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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 1998781" data-attributes="member: 2011">We have a similar, but slightly different problem.Virtually every encounter, our enemies get to "ambush us", even when we attempt to ambush them.No matter how we approach an encounter, it ends up that NPCs archers are shooting from the dark or from concealment at us and we then become flatfooted in the middle of the battle. Arrrggghhhh.The other aspect of this is that WotC has a BAD rule about initiative versus surprise. So, even though we KNOW the enemy is ahead of us, if we do not spot all of the enemy before battle starts, then some of them can get an attack during the surprise round and again if their initiatives beat ours (us being flatfooted the entire time).This is all according to the rules, but it really sucks, especially at lower level, to get hit by two arrows in the surprise round and another one in round one before your initiative even comes up. Or, if a couple of opponents fire from concealment and we become flatfooted against them in round five. We are basically toast against underground races in a "dungeon setting" (our last dungeon setting was a silver mine where we had an extremely difficult time defeating small groups of kobolds since we needed light and they didn't).The new motto of our group has become the sarcastic "Fine time to take a nap" (alla Three Stooges).As a DM, you can use the "fire from the dark / concealment" flatfooted tactic against the PCs to at least wound them before they get the Darkness / Devil's Sight tactic working. Plus, the NPCs shouldn't have too much of a problem against 3.5 Darkness since they should rarely attack their own allies and also, it is only a 20% miss chance in there.It is unfortunate that you got caught up in WotC's experiment with the unbalanced Warlock class. You have to power down your PC in order to not irritate your DM. That sucks. :\ In our campaign, I play a psion. I rarely use my powers (relying on a crossbow and a greatsword most of the time), but if an encounter is going against us, I pull out my psionic guns and lay waste to the field. I have single handedly turned the tide of battle from losing to winning (or at least drawing in one case) every single time we have gotten into a losing situation (and none of the other 5 PCs have done this even once, course, we do not have an arcane spell caster). The problem is that I am pretty much low on power or out of power once I do that.I could not imagine the fits I would cause my DM if I had a Warlock doing that.On the subject of dice, comparison of averages of normal method, average minimum method, and re-roll method:D4 2.5 2.75 3.25D6 3.5 4.00 4.47D8 4.5 5.25 5.81D10 5.5 6.50 7.15D12 6.5 7.75 8.49On the further  subject of Warlocks, I'd just as soon get rid of them. WotC introduced a power curve of power vs. versatility vs. reusability vs. abilities per day that started ballooning like:P10: V10: R5: A10 Wizard P11: V9: R5: A11 Specialized WizardP13: V7: R15: A13 SorcererP15: V5: R20: A10 PsionP18: V2: R20: A100 WarlockSure, a Psion can do a D6 per level and a Warlock can only do just over 1/2 D6 per level, but the Psion can only do that maybe 5 times per day at max power and a Warlock can do it all day at max power.Combine that with the Warlocks other pretty cool abilities and you have a very good NPC villain class, but a very broken PC class.</blockquote>

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