D&D General GM : Spellcaster Arms Race

[Lanefan]

Level doesn’t matter.

Any spell or gambit (let’s say 2 x low level spells) that dramatically impacts the trajectory of play and changes the gamestate in a significantly positive way for team PC. Examples:

In the 1st-level game I'm running right now an impressive amount of the supposedly-fearsome opposition thus far has been far-too-easily put down with Sleep spells followed by slit throats. (I use the 1e DMG guidelines for randomly assigning starting spells and - lucky buggers - both party casters got Sleep!)

What can I do except shrug and move on.

 

[Shiroiken]

The only thing I've ever done is item 1 (adding magic countermeasures in advance) and only if it makes sense. I've had extremely powerful parties before (my first campaign was a 1E game that ended between levels 30-36), and when they face off against a powerful baddie, they have a lot of tricks up their sleeves. Not because I want/need them against the PCs, but because the baddies want them against everybody! High level casters have powerful defenses, and my players often learn to implement them on their own strongholds as well.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

This has been a ongoing conversation for decades. GMs talk about how mid/high level (and certainly beyond) Spellcasters (lets say level 9+) are not relatively overpowered (compared with their martial counterparts and the obstacles the PCs face) because a GM is capable of either proactively or reactively deploy countermeasures to bring their power in check (and that this approach is (a) not adversarial and (b) appropriate GMing). However, this conversation always struck me in that it was the inverse of the white room theorizing where we converse about how spellcasters dominate the trajectory of play and the bulk of the gamestate. There is always the response that the "caster supremacy" argument never has to "show their work"; eg spells known, spell loadout, etc etc. But I never see the alternative where GM's "show their work." Its always just assumed that because a GM has unilateral access to unestablished backstory, unilateral access to the offscreen, and the ability to fudge rolls if their game isn't player-facing and they choose to do so. Effectively, they have unbridled resources to deploy countermeasures at their discretion.

It sounds to me like you think the GM is somehow an "equal" to a Player. He/She is not (I'm going to just say 'he' for GM, because it's easy from here on out).
The GM has ALL the power as it relates to the game. The GM can, technically, just utterly annihilate the PC's on a whim. The old "Rocks fall. Everyone dies" thing. Of course, such a GM would find themselves sitting alone at the table the next week wondering where everyone is....so it's a self-correcting position, so to say!

However, we've never discussed how often or at what rate are GMs deploying these blocks/countermeasures?

So, then. GMs out there who feel that it is appropriate and responsible GMing to focus this kind of overhead to passively and actively counter spellcaster PCs. How often per session or how often per spell deployment are you countering spellcaster PCs via any of the below:

I'm going to have to use my imagination for this exercise, because in 40 years of GM'ing, I have NEVER had a spellcaster completely "overshadow/overpower" other PC's/NPC's, etc. I honestly find it a bit of a conundrum, to be honest. But hey...everyone has different experiences, and all that, right?

1) Preemptively using unestablished backstory or unilateral access to the offscreen (NPC x has Antimagic wards on their lair/redoubt, Divination and Teleportation exclusion zones mandated by territorial governing bodies, spellcasting is outlawed or aggressively stigmatized, NPC x has a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x IS a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x has Magic Resistance, etc, etc).

As long as the GM did all this "pre-emptively"...in other words, BEFORE the campaign even GOT to such high level play.... then go for it. The campaign world the GM is running/creating/nurturing doesn't get that way by accident. Any GM worth his salt would have probably spent hundreds of hours already pouring over his world and thinking about all these "What if...?" situations. These "what if" situations are typically quite boring when compared with all the exciting antics the Players PC's get up to during a 6 hour play session! Things like "Ok, this town sits on a hill side near the coast....how does it handle rain and sewage?", or "The town Mayor is elected every 6 years, but does he get to pick his helpers? Or is there some sort of 'committee'? Are they elected? Hired? Lifetime?", or "This town has a tower that the retired Sorcerer Nostronomono lives. How does his magic fit into the town as a whole?".

Any GM who hasn't thought of "So, are Otyughs attracted to the lower section of the town, where the sewage runs into a disgusting slough at the edge of the river?", or "What if the Mayor has spells or abilities that let him persuade virtually any commoner?", "If Nostronomono summoned a demon, how bad off would the town be?", etc....needs to go read some old Dragon Magazines on DM'ing and running a successful campaign.

2) Reactively (and secretly) changing loadouts or defenses to counter a spellcaster PC after you've discovered they've got an obstacle/encounter trivializing or obviating spell gambit they're about to deploy.

