A Man In Black
First Post
With or without that spell, that party should be able to all but ignore the efforts of CR8-10 encounters, no matter how many of them there are, for the same reason that a level 10 party (especially one with eight members) should be able to mow down any number of goblins. These are foes that should pose no challenge whatsoever to an 18th-level party.Aluvial said:Thanks for all of the comments. Playing a bunch of high level characters is a problem. Let me explain the current encounter some. They are facing off against around 105 9th level barbarians and their leaders. Thre are 12 clerics of 10th level, one high level druid, and a tough, BBG around CR22. Some of the barbarians have flying mounts (chimeras) and there are four giant monks of 6th level. The group is assaulting a hill top where the bad guys are camped. I thought that this would be a tough fight, but in 8 rounds, they've decimated the barbarians and the bulk of the captains, taken out all four monks, and ruduced the bulk of the chimera riders and the clerics to ash. At the end of their surprise and squad tactics, the leaders took flight to fight another day.
So they expended at least three 9th-level spells and took a casualty against an extremely formidable foe, and you have a problem?As for the dragon, I'd love to talk about it. It took me four hours to design with the help of the Draconomicon, Epic, and the MM (3.5). I used a computer (E-tools) for the initial design. Once I loaded the dragon with a host of great sorcerer and cleric spells, I gave the dragon surprise, with 5 rounds of prep spells, including a Time Stop for an additional three rounds of prep. The Dragon's Lair was underground, but large enough for the dragon to Wingover for another Flyby Attack or breath weapon routine. SR was high, abilities were high, I even assumed that once the dragon had adopted a high enough INT, and enough 9th level spells, it cast repeated wishes on itself to boost its stats by +4; all of the ability scores. The first attack was from invisability and hit the group with a Maximized Breath Weapon. WHAM! Killed the Wizard. Singed some, others evaded. Then I flew into a perch high above to cast spells and wait for the breath weapon to return. The group was grounded due to Dragon Lair Protections of some such nonsense. Essentially no fly or levitation. So how did they do it. The dimension doored, they teleported, they even managed to stun the dragon for a round to allow the fighters a shot at him. I thought I had it in the bag with all the prep, and yes, I was looking to end the campaign right then and there. They beat it! It was tight, but they pulled it out. Anyhow, I can take critizism, lay it on me! In both cases, the group is just able to assorb to much HP with the spell. I could see it effecting less, but since I have eight, it just does too much help, at the end of the first 7 rounds of combat, the group in the barbarian camp raid have taken in most cases, less than 10% of their total HP. Toss in the fact that the cleric can cast a Mass Heal, twice, and that's 250 HP X 8 PCs X two spells; it's a lot to overcome.
I think you underestimated the mobility of both the dragon and the party; the dragon could easily teleport somewhere completely inaccessible to the party to buff up again. Once a party can cast Dimension Door over and over again, there's not anywhere in LOS that should be inaccessible to them.
No, it wouldn't be balanced, for the same reason that Protection From Energy is lower-level than Fireball. Offense is always more valuable than defense, because defense can be circumvented.My thought now is to invent the counter spell and ask if it is balanced. How about a 9th level cleric spell that allowed all of your comrades to add 50% to all of their damage? Does that sound broken?
It seems like the causes of your problems are overestimating the effectiveness of level 10 characters against level 17 characters and underestimating the mobility of a level 17 party. I don't think one (admittedly powerful) defensive spell is the cause.