion Crawler and 2 Ogyltul (butchered the spelling but I can never remember what they are called or how it is spelled) in a water filled cave.

We survived even with the Rogue under the water the entire fight (one of the Os lashed out at him and drug him into the pool of water).

So I think your scenario is doable, you might be able to throw more at them depending on the size of the party.

Hi

Yep - played that one at GenCon UK. That encounter took us about 90mins to run, with half the party unconscious at the end. My Tiefling Swordmage's 'Defensive Mark' (forgot the name) helped us survive.

All this was at lvl one LOW TIER! Oh - and there were two Otyughs in the water, (drowning us), and one Carrion Crawler. It was as much the terrain advantage as anything else that near killed us all....

Cheers
Paul H