No! Bad GM! BAD! No twinkie for you!
This is something I feel quite strongly about, obviously. To me, this is the only way a GM can really outright "cheat". Now, a GM can think "Oh crap! The fort is made mostly of wood! Obviously they would have barrels of water or some means of stopping a fire...hmmm....ok..." and then come up with something REASONABLE to the capabilities of that fort and it's inhabitants! The GM should still not just pick the toughest most sure-fire way to fix such a fire...so no "Well, it's an old fort that these bandits have fixed up in the last year. Lets put an enslaver water elemental in a barrel in every large room. Oh, and every sergeant has a Ring of Water Elemental Command. The wood is all treated with Anti-Magic too".

That would NOT be "reasonable".

Barrels of water with a pile of old blankets next to them. That's reasonable for bandits in an old half-ruined wood fort.

3) Aggressively using the endless resources at your disposal to actively harangue spellcaster PCs in ways that you don't harangue martial PCs (eg creatures that can steal spells or spellcasters that steal spells but none that steal armor/swords, Rakshashas and the like but limited Rust Monsters, spellbook and component pouch stealing Imps/Pixies).

See above!

4) Fudge a Saving Throw Roll or a To-Hit Roll against the Spellcaster.

Nope. Bad move. The only time I've ever done this sort of thing was when the Players are really into the moment and my dice suddenly decide "Naaa...lets just kill everyone!". I only do this VERY rarely. Like...once a year or three. If I was to do it more often...well...you don't get the title "Killer DM" by doing that sort of thing! I have my standards!


In a nutshell: Never had a problem with spellcasters. In any version of the game I've played (all but 0e ['Brown Booklets'] and 4th). I think the problem honestly comes from GM's simply not actually thinking about what they put into their game (re: adapt or allow). When a GM just sort of takes the roll of "I'm the Player that rolls the dice for the monsters", that's when things go bad. When the GM is resigned to trying to make EVERYTHING so whiz-bang-spectacularocious that he say's "Yeah, go ahead and use any of the official books. And yeah, you can choose whatever race...and we're using Feats...and Multiclassing...and the new Tasha's stuff so you can go nuts and make the PC you want"...and then does absolutely zero thinking of what those choices will/would have on his setting/world/campaign? Well, that's when you have the problems of "Uber-Spellcasters".

A GM should have at least half his off-time taken up by thinking about economics, relationships between NPC's, religious festivals of the locals, weather, soil composition of the area, migration patters of animals, availability of timber and thatch to fix/build structures, etc. If a GM isn't or doesn't take the time to think about all that 'boring world stuff', their campaigns will be...."typical". Maybe fun, but nothing special. Nothing they or their players will remember decades later. It will just be "Oh yeah, I played that Adventure Path! I was some kind of multiclass paladin/sorcerer or something. It was fun". Yeah...TOTALLY memorable and worthy of GM pride. ... ... ...

IMNSHO, of course.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Benjamin Olson]

1) Preemptively using unestablished backstory or unilateral access to the offscreen (NPC x has Antimagic wards on their lair/redoubt, Divination and Teleportation exclusion zones mandated by territorial governing bodies, spellcasting is outlawed or aggressively stigmatized, NPC x has a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x IS a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x has Magic Resistance, etc, etc).

2) Reactively (and secretly) changing loadouts or defenses to counter a spellcaster PC after you've discovered they've got an obstacle/encounter trivializing or obviating spell gambit they're about to deploy.

3) Aggressively using the endless resources at your disposal to actively harangue spellcaster PCs in ways that you don't harangue martial PCs (eg creatures that can steal spells or spellcasters that steal spells but none that steal armor/swords, Rakshashas and the like but limited Rust Monsters, spellbook and component pouch stealing Imps/Pixies).

4) Fudge a Saving Throw Roll or a To-Hit Roll against the Spellcaster.

1. The Archmage has warded his wizard's tower, and government buildings may have received similar treatment. This is done more for the sake of worldbuilding and variety than to specifically counter player characters. Similarly if it makes sense that someone would have an anti-caster spell loadout they have one, if it doesn't they don't. So less than once per session.

2. I'm sure I have sometimes retroactively changed something because the way I had it made no sense in a world where X spell is a common concern or because evil wizard, who spends all his time being an evil wizard, would have thought of the thing that I, someone whose lucky to find a few hours a year to be an evil wizard, didn't. It's once again a world building issue. Once again less than one time per session.

3. No times per session.

4. I've never fudged a die.

 

[Manbearcat]

I appreciate everyone's replies.

You've all mostly engaged with the thrust of my original post, but there hasn't been uniform clear answers as to the bottom questions. Thus far it seems the 2 answers that predominate are basically:

* “Not much or at all. Spellcaster toys are meant to do this stuff and I’ve always got more bad guys/obstacles.”

* "Number 1 is a legal move and countermeasures are extrapolated from that."

Ok then.

So following from the above, an answer to the questions might be something like:

1) Countermeasures occur about 1 x per session.

