Oops... PCs too strong.
You could always go with one of my dirty tricks:
Hasted, illusioned rust monsters to look like trolls. Throw in a stoneskin or the like and these puppies should remove most of that broken gear. Make them the beasts controlled by some evil wizard and let the wizard just buff his pets.
Add extra hit dice and maybe a template or two to enhance the rust monsters as needed for your party's power level.
Also there is the wonderful Mord.'s Disjunction that will make a party cry.
Hasted, illusioned rust monsters to look like trolls. Throw in a stoneskin or the like and these puppies should remove most of that broken gear. Make them the beasts controlled by some evil wizard and let the wizard just buff his pets.
Add extra hit dice and maybe a template or two to enhance the rust monsters as needed for your party's power level.
Also there is the wonderful Mord.'s Disjunction that will make a party cry.
Ukyo the undead
First Post
I think a (real) meteor swarm would do the trick.
Really, extinguish(sp?) this halfling.
You see, the Tarrasque is to D&D what the fever is to the human body. It showing up is most likelly a sign that something is going very, very wrong.
Really, extinguish(sp?) this halfling.
You see, the Tarrasque is to D&D what the fever is to the human body. It showing up is most likelly a sign that something is going very, very wrong.
Kristivas
First Post
GlassJaw said:
Being that I'm not a hardcore-poster, wtf is a 'troll'?
When gear is a factor with overpowering, it's easy to get rid of. I had a group 'think outside the box' once and make a ton of money for their level. Well, they buy a bunch of upgrades, and were doing better against encounters for their level than they should have. So, I fixed the campaign plot a bit and they had a little sea voyage. Here's what happened:
Oh my, is that a storm coming? The weatherman didn't say anything about this!
Hey, there's a dragon turtle circling in the water just under ship!
Those waves are getting bigger...
The lightning is getting closer...
I didn't memorize fly today!
Avast ye, travelers, get below decks! This be rough!
Okay Captain!
Wait... by Torm! Look at that wave!
No! We're doomed!
Oh Tymora save me!
Moradin's beard, I cannae swim lads!
Arrrgh!
*gurgle*
And they wake up, gear-free but alive, on an island.. the only survivors. Sure, they find decent gear in the watery Kua-toa dungeon off the edge of the island, but not as overpoweringly good as what they had before.
It worked wonders, with only a little complaining. After I got the island adventure going, everything evened out and we had fun again.
DonTadow
First Post
-- this comes from of course outside of talking to the player and discussing the situation with him, which I think is the best method. I'veran into a couple overpowered characters in my campaign and the easiest thing forme to do was talk to hte charcter to tone him down and make him more like hte other pcs.
As far as encounters go, make you make full use of the rules. People ca't sleep with armor on else they'll be fatigued the next day. Use this to your advantage by staging an attack during a watch where the cleric is asleep. Without a full night sleep, he may have already exhausted a great many spells (especially if other party members wer healed he previous night or if they had an xeptionally tough time so far).
Perhaps the party's recent sucess has angered somone hwom sends the rustmonster towards the party's camp. This cleric's power at this point must be legendary among his church, so fame of him and his great weapons and armor have probably spread throught out hte kingdom. You could even send speedy monks with boots of speed at the party in their sleep to sneak in and steal the cleric's weapons and armor. then make an adventure or arc concentrated on the cleric attempting to get his weapons and such back. Perhaps the journey takes so long that 15 levels may have passed by the time he gets this stuff back.
More or less the campaign can center around these items being key to a legendary construct, and they were in posesseion if his church when he was "loaned" the weapons on his journey. this way, he has the higherups in his church pissed off at him, he has other clerics aiming to gain the items abck and he has this big bad whom stole the items in the first place.
You should also limit his offensive spells by making sure he's going torhough his cleric duties. Praying in the morning, selecting his spells, donating and tithing to the church. The best way I control clerics from being too powerful is to have strict churches in my campaign.
----option 2-----
again, he's angered some high level npcs plans. instead of sending hordes of monsters at the party, he's going to trick them. I ran this encounter a bit ago. from what you describe your cleric sounds at seventh level
You can send an adamantium clockwork horror (mm2) at them. IN addition to having a once a day fortitude save instance death, they also have a neat spell called magical disjunction which massively disenchants a series of items.
