My players are unstoppable

[Lady Chaomii]

I'm running a D&D3.5 game and just about everything I throw at my players gets sliced and diced and thrown over their shoulder like it was nothing. This -INCLUDES- high level boss fights.

There has even been more than one occation where one character or another got separated from the main group, and managed to take on an entire combat encounter, designed for the whole group, by their lonesome.

I feel like I could throw the entire cast of major villains at the players and they'd come out the other end with, maybe, a broken sweat. And I mean past, present and future villains, consisting of; a mob boss, a pirate king, a god, a giant robot, a brain eating alien that escaped from a B-Rated Sci-fi film and Barney the dinosaur.

And yet my Rules Lawyer told me that our characters are not only underpowered, but criminally underequipped to be facing the challenges they have been. I'm notoriously horrible at most games, and I wouldn't be surprised if my evernoobness is rubbing off on my encounters, making them much easier than they should be.

Any suggestions?

 

[Crothian]

What level are they and what are their classes? That can make a big difference. Are they going though modules or are you preparing your own stuff? Are they dealing with many encounters per day or are they dealing with a few and able to unload their best things at those foes? Are you playing the encounters smart or just rushing in the bad guys to fight at the PCs strengths?

There is a lot that can go into an encounter being easier or hard. There is nothing wrong with easy encounters as long as everyone is having fun.

 

[Morrus]

3.5 has a lot of "binary" stuff in it - a given challenge can be ludicrously easy or almost impossible, depending on the makeup of a party. There's a rock-paper-scissors element to it, almost.

For example - if you're prepared, an elemental is the easy to beat. Come in with a rogue (who can't sneak attack it) and a wizard who memorized spells of the wrong damage type, or without the appropriate damage-type buffs, and it can be very tough.

 

[TarionzCousin]

And yet my Rules Lawyer told me that our characters are not only underpowered, but criminally underequipped to be facing the challenges they have been. I'm notoriously horrible at most games, and I wouldn't be surprised if my evernoobness is rubbing off on my encounters, making them much easier than they should be.

Any suggestions?

Have the Rules Lawyer run a session or three and compare notes.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

And yet my Rules Lawyer told me that our characters are not only underpowered, but criminally underequipped to be facing the challenges they have been. I'm notoriously horrible at most games, and I wouldn't be surprised if my evernoobness is rubbing off on my encounters, making them much easier than they should be.

Any suggestions?

Ask your rules lawyer to run an encounter or two for the group. Whichever lawyer is interested in challenge and not just curb-stomping encounters, of course.

In my old 3.x group, a new DM had the same kind of trouble, with low level parties. I had to tutor him. It worked; he nearly ganked my "invincible wizard" two or three times. (Okay, once was an accident, but still...)

We don't have enough details. You've been asked for classes and levels, but I'd also like to know sources (what are you using beyond the PH1), and if you ever get the sense the players are taking advantage of your rules knowledge by cheating.

How many encounters do you usually have per day? It needs to be more than one. Ideally four, except at the lowest levels.

 

[nedjer]

Are these bad guys using cover, equipped with escape options, playing mean, positioning PCs in dodgy terrain, supported by endurance-sapping traps, making the fullest use of their magic items, familiar with poisons, taunting and provocative, getting all the bonuses they deserve. If so, that leaves - feed the party intestinal parasites at the tavern before they even set off

p.s. you have a rules lawyer. Dagger in the back, straight into the local river - result!

 

[Summer-Knight925]

Behold the power of the DM, for when we make him mad, he can make us tasty treats for dragons.


Field of anti-magic.
Flock of dragons
all while listening to "Friday" by Jessica Black.

It's friday! friday! gotta get down on friday!

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Welcome, L. Chaomii! Giving us more info will get you a lot of specific advice, but I'm going to give you a few general pointers now:

Any suggestions?

1. Use more enemies, not tougher enemies. It works surprisingly well.

2. Try to get your group 'on the same page' optimization-wise. (If some players are really good at making powerful characters, and some are struggling along, ask the savvy players to help the strugglers.)

3. Play 4th Edition. If you're already highly invested in 3.5, this may be the least helpful suggestion I can offer. But in all honesty, 4th edition is in large part all about avoiding the problems you're facing.

Good luck!

 

[S'mon]

My experience of high level 3e was that non-caster PCs felt like tissue paper and died like flies, so I had the opposite experience. In particular, higher level melee-brute monsters could easily trash melee PCs. I'd be very interested to know what happens in your game that you get the opposite experience - buff/scry/teleport?

 

[Water Bob]

3.5 has a lot of "binary" stuff in it - a given challenge can be ludicrously easy or almost impossible, depending on the makeup of a party. There's a rock-paper-scissors element to it, almost.

For example - if you're prepared, an elemental is the easy to beat. Come in with a rogue (who can't sneak attack it) and a wizard who memorized spells of the wrong damage type, or without the appropriate damage-type buffs, and it can be very tough.

I ran into this last night during my 3.5 based Conan RPG game. I threw two 5 HD critters against two 3rd level Barbarian PCs. One PC failed his fear check at seeing the unnatural things and split, so really, the one PC fought off two 5 HD foes.

And, he did it without losing more than 6 hp.

The difference was, by chance, the PC had come by some armor--a breast plate. The Conan RPG uses DR, so even when these buggies hit, they could only do 1-2 points of damage due to the PC's armor.

I hadn't planned on the armor when designing the encounter, but I'm the type of GM that says, "Good for the players!" when things just happen to go their way.

Without that armor, the encounter would have been extremely tough. With it, the encounter was just a hiccup during the session.