Forge of Fury: Question **Spoiler**

[fake_name]

The roper encounter is, IMO, far too vicious becuae there is no warning how powerful the creature is. Even if you get to see it move beforehand (such as grabbing a fish out of the water) it appears to be a low danger predator, and a not something with 10 STR draining attacks and incredable reach.

 

[Henry@home]

Devil's Advocate: There IS a very useful sidebar on that encounter in the module. It mentions several ways that the Roper can be bargained with by the party.

 

[Hatchling Dragon]

Just occured to me, as it relates very closely to the Roper encounter. What did your parties do about that Succubus? It's yet another encounter that's over the player's heads, as measured by CR's. Granted, it's a bit more 'in reach' than the Roper, being only CR 9.

So, what happened? Did your party even figure out what it was? Did they learn before or after it was 'too late'?

Hatchling Dragons

 

[Kershek]

My PC's were warned that there was some nasty tentacled creature that was very tough somewhere in the lower levels. So when they walked by and it grabbed two of the party, they knew they couldn't beat it. I made it talk as soon as it grabbed the two party members ("Yum! Fresh food!!"). This told them that conversation (and therefore bargaining) was possible as well as giving away it's primary motive for grabbing them.

As it held the two adventureres underwater in the river, the party went into frantic diplomacy mode. They promised to trade it lotsa food (the bear from the trog pen, orcs, anything!) if it would not kill or eat their friends. It thought for a second, then pulled the two gasping out of the water and slammed them into the wall and into unconsciousness. With the clock ticking, the rest of the party went to find the food they had promised. Soon enough they returned and the roper threw their two friends across to them and they ran away.

Er, to the best of my knowledge, those strands only pull. They aren't like arms at all. They wrap around the victim and pull towards it with no side-to-side leverage.

 

[reiella]

When we ran through it, we talked to it and ended up just dragging the bear carcass from somewhat nearby to feed it instead of getting into combat with it. It's position was just far too much in its advantage and level a bit too high.

The Succubus encounter was kinda sad...
It managed to charm my character (psion/shaper), but it broke that when trying to energy drain him (lucky saves...) then a happy fun mind blast recoil and a lucky roll was the main reason we were able to kill it.

Although truthfully, most of that trouble could have been solved by just using Prot Evil or Prot Chaos.

 

[Skarp Hedin]

My PCs beat the roper to death. Sure, it took a while, and some of them were pretty low STR by the time it was dead.. but the roper had a lot of really really bad rolls. I think around half the party was unconscious by the time the 1 str paladin managed to deliver a killing blow (a really -weak- killing blow, heh), but there you have it.

I wanted the roper to negotiate, but uh, they're not good with negotiation.

I did think that the encounter was a big much, though. I mean, yeah, they killed it and no one died, but it was miiighty close. Had I rolled better, they all could have died.

 

[Dr. Zoom]

My group just encountered the roper during tonight's session. They did not surprise it so it fired a strand and stuck the ranger, saying, "Fresh food, finally."

But my group did not even think about a parley. They attacked immediately. The roper managed to drain the strength of 4 out of 6, one of which it drained to 0. The monk jumped the river but got hit with a strand and was weakened. The barbarian tried to jump over but landed short and was carried away by the river. He had to dump all his equipment just to make his swim check, including his +1 greataxe. Easy come, easy go.

The spellcasters were ineffective, so they began using bull's strength to help with the roper's weaken attacks. The ranger was able to get back up with a 4 strength and he fired a couple poisoned arrows (drow poison) that incapacitated the roper. The monk killed it with a coup de grace from his light crossbow right thru the eye. It was a fun battle.

The roper's 6 strand attacks and the river obstacle make this a dangerous encounter, indeed. But it is fun and there are many ways to take out the roper. As the DM, I thought my group would have used all the alchemists fire they found earlier in the orc lair, but they did not. I am looking forward to the encounter with Nightscale. That should prove interesting. BTW, I have 6 player characters and one NPC (Erky). Four were 5th level and three were 4th level when they encountered the roper.

 

[Darklone]

huh well...

My players burnt it. They have a tendency to burn everything. And we got a Spiked chain barbarian rogue who rolled like hell (as usual... one of those 4 18s guys...). He made at least 5 saves against the poison and bashed the hell out of that roper. Then alchemists fire did the rest.