D&D 5E A Mess of OP Characters (magic items, rest mechanics, etc.)

[Oofta]

Are you saying the 6th level group of 7 "easily" took out a group of 25 non-mooks including multiple high level casters (so presumably 13+ level casters) without difficulty?

That's just head scratching to me! Multiple high level casters alone should be a challenge to a 6th level group - they have so many options!

Heck ONE high level caster played to the max will be very difficult for a 6th level group. For example, Improved invisibility and then some nice AoE is devastating (few groups stock see invisibility, especially all the time).



6th level PCs can be competent sure, but they don't have NEAR the shenanigans higher level groups can bring to the table!

Yeah, we need details on the scenario that @Retreater ran because on the face of it, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Then again, it seems like the group has custom items (perhaps from a module) like a "Wand of Reverse Gravity". So, yes, being able to cast a 7th level spell multiple times per day is going to cause issues. If you have an item that you would normally be able to cast once per day at 13th level and also have every enemy show up in fireball reverse gravity AOE without affecting allies, it's going to be an issue.

But without details we can't offer much advice. If they actually have such things, the only option may be to take away some of the toys. Giving a wizard this kind of power and then setting up situations where it actually works is kind of like giving the fighter a tank and then wondering what's wrong. I'd talk to the players outside of game time and ask how they want to fix this.

 

[Mort]

Yeah, we need details on the scenario that @Retreater ran because on the face of it, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Then again, it seems like the group has custom items (perhaps from a module) like a "Wand of Reverse Gravity". So, yes, being able to cast a 7th level spell multiple times per day is going to cause issues. If you have an item that you would normally be able to cast once per day at 13th level and also have every enemy show up in fireball reverse gravity AOE without affecting allies, it's going to be an issue.

But without details we can't offer much advice. If they actually have such things, the only option may be to take away some of the toys. Giving a wizard this kind of power and then setting up situations where it actually works is kind of like giving the fighter a tank and then wondering what's wrong. I'd talk to the players outside of game time and ask how they want to fix this.

Yeah, without context this is like those 1e stories where the group of low level PCs one shot Thor (using this one easy trick).

 

[MichaelSomething]

Have you tried throwing three hundred Orges at them?

 

[Retreater]

Here are two examples from last night's session. (Keep in mind that 2 players were absent, so we had a more manageable 5 players instead of 7.)

Encounter Example 1: Bandit Attack

Party comes upon a group of 13 CR 1/2 bandits, 1 CR 8 Fighter/Rogue, 1 CR 8 Cleric, and 1 CR 8 Wizard. (According to the Encounter Calculator, that's a Deadly encounter at 23 Challenge Rating.) The party was moving silently and taking cover, approaching the bandit camp. On one side of the road were 7 bandits and the Fighter/Rogue captain; the other side was the wizard, cleric, and 6 additional bandits.

The party was sneaking and beat the scouts' Perception. They also beat most everyone on Initiative. Party's sorcerer dropped a fireball on the side of the road containing the 6 bandits and the cleric and wizard. He is out of reach for Counterspell. Bandits killed instantly. Wizard gets pincushioned by ranger's longbow. Down to 4 HP, wizard casts invisibility and moves to behind cleric. Cleric casts 5th level cure wounds on the invisible wizard. Some minor attacks are done by the rest of the party - barbarian moves up and rages and fights bandit captain and is surrounded by seven other bandits. Not a lot of damage is done to the barbarian.

Sorcerer then casts Reverse Gravity from the wand - with enough range to get all the enemies. There is nothing but sand for the enemies to grab onto. The barbarian also flies up with the rest of the enemies. Sorcerer drops the spell. Everyone plummets 100 feet - but the sorcerer casts Feather Fall onto the barbarian, who safely floats to the ground. Everyone but the bandit captain is dead - and he surrenders.

My take: Yes, the Reverse Gravity Wand is overpowered for their level, but honestly - what would've changed without it? Every bandit was already dead. The wizard and cleric were down to about 1/3rd hp after one round. At best, the fight would've gone one more round, taxed nearly no resources, and done a middling of damage to the party. A 23 Challenge Rating fight?

Encounter Example 2: Lycanthrope Pack

Party is approached by a pack of 9 various lycanthropes (CR 16). As they approach, fireball dropped, killing half of them. Then - AND THIS IS MY MISTAKE - twin spell fireball a second time to kill off the stragglers who still have 11 HP or so each.

My take: Didn't know until reading DND Beyond discussions with designers that isn't spelled out in the book that a sorcerer's twin spell can only be used for cantrips. I will get resistance bringing this up in my group of rules lawyers. But that could've prolonged the combat "maybe" one more turn. There were 5 enemies left who still had a few HP. More than likely, barbarian would've killed two of them on the next round, Rogue killed one on her turn. And then the ranger killed the next two on his turn. In short - it wouldn't have mattered significantly.

