An0nymo|_|s
First Post
asdf
Help me battle munchkism
- Thread starter FTracer
- Start date
Dimwhit
Explorer
Here's my take. I may be off, but I don't think so. There will always be some degree of Munchkinism. I'm not even convinced it's all bad, but it easily can be. Here's what I would do in your place.
1. Ban all non-Wizards books. The core books and maybe the guidebooks (Sword and Fist, Song and Silence, etc.).
2. No house rules. Go strictly by the book, all interpretations being decided by you. Hopefully, 3.5 will make that a little easier, since there are some things that still need clearing up.
3. Don't Monty Haul your players. One thing that easily gets out of hands is the ridiculous amount of treasure and items. +5 flaming burst keen longswords at 9th level, that kind of thing. If you keep the treasure under control, it will help a ton! (Don't skimp on the players, but keep it balanced.)
You're in a tough spot with the players already being so high level. I'd make them start again. Also, this won't completely get rid of the problem. But I really believe it will cut out 90% of it. In all the campaigns I'm in, we don't have a serious problem. Sure, we have a few really tough characters, but nothing out-of-balance, and nothing the DM hasn't been able to easily challenge.
My two cents. Probably worth about that much.
1. Ban all non-Wizards books. The core books and maybe the guidebooks (Sword and Fist, Song and Silence, etc.).
2. No house rules. Go strictly by the book, all interpretations being decided by you. Hopefully, 3.5 will make that a little easier, since there are some things that still need clearing up.
3. Don't Monty Haul your players. One thing that easily gets out of hands is the ridiculous amount of treasure and items. +5 flaming burst keen longswords at 9th level, that kind of thing. If you keep the treasure under control, it will help a ton! (Don't skimp on the players, but keep it balanced.)
You're in a tough spot with the players already being so high level. I'd make them start again. Also, this won't completely get rid of the problem. But I really believe it will cut out 90% of it. In all the campaigns I'm in, we don't have a serious problem. Sure, we have a few really tough characters, but nothing out-of-balance, and nothing the DM hasn't been able to easily challenge.
My two cents. Probably worth about that much.
Mark Chance
Boingy! Boingy!
Here I Come to Save the Day!
Everyone else is wrong. Activating a ring is a standard action (p. 192, DMG).
There are any number of monsters to which invisibility is not an obstacle. See invisibility is a low-level spell.
I am curious, though: A 32 AC at 13th level?
Mind fog, dominate person.
There are also any number of monsters immune to criticals and sneak attacks.
Definitely no spells. Not sure about when he can start getting new spells. I don't think there's anything hard and fast in the core rules. I'd make him sweat it out something awful, so your call on it seems reasonable to me.
Minor globe of invulnerability, globe of invulernability, antimagic shell. Monsters with SR or resistances and immunities. Use grapple rules, preferably in conjunction with improved grab extraordinary ability. Let's see him casts spells after being swallowed whole.
Correct, regardless of level. This includes multiple attacks from two-weapon fighting.
Question: Did you pick this group from another GM, or is the horror one of your own making?
If you'd like quicker, more specific replies, feel free to email me.
FTracer said:
Everyone else is wrong. Activating a ring is a standard action (p. 192, DMG).
There are any number of monsters to which invisibility is not an obstacle. See invisibility is a low-level spell.
I am curious, though: A 32 AC at 13th level?
Mind fog, dominate person.
There are also any number of monsters immune to criticals and sneak attacks.
Definitely no spells. Not sure about when he can start getting new spells. I don't think there's anything hard and fast in the core rules. I'd make him sweat it out something awful, so your call on it seems reasonable to me.
Minor globe of invulnerability, globe of invulernability, antimagic shell. Monsters with SR or resistances and immunities. Use grapple rules, preferably in conjunction with improved grab extraordinary ability. Let's see him casts spells after being swallowed whole.
Correct, regardless of level. This includes multiple attacks from two-weapon fighting.