2) Countermeasures occur about 1/4 spell/gambit deployments by the spellcaster (meaning 25 % are countered and 75 % aren't countered).

3) The countermeasures deployed are nearly universally by way of:

1) Preemptively using unestablished backstory or unilateral access to the offscreen (NPC x has Antimagic wards on their lair/redoubt, Divination and Teleportation exclusion zones mandated by territorial governing bodies, spellcasting is outlawed or aggressively stigmatized, NPC x has a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x IS a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x has Magic Resistance, etc, etc).

This is because 2, 3, and 4 are bad faith moves made by the GM (or something to that effect), but 1 is not only a good faith play, but responsible GMing.

 

[prabe]

So following from the above, an answer to the questions might be something like:

1) Countermeasures occur about 1 x per session.

2) Countermeasures occur about 1/4 spell/gambit deployments by the spellcaster (meaning 25 % are countered and 75 % aren't countered).

3) The countermeasures deployed are nearly universally by way of:

1) Preemptively using unestablished backstory or unilateral access to the offscreen (NPC x has Antimagic wards on their lair/redoubt, Divination and Teleportation exclusion zones mandated by territorial governing bodies, spellcasting is outlawed or aggressively stigmatized, NPC x has a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x IS a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x has Magic Resistance, etc, etc).

This is because 2, 3, and 4 are bad faith moves made by the GM (or something to that effect), but 1 is not only a good faith play, but responsible GMing.

I don't think you're wrong about what is considered "fair" and "unfair," but I think you've understated the extent to which DMs try to make things make sense narratively (as in, the existence and type of countermeasures should be appropriate for the situation) and maybe overstated the frequency with which these things happen. I don't think it's as frequent as once per session, but my sessions aren't complete adventures, so my sense here might be off.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't think you're wrong about what is considered "fair" and "unfair," but I think you've understated the extent to which DMs try to make things make sense narratively (as in, the existence and type of countermeasures should be appropriate for the situation) and maybe overstated the frequency with which these things happen. I don't think it's as frequent as once per session, but my sessions aren't complete adventures, so my sense here might be off.

You misunderstood my last post.

It was (a) a request to answer the questions asked in the initial post and (b) a template by which one would answer it (the answers in the template are arbitrary and not mine nor anyone else's...they are there merely to serve as filler for the template).

 

[Quickleaf]

How often per session or how often per spell deployment are you countering spellcaster PCs via any of the below:

1) Preemptively using unestablished backstory or unilateral access to the offscreen (NPC x has Antimagic wards on their lair/redoubt, Divination and Teleportation exclusion zones mandated by territorial governing bodies, spellcasting is outlawed or aggressively stigmatized, NPC x has a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x IS a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x has Magic Resistance, etc, etc).

Interesting question!

There's multiple things here, so that makes reducing to a "per session" estimate impossible. However, most of what you've listed falls within my personal Fair Play is Foreshadowing paradigm. By requiring myself – in the majority of these situations – to foreshadow these sorts of hard magical counters, it makes the challenge something the players can engage with and thinking strategically about. While I know I can do a better job with Magic Resistance (a trait common in 5e monsters and a whole other conversation), a few examples spring to mind...

(1) World-building is Foreshadowing
I was just asking for advice about how to run a scene where the PCs witness a NPC ruler get poisoned, and one person suggested that the ruler's throne room has a permanent antimagic field in effect as a defensive measure which then works against them when healers try to cast lesser restoration to heal the poisoning. That's a great example of world-building serving as foreshadowing which then becomes a hard magical counter.

(2) Foreshadowing for Multiple Functions
When I ran Tomb of Annihilation – in which Acererak has a huge magical dungeon in the jungle – I dropped multiple clues about diamond mines specifically being over-mined, extremely rare, and dwarves lamenting the long enslavement their fathers and mothers endured in the diamond mines. This helped foreshadow that Acererak had teleportation & divination countering enchantments on the dungeon... something my players were able to piece together. The scarcity of diamonds, and hence diamond dust (this was 5e where diamond dust is a material component for resurrection & greater restoration spells), also served to emphasize the deadliness of the night hag adversaries in the adventure – their maximum HP reducing Nightmare Haunting was usually curable with greater restoration, but with the scarcity of diamonds that made the decision to expend some to cast the spell a challenging choice.

(3) Limiting Through Engaging
I've been writing up a flame mage dungeon built on an old oracular sacred site, for high-level play. There's essentially ambient magic from all the training of apprentice flame mages mingling with residual magic of these elemental flame oracles. This effect is also tied to a forbiddance effect preventing an asuras NPC critical to the quest from entering the dungeon. This manifests as a "Counterspell Meter." Each time counterspell is cast in the dungeon within a 24 hour period, the caster rolls a d6. If the result is equal to or less than the number of times counterspell has been cast, then there is a fiery eruption at the midpoint between the countered spell and the caster of counterspell, and a living glitterfire manifests (a form of living spell) hostile to all creatures. Design-wise, this was as much to limit player abuse of counterspell, as it was to curtail multiple enemy mages stopping all PC spellcasting through sheer weight of counterspells. But it also engages the players in the story of this dungeon, because it can directly affect them depending on their chocies. Or at least, that's my intent! Will see how it runs in play!

