Need advice for dealing w/an invoker.

[Rekka360]

The party invoker is just crushing my encounters. Unfortunately the player is a D&D vet and a self described power gamer. He knows his class inside and out and I'm having a tough time setting up encounters that push the party to their limits.

Any suggestions for hampering a level 15 group sporting a well thought out invoker?

 

[moxcamel]

What's the rest of the party comprised of?

 

[Rekka360]

A very well though out rogue striker, a dwarven fighter who functions as a tank and a sorcerer

 

[Incenjucar]

What build of invoker? What sort powers does he use?

 

[twilsemail]

How many encounters per day are the adventurers facing?

When I first ran afoul of a well built controller I found one of the ways of keeping him in check was extending the adventure day. Originally I was just averaging 4 or 5 encounters a day, but when I upped that to 6 or 8 he was no longer able to break out a massively game altering power every single fight*.

After that, what they said. ^

*I know this is the controllers job, but some encounters were just becoming trivial.

 

[Rekka360]

Basically I'm seeing a lot of Pure Glow, Chains of Carceri(sp?), Four Fold Invocation of Doom, Thunderbolt of the Heavens, Winds of Celestia, he also teleports a lot. Being the player that he is he puts almost no effort into dealing damage because he doesn't have too (mostly because of the team rogue), so all he focus is on putting conditions onto the creatures.

 

[Rekka360]

I don't begrudge what the invoker is doing, I understand he's just doing his duty as a controller, I just want to make sure the party is adequately challenged. I've seen a few fights now that as the DM I expected to be pretty tough and the party barely left with a bloody nose.

 

[renau1g]

Lurkers? Phasing monsters? Daze/Stun? Terrain Effects?

Is this a Radiant Mafia situation? I.e. is the rogue and fighter using radiant weapons while the morninglord throws down some radiant vulnerability?

 

[OnlineDM]

Has this party started from level 1, or did they jump right in at 15? If they started from 1, has this only recently become a problem?

Also, are you using monsters from Monster Manual 3 and Monster Vault or earlier monsters? If you put together an encounter equal to the party's level using earlier monsters, most parties will wipe the floor with them. With later monsters, the challenge level tends to be more appropriate.

If you're using older monsters, I'd suggest either upping their damage to MM3 levels or putting together encounters of party level +2 as the starting point, and going up from there.

 

[bobhayes]

Enemy casters.