Sword Wraiths - totally bent? P2 SPOILER

[Gazzor]

Hi all,

We've got a pretty geared up group that fancies itself in a fight. We're all lvl 17, having played through H1 to P1 and a Dungeon adventure. We're now part of the way through P2.

We've got:
1) Ranger/ Pit Fighter. Best damage so far is Armour Splinter and Blade Cascade on a big boss for 312 damage, dropping her in 1 round (She had 304 HP).
2) Fighter/ Pit Fighter. Greatest moment was causing 104 damage with one at will attack.
3) Wizard/ Blood Mage. Gets good mileage from stabbing himself and Blood Pulsing.
4) Rogue/ Dagger Master. He crits on 18-20 for approx 60 damage.
5) Cleric/ Divine Oracle. Keeps the party going. Best trick is Turn Undead whilst rolling twice for every attack.

Most fights have been pretty easy to now, since we hit level 16, with some encounters being ended in 3 rounds, with only 1 surge needed to be spent by the party.

That said, we had a hard fight entering the city as the animated gates had 2 characters on lockdown (Was hitting them on 2+ and 3+ and immobilising them and attacking them each turn). The Auto dazing Naga was annoing as well. Suffice to say that we triumphed.

Then we had a really really hard fight. As we were in Orcus' city we were cursed. Things like 5 ongoing damage every round or -2 damage/ -2 to all defences. This carried on until each encounter ended.

We smashed into a guard house. In it were 2 Bodaks. The Ranger, being a bit mental decided to charge in. He was dazed by some fleshy curtains (Ooh er missus) and was right next to the Bodaks, one of whom had weakened him with an OA attack (Which the Ranger had drawn out for some mental reason).

Bodaks have an enounter attack that on a hit brings down a weakened creature to 0 HPs straight away. The Ranger was in a bit of trouble. Luckily the Fighter, Cleric and Wizard managed to severely damage the Bodaks and push them away and immobilise them both. One Bodak was then killed.
Next turn a Sword Wraith floated in and hit the Fighter (AC33 doesn't help vs +20 vs REF 21) which also weakened him. The surviving Bodak then unleashed its readied death gaze and dropped the Fighter from 110 to 0HP. Oh dear.

Luckily the Cleric was next and the Fighter was brought back to action.

It then turns out that were 2 sword wraiths. The fight then got very ugly indeed as the Sword Wraiths were weakening on every hit (Save to end) whilst being insubstantial (Half damage) so they were taking 1/4 damage from some PCs.

Worse yet was that the sword wraiths had regen 10. So they could just phase through a wall away from the PCs, wait a while and then come back fully healed. Unless the party could alpha strike a wraith and kill it in one turn, it could always get away.

I suggestd that we run to open ground and fight them after we'd had a short rest (To get back Come and Get It!, Turn Undead and other mmobilisation/moving powers).

The Ranger decided against this, saying that the DM wouldn't kill us off as the campaign would end and that we should stay and fight, despite doing no damage most rounds and taking OG5 each turn. (As I mentioned, the Ranger's a bit mental).

If we stayed in one place, the wraiths could easily get away. If we spread out the wraiths could just gang up on the isolated PCs.

Eventually the DM took pity on us (Not wanting us all to die thanks to the Ranger's mentalness) and had the wraiths engage us "properly".

My contention is that if the DM had been super tactical with them, and we didn't have an open area we could run to, they were effectively unbeatable in an enclosed structure with multiple rooms (And also a roof they could presumably float up and through).

In 3rd ed wraiths were not too much of an issue as they had no regen. They could do all their hit and run stuff, but eventually the party would get them.

Allying the wrath's mobility with regen just makes them horrendously broken IMO. Is an open air battlefield really the only place to engage wraiths? (And even they they can just float away really fast, up into the air presumably, and regen there - right? Or do they have to hug the ground?).

Or do you think I am missing some really obvious tricks we could have used to win "properly"?

Any feedback gratefully received.


Cheers,

Gazzor

 

[Wik]

Well... if you try to surround a wraith, when it escapes, everyone gets an OA. But, I agree - the GM should have killed you all.

 

[Gazzor]

Cheers for the reply.

I managed to miss the wraith thread lower down the page. My search fu was weak. Suffice to say that there appears to have been no answer to anything that we could have done better in the fight.


