Invisible stalker How hard a challenge?

[Snowy]

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum. Wasn't sure which way the conversation would turn.

Ok the situation, I ran a weaker invisible stalker agianst my party last night with one death and me not playing it as optimumly as possible to avoid another death and probably more.

1stly the reductions I applied.

no reach.

Lower armor class - AC 22 to hit it with the bonus from being invisible.

spot checks to see it I just set at DC 20 lazy of me.

I didn't have it retreat when hurt after dropping one of the party. If it had gone away rested and recovered I think it would have killed more of them easily. Figured it knew that once it died it would return home and could continue to fight fulfilling its orders and get home quicker.



It attacked two of the party as they sat on a tall rock looking out.

What are other peoples experience of them, or other improved invisible flying enemies.

What rules did I probably mess up, or helping hints I should have passed to the party?

(it was the first player kill I have had and it didn't feel very well run on my part so want to improve - (until afterwards when the paladin/ranger who died told me his thinking that he'd stay in the fight rather than healing so that he would die rather than the archer alongside him, he was being a hero, it worked too if he had stepped back the archer (on 1 HP) would have died instead.)


I have ripped off a section of piratecats storyhour and brought the paladin back to life as PC did with Raevyn (homage to a great sounding game that has given me great ideas).
Will write up the storyhour sometime as my players are being really good at playing up the tribal savage elves I gave as a background.

Want to emphasis I want to pick peoples brains on how this should have ran or what would have been better as it turned into a bit of a whittle down the hitpoints before we die fight.

 

[frankthedm]

What level was the party?

Glitterdust is soo good, there is no excuse not to pack it as an arcane caster, if only in a scroll.

 

[Snowy]

the party is five players at level 4 (well 4 at 4 now and one at 3, but that was after the paladin woek up again).

fighter1 / bard 3 (I tried to persuade him the fighter level just for a feat wasn't worth it)

sorceror 1 / fighter 3 (archer with all the feats heading for arcane archer, doesn't know glitterdust don't think he has a scroll of it either)

Paladin 2/ ranger 2 two weapon fighting route with shortswords

Druid 4

cleric 2 / barbarian 2 (has claws scent and fangs from domains and feats)

combat went as follows.

P/R and S/F on top of rock rest down below in campsite (30ft tall rock plenty of space on top)

IS does fly by no one spots it, I give flavour text to the one with scent about fresh air strange rustle in leaves.

IS goes back to a distant rock and reports to boss, gets spotted by S/F on the way out.

On way back in S/F spots it again as its flying to attack him, he shoots it it misses him

It flies off they lose sight of it.

It comes in again and hits S/F for 24 hp leaving him on 1 hp. (crit)

He 5ft steps and shoots twice hurts it, paladin attacks it hurts it a bit.

others try and work out what the hells going on as they can't see it. Bard drums with inspirational boost.

IS attack both of them full attack a fist at each misses archer hits paladin for not much damage (7?)

barbarian starts to climb rock fluffs roll and it takes him two turns rather than one.

archer 5ft steps and shoots, hits it, paladin attacks (heavily injured and has healing potion but doesn't want the other one to die if he leaves the fight archer is more injured)

IS attacks and crits paladin takes 25 hp of damage and dies

Druid has moved to see the IS round the rock shoots it and Bard shoots it small damage

Cleric gets up and cures archer, archer shoots the IS and kills it.

 

[shilsen]

1stly the reductions I applied...

Lower armor class - AC 22 to hit it with the bonus from being invisible.

How's this a reduction? An Invisible Stalker has an AC of 17, so someone attacking it and taking the -2 to hit is going against AC 19.

And a CR 7 creature vs. two 4th lvl PCs should have the kind of effect your fight did, with things going against it when the other PCs joined in. Note that there were two crits in there, without which the fight would have been very different.

 

[frankthedm]

How's this a reduction? An Invisible Stalker has an AC of 17, so someone attacking it and taking the -2 to hit is going against AC 19.

And a CR 7 creature vs. two 4th lvl PCs should have the kind of effect your fight did, with things going against it when the other PCs joined in. Note that there were two crits in there, without which the fight would have been very different.

Well dropping the stalker a size class auto bumps AC by 1, plus if he gave it non elite array and dropped the 8 in STR and placed the 13 in dex we have 21 already. If he took the combat reflexes feat off and gave it improved natural armor he'd hit 22. Or after the size mod, perhaps the inviso stalker simply fought defensivly.

looking at those PCs tells me quite quickly thier builds are not that strong. The Druid will be the powerhouse in all liklyhood. This party needs meat sheilds in Fullplate. This crew looks like it will shape up to be the Mucho Morte Multiclassed Mithral Misfits.

 

[Pinotage]

One of the more useful tricks against something that's Large and invisible is to hit it with something like Alchemist's Fire. Burns for 2 rounds and gives everybody a clue as to where the creature is. If you can't use glitterdust of Faerie Fire, Alchemist's Fire works just as well.

Pinotage

 

[ElectricDragon]

The party seemed to hit it easily. Where is the 50% miss chance for their attacks?

