Co8 5.0.0 Beta - The Big 3; A poll

When does the "re-spawn" occur? certainly, after the death/defeat of Lareth. Why not implement Gaear's fix, & use the "Ambush" as-is whenever the party exits out into the ravine after the re-spawn? Would the party likely be tough enough then? It would be their second run through. To make it smoother, could someone in Hommlet give the PC's the clue that more evil has crept in? I just gave Kenter Nevets a listen, and he mentions bad guys at the moathouse. Perhaps his reference is generic enough to fit.

 

Is it possible that one balancing factor could be that Furnok will be there if Elmo's with the group and his scheme at the Inn is upset? If not, that is fine.

The capabilities of the "extras" could be reduced in one or more ways...by either lowering their numbers or by lowering their levels. Another option is to change their combat script so they act in a less skilled fashion...poorer target choices, coordination, etc. Or, some mix of all these could suffice as well.

If Furnok is there, then more balancing factors should be applied to the extras.

 

I think the encounter works fine as originally written if it occurs after the death of Lareth, from a game balance perspective, though it will be very difficult, particularly if the party fights Lareth's guards, Lareth himself and Lareth gets a chance to summon his spider helpers.

From a logical perspective, unless someone else is giving the orders, it would be incredibly unlikely for Zert and Co. to recruit a bunch of soldiers that are higher level than themselves.

I dislike the idea of Furnok joining them because I don't see him personality-wise as the type that would resort to violence as revenge for being caught cheating. Particularly since he's eager to join the party even after his cheating has been reported to Gundigoot.

The crossbowmen are fine, as-is. They're all level 1 fighters, and considering that making a character a warrior instead requires alot of kludging to work, it's best to leave them as such.

The brigand footmen, on the other hand, are 3rd level, which makes them more powerful than the big three, which is kind of silly.

The options would pretty much be to replace them with the normal moathouse brigands, who as 1st level rogues would make sense to be easy to find and recruit,hobgoblins (depending on what kind of ties we think Zert and Co. might have), create some additional 2nd level NPCs that are "friends" of Zert and Co. and fill in the gaps in their party composition (a rogue, a cleric and a wizard or sorcerer) or level-up Zert & Co to be more challenging, though this would depart from the ToEE module.

Personally, considering ToEE doesn't really take the rarity of leveled PC-class characters into account (and really, the game would pretty boring if everyone you ran into was 1st level warriors) my vote would be to leave it as is and set the "Lareth is dead" flag. It prevents a lot of additional work and gives a good, challenging fight. Maybe remove a couple of the footmen and maybe one of the crossbowmen, since the party will usually be weakened going into the battle. (That's my one problem with Liv's ambush in Nulb encounter is it doesn't take a weakened party into account [they attack when you're going back to rest] which means a lot of folks keep visiting their Nulb house at full health to trigger the encounter when they can handle it rather than seeing their party wiped out repeatedly.)

 

Has a consensus been reached about the ambush? I haven't yet played TOEE with the 5.0 beta, and want to hold off until the decision has been reached on this matter.

For what it's worth (probably nothing) but I agree with what has been said earlier about reflagging the ambush to occur after Lareth's death....am anxious to try this encounter.

Thanks for your efforts.

MB

 

@Gaear: Sounds good to me. Especially since at the level the PCs are going to be at, the only area damage spell they're going to have access to is sound burst, which isn't exactly a killer spell and most players, if they even have it prepped, will most-likely use it on Lareth's guards anyway. So even though it's a bunch of weak guys, they're not going to get wiped out in one blow.

 

Sounds good to me Gaear. That looks like a tough fight but not 99% TWP tough.

 

I'm not trying to be overly critical about this thing, but it still isn't exactly what I'd consider accurate to the setting & circumstances. I'd pick a bugbear or two, or perhaps several gnolls if there's going to be humanoid troops. This will eliminate the need for some of those humans, and is more easily explained by than where the tough guys came from. This could be accounted for by them having been out "foraging" or "patrolling", as it states in the wandering monsters section of the moathouse dungeon. IMO, they'd work better than new "warrior" bandits that were tougher than the boss bandit on the first floor.

The "Big 3"
the brigand crossbowmen
some gnoll or bugbear footmen

Zert rounded up some stragglers for a counter-attack in order to fill the power vacuum (with himself as top-dog, of course...), but underestimated the party's abilities. He got some adventurers, bandits & (insert humanoid) to ambush the party. Rag-tag, but accounted for in the game.

 

Lotsa bugbears in the rest of the game is right. Some gnolls in the ambush would be pleasant to see, the skilled acrobats of the Moathouse.

@gaear: Some added dog growls or dog-like growling from the Gnolls during the fight in the ambush would be cool, too, if you decide to go with using Gnolls.

 

At this point, it doesn't really matter. Troika took plenty of license with this already. Toruko may simply be their spokes-person; or perhaps Zert is letting him think he's in charge. The leader can take the fall and the follower can always claim "he's simply following orders". That way, if things take a turn for the worst and the good guys prevail, he'll maintain some level of deniability for not being the head guy.

Edit: Gnolls are better.