How do i deal with an overwhelming Mage?

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I am having similar problems with an enchanter mage in my campaign. Part of the problem is the rest of the party isn't optimized and he is, but that's only part of the problem. Just looking at the at wills he gets they just put all of the rest of the party's at wills to shame. Psychic Strands? Ugh. Targets everything in a blast 5. BYE MINIONS

An ordinary wizard or sorcerer could do that too. Killing minions is something they're good at.

oh you survived? Here how about the tough slow dudes are now thrown down a well or something similar while the casters are now in convenient flanking positions... plus unarmored agility lets him have tanky AC.

I'm going to assume you meant "characters" rather than "casters" because no wizard should want to go into melee, even if they're getting combat advantage.

I'm not too familiar with the Enchanter's special powers, actually. I recognize the at-will (along with Hypnotism, which is awesome) but aren't really familiar with its encounter or daily powers. This makes it hard to give advice.

Unarmored Agility almost drives me nuts. I have a PC with it, but he's an avenger, and instead of wearing leather armor, he took this, which cost him a feat and gives him effectively +1 AC (IIRC, the feat gives +3 AC, compared to leather armor's +2 AC). IMO, UA should have been a monk ability and not a feat. Apparently it stacks with whatever a monk gets! (I don't have a monk in my game, so I don't really know if that's a legal combo.) The issue isn't really an issue unless used by a monk or wizard.

Note that a wizard without the feat could have taken proficiency in leather armor, giving them only 1 less AC. Any PH1 or Essential 1-only campaign still has to deal with that.

The first issue is the AC bonus isn't huge. Players buy AC bonuses anyway, and the game generally increases the gap between AC and the other defenses (NADs) anyway. So at least you're not dealing with an issue other DMs don't have experience with.

IMC, I've solved this problem with index cards. Seriously. I don't run monsters right out of the book, in part because, if I wanted to use a monster from the MV (say bandit) and another one from MM2 (say half-elf bandit captain) and another from Threats to the Nentir Vale (say highwayman and outlaw veteran, so it makes sense they're part of the same group) I'd have to flip through too many pages, and then I'd need more paper to keep track of hit points, initiatives and conditions. So since I have to deal with this problem, I might as well solve another issue too.

By putting monsters on index cards, I can:
1) Update poorly-designed monsters from older Monster Manuals.
2) Level-up monsters, apply themes, or make a monster elite.
3) Change what defenses they target. Especially for defenders, I frequently give them a second melee basic attack (letting them use either for opportunity attacks) which targets a defense other than AC. If the halfling trickster rogue tries to zip past that soldier, they might be in for a nasty surprise; all those AC bonuses against opportunity attacks mean nothing when the attack is against Fortitude.

That's also useful for regular attacks. In Threats to the Nentir Vale, there's a bandit type called "outlaw veteran". It's supposed to belong to a specific organization, but in my last session I just made it look like a lizard and used its card. I made a change though. It's melee basic attack targets AC and does high damage, ho-hum. It's other at-will is Tide of Iron but under a different name... and also targets AC. It's recharge ability lets it use "Tide of Iron" twice. So all of its attacks are targeting AC, which isn't good. Instead, I dropped the attack bonus by 2 and had it target Fort. The poor Chaladin was quite heavily victimized by this (I think his AC is 5 points above his Fort defense, but it might have been 7 points).

I made a similar change to the highwayman; it's "Stand You Coward!" ability was changed to target Reflex (with the same 2 point reduction in attack bonus), and through some very poor saving throws one heavy melee damage striker PC was immobilized for four rounds, long after said PC killed the highwayman. If I had targeted AC, I might have missed.

So in short switch out attacks vs AC to attacks vs other defenses. Many monster types (controllers and some artillery) tend to target NADs anyway, but there's not enough so you as DM need to work to fix this.

I think other gamers might use the Monster Builder instead. I don't have it and don't have a laptop or other portable computer. I presume said strategy works for a lot of DMs.

I dunno maybe that's how wizards are supposed to work but he is just so far ahead of everyone else's capabilities at level four that I feel I'm having to throw in extra monsters that almost kill everyone else just to threaten him.

What am I doing wrong here?

Could you tell us what level the PCs are? What they are (builds, classes, etc)? What sources you're allowing?

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=82763]Ratinyourwalls[/MENTION]
Speaking to a very specific part of your post - the blast 5 psychic strands - I can say from experience that spacing minions apart and including waves of minions will prevent 80% of excessive mass minion slaying. However, I didn't do this all the time, and sometimes when it made sense for monsters to be in tight formation the Mage simply got to be awesome.

Also, rarely I used minions with psychic feedback (far realms horrors which when they took psychic damage, the attacker took X psychic damage from peering into an alien mind), or construct minions immune to all attacks targeting Will. Again, rarely used.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Unarmored Agility almost drives me nuts. I have a PC with it, but he's an avenger, and instead of wearing leather armor, he took this, which cost him a feat and gives him effectively +1 AC (IIRC, the feat gives +3 AC, compared to leather armor's +2 AC).

Nope. It's +2 AC. Meaning that other than for the monk, the avenger, or the desert beserker it's a strict alternative to leather armour. (Avengers get +3 to unarmoured AC, monks get +2 but use dex as a primary stat)

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Do avengers get a special bonus with that? Now I need to check on the avenger's armor proficiencies.