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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rystil Arden" data-source="post: 3257165" data-attributes="member: 29014">I've heard that Shackled City is meant to be very very hard for a party of 4 ordinary PCs (having been designed for 6), but I think it varies based on a lot of factors, and not just how 'tweaked' the characters are.  If you had a 'tweaked' tag, you'd have to include a 'good tactics' tag too.For instance, our SCAP group of 5 has defeated the first three adventures without any deaths (we met with several close calls, but no deaths).  Notably, we cleared out the entire final dungeon of Flood Season without resting, including several fights where the GM combined many rooms into one because it didn't make sense not to (the spider halfling guy was fought together with every single spider, ettercap, etc--ouch!).  We didn't win because we were particularly twinked out.  Our group is kind of weird but *definitely* not optimised--it isn't the least optimised group I've ever seen, but it is kind of haphazard: We have a Cleric with 10 Strength who has Negotiator, Skill Focus (Diplomacy), etc, and lots of cross-class Perform.  His goal is to get into the Cusp of Sunrise inn and to become a renowned wine conoisseur (he beat Valanthru at the drinking contest by using an idea of mine to cheat).We have a Gnomish Illusionist who gets Evocation and Conjuration spells two levels late and so basically carries around lots of Colour Sprays (admittedly, his DC on Colour Spray is quite high) and Images of various sorts that we use in strange gambits (we pretended to summon Grazz't against the boss of Life's Bazaar and the beholder failed his Will save and made his pet mage teleport them both there to make sure it was a fake).We have a Ranger who really really wants to two-weapon-fight (has the feats and all), but due to being the only real meleer in the party, he is constantly forced to pretend he's a barbarian and two-hand his longsword for better Power Attack.We have a Mountebank who is basically just around to check for traps and turn into a Skulk so that we can tell the GM "That's what you get for making us fight so many Skulks".  Also, he sometimes makes the enemies flat-footed, but we don't really have anyone who can exploit that.Then there's me--I'm a halfling Archivist with 26 AC (yay for small size and Full Plate!) but 6 Strength.  I refuse to prep healing spells, but I generally load up on buffs and maybe an attack or two.  I like to wade into combat and trick the enemies into attacking me because I'm otherwise worthless.This is not a powerful group, but we have some solid tactics.  For each of the big high-CR fights in the final dungeon of Flood Season (except the Gnoll--we sort of underestimated him, but it went alright), I can describe the weird hijinks we used to eventually come out on top. [SBLOCK=Flood Season spoiler]The best may have been when Triel's awful door trap nearly got us killed, but our quick-thinking gnome put up an illusion that our guy got away and shut the door, so they opened the door and undid the trap for us <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" />  [/SBLOCK]So, I rambled a bit, but my point is that there is no single 'tweaked' factor that can decide this.  As another example, I heard the Worldwide D&D Gameday scenario was hard, but my group beat it with no casualties (and everyone shared the same awful awful characters for that one--Cha 10 Paladin, augh!!!).</blockquote>

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