Taking advantage of darkvision

[akbearfoot]

*casts ropetrick and hides until morning.

Any particular reason why you specifically want to hose the party? It's pretty much a TPK if you want it to be.

Unless they have specific countermeasures they've prepared for which may or may not be possible by 5th level, they are pretty much going to get their butts handed to them. At such a low level, they aren't likely to realize their only option is to retreat until it is far too late. Even 2 or 3 2nd level drow rangers could easily kill an entire group of 5th lvl adventurers using this tactic.


PCs should always buy everburning torches from divine crafters Continual flame is a 3rd level divine spell....making it overwrite darkness and not be counterable by it.

This is also why PCs should always have a scrolls of obscuring mist, fog cloud, wind wall and daylight handy.


Beating the party up is cool in my book...but not beating them up by abusing a specific PC weakness that they dont really have control over...ie lack of 120 ft darkvision.

I've actually experienced this before...A rapid river crossing that can only be waded across slowly and that leads to an underground waterfall, in an anti-magic field, guarded from the other side by drow archers using drow sleeping poison (old 2e game). We were like 8 levels higher than the few drow, but we still had to run away and disregarded any notion of ever EVER going back. We were practically begging for the DM to throw some more levlel draining undead at us after that...anyone who knows 2e knows how sad that is, lol.

 

[Rechan]

What's the range on counterspell? I have no idea. If it's the spell's range this tactic isn't practical since light's range is touch.

Hmm. The only thing that counterspell says is "If the target is within range", but does not specify what range that is.

Might have to ask the Rules forum.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

There was a web enhancement article on the WotC site for The Book of Challenges and it dealt with this topic. It was called, Staying Out of the Dark.

Edit: Oops! The article dealt with staying out of the dark, rather than getting into the dark. My bad.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Any particular reason why you specifically want to hose the party? It's pretty much a TPK if you want it to be.

Unless they have specific countermeasures they've prepared for which may or may not be possible by 5th level, they are pretty much going to get their butts handed to them. At such a low level, they aren't likely to realize their only option is to retreat until it is far too late. Even 2 or 3 2nd level drow rangers could easily kill an entire group of 5th lvl adventurers using this tactic.

well, they've already faced off with some drow and some orcs in the area, so they know these types of bad guys exist and should be prepared for them. I'm not going for a TPK or anything - I just want to make sure I'm making the best use of the bad guys' tactics and abilities. I've done a good job at coming up with tough, but winnable, challenges for the party through levels 1-3. However, I don't want to short-change my bad guys and also have the players wondering why didn't I do *this* or *that* when facing the orcs and/or drow. If I don't run my bad guys to their fullest abilities, it will cheapen the experience for the group, too. ("those orcs were scouring the forest looking for us, but why didn't they ever attack at night?")

 

[NewJeffCT]

If thick enough they are pretty dark in full daylight as well. If it is a cloudy day it can be almost totally dark under a tree canopy. Certainly enough that normal daylight vision could be reduced to 45 feet or even less due to reduced natural light.

The forest is thick in places, but it's not that thick... the elves that used to live there moved on to friendlier environs about a century ago. So, the forest has become more a bit more sparse over that time...