Forge of Fury: Deathtrap? (spoilers)

[Tharen the Damned]

Our group of 4 fourth level characters monkey-stomped the roper. Of course, it helped that one of the characters actually make the insane spot check to notice it before anyone entered the range of it's tentacles. That, and some extraordinary good luck with the dice during the combat.

So it is possible to win the encounter with some good fortune. Of course, one can't plan for 'good fortune'

My group didn´t fight the roper but parleyed. He held one of the PCs Hostage and the other PCs provided him with some of their mules (brought them in from the Troglodyte Tunnel).
After that, the groups (monte Style) Sorcerer (has Dipl. as class Skill) with a Cha of 18 rolled a 20 on his Diplomacy Check against the Roper.
So the Roper actuelly set the PC free and let them pass to the other rooms.

So they had a lot of Luck too!

 

[stevelabny]

Ok, I've been meaning to come back and tell you guys what happened next, but I kept putting it off. We played 1 1/2 sessions since the druid's death and I have to point out some more of the odd things my group did. (and how they almost paid an additional price) MORE SPOILERS AHEAD:

On the return trip back, the party actually looked for other entrances.
They found the chimney, the cave entrance leading to the trogs, and even investigated the lake for a cave entrance.
They found the trog and bear tracks, snuck into the cave, and then randomly tried to have a pleasant conversation with the trogs. Is this what cutting a deal with the kobolds in Sunless Citadel has led to? Trying to befriend every notoriously naughty race in d&d? I'm all for diplomacy and breaking stereotypes but it almost seems like the pendulum has swung the other way.

Anywho, the decide to try to get a vantage point on the orc guards from above. See two orcs and the ogre standing guard...and decide to shoot arrows from above. They each get one or two arrows off and then the orcs and ogre move inside, rather than stand still and die.

With the alarm set off AGAIN, the party waded into one big fight with the remaining orcs, the ogre and the orc adept. The monk got killed on heavy damage rolls (but im rolling in the open, so i cant fudge even if i want too) but i allowed the cleric's temple to raise him (magically without the level loss just for the sake of the game) and ask for repayment within 2 weeks (figuring theyd have to go back into the Forge and not be able to keep going back and forth to town for healing so theyd be more careful)

Back inside, they hunt down the orc adept, and then loot the whole orc encampment. they leave the coins AND THE MAGIC RAPIER in the ogres chest to pick up on the way out. So the barbarian has a masterowrk greatsword, the fighter/rogue has a greatsword, the monk has his fists and isnt a magic weapon yet, the cleric has a +1 morningstar AND is carrying Shatterspike, the +1 longsword that does extra damage when sundering weapons. (from Sunless Citadel)

The party gets torched by the obvious fire trap by the stairs to level 2. I made it very obvious to the point where they basically chastised themselves for setting it off. They picked their way around level 2, carefully avoiding the dwarven coffins afraid of undead, and evntually getting to the trog lair. They refused to enter the 5ft tall trog lair and continued. Later they got to the two trogs with the bear and messed around so the bear got out, but they were close enough to the cage that they sorta had it trapped in the narrow passageway to the bear cave. The bear mauled the barbarian, and after the ftr/rog tumbled behind the bear, the barbarian ran off. Left with no flanking partner and BEHIND the bear, the ftr/rog had to tumble back out, and failed. The only thing that prevented him from dying was the cleric had cast Sanctuary on herself and the trog and the bear both failed their saves to attack her, so they chased the barbarian while she healed the ftr/rog. Luckily they choose to run out through the exit that lead back outside.

When they returned to this cavern, they dropped the two trogs before they could pull the lever, and then disabled the lever. Good for them. They luckily snag the +1 greatsword (changed from a bastard sword to be nice) from the yellow mold without any ill effects. The ftr/rog took the +1 greatsword but then...

They enter the largest cavern in the complex, the three characters who cant see in the dark go one way, the half-orc ftr/rog goes THE OTHER WAY, BY HIMSELF. He gets attacked by the gricks, and now we learn TWO lessons.
1> dont go off by yourself and 2> dont have one cleric with two magic items and another in a chest. The two gricks drop the ftr/rog before he can do anything and when the other characters come running in, they are all rolling dreadfully. It took them a few rounds to even realize they couldnt get through the gricks DR, which eventually led to the cleric dropping the magic sword, the monk picking it up and fighting at a penalty while THE BARBARIAN RAN AWAY AGAIN. Its comical how often this barbarian runs away. The gricks are stunned by a Sound Burst, which lets the party finish them off without losing anyone in this battle.