Question: Did you pick this group from another GM, or is the horror one of your own making?
If you'd like quicker, more specific replies, feel free to email me.
Never said I was a new DM, just that it's my turn to run the game. I'm rarely the DM, I have in the past. To prevent burnout we're trying the idea of having one person run three or four adventures then switch. I HAD the DM guide but traded it off since I didn't use it, read it three or four times. I use the Kalamar shield for info. Reason we don't start over is we'd like to play epic level and tried of restarting our characters(but it looks like it doesn't matter, might be going to a spycraft/d20 campaign).
Thank you all for your help, I did very well last week during play. Looking to the Sultans of Smackdown thread now ;-)
Thank you all for your help, I did very well last week during play. Looking to the Sultans of Smackdown thread now ;-)
Don't be surprised that your Rogue has amazing skills. My Rogue with 16 Int gets 11 skill points a level. At 13th max rank is 16. with good Dex, synergies, and items she ought to have a number of skills well over 20.
And her damage on a sneak attack ought to average about 28.
Hey, you wanted to play "epic."
[Edit: that's 28 before damage bonuses or crit (assumes d6 weapon).]
And her damage on a sneak attack ought to average about 28.
Hey, you wanted to play "epic."
[Edit: that's 28 before damage bonuses or crit (assumes d6 weapon).]
Last edited:
Kae'Yoss
First Post
my tuppence
First, if it's really a ring of improved invisibility, he doesn't even need to "recloac", since improved invisibility won't go away after the attack.
The normal ring of invisibility can used all day long IIRC, but after every attack, you have to spend a new standard action to activate it again, which cannot be done in the same round as an attack, since both are at least standard actions. Even the feat "Expert Tactician", which gives you an extra partial action against someone who lost his Dex bonus against you (which happens if the attacker is invisible) has been errata'ed so it only grants an addtitional attack, NO other standard actions, and ONLY an attack against someone who is denied his dex bonus against you (so no extra attack against the all-seeing dragon). Be sure to enforce that errata.
First rule as a DM: you're DM, what you say is not only right, but it's reality. If you say something isn't possible, no player can say otherwise, period.
Rule two as a DM: try to be reasonable with your rules, don't make "cause I say so" changes. But as far as I can see that situation, they use something that really shouldn't be there, and you can rest assured that you do the right thing when you say "no attack and cloak in one round", which is only ever possible with haste (or that feat that makes you act as if hasted, but that one is epic)
I wouldn't run a session without that book.
Invisibility is a popular tactic, and naturally, most experienced enemies had the opportunity to become experienced because they didn't fall for the old invis trap! There's see invisible as wiz2, invisibility purge as clr3, and even the spell faerie fire (druid 1, inherent to all drow elves), will defeat invisibility (just consider this: someone readies an action to "cast faerie fire on the first enemy that becomes visible again", especially if they see someone going invisible time and again. Of course, at these levels, some characters will have the true seeing spell, which fools even darkness (and thus they can use darkness and be unaffected by it).
Well, everything that requires a will save, charm person, hold person, dominate person, fear, feeblemind, doom, tasha's hideous laughter, suggestion.....
Should not be to much, since rogues tend to be rather weak and have no big weapons. And sneak attack damage is NOT multiplied with a crit.
Hasn't to do anything with leveling. But he will lose his patron deity and access to all spells, and any new deity he worships after that will demand something of him before he'll grant him spells. Usually a mission he must fulfill (think of something nasty). Depending on the alignments you allow (many ban evil characters) he might even become a NPC.
Feeblemind (if it works), bestow curse (to drop his ability score), or more mundane stuff, like good old grappling: if you're grappled, you can cast only spells that have no somantic components and whose material component (if any) you have on hand. Poison can be really nasty, too. Than there's the antimagic field, or a targeted dispel magic against the headband of intellect, cloak of charisma or periapt of wisdom. That will rob him of bonus spells and probably to access to higher-level spells. Or have an enemy who's good at counterspelling (with improved counterspell, and reactive counterspell)
Yes. One single attack is a standard action. Two or more, no matter where they come from, is a full-round action
I'd have done that first thing before I started to DM them!
