Game Balance: Smilodon + Barbarian Ambush

[whorrak]

My level 8 party, while traveling along the road, was just ambushed by 6 Smilodon and 6 Barbarians, who are joined after a few rounds by 6 more of each from behind. Are you kidding me with this? Good thing there are multiple auto-saves, as I tried this fight about a dozen times now and get outright slaughtered each time.

It seems like every time I cool down and want to give the game another chance, it spits in my face again. Who designed this game, and why do they hate their players?

[Pink Eye]

Well a party wipe is pretty rare, unless you're playing on the harder difficulties. What's your party comp, and MC build?

[dwarner]

One bard singing a fascinate song and all those big dummies are sitting ducks.

[whorrak]

This is my third attempt at playing through this game. After I rage quit the first two times (f-ing kingdom failure game-end), I decided to make it at bit easier. Enemy Stat = Moderately easier enemies, Damage to Party = 0.5, Enemy Difficulty = normal.

Right now, I'm running my melee-focused cleric along with Amiri, Linzo, Octavia, Valerie, and Harrim. I have had the occasional tough battle that needed a reload, but almost every battle has been relatively easy. Guess the game was feeling salty and hit me with this brick wall instead.

[1ttffsse]

try to discover the power of a high intelligence wizard or high charisma sorcerer focused in conjuration and casting stinking cloud while your party priest cast communal protection from poison on the party. All those kitties and barbs and other monsters will be disabled.

[Grifta]

As dwarner mentioned, get Linzi to Fascinate. Barbarians have garbage will saves. This should hold 50-75% of them until you've killed their buddies

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Fascinate
At 6th level, a bard can use his performance to cause one or more creatures to become fascinated with him. Each creature to be fascinated must be within 30 feet.

Each creature within range receives a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 the bard's level + the bard's Cha modifier) to negate the effect. If a creature's saving throw succeeds, the bard cannot attempt to fascinate that creature again for 24 hours. If its saving throw fails, the creature stands quietly and observes the performance for as long as the bard continues to maintain it. Any damage to the target automatically breaks the effect.
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[dwarfpcfan]

communal delay poison+stinking cloud

[Senkoau]

I had a similar encounter (even mix of barbarians with Smilodons and druids) barely managed to beat it by retreating to the lower right corner (my enemies reinforcements came from the top right and bottom left) so i didnt get hit from behind and the speed difference spread out the initial attack slightly. I had a main character mage though and even then barely managed to pull off a win. One more enemy would have made it a loss.

[dwarner]

I got ambushed today by a boatload of large water elementals, with reinforcements. Caught without Resist Energy up.

Love it. I was in a part of the map I shouldn’t have been yet, trying the steal it’s goodies. The map should fight back.

[dwarner]

Originally posted by dwarfpcfan:

communal delay poison+stinking cloud

Borderline cheesy, tho barbs and beasts should have healthy fort saves so it could still be a fair fight.

[dwarfpcfan]

Originally posted by dwarner:

Borderline cheesy, tho barbs and beasts should have healthy fort saves so it could still be a fair fight.

spell focus conjuration+greater spell focus conjuration+ cognaten mutagen take care of that very easily.

You can pump your spell Dc stupidly high where anything not immune will miss their save 95% of the time

Stinking cloud actually even works of the Lantern king, it's that stupid strong a spell

[whorrak]

Thanks for the tip on fascinate. I didn't even realize that was an ability Linzi had.

Regarding the stinking cloud / high-int focused spellcaster, that solution doesn't really help me if nobody in my party has that build / spell. I'll be damned if I'm going to start the game over for a 4th time just to use a build that plays well against the meta of the game. The random encounter rules are obviously broken if they require a certain build / spell, especially given the difficulty options I've set.

I very, very rarely pit my tabletop players against such an overpowered encounter, as it's not fun for anyone involved. Silly me for assuming the PK developers felt the same way.

Unsubscribing, as my question is answered.

[Grifta]

Yea, it's just a side-effect of a CRPG. You have less than infinite creative freedom, so they make the fights more challenging.

[Nightbringer]

Originally posted by dwarner:

Originally posted by dwarfpcfan:

communal delay poison+stinking cloud

Borderline cheesy, tho barbs and beasts should have healthy fort saves so it could still be a fair fight.

Barbarians get access to Internal Fortitude at 8th level.

Immunity to sickened and Nauseous conditions.

Communal Delay Poison is better. You should almost always have this up, given the number of poisonous monsters in game.

[Nightbringer]

Originally posted by whorrak:

Thanks for the tip on fascinate. I didn't even realize that was an ability Linzi had.

Regarding the stinking cloud / high-int focused spellcaster, that solution doesn't really help me if nobody in my party has that build / spell. I'll be damned if I'm going to start the game over for a 4th time just to use a build that plays well against the meta of the game. The random encounter rules are obviously broken if they require a certain build / spell, especially given the difficulty options I've set.

I very, very rarely pit my tabletop players against such an overpowered encounter, as it's not fun for anyone involved. Silly me for assuming the PK developers felt the same way.

Unsubscribing, as my question is answered.

There are a dozen ways to handle this.

Fascinate and Stinking Cloud are the simplest.

Personally, I just tank it. Was never wort it for me to spend the resources when they were unable to hit my SS or my monk.

Or you could use kineticists with Deadly Earth. Or send in a couple of invisible rogues. Or Haste and kite. Or use UMD + scrolls & wands to flood the area with AoEs.

The barbarian attacks generally come at a time when gameplay is at its easiest. Things get much more difficult later.

If your party cannot do most, or all, of the above, you're going to have a bad time with the wild hunt and mandragora swarms.

[OSculton]

Just searching, I was ambushed by the same barbarian party, 6 Smilodons + 12 barbarians, level 10.
My party was level 6 (just reached, not even rested for spells, etc).
WTF happens with this game, last random encounter was 3 level 5 kobolds.
RLY.
bag of tricks + kill all enemies, first time, I didnt feel cheating, I feel devs deserve hell for their poor game design. (not even poor, just stupid nonsense)