When faced with the locked door to the forge, the party decides to clean out the whole level. The take out the trogs in the small space with no problem, but give the trog sorceror plenty of time to buff himself and his lizard (and another trog in the room with them). The party dispatches the trog grunt and lizard quickly, but then cant find the invisible trog sorceror. (cuz hes hanging from the ceiling). Luckily, the cleric was smart enough to block the door and the sorceror had to keep casting Sleep from the ceiling and hoping shed fail her save. She never did. Rather than wait the sorceror out, the monk drinks a potion of spider-climb and runs up to the ceiling also. When he finally suceeded in pulling her down, there was high 5s all around.

So yes, theyre having a great time, but they still make a LOT of mistakes. Mistakes that they even admit are bad. And with the roper and duergar and dragon below, i still fear the worst.

 

[DragonOfIntellect]

The Barbarian seems to be the biggest problem. You really cannot afford to have your primary tank running away at critical points in the battle. But the only ones who can really do anything about it are his fellow PCs, who should take him to task for abandoning them so often.

 

[Graywolf-ELM]

Forge of fumbling foolery

Oh yes, The Forge of Fury, I'll eventually write this one up in a story hour. We have a rather unusual party. No wizard, sorcerer or fighter type, unless you count the Monk/psion, Druid, Cleric of Sune, Rogue, Bard, that we have. It takes us twice as long to kill anything it seems(all between 3rd and 4th level). An NPC Druid is along for the ride as well, 3 horses are left outside to fend for themselves, 1 being an animal companion to watch over the other two.

We came in the back door by the rogue's suggestion(my character), and our Druid promptly gets mauled by the Bear that is released. The troggy's are put to sleep, and the bear calmed down by the NPC Druid. We missed the rooms with the magic sword and the Helm, until much later. Somehow we made it down to the Roper's lair, and suddenly rock formations are part of the description Stalactites. an arrow gets popped off at the rock, and lo and behold, it hits, waking the creature. We couldn't get out fast enough

We bypassed the Gricks and Iron door(failed open lock check) and got hammered by the stirges. We ended up going up through the tunnels, bypassing the fire trap, and hitting the Orc's from behind, starting with the 3 in the room together sorcerer or shaman, she didn't have much of a chance to cast anything. Good rolls by the thief to pick the lock, and push the key onto something we slid under the door. We flung the door open and killed 2 of them with a round, one ran for the secret door, and we killed her before she could warn anyone. We then found 2 NPC's in a cage, and set them free. We came at the rope bridge from the opposite direction. My rogue flings the door open, rushes out and sneak attacks one Orc to death, the rest of the party takes a round and a half to take out the other.

We find 1 secret door, and kill the Orc that comes out by hypnotizing it, and the Druid beheading it with his scimitar. back across the bridge to attack the Ogre and his 2 wolf pets, who we took several rounds to kill. back around to the other secret door, and kill the Orcs there. We didn't find the secret door to the barracks, and during the rest we were taking, the remaining Orcs come through that door. My Rogue pops around the corner, and drops one with a single arrow. We ended up parleying with this last group, and remind them, we've killed their Ogre leader and everyone else we've come across. They pack it up and head out.

We meet the Gricks on the way back down to open the iron door, and it takes us a while to figure out magic or high damage is needed for these guys. The door is finally opened with support from the Cleric with a spell.

The rogue promptly sets off the alarm heading towards the Duergar, and when they tell us to leave or die, the rest of the party pushes in to see what's going on. After a running battle with the 3 in this room, doors are flung open to the ones in the forge, who promptly turn invisible and give us plenty of fits. Our Druid player was out for this session, so I used him to cast some spells. Summoned a crocodile, and did not read that he could take 10 on a swim check and promptly failed it. After killing everyone here, culminating with the croc finally remembering he can swim and eating the familiar as it tries to escape.

We then got the tar beat out of us by an animate table, and decide that maybe we should be thinking about getting to a town to drown some of our sorrows. 2 more deurgar attack us during our rest here, and we kill one and get the other to surrender. At this point one of the Druids says, Oh my, I need to check up on my horse. Many of us, are just looking for an excuse to leave at this point, and agree. Well one of them has been eaten, the grisly remains are here, and the other two have been led off by a group of humanoids(read the Orcs we let go earlier) We end up tracking them to a humanoid hunting party coming back with some deer. We figure that if they are hunting and coming back with deer, then they've already eaten the horses. Some of us say good riddance to the Forge and are ready to head back to town. No dragon or succubus for us, we would hav been slaughtered.

