Harzel
Adventurer
So I have tried multiple outlets to communicate with my players. We are all very strongly opinionated.
I kind of expected these two things to be related to problems you were about to explain, but you never seemed mention them again. Did you leave something out or am I missing something or ?
I have been gaming for about 15+ years or so now. First started around 8 and played in games with friends and family for a longtime. A friend introduced me to my current gaming group who after alot of bad expeiences handed the reins over and now I am DMing our game.
Good on you for taking on the challenge. Welcome to EnWorld!
The current issue I am facing is challenging my players. I am trying to avoid the player versus DM mentality. We ran into that sometimes when I was playing in a game more so then most of us are willing to admit. Here is were we are currently.
Its a home brew game. Long Intro Short, I have a war ravaged world that has been assaulted by the Titans. They have killed a large portion of the gods. My players were coming in as survivors who have banded together and are trying to build up their power base. The game right now is in an explore and acquire stage. Now for the problem. I aksed my players to setup a team that would work together. When they asked me about allowable material, I pretty much said anything was game just run it by me first. As long as we and the group can agree we will give it a shot.
We are using alignments but only because it we don't one player acts like a complete smuck.
We are on game 11 about 4 months in and while my player are not complaining. I myself have some serious problems. Here is the party. They are all 8th level.
Mystic Avatar . Which honestly at times feel like it is way to OP but then other times it just falls super flat.
Barbarian Bear Totem Weilding a Great Axe. - Super Resistant and Deals a Metric Arse ton of damage.
Diviner Wizard/Warlock - Says she is sword pact but spends most of her time at range annihilating things with Eldritch Blast and has an annoying power that allows her to swap rolls.
As others mentioned - make sure you understand how this is supposed to work. She gets to roll two d20s at the end of a long rest and then she can use each of those values once to essentially pre-empt one d20 roll (using the prerolled value instead of rolling) by her, or an ally or opponent that she can see. At the end of the next long rest, unused pre-rolls go away and she rolls two more. So that's just two uses per long rest and they don't accumulate.
Multi-class Paladin/Cleric/Druid - Weird Healing/ Buffing/Burst damage Build.- Honestly she is the one I Hate the most. I didn't realize how broken it would be until now.
Rogue Assassin - I actually have no problem with this one Although I feel sorry for him at times.
So the problem.
The Rogue, Warlock and Barbarian I can handle.
The Mystic class is a real head spinner. and combined with this Divine Trio. I'm just not sure how to deal with it.
They annihilated a Cr 14 Black Dragon and 12 of his Kobald Guards. They then fought their way out of the lair. They were supposed to RP through the encounter and go on a fetch quest in exchange for an item the Dragon had in his horde. The Mystic for the most part acts kinda like the warlord from 4E but in this fight he pulled off an insane combo and after 3 rounds Killed my dragon with a crit for almost 30 Dice. To be fair the diviner helped with her roll swap power and after this fight he only had 4 points left and was reduced to hanging out in the background debating if he should buff our 3 melee combatants. And was relatively inactive for the remaining fights out of the dungeon. But the Divine trio is the one who really irks me.
How many levels does she have in each class, and what is her Cleric Domain, Druid Circle (if any), and Paladin Oath (if any)?
She was pissed at the mystic because he picked up the healing power when we started at level 5. After some talk he swapped it out. which honestly I could care less about his healing, because hers is way worse. At the end of the adventurering day she blows her entire spell slot load to create almost 300- 400 HP worth of healing. Its absolutely ridiculous. it lasts for 24 hours. I checked though and the power is legit.
Yeah, like others, I don't understand exactly what is going on here. How many spell slots does she think she has and what 'power' are you referring to?
I cringe for anyone else who has run into someone playing this. Now she spends the following days only using cantrips and basic attacks, but when she is feeling frisky she will nova 3 abilities to smash a target for 50+ points of damage. And its just rinse repeat for her.
Even with a 4th level Divine Smite + Hunter's Mark + weapon damage, I have a hard time getting to 50 without a crit. Maybe I am missing a synergy effect. In any case, it seems like she would have to be burning spell slots to do this, so she couldn't repeat indefinitely.
I just dont know how to manage. I swear between her and the mystic they could solo entire dungeons.
My players all seem to be having fun and none of them have complained to me but im at a loss.
I don't want to kill their fun, but it feels as if I am not challenging them. They seem bored.
Any words of advice?
Well, keep in mind that you can TPK the party any time you want to, and with a little effort you can make it look legitimate. So somewhere between there and where you are, there's probably a satisfactory spot. I don't know how you are estimating encounter difficulty, but however you are doing it, if the party trashes an encounter you thought would be hard, congratulate them and make the next one 50% harder. Repeat. Exponentiation is a wonderful thing; you will have them fleeing in no time.
Other points, some of which have already been mentioned:
- If a creature is legendary, make sure it uses its legendary saves and legendary actions. If in its lair, make sure to use lair actions.
- Legendary or not, solo creatures will always underperform. In fact, any time there are fewer opponents than PCs, their performance will be a bit lackluster compared to what you might expect.
- 12 kobolds are not even a speed bump for an 8th level party, even if they come with a dragon, unless there is something that makes them much harder to kill such as if they could spread out and harry the party from cover. Even then, you'd probably need more.
- For an 8th level party, you probably need opponents that are CR 5-ish if they are going to more or less go toe-to-toe with the PCs, and you don't want to have to have excessive numbers of them. 12 trolls (+ dragon) might have been a little much if you expected the PCs to have a chance in combat, but it might have made them think twice about attacking.
- You can have optional reserve waves of monsters that you bring in during a battle if it you think the PCs are not being challenged sufficiently as a dynamic adjustment. Personally, I do not like doing this, preferring to set up the encounter and then let the chips fall where they may, but others seem to use this and get along just fine.
- If you have just one substantial fight a day it's going to be hard to balance. Easy combats don't really help much because the PCs will need to burn few if any expendable resources. You really need several hard (or, in DMG terms, 'deadly') fights a day to get sort of controlled attrition.