Shackled City questions - some possible spoilers

[farscapesg1]

From many threads on here it has been shown that the Shackled City adventure path is fairly difficult but honestly I'm finding playing it to be practically impossible. I realize that the adventure series is designed for groups that do a little thinking and strategy, but is this the pivot point for survival or death in the adventures? Is there any hope for a group that is not built built for stealth and diplomacy?

Our group currently consists of the following 5th level characters;
Human Conjurer (my character) - focuses on conjuring creatures to aid the party by flanking, grappling, or providing extra muscle.

Elf Wizard - doesn't seem to have a focus. Provides some offensive magic, illusion, and a little summoning.

Human Favored Soul - dedicated to a god of truth that has a longbow as a favored weapon and has several healing-based feats. Basically the party archer/healer.

Dwarf Cleric - worships Moradin and used the racial substitution to trade turning undead for bonuses against giants (DM NPC). Also has Earth Sense from Races of Stone so he serves as a quick check before entering doors.

Human Monk - acts as the party's first casualty Pretty much guarenteed to be first to be taken down, usually by the first critical of the game session.

Elf Ranger - Two-weapon fighting focused with just Shortswords :\ Socially inept and tends to run off by himself, getting the rest of the group in danger by alerting the enemy of our presence.

Stonechild Fighter - the power hitter of the group, but suffers from taking multiple racial levels over class levels. When he hits, he hits but he's not good for anything else.

Over the course of the campaign we have lost and added some characters, but not one of them was a rogue

The first part of the adventure path was very tedious without a rogue. Between the traps and the secret doors it was very slow going. Once we made it into fortress the rest of the party brought down most of the forces upon our heads and with the destruction of the elevator made it impossible to retreat to safety for rest. We managed to survive, but I felt that the group just couldn't seem to get things together. We rarely set ourselves up for flanking or any other beneficial situations and any attempts at stealth are quickly shot down.

After that, I thought that the players would work on better teamwork, but no. We started the second adventure from Dungeon and made it to the Inn. We managed to detect some enemies inside and entered from the side of the building. However, once again we ended up bringing down the whole slew of enemies on our heads instead of getting to try to take them out a couple at a time. Then the party ranger wanders off into the woods by himself to search for the bodies of the inn inhabitants, only to be chased down and bring the two raptors directly to the rest of the party.

At this point, the DM picked up the hard back and decided to run Drakthar's Way. How can this adventure be designed for 3-4th level characters Drakthar's damage reduction meant that the monk and the ranger couldn't scratch him, the dwarf had to enhance his Strength and damage with magic to have any effect. Our Stonechild was the only warrior that could do any damage and even that was pretty limited. Our ranger once again wandered off by himself to be captured. We fought off Drakthar, but after the goblins and Drakthar our casters were low on magic, the ranger was lost, and the stonechild and monk were hurting so we made a retreat to the dwarven temple to rest. A couple hours into rest and Drakthar turned into a wolf and proceeded to howl through the night, which the DM ruled requires Concentration checks of DC 20 to get enough rest to prepare spells. Even with +8 or +9 to their checks, none of the casters made it :\

The group decided they couldn't leave the Ranger, so with the healing of some magical items we made an attempt to find him, being attacked by Drakthar again. Again we forced him to flee, took out his two followers, and found our captured comrade. However, again the rest of the group insisted on trying to rest instead of pressing on against Drakthar, so we planned on leaving and resting above ground, but a gate had been dropped over the entrance to the dungeon. Instead of trying to break it down to leave, the group decided to try to rest again in the temple, with the same result as before. Now with even less magic we decided we had no choice but to try to defeat Drakthar before we could leave. In the end we defeated him (however I feel that the DM pulled a lot of punches) but in 24 hours we will have to make Fort checks to avoid loosing 6-8 levels (3 just for my character alone ).

Now with all that out of the way Another severe issue IMHO is the power level of the characters. While we can use anything released by WOTC, we are 5th level without a single magical weapon. Our magic items consist of Pearls of Power, a haversack, a bag of holding, and several scrolls and potions. The DM requires training, which severely depleats our resources (200 gp per level above first; 200 for second, 400 for third, 600 for 4th, etc.). That means that our character wealth seems to be very low for a standard campaign, resulting in not having the means to effectively fight creatures with DR.

Is there any hope? Can anyone give me any tips/advice? I'm honestly getting to the point that I want a TPK so we can start something else and get the DM to force the players to create characters that can work together.

 

[BobROE]

I think your inability to retreat is really hurting you. Part of the advantage of the campaign is that your able to retreat back to an inn/temple/etc to heal up and rest, especially in the first two adventures.

 

[farscapesg1]

See, I've viewed that as a problem also. However, I'm not sure whether it is a rat-bastard DM thing on the DM's part, or is it a fairly common occurance in the modules. I guess my question is, does the modules have any information on the Fortress's inhabitants possibly setting fire to the elevator and is there information on the gate in Drakthar's way put in that adventure? If so, is my group just so incompetent that we get caught in these situations that most others easily avoid?

 

[MacMathan]

Well the higher level you get to and the less equipment you have the worse off your group will be unless the DM modifies the challenges. I would tend to believe that it was published with the standard wealth guidelines in mind.

First off I would have a serious talk, in character, with the ranger who is causing problems. He is endangering the rest of the characters lives, why would they continue to keep him on the team if he can't adjust to some reasonable degree of tactics?

