3.5 breakdown at high levels?

[VanRichten]

Finally, here's a challenge:
Make a group of enemies to challenge a 17th level party.
1) One must have PrC.
2) One must be a monster with class levels.
3) One must have an animal companion (so bring those stats too).
4) One must have a template.
5) One must be a spellcaster.

If you're not so utterly disgusted by the time you reach #4, congratulations, you're a masochist.

Would an Orc Wereboar Druid/Warshaper fullfill your request?

What about a Drow Half-Dragon Ranger/Sorcerer/Arcane Archer?

While I admit I didn't actually post the stats it took me about 20 seconds to come up with these ideas.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Would an Orc Wereboar Druid/Warshaper fullfill your request?

What about a Drow Half-Dragon Ranger/Sorcerer/Arcane Archer?

While I admit I didn't actually post the stats it took me about 20 seconds to come up with these ideas.

I think making up the stats was the point, not just shouting out the names.

 

[billd91]

Finally, here's a challenge:
Make a group of enemies to challenge a 17th level party.
1) One must have PrC.
2) One must be a monster with class levels.
3) One must have an animal companion (so bring those stats too).
4) One must have a template.
5) One must be a spellcaster.

If you're not so utterly disgusted by the time you reach #4, congratulations, you're a masochist.

I don't mind doing these things but I have to ask: why must I do any of these particular things to make a challenge to a 17th level party? And, more to the question, why would must I do them all at once? This sounds more like you're trying to make a point rather than provide an example of a typical 17th level encounter a DM would have to devise.

But then if you've been DMing that campaign since level 1, you've got some tools around to make these issues easier. Got a stat-block of a riding dog to advance as an animal companion? Check. Got a low-level caster I can advance? Yep. Got a half-fiend drow fighter I can revise to the right level? Sure. I've got a whole bunch of building-blocks lying around...

 

[AllisterH]

For me, the biggest issue is the glass cannon effect after level 12 I encountered.

PCs by this point can significantly trash monsters in the MM above their CR level (I'm not talking CR 2 or 3, but even CR 5 and 6) with the proper applications of buffs/ablities/spells/magic items.

Yet at the same time, they still can't withstand an attack if the monsters win initiative and the monsters are even CR or CR -1).

There's got to be a wider range than

"oh, we win initiative, (1 hour of real time later), ok, we did X points of damage and monster is stunned/immobilized etc.

and

BBEG wins initiative, "crap, we're dead"

 

[Spatula]

Finally, here's a challenge:
Make a group of enemies to challenge a 17th level party.
1) One must have PrC.
2) One must be a monster with class levels.
3) One must have an animal companion (so bring those stats too).
4) One must have a template.
5) One must be a spellcaster.

If you're not so utterly disgusted by the time you reach #4, congratulations, you're a masochist.

You're the DM, so the only one forcing you to make such a group to challenge a 17th level party is... you.

I have made such groups at high levels, although I don't mess with PrCs (or unusual base classes) when building NPCs. Stick to what you know, don't obsess over every skill point, and NPC construction isn't an exercise in self-flagellation. The spellcaster would be the only time-sink as you determine what buff spells it had and their effects on the group - and that's a serious chore.

 

[VanRichten]

Well if you prefer I can always make the characters. I don't think it takes that long to do that. But I must state that if you want this type of challenge then it will be time consuming to create, because afterall it isn't directly found in the Monster Manuel. No monster manuel has something as specific as that. If you want specific and easily created then use what is in the book. If you want more you will have to create it. No system will make it so easy that you can just in 2 minutes have exactly what he stated, not even 4E.

 

[Hussar]

You're the DM, so the only one forcing you to make such a group to challenge a 17th level party is... you.

I have made such groups at high levels, although I don't mess with PrCs (or unusual base classes) when building NPCs. Stick to what you know, don't obsess over every skill point, and NPC construction isn't an exercise in self-flagellation. The spellcaster would be the only time-sink as you determine what buff spells it had and their effects on the group - and that's a serious chore.

I think this illustrates his point quite nicely. The stock advice for designing high level encounters is, "Just fudge it". Ignore the actual rules and come up with something close.