2) Reactively (and secretly) changing loadouts or defenses to counter a spellcaster PC after you've discovered they've got an obstacle/encounter trivializing or obviating spell gambit they're about to deploy.

I haven't done this. I'm more of a "play it where it lies" mindset, and don't think it's worth it to neuter the players' enjoyment of these sorts of loopholes. As play progresses in the long-run, I believe part of the DM's role is to present bigger and better challenges to the players, and this requires stepping up to superior play – in other words, there will be a chance down the road to challenge whatever winning strategy they've landed on today.

But I do understand why a DM might overreact, especially with certain spells... Leomund's tiny hut comes to mind because that spell in 5e has seen a dramatic power-up since even its powered-up appearance in 4e. The concept of the spell isn't flawed, but its execution in 5e is really bad.

I think the "this is play as intended" argument should always be open to questioning. Maybe what's intended isn't what's written. Maybe what's intended isn't right for your group.

3) Aggressively using the endless resources at your disposal to actively harangue spellcaster PCs in ways that you don't harangue martial PCs (eg creatures that can steal spells or spellcasters that steal spells but none that steal armor/swords, Rakshashas and the like but limited Rust Monsters, spellbook and component pouch stealing Imps/Pixies).

Nah, I'm an equal opportunity rat bastard DM. I did have a night hag focus her Nightmare Haunting on the wizard PC for a couple sessions, but that was because the wizard and the paladin killed her younger sister. Whereas her older sister was married to the paladin, and declared his soul off limits for herself (long story).

4) Fudge a Saving Throw Roll or a To-Hit Roll against the Spellcaster.

I used to fudge dice when I was younger, but I guess I grew out of it. Since then I've had a lot more bad guys get wiped out in a single round by my players. But you know what? It's also made me level up my strategic & tactical thinking when it comes to D&D, and I've also gotten a lot better at knowing how to tweak monster design – when it makes sense for that monster/NPC – to account for common tactics (e.g. stun-locking comes to mind).

Is it 1 x per session? Is it 2 x per session?

Is it 1/4 spellcaster deployments (that would otherwise trivialize or outright obviate an encounter)? Is it 2/4? Is it 3/4?

Which of the above 4 countermeasures do you use, why, and how much?

#1 (Preemptively using unestablished backstory or unilateral access to the offscreen) is my poison of choice. For me, it's much more of a dungeon-building or campaign-building decision, rather than a "per session" decision.

 

[prabe]

You misunderstood my last post.

It was (a) a request to answer the questions asked in the initial post and (b) a template by which one would answer it (the answers in the template are arbitrary and not mine nor anyone else's...they are there merely to serve as filler for the template).

Apologies.

In my campaigns, it's less than one time per adventure (if you don't count encountering an established protection more than once, to be more than one time, and considering that adventures often run more than one session). It's almost certainly less than 25% of the time spellcasters try to solve problems with spellcasting (at least as a matter of intent; I have on at least one occasion nuked the 14th-level bard's shiny new highest-level spell by accident--because I didn't know what his shiny new was).

I think you have it right that the countermeasures are typically deployed as something like worldbuilding, or making a believable situation, or something along those lines, and much less often changing even the DM's hidden notes. The latter is (probably) understood as DMing in bad faith; the former at least can be DMing in good faith. If I establish that in [place] at least some spellcasting (of a sort the PCs typically use to solve problems) is ... illegal, or taboo, or whatever, that can be A) an interesting facet of that place and B) a challenge to the PCs--solve those problems differently or deal with the consequences of casting those spells or try to use those spells without getting caught or, etc.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

1) Preemptively using unestablished backstory or unilateral access to the offscreen (NPC x has Antimagic wards on their lair/redoubt, Divination and Teleportation exclusion zones mandated by territorial governing bodies, spellcasting is outlawed or aggressively stigmatized, NPC x has a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x IS a mage with an anti-spellcaster loadout, NPC x has Magic Resistance, etc, etc).

Hmm. Could be a couple of times a session, to maybe once every 5 sessions or so, depending on your definition of countermeasures.
From the examples you have listed, closer to once every 5 sessions that the party will run into monsters with magic resistance like Demons/Devils/Illithids etc.

If opponents kicking their companions back awake after a sleep spell, spreading out to reduce area damage, or using Counterspell if they have it known counts as a 'countermeasure', then of course, much more often.