The second Druid is leaving the party, we are gaining an Elf Paladin, and my rogue is going to multiclass wizard now.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

My group went through Forge of Fury early ... very soon after its release. We never finished it, due primarily to the infamous roper encounter, which resulted in two near-TPKs.

Frankly, I simply don't believe the stories of 4th-level PCs beating the roper on initial encounter. Not by the module as written. It can't be done. I attempted it with my PCs over and over and over again, after the TPK. Even with good luck with the dice, the result was the same.

First, there aren't enough clues on the roper's existence, and by the time the PCs even have a chance to spot it (against its Hide of +18), they are within range of its tentacles. And that's for the folks with low-light vision.

Second, the roper is intelligent. It knows it's all but invulnerable to magic, and it knows it doesn't have a hard time hitting armored creatures. It'll take the fighters and clerics out first. Sure, they have decent Fort save, but at 4th level a DC 18 save is tough.

Third, despite what a couple of folks have said, you can't charge the roper. The cavern floor slopes down into a stream. The roper sits on a ledge on the other side. It'd take even fast PCs two rounds of movement to reach the roper. That's 13 tentacle attacks (including one from the almost certain surprise round). And against 4th-level PCs, its AC of 24 is pretty good protection against AoOs it might incur by continuing to use its tentacles once it's threatened.

Fourth, the roper has SR 30, immunity to electricity, cold resistance 10. Lesser fire orb is obviously a great spell for this situation. (Unfortunately it didn't exist when the module was released and for some time after.)

Fifth, as written the roper isn't willing to negotiate until it has "secured its first victim," and even then the PCs have to be the ones to make a call for parley. Even very smart players are going to be loath to surrender or negotiate in this situation, especially when they -- possibly both player and PC -- probably don't know how vastly outclassed they are by the creature.

Sixth, some characters -- whether due to class restrictions or just RP restrictions -- can't give the roper what it wants. Their only options are fight or deceive and retreat.

I altered the encounter and had the roper make the call for parley, bemoaning its monotonous diet. I have one charismatic player, however, who is of the "PC should never die as long as they're acting heroically" school of thought, and he managed to convince the others not to negotiate or surrender. (We've since discussed our gaming philosophies many times, after several of his PCs' deaths, and he's aware that I don't share his opinion.)

Although I really like the alteration one poster above made -- having the roper being worshipped by the trogs, which also allows the PCs some clues -- and I might use that setup with experienced 3.x gamers, for not-so-experienced players I'm going to side with the folks who are recommending removing the roper encounter, or replacing it with something more suitable.

If you run the encounter as written, it will kill PCs. Possibly all of them. And there's no surer way to sour someone's taste for roleplaying games.

 

[coyote6]

If a party of 3rd-5th level characters beat it, then I usually suspect that the DM 'softened' the encounter a tad, or gave them a freebie involving it's fire vulnerability. Any creature that can deliver 6 attacks at 50 feet, has an AC of 24 and SR of 30, and each of those attacks does 2d8 Strength damage and grapples the target should be ripping up a party of that level.

The only softening I did was to let the party's knowledge skills function (i.e., the bard made a bardic knowledge check to recall a roper's weakness). That, and allow some mostly-useless NPCs (a hireling or two, and some rescued prisoners). The PCs had also made 4th level by the time they met Mr. R.

The group wandered into the room, and the roper promptly ate a couple of the rescued prisoners; after a couple of PCs took that 2d8 Str loss, the rest chopped off a couple of strands, and they all fled. IIRC, they spent a few days recovering (lots of lesser restoration) & preparing before going back (actually, they may have even finished exploring the Forge before preparing & going back). In any case, they set about Getting Even.

With scrolls scribed and LOTS of alchemist's fire in hand (remember, there's a partially broken trap on an upper level that can be turned into quite a few vials of alchemist's fire), the PCs used nearly every single buffing spell, scroll, or potion they had (IIRC, the cleric did use every non-orison spell he had on buffing spells -- bull's strength, bless, shield of faith, endure elements, etc., and the sorcerer spent all her 2nd level slots, plus some scrolls, making the whole party invisible), snuck up (invisibily), used an invisible portable footbridge (that they built; a PC had profession "carpenter" or "handyman" or some such) to get the stealthy ranger & rogue close to the roper (bad Listen roll, and that darned invisibility), and opened fire with sneak attacks and alchemist's fire. Two or three PCs readied actions to swing their slashing weapons (gripped in both bull's strengthed hands) at the roper's strands.

