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Is it fair to cast save-or-suck spells on the players?
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7149706" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>Yeah. I remember one adventure involving a "legendary" pair of lich brothers who (in the out-of-character cutscenes) took down whole armies. Then one of the PCs (Keldor, the Chosen One, basically our Gandalf) split off from the party in a huff because others wouldn't follow his leadership, and what does he run into except the lich?! carrying the legendary dragon staff no less, which the PC is coveting.</p><p></p><p>Keldor was a multiclassed Cleric 11/Wizard 11 or something like that with Int 20+ and a ton of magic items, but his player used that power poorly--e.g. liked to blow his 9th level spell slot on Chromatic Orb. So of course I expected this legendary lich to effortlessly toast Keldor, which he totally deserved for attacking a lich who had just beaten the <em>entire party of ten PCs <strong>and</strong> the monsters who were beating them, all at once!</em></p><p></p><p>The way it actually worked out was that the PC casts Globe of Invulnerability IX, and the DM says that the lich had used up his 9th level slot in a previous encounter (saving us all from a Balor and a bunch of Mind Flayers--did I mention that? The lich disabled everybody in the whole encounter with no saving throw, so no wonder I was expecting great things from it) so couldn't cast spells within the Globe of Invulnerability. So what happens next? Does the lich get out of the Minor Globe of Invulnerability and wait for sixty seconds for it to wear off? No, he walks right up to Keldor and basically engages him in a fist fight: makes a paralyzation attempt every round (I believe Keldor had a ring that made him immune to paralyzation or gave him a bonus on saves against it or something), then Keldor throws a Chromatic Orb or something. Rinse and repeat until the lich falls over dead. (The lich didn't use any legendary actions, but I think that was just because the DM was new to 5E and didn't realize that they were a thing--I didn't realize this angle myself until over a year later when I had more 5E experience.) Then Keldor took the legendary dragon staff and rejoined the rest of the party.</p><p></p><p>The long and the short of it was that this terrifying NPC turned out to be a chump when the plot required it. All the power he had displayed in offscreen or onscreen cutscenes (like his "saving the PCs" intervention) was totally irrelevant, and all I was left with was this impression of an incredibly stupid lich who talks big but still manages to lose a ten-round fistfight with a <em>cleric/wizard</em>, of all things. The legendary lich who loses in physical combat against Conan, okay, I can buy that if the story demands it. But this was more like legendary lich who loses in physical combat against Inspector Gadget!</p><p></p><p>I left that campaign after a couple more sessions.</p><p></p><p><strong>TL;DR</strong> Concur that underplaying big bad enemies with terrible tactics can rob players of any sense of fun.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 7149706, member: 6787650"] Yeah. I remember one adventure involving a "legendary" pair of lich brothers who (in the out-of-character cutscenes) took down whole armies. Then one of the PCs (Keldor, the Chosen One, basically our Gandalf) split off from the party in a huff because others wouldn't follow his leadership, and what does he run into except the lich?! carrying the legendary dragon staff no less, which the PC is coveting. Keldor was a multiclassed Cleric 11/Wizard 11 or something like that with Int 20+ and a ton of magic items, but his player used that power poorly--e.g. liked to blow his 9th level spell slot on Chromatic Orb. So of course I expected this legendary lich to effortlessly toast Keldor, which he totally deserved for attacking a lich who had just beaten the [I]entire party of ten PCs [B]and[/B] the monsters who were beating them, all at once![/I] The way it actually worked out was that the PC casts Globe of Invulnerability IX, and the DM says that the lich had used up his 9th level slot in a previous encounter (saving us all from a Balor and a bunch of Mind Flayers--did I mention that? The lich disabled everybody in the whole encounter with no saving throw, so no wonder I was expecting great things from it) so couldn't cast spells within the Globe of Invulnerability. So what happens next? Does the lich get out of the Minor Globe of Invulnerability and wait for sixty seconds for it to wear off? No, he walks right up to Keldor and basically engages him in a fist fight: makes a paralyzation attempt every round (I believe Keldor had a ring that made him immune to paralyzation or gave him a bonus on saves against it or something), then Keldor throws a Chromatic Orb or something. Rinse and repeat until the lich falls over dead. (The lich didn't use any legendary actions, but I think that was just because the DM was new to 5E and didn't realize that they were a thing--I didn't realize this angle myself until over a year later when I had more 5E experience.) Then Keldor took the legendary dragon staff and rejoined the rest of the party. The long and the short of it was that this terrifying NPC turned out to be a chump when the plot required it. All the power he had displayed in offscreen or onscreen cutscenes (like his "saving the PCs" intervention) was totally irrelevant, and all I was left with was this impression of an incredibly stupid lich who talks big but still manages to lose a ten-round fistfight with a [I]cleric/wizard[/I], of all things. The legendary lich who loses in physical combat against Conan, okay, I can buy that if the story demands it. But this was more like legendary lich who loses in physical combat against Inspector Gadget! I left that campaign after a couple more sessions. [B]TL;DR[/B] Concur that underplaying big bad enemies with terrible tactics can rob players of any sense of fun. [/QUOTE]
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