Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Tom McCarthy 10-04-05, 04:18 PM	I think someone else may have raised this issue earlier. My party of 6 decent 4th level PCs entered the final battle at the climax of Whispers of the Vampire's Blade and seemed hopelessly outclassed. They fled fast and cut their losses, but I and they expected TPK if the monster decided to pursue. Right off the bat, they lacked the right weapons or spells to easily overcome the monster's damage reduction (10/magic and silver; so magical silvered weapons) and energy resistance (10 cold, 10 electricity). Since the monster drains two levels per hit, it only takes 2 hits to kill a 4th level PC, and their ACs of 15-22 didn't stack up well to a +9 slam attack. By comparison, the monster has an AC of 25 (26 or 29 on occasion) and fasthealing 5, for truly superior defences on top of temporary hit points from energy drain. So when they fled after 8 rounds, there was one dead, two drained to half levels, and the rest demoralized. What kind of tactics, spells and equipment do you think would let 4th level PCs win this fight ?
a_psh 10-04-05, 04:36 PM	Well, first off: this adventure is about hunting a vampire. If it's not clear from the intro, it should be after the first one or two encounters. By the time the PCs are facing Lucan, they should have equipped themselves with the right tools for the job (e.g. stakes, holy water, silversheen, scrolls/oil of magic weapon). If they're still unprepared by then, yes, it's going to be a massacre. My big issue with the adventure is in terms of some of the vehicles (those little sky-skiffs that can effectively move faster than airships and don't require elementals!) and with the whole dungeon-crawl bit at the end, which felt pretty unnecessary to me. The complex plot-based railroad built into the module can be hard to deal with if your PCS glide off at some point, of course.
ekomega 10-04-05, 05:29 PM	I'd like to know what level your PCs started at, if they only reached 4th by the time they fought Lucan? The adventure is intended for 4th level members, which means 4th level starting. By the time they complete all the encounters, they should be much higher by the time they reach Lucan. He's still difficult, but 4th level is too low to have a chance at him. As the DM, you do need to add in some Knowledge checks so the PCs can find out what they're up against, and equip themselves appropriately. Otherwise, he is too powerful. I would allow a final chance to get equipment at the last little outpost the PCs stop at. It seems with the downtime before the rail leaves, and the fact that the PCs are actively chasing Lucan and right on his heels, that would be the perfect last chance to load up on vampire killing tools. Sounds to me like your group has a recurring villain now.
Salla 10-04-05, 06:41 PM	Unless something went weird, Lucan should have revealed his vampiric nature at the ball in Trolanport ... so the PCs should have had at least a *little* time to prepare themselves for that fight. Before I try to give a tactical analysis, what classes/races were the members of the party? Me saying 'why wasn't anybody using scorching ray' won't matter if you don't have an arcane spellcaster. :)
Crimsonsun 10-04-05, 06:56 PM	If you followed the adventure path (Forgotten forge, SoTLW, WoTVB) there are at least a few +1 longswords floating around (unless your party SOLD them!) SoTLW also has a vial of silversheen IIRC... If you had trouble, you could do what I did and have the Soul Blade take Lucan back over and start swinging with it instead of his slam attack...
Tom McCarthy 10-05-05, 01:09 PM	In point of fact, the party was: Shifter Fighter 2/Ranger 2 Warforged (adamantine) Fighter 1/Wizard 3 HOrc Orc Paragon 3/Barbarian 1 Dwarf Fighter 1/Ranger 2/Dwarf Paragon 1 Gnome Bard 3/Gnome Paragon 1 Halfling Druid 2/Barbarian 2 Right off the bat, the party has some limitations. The wizard isn't the most reliable spellcaster due to arcane spell failure, for example. The 4 +1 swords were in the hands of the shifter, warforged, halfling and half orc, and the halfling had silver sling bullets and the shifter had the silversheen. They also had some oil of magic weapon (carried by the half orc). They had a chance to put together a silvered enchanted weapon or two. It sounds like two of the biggest problems are: I envisioned the module as a chase scene, generally presented it as such, and the PCs consequently were loathe to take 1-2 weeks off to train and level up (a feature of our campaign, not universally adopted I know). This would have made them level 5, and bought them more time to survive the fight. The characters, all of them lacking in Know(religion), didn't have the skill to know vampiric strengths and weaknesses. The players chose not to act on out of character knowledge (some of which was wrong, like thinking silver or magic overcame vampiric damage reduction) and due to pacing or lack of imagination, didn't consult someone who knew. I guess that's back in the DM's court; I could have had a high-level NPC cleric kick in the door. Secondary problems were: The party pinned their hopes on a couple of attackers aided by the rest of the party, and the rest of the party weren't strong support. The halfling pulled back when it was clear the next hit would kill him, for example. The wizard hung back and was ready to cast some spells, but wanted a sign the tide was turning in the PC's favour. So generally speaking, the consensus is that if the five survivors level up to CL5, stock up on a bit of the right gear and march back, they can win ?