He does have expert tactician, then. As I have pointed out above, that feat has got errata'ed, and the new version can be found in song and silence, and in the errata of Sword and Fist. As the DM you can rule that the new version is used (and every sane DM would enforce that!)
There are other ways to defeat attacks apart from AC: conceilment will give him a miss chance (consider displacement), damage reduction will get him, and there's always the possibility that he cannot reach the enemy (everyone incapable of flight who fought a wizard with the flight spell knows that can be dangerous)
That's nasty. Though I have on several occasions set one of my players (the barbarian with his poor will save) against the rest of the party (they encountered several vampires), I usually looked that he won't do to much damage (a crit would be deadly to everyone in the party...)
It's no longer hiding in shadows, but you still cannot hide in plain sight, or while under observation. She'll need to get out of sight before she can hide again, or use bluff to create a diversion and then go hiding, but you usually cannot hide again while standing next to an enemy.
As I said: get everyone's sheet, and look it up. But rogues tend to have a lot of skill points, and they usually max-out the skills, or nearly do so. At 13th-level, she'll probably have +20 or better on the rogue-ish skills (the ones with dex as key), and not much worse on the rest (+16 and more).
To repeat that: sneak attacks aren't multiplied with a crit. But she still has +7d6 sneak attack at 13th level, thats +24. Even with a non-magical short sword and STR 10, she'll deal 28 points of damage on average with every sneak attack.
Well, I am liberal in those things myself, but not to that extend: there are no hamlets with "Mordenkainen's Magnificient Magic-Store Outlet - A franchise at every corner", but the big places tend to have all the standard stuff (even +5 weapons, but stuff like a +3 sonic burst holy drow bane defending bladed gauntlet can only be commisioned, or found as random treasure - and then they won't be able to choose it, of course).
Well, why bother with other costs, except a couple of percent of difference (no more than 10%, on either side) as we have no perfect market there. But instead of making all magic items 15% more expensive, you can as well give them less treasure and save all the fuss with the pricing.
Well, nothing wrong with that, basically. It's why we play RPG's.....
....but they have to live with the consequences, even in a RPG: this will bring about an alignment change to NE or even CE, and if they're observed, they'll run afoul with the guard (and eventually a party of adventurers, which studied them, and is preparded to counter their tactics)
Hm... was it intended all along to be a demon, or did you make that up to piss off the character? The latter I call bad DMing, and anyway it's much more satisfying to defeat them by the rules.
As it should be.
Beating the thief wouldn't be to bad, but beating innocent people is clearly an evil act.
He doesn't have to. If he uses the money to get better equipment, thus becoming better at battling his god's enemies, he's serving his god well.
That isn't unusual, too. It really depends on the deity he worships. Waukeen, for example, will probably expect such a behavior from her clerics, but Lathander will reprimand him (first by visions, then by partial withdrawal of divine powers, and ultimately with abandoning the cleric). There's no general guidelines on how a cleric has to behave, it all depends on his patron deity and his alignment.
The stealing may be alright, unless it will be a serious blow to the victim (stealing a platinum coin from a merchant isn't that bad, stealing a copper from a beggar is). Killing people for their own gain is a serious evil act.
As has been said: that's up to the players, not the system. Noone forces or even encourages them to behave like crazed serial killers!
All in all I think you should tell them that they are on the border of becoming evil, and a little more and they'll go over. This can result in two things:
1) If no evil characters are allowed: the PC's become NPC's, and the players may not play them any more. Be sure to give out less-than-standard (standard for that game) starting money for the new characters they create them, and if you don't synch XP, they'll have less then they'd normally get, because they didn't lose the old char because of bad luck, or they really wanted to play something else, but because of really bad roleplaying.
