D&D 3.x (3.5) Problem player and campaign issues

[Dandu]

Alternatively, have a mage Chain Lightening a character's armor and equipment...

 

[green slime]

It's worth noting that you're allowing many things that many DMs would flat out disallow, and probably some things that the rules don't allow, either. For starters, consider the Spellstitched template. This is a template designed for monsters, not for players. Note that it is listed in the Monster section of Complete Arcane, and has no Level Adjustment listed for players (not LA +0, just no listing). When previously discussed on the boards (http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/124863-spell-stitched-template.html) it was decided it should be about a +2 or +3 LA. You gave it out for $60k. Even if that's a lot of money to the player, it's ridiculously overpowered for the cost. And where the heck did they find someone willing to apply the template, anyway?

I'm going to take issue with the last question in this paragraph.

Firstly, he stated earlier in the thread where they found someone willing to apply the template. If it made sense in their game, why question that fact? Sure, it seems a bit cheap, but they had also via RP managed to get into the "good" books of a powerful necromancer.

I'd actually personally question the motives of the NPC necromancer doing the task, myself: if it was me running the game, I'd have the necromancer possibly include several other things on the sly: 1) provide constant knowledge of the whereabouts of the character 2) enable reliable scrying on the character, 3) ability to dominate the character 4) prevent the character from being able to cause harm to anyone bearing the necromacer's arcane mark. 5) ability to cast geas upon the character 1/year.

Powerful NPCs always have hidden agendas. Giving away items that have hidden powerful abilities is a relatively easy way to achieve this.

Also previously noted was the fact that the Necromancer has a set of armor that gives orders to undead for him. As mentioned by someone else, this doesn't work. The Necro has to command the undead himself. I also have to ask - where did the player go to custom order intelligent armor? And has the item's ego had any affect on the player (as it should)? Both of these examples are probably only scratching the surface of quetionable material that the group is playing with.

Why does it matter where the character went to order the armour? Seriously? It happened in their game, and it sounds cool. I have handed out similar pieces of equipment in games I run at high level. Questioning it after the fact isn't very constructive. Instead, I'd look at limiting the amount of HD the armour can command, the effective range, making them level dependant or somesuch (perhaps he has, we don't know). Suggesting that the DM is using "questionable material" is rather insulting, and not really related to the task at hand: challenging the characters. Any group of player characters can be challenged, regardless of the equipment they are lugging around with them.

Suggesting a conflict with the intelligent armour is a good idea: such is more likely to happen 1) when the armour has a goal that conflicts with the character 2) when the character is in a weakened state

Which raíses questions about the goals of the creator of said armour. The armour is obviously going to try and seek out the most powerful necomancer in the game, because then it will be able to control more undead. (see the comments above, regarding the "spellstitching".

You also previously mentioned that forcing the party to have multiple encounters a day is really hard. This is simply not true. For starters, there are a ton of ways to prevent your players from taking the easy route and running away after every battle. More importantly, though, is the number of ways to make them not want to. Any mission that has even the slightest time-dependent goal should make your players question if they should push ahead or regroup. There could be an impending apocolypse. There could be another group of adventurers half a day behind them trying to get the gold. The enemies could respawn by the time they return, meaning they never make any forward progress unless they push through. Even worse, enemies could respawn with the knowledge of how their comrades died, meaning they now know the party's weaknesses.

Agreed.

 

[carmachu]

Alternatively, have a mage Chain Lightening a character's armor and equipment...

Spending on how many undead he has, a nice prismatic spray would also be fun....

 

[carmachu]

To put this bluntly, you hav ea party that is a sledge hammer problem, and your trying to solve it with a bigger sledge hammer. And are currently unsuccessful. So instead of a sledge hammer you really should be using a knife.

There are several suggestions floating around alread, but frankly the Dread Necro is the weakest link. As I pointed out, but I'll expand on it, intellegent suit of armor that gives commands to his undead? Who created it for him and why? Cant just be money, and no good person would create the armor that commands undead, so what is their motivation? And further, intellegent item commanding undead, and hasnt tried to take over the army for itself and break free? Thats a plot in and of itself. Especially if it eventually doesn and takes the army with it.....

Further, spell stitched by another Nercomancer, thats more powerful? Why? Cant be for money, but now he can scry on them and take out a potential rival, or have use for him to further his goals, whatever they may be.

If you give a bit more background on the others, I'm sure there are places to stick a knife. Stop trying to challenge them in combat. Yeah their bada$$ there, but their very very weak in other places you can exploit.

