Didn't fear the Roper
Mar. 23rd, 2010 10:42![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
viktor_haagLast night, for the first time in a long time, there was a character death at my gaming table. I did not mishandle the situation, but I didn't really handle it all that well either. The moment was a bit shocking, and abrupt. Shocking, OK, but abrupt, I have to bring on myself for not properly pacing things a bit better.
As part of our Rise of the Runelords campaign's effort to transition to the new-ish Pathfinder rules, the Monday PM players created new characters of their own, from scratch (when we started RotRL, we used the stock characters provided). I decided to use the first two or three original 3.0 "adventure path" modules ("Sunless Citadel", "Forge of Fury", and "Speaker In Dreams") to get these new characters up to the same level as the original four they'd already played through RotRL pts I and II, so that at the end of this diversion we'd have a stable of eight characters that could move forward into RotRL pt III and onwards.
Well, the Roper in "Forge of Fury" reared up and smacked them. The Roper is no doubt deliberately placed as a "you must learn to negotiate" impasse: he's without doubt the toughest opponent in FoF, and perhaps tougher than anything the PCs might face in the next module as well. Not only does the Roper have more hit points than God (well, OK, he doesn't, but he easily has more hit points than the party does amongst them), but he's cunningly designed to be a one-trick-pony party killer.
Its initial ranged attacks are subtly nasty: no damage, just a STR drain. It ropes you, and pulls you in. Slowly. It's the "slowly" part that is horrid: it, combined with the high AC of the creature and its tendrils, can lead the characters not to take it's danger seriously enough. Because once it gets you next to it, it's average melee damage is 36 points.
Our party got roped, and managed through luck and reasonable tactics to get themselves all free of tendrils and decided to run. Unfortunately, one character in the party was lower in the initiative order than the Roper: this meant that everyone else took off, and poor Marna was left standing there, agape, as the Roper re-roped her. On her turn, she tried to free herself, and was unable (she actually missed her roll by one). It pulled her in; one of the other PCs tried to run in to rescue, but before an escape could be effected, the creature had Marna next to it, and subjected her to a bite: it scored a critical hit for 74 hit points of damage. I looked at the dice, and said, "Well, the creature swallows the top half of Marna; there is a horrible crunching noise, and the top-half of Marna is gone."
Stun.
The most "meta-game-aware" player was not in attendance last night. If he had been, I imagine there would have been a panicked "Jimminy! That's a Roper! We have to leave now" exclamation earlier in the encounter. As it was, the Roper's game mechanics led to doom for these players, just as it has for so many before them. The Roper rope-a-dopes like the best of them.
I view encounters like this with an extremely jaundiced eye: what exactly is the purpose of the Roper's placement in this module? To me, it's more about teaching players to fear the Roper than it is about the story going on in the module itself. And really, how much utility will that have? When will these players next have occasion to face a Roper, really? Rarely, I suspect.
To make this death pay off, I have to now pledge to seed a Roper (perhaps this Roper) somewhere forward in this campaign, to make that meta-game cost the players anted last night come home to roost. Otherwise, the PC death seems horribly wasteful.
As part of our Rise of the Runelords campaign's effort to transition to the new-ish Pathfinder rules, the Monday PM players created new characters of their own, from scratch (when we started RotRL, we used the stock characters provided). I decided to use the first two or three original 3.0 "adventure path" modules ("Sunless Citadel", "Forge of Fury", and "Speaker In Dreams") to get these new characters up to the same level as the original four they'd already played through RotRL pts I and II, so that at the end of this diversion we'd have a stable of eight characters that could move forward into RotRL pt III and onwards.
Well, the Roper in "Forge of Fury" reared up and smacked them. The Roper is no doubt deliberately placed as a "you must learn to negotiate" impasse: he's without doubt the toughest opponent in FoF, and perhaps tougher than anything the PCs might face in the next module as well. Not only does the Roper have more hit points than God (well, OK, he doesn't, but he easily has more hit points than the party does amongst them), but he's cunningly designed to be a one-trick-pony party killer.
Its initial ranged attacks are subtly nasty: no damage, just a STR drain. It ropes you, and pulls you in. Slowly. It's the "slowly" part that is horrid: it, combined with the high AC of the creature and its tendrils, can lead the characters not to take it's danger seriously enough. Because once it gets you next to it, it's average melee damage is 36 points.
Our party got roped, and managed through luck and reasonable tactics to get themselves all free of tendrils and decided to run. Unfortunately, one character in the party was lower in the initiative order than the Roper: this meant that everyone else took off, and poor Marna was left standing there, agape, as the Roper re-roped her. On her turn, she tried to free herself, and was unable (she actually missed her roll by one). It pulled her in; one of the other PCs tried to run in to rescue, but before an escape could be effected, the creature had Marna next to it, and subjected her to a bite: it scored a critical hit for 74 hit points of damage. I looked at the dice, and said, "Well, the creature swallows the top half of Marna; there is a horrible crunching noise, and the top-half of Marna is gone."
Stun.
The most "meta-game-aware" player was not in attendance last night. If he had been, I imagine there would have been a panicked "Jimminy! That's a Roper! We have to leave now" exclamation earlier in the encounter. As it was, the Roper's game mechanics led to doom for these players, just as it has for so many before them. The Roper rope-a-dopes like the best of them.
I view encounters like this with an extremely jaundiced eye: what exactly is the purpose of the Roper's placement in this module? To me, it's more about teaching players to fear the Roper than it is about the story going on in the module itself. And really, how much utility will that have? When will these players next have occasion to face a Roper, really? Rarely, I suspect.
To make this death pay off, I have to now pledge to seed a Roper (perhaps this Roper) somewhere forward in this campaign, to make that meta-game cost the players anted last night come home to roost. Otherwise, the PC death seems horribly wasteful.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-23 15:18 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-23 16:32 (UTC)Pretty much all on her own, Marna removed 120 HP from the creature.
If it had been me, I'd have been screaming, "We did how much damage and the thing is still up? We need to book, now!"
Granted, the party did at that point realize they were well in over their heads, but they weren't able to fully extricate in time. 25% party losses seem rather better than things might have ended up.
I was least kind enough to only assess the STR drain on "first contact of filament" and not as ongoing damage, or even "every time you get hit with a filament", and this probably saved our heroes from a TPK.
I was told, grimly, to save the home-fashioned creature token and not recycle it, because, "we'll be coming back". Fair enough. At least they now know how deadly the damn thing is, and how susceptible it is to fire... and how many experience points the thing is worth (::shudder::).
The trouble with the Roper's position in the module is the Big Boss Fight really is a doddle if the party has any kind of success against the Roper... 8P
Mind you, I have some plans for when the party finally makes it into the Big Boss Fight that will toughen it up significantly (and help to tie the module better into the overall RotRL story). Not revealed here for obvious reasons.... 8)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-23 22:28 (UTC)By offering myself as a hostage while negotiations took place and being in immediate harm's way I was also right on the spot to hurl that magic token down the gullet of the Roper that split that Roper from the inside out when I shouted the activation.
::B::
no subject
Date: 2010-03-23 23:26 (UTC)