DM needs advice

[eblue562]

Radiant Servants do just as good against Demons, teehee

Okay then, how about... DUCKS! Bwahahaha.

Seriously though, I think talking to the player about it makes it a little better for everyone. Does he really want to be pigeonholed into one single role? I'll bet the answer is eventually, no. That's what the beauty of retraining feats/powers allows. If he feels like later he's gimping himself, just allow him to retrain some powers and maybe make it a party quest to allow the retraining of a feat or two. The beauty of D&D is that almost anything is flexible, with the exception of the table you roll your dice on.

 

[OchreJelly]

I too thought Halivar's post may have been taken a bit personally by the OP. I don't think he meant it as an indictment on the OP personally but more of how a player may feel if a DM doesn't like their concept.

But let's get passed that. This caught my eye in the OP's post.

The irony of it is that as a long term effect this will alienate undead from the campaign, thus invalidating his character. The player has stars in his eyes when he looks the the numbers, but isnt thinking about it straight.
Does anyone have experience with a similar circumstance and how have you dealt with it?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'alienate undead from the campaign'. As the DM you control the amount of undead. What's key here is do the players know in advance what type of focus you plan to have for your campaign? If you were planning to have a big undead theme, you shouldn't be surprised if players want to build effective characters for such a world. OTOH if no theme was expressed at all, you will find that the players themselves may try to guide a theme with their character selection. And if you're running a sandbox style, know that such characters will actively seek undead threats. This isn't bad either.

What's important is that such a social contract be established before the campaign starts. IME the best campaigns are when the DM takes the active interests of the players' choices to heart, rather than fight against it. Otherwise, it will lead to frustration on both sides. If you really had a strong theme in mind that did not involve undead at all, that should have been communicated to the players prior to character creation. Please take all this constructively.

It's possible that I'm saying things the OP already knows, and that what he really wants to know is if the cleric player will still feel effective in non-undead encounters. I think 4E does a pretty good job of making all characters feel effective in circumstances that aren't ideal for their build.

 

[Nifft]

My advice seems to have gone over some heads, so here it is in more explicit form:

Use Waves. Most of the powers that should worry you are Encounter or Daily. Sure, it's sad when Solar Wrath kills every zombie on the board, but it's not such a big deal if you know there are more zombies coming. Then, the PC has the choice of clearing the board right now, or husbanding his power for a more opportune moment. (This is why I used Demons above: if he'd spent Solar Wrath while destroying the Undead, he wouldn't have it for the Demons.)

Mix Up Monster Types. Even if it's just Undead and Demons (which is a fine combo, by the way: because it's okay for this PC to shine), it gets them used to facing mixed encounters, and that's great when you spring Undead and Humans, or Undead and Golems... or Undead and Angels.


Start doing these two things all the time, so the players get used to seeing them, and they don't think you're just being spiteful when such an encounter eventually does catch them at a disadvantage.

Aside from tempering the ability of one PC to outshine everyone else, it will also makes your combats more interesting.

Cheers, -- N

 

[BobTheNob]

My advice seems to have gone over some heads, so here it is in more explicit form:

Use Waves. Most of the powers that should worry you are Encounter or Daily. Sure, it's sad when Solar Wrath kills every zombie on the board, but it's not such a big deal if you know there are more zombies coming. Then, the PC has the choice of clearing the board right now, or husbanding his power for a more opportune moment. (This is why I used Demons above: if he'd spent Solar Wrath while destroying the Undead, he wouldn't have it for the Demons.)

Mix Up Monster Types. Even if it's just Undead and Demons (which is a fine combo, by the way: because it's okay for this PC to shine), it gets them used to facing mixed encounters, and that's great when you spring Undead and Humans, or Undead and Golems... or Undead and Angels.


Start doing these two things all the time, so the players get used to seeing them, and they don't think you're just being spiteful when such an encounter eventually does catch them at a disadvantage.

Aside from tempering the ability of one PC to outshine everyone else, it will also makes your combats more interesting.

Cheers, -- N

Now that is the sort of thing I was after...waves! Nice thinking. BTW, I like the "mixed angels and undead" bit. It actually matches the backstory for my campaign.

Thats some good ideas. Thanks.

p.s. As OP I want to clarify why I am stretching out for help. I do want his character to shine, I want everyones to shine at some given point, I just dont want to look at undead encounters and say to myself "whats the point?". I want undead encounters (and demons, since he is also taking demonbane feat) to be included in my campaign without being marginalised.

I was also thinking "Hmmm...so he stacks radiant damage to the roof and then leverages via radiant servent huh? Maybe the occasional fight vs radiant resistant creatures will teach him the price of power"

 

[Turtlejay]

I am kind of amused by this whole thing. So, he chooses to bend his feats, powers, and Paragon Path towards killing undead effectively.

Does he *lose* healing word? Do his powers have no effect on the living? Essentially, he is playing a normal or mildly sub-optimised cleric 80% of the time, and a powerful, undead smashing cleric 20% of the time. This is fine. Sure, you may want to make the undead fights a little more interesting since he is likely to help the party blow through them, but in the other encounters, I'm sure he will function just fine. As long as you both are on the same page about this, I'd say there *is* no problem.

Jay

 

[OchreJelly]

That helps Bob. I wasn't sure if you were looking to avoid undead encounters altogether, but your follow-up makes it clear that you want the undead encounters to be interesting. Waves are a good suggestion. Don't worry about going into "hard" territory on encounter budgets, especially with minions. I have found that our group with a cleric handles hordes of undead minions very well.

If you don't have it, I suggest getting Open Grave. It's filled with a lot of undead, as you would expect. Some of the zombies have an interesting "rise again" power that lets them get back up after they are killed. If you use the monster builder you could possibly apply it and modify it for other undead beasties to give those encounters more legs and add a bit of variety.

 

[Nifft]

Now that is the sort of thing I was after...waves! Nice thinking. BTW, I like the "mixed angels and undead" bit. It actually matches the backstory for my campaign.

One thing I like about the new 4e Angels is that they serve all the gods... including Vecna. Mua-ha-ha!

p.s. As OP I want to clarify why I am stretching out for help. I do want his character to shine, I want everyones to shine at some given point, I just dont want to look at undead encounters and say to myself "whats the point?". I want undead encounters (and demons, since he is also taking demonbane feat) to be included in my campaign without being marginalised.

Open Grave has some goodies, and WotC seems to implicitly design waves into some of their encounters, though they seem do it as monster powers, where one critter summons minions, or summons minions when bloodied, or the like.

You could steal that from them, and make the trigger for wave 2 be the boss-monster elite dude getting bloodied.

Cheers, -- N