Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5522595" data-attributes="member: 61155">A story that (these days) my group tends to laugh about quite a bit:&nbsp;A friend is running a high-level D&amp;D one-shot. I decide to play a cleric, because I've never played one at high levels before! And I think it will be awesome. &nbsp;Another friend is playing a rogue, or duelist type, or someone designed to use sneak attack or crits or similar bonuses. And as we go exploring this evil temple we fight... some golem constructs. Which he can't do much about. And then some water elements. Again, can't do much other than try and bounce in and out and stay alive. But the DM assures him, the adventure does have enemies who he will excel against. &nbsp;Eventually, we reach the final encounter, and are swarmed by the high cultist and his various minions. Human minions! &nbsp;And my cleric wins initiative, and not even realizing what would happen, I try out my high level spell - Holy Word. &nbsp;And in a single standard action, kill/disable every enemy in the adventure vulnerable to sneak attack. &nbsp;(The High Cultist survived, of course. And happened to be wearing Heavy Fortification Armor...)&nbsp;Now, this specific story wasn't about one character being useless or not - there are plenty of ways to address that (in this specific instance) by adjusting the adventure itself. &nbsp;But the point is that it doesn't take a drive to 'be the best' for one PC to overshadow another. This guy wasn't optimized or designed to be the best - he was just a high level cleric with the Good domain, and that give him a spell (at +1 caster level!) that trivialized what my companion could contribute in the adventure.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MrMyth, post: 5522595, member: 61155"] A story that (these days) my group tends to laugh about quite a bit: A friend is running a high-level D&D one-shot. I decide to play a cleric, because I've never played one at high levels before! And I think it will be awesome. Another friend is playing a rogue, or duelist type, or someone designed to use sneak attack or crits or similar bonuses. And as we go exploring this evil temple we fight... some golem constructs. Which he can't do much about. And then some water elements. Again, can't do much other than try and bounce in and out and stay alive. But the DM assures him, the adventure [I]does have enemies[/I] who he will excel against. Eventually, we reach the final encounter, and are swarmed by the high cultist and his various minions. Human minions! And my cleric wins initiative, and not even realizing what would happen, I try out my high level spell - Holy Word. And in a single standard action, kill/disable every enemy in the adventure vulnerable to sneak attack. (The High Cultist survived, of course. And happened to be wearing Heavy Fortification Armor...) Now, this specific story wasn't about one character being useless or not - there are plenty of ways to address that (in this specific instance) by adjusting the adventure itself. But the point is that it doesn't take a drive to 'be the best' for one PC to overshadow another. This guy wasn't optimized or designed to be the best - he was just a high level cleric with the Good domain, and that give him a spell (at +1 caster level!) that trivialized what my companion could contribute in the adventure. [/QUOTE]

Verification