How powerful are my PCs?

[shilsen]

As promised, here is a thread mentioning some of my general tactical approaches, and asking other DMs to post in it.

 

[Warren Okuma]

The five PCs in my Eberron campaign (see sig) just hit 13th level and I was just wondering how they fall on the power level continuum in comparison to PCs run by other people on ENWorld.

My players are a bit stronger, because they practice tighter builds. Similar amounts of treasure. Looks like a nice campaign BTW.

 

[Nightfall]

Shil,

I don't know about your mofos but mine are pretty sweet and powerful.

 

[Agamon]

Hrm, a setting where NPC's are limited to about 10th level is the power creep setting. Just saying.

For those 10 levels, yeah. I'll admit, I haven't played Eberron (though I've read some of the books, so my opinion isn't completely uninformed), but my friends' stories make me cringe as a DM.

 

[Warren Okuma]

For those 10 levels, yeah. I'll admit, I haven't played Eberron (though I've read some of the books, so my opinion isn't completely uninformed), but my friends' stories make me cringe as a DM.

If you know what you are doing it becomes so much fun.

Cool spells, cool items, cool monsters, it puts the awesome in the game. You get to fight real dragons, and not baby dragons. It never seemed to me that it was heroic to slay dragon infants and youngsters.

After level 10 my games really start to bloom. Complex strategies can be done by both sides.

 

[Nightfall]

Aggy,

It's just the trains man. That and the robots make people cringe.

 

[Darklone]

Maybe it's just me, but I could never really enjoy doing that, since then there's no challenge for me. As a DM, I always enjoy the tactical challenge of designing encounters where the PCs go up against enemies who are much lower level, significantly worse equipped, lacking all these special abilities and bonuses that the PCs have (essentially an encounter that, according to the CR/EL charts should be a walkover for the PCs), and finding a way through judicious use of tactics and teamwork to give the PCs a really hard time. A lot of the time, I intentionally underequip the NPCs for their level and/or restrict myself purely to core rules, just to make it a tougher job for myself and heighten the challenge.

But then we all know I'm nuts

Didn't we have that other thread already a few months ago? At least I spammed some examples and IIRC we agreed to agree.

There's nothing like whooping 10 level 9 PCs with three or four dozen of skeletons, zombies, ghouls and wights.

And another big advantage of these mass monster tactic: Fireball is worth it. I love all these AoE spells and pretty often in typical D&D adventures, they are close to useless since the enemies are a few powerful opponents. ... ok, more in the other thread!