 

[Retreater]

why on earth would they start with a buff if the fight is going so against them ?

Invisibility - just for the chance to see one more round of combat. It didn't work.

 

[mamba]

Party's sorcerer dropped a fireball on the side of the road containing the 6 bandits and the cleric and wizard. He is out of reach for Counterspell. Bandits killed instantly.

he should not even take out 6 bandits, unless you clump them together

Sorcerer then casts Reverse Gravity from the wand - with enough range to get all the enemies. There is nothing but sand for the enemies to grab onto.

even in a desert there are boulders and maybe some shrubs, let them have their saving throw. It’s like you make it intentionally impossible for the enemies to survive

Also, you know they abuse the wand, send them an ancient dragon with two young ones and see how that goes…

How many charges are in that wand, sounds like they should have used them all up by now

 

[DEFCON 1]

Some of my own suggestions when I face similar situations of larger groups of players:

- Max HP every monster.

- Add a bonus to every monster's attack roll equal to their HD equivalent of proficiency bonus (so up to CR 4 creatures get a +2, CR 5-8 get a +3 etc.) And add an extra die of damage to every attack. (Monster stats are too low in the MM as-is.)

- Monsters that have Resistance To Non-Magical Bludgeoning, Piercing & Slashing Weapons instead have Resistance to ALL Bludgeoning, Piercing & Slashing Weapons (regardless if they are magical or not.) For my money if Barbarians at 1st level get that ability to Resist all B/P/S attacks (magical or no), then almost all monsters that have Resistance to B/P/S should get the same thing.

- Don't use the Encounter Building rules, just throw down whatever you want on the battlefield. Or if you HAVE to use those rules, definitely do not use the rule that doubles the encounter worth for more enemies than the party-- because thinking 13 CR 1/2 bandits is worthy of balancing an encounter is not true in the slightest. For my money, also stop using anything lower than CR 2 after PC level 5 unless you treat them all essentially as minions that are meant to just make the players feel cool by crushing waves of them. If you take those "minions" out of the equation of your first encounter, you had 5 PCs versus 3 worthwhile enemies. So of course they were going to be slaughtered. Instead, make an encounter of equal numbers of powerful enemies and then throw a bunch of mooks onto the battlefield for flavor (since you know for a fact they will all die almost instantly from AoEs.)

 

[Mort]

My take: Didn't know until reading DND Beyond discussions with designers that isn't spelled out in the book that a sorcerer's twin spell can only be used for cantrips. I will get resistance bringing this up in my group of rules lawyers. But that could've prolonged the combat "maybe" one more turn. There were 5 enemies left who still had a few HP. More than likely, barbarian would've killed two of them on the next round, Rogue killed one on her turn. And then the ranger killed the next two on his turn. In short - it wouldn't have mattered significantly.

That's not correct.

Twin spell can be used for any level spell, as long as there are enough sorcery points. The limitation is that the spell must be single target only - and you can't target the same target with the twinned spell.

DnDbeyond even provides an example of proper usage - chromatic orb (a 1st level spell).

 

[Blue]

Let me give you the run-down of the situation, and maybe we can figure out some kind of a solution.

TL;DR - My group consists of 7 players, are fully loaded with powerful magic items, and face only 1-2 encounters per day. All of these elements are against the design intent for 5e.

• We have 7 players because there are three families involved. I can't "uninvite" people to pare down the group - as these are all friends.
• The players are mostly between ages 13-19. They enjoy showing off their power. And they're pretty much murder hobos.
• We played through OAR: Isle of Dread, which handed out gold and magic items Willy-Nilly. (Because, you know, there's absolutely no guidance for this in 5e.)
• Wanting to cash in their gold and buy magic items, we used the Level Up "Trials and Treasure" book for prices. (Because, you know, there's absolutely no guidance for this in 5e.)
• So now there are characters running around with very potent magic items (a Wand of Reverse Gravity - for example), which can basically one-shot an encounter.
• And the way the adventure is set-up (Necropolis by Frog God Games/Necromancer), there's no way to conceivably do a half dozen or so adventures a day (a barren wasteland, small towns, etc.)

I don't even mind that they're OP. However, I'm now getting complaints from players that they don't do anything. The caster comes in and wipes out any encounter in a single turn. People barely get an attack roll. "It's a waste of time to even roll Initiative.")

They are 6th level, easily stomping through an adventure for 6-8 9th level characters. Even without the magic items, I honestly don't think they'd be having much difficulty. And it's not like it has to be hardcore mode - I just don't want them getting bored, which is something they're telling me.

What can be done? I'm assuming that Necropolis won't take much time - we're past the midpoint of the book's adventure content after three sessions. I'd rather not add big house rules midway through an adventure. Maybe it's best to think about what should be done next?

I'm just at a loss here and want to give these kids the best time I can.

