green slime
First Post
Assuming you are fairly confident in hitting with that ranged touch attack.
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D&D 3E/3.5 (3.5) Problem player and campaign issues
- Thread starter mucco
- Start date
Assuming you are fairly confident in hitting with that ranged touch attack.
Magesmiley
Explorer
Another thought which just crossed my mind - they're high enough level to toss them onto another plane for a period of time - an entire extended adventure could simply center around getting home. Other planes can give you all sorts of ways to legitimately alter the environment so that certain tactics aren't as effective or useless.
I've used this before, creating a plane where teleporation and plane shift type spells didn't work. This forced the players to explore the plane to find a portal to get somewhere else.
And there are lots of ways to dump the players onto another plane...
I've used this before, creating a plane where teleporation and plane shift type spells didn't work. This forced the players to explore the plane to find a portal to get somewhere else.
And there are lots of ways to dump the players onto another plane...
Not every encounter will feature a mid-level wizard though, I hope... This is exactly the kind of stuff I'm trying to avoid if I don't have the right reason to do it.
The party spent the last eight levels or so doing stuff in the Big Capital City of the human nation, with the result that the Dread has become a prominent public figure. Every party member aside from the assassin is well known in the city, and sortof respected - the party has become involved with all sorts of shady business but thanks to strong contacts they always managed to find a way to appear innocent, and victims of hate. The city is quite lawful, so once their status has been confirmed it's unlikely they'll have too many problems.
I will probably play on this by having people from other cities or nations come to fight the party, as you guys suggested. This should justify more balanced foes, hopefully.
The party spent the last eight levels or so doing stuff in the Big Capital City of the human nation, with the result that the Dread has become a prominent public figure. Every party member aside from the assassin is well known in the city, and sortof respected - the party has become involved with all sorts of shady business but thanks to strong contacts they always managed to find a way to appear innocent, and victims of hate. The city is quite lawful, so once their status has been confirmed it's unlikely they'll have too many problems.
I will probably play on this by having people from other cities or nations come to fight the party, as you guys suggested. This should justify more balanced foes, hopefully.
green slime
First Post
No one has suggested that every encounter feature a mid-level wizard. You should, however, realise that one of the easiest way to challenge a mid to high level party, is to use large amounts of classed intelligent foes: a cabal of Mindflayers with 10-12 levels of psion, and their subjugated strongarm bodyguards. For example.
Doesn't mean every merchant buys their innocence. Doesn't mean certain people won't go out of their way to cause minor problems for them: shoeing their horse poorly, putting weevils in their food, losing their petition, forgetting it, or keeping it on the bottom of the stack, taking the long way round to get something. People who may have been slighted in their "shady" business, and their friends.
Make sure to spread them thin. If you throw enough enemies at them, on a large field of battle, it becomes more difficult for them to support each other as well. If the battlefield also has buildings and other natural dividers, Don't allow them to immediately go to the rescue of a swamped character, just "because".
To clarify: Using a Large Castle scenario, with multiple buildings and outhouses, a several group of archers open fire on the characters, from several different directions. The archers are obviously no match for even one character; nevertheless, they open fire (at a fair distance, say 300 ft), then scoot back 'round a corner. (5th-6th level archers, could even have the shoot-on-the-run feat). Hopefully, some character pursues one of the groups, to suddenly find himself assaulted/grappled by a bigger group that have been waiting exactly for this. Because he is no longer within sight of the other characters, and the sounds of the rest of the battle muffle his own cries for help, he cannot be assisted by the others.
Prepare each battle well: think things through. Mid to high level opponents didn't survive all those intervening levels by baby-sitting doves. Use fleeing enemies to sucker lone pursuing characters (one character usually has a higher speed than the others) into ambushes. Use terrain, cover, concealment, and illusions. Use hordes of classed enemies: (animating them from the dead only means a normal, unclassed zombie). Paladin's and sun Clerics (Pelor). Use mounted feats, especially mounted archery feats, to up the maneuverability and irritability level of groups of foes: A lose formation of 20 6th level hippogriff/pegasus riding archers, engaging at long range will cause pain and irritation.
Make them use their resources. Keep track of them. Ask the psion; "How many points do you have left?" Make a note! "How much does that power cost to maintain?" Keep a close eye on all their resources. Ask "How many potions of healing do you have left? How many arrows?"