 

[Magesmiley]

The intelligent armor strikes me as having some possibilities... if you play your cards right, you might even be able to get the player to do himself in with his own armor power trip. How about this:

Dangle some sort of an adventure hook involving a magical forge that the players can use to permanently enhance their magic armor at no cost to themselves. The odds are that the necro player will want to pursue this and be first in line to use it. Put some suitably nasty guardians so the players don't smell a rat.

Have the forge enhance non-intelligent magical armor (raising the enhancement bonus by +1 or so), but if used on intelligent armor, the armor sucks all of the magic out of the forge (and breaking it so no one else can use it), grossly enhancing the armor's powers. Make the armor exceedingly powerful at this point, with a disgustingly high ego score to match its newfound power (high enough that making the save will be dubious at best). And an attitude. And a megalomaniac mindset, trying to gather power for itself. Play it like an NPC.

Let the players try to figure out how to deal with this when the armor doesn't feel like doing what the necro wants it to do. Or causes him to do something he doesn't want to do. Or tries to use the players as the armor's pawn. So many fun possibilities if you can pull this off.

And you're giving the players what they want - more power (albeit with a stiff price tag), and some new and interesting encounters.

 

[mucco]

Firstly, he stated earlier in the thread where they found someone willing to apply the template. If it made sense in their game, why question that fact? Sure, it seems a bit cheap, but they had also via RP managed to get into the "good" books of a powerful necromancer.

I'd actually personally question the motives of the NPC necromancer doing the task, myself: if it was me running the game, I'd have the necromancer possibly include several other things on the sly: 1) provide constant knowledge of the whereabouts of the character 2) enable reliable scrying on the character, 3) ability to dominate the character 4) prevent the character from being able to cause harm to anyone bearing the necromacer's arcane mark. 5) ability to cast geas upon the character 1/year.

Powerful NPCs always have hidden agendas. Giving away items that have hidden powerful abilities is a relatively easy way to achieve this.

Instead, I'd look at limiting the amount of HD the armour can command, the effective range, making them level dependant or somesuch (perhaps he has, we don't know).

Suggesting a conflict with the intelligent armour is a good idea: such is more likely to happen 1) when the armour has a goal that conflicts with the character 2) when the character is in a weakened state

Which raíses questions about the goals of the creator of said armour. The armour is obviously going to try and seek out the most powerful necomancer in the game, because then it will be able to control more undead.

About the armor, it's a series of things I let the PCs do when they didn't have enough contacts to prevent backfires; as such, I'm planning on messing the armor up at some point. At the moment, the limitation I am imposing is that the armor can give out no more than two different commands, because giving a command is a move action. And I'm only allowing it with intelligent undead (most of them by now - the guy's burned 1000 xp on awakenings already).

He asked the armor to be crafted with the exact purpose of "serving him in the most loyal of ways", and asked for the alignment to match his one (LE). He did ask a member of the shady Thieves' Guild, which was not a safe move. The "friend" necromancer who spellstitched him of course knew of this request, so I can surely say that he interceded and changed the behavior and purpose of the intelligent armor, without the party knowing. I do need for the armor to become something they take for granted though.

This powerful necromancer has his own agenda, of course, and it'll come into play at later levels.

About the spellstitched template, I don't feel it's ridiculously overpowered, applied to a spellcaster, since the SR and saving throw bonuses will hardly come into play. The SLAs aren't terribly unbalancing with that cost.

 

[anest1s]

About the armor, it's a series of things I let the PCs do when they didn't have enough contacts to prevent backfires; as such, I'm planning on messing the armor up at some point. At the moment, the limitation I am imposing is that the armor can give out no more than two different commands, because giving a command is a move action. And I'm only allowing it with intelligent undead (most of them by now - the guy's burned 1000 xp on awakenings already).

He asked the armor to be crafted with the exact purpose of "serving him in the most loyal of ways", and asked for the alignment to match his one (LE). He did ask a member of the shady Thieves' Guild, which was not a safe move. The "friend" necromancer who spellstitched him of course knew of this request, so I can surely say that he interceded and changed the behavior and purpose of the intelligent armor, without the party knowing. I do need for the armor to become something they take for granted though.

This powerful necromancer has his own agenda, of course, and it'll come into play at later levels.

About the spellstitched template, I don't feel it's ridiculously overpowered, applied to a spellcaster, since the SR and saving throw bonuses will hardly come into play. The SLAs aren't terribly unbalancing with that cost.

Maybe the armor is over-protective... ^^

 

[Andras]

I didn't see Beholders mentioned. A couple or three beholders with their anti-magic cones will slow their roll pretty quick. They can also use their disintegrate ray to cut down the numbers of undead running around, and use their telekinesis rays to fling some of the undead at the party members.

If the Dread's control over the undead horde a magic or supernatural effect the AM cone would negate that and then the party would have to fight them all as uncontrolled undead while in the antimagic field.