ekomega 10-05-05, 01:50 PM	It depends on how the battle went. How much damage did Lucan take? Even with strategies, and with proper weapons, he's still very formidable for a level 5 party. Plus, he has lots of tricks up his sleeve, like turning into gas, spider climb, and summoning wolves, etc. He can always surprise a party at the last minute. Also, your PCs seem to be very unoptimized (i.e. not strong builds), which I'd consider a disadvantage against this particular foe. So.. they'd certainly have a better chance against Lucan with another level each, and with proper equipment, but I'm not going to guarantee anything. My group of 5 6th level PCs, with proper equipment, didn't hold their own against him very well (although they did win).
Sarlax 10-05-05, 01:58 PM	It looks like a number of factors were at play in bringing about the near-doom of the party. First, the adventure assumes the standard rules for power advancement. If you deny the PCs a level each, they're bound to be outclassed. It may have been better to extend the period of the rail travel to stretch long enough (with enough stops) to allow for training time. Second, the adventure screams, "It's a vampire!" over and over. Coffins, wolves, testimony of damage reduction/spiderclimbing, etc. Despite their admirable dedication to knowledge separation, they players failed in their preparation; they ought to have taken at least a short amount of time to arm themselves with the right knowledge and equipment to battle Lucan. Third, the party doesn't seem particularly optimized. There's a lot of muscle but no strong casters. The adventure assume 5th-level spellcasters (and probably access to 3rd-level spells through a wizard or cleric), but this group of six can't beat first-level, except for the wizard, who has that terrible 35% chance of spell failure. To be effective, the party first need to be concerned with its weapons. Even if they were given their level of experience, they couldn't do much to harm a vampire. DR 15/magic & silver will just neutralize the bulk of all weapon damage. Once they have the right gear, they can deal with him. If you give them a break to level, keep in mind the Lucan will have seen much of their fighting style and should thus be better prepared to face them. On another matter, the PCs should start focusing their talents. It looks like a lot of their choices have been made for flavor, which is great, but it's cost them access to high-level abilities which published adventures are always going to assume are present. It also looks like there's too much duplication; except for the gnome, there's a lot of warrior happening in this group. The presence of a full wizard would be handy, and a cleric would be great for those spontaneous Cures.
Tom McCarthy 10-05-05, 03:41 PM	The replacement for the dead half orc will probably be a Cleric 5, so that should help. Still, I think these guys would be better off not finding Lucan when they rturn for a rematch.
Tom McCarthy 10-05-05, 03:45 PM	Actually, the longer the train ride, the more my players threatened to 'derail' the plot and find Lucan before the set piece on the train or the set piece in the ziggurat. At one point, they talked about damaging the train.
JoshuaWilhoyte 10-05-05, 04:03 PM	We beat him without too much trouble, but we had done some research on vampires due to the Vampire in the previous module being responsible for a PC death. The Warforged was on the frontlines, and he's immune to Energy Drain. Everyone had a potion of Protection from Evil to stop the Dominate Person. We had a couple Silversheens, a silver stake, a couple +1 weapons and some Oils of Magic Weapon. We blew our one Scroll of Haste on the Encounter. He doesn't have all that many Hit points, and when he climbled up the walls we hit him with enough ranged attacks to make him come back after us (Undead Bane on the Artificer's crossbow).
TheLoneCleric 10-05-05, 04:31 PM	Ya...adventure went damn fast for some friends of mine because they had an undead slayer in the party.
