D&D 4E Help, I’m a Terrible (4E) DM

[Retreater]

The defender in question with the sometimes 35 AC is, in fact, a dwarven warden. The issue is not that he has a flat +10 bonus to AC, but it's a synergy of numerous feats, equipments, and conditions that make him all but impervious for a few rounds in a combat. But regardless of that - it's just that he has so many hit points, so many surges with such high surge values, such good defense, that it's not even worth throwing anything against him. He simply can't be hurt enough to matter.

He's not even the only problem. Consider last Wednesday's battle with a solo beholder (and a few minions). He was scary for a minute with nearly 400 hp. Then he was knocked unconscious with a magic item. Despite his +5 save bonus, he remained unconscious for two rounds, during which time everyone approached him and did coup de grace actions, draining almost 300 hp before he could even get off his round butt. He came back with literally 3 hp and got off one attack before being dropped by a cleric's basic melee attack.

It's just ridiculous how they are cake-walking through everything. I think part of it is my rotten luck with dice (the beholder couldn't save), but there's also the problem that I can't hurt enough people deeply enough.

Someone earlier asked about how many encounters before a rest: 4. I've placed a gamist requirement that they complete four encounters before taking an extended rest.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I'd amp up the monsters with more damage output, toss in some more minions that are like 3+ levels higher than the party, use swarm tactics, build a party of monsters that will respond tactically against the PCs (i.e. they are taking out the cleric first to get rid of the healing coming in or the mage to drop the highest DPS w/ the lowest AC kind of thing).

I ran into some issues when I DM'd 4E from 1-30, but my issues with the PCs weren't until they hit EPIC tier where they started tearing through things. That's when I amped up the level of the encounters (I had to go with level 27-30 encounters for a level 21-22 group). So I wouldn't follow the modules by the book, I'd definitely up the difficulty of the encounters if you are having so many problems right now.

It sounds like you have a very smart group who min/max. The other thing I'd also check to make sure they have level appropriate gear. It sounds like with 35 AC at level 7 they may have artifacts or wondrous items that should be VERY rare and I'd stomp on that stuff right away before it gets much more out of hand. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think +2 stuff should be the highest they should be having right now to be level appropriate (level 1-5 = +1, level 6-10 = +2....) and the +2 stuff isn't THAT great to give so many bonuses to their abilities/powers and a lot of that stuff that is added into magical items is 1/day or 1/encounter stuff.

I see you do 4 encounters before resting which is another good way to offset them. Having them go through waves of fight after fight to drain them (making it impossible to rest and regain some encounter powers - this will put the fear of the DM into them!). I like to use descriptions of things and give waves of harder minions to make them blow their bigger powers, make things sound scarier than they are. Put down minis instead of tokens to represent them, then at encounter 4 or 5 toss in some elites and a solo, mix it up more.

I'm sure that I'd do other things a bit differently as well, but w/o knowing your party make-up, stats, gear, etc it's just hard to give you advice other than generalities.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The defender in question with the sometimes 35 AC is, in fact, a dwarven warden. The issue is not that he has a flat +10 bonus to AC, but it's a synergy of numerous feats, equipments, and conditions that make him all but impervious for a few rounds in a combat. But regardless of that - it's just that he has so many hit points, so many surges with such high surge values, such good defense, that it's not even worth throwing anything against him. He simply can't be hurt enough to matter.

That's still not a complete explanation.

Which feats? From which sources? Which equipment? Are you allowing things to stack that shouldn't (do not count on the Character Builder to do the math for you)? Is he within his item budget? Which conditions? Are you allowing everything in the splatbooks/CB?

He has such good defense - which ones? Are all of his defenses that good? I can scarcely believe a dwarven warden will have all three NADs being good.

4th Edition PCs have more hit points than in previous editions, but they have less than their opponents. (HP bloat is greater on the monster side.) The amount of damage that monsters can dish out is higher than what PCs can dish out. Indeed, that's why PCs have such good healing - they need it. Unless they've cherry-picked item X from Source A and item Y from Source B and feat Z from Source C...

He's not even the only problem. Consider last Wednesday's battle with a solo beholder (and a few minions). He was scary for a minute with nearly 400 hp. Then he was knocked unconscious with a magic item.

Which item? If there's an item that can knock someone unconscious in one round (it's better than a 1st-level daily spell or Lolth's poison) I'd like to know. And if this item is available to 7th-level PCs I want to write a personal email to whoever wrote what splatbook it appeared in to register my disappointment in their publishing unbalanced stuff. I will demand free errata.

You're not even dealing with a 4e problem anymore. I think you're just allowing character creation with no guidelines, so your players find the most broken cheese and exploit it with no consequences. If someone allowed this in 3e or Pathfinder, they would run into this problem. (In my group, in addition to DMing Dark Sun, I'm a player in a Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign. My PC druid - generally one of the strongest classes - is only mid-rank in power, falling behind such combos as alchemist/barbarians [rage stacks with the alchemist's Potion of Growth] and cavalier/alchemists [Potion of Shield every encounter]. This doesn't make Pathfinder broken, it means the DM shouldn't have told us to use APG and other splat material.)

 

[Retreater]

I have vacated my weekly Wednesday game - the one that's 8th level with the occassionally 35 AC dwarven warden. I've passed the screen to a player who knows the various powers and character options better than I and should be able to present a better challenge.