As far as encounters go, make you make full use of the rules. People ca't sleep with armor on else they'll be fatigued the next day. Use this to your advantage by staging an attack during a watch where the cleric is asleep. Without a full night sleep, he may have already exhausted a great many spells (especially if other party members wer healed he previous night or if they had an xeptionally tough time so far).
Perhaps the party's recent sucess has angered somone hwom sends the rustmonster towards the party's camp. This cleric's power at this point must be legendary among his church, so fame of him and his great weapons and armor have probably spread throught out hte kingdom. You could even send speedy monks with boots of speed at the party in their sleep to sneak in and steal the cleric's weapons and armor. then make an adventure or arc concentrated on the cleric attempting to get his weapons and such back. Perhaps the journey takes so long that 15 levels may have passed by the time he gets this stuff back.
More or less the campaign can center around these items being key to a legendary construct, and they were in posesseion if his church when he was "loaned" the weapons on his journey. this way, he has the higherups in his church pissed off at him, he has other clerics aiming to gain the items abck and he has this big bad whom stole the items in the first place.
You should also limit his offensive spells by making sure he's going torhough his cleric duties. Praying in the morning, selecting his spells, donating and tithing to the church. The best way I control clerics from being too powerful is to have strict churches in my campaign.
----option 2-----
again, he's angered some high level npcs plans. instead of sending hordes of monsters at the party, he's going to trick them. I ran this encounter a bit ago. from what you describe your cleric sounds at seventh level
You can send an adamantium clockwork horror (mm2) at them. IN addition to having a once a day fortitude save instance death, they also have a neat spell called magical disjunction which massively disenchants a series of items.
HeapThaumaturgist
First Post
My recommendation for the overpowered little brother:
5 Noogies
2 Atomic Indian Burns
1 Over-the-Head Wedgie
That'll let him know who is boss.
--fje
5 Noogies
2 Atomic Indian Burns
1 Over-the-Head Wedgie
That'll let him know who is boss.
--fje
moritheil
First Post
Cartigan Mrryl said:
I see that I wasn't clear about my own position. I can send in an EL 5 encounter and play it out reasonably accurately, and it will usually wipe out a large portion of a group that should numerically be able to handle EL 7, and force the rest to flee. The problem is, essentially, that the monster routines are written sub-optimally. CR ratings sometimes assume DMs who don't know what the heck they're doing, and overly intelligent or overly stupid behavior for monsters. I know what I'm doing more often than not, so for me, the CR system is a little broken. I adhere to it, but it doesn't help that much.
I do award story arc XP, which you would call quest XP. I do not award XP for player creativity, but I do award XP for good RP. The creativity of characters should be solely a function of how intelligent and creative the characters themselves are, and should not be a function of how bright the players are. A 5 int barbarian cannot and should not come up with a clever solution to any problem, except something like how to put his pants on. If the player doesn't like it, too bad - they should have put more points into Int. I do not reward metagaming. If the player's character is more intelligent than the player himself, that can also be a problem, but I have no way of making real life players suddenly more intelligent.
What is it that enables the characters you have to crush anything? See, from my standpoint, it appears that it isn't that you aren't willing to kill them, it's that you have strange ideas about how to kill them. Why use the tarrasque, for example? That's an encounter of last resort. Why not send in succubi who look like commoners in need of help, mixed in with commoners who really do need help? A few kisses later and the cleric will have lost serious amounts of wisdom. THEN you send in some monsters to fight. When he goes to cast some spells - oops, no can do.
Why allow your character to flee the tarrasque? Does he know what it is? Why allow him to listen to his older brother? Isn't that metagaming? He should make decisions only on what the character thinks and knows, not what he himself thinks and knows, and certainly not based on the OOC input of others. If his cleric thinks he's invincible, why would he flee just because he can't recognize a new type of monster?