Cheers,

Gazzor

 

[Kalbutt]

One important fact about fighting Wraiths is that their regen don't work the next turn they are hit by any radiant damage. And they have vulnerable 10 radiant (I don't remember if the vulnerable is halved or not). If you have a way to consistently dish out radiant damage and status effect (dazed/stunned) you are good to go.
As a DM I wouldn't make my Wraiths fly upward (even if per RAW they would be allowed), that might be too unfair for the players. But through walls, no problem : up to the PCs to limit the wraith's mobility.

 

[hyphz]

I'm the DM from the campaign in question.

Per RAW, Wraiths can fly upwards, but they can't shift upwards, in fact nothing can shift upwards: if you want to move vertically you have to take a Fly action which is per se not a Shift and does provoke OAs. As such if a Wraith is surrounded, it's actually a better idea for the Wraith to Shift into the square of one of the enemies and then Move out - at least it only gets half as many OAs in that case.

Also as I mentioned in the fight, per RAW a Wraith can't just sink into the ground and take as long as it needs to heal up because, even with Phasing, it has to end its movement in an empty square.

What I think that fight does show is that the raw XP addition system 4E uses is kind of unreasonable because no account is made for the huge synergy between the Wraiths' ability to weaken on a hit and the Bodak gazes. Having a Bodak ready Death Gaze was, I confess, something I hadn't thought of before - you can blame that on your coordinated rat attacks gazzor

I would like to know if there's an official ruling on whether the Vulnerable damage is halved, as if it isn't, Wraiths will be running into walls in terror from the Cleric

 

[Bolongo]

I would like to know if there's an official ruling on whether the Vulnerable damage is halved, as if it isn't, Wraiths will be running into walls in terror from the Cleric

From Q&A on the D&D homepage:

Q: What happens when damage is dealt to a creature with both insubstantial and vulnerability? For example, let’s say I deal 1 radiant damage to a specter (who has vulnerability 5 radiant). What happens?
A: You apply the vulnerability first, bringing the total up to 6 damage, then apply the insubstantial, cutting it by half for a final total of 3 damage. You would do the same with resistance, so a specter taking 12 necrotic damage first reduces it to 2, which then gets cut in half to 1 because it’s insubstantial.

 

[Caliban]

Some basic tactics for dealing with insubstantials, not sure if it will help you currently:

1) the Inescapable Force feat for anyone with a force attack (wizards, melee characters with a force weapon from Adventurers' Vault). It allows you to do full damage+1d10 to insubstantial creatures.

2) Consecrated Ground (cleric 5 daily) - creates a zone that heals any bloodied ally, and does radiant damage to any enemy that starts within it. Works really well if you do a Beacon of Hope first, or any of several items that enhance healing, increast the size of a burst, or increase radiant damage. If it comes down to it, you can huddle in the zone of healing and have readied actions to blast the first wraith you can see. There may be a higher level version of the zone, but I haven't played beyond lvl 8 yet.

If you have somone who can immobilize on your side, the cleric can move the zone on top of the wraith after it's been immobilized, giving you a round or two to beat it down while it's regen is shut off.

 

[Skallgrim]

What I think that fight does show is that the raw XP addition system 4E uses is kind of unreasonable because no account is made for the huge synergy between the Wraiths' ability to weaken on a hit and the Bodak gazes. Having a Bodak ready Death Gaze was, I confess, something I hadn't thought of before - you can blame that on your coordinated rat attacks gazzor

While it is true that the raw XP addition system 4e uses is very simple, these synergies will exist regardless, as well as other xp discrepancies. Even leaving aside synergies between monster powers, terrain placement, clever tactics, and variable PC capabilities will all make encounters more or less challenging for every PC group.

Heck, I'm running H2 now (we got into 4th slowly, what can I say?) and having a tielfling wizard focused on Fire seemed pretty cool tlll we ran up against the duergar. Thankfully, he knew that being a one trick pony was risky, so he "focused" on a secondary damage type too: Illusions. Guess what Duergar are immune to?

There's no way for the game designers to know what your party composition is, or what magic items they have, or how clever they are with tactics, or even how well or poorly they roll. All of those things have a strong bearing on how challenging the encounter is. As a gross measure of xp, I think the system works fine, and, of course, if an "easy" encounter is going poorly, you can always "ease up" on the PCs, or if a hard one is being handled easily, you can always add some complications (or reinforcements) to make the big xp reward well-deserved.

 

[hyphz]

There's no way for the game designers to know what your party composition is, or what magic items they have, or how clever they are with tactics, or even how well or poorly they roll. All of those things have a strong bearing on how challenging the encounter is.

True, but they can include "if" statements in the adventure, or abstracts.