A Paladin Problematic

[Aegeri]

It's a daily power that requires actions to sustain. This is not a difficult power to defeat with a huge horde of monsters. It also fails to work entirely if monsters simply beat the Paladin to death (often with his own arm). Monsters with Tremorsense/Blindsight/Truesight simply do this efficiently as they can use single target powers. Anything else can get away with it with the simple use of ranged attacks beyond 5 squares (it only has a range of 5, it doesn't affect enemies beyond 5 squares of the paladin). Further, you could make a creature with a no-action power, every time it is damaged by a radiant effect every PC within X takes 10 damage (probably radiant damage, maybe even necrotic. Depending on your point of view).

This means a monster can swing it right back on the paladin into an automatic X distance autodamage on the whole party per attack. PCs have less HP than monsters, so in a HP race monsters are going to win.

 

[Joshua Randall]

More fights per day is absolutely not a flippant response. It is the key to keeping the PCs' uber-powers from feeling like they are dominating the game.

There should be enough fights per day that the PCs have to use their uber-powers just to survive.

When you can change the game from "Oh, the paladin blinds everything, yawn another cakewalk" to "Holy crap, we're down to 4 surges among the entire party and getting beat on -- help us, paladin, use the blinding power!" -- then you've got the right balance.

 

[Felon]

More fights per day is absolutely not a flippant response.

True, but going on about using monsters with tremorsense/blindsight/truesight--as if we were talking about a one-night delve instead of a campaign--is a flippant response. "Hey, Mr. DM. Here's a pitch for a new campaign: 'Against the Oozes'--whaddya think?"

The same goes for emphasizing artillery and area attacks, because at the end of the day, the cornerstone of many (and probably most) enemy encounters are going to involve brutes, soldiers, and skirmishers, and their bread and butter is melee attacks. The idea of chucking the whole melee thing for auras and bursts strikes me as not being very seriously thought out.

 

[Aegeri]

Brutes, Soldiers and Skirmishers can have fantastic burst attacks. Some of my best friends are Brutes with limited damage attacks. For example Ter-Soth (one of my Balors that was designed shortly after the new and shiny of MM3 rules):

And for Wizards monsters (Bearing in mind appropriate damage increases):

Balor (level 27 elite brute): Beheading blade - quite frankly this power rules the roost in lolwtf burst attacks on monsters.
Herald of Colorless Fire (Level 27 skirmisher): Storm of Colorless Fire
Angel of Command (Level 25 Soldier): Edict of Honor
Dragonborn Deathknight (Level 25 Elite Solider): Unholy Flames
Mezzodemon Watchguard (Level 27 Soldier): Poison Breath

And so on. Most solos have burst/area attacks as well. A good combination of monsters - albeit I do acknowledge the higher in tier you go the worse your options get - is paramount. Also, brutes and soldiers should not inherently be the most common part of the encounter. In fact it's a distinct trap, because artillery/controllers/lurkers are just as important - if not more important - than soldiers/brutes. Soldiers and brutes are there to entertain defenders and kill anyone else if ignored. Artillery and controllers are where you get your real damage/disruption in. Skirmishers fall in between those and Lurkers are when you get a good set up for a quick "picking off" of a wounded character.

Also, I may seem to respond flippantly but this is because you're not the DM (I am meaning no offense by this either). Unless I know what your DM is trying to do and accomplish specifically, I can only give general responses. If I knew what he was trying to do specifically, I could help tweak encounters to a more reasonable standard in all departments: Terrain, composition etc. It's very hard to do that when I have no idea what monsters he's using, the terrain he's planning to use and what the overall "goal" of his encounter design is.
​

 

[Raikun]

Whatever. I'm getting a lot flippant responses, but wrting off an auto-blinding power as very simple to work around is being flippant to the point of absurdity.

Nah, you're being far more flippant...he's right, it's very easy to work around that power, and he's given several legitimate, serious ideas on how to do so. Off the top of my head, I thought of probably half a dozen encounter ideas to accomplish this, and with a little effort could probably come up with a lot more.

Yes, there are some monsters that can get around blindness. No, it's not feasible to suggest that a DM build an entire campaign's worth of encounters around them.