That is not a strength of a system that is designed to have actual rules for each step along the way.

Sure, I can fudge it. But, that's not the point. If I have to ignore the rules, or if the rules make my job harder, then those are bad rules, no matter how you slice it.

 

[Spatula]

I think this illustrates his point quite nicely. The stock advice for designing high level encounters is, "Just fudge it". Ignore the actual rules and come up with something close.

What? That's not what I said at all. My advice for designing high level encounters is: use stock elements and modify to taste.

 

[Najo]

Something that really hasn't been laid out in this thread yet:


As characters in 3.5 get higher in level, they begin to remove obstacles or create major headaches, making it extremely hard on the DM to challenege them.

Here are some of the issues with high level game play:

Reliable Flight in Combat
Ethereal and Shadow Movement
Teleportation
Polymorph
Divination/ Scrying
Speaking with the Dead
Save or Die spells
Wish

I am not saying that characters shouldn't be able to do these things, but the way 3.5 handles it is frustrating for a DM and makes planning and challenging players very hard.

 

[Runestar]

Few more observations.

Forcecage shuts down any foe of huge or smaller without the ability to teleport. It has an obscenely long duration as well.

Maze is not as bad, but still debilitating. Imagine throwing a pair of death giants at the party, only to have the wizard maze/forcecage one of them, effectively removing it from combat. The party than focus-fires on the other one, before discharging forcecage/waiting out maze, then gangbangs the other.

As noted, flight is an issue, since an astute party can just hover out of reach of a non-flying melee foe (like the tarrasque, which is the poster boy of crappy high-cr monster design).

Gate is problematic as well.

Basically, while the point about 1-turn kills is likely an exaggeration, it is not really that far off from the truth. By the first 1-2 rounds, even if the enemies are not yet dead, the outcome of the battle should more or less have already been dictated, with most of them disabled in one way or another (eg: trip-locked, held/paralyzed/forcecaged/grappled, separated by walls of force, blinded etc).

Here is an example of what one can expect in mid-high lv play.

Another really funny party was Fighter, Wizard, Wizard, Nymph. Both of the wizards focused on control spells, with one favoring summons and the other favoring defensive stuff. Basically, this party was the exact opposite (even though the fighter in this party was one of the fighers in the other party) of the other. They simply did not so any damage, instead completely looking up the fight with stunning gaze, acid fog, wall of ________, trips, summoned elementals, etc. while slowly chipping the opponent away. Every combat took a long time to resolve, but usually it was a forgone conclusion early on. The opponents would get seperated and stalled while the fighter individually pounded them. For a powerful single opponent would be subjected to repeated save-or-abilities from behind barriers of spell created obstacles and the fighter. Probably the most "professional" party I'd ever been in, from the perspective that they always were able to solve every encounter they faced with a clear, efficient strategy that was often ad-libbed and always effective.

It also helped convinve me that the game is less fun with two wizards, because you really, really always have a solution to every problem as a standard action, even when both wizards are intentionally limiting their spell lists for thematic and balance concerns.

But, seriously, the second party absolutely controlled combats. I remember one encounter involved them getting surrounded and ambushed by a group of Gythanki bandits on a barren stretch of an unfamiliar plane with the only terrain feature being the Mercenary and Pacifist Sphinx that they were riding who decided to take a nap when the action started. Being surrounded by enemies (two of which had ninja levels which we all know are deadly against wizards who haven't got detect invisible up!) would seem to be a tricky encounter, especially with no walls to use blocking out enemies. But the party quickly readjusted to the situation, rushed one side of the fight, disabling as many as possible before covering themselves with solid fog to prevent retaliation. The enemies wanted to avoid clumping together, so they kept spread apart while the party "fog cloud jumped" attacking one or two at a time before going after another. At one point in the fight every single Gith was stunned, held or tripped and there was at least 8 of them. In fact, the party only ended up killing one of them when the Nymph cdged one of the held opponents. She felt really guilty about that, particularly her player after I mercilessly added three minutes of gory details to the "Merciless display of cruelty". Good times.

Whacky...to say the least.