Was I asking too much?

[Abraxas]

The Barghest according to my v.5 (which lists all the revised CRs) is at least CR 7 (and thats using the Silver Rule which GT doesn't use, otherwise the Barghest is CR 8).

Small Hijack - UK, is v.5 available for us waiting for the IH?

 

[Len]

Or an elf.

Yeah, or an elf. But I figured that was covered by "woman or bard".

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Quote: " Was I asking too much?"

Nope. CR, shmeear. If they can't handle it, they should learn to run.

 

[Runesong42]

Just a quick thought...

If you didn't want a total TPK, and the barghest should have tracked them down, one thing you COULD have done was maybe run a "Predator"-esque mini-adventure. Play up their paranoia as the beast slowly and efficently stalks them, toys with them, keeps them as busy as possible while the surviving gobins etc. make way for the evil artifact. Eventually you could have given the PC's somewhere relatively safe to camp out (preferrably in a camp with NPC's) and the barghest would have completed its mission.

After reading the barghest's description, it could have either paused to devour the corpse of the most recently fallen (PC or no) and then opted to stalk the rest.

From the d20srd.org website:
"Though they love killing, they have little stomach for direct combat and attack from ambush whenever possible."

Once the barghest had them on the run, he may have just been sick and depraved enough to follow them. For fun. I realize that this scenario would have been difficult to come up with on your feet, but might be an idea for next time...?

 

[S'mon]

Once the barghest had them on the run, he may have just been sick and depraved enough to follow them. For fun. I realize that this scenario would have been difficult to come up with on your feet, but might be an idea for next time...?

If the PCs have lost but not yet TPK's it is ALWAYS a very good idea to break the game at that point. Come back next time with a way to do a fun scary adventure where the PCs are in desperate straits but a TPK is not guaranteed.

 

[the Jester]

Hmm, I'll come down on the side of "very hard encounter, approached properly coulda been doable."

Your pcs didn't think their approach through. Yes, it was a very tough fight; but with the right approach to it, the pcs could have won.

 

[werk]

Hmm, I'll come down on the side of "very hard encounter, approached properly coulda been doable."

Your pcs didn't think their approach through. Yes, it was a very tough fight; but with the right approach to it, the pcs could have won.

Is that approach to seperate the undoable encounter in several, smaller, doable encouters? Just checking. If you break it up, it's not the same challenge at all.

My player party (if appropriate level) would have been TPK by this, but I figure one or two of them would have fled early on...but who knows.

Was this a random encounter?

 

[the Jester]

Is that approach to seperate the undoable encounter in several, smaller, doable encouters? Just checking. If you break it up, it's not the same challenge at all.

That's one of the approaches. Depending on the actual circumstances there may have been others. Either way, though, if I had been in that party I would've been reluctant to try a frontal assault.

Heck, if I was in that party, I'd be reluctant to try a frontal assault on anything.

 

[Templetroll]

Yes, I know. But they did fine for several adventures already...
.

Our group has had several parties that were run under the same DM and what happened was they would survive a few encounters, gain some levels and then a process would begin. The DM didn't think we were being challanged enough so he would up the danger of the next encounter. So long as we survived the danger would increase for the next battle. It was usually items being used up, bad rolls and some bad choices that would lead to a TPK.

The worst was when we set out to find the rogue who had wandered off in the night. We found a hole that we had to climb down, and left a party member to guard the way out. We left someone else at another choke point. Then one person went ahead to scout and saw the rogue on an altar about to be sacrificed. That person told another to go back and bring everyone up. The sacrifice was about to occur so the scout interfered.

The rest of the party burst in, got ambushed by prepared undead and the leader shut the door behind the party. See, our typical behavior had been to explore as a group; this time we had "learned" to explore wisely... so we all died.

 

[S'mon]

Our group has had several parties that were run under the same DM and what happened was they would survive a few encounters, gain some levels and then a process would begin. The DM didn't think we were being challanged enough so he would up the danger of the next encounter.

I found this to be a big problem & temptation with running high-level D&D; some challenge-oriented players are literally contemptuous when their PCs win an easy victory - rather than being happy to win easily they appear to be bored and dismissive. This is particularly the case with players who focus on optimised character builds as the primary goal of the game. So the GM ups the ante next time... and the party gets slaughtered. I guess the solutions are either not to run a purely Gamist game, or to stick very close to the CR-EL guidelines no matter the temptation.