Crimsonsun 10-05-05, 05:04 PM	The replacement for the dead half orc will probably be a Cleric 5, so that should help. Still, I think these guys would be better off not finding Lucan when they rturn for a rematch. That will help quite a bit, especially if they have a decent CHA and can roll well on a turning check ;)
Androlphas 10-05-05, 06:14 PM	I just finished running this adventure. Fortunately, my group realized Lucan was a vampire back in Trolanport. They began to prepare little by little in each city they came across. First, they reseached vampire weaknesses at a temple of the Sovereign Host, where they also obtained some holy water. Then they obtained alchemical silver weapons along with some wooden stakes. Here's more or less how they ended up armed: Myrick d'Cannith - male human wizard 4/swashbuckler 1: +1 longsword (belonged to Saber), holy water, stakes, true strike spell. Tzar - female changeling rogue 5: Alchemical silver short sword, holy water. "Splitter" - male warforged fighter 3: Alchemical silver greatsword. Rinya - female elf sorcerer 3: Alchemical silver crossbow bolts, holy water, wand of magic missile. Callista Esperanza - female half-elf bard 4: Holy water, party support with music, spells, and wand of cure light wounds. Loosely following the module's strategy, Lucan split his attacks between various characters, making effective use of Spring Attack and Mobility (drained two levels from Myrick in the first round). He dominated Tzar, who became a nuisance to the PCs while he climed up the walls and used Fast Healing to heal the first few scratches he got. Then he went back into the fray and attacked Splitter, who had a tough time getting a hit in. At this time, Callista had been using Inspire Courage (with a Brelish song to psyche out Lucan) and used her wand to cure Myrick, Rinya is lobbing magic missiles at Lucan, and Myrick is fighting off Tzar, while trying to ready a true strike spell on one of his stakes. Eventually Splitter gets a lucky hit (with an Action Point, I believe), bringing the full might of his greatsword to bear. Lucan is forced to pull back once more, but by then he was in range for Myrick to charge him with a stake imbued with the true strike spell (with an Action Point as well.) Lucan was defeated. His last word was the name of his (dead) sister. Moral of this story I guess is that an effective encounter hinges on player ingenuity along with some judicious DMing. I could have gone all out with Lucan's myriad powers, but that would not have made for a fun and suspenseful encounter. Still, just because your players didn't defeat Lucan THIS time doesn't mean they can't track him down to Karrnath and exact some sweet revenge ;) Sad note: One of Myrick's negative levels ended up being real. While he managed to get it back with a restoration spell (gotta love House Jorasco), he still didn't make enough XP to go up a level, even with the "cool idea" bonus I gave him for the stake with true strike. To Myrick's player: Sorry dude. You'll get that XP back soon, I promise!
Tom McCarthy 10-07-05, 04:11 PM	Androlphas, sounds like you let silver defeat the vampire's DR. Strictly speaking, I believe you need silver enchanted weapons to do so. Still, such a well-prepared party deserves recognition.
Finmot Ranzkin 10-07-05, 04:45 PM	We played through this module with a 6 man party of adventurers at 4th level. The party looked something like this: Changling Rogue 4 Half Elf Cleric 4 Elf Warmage 4 1/2 Dragon 1/2 Tiefling Lvl 2 Aristocrat (don't ask... its too painful.) Human Druid 4 Human Fighter 4 We ended up actually cutting the adventure in half. We took the alternate route following him over land. We caught him and his sister in the middle of the wilderness. The party got really inventive and only two of us made it to the carriage (the others lived, but their horses died.) We basically crashed the carriage. Lucan dropped one of the party members while the other one dropped his sister. Then Lucan took off. We knew he would be at the party and knew what he was. The party pretty much brought all the right equipment. The Warmage leveled him with spells while the party pelted him with holy water. In the end, the final blow was a critical from a stake. So the GM ruled we staked him right then and there. The druid took the body out the window and flew off on a griffin. The rogue pocketed the sword and we snuck out. It was pretty cool. It can be done, but the builds you showed make it almost impossible to survive. Too much multiclassing.
MerricB 10-11-05, 09:10 PM	Lucan went down extremely easily to my group. They didn't realise he was a vampire until the masquerade, but, following that, they took advantage of the short time they had at various towns along the lightning rail route to acquire holy water and other items that would help defeat him. Key moments: * During the carriage chase, a couple of character leaped onto the back of the carriage and threw burning flasks of oil through the window. In the confusion, Lucan turned into gaseous form and escaped into the forest. Meanwhile, his sister, who had been tossed off the carriage, turned invisible and followed him. The PCs were unsure if they had been successful. * During the masquerade ball, the PCs mingled, and the swashbuckler entered from the outside, through a high window, and got ready to slide down the curtains. That was fun. Lucan revealed that he was a vampire, and escaped in the confusion of the crowd. * After the crash of the airship, the party was extremely wounded. They worked out where Lucan was going and caught the Lightning rail. They also used a messenger to report back to Sharn and gain additional help. In fact, they expected to catch up with Lucan at the journey's termination... they didn't realise he was also on the lightning rail! * During the final encounter, Lucan was unable to dominate anyone, thanks to the cleric having cast protection from evil. A little preparation works wonders. The PCs all worked extremely well together and Lucan was down within a few rounds. IIRC, the party of 6 PCs was about 5th level by this stage. If you don't allow level gain during the course of an adventure of this sort, you have to start it at 5th or 6th level. Cheers!
