Co8 New Content: War of the Golden Skull

I did the slavers at 12th level. I wasn't familiar with any of the post temple content, so I just tried to pick up any quests I came across. Once Oodenard had told me where the slavers were, I went and killed them, then the WOTGS came up next.

WOTGS also seems to introduce two fairly significant CTDs to the game. The first is one levelling up, if you try and increase spot or tumble too quickly it causes a CTD.

The other is about 50% of transitions cause a CTD. This was particularly painful when I just did the Deitieds and Demigods fight then forgot to save before transitioning. Needless to say it crashed!

 

Thanks, really appreciate the detailed feedback. On the archers obviously precise, point blank and far shot, but wouldn't the answer be magic arrows or elemental bows which they don't drop? Or maybe gloves of dex +6?

 

You could make a few of the archers into Rangers, (many shot, rapid fire) or rouges, the rouges could hide in shadows until their first attack and deal out some nice sneak attack damage.

Heck, if the rouge archers are above 10th level they could even have crippling strike, (nasty when done from a bow) you'd just have to be sure to not have them break cover until they are within 30ft of their target, (30ft range on sneak attack).

 

Well it's not so much the damage they deal, it's the fact theycan't hit. I think a 12th level could have a handful of +2 arrows without us sweating too much, or a +2 bow, and maybe chuck in a sonic or flaming one every now and then just to give the player a sweat.

 

Give the archers some rogue levels for sneak attack damage, and equip them with rings of invisibility. If the AI can have them shoot from invisible within 30 feet, then next turn five foot step if necessary and reactivate the ring (does activating the ring draw an AoO?).... The +5 for attacking from invisible plus the loss of Dex bonus could give the necessary boost to their chances of hitting magically equipped PC's.

 

I have read repeatedly how efevtive a rogue becomes with the spell Glitterdust. If I remember correctly he makes sneak attack as long as that spell lasts. But well, don't know if this helps, since you need someone to cast that spell.

 

Glitterdust grants a saving throw and is only a second level spell. You need something passive like an invisibility sphere within a minor globe of invulnerability just behind some sort of moveable physical obstruction - perhaps a dozen chain devils with non-droppable major fire resistance rings.

 

Spellcasters? Monster mash can be tricky as they keep dropping summoned critters on you faster than you can get rid of them (and some of those critters cast too!). My counter to this is to take down the summoners asap, which is enough in the temple which is basically a big open space, but if they teleported in behind Wakefield they would be harder to get to. I take the point re verisimilitude, but that's a DnD thing generally at high levels. I think to go after an artefact like the GS though it would be reasonable to have the high-level Hextorite casters in the region band together to make a play.
Other options: potions of heal for major characters (or better still, for minor characters who use them on the big guys who then don't miss a turn taking them..)
Rogue archers who have already buffed with dust of disappearance and who have precise and rapid shot- indeed dust of disappearance generally as a rogue item (miss chance when you try to hit them, additional damage dice,, can evade fireballs etc, can tumble past AoOs. Script them to ignore meatshields and keep coming for my casters and they could be very annoying.
How about moving some fights indoors? Say the inn, the Church, the Tower. One of the things that makes the tower bandits fight tricky is the constricting battlefield. Have to take out the guy who goes to kill the hostages from a distance without fireballing the whole place, and stop the occassional NPC (Gundigoot, Elmo etc) getting themselves killed.
Finally, what about the possibility of WotGS aftr Zug but before the rest of the Verbobonc NC, but with some way of stringing together the fights as one encounter so the max XP gain is 2 levels minus 1xp, thus avoiding the rocket boost to levels that it used to provide.

 

As a mechanism for my final suggestion, how about this:
Wakefield's group includes a new creature/ character: the 'malign spirit of Hextor'- either a Will-o-wisp type model or a black robed, invisibility- translucent humanoid if it needs to have class levels to perform all its roles. Characteristics- 1) initiative modifier so big that it always goes first. 2) enough evasion/ damage/ spell resistance to be essentially unkillable (including by things like magic missile). 3) very fast movement- either by having a high move rate, or because it has a wand of dimension door. 4) first and only action is to run off and hide behind a randomly chosen mob of Hextorites elsewhere on the map, until such time as there are no more Hextorites left, at which point it either dies automatically or loses all its powers and becomes susceptible to being killed very easily- casts an empowered disintegrate on itself or similar, or perhaps Araikas remembers that he has a dagger/ scroll/ McGuffin in his pack that will kill it once all the Hextorites are dead.
The point is to provide an enemy that persists until all the Hextorite mobs are dead, thus forcing the WotGS to be played as a single encounter rather than having XP awards after every fight and level ups nearly every one.

 

For the archers, composite bows would help boost their damage, and with all the melee troops around to flank the PCs rogue levels alone should be enough to gain sneak attack damage. If hitting is the problem, magic arrows are a fairly reasonable way to boost their attack bonus,

 

I rarely take a hit from the pair of assassins in each mob, nevermind have problems because they are flanking me, but I know you tend to be archer-heavy yourself, so I guess it's a case of YMMV

 

I drop the assassins first (to preserve their potions) so never take hits from them either, but my melee character and nearest archer are usually surrounded by troops until I can drop them.

 

No thoughts from anyone on my suggestion for tying the fights together to limit the amount of XP that can be harvested from the Hextorites in WOTGS?