Obryn
Hero
Well, damn. We only made it through two encounters tonight - kind of a short session, and battles took extra-long due to everyone running 2 PCs for the night - but the one I thought would be rough wasn't, and the one I thought would be a pushover almost killed several PCs, and bloodied every single one. In some cases, several times.
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The Roper encounter was pie. I think that was mostly due to excellent rolling on the party's part, and awful rolling on mine. The Rogue critted with a sneak attack, and rolled well on her vicious weapon, doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 damage. And the Roper couldn't roll above a 10 to save his life. Literally. So I bloodied one PC, and then he was done. The Swordmage's mark really sucked the fight out of him, too.
On the other hand, the hags+skeleton fight... Wow. Now, I modified this - the hags looked ridiculously easy and dull to me, so I swapped them out with a foe of equivalent XP - a single Elite Lamia. Nevertheless, I figured the trolls wouldn't be a threat, and the lamia would be dealt with.
Wow, was I wrong. First off, the party's companion character - an upgraded Splug who's been a fun recurring NPC in the campaign - ran down to go check out her mushrooms. Everyone else followed. Result: Party surrounded.
Second, the Lamia is a really nasty opponent. Her swarminess meant that only our Invoker was doing anything against her, basically. (And, ironically, the trolls' explosions took her down a few pegs!) Nobody wanted to land next to her, and her minor-sustained swarm took a ton of HPs off the swordmage and made him run away and hide. And a recharge close burst 5 stun (save ends)? Whoa. She slowed them down a bit for the skeletons to beat on. I only used that twice, though - being stunned sucks. It sucked slightly less since every player was running 2 characters, but still.
Third, the skeletons I thought would do nothing at all (given the warren trolls' abysmal performance) were actually insanely powerful. I hadn't realized how much damage they could do. And their dice were on fire this fight - tons of 15+ rolls, and a few crits on top. These things hit hard, and when the Lamia was occupying the party's attention, these guys were performing a major beatdown. I hadn't looked closely, but their damage is 2d8+16 (or 2d8+32 on a crit). Huge. They knocked the swordmage and the rogue out, and almost took the avenger and the artificer with them. (The deva invoker was okay against them - resist 11 necrotic helped.) What's more, with 5 of them, that's 10 free explosions for yet more necrotic damage. And everyone actually used their second winds.
I had no idea this was the fight that would almost send the party running. But yeah, it was a nice way to soften them up and burn some of their action points and dailies before their fight with Skalmad... who I upgraded, giving him some Warden powers.
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-O
[sblock]
The Roper encounter was pie. I think that was mostly due to excellent rolling on the party's part, and awful rolling on mine. The Rogue critted with a sneak attack, and rolled well on her vicious weapon, doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 damage. And the Roper couldn't roll above a 10 to save his life. Literally. So I bloodied one PC, and then he was done. The Swordmage's mark really sucked the fight out of him, too.
On the other hand, the hags+skeleton fight... Wow. Now, I modified this - the hags looked ridiculously easy and dull to me, so I swapped them out with a foe of equivalent XP - a single Elite Lamia. Nevertheless, I figured the trolls wouldn't be a threat, and the lamia would be dealt with.
Wow, was I wrong. First off, the party's companion character - an upgraded Splug who's been a fun recurring NPC in the campaign - ran down to go check out her mushrooms. Everyone else followed. Result: Party surrounded.
Second, the Lamia is a really nasty opponent. Her swarminess meant that only our Invoker was doing anything against her, basically. (And, ironically, the trolls' explosions took her down a few pegs!) Nobody wanted to land next to her, and her minor-sustained swarm took a ton of HPs off the swordmage and made him run away and hide. And a recharge close burst 5 stun (save ends)? Whoa. She slowed them down a bit for the skeletons to beat on. I only used that twice, though - being stunned sucks. It sucked slightly less since every player was running 2 characters, but still.
Third, the skeletons I thought would do nothing at all (given the warren trolls' abysmal performance) were actually insanely powerful. I hadn't realized how much damage they could do. And their dice were on fire this fight - tons of 15+ rolls, and a few crits on top. These things hit hard, and when the Lamia was occupying the party's attention, these guys were performing a major beatdown. I hadn't looked closely, but their damage is 2d8+16 (or 2d8+32 on a crit). Huge. They knocked the swordmage and the rogue out, and almost took the avenger and the artificer with them. (The deva invoker was okay against them - resist 11 necrotic helped.) What's more, with 5 of them, that's 10 free explosions for yet more necrotic damage. And everyone actually used their second winds.
I had no idea this was the fight that would almost send the party running. But yeah, it was a nice way to soften them up and burn some of their action points and dailies before their fight with Skalmad... who I upgraded, giving him some Warden powers.
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-O