WotC_Andy 10-11-05, 10:16 PM	I just ran this encounter for my Eberron group a couple days ago, and I agree that it's incredibly challenging. The group of five PCs (warforged Ftr5, goliath Bbn3/Rgr1, human Clr4, changeling Rog4/Sor1, azurin incarnate 5) took him out with only one PC casualty, though a couple others were on the ropes, and that was after taking care of just about every other monster in the dungeon. It sounds like your group was a bit underpowered, and certainly underprepared. While magic silver weapons are de rigeur for the veteran play group, even less-experienced players should be packing alchemist's fire, holy water, and a wand of cure light wounds by 5th level (all are touch attacks, which is like getting a +10 bonus to hit Lucan). The real trick, IMO, is organization in the fight. Lucan's getting back 5 or even 15 hp per round (fast healing plus energy drain), so if you're not putting more than that on him, you're doomed. Characters who panic after that first energy drain are in for a world of hurt. The cleric's cure serious wounds might be nice for healing, but it's probably better as a 3d8+5 touch attack. (And definitely get it out of your system before you lose it to negative levels.) Any character who either can't hit his AC or can't overcome his DR (Ms. Rogue, I'm looking in your direction) should be aiding attacks or AC of those who can. Glamorous it's not, but that +2 can be the difference between success or failure. Trips, bull rushes, and overruns are all decent tactics (though think twice if you'd be allowing him free attacks against you). Putting a high-AC warforged in his face is a one of your best tactics--Lucan's slam attack bonus is only +9 (giving him at best a 50/50 chance to hit the PC), and the energy drain is useless.
Edymnion 10-11-05, 10:35 PM	Honestly, something like that, I would have expected somebody to try and grapple him. Never underestimate how fast a grappler with armor spikes can completely shut an opponent down. Especially if the party artificer sticks Bane on them beforehand.
MerricB 10-11-05, 11:31 PM	I just ran this encounter for my Eberron group a couple days ago, and I agree that it's incredibly challenging. The group of five PCs (warforged Ftr5, goliath Bbn3/Rgr1, human Clr4, changeling Rog4/Sor1, azurin incarnate 5) Ok, I got the rest, but what's an Azurin Incarnate? (looks around a bit). Oh, Magic of Incarnum. The book that is waiting until tomorrow (when I get paid) before it becomes mine. I take it that the incarnate works well in the group, Andy? Cheers!
chrisros 10-12-05, 01:49 PM	Honestly, something like that, I would have expected somebody to try and grapple him. Never underestimate how fast a grappler with armor spikes can completely shut an opponent down. Especially if the party artificer sticks Bane on them beforehand. Grapple him? Yeah, I tried that at the embassy party. I had him in a great head lock. Two negative levels later, he turned gaseous and I realized that grappling a vampire was a really, really, poor idea. Chrisros
Chiyo 10-12-05, 02:54 PM	I think the setup is for the PCs to be ready for a fight vs a vampire by the time they make it to the ziggurat. The clues are there right from the start. In our case, it turned out to be a relatively easy fight. Cleric inquired about vampire abilities and weaknesses and made knowledge religion check to get basic information, then artificer and cleric in group got the right spells for it. Between protection from evil to avoid charms and such, bane-augmented weapons and use of the silversheen found in our previous adventure, damage reduction was not an issue. And luck with rolls didn't hurt either but I think it still came down to whether the party is prepared for him or not. And possibly also if party has very adaptive character classes that do well vs undeads. No matter how much you know about vampires, if you can't avoid charm and can't get silver magical weapons, it's gonna be a tough fight. It's probably up to the DM at that point to give PCs a break. A silversheen potion is really not a big deal to insert as one of the loots in previous fights if you know PCs won't get silver weapons. Scroll or oil of magic weapon isn't too hard to come by either. Maybe it can be provided to the PCs by one of the helpful NPCs they encounter (either at time of employment or after the ball). And also it may depends on DM running the vampire. Vampire has plenty of ways to flee admitedly and thereby regenerate wounds while party expends resources. If he sees silversheen applied to weapons, he could decide to retreat until the duration expires and then hit the PCs again. If PCs are having a hard time, he could not play on that hit and run tactic as much as if PCs are having it easy against him.
AlDaRoN Arg 10-12-05, 03:51 PM	My group is about to fight him, and they are 5 PC all 4th level. They are prepared for him but is going to be hard for them. Anyway they almost kill him at Trolanport, when he tried to kill the wizard the paladin smite him almost killing him with one punch, if the party wizard haven't missed his scorching ray they would have killed him right there.