Above all, you need to be at least as familiar with the characters' abilities as the players themselves. You also need to be aware of those abilities limitations! Otherwise, they may be tempted to pull wool over your eyes when they feel the chips are down. Make sure you always have an up to date version of their character sheet available during your preparation, so you can refer to their abilites / items / capabilities, and check up on spells / powers that you are unsure about.
It hasn't been an Epic battle if less than half the characters were rendered unconscious/held/paralyzed/ability drained at least once during the battle. (Not all battles need be Epic).
Remember, a strength drained character may collapse under the weight of his own equipment, and be unable to move. Drain to 0 and he is immobile. Won't hinder the psion too much, but eventually, those power points will be gone...
How?
Err, what? Where did he get all the gold from?
In my group the pcs found more treasure than recommended in the DMG and there's still only a single pc who managed to get hold of a +4 stat item.
I get the feeling you've been too lenient with your players...
green slime
First Post
Well, that goes without saying, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to deal with it in game.
Just because they go for a different power level than "normal" or "usual" doesn't invalidate his appeal for help.
Sure, but it explains why they're difficult to challenge when following the "normal" or "usual" guidelines for encounter design
How about an encounter with a couple of (advanced) death reavers (from MM3)? I've used them once and they seemed pretty weak for their CR but they should do better against undead opponents, since they'll heal themselves with every hit.
Persiflage
First Post
Hello!
That's a good start. They sound like a target for a high-level group of good-aligned adventurers to me. A group, moreover, with a Cleric optimised for turning; with Greater Turning, the right feats and appropriate equipment, do you have any idea just how many HD of undead can be crumbled to dust in a round?
That Necropolitan Dread Necromancer is extremely vulnerable to a mid-level Radiant Servant of Do-Goodery making his daft head explode.
Heheh - welcome to my world. I play in a seriously high-powered group and it does get interesting from about 12th level or so.
Tip 1: You need to fiddle with CR as a guideline for balance against an optimised party. Start with CR's 3 to 4 levels higher than the party, then make them tougher... but only give XP as though they were 3 or 4 CR levels lower than they really are. CR (and Encounter Level) are supposed to be an indication of how tough monsters and NPC's are for the party to face. If it's a cakewalk, the encounter isn't deserving of the XP, and that's all there is to it.
And puzzle monsters aside, a single creature of any CR isn't going to be a viable threat for a mid-to-high-level party. Period. The party have just got too many actions by comparison: a lone creature will never get a chance to bust out the big moves.
Tip 2: Oh no you're not. Encounters can be anything, up to and including actively hostile terrain features, fiendishly difficult mechanical traps, staggeringly violent weather drifting in from an extra-planar portal, tricky diplomatic situations, bursts of raw Chaos emanating from a damaged artifact, rains of carnivorous insects or green slime, clouds of eldritch vapour drifting backwards and forwards across the landscape turning things ethereal as they go... really, there are ways to challenge a party that don't result in them gaining new undead minions.
Throw them into a fight against a few tough opponents whilst something like the above is going on, and have those opponents be immune to whatever's happening.
It'd probably help if you were to explain how they're dishing out that much damage. What type of damage? Is it subject to saves or SR?
Also: why do NPC's have to have low hit points? They've got access to everything the party does, after all.
Oh dear... Any creature that finds itself stuck in a cave and taking on this kind of firepower is of course going to get beaten. Dragons are CR'd the way they are because of their extensive range of abilities and tactical options, particularly those options involving "flying around a lot and doing damage at range". If you put them in a scenario where they can't *use* those options, they're going to lose, and lose hard.
Incidentally, what age category was the White Dragon? Because I can't see a CR14 version...
Were you making the Psion overcome the dragon's spell resistance? Did you ditch the hopeless Weapon Focus feats from the standard dragon and give it something useful instead?
Tip 3: Know the abilities of your monsters and don't hamper them by allowing the party to fight them in conditions that favour the party.
But only one per character, right? Tell me you're not allowing them to stack...
He hasn't done that with animate dead, has he?
SRD said:
How did he create the 24HD zombie dragon?
