Slightly over halfway through Savage Tide (some spoilers)

[MerricB]

Our Savage Tide campaign got underway again last Friday. It currently has the PCs exploring the City of Broken Idols on the Isle of Dread. We had two new players (Nate & Adam) replacing our departed-and-sorely -missed friend Rob, and our "I've got a job"-friend Craig. Bradford missed the session due to unspecified reasons, as is unfortunately becoming usual.

Without Bradford, it's a lot trickier doing roleplaying, especially when the PCs are in the middle of a dungeon crawl. Also, every PC has low charisma, so what do you expect? The PCs needed to cross a lake, so Martin's wizard Corbin cast mass fly on them. As they were approaching the broken city, a watery demon appeared before them and dispelled their fly spell (except on Adam's Whisper Gnome - yes, for his final 3.5e character he chose to play a Whisper Gnome psion), and then used blasphemy as they scrambled to react. That killed their Strength scores, especially Adam's, and so Adam spent the rest of the combat just hanging there. Martin used his boots of levitation to stay out of the water, Rich had a cloak of the manta ray, but Peggy and Nate gave good impressions of what rocks do in water.

Honestly, this encounter really showed up a bunch of things I don't like about 3.5e. Apart from the fact that blasphemy is something you just can't protect against, and knocks PCs out of combat for several rounds, you also have the reliance on the cleric. Rich is our least experienced player (which is probably why he got stuck with the cleric), and he's not really used to casting spells like restoration and dispel magic in the middle of combat.

Martin managed to do most of the damage to the demon with his fire spells, and eventually destroyed it. Once on the island, they got into a bunch of big combats with Skinwalkers, which have to be one of the coolest enemies I've yet seen, conceptually, that is. Unfortunately, they also have that problem with massive stat blocks and lots of attacks (the blasted things are only CR 6). Sword, sword, claw, claw, bite, most with poison as well. I mean, huh?

Adam showed that he was as good at playing "Giles" as I was. He made the mistake of being the first into the room and having a poor Fort save. Several failed saves later, down to a 0 Str and paralysed again. Two out of two combats where he was out of action. See note above about 3e's need of cleric. (My Star Wars SAGA character keeps getting knocked unconscious. As I've based him on Miles Vorkosigan, the question for each session is "Miles or Giles?" )

The other PCs had fun, although it was a long combat. Just as they thought it was all over, in came the skinwalker chief and two acolytes. At least Adam was unparalysed by then. Martin disintegrated the balcony they were on, which was rather amusing, but then found himself on the wrong end of various attacks. Martin had his first death of the campaign. Hmm.

The complexity of all these statblocks is really making me wish 4e was here; and the complexity of Rich's character (he's a crusader/cleric) is probably doing the same for him. The PCs in the game are cool, but there's a lot of stuff to keep track of.

Cheers!

 

[jmucchiello]

You should probably include a spoiler warning in there somewhere. (Or have it moved to story hours.)

 

[BiggusGeekus]

You should probably include a spoiler warning in there somewhere. (Or have it moved to story hours.)

Well, it does say he's halfway through in the thread title.


@Merric

We'll see. Remember at this point in 3e's development we only had previews of one or two prestige classes and not many examples of mid-to-high level multiclassing. But I'm guardedly optimistic.

 

[Gundark]

interesting read. It was an AP that got me to hate 3.5 (age of worms).

 

[Gundark]

We'll see. Remember at this point in 3e's development we only had previews of one or two prestige classes and not many examples of mid-to-high level multiclassing. But I'm guardedly optimistic.

True...crossing fingers

 

[MerricB]

interesting read. It was an AP that got me to hate 3.5 (age of worms).

It was Paizo's love of "immune to sneak attack" monsters that really got me wondering about the Age of Worms. It's really the adventure you don't take a rogue on.

Blasphemy "at will" is the winner for stupidest power ever - a complete failure in development. Heck, Blasphemy itself is stupid. It worked in 1e when no-one could cast it. Once you reach 3e? Get rid of it.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

We'll see. Remember at this point in 3e's development we only had previews of one or two prestige classes and not many examples of mid-to-high level multiclassing. But I'm guardedly optimistic.

My problems with 3e stem more from the plethora of effects that take out the PCs from the game, and with the resulting need for a bunch of spells to counter them.