Casters winning all of the battles through early novas is 100% having 1-2 encunters per day. Completely throws off the balance between the at-will classes and the long recovery classes like crazy. Possible solution: Switch to the Gritty Rest variant from the DMG. Overnight is a short rest, 7 days (e.g between adventures usually) is a long rest. But if the casters have no thought to conserving resources and can always through out their highest level spells, this will cointinue to happen.

5e has always had how much magic items to give out, but it was hidden between the XP per encounter and the magic item charts because it was emergent, not explicit. An adventure that ignores that can easily go off the rails. It took three years for them to fix that by coming out with an explicit chart in Xanathar's back in 2017. It's on page 135, and will tell you expected number of magic items for the entire party. For example, a 4th level party should have a total of two uncommon major (~= permanent) items, and between 5th and 10th they should find 5 more and 1 rare. They are a 1/3 of the way through that, so say 4 uncommon item for the whole party right now. If you are way above this, you need to either take the items away (boo!) or amp up the encounters to match. Give all the foes +2 AC and saves and +10-20% more HPs and see if they are then appropriate challenges. Adjust until it feels right. (And this is assuming fixing the casters-I-win above first.)

Not having explicit item costs was one of the many fixes, like attunement, put in to avoid christmas trees of items what have been prevalent in earlier editions. It's the idea that buying or selling an item outside something like healing potions is a rare enough even the DM should be considering the people involved and the situation and coming up with a unique price to fit that. But yeah, in practical terms that's not everyone's game. Level Up gets a thumbs up from me, but it if's not working there are some decent fan-made item pricing guides, though I'd go for one from 2017 or later - some of the early ones under- or over-valued some aspects of items.

Good luck!

 

[Mort]

Here are two examples from last night's session. (Keep in mind that 2 players were absent, so we had a more manageable 5 players instead of 7.)

Encounter Example 1: Bandit Attack

Party comes upon a group of 13 CR 1/2 bandits, 1 CR 8 Fighter/Rogue, 1 CR 8 Cleric, and 1 CR 8 Wizard. (According to the Encounter Calculator, that's a Deadly encounter at 23 Challenge Rating.) The party was moving silently and taking cover, approaching the bandit camp. On one side of the road were 7 bandits and the Fighter/Rogue captain; the other side was the wizard, cleric, and 6 additional bandits.

The party was sneaking and beat the scouts' Perception. They also beat most everyone on Initiative. Party's sorcerer dropped a fireball on the side of the road containing the 6 bandits and the cleric and wizard. He is out of reach for Counterspell. Bandits killed instantly. Wizard gets pincushioned by ranger's longbow. Down to 4 HP, wizard casts invisibility and moves to behind cleric. Cleric casts 5th level cure wounds on the invisible wizard. Some minor attacks are done by the rest of the party - barbarian moves up and rages and fights bandit captain and is surrounded by seven other bandits. Not a lot of damage is done to the barbarian.

Sorcerer then casts Reverse Gravity from the wand - with enough range to get all the enemies. There is nothing but sand for the enemies to grab onto. The barbarian also flies up with the rest of the enemies. Sorcerer drops the spell. Everyone plummets 100 feet - but the sorcerer casts Feather Fall onto the barbarian, who safely floats to the ground. Everyone but the bandit captain is dead - and he surrenders.

My take: Yes, the Reverse Gravity Wand is overpowered for their level, but honestly - what would've changed without it? Every bandit was already dead. The wizard and cleric were down to about 1/3rd hp after one round. At best, the fight would've gone one more round, taxed nearly no resources, and done a middling of damage to the party. A 23 Challenge Rating fight?

Encounter Example 2: Lycanthrope Pack

Party is approached by a pack of 9 various lycanthropes (CR 16). As they approach, fireball dropped, killing half of them. Then - AND THIS IS MY MISTAKE - twin spell fireball a second time to kill off the stragglers who still have 11 HP or so each.

My take: Didn't know until reading DND Beyond discussions with designers that isn't spelled out in the book that a sorcerer's twin spell can only be used for cantrips. I will get resistance bringing this up in my group of rules lawyers. But that could've prolonged the combat "maybe" one more turn. There were 5 enemies left who still had a few HP. More than likely, barbarian would've killed two of them on the next round, Rogue killed one on her turn. And then the ranger killed the next two on his turn. In short - it wouldn't have mattered significantly.

So the theme here seems to be: The group gets the drop on a "big threat" NOVAs and takes it out?

Make that strategy less easy sometimes!

For example, if they're sneaking up on a bandit hideout with a CR 8 wizard? That wizard should have layered the area with Alarm spells. And possibly have other divinations going making sneaking up not so easy! And even in the encounter as presented, the wizard should have used feather fall, and then invisibly (edit: would have to be improved invisibility or cancelled by the feather fall, but idea still stands) fireballed the entire group (make it an evoker wizard and his own guys are unaffected).

Or another, use waves. The group NOVAs and then, woops, another encounter right after. One where they DO NOT have the drop on the bad guys, and likely can't NOVA so hard again.