I have been GM'ing for awhile however I am a new GM to Pathfinder and I am trying to learn the system. What is the best approach? I have a player that without even meaning to creates characters that are untouchable without even meaning to. (I have known him for years and I know this is the case) What is the easiest way to learn how to manipulate the system to deal with power gamers? Any help would be appreciated.
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Pathfinder 1E How to be a munchkin GM
- Thread starter Pentoth
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In a word: cheat.
Base your opponent's numbers on the PCs -- without the bothersome step of justifying them under the rules-as-written. Your job is to challenge them, not match them in a game of character optimization. Look at it this way, a player has --usually-- a single character to build. You've got a whole world.
Seriously, consider cheating.
If you're not comfortable with that, snatch broken builds off the Internet, or mess around with Templates. I recall Templates being a great way to buff up enemies under D&D 3.5.
n00bdragon
First Post
I suppose it would be edition warring if I simply told you to play a version of the game that didn't have those problems but...
Yeah, when running or playing 3.5/Pathfinder the first thing to remember is that the following statistics do not matter, either for players that want to win or for monsters that don't want to instantly lose:
Hit Points
Armor Class
Melee damage
Attacks per round
You should seriously just disregard these things. They are nice to have and when you are done with the important bits you should fill them in with whatever sounds good but don't ever get too caught up in them. What you want are monsters with cool abilities. Pick things that fly or turn invisible or that force a saving throw or a skill check every round. Include one or two of these beasties in your fights to keep Mr. ImSoCool happy and then add in some orcs or skeletons or whatever boring standard issue monsters you feel like to keep the rest of the party from feeling aggravated or useless.
Yeah, when running or playing 3.5/Pathfinder the first thing to remember is that the following statistics do not matter, either for players that want to win or for monsters that don't want to instantly lose:
Hit Points
Armor Class
Melee damage
Attacks per round
You should seriously just disregard these things. They are nice to have and when you are done with the important bits you should fill them in with whatever sounds good but don't ever get too caught up in them. What you want are monsters with cool abilities. Pick things that fly or turn invisible or that force a saving throw or a skill check every round. Include one or two of these beasties in your fights to keep Mr. ImSoCool happy and then add in some orcs or skeletons or whatever boring standard issue monsters you feel like to keep the rest of the party from feeling aggravated or useless.
Curmudgeonly
First Post
I have never met a PC that hasn't had a weakness. Challenging PCs isn't hard in Pathfinder, killing them is even easier. No cheating required. If you are building your own adventure or encounters, just look at what type of characters they are playing and adjust accordingly.
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
Research & Duplicate.
Read the class guides and make NPCs based on them.
Be tricky. Too often, I hear of PCs who prep and buff and then go attack the NPCs. The NPCs don't need to do the same thing back... not exactly. They should prepare defenses against invisible PCs, have traps (magic and mundane), etc. For instance, if the PCs are going up against a druid's grove, said druid has probably charmed a bunch of chipmunks to watch out for danger (with Scent) and warn him if anything approaches. The druid probably has a bunch of powerful charmed animals with him, say snow tigers, and he'll wildshape into one when he's warned of danger. Which one if the druid? (Maybe none of them. He's that bird that the PCs don't even notice due to the wind storms and lightning.)
Read the class guides and make NPCs based on them.
Be tricky. Too often, I hear of PCs who prep and buff and then go attack the NPCs. The NPCs don't need to do the same thing back... not exactly. They should prepare defenses against invisible PCs, have traps (magic and mundane), etc. For instance, if the PCs are going up against a druid's grove, said druid has probably charmed a bunch of chipmunks to watch out for danger (with Scent) and warn him if anything approaches. The druid probably has a bunch of powerful charmed animals with him, say snow tigers, and he'll wildshape into one when he's warned of danger. Which one if the druid? (Maybe none of them. He's that bird that the PCs don't even notice due to the wind storms and lightning.)
Celebrim
Legend
As a rule zero, I would advice not cheating. I would also advice staying believable and at least as much as possible avoid the appearance of metagaming. Set up scenarios where the enemy can be reasonably expected to have the resources to counter the PC's. Intelligent foes are best using generic defenses. The goal here isn't to beat your player. The goal is to make the game more fun for everyone involved, including the player you are challenging.
Summoned monsters are really abusable in D&D and in 3rd edition in particular, but they are also really easy to defend against. Attacking with summoned monsters tends to be one of the weaker things you can do with them, and stacking spells on a summoned monster which is only going to be around for a few rounds anyway is almost a waste of resources. Anything as simple as 'Protection from Good', a 1st level spell, complete negates most summoned monsters because they are unable to touch anyone so protected. There are also numerous ways to force summoned monster spells to end early. Look for anything that dispels magic or forces summoned monsters to return to their home plane. Make this part of your normal portfolios for spell castesr. So my first advice is to use monsters in teams with low level caster support. What you have is a spell user running amuck because he isn't being countered.
My second advice is that its hard to counter a capable party with a single foe. The party just too much dominates the action economy. My usual tactic here is to make the part face off against twice their number of foes, that are generally about 2 CR below party level. This makes for a combat that is hard to end quickly and generally avoids the beat down strategy that can occur when you allow PC's to concentrate all their firepower on a single target. Play with the enemy team composition and work on your tactical accumen. But never ever make up counters on the fly. Stick firmly to that believability rule, and remember that if you don't feel you can 'believably' counter the player then there is something wrong with your assumptions about what is 'realistic' because the PC can't possibly be the first character in the game world that discovered these sorts of tactics. In your world, countering enemy spellcasters is something every armed forces, every warrior cult, every templar of every church in the game has been training for reutinely. If the player can do it and does it reutinely, then you have to assume its Stardard Operating Procedure in the world and everything that couldnt' figure out some sort of effective counter is long sense extinct.
So let's make this concrete. Let's talk about some of the foes you'd like to include in the campaign world, and some of the standard attack modes the player uses with summoned creatures and how your world might have evolved to deal with them. Also, if this is a problem now, you may want to be looking ahead to spells like Planar Ally or Gate and thinking of preemptively rebalancing them before they get into play. The gated creature spells are much much worse than the summon monster type spells.
adembroski
First Post
You're tempting conflict escalation here. I find discouraging power gaming through counter power gaming only convinces players that they need to get better at power gaming.
Switch up your style. Mystery, courtly intrigue, make the hunters the hunted, etc.. I find the best way to counter players that have an answer to everything you do is to do things you've never done.
Switch up your style. Mystery, courtly intrigue, make the hunters the hunted, etc.. I find the best way to counter players that have an answer to everything you do is to do things you've never done.
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