Let me close by addressing your comments on style and manipulation. I recognize that this is a matter of personal preference amongst DMs. My style is not dead-set on making a group do exact things. I run my game with multiple parallel side-threads, and let the characters decide where they go depending on what they think is important. Events in the world progress accordingly, and there is always more to do than can be done. So, if they don't go after the people who are hatching a plot to open a gate to the abyss, lo and behold, after enough time passes, demons will indeed start overrunning the world. On the other hand, if they don't go after the necromancer amassing bodies, they could face an undead army. It's up to them to decide what's important and what gets done. If they screw up, they screw up. My game is non-cinematic, and I do not have a habit of making things easy, giving extra equipment, or fudging rolls to keep people alive.
That's my DMming style. Your mileage may vary.
PS: I see what you mean about not having to worry about the plot, though, because you apparently are not running multiple independent events in the background. It's a downside of taking the "simulated world" approach that a DM has more stuff to keep track of.
Last edited:
Cartigan Mrryl
First Post
Alright, Moritheil, I'm quickly starting to like you. Ther ideas you give are GREAT, I should use those instead of my idea. Just to let you know: I'm not fudging rolls to keep ANYONE alive. Anyways, when you said
I agree with that, I'm sorry. I forgot that brute force isn't often the way to go. I just recently got the MM... I made up msot of my monsters since then (Using my friends MM for a base stats thing) so when I got the MM, I decided to hack-and-slash him to death, but I've been reading through it, and I launched a few ideas at him, he handled the Succubi kind of easily, they tried to kiss him, but he was all righteous, "Clerics don't take advantage of needy women," and besides that, his WIll was high, so their Suggestion to kiss them was beaten.
I don't know about metagaming, but I figured everyone knows what a Tarrasque is, it's the five-story building that wakes up every 5 years to eat... right? I used it on him with the thought of "I'll grapple him, then eat him... that's take care of him," but he decided to listen to the Ranger, my older bro, it makes sense though, his cleric respected the ranger's knowledge of animals/ monsters. (A feat I made up called [Hunter's Cunning]... House Rules.)
I forgot about the whole Base speed. I'm not a major rules guy... I memorize what's generally important, besides, the Tarrasque didn't attack the guys, they heard a big crashing sound and followed that sound to the Tarrasque romping through a village, eating people and breaking stuff, so my lil' bro attacked, and my older bro decided to use that feat to see what he knew about the Tarrasque. I told him what his roll granted, and he decided to tell the Cleric to flee, who was half way to the Tarrasque. I was thinking that once the Tarrasque was struck by the Cleric, he would turn around and grab him and eat him... and that would've been the end.
I'm quite sure I actually already tried that... obviously, lil' bro won.
Anyways, as for the rest, THANKS! I've read it all and I liked it all, they really made my imagination start to go, I'll post on here how I KILL the little bastard, okay?
ADIOS!
I agree with that, I'm sorry. I forgot that brute force isn't often the way to go. I just recently got the MM... I made up msot of my monsters since then (Using my friends MM for a base stats thing) so when I got the MM, I decided to hack-and-slash him to death, but I've been reading through it, and I launched a few ideas at him, he handled the Succubi kind of easily, they tried to kiss him, but he was all righteous, "Clerics don't take advantage of needy women," and besides that, his WIll was high, so their Suggestion to kiss them was beaten.
I don't know about metagaming, but I figured everyone knows what a Tarrasque is, it's the five-story building that wakes up every 5 years to eat... right? I used it on him with the thought of "I'll grapple him, then eat him... that's take care of him," but he decided to listen to the Ranger, my older bro, it makes sense though, his cleric respected the ranger's knowledge of animals/ monsters. (A feat I made up called [Hunter's Cunning]... House Rules.)
I forgot about the whole Base speed. I'm not a major rules guy... I memorize what's generally important, besides, the Tarrasque didn't attack the guys, they heard a big crashing sound and followed that sound to the Tarrasque romping through a village, eating people and breaking stuff, so my lil' bro attacked, and my older bro decided to use that feat to see what he knew about the Tarrasque. I told him what his roll granted, and he decided to tell the Cleric to flee, who was half way to the Tarrasque. I was thinking that once the Tarrasque was struck by the Cleric, he would turn around and grab him and eat him... and that would've been the end.
I'm quite sure I actually already tried that... obviously, lil' bro won.
Anyways, as for the rest, THANKS! I've read it all and I liked it all, they really made my imagination start to go, I'll post on here how I KILL the little bastard, okay?
ADIOS!