Listen checks should have alerted the others to combat earlier (DC 3: 0 for invisible creature in combat +3 for 30 ft. distance). Free action to yell for help.

Spot checks to notice moving invisible creature are DC20 but Spot to pinpoint location is +20 to the DC. If the invisible creature hit you that round then you know the location but still have not pinpointed it. Still requires the 50% miss chance, pinpoint or not. Pinpoint only allows knowing the right square(s) to attack.

Scent allows auto detect within 30 ft. (move action to determine direction) and auto pinpoint within 5 ft. Still gets 50% miss chance.

Invisible Stalker is from Summon Monster VII or a 13th-14th level caster. The party should not survive an attack from such a lop-sided BBEG. He could have added two Large Air Elementals, three to four Medium Air Elementals, etc. and wiped the whole party off the face of the planet; if that was his goal. Either he didn't want to kill them and hoped to teach them a lesson or the IS represented a one-shot magic item (scroll and Use Magical Device) that he couldn't easily duplicate. Don't play your bad guys as dumb when they obviously are not. Maybe the party is not that much of a bother yet and just needed to be shown the error of their ways. A letter to the party awaiting them at the next town warning of further pain unless they change their ways, would help the point the BBEG made on the rock sink in and allow him to turn his attention to more important matters for a while...as well as give the party a clue that they have a big bad stalking them.

Ciao
Dave

 

[Infiniti2000]

How's this a reduction? An Invisible Stalker has an AC of 17, so someone attacking it and taking the -2 to hit is going against AC 19.

What -2 to hit for being invisible?

To the OP, how in the world is an increase in AC by 5 points a reduction?!

And a CR 7 creature ...

You can stop right there, shilsen. Snowy, the first thing you need to understand is what a CR 7 creature means to a 4th-level party, particularly a subpar 4th-level party. Multiclassed spellcasters will leave your group very weak to specific attacks, case in point.

Not only should you have had a TPK, you should have expected one.

Please tell us how you decided to put up an invisible stalker against the party. What, pray tell, brought it to the material plane and how? I'm sure that's where your fundamental problem lies.

 

[Snowy]

well I obviously *its always obvious after reading the right way* made some goofs, I had a +8 to armor class stuck in my head for beig invisible and not the 50% miss chance, it felt wrong when I was running it, drat, goes to show that one should always look things up rather than assuming you remember them right.

I'm rather embaressed about that mistake.

As for hearing the fight, the others were aware of it soon after it started but couldn't work out what was going on as they were failing spot checks.
The two on top of the rocks didn't shout to the others, I reminded them that they could shout or talk as a free action, they decided that they were too rushed and flustered, or were too rushed or flustered in real like maybe.

The scent did "spot" the IS, I made sure the description he got made it evident that something had just passed close to them and that it had come back and attacked.


I had used the IS as a "freestanding" monster not as a summons by a high level caster, the pool they had camped by had been poisoned by the BBEG and the stalker had been summoned through a custom magical item and bargained with to stake out the pond and report any interlopers, which it did and then once a dwarf had come to check who they were, to attack them.

The party have now tracked the dwarfs footsteps to the stronghold and are busting into the place, I expected a subtle approach, so of course full frontal so they slam the gate and then in through a side door using an axe!

I intend the IS summoning portal to be at the top of the fortress, with suitable moral issue with regards to using it, needs a soul sacrificed to power it (I stipulated a good or neutral party).

Damn some of that sounds defensive, i'm obviously more worried I messed up than I thought.

My next evil plan is below:
here's the evil bit the artifiact the destroyed in the lake has poisoned the water so theres a few days worth of magically tainted water filtering downstream, its carrying a plague of madness (as per derro who are the real bad guys of my campaign , at first anyway) the dwarves are their minions or dupes some are fully evil some are just misled. SO while the party kill off the dwarves and their cultist leaders which is a good idea chunks of the forest are being warped by the evil taint, they stopped the artifact in time to stop the taint reaching their village, I set a time period and counted the days of travel, they didn't waste anytime so arrived easily in time to prevent it. They were so fast that only half of the savage lizardmen that live in the swamp upriver got affected, so thats a relief!!

 

[Snowy]

Am I wrong using the estimation that a party of 5 4th level characters is approximately the same effectivness as a party of 4 5th level characters.

someone on enworld proposed a power level method of estimating encounters level time number or characters then divide by 4.

Higher level spells distort it but then do number of actions a round.

I was roughly, very roughly, thinking about effective party level 5 and attempting to drop the CR to 6 hence the loss of reach and reduced slam damage and what I thought was lowering the AC

Anyone got a better method of estimation?

edited section below:

Hopefully I explained how I got the IS to the material plane in my previous post.
The party is not desperately weak I don't think, obviously they're not all dwarven clerics, but they're not that bad. They do lack a full caster, the druid is a recent addition.

As I think of it I have

An archer

2 fighters that can heal and have some skills

a druid

a bard

I have limited the party to elves and to little metal available - I have allowed darkwood and dark leaf from arms and equipment. The party is probably a little under equiped right now but not by far.