Co8 New Content: Arena of Heroes

I just did the third battle at level 5 with 6 pc's and 0 npc's. Boy it was touch especially when the giants broke free. I had a problem with the stinking cloud but the people affected were well to the south, and only got affected after the my rogue, who was affected straight off recovered enough to fight again. Thank pelor my cleric had extra turning to take out the undead wizzos or all would have been lost.
A really good fight!

 

During the 3rd fight in the AoH the undead wizard did cast "Tasha´s Hideous Laughter" on Elmo who was in my party and succeded. Elmo lay prone for several rounds.
When I looked in the rolls history it calculated:
"+3 Wisdom, +2 class = +5 total" for Elmos roll that was too low.

Shouldn´t Elmo (and any other PC / NPC) receive a +4 bonus to that roll according to the spells description (creature of different type, e.g. humanoid or dragon)?

Or is the "undead" wizard not considered to be of a different type than Elmo who started as "humanoid" according to his descriptiona and has gained 2 fighter levels in my game?

 

I feel sure this must have been reported before but it isn't in this thread and I can't think where else it would be:

We now have a Mistress of the Arena - this wasn't at all evident from how my female elf thief addressed 'her'

 

Look closely. 'She" has an Adam's Apple.

 

Maybe SHE is trapped in a man's body ...

 

Sorry I just saw the dress and missed the adam's apple!

 

I wonder how many young men have uttered that same phrase ...

 

Yeah. The next clue isn't a good one...

 

Is the final arena fight supposed to be many times more difficult than the first two? My party (level 4s, but I'd also just picked up Otis) were able, with some difficulty, to defeat the owlbears and hill giants on their first attempt (bar a ui issue which lost me the battle against the hill giants early on). The undead, however, I can't seem to defeat. I was able to fight my way through/turn the undead, and beeline fairly quickly for the casters to prevent them getting off stinking clouds and disabling several party members. Although I was somewhat weakened by attacks of opportunity and so forth, I was able to take them down and get rid of most of the weaker enemies by turning. That part of the battle seemed harder than the other two but only to the extent that the hill giants were harder than the owlbears. When I took one down, however, what should occur but I had another caster spawn, protected by two undead hill giants. While I'm not sure how powerful the undead versions are in terms of CR compared to the living ones, those two giants alone are similar to the entire second encounter! You also have to deal with the caster, and the other remaining undead, and do not have time to recover spells or even heal between encounters!

Is there some trick I'm missing, some weakness in my party composition (bard/barb/cleric/rogue/wizard/Otis) which is making this encounter significantly harder for me than it normally would be, or is this battle actually meant to be this much harder than the previous two? If so, given that you don't get any reward beyond xp for just doing the first two, why would a player (who is familiar with the mod) bother to fight them until he's high enough level to win the final fight, at which point the others become trivial and might as well be dispensed with entirely?

(Incidentally, I'm familiar with 3.5 rules, so don't be afraid that I won't understand if you start talking about base attack bonus, will saves, etc!)

 

The final battle should not be attempted until you are much higher level than 4th, even with Otis or Elmo.

The first fight, and even the second one are OK at lower levels, but I truly believe you are supposed to level up a bit between trips, not do them back to back.

 

Also, are you saying you were suffering from AoO from the standard skeletons?

I don't think that should happen as an AoO requires that the attacker has the intelligence to recognize that you have lowered your guard and standard undead are mindless and unintelligent.

 

I was indeed suffering attacks of opportunity. Since there weren't many skeletons/zombies left post-turning, it's entirely possible that I was only getting them from the ghouls and lacedons, though.

I was not aware that I was supposed to be going away and improving my levels between battles. The Master suggested that the party regain (or perhaps gather; I admit I don't remember) my strength before fighting again. I interpreted that as saying I should rest, prepare spells, heal, etc, before coming back. Perhaps the text could have been altered a bit to make that clearer? I'm not entirely clear as to the state of Co8 currently: I know that a 'final' version has been released, but to judge by the existence of the patch that 'final' version turned out not to be final after all. Either way, if some update does get released at some point, I'd like to highlight this in the hope that it gets included.

It seems to me that there's a bit of an issue if you're expected to gain levels before having the final battle. Namely, there's no incentive to fight the earlier battles while it's still a challenge. Normally, you would expect to receive a reward proportional to the difficulty of the fight. Thus, if you manage to win a battle earlier in terms of levels than you're expected to, you'll get a good reward, which will be more useful to you than had you won it when (or after) you're 'expected' to, as it's more powerful compared to the other things around you. Thus, the game rewards you for successfully taking risks and winning difficult battles. In this case, there's none of that, since you get no reward for winning the earlier battles. Thus (with the exception of the standard xp for the encounter, which you could get from any such battle), there's no incentive to fight it early, before you're ready to take on the final encounter and gain the full reward. That way you get the same result (the reward, whatever it may be, from winning the final encounter at the point that you're ready to take on the final encounter) with less difficulty (two pushover encounters rather than two difficult ones before waiting to be able to fight the undead battle).

Putting in in dnd terms, you should be getting around the average treasure level for each of the first two encounters (2700 for the owlbears and 4500 for the giants, according to the d20 encounter calculator). If you're intended to fight on and complete all three arena fights together, and then get a reward with a value of about that of the three treasure amounts combined, then that's fine, since it's all part of one adventure, as it were. On the other hand, if you're expected to go off and gain several levels before coming back for the next battle, then the party isn't being given the treasure they should be from that battle. Again, we reach the question "Why would I bother to fight the first two encounters before I can beat the third, by which point the first two are trivial?"

As I see it, there are two possible solutions: adjust the battles so they're all about the same difficulty (either make the earlier ones harder to get them at about the level of the last one, tone the last one back a bit, or something in between) and adjust the reward you're given accordingly, or give some amount of reward when you win the earlier battles (perhaps reducing the reward for winning the final battle; I don't know what the reward is so am not sure whether that would work, but if it's a single powerful item then perhaps it could be upgraded as you win arena battles to reach its current power when you beat the third battle?)

 

My thoughts exactly, at least it should be clearly mentioned in the dialogue that you need to gain (lot) more experience before attempting the final battle especially since the first two battles pose little to no challenge even for a level 5 parties consisting of 1 PC and 4 NPCs. On my first attempt I somehow managed to clear the first wave so I was able to save (I sticked around lower area to avoid provoking the second wave) but Spug died when the red mage started tossing fireballs... On second attempt I just needed to kill the blue mage before I could save again but sleep on my PC = game over... gotta love it when outcome of a battle doesn't depend on your abilities... might just reload the first attempt and see if the second wave is even doable then maybe console in raise dead. :shy: