Dealing with Smigmal and Falrinth (for weaker parties) *Spoilers*

Discussion in 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' started by pblack476, Sep 29, 2014.

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  1. pblack476

    pblack476 Established Member

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    There are a thousand ways to go about killing those two. But very few ways to do it underleveled. So here's what I did today:


    Fundamental requisites: Charm Person


    I was in the secret passageway and found myself trying to whack Falrinth before he could cast his spells. Usually I have a rogue or two to do this while undetected with sneak attacks. But this time I was running with no rogues in the party.

    So I tried to Charm him with my enchantment specialist bard.

    It was very hard. My DC was 17 and he had 13 points of natural bonuses. So I was hoping for him to roll a 3 or less. Not very good at all for me. I was basically going to reload until I got the results I wanted... I decided not to cheese the game like that.

    So I turned to the other side of the hall and tried the same on Smigmal.

    She has only 4 points of natural bonus! A very plausible sucess rate even for weaker casters than my bard!


    Then, after charming her, I got her behind Falrinth. Luckily, when you charm her, she automatically enters sneak mode, and that makes it possible to enter falrinth's room with her and position her behind him.

    Then, toss your best damage spell/arrow on falrinth from out of his sight to start the combat.

    Smigmal has amazing initiative and will likely attack him first. She deals around 30 DMG per sneak attack, and she performs two. With a good magic missile and her damage alone, you can hope to take him down before he does anything else.

    Then dispatch the quasit and you just got a nice bit of XP.

    Now, let's not waste this lvl 13 rogue! Take her to DL 3 from the passageway. I just put her in the ogre room and let her get bashed there. If you keep a good distance, she won't attack the ogres and will just take damage. If you close in, she will probably attack them and you could, theoretically, keep her alive longer, charming her again eventually, to clear out more of DL3. I chose not to go THAT far.

    When she gets badly wounded she will start her dialogue as normal. But will return to combat still charmed.

    When she got unconscious, I put an arrow in her just to make sure that I got the kill (I don't think it's necessary to damage her in order to get the XP since when you charmed her, combat started)

    Then, dispatched the ogres and got 3x the XP I got from falrinth without much danger.

    When you return to the passageway, both assassins will be there as well, and you can take care of them whenever you want without smigmal or falrinth around.


    I suspect it is possible to do that even at levels 2 or 3, when you first get charm person. It would be insanely risky and you would have to access the secret passageway from DL3 since you probably wouldn't survive the fight in the broken tower (I don't know if letting lareth go or letting him join makes the broken tower brigands peaceful, if it does, it may be a way also). But anyway, doing it at those low levels might give a very quick and relatively easy boost to XP.

    It is also very fun!
     
  2. Kharagh

    Kharagh Established Member

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    Or, as a 1st-level character you could recruit Furnok, send him to his death so that you can claim his "precious". With the ring of invisibility you can then sneak into Lareth's room, steal his journal, use that to travel to Nulb, then talk to Otis to gain access to the temple, go down to temple level 2 without fighting anything, use the ring to sneak past the ogres in the hallway of temple level 2 to the stairs in the "prison area". Then head down to temple level 3 and without any encounters, get to Thrommel's room. Once you recruit Thrommel, you can use him to kill smigmal and falrinth. If you wanted to keep going, you could then grab the golden skull which opens the stairs to Zuggy. You then go confront Zuggy and take her gems. You just won the entire vanilla version of the game - and you're 1st level (with enough XP from Thrommel's fights to get to 3rd)
     
  3. pblack476

    pblack476 Established Member

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    But the point is getting quick XP. Not finishing the game.
     
  4. Kharagh

    Kharagh Established Member

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    Oh. I thought the point was eliminating Smigmal and Falrinth while low-level. Well, if the point is to get XP, recruiting Thrommel is still probably more useful than charming Smigmal (given that Thrommel easily defeats Smigmal every time they fight - he's probably better).
     
  5. pblack476

    pblack476 Established Member

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    But Thrommel will steal XP. Charming her and killing her gives you more.
     
  6. Kharagh

    Kharagh Established Member

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    In the short term, yes, killing her without Thrommel will be a little more XP than with him. But since Thrommel could go on to kill many more opponents than Smigmal, Thrommel will net you more than charming Smiggy - although there's nothing stopping you from doing both.
     
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