Darkness+Devil's Sight is killing my campaign

[reanjr]

Is there no one who just enforces the HP rules? I mean, yeah, low HP is a detriment and that's why players have the option to take average. If you choose not to take average and you roll a 1, then why are you complaining? I always take average at 2nd level and roll from then on. Gives you a good start, but maintains the high average over a long career.

 

[atom crash]

The "drawback" of your method is that it really favors the PCs. Starting the PCs with a minimum score of half the die and letting them potentially roll higher means they can more easily overpower otherwise balanced encounters. Especially when the monsters by the book have the average roll per HD.

I've already had to start giving monsters by the book +1 hp per die and NPCs (average roll) +1 hp per die (does that sentence make sense?) to balance the encounters. For example,

The group in my campaign is 4 PCs + 1 cohort + 1 animal companion. One class ability + one feat have effectively thrown encounters balanced by the book out of whack.

 

[-=Xar=-]

Ah, thanks, I didn't knew Darkness was changed in 3.5, it explains a lot. Once I had a cleric PC who took a solo mission. He used Darkness and Blindsight, slaughtered the whole dungeon without even resting. It was ment for a group of 12th level PC's, he was 11th. Since then I am icky for combos like this.
As for HP's we use a variation on Thanee's: every level you get the average+0.5, so a rogue with Con 10 would get 4. It's like point buy, you know what you get. Never used rolling again, except for a single 2nd edition one-shot, for sentimental value.

 

[Lasher Dragon]

Nearly every DM I play with uses the method Thanee suggests, with 1 small difference - we always get at least top-half of die rolls, making a d4 minimum 3, a d6 4, a d8 5, etc.

Oh, and the DMs almost always give the monsters max HP, among other little boosts and tweaks

 

[Sir ThornCrest]

About the warlocks invocations..

#1) in my campaign a big dark spot in the middle of the sky or field is an instant target for any spell caster with a fire ball, sonic boom whatever.

#2) Blindsight is worse than devils sight it allows him to see inviso in dark in clouds gases whatever its like radar! in a x radius so he cant be sneaked up on either, providing he sees anyways.

#3) The Warlocks ability to cast 2 3 4 or more invocations incessently makes him powerful for what he does, but thats just it he only does a few things..

Thorncrest

The Warlock's invocation Devil's sight allows him to see through all natural and magical darkness. He can take it at 1st level, and use it continuosly. Combine this with a Darkness spell (or better yet, Darkness invocation for unlimited use), some levels in fighter and you have a nice Sphere of Annihilation-look alike. Simply roll over the enemies with your Darkness spehere, and they will leave it in tiny bits. Enemies get disoriented within the sphere and attack an empty space, their allies, or simply suffer the 50% miss chance. They can only use area-attack spells. While the PC's merrily hack them into pieces or nuke them with spells and Eldritch Blasts from within their protection. Soon every PC takes a level in Warlock, and suddenly the party calls itself "The Blackballs".

It seems that there are but a few way to counter this cheesy tactic, like monsters with scent and blindsight. But I don't really want to center my campaign around girallons and dragons. Daylight and Dispel Magic would work, but there aren't always enemy spellcasters around, and even then they wouldn't prepare a lot Daylights. And when dispelled the party can simply put up another Darkness.

Any other groups with the same problem? Is there any way to counter this abusive combo? Tactics the enemies could use to even things out, without relying to "every enemy spellcaster has now a daylight spell prepared" thing? Or should I simply disallow this?

 

[Sir ThornCrest]

cont hijack about hit pionts...

We have always played no 1's period. And warriors cant roll less than their con bonus. This makes for a more stout warrior Palidons fighter barbarian and rangers and any other warrior type prestige class (usually any class with a +1 bab per level).