There's a lovely bit in Dragon (by Steven Brust) which has Sethra explaining to Vlad how magic works in combat: it doesn't, because all the spells get countered by the opposing side. Well, mostly.

Unfortunately, that's how 3e high-level combat needs to work or it starts running into problems. Spells that take out PCs and don't have counters? Urgh. No Cleric in the party? Boy, you are in for a world of hurt.

And multiclassing spellcasters in 3e? Big mistake. Because you're 2+ levels behind in gaining spells, and that causes more problems. Especially in an AP where you're running into problems anyway because you have 6 PCs instead of 4 and they aren't quite the right level...

cheers!

 

[Wik]

Skinwalkers are pretty cool, but they are responsible for two of the PC deaths in my group.

Around the time, the PCs were 10th level or so, and I pulled the skinwalkers from a later adventure in a sidequest I had written. One of hte PCs, a phanaton warmage with the boots of levitation, made it a point to levitate up, and then glide in circles around enemies while blasting them with rays.

We ran the fight, and the PCs were doing well (it was five PCs against five CR 6 foes, and a CR 8 Demon or something). The demon went down fast, and things were looking good for the players.

Until two skinwalkers started using poisoned bows against the war mage. They hit for 20 points of damage or so, but the poison dropped the warmage's con by 3 points, which meant he lost another 20 HP. Which knocked him to just below zero.

He had his levitation effect turned off, so he could glide. But, now that he was unconscious, he fell. Forty feet.

Dead phanaton.

After that, the skinwalkers were able to take out the group's cleric through a swarming tactic, and the fact that the cleric had foolishly (and in character) tried to protect the phanaton's body (the skinwalkers were going to steal it). Three hits, all with poison, knocked the cleric's con to 6 or so. And, once poisoned, it's harder to resist further poisons...

Dead cleric.

That was a fun fight.

 

[Wik]

And yeah, Blasphemy sucks. I was running hte 4th part of the AP, and the PCs went out into the jungle. I rolled on the random encounter table, as suggested, and rolled a Hezrou. I had never used the monster before, and knew nothing about blasphemy. When I ran the encounter, the demon used the spell as suggested, and next thing I know, every PC in the group is knocked out of the fight, no save.

WE looked at each other, and I Just said "Yeah, that's bad design. Scratch that. You're fighting a colossal spider instead". Blasphemy is a stupid spell, and whoever put the hezrou on the random encounters list wasn't thinking. There's no way PCs of that level would be able to handle the encounter, barring the "sneak up on it and hope you get lucky" or "Run away as fast as you can, even though you're in a jungle and it can move faster than you" techniques.

***

WE ran STAP up until halfway, when we all just got tired of it. The huge statblocks annoyed me, and the players were getting sick of the fact that there was no real sense of progress. I mean, the PCs felt like they were on a series of loosely connected adventures, as opposed to any real grand quest. Plus, most of them were hoping their PCs would get killed, so they could create a new character from some splatbook they had just read. Two of the most important PCs (Erias, a Dwarven Dragon Shaman/Fighter, and Roth, a Goliath Fighter) retired, to be replaced by more ineffective but fun characters (A human wild mage sorcerer, and the already-mentioned Phanaton War Mage).

By the time we quit, at 11th level or so, only one character, a Catfolk Rogue, had played in every adventure. And she really got the shaft - that AP sucks for rogues. I mean, I had to keep putting traps in the adventures, and she rarely had a chance to get a sneak attack in, due to the tight nature of many of the dungeons.

 

[JoeGKushner]

We've in the latter poritons of the game.

Worst effect spell for us? Feeblemind.

My first character, Malred, went super healer path. Once he was feebleminded in one adventure he became the little cleric who got in the way of the fireballs our sorcerer was throwing down.

My second character, Dorgan, is a dwarf cleric of Clangadin. Much more combat oriented and now the sorcerer has been feebleminded twice.

In terms of high level play, there do tend to be a lot of things to keep track of. I don't see that changing for the players at all. Previews make it seem like they'll have just as many if not more options in 4e.

But when one of the players starts cursing up a storm because he missed several saves against poison and has died due to zero con and I point out that my war priest does the heroe's feast every day and we're still under the effect of it, he calms down a little.