Anyone with their prefered Min/Maxing tricks?

[Turanil]

I remember having read on Enworld about a paladin who can make 250 hp of damage on a charge; and somewhere else such stuff as a monk jumping forward, striking, then jumping backward and not being hit; and other similar stuff. I suppose this is what min/maxing is all about? (never bothered about min/maxing before).

Well, I am interested in knowing some of these min/maxing tricks as a GM to throw at higher level PCs, since I have a hard time DMing past 10th level. (I mean: without resorting to over-used and over-abused dragons and demons, and the like).

So, does anyone knows if someone here or on the internet has compiled ideas of this sort? Anyone kind enough to give his/her own min/maxing tricks on this thread? (For example how make a bunch of orcs or ogres much more lethal without having to immediately make them 10th level fighters or what not).

Thanks to all.

 

[mirivor]

Learning power gaming won't solve your DM'ing troubles. Instead look to other devices to challenge your players. Use the standard giants and such but give them a twist. Perhaps a crafty malignant wizard guides their steps, making them much more formidable than normal. Heck, toss a group of goblins at them and let them delight in their power... right up until they realize that they face a band of adventurers like themselves... a 10th level goblin party, as it where. There are a ton of things that you can do to help the task of DM'ing at higher levels. Take standard monsters and give them twists. My cousin once tossed 4 skeletons against a higher level party, the members of which where tossing coins to see who would kill the "lowly" skeletons when all four shot one magic missile from each finger at the party (40D4 + 40). Yowza!

Another scenario, should you really want to scare your players, is a mounted opponent with good support. In particular, a lance-wielding fighter/cavalier type. A mounted charge with a lance is devestating. Toss in some support spells, such as Expeditious Retreat, and your players will dread the thunder of hooves on the battlefield. Even a high level monk would have trouble catching a swift steed rolling along at some ungodly rate (150, after the spell, right?).

I could sit here all day and hack up ideas, but I repeat that you should look to strategy and clever play as opposed to powergaming. That gets very old, mostly because the players come to expect and even anticipate it. Later!

 

[Thanee]

You are not looking for min/maxing (which is basically overspecializing a character to be extremely good at one thing, usually fighting, often by completely neglecting any background associations for character choices, lowering any unrelated abilities to the minimum level to free up character building resources to be put into the field of expertise and mixing various abilities to achieve a totally ridiculous conglomerate), you are looking for tactics.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

One thing, which can totally alter the challenge a group of opponents presents, is situation.

Put them into a highly favorable situation, like creatures with blindsight into an area of magical darkness as one very simple example, and you'll increase the challenge considerably.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Gort]

There's an easier way also, which I've been known to use. If you find that your players are munching through anything you throw at them in two rounds flat, you might try advancing the monster by hitdice.

However, this leads to monsters that can kill players quite easily, or have ACs that can't be hit. So my method is simply to double the hitpoints of a monster who is an equal challenge rating to the party (my players are good at making strong characters, and there're five of them). He lasts longer, so it makes fights seem less of a pushover for the players, but it doesn't make him hit any harder or be impossible to hit due to a high AC.

Wouldn't you rather do 50 points of damage to a monster with 600 hitpoints than no damage to one with 300 since it's AC is too high?

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Kobolds.

Use lots of them.

They are the bane of the PCs in my campaign's existance.

And the first time a high level party runs into them...they'll never expect to get their butts handed to them by the Half-Air Elemental Kobold Assassins. Trust me, your PCs will learn to fear the little guys.

 

[lupus]

Kobolds.

Use lots of them.

They are the bane of the PCs in my campaign's existance.

And the first time a high level party runs into them...they'll never expect to get their butts handed to them by the Half-Air Elemental Kobold Assassins. Trust me, your PCs will learn to fear the little guys.

They also actually make pretty cool sorcerers. Who cares if your strength sucks, when you're tossing around 5th-level spells?

 

[ashockney]

The character optimization boadrd over at WOTC is usulaly chock full of ideas, and the DnD rules board here (particularly the Sultans of Smack thread) will give you anything your heart desires.