2) If evil characters are allowed: either the party splits along the line of evil, or they become an all-evil party. Depending on their infamy, they'll have to deal with the guards, and sooner or later they'll meet their end at another adventuring party that was sent to defeat them (maybe there's a faithful of the clerics former deity in that party)
Well, being to picky in regards to magic is not everyone's definition of a fun game. If they get their share of magic stuff as treasure, that's alright, but keep in mind that a certain amount of magic equipment is part of the average party's power, and the challenge ratings are created according to that.
Also, I would the characters have some if not all items they want, and some that are useful for them, becaue it's no fun at all if you'll never get what you want.
FTracer said:
First, if it's really a ring of improved invisibility, he doesn't even need to "recloac", since improved invisibility won't go away after the attack.
The normal ring of invisibility can used all day long IIRC, but after every attack, you have to spend a new standard action to activate it again, which cannot be done in the same round as an attack, since both are at least standard actions. Even the feat "Expert Tactician", which gives you an extra partial action against someone who lost his Dex bonus against you (which happens if the attacker is invisible) has been errata'ed so it only grants an addtitional attack, NO other standard actions, and ONLY an attack against someone who is denied his dex bonus against you (so no extra attack against the all-seeing dragon). Be sure to enforce that errata.
First rule as a DM: you're DM, what you say is not only right, but it's reality. If you say something isn't possible, no player can say otherwise, period.
Rule two as a DM: try to be reasonable with your rules, don't make "cause I say so" changes. But as far as I can see that situation, they use something that really shouldn't be there, and you can rest assured that you do the right thing when you say "no attack and cloak in one round", which is only ever possible with haste (or that feat that makes you act as if hasted, but that one is epic)
I wouldn't run a session without that book.
Invisibility is a popular tactic, and naturally, most experienced enemies had the opportunity to become experienced because they didn't fall for the old invis trap! There's see invisible as wiz2, invisibility purge as clr3, and even the spell faerie fire (druid 1, inherent to all drow elves), will defeat invisibility (just consider this: someone readies an action to "cast faerie fire on the first enemy that becomes visible again", especially if they see someone going invisible time and again. Of course, at these levels, some characters will have the true seeing spell, which fools even darkness (and thus they can use darkness and be unaffected by it).
Well, everything that requires a will save, charm person, hold person, dominate person, fear, feeblemind, doom, tasha's hideous laughter, suggestion.....
Should not be to much, since rogues tend to be rather weak and have no big weapons. And sneak attack damage is NOT multiplied with a crit.
Hasn't to do anything with leveling. But he will lose his patron deity and access to all spells, and any new deity he worships after that will demand something of him before he'll grant him spells. Usually a mission he must fulfill (think of something nasty). Depending on the alignments you allow (many ban evil characters) he might even become a NPC.
Feeblemind (if it works), bestow curse (to drop his ability score), or more mundane stuff, like good old grappling: if you're grappled, you can cast only spells that have no somantic components and whose material component (if any) you have on hand. Poison can be really nasty, too. Than there's the antimagic field, or a targeted dispel magic against the headband of intellect, cloak of charisma or periapt of wisdom. That will rob him of bonus spells and probably to access to higher-level spells. Or have an enemy who's good at counterspelling (with improved counterspell, and reactive counterspell)
Yes. One single attack is a standard action. Two or more, no matter where they come from, is a full-round action
FTracer said:
I'd have done that first thing before I started to DM them!
He does have expert tactician, then. As I have pointed out above, that feat has got errata'ed, and the new version can be found in song and silence, and in the errata of Sword and Fist. As the DM you can rule that the new version is used (and every sane DM would enforce that!)
