Damn tough boss fight ahead. What would you do?

[PhaedrusXY]

Yes the fight is hard, but nowhere near impossible, I'm pretty confident that a 2nd level warlock and a 2nd level druid could do this without needing the 2 other guys in the party.

Agreed, and See the Unseen and Summon Swarm are generic, yet very good invocations for low levels.  Only difference between them is that Summon Swarm is traded out in higher levels.

Even if the warlock didn't have See the unseen, he would have Detect Magic.  Guess who shows up like an LED?

Yeah, but you have to concentrate for 3 rounds to actually pinpoint auras, and if you do anything else you're not concentrating on Detect Magic... So unless you have a way to outline him for the rest of the party, or you can one-shot him by targeting his square, it's not doing you much good. You concentrate for 3 rounds, figure out where he is, do one action, and then have to start all over again if he's not dead. Meanwhile, he's pinging you with his returning dagger (forcing concentration checks), or whatever.

I agree with the other thread that this is an incredibly difficult encounter for many, many adventuring parties, and a large part of the reason it is so difficult is the stupid CR system...

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Torch bug paste (complete scoundrel) is good if you can hit him.  It's a splash, so there's a decent chance of that.

[Mixster]

Torch bug paste (complete scoundrel) is good if you can hit him.  It's a splash, so there's a decent chance of that.

Unless he is flying, so you can't hit his square (since he is floating in mid-air there is nothing for the splash weapon to smash against).

The real trouble here is dealing with invisible flying opponents w/ fast healing, and since a regular Imp can do just that. I would like to note that level 2 parties should be able to deal with such threats. The 3 levels of cleric, while nice, doesn't add enough to this imp that it goes overboard, since it can only cast 2 second level spells, gets very little from healing itself, and generally don't want to be in a situation to cast inflict wounds, so all it really can do with those spells is summon things.

Alternatively it could attempt to augment the aberration it summons, but even that isn't that powerful IMO.

So I don't think this is a flaw in the CR system, and agree that this is a CR 4 encounter, which is what the CR system sets it at.

The DM, in this encounter, does however seem to have buffed it's AC arbitrarily, unless it was under the effects of both a shield of faith and a Cats Grace spell, in which case it would only have a single 2nd level spell left, and most parties should be able to not be engaged by it.

A simply creature, such as a Tiger (that is also CR4) Could charge in from hiding (which it has a +11 bonus to in it's natural environment), and pretty much kill one PC in that round, then it would have to be shut down, with a spell or a lockdowner or it would be able to pretty much kill one character per round. CR 4 encounters are this dangerous when you are level 2, this is how it should be IMO.

[E-mail]

Well, the whole strategy part is a major weakness within this group. I did suggest that we planned the assault, but none of them were willing to do anything that would put them in harms way. Even when the bloody imp landed and the DM more or less gave up, they kept throwing things at it to avoid its melee attacks, and when they ran out of shit to throw they began delaying their actions hoping that someone else would absorb the imps AoO for the round. Their chickenshit behavior is the entire reason why I never get to play anything but tanking CoDzillas, but this time the urge to be God was just too strong. My hopes are that I will live to become level 7, at which point I won't really need the others to survive anymore.

@TML: The encounter is a part of Paizos 'Rise of the Runelords' campaign, so you may indeed have seen it described before.

[Mixster]

Well, the whole strategy part is a major weakness within this group. I did suggest that we planned the assault, but none of them were willing to do anything that would put them in harms way. Even when the bloody imp landed and the DM more or less gave up, they kept throwing things at it to avoid its melee attacks, and when they ran out of shit to throw they began delaying their actions hoping that someone else would absorb the imps AoO for the round. Their chickenshit behavior is the entire reason why I never get to play anything but tanking CoDzillas, but this time the urge to be God was just too strong. My hopes are that I will live to become level 7, at which point I won't really need the others to survive anymore.