D&D 5E (2014) As a DM, can I just say, Screw Paladins :)

[Yunru]

Nothing worse than a Paladin in Full Plate with a Shield safe from spells thanks to his Aura of Smugness

 

[epithet]

I think I just found my next character. Sir Pokes-A-Lot!

That's one way to see the tarrasque at first level.

 

[Oofta]

That's one way to see the tarrasque at first level.

How do you know when the DM is upset?


When you get surprised by the T-Rex that was hiding behind the bush!

 

[Tormyr]

I will say you guys are all doing it wrong...just kidding

An Ancients Paladin is one of the best things a party can have. As soon as the paladin in our party got resistance to spell damage, the party would often purposefully stand in "fireball formation" within 10 feet of the paladin. Fireballs and the like would suddenly be, "Saved and Evasion? 0 damage. Saved? 1/4 damage. 1/2, 1/4, 1/4." It made for some good laughs

My 5e Age of Worms campaign is wrapping up, and the second to last encounter of the AP was against a CR 20 level 20 Paladin of Kyuss and 4 CR 7 Kyuss Knights against the 4 level 20 PCs (some with an epic boon).

The party:
Half Gnoll Ancients Paladin with an 8 Charisma
Half Orc GWM Fighter
Tiefling Wizard
Human Shadow Monk with 24 AC.

I had been feeding the Paladin information that he felt a doom coming. He had gone oathbreaker for story purposes for a while before redeeming himself, and had been having nightmares the last few nights of himself as a fully realized oathbreaker as the time for Kyuss to emerge approached. As they advanced toward Kyuss, he felt the same feeling of doom get closer.

The bad guys had been prepped on the PCs tactics. They let the party come in the room, then engaged. The paladin saw the source of the sense of doom in front of him. I narrated that the two paladins' auras visibly clashed and negated each other in the areas they would normally overlap (so if the paladins were within five feet of each other, you would essentially have two half circles). They Kyuss Knights engaged the wizard, and once he used shield to block some incoming attacks, the Kyuss Paladin cast banishment when the wizard would not be able to counterspell. The Half-Gnoll Paladin disappeared, and everyone started to panic a bit. The wizard retreated after being hammered. The fighter was carving through the Kyuss Knights and Kyuss Paladin until the Kyuss Paladin used its channel divinity to cause fear. Suddenly the GWM fighter could no longer approach, and the good paladin was not around to stop the fear. Then the Kyuss Paladin used its 20th level ability and moved on to attack the monk, bringing him to 1 hp with a hit that included a 5d8 smite. The monk soon went down and was hit once for two failed death saves (funny thing, its still hard to hit AC 24 with a CR7 creature even when you have advantage), and the monk went next and failed his final death save.

We ended the session right there and will see how it finishes next Tuesday. Knowing my players, they will pull it off and resurrect the monk, but it is going to be dicey in the meantime. I did tell the monk's player to roll up his gnoll hating ranger just in case.

Yeah, I would only pull something like this once per campaign.

 

[Satyrn]

I think I just found my next character. Sir Pokes-A-Lot!
View attachment 84140

Shoop in a second rapier, and that's my current character.

(Oh, and if someone actually does so, could you p,ease also shoop in a a pet owl?)

 

[Caliburn101]

Most Paladins are MAD, and have to dump dexterity if they use strength weapons. Target them with dexterity save attacks like fireball/lightning bolt. Even if they do save, they'll still take damage.

Also, craft the battlefield to force him to spend time climbing to his enemy or running around. Utilize his lack of ranged attack options.

Limit their long rests to burn through their resources

If that fails you can make some changes that my DM has used: He removed all of the smite spells and changed divine smite to 1d8 per spell level instead of starting at 2d8 at level one.

... and right there is the only significant issue I have with 5th Edition.

The GM has to know in detail what the party can do in terms of SRs and LRs and damage types and saves, and ... well, you get the picture. CR is nor guide beyond 5th level, and certain enemies are borked against certain abilities or combinations.

Now I am very experienced and know the game well, but still, I had to pull this lot out of my hat to make it challenging!

I just had a 20th level party of 5 stunlock the Demon Prince of Fire & Vampires (from the Tome of Beasts book) and take him down in one round... I had to maximise his HP on the fly to make him a challenge, and he came pre-loaded with 8 vampire spawn and a horde of skeletons. They then took out TWO Balors, about 20 Ghost Knights, 40 or so Imperial Ghouls, a CR 20 Ghoul Emperor with the Wand of Orcus, 6 winged Barlgura and then they took out VECNA (That's right, Vecna...) - who I had loaded up with 1000 HP, AC 30, Spell DC 25, Legendary Counterspell (automatic counterspell for 1 use) and Legendary Casting (3 spells a round).

