What was the typical total soak of your PC's facing Izka and standard damage?

He's quite the damage-dealer etc. Seems to need an ironbreaker or similar to face him, no?

Rob

Yes, as I've said in another thread, Izka was capable of putting down any one of the 3 PCs in my group with a single blow with a good enough roll. Without a party full of combat monsters, this really shouldn't be run as a combat encounter as the PCs just need to get the stone and flee as quickly as possible.

Our Waywatcher hit Izka for 15 wounds in one Sniper shot before the Trollslayer took him on. the Trollslayer went down just after killing Izka, but the big beastie had already suffered a couple crits that made it much tougher for him to fight.

Basically, he's tough toe-to-toe, but attacking at range made a huge difference.

Thanks, I've run test combat (the players leave their sheets and bits with me as I own box) and yup trying to do things like Immobilizing Shot to keep Izka pinned down very important etc.

The "story" aspect works best I think if it is more about "getting the stone and carrying it off" rather than "trying to kill Izka" though it can be up in air as to whether it goes down that way.

Ultimately the cart may there as much to help carry off the unconscious PC's as much as the stone.

I have found most of the combats in Gathering Storm needed to be toned down for my group. I have 6 players but only one of them, a Pit Fighter, is any good in melee. The rest are mostly social rogue types that have low toughness and no armor. I used a very small number of beastmen supporting Izka plus Foaldeath helping out but we still finished with 1 character unconscious and two more with critical wounds. In the end it was a character with a long bow that standing at medium range that did most of the damage.

I realise that the writers face a bit of a problem with this. The difference between a combat ready character, such as an Ironbreaker, and a social character is much greater than in most games. Whilst I think this is a good thing it obviously make it more difficult to write challanges for if you dont know the party make up.

Izka put the dwarf bounty hunter down in two rounds and would probably have taken out at least one other player if they hadn't managed to take him down themselves. He's definitely a serious threat and the PCs are probably best off avoiding a head-on fight with him. Luring him away from the herdstone would be the best option.