Fortunately, a DM doesn't have to build an "entire campaign's worth of encounter's" around it. Just one encounter a day. And by the time the Paladin gets that power, there shouldn't be that many "days" left before the campaign is over.

Once you're designing entire encounters around a power, you've abandoned the position that the power is a non-issue.

Not really. DMs also have to design encounters around the obscene burst damage a Ranger can put out when breaking out his dailies, or his ability to take out two minions before a battle starts. DMs also have to design encounters around the sheer level of healing and self preservation characters get in the epic tier. Designing encounters to match the player's capabilities to keep them challengied is part of a DM's job.

Yes, that power has a pretty heavy impact. It's an Epic tier Daily...it's SUPPOSED to have a heavy impact. If the DM can't handle it, that's on him really. (Though not necessarily his fault...there really isn't enough material out there on how to handle DMing Epic tier play, which is covered in another thread in itself).

But there really should be a good share of encounters that the players can walk all over. It's fun to feel powerful sometimes...which leads to one of my off-the-top-of-my-head ideas...if the DM is leading up to an epic boss encounter, have an encounter before it that throws waves of smaller bad guys that could be really challenging, that highly encourages the Paladin to use that daily. Once used, the waves of bad guys become trivial, letting the characters feel powerful...but once it's over *THEN* the BBEG comes out with his Close and Area attacks. No Tremorsense or Truesight necessary.

 

[keterys]

I think that may well be the most times I've seen flippant used in any conversation, and all within just a few posts.

We're all trying to get to the same place - an enjoyable night of D&D - so let's try to avoid using labels that might get misconstrued or hurt feelings and keep the conversation on track. Or at least more diverse.

 

[keterys]

So, I've a couple worries after going through this thread:
1) If the monsters all gang up on the paladin and just go to town... he's totally fine? End of the day, that's problematic. If all of Team Monster can't drop a single guy, defender or otherwise, then either he's too tough or Team Monster isn't strong enough, and maybe both.
2) In Epic the party has a _lot_ of daily resources on tap. While it might feel logical that there would actually be less battles at epic, you will generally find that you actually want quite a lot of them to maintain good pacing. Our epic group (just hit 23rd) does 8-10 encounters per day... and we're actually restricted to just PH1 + 2, AV1, and the power books, and have very very unoptimal treasure, so we're quite a bit weaker than we could be. Most of that is us players wanting a better challenge. It puts less effort on the DM to overload damage abilities and such into the encounters. At a certain point, it can be reasonable to aim for a different target than 'won by the skin of our teeths' to 'Made it through without using a daily' and 'She didn't have to use a surge, so we can do another combat'
3) Gift of Resistance - I'd suggest that this one not be allowed to work with 'resist all' (the flimsy excuse being that "all" is not a damage type), which I assume is being done via masterwork armor. If it's just that he's collected resist items and has lots of important ones, though, that seems a good use of the power and that's fine.
4) Is Discipline the Unruly (blinding), Gift of Resistance, and the other powers being used while another defender marks the targets, to create a total lose situation? It's not an unreasonable houserule to add "unless the target is marked by another creature" to many of those. Without it, they're workable (at least, after addressing point #1), but if not then I imagine a lot of epic monsters should just be leaving the field and looking to join into the next fight or come back after 5 minutes.
5) After addressing divine sanction!=divine challenge (and, again, #1), is the Hospitaler ability that problematic?

 

[keterys]

On the suggestion side of things.

If any one power seems to be extraordinarily strong, I recommend that you submit it for errata on the wotc boards. It won't necessarily get addressed, but it's a good way to inform future design. And the more egregious stuff - like pre-errata Hospitaler - does get addressed sometimes.

The other angle is that sometimes a DM can't actually cater the adventure to the PCs, even at Epic. If you're writing a module for public consumption or DMing Living Forgotten Realms, for example, you don't necessarily know what you're going to run into. It's also possible, via hybriding or half-elfing to be a paladin that is extremely difficult to get into melee at all or has near impossible defenses for a couple rounds per encounter. I know a tiefling hybrid who did damage and had +Cha to all defenses for 1 round per combat, then used Mantle of Unity to maintain the Cha bonus for another round after - while also applying it to the rest of the party - so aura 5 of blinding abilities on a character that is already causing difficult for a DM might frustate a DM.

