Entangle

[marune]

Last evening, the party waits at the Forest border for a group of elves. The PCs wrongly think that the elves will talk... One of the PC, invisible move around the first big trees to spot the arrival of the elves. The elves leader are a ranger and a druid, and the druid's animal compagnion (wolverine) detect the invisible PC with his scent ability.

The invisible PC then run to the party and say, "Elves coming!".

So the charismatic PCs move toward the forest..(thinking about what they will say) and that's where everythings get really bad... The elves doesn't want to talk and want to show them clearly that they are not welcome in the forest. The druid cast Entangle, a little first level spell that clearly doomed the party.

3 PCs are entangled in the middle of the 40ft burst. They all fail their saving throws... Now they have 10 elven ranger shooting them with their longbows from behind their trees..

The player's were a bit surprised of the power of that spell...

Is it something wrong with this situation?

 

[MerakSpielman]

The only thing "wrong" with the situation is attacking a druid in the middle of a forest.

 

[Len]

What level was the party? What level were the ten archers? How many PCs died? Was it more than you would expect from the EL?

Yes, Entangle can be a powerful spell when it's backed up by arrows or fireballs. Even if half the party is free to act, it's hard for them to take care of 10 archers before the entangled PCs are killed.

On the other hand, sometimes Entangle doesn't do much. In one fight that I remember, our druid cast Entangle on about half the enemies and about half of them made their saves. But even the ones that weren't entangled were slowed, or had to go around the spell area, so they couldn't all attack us at once. Entangle didn't let us pick off all the enemies at will, it just made the fight somewhat easier.

In your case, I'd say the number of enemy archers made a big difference.

 

[mikebr99]

What is the party's level?

Seems like it caught a lot of people for a 1st level spell... DC= 10 + 1 + WIS modifier


Mike

 

[Len]

The only thing "wrong" with the situation is attacking a druid in the middle of a forest.

I think it says they wanted to talk to the elves, and it was the druid who "opened fire".

 

[marune]

Party is :
Rogue level 5 (Entangled)
Monk level 5 (Entangled)
Wizard (Drow) level 3
Rogue (Fey'ri) level 3
Swashbuckler level 4
Cleric level 4 (Entangled)

Druid was level 4 with 16 wisdom, so the DC was 14.
Other leader (ranger) was level 4 too.
8 others elves were level 1 ranger.

When the elves all droped the entangled PCs (the wizard and cleric were invisible, and the fei'ry was hidden) they withdraw to their forest, judging that the message was clear enough.. (The player's were very upset of this decision)

 

[Zoatebix]

I have to agree. 10 on three can be rather steep odds even without factoring in magic support. Though the relative levels of the two sides makes much more of a difference in D&D than in lots of other games.

Edit: Oops it was 10 on 6. The thread moved on without me! So the 3 unentangled guys didn't get to do much before the elves withdrew, eh? Let me run the encounter through my little calculator -see some posts from near the bottom of http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=86471&page=2 and throw in some of Upper_Krust's EL modifiers from "Encountering Encounter Levels" in his version 4 Challenge Rating document...

My little predict-o-formula says that the party should expect to use from half to three-quarters of their resources on this encounter. Factors that come in to play besides number and level include "favorable conditions for the enemy," and "enemy suprise," and maybe a modifier in favor of the enemy because they have more than one (in fact 10) warrior types in a situation where they outnumber their opponents. In practice this usually isn't represented by losing half the party, though.

I'd say that losing 3 members is a reasonable but not the most likely outcome. Of course, there are a lot of factors that this system doesn't take into a account, so YMMV.

 

[mikebr99]

Party is :
Rogue level 5 (Entangled)
Monk level 5 (Entangled)
Wizard (Drow) level 3
Rogue (Fey'ri) level 3
Swashbuckler level 4
Cleric level 4 (Entangled)

Druid was level 4 with 16 wisdom, so the DC was 14.
Other leader (ranger) was level 4 too.
8 others elves were level 1 ranger.

When the elves all droped the entangled PCs (the wizard and cleric were invisible, and the fei'ry was hidden) they withdraw to their forest, judging that the message was clear enough.. (The player's were very upset of this decision)

What... they're upset that the WORLD hates Drow (& Fey'ri)? Just because he was invisible for a minute before hand doesn't mean that the Druid's contacts didn't know what he really was.

Why do they expect a friendly response with their party's makeup?


Mike

 

[marune]

Oops... the Drow have an Hat of disguise (looking as moon elf if I remember) and the Fey'ri use Alter self to appear as human.

But that wasn't the goal of the topic, it was more about the use of Entangle.

The PCs were upset about their decision to dismiss the entangle and withdraw when they have done enough damage, they didn't believe it, telling that they should have come to finish all of them because they have opened fire first.

 

[Zoatebix]

hee hee. And while I was editing my post the topic moved on again. Next time I'll just make a new post.
-George