Second, the lack of a trap finder in published modules can be a killer unless the DM takes it into account. Talk with your DM and see what he expected the party to do, sometimes a DM can think the solutions are obvious when the party has no clue.

The main thing is; are you all still having fun?

 

[JoeGKushner]

The characters sound like they're fun to play, but don't sound like an effective character group. There also seems to be some tactical blunders on your group as far as keeping your core strengths together.

The party I GM, perhaps because of action points, perhaps because of the variant death rule I use, almost walked through the first adventure. Now I'm not saying that they didn't take their lumps with the Vanishing disease, or the traps, or have a heck of a fight against the half-dwarf half troll, but they didn't seem to be experiencing the same issues.

 

[Eonthar]

However, I'm not sure whether it is a rat-bastard DM thing on the DM's part, or is it a fairly common occurance in the modules. I guess my question is, does the modules have any information on the Fortress's inhabitants possibly setting fire to the elevator and is there information on the gate in Drakthar's way put in that adventure? If so, is my group just so incompetent that we get caught in these situations that most others easily avoid?

I believe that your DM is trying to make things harder on the group than the module intends - although it seems that your group has some cohesion issues to deal with as well.

I do not see why the inhabitants of the Malachite Fortress would set fire to the elevator, doing so would mean that they would be unable to continue their blossoming slave trade until it is fixed. Unless your group did something unusual, I would not expect the inhabitants to destroy their main link to the surface, and their direct link to their kidnappers.

My group has not gotten to Drakthar's Way yet, but looking quickly I did not see any gate that would block exits. You are right that without the proper weapons, it must be very difficult to defeat Drakthar.

The difficulty level of some of the early adventures are set high because of the fact that the PCs are able to easily retreat to the city to rest.

However, with all that said and done, as long as everyone is enjoying themselves, then its all good. If you are not enjoying yourself, then maybe you should sit with the DM and discuss this.

Good luck

 

[billd91]

Now with all that out of the way Another severe issue IMHO is the power level of the characters. While we can use anything released by WOTC, we are 5th level without a single magical weapon. Our magic items consist of Pearls of Power, a haversack, a bag of holding, and several scrolls and potions. The DM requires training, which severely depleats our resources (200 gp per level above first; 200 for second, 400 for third, 600 for 4th, etc.). That means that our character wealth seems to be very low for a standard campaign, resulting in not having the means to effectively fight creatures with DR.

Get the DM to ditch the training requirement. It's not part of the structure of 3E and is just going to suck away the cash you need to keep up to expected power levels. Since you are 5th level, you've already had to toss away 2000 gp each. Guess what? That +300 gp and small change is a +1 weapon for each character.

 

[farscapesg1]

Get the DM to ditch the training requirement. It's not part of the structure of 3E and is just going to suck away the cash you need to keep up to expected power levels. Since you are 5th level, you've already had to toss away 2000 gp each. Guess what? That +300 gp and small change is a +1 weapon for each character.

Yeah, well no luck there We've tried in the past and he firmly believes in using training. It takes time (2 weeks) and money.

And those costs are just the tip of the bucket. If you want to take a new class (say, pick up a level of fighter after starting as a rogue) that's an automatic 1000 gp. Want to pick up a extra regional feat (we use the Greyhawk ones from Dragon), that's 1000 gp (on top of the price to train for that level). I have a strong feeling that picking up a level in a prestige class is going to be 1000 gp also :\ Trainging time for any of these is 1 month.

To try to alleviate this issue somewhat we split all the treasure as follows;
1/3 is automatically saved for training expenses for the party
Of the remainder, 1/2 is put into a party fund for lodging, one-use items like potions, etc.
The rest is divided between the party members.

At 5th level, I have 1000 gp to my name, a pearl of power (1st level), and a Heward's Handy Haversack (actually the parties, but I carry it while the other wizard carries the party's Bag of Holding). The cleric and other wizard also have a Pearl of Power each, and the dwarf has a suit of +1 Full Plate. We had a +1 longsword that the ranger sold and added some money to order two +1 shortswords He had taken it as his share instead of extra cash, so it was his decision.

 

[James Jacobs]

Shackled City is very much designed for the 3rd Edition rules as presented in the Core Books. Major deviations from these rules should require equally strong adjustments to the flow of the adventure itself. Namely... the design of the adventures assumes that the PCs have a certain amount of magical gear at certain levels. It expects PCs to have magic weapons by second (and certainly by third) level. By 5th level, they should have a character that can fly. By 9th level, you should be able to teleport or raise dead. And so on. It's not impossible to run the adventure for a low-magic campaign, but the DM will need to make adjustments to many of the encounters.

Additionally, adding training time & costs to the campaign will cause some severe problems down the road. Staying spoiler-free, there's a section near the end of the campaign where the party simply won't have time to train, and the challenges will continue to increase. If the PCs aren't allowed to automatically level up when they reach enough XP, they'll rapidly find themselves outclassed by the opposition. Again, this can be adjusted by the DM, who'll need to rework a significant portion of the last half of the campaign to allow more down time, but if he runs the adventure as written and enforces training times between levels, I don't see how any group of PCs will be able to survive to the end.

 

[farscapesg1]

Well, for the training he will allow the characters to "level up" immediately in the game if time presents a challenge for training. In these instances the characters have to make it up at the next available downtime. Of course, this doesn't alleviate the monetary issue.