DM having Epic difficulty, seeking other DM experience

[BobTheNob]

Our party is doing epic now, and if I am noticing one thing more than ever, its that they are utterly trouncing the opposition. Im doing my best to come up with challenging encounters, and yes, Im using the battlefield to create that challenge, but no matter how much I try, Im finding it hard to challenge short of DM barstardry (The only thing that has really worked was seperating the party at the beggining, but even that only really created initial confusion)

Its not a question of party damage. Yes, our paladin (i.e. not the striker) is averaging around 100 on a crit, and the strikers are even worse. But then, given epic level hp's, I dont have an issue with that

Its not a question of monster damage. I am using monster sourced from MM3 and the Vault. When they hit, they are doing enough to make the party notice.

What it is is the sheer number of things party members can do to the creatures. Just about every party member has a lineup of control effects (the pre-essentials controller is an irrelevancy to me...everyone controls) except the warlord, and its the warlords who practically all but guarantees that party members go first on init (specced up, high init warlord).

So battles open, and most of the opposition is either dazed/stunned, immobilized/slowed, weakened, in a zone that is doing damage and is difficult terrain. Good chance a large number of them are taking ongoing. Those that arent totally screwed over are the ones the strikers focus fire on.

I have tried multiple techniques to create challenge, but cant help but feel that the thing lacking is defences against these things on behalf of monster design. Either that or pre-essentials classes just shouldnt have so many darn control powers if they arent a controller!!

Now Im really trying all sorts of stuff to restore the balance (basically the grab bag of all previous posts on this forum). What I an wondering is whether anyone else out there has had the same experience and as a DM how did you cope with it?

 

[Brys]

While it's not fun as a player if the DM tries to invalidate your schtick, it doesn't hurt to throw curveballs occasionally. If anything, this highlights how effective their build normally is.

It may just be a matter of upping the power level of the enemy (higher level, or more enemies - be careful before doing both). What level encounters are you throwing at them? Is it a matter of them working well together? If your party built for team optimization and works well together, that can be tough to get past.

Here's what I found in my play experience: when PCs get to this level, they have so many options that there is a short discussion before each persons turn. This allowed for optimal tactics and REALLY slowed the game down. I'd frequently go refill my drink or grab a snack between player turns and not miss a thing. Once I started getting bored, I put them on a clock. The whole round is supposed to last 6 seconds. To simulate the confusion of battle, they would have 20 seconds between when I said it was their turn and them rolling dice. I didn't ever penalize them for taking too long, but having a deadline sped things up made combat more chaotic. More chaotic meant less formulaic and thus more interesting for me. They were still mopping up, but it wasn't as clean each time.

Use waves. If the battle is going too easily, bring in a back-up group of enemies. Not too many, but enough to be a concern. Monsters usually get wiped at this level because the PCs get many more actions than the monsters (due to minor attacks, action points, move action attacks, triggered attacks, etc.). Even that up by adding more monsters.

Force the issue with the short workday. At that level, they have enough dallies that they can use one each battle. My PCs were trying to get an extended rest as soon as someone ran out of dallies. It wasn't until I forced them to push through it that they started getting challenged. Monsters are built to die in one battle. PCs are built to be at risk of death over the course of a day. It's not the first battle that's the real danger. It's the last battle of the day (provided the rest were challenging enough that they spent dallies and used surges). Don't let them rest before they get to that last battle. My PCs enjoyed it because they could still feel uber-powerful in the early battles but were still challenged in the later ones without me needing to make every fight a TPK risk.

Edit: Just wanted to stress: it's okay to let them mop up occasionally (I try for once per meeting) so that they get joy out of their powers. But they (or you) will get bored with that if they start feeling invincible. Your fun matters too. If that only comes by putting the PCs in jeopardy - do it. Just be aware they may not want you to DM if they pick up that you don't have fun unless one of them dies.

 

[Hejdun]

I think it's just the nature of the beast at epic. My DM told us after a not-particularly-hard battle that we just beat a level 34 encounter. At level 25.

One thing that helped was that we had a plethora of stunning powers, so in pretty much every battle the biggest opponent never got an action. I would find a way to protect your biggest, baddest opponents from stunning somehow, and make him particularly tough.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

The main group I play in is still just at mid-paragon, but I already see some of what you are talking about. I suggest you do what I have done as a player -- chomp up the good stuff in Essentials.

Give one of your bosses the equivalent of Superior Will -- save against those Stunned and Dazed conditions at the start of your turn. It might seem "too good", but hey, the smart guys at WotC thought it was okay for PCs.

Use minions liberally and in waves so they can't all be brought down in round 1. The minions can clog strategic points, provide CA, and use Aid Another to give the boss bonuses to saves and defenses. The party will use area attacks to sweep away the minions, but in so doing they will be forgoing the heavy hitting single target attacks against the boss.

One thing I would warn against, based on recent experience -- don't go too crazy with auras and swarm creatures. In the past three weeks I have sat through three separate tedious combats because my character was rendered almost completely ineffective by a combination of monster abilities, all of which hampered melee characters but did nothing to deter ranged characters. (No disrespect to my DM -- I know he didn't do it on purpose.)

 

[jcayer]

I'm there too. The party warlord is the cause of most of my pain. He breaks/rewrites so many rules that it's hard to know if those are real powers, or he's making stuff up.

I've been experimenting with some things, longer times between full rests...I particularly like to have a big encounter, so they use a lot of their dailies, and then drop a couple midrange challenges on them. By the end, they're hurting.

Find ways to remove healing surges outside of combat. That takes some wind out of their sails.

As a group, we've been talking about eliminating the stunned condition, or at least having it drop to a daze after the first lost turn...it's just not fun for anyone.

I'm also a huge fan of monsters that go every round. The beholder is my favorite creature.

 

[Madaxemat]

Have you read aegeri's post on Epic play.

I found it particularly enlightening on. In summary:
1. Press your PC so their Healing surges and Dailies are spreadout over multiple difficult fights.
2. Use high damaging monsters (damage is much better that Status effects)
3. Throw everything you have at them


What I would add to that is that you need to set a house rule that all until end of X powers count as save ends for solos (and then build into most solos with ways to easily trigger saving throws or out of initative spots to take saves). With this a party will struggle to "chain stun" a solo into nothingness.

Disclaimer: I've never run a full campaign from 1-30 but have run a few mini campaigns at epic level and they went much better when following this advice.