A good DM will save the game from being entirely wrecked by certain combinations, but at the end of the day I think the most profitable thing is not to look for rules corrections, but rather to just have a conversation with the group.

Something like 'Well, things have been feeling well.. too easy, lately... boring, even. And not to say that they couldn't be - that last fight would have totally dropped half of us. If not for the resist 20 we all had, anyways. What I mean is, I'd rather we were just a little less tough, so that I got to use my immediate interrupt defenses without feeling they were unnecessary. This power here and that power there actually make me feel, well, a little dirty when I use them. Are there any other kickass powers at that level that shut the DM down a bit less?'

Reminds me a little of a BESM game I did once, where we made characters, then compared stats. And the first person could do, let's call it 5 damage, and resist let's call it 3 damage... and the second person could do let's call it 10 damage, and resist 5... and the last person could do 30 and resist 20. So we conferred, and optimized and de-optimized as appropriate to meet in the middle.

 

[Felon]

So, I've a couple worries after going through this thread:
1) If the monsters all gang up on the paladin and just go to town... he's totally fine? End of the day, that's problematic. If all of Team Monster can't drop a single guy, defender or otherwise, then either he's too tough or Team Monster isn't strong enough, and maybe both.

Well, we have a Charisma paladin and a cleric, both with lots of optimized healing. One Healing Word can easily wipe out 80 or 90 points of damage on the pally. One Lay on Hands is about 65. And the pally gets anything that exceeds his max HP as THP. He's also god Resist All 5 and gets 6 THP every time he's hit. Of course, he also got good AC.

The running gag in our group is that the sorcerer is the monster's damage MVP. I'm surprised that half damage on a miss is apparently quite rare. Maybe it's just the DM's choice of critters.

2) In Epic the party has a _lot_ of daily resources on tap. While it might feel logical that there would actually be less battles at epic, you will generally find that you actually want quite a lot of them to maintain good pacing.

I agree. Thing is, players often know when they're facing an encounter where the use of an encounter-buster power is optimal. Obviously, the pally saves his pain-in-the-neck power for when it will gimp monsters the most. So, does the DM just never have an encounter with some big melee brute because he knows it's just going to be maced for the entire battle? Does he just accept that it will be an anticlimactic battle? I'm reminded of older-edition battles where the gravitas of fighting a balrog is neutered by slip-sliding with a grease spell.

3) Gift of Resistance - I'd suggest that this one not be allowed to work with 'resist all' (the flimsy excuse being that "all" is not a damage type), which I assume is being done via masterwork armor. If it's just that he's collected resist items and has lots of important ones, though, that seems a good use of the power and that's fine.

See, this is an example of why I have trust issues with DragMag stuff. It's not that the stuff is necessarily overpowered, but they often seem "underthought". Seems like a no-brainer to realize how this can be used in tandem with a measly 1 point of resist all from off-the-rack legion plate. Is this what the author of that power was going for?

4) Is Discipline the Unruly (blinding), Gift of Resistance, and the other powers being used while another defender marks the targets, to create a total lose situation? It's not an unreasonable houserule to add "unless the target is marked by another creature" to many of those. Without it, they're workable (at least, after addressing point #1), but if not then I imagine a lot of epic monsters should just be leaving the field and looking to join into the next fight or come back after 5 minutes.

Yeah, there's a fighter, a dreadnought adamantine soldier. At level 25, he's got 47 AC and all his NAD's are 40 over as well. Couple hundred HP, Resist All 6, chock full of tempies--even tougher than the pally.

5) After addressing divine sanction!=divine challenge (and, again, #1), is the Hospitaler ability that problematic?

Not as problematic as I'd previously thought. It's just another anticlimactic way to neuter the BBEG--which seems to me to be enough of an issue to warrant concern. Getting locked-down by the defenders is as big of a hole in BBEG design as the action-denial effects that the Monster Vault sought to address.

 

[Felon]

Also, I may seem to respond flippantly but this is because you're not the DM (I am meaning no offense by this either).

Allow me to take a moment to say that I also mean no offense, and am indeed appreicative of the time you've taken to contribute suggestions in the spirit of helpfulness. I'd have slapped this into an XP box, but I've apparently given you some too recently.