jedibcg wrote: I know when the doppelganger showed we left the duplicated character to fight him. I don't know if that was the correct strategy but it worked well for us.
This was a very common strategy, and in my experience it was consistently an effective one.
On paper, the Doppleganger was stronger than most players, and had double the HP even on Normal mode. But this is one of the interesting mechanics, where Players using (skill-based) shuffleboard tactics have a distinct advantage over the DMs using Dice (random chance.)
I remember one situation where I, as the Doppleganger, carefully selected a target which I could hit with a roll of 15 or more (factoring in my to-hit bonus). I hit him 2 or 3 times in roughly 8 rounds (all very quick rounds, because fighting 1-on-1 is surprisingly fast, and I didn't mind getting out of Sync with Eric from time to time. In fact, it made the Doppleganger fight feel justifiably frenetic!) which is well within the odds.
He could hit me on a slide of 17+ on his own, and did so twice in 4 rounds. Then the Bard (rescued from the Purple Worm) started singing, and my opponent could suddenly hit me on a 15+. He slid well, and hit me 4(?) times consecutively, for more damage than I could pump out (the +4 from BardSong adds up fast over multiple hits!) and despite my desperate cries for healing from "my" party, I was reduced to a corpse in very short order.
So, although I was more "powerful", the skill-based slider m=combat gave a definite advantage to the more experienced players, and the BardSong was the kicker which did me in.
Other strategies included:
Using the Paladin to "Detect Evil." --> A couple parties did this. One used the power only once, and in that round the party dropped me half my hit points. Then the Paladin went back to the Purple Worm combat, and left 3 players to finish me off (although they also did some damage to their own party member once the Paladin wasn't there to point out the Doppleganger.) Another party - Hardcore, I am pretty sure - had the Paladin use his power twice, and then discussed using the Druid to Restore Power in order to do it again (though I can't remember for sure if they went that route.) Either way, I was dead very fast under the focussed fire.
Orb of Pelor --> One party brought 3(?) Orbs of Pelor into the fray. They would only do damage to the Evil Doppleganger, not to the party member, and when you add in the "thrown" (str-based) damage bonus, that added up to ~40+ pts of damage. One Orb hit their own party member, but did no damage. He was relieved.
One party's Cleric finished off their DoppleGanger with a Searing Light spell (20 pts of damage to Evil creatures) modified by Ring of Focus. The Doppleganger was already on its last legs at that point, but I thought it was an excellent Coup-de-Grace!
A couple of parties took the "Kill them Both!" route. They didn't care if they hit their own party member, they just went whole-hog against the Doppleganger. Both of these groups suffered some player death as well. One party Death's Door'ed their fallen member while the players finished me off next round (I was badly hurt already) and the other party.. well... the chain of deaths which resulted will go down in True Dungeon history.
Incognito wrote: Raven and Brad did most of the player coaching so they could say better what the Red/Purple ratio was like for Hardcore.
Based on the party cards and equipment lists I saw, it seemed like there were plenty of Hardcore groups that were not significantly Purped out.
In as much as I can recall, that is true.
A couple of HardCore parties which I wrote up had 2 or 3 well purpled players, and the others were busy sharing Charms or Rings of Heroism to bring their members up to 5th, and lending equipment to make sure everyone had an UR weapon... with the rest of their equipment being mostly Red- level and a couple other URs or Relics.
It made a HUGE difference if the URs players had were "Lenses of the Divine" or "Cloak of Shadowskin" or "Mad Evoker's Charm" or even "Widseth's Lute." It made relatively little difference if the URs were "Girdle of Hill Giant Strength" or "Plate +1" or a +2 Weapon.