Between a couple-few lucky hits, a couple-three people pelting the roper with alchemist's fire, and a couple of terrible rolls (in the open, IIRC), those 90 hp went away *quick*. A roper's touch AC is 10, and every vial of fire either did 4d6 of fire damage (only take 6-7 vials to kill it dead, and they had over a dozen), or did 2d6 and cost the roper an action, trying to put the flames out (and thus halve the damge). The adventurers were beat up, and they took days to recover, but they bloody well killed the roper.

(And then cast detect magic, at which point I had to rule that a roper's stomach was not, in fact, the equivalent of a foot of stone or an inch of metal, and the sorcerer ended up very happy. And many future villains that lacked immunity to magic missiles ended up very unhappy.)

A 3.5e roper would've slaughtered 'em, though. The instantly-regenerating-strands would've hurt, a lot -- the PCs chopped through a couple-three strands in the first couple of rounds, and I think they managed to chop through all or almost all before the end of the fight, thus cutting the roper's number of attacks down quite dramatically.

 

[Rel]

I made quite a few alterations to this module and one of them was to get rid of the Roper. I replaced him with a hive of giant ants and their queen. If there was a lesson to be learned, it was "don't screw around trying to kill every critter in the whole dungeon, especially the ones that don't have any treasure, when you're on a time critical mission." They were there to try and obtain some magical orc-slaying weapons from the original dwarven inhabitants to aid in repelling an orcish invasion.

I saw the Roper encounter as an encounter that was going to very likely derail the whole storyline. If a PC gets captured and eaten then I'm looking at the party abandoning their quest and trying to get the character raised or else I have to try and introduce a new PC in the middle of the dungeon. Plus, if they did get lucky and kill it, I didn't need them getting their hands on its treasure at the level they were at.

If they needed to learn the lesson that "sometimes you need to negotiate" then they got that one later when they met the Duergar. My group were under the impression that the inhabitants behind the iron door were regular Dwarves. So they KNOCKED LOUDLY ON THE DOOR. The Duergar had time to get organized and came in force to attack the party. If the Rogue/Sorcerer in the group hadn't called for a timely parley (and rolled incredibly well on his Diplomacy check), that would have been a TPK.

They proceeded to negotiate with the Duergar who allowed them safe passage through the Foundry area so long as they did them the service of killing the undead in the shrine. After that they went after Nightscale (the Duergar was hoping the party would be successful - they had been paying Nightscale tribute for years, including the orc-slaying weapons).

 

[Asmo]

I wish that I had been as wise as you were. I went for the negotiate-scenario with disasterous results: the whole party was completely wiped out. Players vs Roper: 0-1. Big mistake on my behalf, it was a great party and I miss the guys.
Everything would have been ok if the party fighter - wearing a full plate and no ranks in swim - hadn´t jumped in the river trying to save the halfling rogue. :\ .
The orc slaying weapon is a cool idea, if I´m running FoF once more I will steal that idea.

Asmo

 

[Prothall]

Well what your group did at the start sounds rather what like mine did, without all the cleverness. That said, most of them were only on their third adventure ever, but... Lessee, they shot down the orcs at the door, I think, and then managed to get in through the door before it was closed. The problems arose when they got to the bridge. (As a note, they neither looked for nor discovered secret doors. Ever.) At the bridge, the Dwarven cleric bravely steps out - and dies. Then, dodging the shots of the orcs on the other side, another player stepped out after having a rope tied to him held by the half-orc barbarian. Well, he fell off about halfway over, and the barbarian managed to not follow him... though he couldn't hold onto the rope, either. (Failed his STR check. Badly.) The truly sad thing was they never even tried to shoot down the orcs until after they'd lost those two characters. Some of them managed to cross, though, and the rest got replacement characters when they found the prison.

 

[Rel]

The orc slaying weapon is a cool idea, if I´m running FoF once more I will steal that idea.

Asmo

You can read the particulars in my Story Hour (it is in the first Story Hour thread, which you can navigate back to via the link in my sig) if you like.

I did a lot of tailoring to this module to fit it perfectly into my campaign but it was worth the effort. I got a lot of nights adventure out of it and The Stone Tooth has become a prominent landmark in my campaign. After the party accomplished their mission and the orc invasion was defeated, some Dwarves who helped repel the orcs got word from the party that there were Duergar in Durgeddin's forge. They got a posse together and cleaned the place out. It is once again in Dwarven hands and they are turning out some fine mithral/magical weapons again (another change I made to the mod was that there was a vein of mithral in the Glitterhame).