Is this encounter too tough???

[Maitre Du Donjon]

The party is 2 CR 11 (wizard, cleric), 1 CR 10 (half red dragon rogue/fighter), 2 CR 8 (wizard, fighter/rogue), 3 CR 7 (fighter/wizard, ranger/cleric, ranger/sorcerer), 2 CR 5 (ogre barb 1, orc barb 5.

10 characters? damn that's a lot. How many players you got?

Maitre D

 

[Someone]

Re: Re: Is this encounter too tough???

My personal method is to use the double-for-2-more-EL rule, convert everything to an equivalent number of CR 1 monsters, add those up, and convert back to an EL value. It's not explicitly given in the rulebooks, but matches the mathematics.

There´s another way just as easy (if nobody mentioned it ealier): Calculate the XP all the enemies would give, and look for the CR that would award those XP. That´s the EL.

 

[mmu1]

As someone who's run CotSQ, I'm also kind of confused as to why exactly all those enemies are facing the party at the same time... Even without assuming (as the module seems to) that most of these enemies will be separate encounters, the DM would really have had to go out of his way to kill the party to force a confrontation quite this deadly...

There's also the fact that your party isn't nearly powerful enough for the module as written, never mind this particular meatgrinder. If you want this to be remotely surviveable, you need to reduce the number of enemy spellcasters, otherwise it doesn't really matter what you'll do, it'll be a complete slaughter.

 

[yennico]

What is the total EL of this encounter with all these monsters of varying CRs?

# CR
1 CR 14
1 CR 13
2 CR 11
1 CR 9
2 CR 8
8 CR 6

For the group you described later this encouter is too tough.
Look, you have 4 NPCs/creatures (CR 14,13, 2x11) with at least CR as high as your highest PC CR.
Calculate the CR of your party PCs and you see which CR they can handle.

Drow CR: You have Drow Fighter level 5.
IIRC the increase to the CR of being drow is +2 and not +1.
So you will have several CR 7 instead of CR 6.

Just my 2 cents
yennico

 

[Iron_Chef]

You're right! The CoTSQ screwed up the CR of every drow in CoTSQ!

 

[sithramir]

Re: Re: Is this encounter too tough???

For the group you described later this encouter is too tough.
Look, you have 4 NPCs/creatures (CR 14,13, 2x11) with at least CR as high as your highest PC CR.
Calculate the CR of your party PCs and you see which CR they can handle.

Drow CR: You have Drow Fighter level 5.
IIRC the increase to the CR of being drow is +2 and not +1.
So you will have several CR 7 instead of CR 6.

Just my 2 cents
yennico

CR of a drow is only 1 above its level. Don't confuse CR with ECL.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

Don't forget that you can chop off levels as well as numbers, and the party will never know, (well, the other DM might, but it sounds like it shouldn't have come to this). Hacking off two levels from each of those spell casters will get rid of a lot of spells and their biggest guns.