slaver tactics

That is why I cast Mind Fog. It gave her a -10 to her will saves.

 

i beat the slavers albeit it was with a lvl 16ish party (after the golden skull episode). i did cast mind fog on the slavers after my thief, paladin, bard and druid were invisible (ring or robe) and standing directly behind either the cleric or the wizard. after that it was the plumpish rogue that was a pain since he did not stand still but went after the kids avoiding free attacks with his 1 million ranked tumble. he did kill one kid which i equate to a victory. kid should have ducked anyway. i mean didnt he see the fat mean rogue with bladed weapons and murder in his eye advance towards him?

 

It's fascinating reading all of the different ways that you guys do that combat. Sorry for the late reply but here's how I usually tackle the combat with the slavers (spoilers ahead):

I always play this game with a party of at least 7 characters (I prefer 8). I usually hit the slavers when my characters are all level 14. I manually walk my characters one at a time around behind the slavers along the bottom of the map (so that ALL of my characters are to the right of the slavers). I do this so that my characters are in between the children and the slavers, so that I have a MUCH better chance of protecting the children, and because I consider the enemy sorceress and the enemy archer to be the 2 deadliest slavers BY FAR!

Now I cast Death Ward and Stoneskin and Haste on all of my characters, and Enlarge Person on all of my fighters and rogue. Now I run all of my characters towards the sorceress so that they are as close to the enemy archer as possible when dialogue with the slavers begins.

As sirchet stated, if you choose the dialogue option to attack as soon as you are able to during dialogue with the slavers, then the sorceress doesn't auto-kill one of your characters.

Once combat has started, I try to surround the enemy archer with as many of my fighters and rogue as possible. This prevents the enemy archer from being able to step back to avoid provoking attacks of opportunity when he inevitably fires his longbow, so my characters each get an attack of opportunity on him whenever he fires his bow, so he gets cut down fast. That enemy archer is deadly if left to fire away at your characters from a distance - he does SO MUCH damage per round that he is quite capable of killing one of your characters quickly if you don't drop him quickly.

Now that the enemy archer is dead, I now have all of my fighters and rogue surround the enemy sorceress and cut her down as quickly as possible before she starts nuking the children with area effect spells.

Now the only real danger left is that deadly enemy rogue because he can sneak attack and perform crippling strikes on your characters. He is the next enemy that my fighters and rogue surround to cut down as quickly as possible.

While all of this is happening, my cleric heals any of my badly damaged characters with his best healing spells, and my wizard casts Fireballs at all of the enemies on the left side of the battlefield.

Once the enemy rogue is down, my fighters and rogue surround that pesky enemy cleric and cut him down to prevent him from healing his allies any longer.

Then it's just the enemy barbarian and 2 enemy fighters that are left to mop up.

Doing the combat this way, I have killed all of the slavers without a single child being harmed or killed. I believe that Wilfrick does praise you for the fact that none of the children were harmed, but there's no real benefit to making sure that all of the children are unharmed as far as I can tell.

Next time that I do that combat, I might try some of your tactics because they sound so much more fun than my boring way.

 

For Ron Paul?

 

Preparing for the worst is within RP bounds, at least in my opinion. Seriously, if you come upon a group of people

Spoiler

leading children strung together by their ears

, the smart money is that they are the slavers you are looking for. Sneaking your rogue and stealthy archers into position before you talk to them is just good tactics.

 

I agree and disagree,

The first time I did this encounter I of course RP'd it as I usually do most instances in most games I play. The catastrophic repercussions were shocking and awesome ... the first time.

After having done this encounter a few times it changes from a life shaping encounter into a tactical problem that is fun and exciting to solve.

To be honest, I'm close to this one again with my evil party and I'm not sure how I'm going to handle it. The party IS evil ... really really evil actually.

I have never made it this far with an evil party before, am I changing maybe, is age making me a wee bit more ... eeeeevvvviiilllllll?

 

Just fought for the slavers for my second time, this time with an evil party, 5 level 11's, Rogue, Cleric, Fighter, Barbarian, Wizard and Oohlgrhist(was 6?). That chief is wonderfully fun. I've been alternating Rogue, Fighter, Barbarian levels for him.....

What won this battle for me wasn't the 'great& ugly' troll though, it was my cleric dragging a dozen skeletons along for the brawl which pulled the slavers thief and one of their fighter types away from the fight....my horn of fog helped out hugely as well making their archer waster his 4 x shots.

I've yet to win this fight on the first try, even the second time around knowing what to expect. I try to make a beeline for the sorceress being sure to bring enough hurt to drop her before she can be healed as I found she is quick to start killing the kids---which I was worried might impact my reward.

It seems to be a very tough fight for mid level characters but it's one of my favourites---luckily for me the slavers don't have the option to save and re-load ;P

One day I'd like to play the whole game 'Iron-man' style---

 

It took me a couple of tries as I wasn't sure if I was supposed to keep all of the kids alive or not, and one time I think I actually started over when I thought I killed a kid when I had actually killed the archer. Anyway, with a party of three lvl 18s, it was simple enough for me and I'm sure the same general strategy works for a group with any spellcaster. Here's my run through (sort of a spoiler i guess):

My rogue went up and talked, when the talking was over she ran on back.
My cleric backed up, then cast Sleet Storm (not sure if that spell is domain specific for clerics)
My sorcerer backed up, then cast Prismatic Spray
Using my high tumble levels for my characters, I could roll out of the way and then cast Cone of Cold (Cleric) and Prismatic Spray (Sorcerer) while my rogue took out any of the stragglers who escaped the cone radius.
And regarding the death spells, I learned from bad past experiences to ALWAYS Death Ward against high level opponents. Funny that I read that Bodaks can glitch past Death Ward and they are the sole reason I learned that spell.
Basically start with knocking them down, then blast them with high level spells.


Was the fight 'cheap' in terms of tactics? I guess so, but so long as I could roleplay it I was satisfied

 

I think all the spells you listed are wiz/sorc spells, except for sleet storm I think a druid can cast it also.

But, yeah ... cone of cold and prismatic spray can do wonders to any group, especially prismatic spray.

I mean, wow ... one spell with the potential to do 20 points fire damage (Reflex half) or 40 points acid damage (Reflex half) or 80 points electricity damage (Reflex half) or Be Poisoned (Kills; Fortitude partial, take 1d6 points of Con damage instead) or Turned to stone (Fortitude negates) or Insane, as insanity spell (Will negates) or Sent to another plane (Will negates) or you could be hit by two rays at the same time and suffer the effects of both of them ... Ouch!

 

I have a really cheap tactic for slavers group -> Stinking Cloud.
They all get sickened. Sorceress, rogue with a bow and cleric don't move from Stinking Cloud area, so my wizard kills them with fireballs. Sickened slavers melee fighters approach my melee fighters who kill them, one by one.

When Stinking Cloud get nerfed, then I will use this thread for finding an another tactic .

 

I've done this with a couple of parties one was four Wizards, a Sorcerer and Elmo the other was Sorcerer (Lvl 14). Wizard (lvl 13), Thief/Wizard (Lvl 7/7), Cleric/Wizard (Lvl 7/7), Fighter (Lvl 14) Elmo and Zaxis.

Each time I opened (after conversation) with Cloudkill (placed with care to avoid children) then Stinking Cloud after that it was a case of using various area effect spells while the Fighters held off (killed) anyone who had resisted being sickened.

Party was buffed with Stoneskin, Mirror Image and Protection from Arrows.