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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hillsy7" data-source="post: 7158824" data-attributes="member: 6689191">OK - So I generally echo the sentiment above that something, numerically, feels a bit wonky. Consistent 50-odd damage at level 5 seems waaaaay too high, even with assassinate.1d6 Crossbow doubled for a Crit (7) + 3d6 sneak doubled for a crit, (21) + DEX (3-4), that's 32 ish average, which considering a 6-man party at level 5 should probably be up against CR 7-9, is a decent start but not a lot else (e.g. a Young Bronze Dragon has 140 HP, a chain devil has 82 HP but resistance to Phys damage)....and that's only the first round. Everything else should be half that save the occasional Crit. 16 damage average per successful sneak attack is decent, but it's hardly a game breaker.Anyways, all that aside, a couple of things.1) If your party is counting damage and ask "How is this thing still alive", the answer is "Because it is." If they want stuff that's easy to kill, they've got to accept the alpha strike master is going to ker-splat a lot of stuff on turn 1. This infers they want to play a specific type of game that's possibly different to the one your Rogue wants to play (optimisation tends towards tough combat, wanting lots of things to go Splat easily tends towards exploration and fast-paced dungeon crawls) - talk to them about it.2) The Rogue is optimized to alpha strike, so tactically is doing 1 thing all the time. Most Big Bad Bosses have good narrative reasons to plan against this - someone mentioned the shield of missile attraction - great idea. Also you are the DM, invent an amulet that mitigates surprise and allow the party to loot it. I mean, how often do you sneak up on a party, really? And it can only be used by one character. The point being sometimes you Barbarian comes across flying monsters and has to throw javelins, sometimes your spell casters get silenced, sometimes Human's have to fight in total darkness: It's perfectly legitimate to occasionally nullify one character's abilities to let another shine.3) If the party is suffering cos the Rogue is nicking all the combat limelight (and too be fair, Insane Alpha Strikes are the Rogue's Thing), bring in more social and skill orientated Combat.4) Speak to the rest of the group and help up-skill their combat effectiveness, THEN toss upgraded Monsters at them.5) Flat out Cheat. Have two 'Bosses' in the same room, let the Rogue waste his alpha strike on one, Essentially this all comes down to 'deliberately mitigate the alpha strike', which is totally acceptable to do some of the time. And if the Rogue gets in a huff about it, your group isn't wanting to play the same game.However, my primary thing would be to check the maths - the damage output seems too high...</blockquote>

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