My game has become "me vs. them"

[WizarDru]

I like the capital on 'My'

Nothing like a God Complex in a DM to really scare the players

LOL!

Hey, a high-level party needs a big-ego DM.

 

[scott-fs]

Maybe it's because I'm getting over stomach flu/food poisoning, or something, but the game I ran last night seemed like a contest of me (DM) vs. my players.

Anyone have any tips on how I can pull off that kind of battle without absorbing the entire evening into senseless combat? I mean, I know I could do this with 20 slaad, but I shudder to think of how long that battle would last.

What I've done when I've found the campaign turn into a me vs the players, is stopped, and took a break from the campaign. In my situation though, I was losing interest in D&D, and before we returned to the campaign (minus two players), I got into another game called HarnMaster, but that's for another thread.

Eventually we restarted the campaign, but I officially considered the campaign over, and this was simply a "new" campaign with the same characters continuing on a different storyline. I ended up TPKing the group, and it was VERY enjoyable

Anyways, we started a new campaign, but this time I decided that it'd be a city based campaign, and combat would not be the focus. In fact, experience would not be given for combat, but rather, what the group has accomplished. The players quite enjoyed themselves, IIRC. No weapons were swung.

I'm sure this doesn't help much if you're looking to continue a hack and slash sort of campaign. The best I can suggest is "try something different". Hell, even if you try something like I mention above for 2 or 3 sessions, the group might come back to the original game changed.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

A combination of the right weaker monsters can sometimes work where tougher ones fail. Never forget the power of a Beholder's anti-magic cone. If the Slaad have a Beholder floating through the corridors with Anti-Magic it'd bump them right out of their rope trick or negate any invisibility. Have the big bad Slaad wade in and fight them hand to hand while there is a Beholder in the background hitting them both with it's Anti-Magic Cone. A creature which requires magical weapons to affect it will be almost undefeatable with that kind of back up. Rust Monsters can also ruin a warrior's day when his magical armor and weapons are rendered non-magical due to Anti-Magic.

 

[Kalendraf]

I'm not sure if this is related to your problem, but how is the party wealth compared to the recommended value in the DMG?

I had a party not much behind where you are at that was very difficult to challenge. The main culprit was that their wealth had gotten out of hand. The characters had anywhere from 50% to close to 3x the recommended wealth for their level. As a result, they had lots of cool toys that they shouldn't have which wound up making them seem much tougher than other characters of their level. The wealth crept up during the course of a few published adventures which included rewards which were off-the-charts compared to what they should have gotten.

Being a newbie 3e DM (though far from being a newbie DM since I've been doing it since 1e), I opted to trust the author/publisher to have balanced the treasure using the rules set forth in the DMG. However, that wasn't the case...not by a long shot.

The difficulty that this increased wealth presents is how to properly balance encounters. Things of their level are a cakewalk, and you start getting tempted to toss monsters EL+3 to EL+4 at them just to make a dent. But that is dangerous since monsters that high often have special attacks that the party can't properly handle since they aren't really that high a level. The normally linear increase between easy to difficult becomes a step function. As a result, you either wind up tossing too easy an encounter at them, or you go overboard and decimate them (unless you use DM intervention to stop it). The difference between those two ranges becomes squeezed to less than 1 CR/EL rating.

How do you fix this? The simplest way is to take away their items somehow. Make it a plot event - sacrificing items for the greater good or something like that. Or they could get destroyed. (Hint: send a horde of Dimensional Slugs* at them!) The other option is to reward no treasure for a few levels and let their real level catch up to their wealth level. All 3 are going to cause grumbling among the players, but in the long run it will be good for the campaign. The alternative is to have unsatisfying easy encounters or risk a TPK whenever you try ramping things up to try to challenge them.

* - Dimensional Slug is from the adventure Aberrations by Necromancer Games.