Scaling the final battle

[JoeyD473]

My party in playing the Sunless Citradel. It is an adventure designed for 4 first lvl charachters. However it wasn't the first adventure so they hit it with most of them being either level 2 or 3. Currently party is:

lvl 3 Fighter
lvl 2 Fighter
lvl 3 Wizard (Evoker)
lvl 2 Wizard (Necomancer)
lvl 3 Priest
lvl 2 Rouge
lvl 3 Priest - NPC
lvl 1/1 Fighter/Priest - NPC

they're basically up to the final battle (for those who may have a copy of the adventure, they are sitting in room 53 about to enter 54 on the Grove Lvl)

The Adventure is suppose to be for 4 1st lvl adventurers and I have a party of 8 (6 PC and 2 NPC) with an average lvl of 2.5 (I'm not sure if I should round up or down on this). The next three encounter areas make up the final battle.

First is a battle against 4 goblins, and if it takes 6 rounds 4 twig blight from the next area join in the fight.

Next battle is with 4-10 Twig blights depending on the previous battle.

The last battle is with:
lvl 4 Druid
Giant Tree Frog (Druids Companion)
lvl 1 Wizard
lvl 1 Paladin
3 Twig Blights
Any Twig Blights not killed in previous room

I need to make this battle more challenging for my PCs but I'm not sure of the best way.
-Should I raise the lvls of the Druid, Wizard and paldin, and if so to what lvl(s)?
-Should I add more creatures, if so do I add to more creatures with class lvls (Can only realistically add 2 due to nature of the adventure), add more twig blights (And how many), or both
-Or a combination of both?

Any help would be appreciated

 

[Mark CMG]

What's the current condition of the characters, health and power-wise?

 

[JoeyD473]

What's the current condition of the characters, health and power-wise?

Basically full hit points, maybe 1 spell used by each wizard and no spells used by Priests

 

[Mark CMG]

They should be all right. If you feel the battle appears too lopsided while you are running things, switch tactics and have the bad guys start grappling and trying to capture rather than kill the PCs.

 

[JoeyD473]

They should be all right. If you feel the battle appears too lopsided while you are running things, switch tactics and have the bad guys start grappling and trying to capture rather than kill the PCs.

You don't think I should add to the challenge here somehow?

 

[Asmo]

I´ve a memory that Entangle was a powerhouse and if I´ve had the npc pepper the party with ranged attacks it would have been a tpk.
I think you can run it with your configuration. I don´t remember and my copy of Sunless Citadel is gone - what spells has the boss prepared?
Charm Person was pretty effective...

Asmo

 

[Dracorat]

I would add a few more gobs to the fight, with one or two ranger levels. Probably four gobs is all. MAKE SURE to use entangle judiciously.

 

[Gilladian]

This is a pretty tough fight for the original proposed party. For your group it may be a bit easier, but as everyone says, entangle is a powerful spell that can quickly reduce the PC party's effectiveness a LOT.

More twigblights are easy to add, and you can even have them appear from the fringes of the cave late in the battle if things are going too easily for the party. I'd be more likely to throw the twiggies in a bit earlier in the first room and then add more in subsequent rounds until the PCs seem to be just getting stretched a little, then stop. This means they enter the big fight at a little under optimum power, but not in BAD shape.

If you overestimate, you might have them find the body of an earlier adventurer with a cure potion or two to boost them a bit again.

 

[monboesen]

I have run the Sunless citadel as well and I'm fairly certain the adventure assumes that the PC's level to 2 before that last encounter. You are facing is a party with twice the number of characters compared to what the adventure assumes. And some of the characters a level higher than assumed.

In order to make it a challenging encounter you need to up the opposition. Your options are:

1. increasing levels of opponents. This can easily throw things out of order, particularly with spell casters. I would not recommend that.

2. increase the number of opponents. This would be my suggestion.


Essentially you need more mooks to prevent the PC's with an easy win by swarming the Druid and kill him by superior numbers. You could easily add more twigblighs (which I did) and also advance some of them 1-2 HD (which I also did). That makes them a little harder to deal with. Another option is to include the two last members of the group the PC's are searching for to the opposition (thats a Rogue 1 and Ranger 1 I would guess).


For a group as big as yours (you actually almost face two standard groups of 1 fighter, 1 cleric, 1 rogue and 1 cleric) I would do both. To make the battle climatic it must be dangerous enough to provide real risk of loosing PC’s and the fight in general. To insure that danger, you must often make the opposition stronger than the PC's, as the players will tend to use/know their powers better than you, the poor dm. With 8 characters on the players’ side I'll say you need 8 comparably capable opponents, preferably more or a significantly larger number of individually less powerful enemies.



If I was running that battle with your group I would:

1. add more "tree'fied" npc's and increase them to level 2 (So Ex-paladin 2, Wizard 2, Rogue 2 and Ranger 2). These should be the druids bodyguards and stay near him to prevent sneaky/fast PC’s from taking him out to quickly.

2. up the number of twig blights to 20 (or even let there be potentially limitless number, with 0-2 new twigh blighs arriving each round, not stopping before the druid is dead at which point they stop fighting and flee). These are your stormtroopers who charge in and menace all the PC’s, including the soft juicy mages.

3. let the Druid use Entangle, Cure light wounds, Produce flame, Flaming sphere, summon swarm and Heat metal to maximum effect (and likely change the fire aspect of those spells to some corrupting/decaying effect just for coolness). So an early Entangle followed up by Heat metal on armor wearing PC’s and Summon swarm on spellcasters. The deal closes with Produce flame and Flaming sphere to kill of those who break free of Entangle.

Be aware of Entangle (and Web). It is a spell that can break the game and should always be heavily modified according to the actual vegetation. I consider the spell as written to be the rules for the optimal situation, which happens to be in a forest of young trees (many roots, low vegetation and branches that can reach those affected). In that cave I would reduce the DC’s of breaking free by 5 to DC 15.


With that scenario I would expect at least half the PC group to end up in negatives (hp) and rejoice and remember their hard fought victory for weeks to come.


Hope this is useful and good luck

 

[Sunderstone]

Wizard and Paladin..... +1 lvl each.
Twig Blights..... I would double the number of them.


Depending on how well your players play, I would also add a level to the Druid as well.