There are other ways to defeat attacks apart from AC: conceilment will give him a miss chance (consider displacement), damage reduction will get him, and there's always the possibility that he cannot reach the enemy (everyone incapable of flight who fought a wizard with the flight spell knows that can be dangerous)
That's nasty. Though I have on several occasions set one of my players (the barbarian with his poor will save) against the rest of the party (they encountered several vampires), I usually looked that he won't do to much damage (a crit would be deadly to everyone in the party...)
It's no longer hiding in shadows, but you still cannot hide in plain sight, or while under observation. She'll need to get out of sight before she can hide again, or use bluff to create a diversion and then go hiding, but you usually cannot hide again while standing next to an enemy.
As I said: get everyone's sheet, and look it up. But rogues tend to have a lot of skill points, and they usually max-out the skills, or nearly do so. At 13th-level, she'll probably have +20 or better on the rogue-ish skills (the ones with dex as key), and not much worse on the rest (+16 and more).
To repeat that: sneak attacks aren't multiplied with a crit. But she still has +7d6 sneak attack at 13th level, thats +24. Even with a non-magical short sword and STR 10, she'll deal 28 points of damage on average with every sneak attack.
Well, I am liberal in those things myself, but not to that extend: there are no hamlets with "Mordenkainen's Magnificient Magic-Store Outlet - A franchise at every corner", but the big places tend to have all the standard stuff (even +5 weapons, but stuff like a +3 sonic burst holy drow bane defending bladed gauntlet can only be commisioned, or found as random treasure - and then they won't be able to choose it, of course).
Well, why bother with other costs, except a couple of percent of difference (no more than 10%, on either side) as we have no perfect market there. But instead of making all magic items 15% more expensive, you can as well give them less treasure and save all the fuss with the pricing.
Well, nothing wrong with that, basically. It's why we play RPG's.....
....but they have to live with the consequences, even in a RPG: this will bring about an alignment change to NE or even CE, and if they're observed, they'll run afoul with the guard (and eventually a party of adventurers, which studied them, and is preparded to counter their tactics)
Hm... was it intended all along to be a demon, or did you make that up to piss off the character? The latter I call bad DMing, and anyway it's much more satisfying to defeat them by the rules.
As it should be.
Beating the thief wouldn't be to bad, but beating innocent people is clearly an evil act.
He doesn't have to. If he uses the money to get better equipment, thus becoming better at battling his god's enemies, he's serving his god well.
That isn't unusual, too. It really depends on the deity he worships. Waukeen, for example, will probably expect such a behavior from her clerics, but Lathander will reprimand him (first by visions, then by partial withdrawal of divine powers, and ultimately with abandoning the cleric). There's no general guidelines on how a cleric has to behave, it all depends on his patron deity and his alignment.
The stealing may be alright, unless it will be a serious blow to the victim (stealing a platinum coin from a merchant isn't that bad, stealing a copper from a beggar is). Killing people for their own gain is a serious evil act.
As has been said: that's up to the players, not the system. Noone forces or even encourages them to behave like crazed serial killers!
All in all I think you should tell them that they are on the border of becoming evil, and a little more and they'll go over. This can result in two things:
1) If no evil characters are allowed: the PC's become NPC's, and the players may not play them any more. Be sure to give out less-than-standard (standard for that game) starting money for the new characters they create them, and if you don't synch XP, they'll have less then they'd normally get, because they didn't lose the old char because of bad luck, or they really wanted to play something else, but because of really bad roleplaying.
2) If evil characters are allowed: either the party splits along the line of evil, or they become an all-evil party. Depending on their infamy, they'll have to deal with the guards, and sooner or later they'll meet their end at another adventuring party that was sent to defeat them (maybe there's a faithful of the clerics former deity in that party)
Well, being to picky in regards to magic is not everyone's definition of a fun game. If they get their share of magic stuff as treasure, that's alright, but keep in mind that a certain amount of magic equipment is part of the average party's power, and the challenge ratings are created according to that.
Also, I would the characters have some if not all items they want, and some that are useful for them, becaue it's no fun at all if you'll never get what you want.
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