Some perrenial favorites:

Frenzied Berserker Barbarians abusing Power Attack
Paladin's Charging
Monk's AC's
Dual wielding rogues with sneak attack
and...
a cleric. Any cleric.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

As others said, you really need tactics not min-maxing help.

All of the min-maxing you need is to learn how to create NPCs who perform reasonably well for their level and what abilities are good for what. So, here's my advice:

1. When creating NPCs, give them at least a 15 in their primary stat. A 15 is sufficient, a 16 is good, a 17 is very good, and an 18 will have your players wondering why all their foes have better stats than they do. Then advance them and apply all of their 1/4lvl stat bumps to their primary stat. So a 4th level foe should have a primary stat of 16-18. An 8th level foe: 17-19. A 12th level foe: 18-20.

2. Make sure that your NPCs are equipped appropriately or at least have help that simulates such equipment. A group of 8th level NPC fighters should have magic weapons. If you don't want to give your players loot, make that magic come from a chained greater magic weapon cast by the BBEG. But they need good weapons. They need good armor too. Maybe the BBEG cast Magic Vestment on their armor and that's why it works like +2 and the player's can't get it but ordinary armor just won't cut it.

3. Pick feats that are useful for the bad guys. An evil warlord's bodyguard will not have Craft: Armorsmith and skill focus: Underwater basket weaving. They will have weapon focus, greater weapon focus, weapon specialization, power attack, Iron Will, Combat Expertise, Improved Trip (and if they've got Improved Trip, they're probably wielding flails, halberds, spiked chains or other trip weapons), etc.

And that's about as far as bad guy creation will take you. The rest is tactics. Your bad guys need to work together and have a balance of classes and be able to deal with things like flight and invisibility if they are going to challenge high level PCs.

 

[Prism]

One of the best things you can do in an encounter situation is to increase the players uncertainty of exactly what they are fighting and how difficult it will be.

One technique you can use is min/maxing the players opponents. This takes a reasonable amount of effort to do well and is probably best for the important class based NPC bad guys. Just to comment on Thanee's statement on min/maxing, a well min/maxed PC or NPC maximizes their strengths while minimzing their weaknesses rather than neglecting areas of their character. A simple example would be to give a wizard NPC their second best stat in CON to increase their obvious weakness rather than lets say WIS to incease their already good will save. Go over to the wizards D20 character optimization board for lots of good ideas. Remember your back ground too though. I would certainly not optimize every NPC, just the main ones

Another good tactic is to play about with location and situational parameters. Varied use of corridors, ramps, ledges, obstructions, ambushes can make what would be an easy encounter into a difficult one. Don't use this every time as it becomes unrealistic

Templates and monster advancement are great ways of increasing an encounter level without always looking for high powered monsters and it always keeps the party on its toes as they are never quite sure what they are fighting.

Some of the more interesting/challenging encounters that our group have faced recently are:-

Spellstitched (MM2) undead - skeletons who cast mage armour, advanced ghasts and ghouls who cast vampiric touch, ray of enfeeblement, stinking cloud and finally a spellstitched advanced mummy who was a nightmare to take down. The hit dice were high which makes turning difficult and the spellstitched template even better.

Werewolf gnolls rangers led by a fiendish werewolf gnoll ranger. This really caught out the party at first when they simply thought they were fighting normal wolves and the gnoll slant kept it interesting and made them that much stronger. Remember the support characters - there was a druid and his companion at the back casting battlefield control spells

Dark boar - a simple hunting mission became that much more difficult when we discovered that the boar was advanced (we expected this, it being a boar of renown) but also had the shadow creature template from Manual of the Planes (this we didn't expect!). You would be amazed how hard a CR8 dire boar can be with additional hit dice and all the shadow powers.

A yuan-ti tainted one psion protected by a mix of human crossbowmen and yuan-ti broodguard. What made this difficult was the fact that the enounter took place inside the central hollow column of a tower, the psion was levitating and the guards were sniping down as the party circled up the sides of the tower. This was ECL7.

All of these encounters were interesting and challenging because they presented the unexpected. Gnolls are easy until they can only be hit with silver weapons - 1st level warriors are weak until you give them crossbows, spread them out, give them cover and make them hard to get to