Thorncrest

As a quick thread hijack, when one of our group DMs, characters get to re-roll their hp, based on the HD.

d4: no re-rolls
d6: re-roll if the result is 1
d8, d10: re-roll if the result is 1 or 2
d12: re-roll if the result is 1, 2, or 3

That way you get the random results of die-rolling, but you still have some assurance that your d12-HD barbarian will have more hps than other characters.

 

[Joker]

Xar is being melodramatic. I only used the darkness/blindsight combo once in a quarter of said dungeon. After I saw him have a lot of trouble with this tactic I decided not to ever use it again (despite being an effective tactic), because it is quite lame.
This topic came up again because I wanted to hire a group of warlock/fighters known to use this tactic. But seeing the large vein on Xar's forehead throbbing I decided not to .

P.S. We still largely use 3.0.

 

[Thanee]

The "drawback" of your method is that it really favors the PCs.

Mine? You mean compared to rolling twice and taking the highest roll?

Then let me tell you, that what I proposed always gives a lower average result than that method. It even is lower than the quite popular re-roll once (but you have to take the second roll if you decide to use the re-roll).

@reanjr: I can tell you why I do not like it... because rolling a 1 or 2 on a d10 three times in a row is no fun. Yeah, you can take the average, but if you do not and roll a 1 once, what do you do then? Take the average from then on and suck it up, or hope for a high roll to even it out? Exactly! And then you roll another 1. And then a 2. And then you are left with a fighter that has to hide behind the wizard. And that is no fun. What I have written above completely eliminates this chance without giving a high increase to the average (it's between +0.25 and +1.25 hps/lvl depending on HD size (yes, it is an increase, even worth as much as a feat for a barbarian or fighter, but it's not such a big difference in the end other than removing all those characters from the pool that are simply no fun to play since they fall over dead as soon as someone touches them - you don't need super high hp, but you need at least roughly average hps, and rolling is more fun than just taking the average, too)). That's why I like it best that way.

Bye
Thanee

 

[atom crash]

Mine? You mean compared to rolling twice and taking the highest roll?

Then let me tell you, that what I proposed always gives a lower average result than that method. It even is lower than the quite popular re-roll once (but you have to take the second roll if you decide to use the re-roll).

I made the statement based on the fact that your method results in a higher minimum score than my method. Though I'll admit I don't dabble enough in statistics to give the two methods a thorough comparison; I was just eyeballing it.

Example #1: The human sorceror IMC gets another level. By my method, he gets hp in the range of 2-4. By your method, he gets hp in the range of 2-4. Same result at the low end of hp. But he can still conceivably end up with a 1 by my method; not likely, but possible.

Example #2: The dwarven fighter IMC gets another level. By my method, he gets hp in a range of 2-10, average is about a 6 (?). By your method, that range is 5-10, average of about 7 (?). Now that I think about it, I haven't taken into account the fact that rolling a 1,2,3,4 or 5 results in a score of 5. How does that affect the average?

And, of course, favoring the PCs is not a bad thing, as they will engage in many more combat encounters than the NPc or monster. That's why I put quotation marks on "drawback."

But I honestly don't understand how your method results in a lower average. A little help with the math?

 

[ForceUser]

You could also try my method. Very simple and effective.

Any HD roll lower than half the HD is half the HD instead.

(Half the HD is 2 for d4, 3 for d6, 4 for d8, etc.)

Eliminates bad rolls completely (not just lowers the chance for them), which is the primary purpose, because having low hit points is simply annoying (especially for fighter types), but it does not make hit points much higher than they normally are either (and therefore does not mess with the CR/EL system much), and it puts a little more emphasis on the high hit dice classes (since higher hit dice gain more hit points that way on average... not much, just very little, the difference is 1 hp on average between d4 and d12).

Bye
Thanee

We don't roll hit points anymore, because too often the barbarians among us roll 1s and 2s for their hit dice. Instead I give them a flat amount of hit points each level at the high side of average, modified by Con bonus and feats. Works for us.

d4 = 3
d6 = 4
d8 = 5
d10 = 6
d12 = 7