Insanely dangerous things you can throw at low level players fairly
- Thread starter clockworkjoe
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Rel
Liquid Awesome
I don't really want to hijack this thread any more than I already have but to answer the points brought up by DocM and S'mon:
I played this character (Cleric of Boccob/Wizard) with an almost Vulcan-like sense of logic and detatchment. He really didn't like unneccessary bloodshed and always tried to parley whenever possible. Had he known the party was up against 50 Hobgoblins and a Drider, he would never have considered fighting them unless the only alternative was death. The DM knew this.
For a good portion of the fight, I was cut off from the rest of the party fighting the Hobgoblins with my longbow and a lot of 5' steps. I had a shield spell up and with my high Dex was almost impossible to hit for the Hobgoblins. If they had grappled me, I would have been quickly subdued and the rest of the party wouldn't even know I was in trouble, much less be in the position to do anything about it.
To bring this somewhat back on topic, the DM in question told me that he never expected us to do so well against the Hobgoblins and he expected us to fall quickly to their huge numbers. The lesson here for those who are thinking about throwing especially nasty challenges at the party is that you can never count on things going a certain way.
If you think it will be cool when the Cleric lays the Rakshasa low with a single Blessed crossbow bolt, consider what will happen if the Cleric doesn't prepare a Bless spell that day. Or if the bolt misses. Or if the Cleric doesn't realize it is a Rakshasa in the first place. Or hasn't read the Monster Manual and know about that achiles heel.
If things go wrong, you are looking at the monsters having to behave stupidly or letting the whole party die.
Don't get me wrong. I routinely throw challenges at my players well above their CR. But I try not to make it so that the only way the party can succeed is to have access to the "magic bullet".
I played this character (Cleric of Boccob/Wizard) with an almost Vulcan-like sense of logic and detatchment. He really didn't like unneccessary bloodshed and always tried to parley whenever possible. Had he known the party was up against 50 Hobgoblins and a Drider, he would never have considered fighting them unless the only alternative was death. The DM knew this.
For a good portion of the fight, I was cut off from the rest of the party fighting the Hobgoblins with my longbow and a lot of 5' steps. I had a shield spell up and with my high Dex was almost impossible to hit for the Hobgoblins. If they had grappled me, I would have been quickly subdued and the rest of the party wouldn't even know I was in trouble, much less be in the position to do anything about it.
To bring this somewhat back on topic, the DM in question told me that he never expected us to do so well against the Hobgoblins and he expected us to fall quickly to their huge numbers. The lesson here for those who are thinking about throwing especially nasty challenges at the party is that you can never count on things going a certain way.
If you think it will be cool when the Cleric lays the Rakshasa low with a single Blessed crossbow bolt, consider what will happen if the Cleric doesn't prepare a Bless spell that day. Or if the bolt misses. Or if the Cleric doesn't realize it is a Rakshasa in the first place. Or hasn't read the Monster Manual and know about that achiles heel.
If things go wrong, you are looking at the monsters having to behave stupidly or letting the whole party die.
Don't get me wrong. I routinely throw challenges at my players well above their CR. But I try not to make it so that the only way the party can succeed is to have access to the "magic bullet".
Rel said:
The Shield spell's cover bonus would work just as good against the touch attacks needed to start the grapple though, so you'd still be just as hard to hit initially. For an average-INT monster I'd think the assumption would be that only heavily armed opponents are likely to be worth grappling. Plus, hobgoblins wouldn't surrender just because one of their number was grappled, so I think they probably wouldn't expect humans to either. In this case the most obvious tactic would be to close in to the archer so he couldn't 5'-step back before firing, and hit with lots of AoOs when he fired, also get round behind the Shield if he wasn't backed against a wall. If he survived several melee hits, then maybe think about grappling.
Ridley's Cohort
First Post
Rel said:
This is really a matter of style and group expectations.
The is no in-game rational for believing that fights should be fair. It is metagaming to think so. "Fairness" only requires that the DM give the players good opportunities to feel they are "making progress".
OTOH sometimes DMs teach their players to have an "us against him" mentality. Naturally those players are quick to become testy when the fight seems unfair.
LostSoul
Adventurer
Rel said:
That's what it sounds like to me. On the other hand, if you had known that you were going somewhere riddled with hobgoblins and thier "demonic" master, you could have expected these results.
While it is meta-gaming to provide fair challenges to PCs at every turn, it doesn't make for a fun game if the PCs die (or are captured) because they made a simple decision:
PC: "We're going to head down Old Mine Road to see if we can't help out those trapped miners."
DM: "Okay... about an hour later, the Green Dragon that just started stalking this road comes by and breathes on you all. You're all dead."
That's a realistic type of game, but not much fun.
LostSoul
Adventurer
I think the original theme of this thread was "Achillies Heel's". What kinds of monsters have them? The rakshasa has a blessed crossbow bolt weakness... are there any other monsters out there with a similar shortcoming?
Evil Wizards spring to mind, since they aren't too powerful in melee combat unless prepared for it.
Evil Wizards spring to mind, since they aren't too powerful in melee combat unless prepared for it.
Frosty said:
Big tough monsters without flight are easy meat for flying fireballing spellcasters - minimum level for that trick is about 5th, eg Fly spell + wand of fireballs.
Monsters without ranged attacks in the open are easy meat for any flying attacker with ranged attacks - hence the vital need to attain and keep air superiority in most D&D battles.
Spellcasters are most fun!
Old Wizards (low con, even lower hit points) who have been busy using their spells to make items or perform nasty icky dark rituals are great for low level PCs. You can give them Big Plot elements (powerful wizard, powerful icky magic!), with low level risk. A few spells (suggestion, chill touch, charm person, hold person, gust of wind, even magic jar) can be used to seriously threaten a low level party, without a major risk of a total party kill.
You can do the same thing with priests, but it is much more difficult and dangerous. 2 or 3d8 of touch attack damage is BAD news for the level 1-3 PCs.
The main things to avoid is High Strength monsters, such as Ogres, Giants, Trolls, ettins, Bears, etc. A lucky shot, never mind a crit, and you have one or two dead PCs.
Another tactic I used recently was a small room with a stone golem. The challenge: Loot the room as much as possible, without entering and thus triggering the golem's 'kill intruders' command. The PCs had great fun with it.
Old Wizards (low con, even lower hit points) who have been busy using their spells to make items or perform nasty icky dark rituals are great for low level PCs. You can give them Big Plot elements (powerful wizard, powerful icky magic!), with low level risk. A few spells (suggestion, chill touch, charm person, hold person, gust of wind, even magic jar) can be used to seriously threaten a low level party, without a major risk of a total party kill.
You can do the same thing with priests, but it is much more difficult and dangerous. 2 or 3d8 of touch attack damage is BAD news for the level 1-3 PCs.
The main things to avoid is High Strength monsters, such as Ogres, Giants, Trolls, ettins, Bears, etc. A lucky shot, never mind a crit, and you have one or two dead PCs.
Another tactic I used recently was a small room with a stone golem. The challenge: Loot the room as much as possible, without entering and thus triggering the golem's 'kill intruders' command. The PCs had great fun with it.
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