They were not heaped on them all at once to be sure, but there was no SR involved.

Now tell me that the CR rules are not a farce and I'll laugh at you heartily, but one of the overwhelmingly constant mega-boosts to the party was that endless +5 save to all things on the Paladin...

... enough said perhaps?

 

[Guest 6801718]

I'm playing in a group that's running Curse of Strahd. We have both a paladin and a cleric in the group. If you think paladins are tough to handle with undead and fiends, clerics are worse. We pretty much decided as a group that we'll just let the cleric handle Strahd and we'll meet him at the tavern in a minute or two.

Though like others have said, there are ways of dealing with paladins and the monsters aren't really supposed to win. Though sometimes as a GM you come up with some encounters that you want to challenge the party and make things a little more fun. No one wants easy encounters all the time. So it can be a bit disappointing when the players walk all over what you had planned without much trouble. You want to make it a challenge for them so the the victory seems that much sweeter. I know I've put together some encounters thinking "this will tough for them!" only to have them stomp on it.

 

[Azurewraith]

I actually love all the classes, and as DM it's up to me to forge the story to accommodate my players enjoyment of the game within the confines of the rules, and since I can do anything I want in a campaign world I don't feel like I'm handcuffed really in doing so. But that being said, screw paladins. At least when you've got Fiends and Undead on the menu as the bad guys for your adventure.

Since most of the people I game with including myself have busy lives now that we are well into adulthood, it gets tough to get us all together for a session. So, I started running a side solo campaign for my twin brother. It's a lot of fun, and solo campaigns are nice in that you don't have to worry about the needs of 4-6 people at the same time, you can build a fantastic story around just one protagonist, make them the son of a god, the last of the Jedi, whatever. A lot of creative freedom in that. He plays a pretty well rounded bladelock with a strong mix of combat and non combat utility, charms, CHA based skills, stealth, give me ample opportunity make adventures happen.

But then his roommate wanted to play. Roommate is also an old friend, but never played DND, and I said sure because we all like bringing folks into the fold. He rolls his very first DND character, a paladin, and the gods of beginners luck on 4D6 dropping the lowest saw fit to give his first character some insane stats. With racial and level advancement(12th at the time to match my brothers Warlock), he ended up having a 20 in STR, CHA, AND CON. He's basically Dwayne Johnson. No problem, crazy high stats affect a lot, but I'm DM, I can always adjust for that to keep things interesting.

Of course, being the Dresden Files fanboi that I am, the current story arc was around a group of vampires in the city taking things over, with an evil mad scientist(Warlock of Old Ones) who makes dead things come to life, sort of a Victor Frankenstein, meaning lots of ghouls and such. Basically undead. Turns out without their charm ability, facing a guy who has radiant damage on his weapon all the time, who can do tons of bonus smite damage, who can also use Protection from Evil, vampires are pretty damn useless in a straight fight. Adding his saving throws to my brother's warlock is crazy huge too. We worked around it, all had fun and still are.

But I did throw in a section on one adventure where they end goal was guarded by a Death Knight. I figured they wouldn't do a straight up fight on it as they had a method to bypass it as a guarding and just wrap up the adventure, so even though they had just been through one deadly fight, they hatted up and decided to take out the death knight. They were 13 at the time, and I even let the death knight buff itself a bit before. Paladin opens up the fight with not one, but two crits with his flaming warhammer. Standard hit for him is 2D8 + 2D6(flaming) + bonuses. So (4D8 + 4d6 + Bonuses) x 2. Dropped it to half HP in the first round, sigh. They killed it. They got a bit lucky, but even without the crits they probably had it in the bag with the paladin there. In fact, he didn't even use his Divine Smite yet. Had he used his 4th level slots on those crits he might have just dropped it outright.

So yea, Paladins make having undead and fiends as your bad guys a lot tougher. So, this is not a claim to nerf any class, or a legit complaint about game balancing, I'm just saying. DM venting a little steam.

No you can't, you can try but they will still turn up.

 

[iserith]

I tried to have the ghost of a hag try to possess the dwarf paladin in my game last week ( [MENTION=6801813]Valmarius[/MENTION], @Lanliss). He succeeded handily in his save, then killed the ghost in one shot.

Later, he was charming enough to bed the (admittedly old and shrivel) leader of a wood elf clan.

...

He must be stopped.

 

[Lanliss]

I tried to have the ghost of a hag try to possess the dwarf paladin in my game last week ( [MENTION=6801813]Valmarius[/MENTION], @Lanliss). He succeeded handily in his save, then killed the ghost in one shot.

Later, he was charming enough to bed the (admittedly old and shrivel) leader of a wood elf clan.

...

He must be stopped.

Just put more difficult terrain in his path, that'll slow him down plenty. Beyond that, I'm not sure he can be stopped.