I had taken about two years off from 4E to play Pathfinder from just after KotS until around the Essentials release. I think that during that time I missed out on a lot of the development of the game that was necessary to run it successfully. I don't think that I have an appropriate level of "system literacy" (is that a good term for it?) to be able to run the game. In short, I think that 4E has grown so quickly and massively full of character creation options that I don't have sufficient knowledge to be able to DM.

I can't really argue with what a player brings on a printed out Character Builder sheet, especially since I wanted to have the campaign open to everything. To retract that now and place new limits on characters would seem a case of sour grapes, and I think it's ultimately better to ask someone else to run the game.

I am still currently running the 4th level game, which hasn't gotten to be as crazy as the 7-8th level one due to my increased familiarity with the players, their characters, and the smaller number of players at the table. I might be able to keep that game fun and challenging for a bit longer.

 

[Retreater]

The magic item in question is the Skull Card from the Deck of Many Things, which is an artifact but it was awarded as per the Gardmore Abbey adventure.

I don't have a list of all of this player's feats, magic items, etc., but he did tally it up in front of me and it seemed to make sense that he could get to a 35 AC.

Next campaign, if I run again, will be 5 players absolute max (I can up the number of monsters to equal an increased EL, but more characters mean more zones, more auras, more synergistic effects, that they are exponentially more effective); I would disallow all magic items and allow only inherent bonuses; I would limit character creation to a resource or two (such as only Essentials) so I would have a chance to get familiar with those classes and their powers.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The magic item in question is the Skull Card from the Deck of Many Things, which is an artifact but it was awarded as per the Gardmore Abbey adventure.

I don't have that adventure but ... wow! I thought handing out artifacts like candy in adventures was soft-banned a decade ago.

Next campaign, if I run again, will be 5 players absolute max (I can up the number of monsters to equal an increased EL, but more characters mean more zones, more auras, more synergistic effects, that they are exponentially more effective); I would disallow all magic items and allow only inherent bonuses; I would limit character creation to a resource or two (such as only Essentials) so I would have a chance to get familiar with those classes and their powers.

That's a much more responsible attitude. I don't know if you need to ban items found in the PH1 (healing potions are useful and not at all broken; inherent doesn't have to mean no items), but limiting resources is a fantastic idea, along with everything else you've said.

 

[Rechan]

II can't really argue with what a player brings on a printed out Character Builder sheet, especially since I wanted to have the campaign open to everything. To retract that now and place new limits on characters would seem a case of sour grapes, and I think it's ultimately better to ask someone else to run the game.

Actually you can argue. I started a thread dealing with that exact situation and the response seems to be "yes, you have the right to do that".

But honestly I think part of the problem is that you are a Dm who is somewhat inexperienced with the system compared to your players, who are experts. If a DM new to Pathfinder/3.5 sat down with charop board players, he'd have the same outcome of "I can't handle their characters". Hell, experienced 3.X DMs have problems running high level games due to the system disparity.

 

[On Puget Sound]

Another key point you may be missing: bonuses with the same name don't stack. A character can benefit from one "power bonus", one "feat bonus", and one "enhancement bonus", plus any number of untyped "bonus"es to AC at a time. If the bard, the cleric and the warden each provide a power bonus to the warden's AC, count only the best one,,not all three.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I assume the 35 situational AC Warden was an Earthstrength Warden, which has the class feature: "In addition, when you use your second wind, you gain an additional bonus to AC equal to your Constitution modifier. The bonus lasts until the end of your next turn."

So that could be a +6 to AC (+2 normally, +4 Con mod) at 8th level. That's not the entire situational AC discrepancy but it's a good chunk of it.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I don't know why that adventure gave out a Paragon level artifact, but you guys were definitely playing the deck wrong if he keeps drawing out the same card. Tihis is the normal Artifact Deck from the WOTC site & Article on it:

The Deck of Many Things is appropriate for paragon level characters. The Deck of Many Things is, by itself, an object that holds within it the potential for either great ruin or great reward. Though the true origins of the Deck of Many Things have been lost to the ages, many historians believe that the artifact was originally a gift from a powerful and ancient archfey to a long-forgotten emperor. The archfey knew that the emperor was extremely superstitious and could not resist reading his own fortunes within the cards. Some hold the Deck of Many Things responsible for shattering that ancient empire and giving rise to powerful warlords that vied for control of the remnants of that empire. The Deck of Many Things passes from hand to hand, bringing the low the mighty and elevating the meek (and sometimes vice versa).

How to play it:
The Deck of Many Things fades in and out of history, wreaking havoc and upsetting the order of things from time to time. It is an agent of chaos in an otherwise ordered world, and once someone has drawn from the Deck of Many Things it vanishes, never to be seen again by that person. It leaves behind only the fate chosen by
the card that was drawn.

Skull Card:
Ruin
Four sword wraiths (Monster Manual, page 167), a nightwalker (Monster Manual, page 197) and an immolith demon (Monster Manual, page 56) appear and attack you and your allies immediately.

The Deck from Gardmore Abbey shouldn't have anything nearly as powerful as what you are describing, which is detailed here in the WOTC community page.

Anyhow, I know you aren't playing any longer with that group or with that artifact, but know for future usage that you were playing the deck wrong and either the player was pulling a fast one on you or the rules for playing it were interpreted wrong. The old Deck used to break games and the new one has been balanced much better.