does anybody know what kind of challenge rating/encounter level those bugbears are at the bottom of the moathouse? please? i have atari patch 2 and co8 patch 5final, and my five PC's are level 3, and those bugbears are tough as hell. one in particular is pissing me off. after taking a potion of strength and dexterity, this guy has an AC of 23, can trip any one of my PC's, can crit for up to 79 points of damage, and seems to have a limitless supply of potions of cure moderate wounds. i've played strategy games for a long time as well as D&D, but this bugbear is ridiculous. sure, web or entangle right? yea, except shooting him with arrows does nothing but annoy him and those potions he has never stop. melee? tried that too, he whomps on me no problem. obviously i need to go and level somewhere, but its rather frustrating that these mere bugbears are so powerful this early on. one other side note, i've averaged over 500 attack rolls and my average roll has been just below 7. (not including modifiers and whatnot) am i just unlucky ALL the time? also in those calculations i have been given 39 critical misses (roll of 1) and only 5 critical strikes (roll of 20). sure the law of averages says OVERALL average, but these numbers SUCK! besides the fact that i can't kill anything, i really like everything else that was modded in the game, and i truly appreciate all the work that has gone into it! :yes:
Welcome to the (old and unimproved) TOEE RNG:thumbsdow Try to persevere - eventually, the RNG will go the other way, and you'll start getting crits and high attack rolls. It always seems to start crappy for me and then starts swinging the other way about the time I get to the Temple. Good luck!
I have had the dice roll both ways, both good and bad. IMO - 3rd Level is probably a bit soon for taking on those bugbears. Realize the monsters have been updated per the version 3.5 rules. Some monsters have been assigned the elite-array to their stats and some monsters have had appropriate PC levels, skills and feats added. Level up and try it again.
I *hate* that bugbear. I just played through that room with my latest party, and it had a 27 AC! My best character was sitting with a +6. The group managed to take it down, along with the other bugbears, with no casualties, but it was closer than I thought it would be. (Not complaining, of course, I love the difficult fights.) We were level three. I'm playing my own version of Ironman. I play on normal, but I kept the literal first role for every PC. Which translates to: my stats suck across the board. In addition to this, I'm refusing to do reloads, and I'm pretending that raise dead doesn't exist in the world. I started with five PCs and selected three NPCs, one of which is Cavanaugh. This is a themed party of St. Cuthbert followers led by a paladin... a paladin who had to wait until fourth level to get a stat increase to marry Meleny and get the holy longsword family heirloom. As I lose PCs, they stay lost, and I'm forced to go ahead without them, or replace them with NPCs. I'll continue to do this until I win the game, or die trying. (I'm down to four PCs now; I lost my archer in a stupid mistake with Lubash. Still feeling hurt about that loss.) I also screwed up and summoned spiders in the fight against the bugbears, but it reminded me not to do that against Lareth. (Spiders are my early level goto summoning creature.) Big mistake in the Moathouse as the spiders just sit and do nothing, clearly a byproduct of Lloth's presence in the area. This game really is amazing. My only regret is that I know the encounters before they happen. I know all the rooms and all the treasures, and I know when to prepare for ambushes. This is why I go forward with low stats and themed parties; it reminds me of how incredibly difficult this game actually is, and I find the close calls with my characters help with overall immersion. I actually care about my little band of Cuthberites, and I'm hoping that Cavanaugh makes it all the way to the end. He just hit third level, and I feel like he's really redeeming himself in the eyes of St. Cuthbert, at least as my story line is going. Apologies for raising an old thread. I was just reading to see if anyone else found that one bugbear insanely difficult, and I suddenly felt like sharing a few thoughts.
I usually try to take that particular bugbear down while he's flat footed (by sneaking archers into the room where they can all see him, and parking my melee character within glaive range).
Clever use of enlarge, grease and or web will go a long way. With special attention to that little hallway connecting the two rooms.
Sneaking a rogue into a position to snipe the Bugbear that runs to alert the others helps, as you can prevent him from doing so, allowing you to clear the first room with the archers, and the extra Bugbears behind the doors with little effort. Then equipping Longspears and Glaives to your melee fighters and positioning them at the corridor entrance before initiating combat with a PC archer, have the melee fighters ready actions vs approach, when bugbears fill the corridor, cast grease on them for maximum attacks of oportunity. If your Cleric has a Hold Person spell handy, cast it on the Bugbear with rediculous stats, if he fails and is held, you can coup de grace him where he stands.
The moment combat is initiated invisibility goes out the window. I mean, the character remains invisible, but gets attacked anyway. For instance, if I sneak in an invisible character and stand behind the bugbear (in the second room, the high AC bugbear) and then hit the room with a combat spell to initiate combat, the invisible character immediately gets attacked as if he's suddenly seen and noticed. So I typically just handle the first room by sneaking in a character to stop the bugbear who alarms the second room. After clearing the first room, I stage all of my characters at the first room entrance and initiate combat, forcing the bugbears to come to me. I pepper in a lot of summoned creatures to keep the bulk of them busy while my fighters take the others out one at a time. I'll throw in whatever crowd control spells I have available, e.g. grease, soften earth. A part of me feels like I'm cheating a little this way though, mostly because I know going in what the difficulty level is. Like I feel like I'm cheating in the fight against Bassanio (in the fire temple) when I prep with a lesser globe of invulnerability. There's no reasonable way I would know that Salamandars are about to appear and start throwing fireballs. That said, I can swallow the feel of cheating in the bugbear room, largely because I can excuse away my tactics in the name of good early surveillance.
Medium or high ranks (depending on how far into the game you are) in Hide and Move Silently is equivalent to a regular invisibility spell. You sneak right up to most adversaries in plain sight, and they don't notice you. Obviously great for sneak attack damage. Quite overpowered really, which I am sure has been mentioned before.
The invisible chatacter should be getting a hefty bonus to AC from being invisible though, check the roll window to confirm this.
I'm sure the character does get an AC boost. I'll check on it on a bit later to verify and take note of what AC benefit is offered.
Hmm. This is usually the last encounter that I do before moving on to Lareth, and I've been experimenting recently with small parties, so I have been hitting this fight early 4th level, usually well rested so with full HP and spells. While I was aware that a couple of the Bugbears in the second room have potions of Bulls Strength (and possibly rage) so can seriously mess up any spellcasters they can get their hands on, I don't recall noticing any that had an unhittable AC or an excessive supply of healing potions. My usual tactic here is to try to take out the first group of bugbears in the room as quickly as possible, without going close enough to the corridor to trigger the next group. Liberal application of Web + Grease into the corridor to stop them all getting out at once, plus Glitterdust and Tasha's Hideous Laughter on the guy with all the HP (at early levels it's worth expending some XP and money to scribe as many scrolls as you can), and once he's down I whack away as hard as I can. IMHO, Invisibility isn't really that useful in combat with the 2nd level spell or the sneak skill, and indeed can be a bit of a trap option as it can lure you away from your support then switches off when the fight starts (i.e. when you most want to have it). That said, when I had my 'stealth party' (2 rogues, a monk, cleric of Olidammara and wizard who went for the less flashy spell choices), I did sneak in to Lareth's room and set him up to be multiply backstabbed to start off that fight...
