Epinephrine
2008-04-25, 07:07 AM
Well, last night we lost a character in an ambush, and it certainly felt like a very tough fight, so I had a question about the idea of EL and CRs.
Our party has 4 PCs and an NPC, we're 3rd level, with little gear (we haven't made it back to a town to trade loot in) - nobody has magic items (well, I have a couple of crafted talismans for 1st level spells), though we have a few masterwork items. We have no cold iron, either. We are gestalt, so we're a little tougher than our level, but we're not twinked really, especially as it's a group who haven't played much, and it's my first time on 3.5 (I played a lot of 1st edition though).
We knew that a pixie was going to be around, as he had been harrassing us with "pranks" the past while, but we had managed to present evidence of his crime (leading a bunch of orcs to kill a dryad who had rejected him) and had him banished from the court - so we had some preparations in case he came back. We followed a trail sign to what we suspected might be a trap, a friend of ours trussed up bleeding at the base of a tree, 100 feet off. One player cast Linked Perception to boost our spot/listen, and I used Embrace the Wild, and we moved up (me in the brush, as I had been hiding).
Sure enough, it was the pixie, who used Entangle on the group, and 4 large spiders dropped down on us. The pixie apparently had class levels of some sort, as he could shatter things and fire some strange entangling moonbeam things too, that dealt non-lethal damage.
We won in the end, and took the pixie out (thanks to a Faerie Fire talisman and my Earthbind spell) - he got caught by his own entangle as well - but our NPC died in the battle, and we were almost killed (he summoned a swarm of some glass butterflies that caused bleeding, which are pretty nasty when you are stuck in place, fighting big spiders).
Now, this seems like a really tough encounter, and I said as much after the session, and the DM said that he thought it wouldn't be too hard, as the spiders are only CR2. We came really close to losing other party members - our healer was at 1 HP, I was only up because of my rage, though much of my damage was non-lethal, and the other 2 players were well below half health. We used every prepared spell except one first level and our cantrips.
Was this absurdly hard, just really challenging, or is it about right?
Our party has 4 PCs and an NPC, we're 3rd level, with little gear (we haven't made it back to a town to trade loot in) - nobody has magic items (well, I have a couple of crafted talismans for 1st level spells), though we have a few masterwork items. We have no cold iron, either. We are gestalt, so we're a little tougher than our level, but we're not twinked really, especially as it's a group who haven't played much, and it's my first time on 3.5 (I played a lot of 1st edition though).
We knew that a pixie was going to be around, as he had been harrassing us with "pranks" the past while, but we had managed to present evidence of his crime (leading a bunch of orcs to kill a dryad who had rejected him) and had him banished from the court - so we had some preparations in case he came back. We followed a trail sign to what we suspected might be a trap, a friend of ours trussed up bleeding at the base of a tree, 100 feet off. One player cast Linked Perception to boost our spot/listen, and I used Embrace the Wild, and we moved up (me in the brush, as I had been hiding).
Sure enough, it was the pixie, who used Entangle on the group, and 4 large spiders dropped down on us. The pixie apparently had class levels of some sort, as he could shatter things and fire some strange entangling moonbeam things too, that dealt non-lethal damage.
We won in the end, and took the pixie out (thanks to a Faerie Fire talisman and my Earthbind spell) - he got caught by his own entangle as well - but our NPC died in the battle, and we were almost killed (he summoned a swarm of some glass butterflies that caused bleeding, which are pretty nasty when you are stuck in place, fighting big spiders).
Now, this seems like a really tough encounter, and I said as much after the session, and the DM said that he thought it wouldn't be too hard, as the spiders are only CR2. We came really close to losing other party members - our healer was at 1 HP, I was only up because of my rage, though much of my damage was non-lethal, and the other 2 players were well below half health. We used every prepared spell except one first level and our cantrips.
Was this absurdly hard, just really challenging, or is it about right?