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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrankinLondon" data-source="post: 1841662" data-attributes="member: 25382">I'm just about to run a 3.5ed module (converted from 3.0) for my (mostly) 17th level party.  It's my first attempts at DM'ing such a high level although I have been a D&D DM for 25 years now (on and off).The party Sorcerer has just pointed out that he will soon gain 9th level spells and is looking forward to using Shapechange.  He is particularly keen on being a Pitfiend, which will be legal for him as an 18th level Sorcerer.  Casually leafing through the MM, I realised that this will take him fromHP : approx 100, A/C 23 (+3 dex, +5 ring, +5 bracers armour), two (never used) melee attacks of +9/+4 (D4-1)toHP : approx 200, A/C 50 (-1 size, +8 dex, +23 natural, +5 ring, +5 bracers Armour), 6 attacks at +20 (2d8+13)*2 / +15 (2d6+6)*2 / +15 (4d6+6+poison+disease) / +15 (2d8+6+constrict), fear aura (DC27), DR 15 (good and silver), immune to fire and poison, resist acid/cold 10, regen 5, spell resistance 32and this will last for 3 hours (plus the ability to change form every round as well).On top of this he retains his ability to cast spells as a 18th level sorcerer.  He could do the module on his own !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I know that 9th level spells are supposed to be powerful, but come on !Now, I could beef up the monsters in the module considerably (but this would run the risk of easily killing the other members of the party who are nowhere near this sort of power level).What really ticks me off though is the fear aura.  The will saves of the monster types in the module are as follows :-+22/+14/+8/+22/+11/+6/+14/+10/+11/+15/+12/+12/+18/+20/+11/+32Excluding the big baddie at the end, this is an average will save of approx 14, leaving the average monster to require a saving throw of 13 to prevent him from fleeing.This means that statistically 60% of my pre-big baddie monsters are going to drop everything and run when they get within 20 feet of the Sorcerer (and with those hps and a/c he's not going to be shy about coming forward).Also, as the highest caster level baddie in the module is 19th level, it means that due to his SR, 60% of my spells (actually much higher as most casters are lower than this) will be bouncing off him.Finally, a simple cast of Shield will give him an A/C of 54.  The best A/C in the rest of the party is 40, with the average being around 35.  Most of my monsters just won't hit him very often.  If I advance them so that they are hitting him about 30% of the time, they will be hitting the rest of the party virtually automatically.I kind of feel that it's not worth the effort running the module  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> I can't be the first DM to come up against this use of Shapechange (and I am aware that there are others that are nearly as bad, e.g. Choker).Any tips for handling this ?Frank</blockquote>

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