Zombies really aren't that big a deal, if you remember their limitations. They get no special attacks and they lose all extraordinary qualities not directly related to their physical attacks, have no skills and no feats to speak of. They can only take one move or one standard action in a round, which means they never get a full attack. That 400hp dragon zombie - assuming it's even legal in the first place - is just a big pile of hit points with a single attack or move per round, unless it can charge, at which point it'll get a move and an attack. Make sure it can't charge.
And don't forget that it's too big to get down a 5' corridor. No, not even by squeezing.
Tip 4: Know the abilities of your player characters. Understand when they are being used legally, and when not. This is the most time-consuming part, but in a group where every loophole is being exploited to the fullest, you've got little choice.
They're under-CR'd if they're not played intelligently. Big red dragons aren't monsters, they're NPC's with pre-defined abilities. They're smart. They've got spells to buff themselves with and they don't hang about getting their asses kicked if faced with strong opponents: they retreat and then return when they're better prepared. Or, you know, drop rocks on people's heads from hundreds of feet up. What they don't do is "engage a whole bunch of unknown enemies in melee".
A Balor isn't so tough. The last party I was running could have stuffed one completely at about 9th level if he had been so stupid as to get within melee range, but the point here is that nothing outside the Epic Level Joke Book is going to be terribly challenging all by itself, particularly if you don't spend any time optimising it.
Well, for starters you're going to have to stop letting them ride rough-shod over you. For example...
Firstly, the correct response is "stop bugging me, the answer is no".
Secondly, his telepathic armour can't do that. No, not even by commanding his zombies to "do what the armour says". Telepathy (and speech, for that matter) only works with creatures that have a language. Zombies have no intelligence score. Your Intelligence score determines the number of languages you can speak, so creatures with no intelligence score ipso-facto have no language. Zombies can understand their creator by means of the arcane energy of the spell (i.e. because the spell description says they can) but they can't understand or communicate with anyone or anything else.
I can understand that a constantly-nagging player is going to get under your skin, but you're also - forgive me - being your own worst enemy by giving in and allowing stuff that couldn't or shouldn't work.
Lots, but if you want really specific advice, I think we'll all need to know even more about what the player characters can do. You don't need to target the players' weaknesses, but take a leaf from their book and blunt their strengths. For instance, a Focussed Conjurer with the Extraordinary Spell Aim feat, the Abrupt Jaunt ACF, Antimagic Field and a Rod of Lesser Maximize Spell could cause any amount of damage and then teleport out if the fight isn't going his way.
Remember that hordes of summoned mooks don't add to XP...
Litter the battlefield with annoying things that'll take wasted actions to beat and can't be ignored but also aren't powerful enough to give the party XP, like a swarm of advanced Ravids...
Use massive area effects to wipe out the undead on the PC's side...
Make sure your monsters and/or NPC's don't bunch together...
Give the other team action-economy breakers too: immediate actions, spells that give extra actions, extraordinary abilties that don't take actions to use, irritating movement capabilities like the Blink Dog's free-action-once-per-round dimension door (particularly nasty when tacked onto something that delivers touch attacks)...
Use battlefield control: effects that block line of sight prevent targeting, effects that trap, enclose or separate the party cost them actions to get around while the enemies deal with one of them at a time, effects that cost movement are going to be disproportionately annoying to zombies, and so on...
C-C-C-COMBO! Use multiple obfuscating tactics: melee threats to keep the party busy while they're harassed by "sniping attacks" from range and dealing with hostile terrain, area spells and battlefield control effects. Don't be afraid to mix-and-match abilities. Can you imagine a company of pimped-out Arrow Demons with the See in Darkness supernatural ability (usually the province of Devils), accompanied by a dozen or so even-lower-level mooks that can cast Deeper Darkness at will? And they're not even high enough level to give the party XP. Have them led by another powerful creature that stays out of sight until it looks like the party have taken a kicking. Give things a couple of class levels: the Tome of Battle is always good for adding surprising amounts of nastiness for a minimal increase in CR: half-a-dozen mooks whose only job is to stay out of trouble and give the Monster In Charge extra actions through White Raven Tactics can really turn a battle on its head.
It's hard-but-possible to make combat challenges that'll stay interesting at this level: the game has basically devolved into Rocket Launcher Tag unless you get cunning... but it can be done!
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