PC spinning out of control

[Parlan]

1. PW wealth- just tell your players that new PCs will come in with no equipment. They can sell the old stuff for new. Let them sell it a full price (or close to it)

2. Summoned creatures- unless they have weapons, they cannot attack anyone under a Protection from Evil etc. spell. Have your bad guys use those.
They can also be dispelled. Also, how is the Sorc controlling them? Usually we play pretty fast and loose with summoned creatures (ie they get sumoned and attack the nearest bad guy to the best of their abilities w/o direction) if they were getting summoned from around corners and stuff, i'd require some sort of direction be given the creatures. Ordinarily pointing would prolly suffice, but since the sorc is invis he'd prolly have to do it audibly.

3. tactics in general. make more magick-saavy BBEGs and play them smart. I HATE it when a frikkin enemy teleports away just as i was about to kill him. I have invis enemies even more. Your BEGs should feel the same way. Slap a Dimensional Anchor on the Sorc first chance you get. hit him with a fairy fire or glitterdust too.

Once they know where he is, have a whole buncha mooks zerg him.

Separate him from the party with a wall of force/ice, then teleport a couple of Cloth Killers (clerics with dim achor and invis purge and rogue/shadowdancers to the other side of the wall.

Oh, and for the love of pete, DISPELL his buffs FIRST chance you get. That will at least cut down on his options and he ll have to think defensively.

 

[Kweezil]

*blink* I just realised this is your thread, Baug. How's things?

The hardest thing to do in a situation like this is to not become adverserial with the player. I have to admit, this is a lesson I had to learn the hard way, as the OP knows ^^; . If things are getting problematic in-game, deal with them in game and fairly (no grudge monsters or NPCs with inexplicable anti-PC abilities), and if they are out-of-game problems, deal with them between yourself and the player.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Oddly, I think a Warlock would be about right for nerfing the snot out of a guy like this.

Dispell at Will is very nice for repeatedly boinging a guy's flight and invis spells.

See The Unseen lets him see the invisible PC without having to prep beforehand. The Warlock can spot and toss down Walls to box the sorc in away from his friends. Bust Devour Magic on the sorc again and again. A few wands or potions on the 'lock can protect him from common spells, while Flee The Scene can let him keep out of the hands of melee characters while he tears up the caster.

And I have to say, on the player end, I've "arranged" a few "tactical errors" for caster types in my own party who keep getting everybody else killed while they protect themselves. Y'know: "Oh, wow, I never expected that they'd do that ... sorry, dude."

Before I play any games, I let everybody know that meta-game we're going to let the dead have viking funerals with their stuff with the understanding that I'll allow replacement PCs come in with full character wealth. It just causes too much in the way of problems to do it otherwise ... then people who die come in with PCs a level back and it really presses upon the caster types to survive so they can benefit from the deaths of everybody else in the party. Which, survival is good ... all of my characters have "Survival Kits" with potions of stuff like Pass Without Trace and Invis. to help escape no-win situations ... but a guy who knows that if everybody dies he's going to have 150,000 GP of sweet sweet loot to power up on ... he's going to arrange a few "tactical errors" of his own.

Really, the folks that have the most trouble in my own games are often the "Me First!" arcane casters ... we get alot of High Hit Dice, Low CR Fiendish Creatures (add Fiendish to a few big animals and suddenly you've got SR way way out of proportion to the EL of the situation, rendering arcane casters pretty nerfed). Clerics really mess up arcane folks as well ... Dispell Magic, Silence, and Spiritual Weapon. After you've bombarded him with Dispells, if half a dozen acolytes pop Spiritual Weapons on him, he's going to have a bad bad day trying to get rid of them. The wizard in my RttToEE game seemed to spend an awful lot of his time running back and forth screaming for healing while Spiritual Weapons whacked him in the face.

--fje

 

[helium3]

I wanted to address this point. How do I stop a PC taking other PCs' gear? That's entirely in the control of the surviving PCs. And it's pretty hard to make a case for NOT gathering equipment to help you survive in a dungeon full of dangerous monsters.

Thanks for all the good advice folks.

Eh, it's kinda tough to handle in any way that's not meta-gaming, but it has to be done. I'm fairly confident that the wealth system was designed around the idea that surviving PC's would not get dead PC's equipment. The way we handled it in game was that PC's were either buried with their valuables (not an entirely unrealistic scenario), donated to a good cause or returned to surviving family members. The DM insisted that every character have a will of some kind. We would be allowed to use items that were useful for the immediate situation at hand but once we were out of danger, we had to get rid of the dead PC's gear. Every now and then we would get to keep something useful. I think we got to keep a wand of fireballs at one point when our wizard died. We had a sorcerer in the group that had an odd selection of spells and the DM let us keep the wand in the hopes that the sorcerer would see that sometimes the "standard" spells were standard for a reason.

As the DM, you basically have to tell the players that for game balance reasons they can't keep dead character equipment. They just have to accept it. Kick them out if they don't as that's a pretty good indicator that they're not playing the game for the "right reasons." I've never had to kick anyone out of my game over this, but I'd have no problem doing it.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I don't think the wealth thing is as big of an issue as is the fact that you feel that you're not able to challenge this guy in encounters. The main problem is that he lives while his friends die, over and over again.

I ran Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil too, and it's the perfect adventure for this kind of PC. By and large, the PCs get to pick the time and place of the fights. Wizards and Sorcerers both do very well with this kind of setup.

You need to use adventures where the PCs don't get to pick the time and pace of the encounters. Have encounters with humanoids with class levels; this makes it harder for the casters to know whether to conserve or use their spells. Have random encounters. In short, make sure you have 3 or 4 fights between every time that the party gets to rest. That way, the sorcerer isn't fully loaded when he has to fight the big bad guy.

There are many spellcasters in RttToEE. Once it becomes clear that they are dealing with an enemy that can teleport away, every one of them who is capable should memorize Dimensional Anchor. It's a ranged touch attack with no save.

They should also memorize dispel magic. This is a perfect spell for evening the playing field with a party that has had time to prepare.

Remember that the goal isn't to kill the party; it's to drain the sorcerer's resources.

Ken

 

[the Jester]

I wanted to address this point. How do I stop a PC taking other PCs' gear? That's entirely in the control of the surviving PCs. And it's pretty hard to make a case for NOT gathering equipment to help you survive in a dungeon full of dangerous monsters.

This pretty well requires a certain level of metagaming. What I do is tell the players, straight up, that a new pc's starting wealth will be reduced by the value of any stuff the pcs take from the dead guy's body.

Even if the sorcerer inconsiderately takes the leavings off the other, dead pcs, that just encourages the other players to teach him a major lesson when/if he dies.

As to the rest- all it takes is blindsight and a targeted dispel magic or greater dispel magic the sorcerer is screwed.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Give some thought to how you're adjudicating time in game. If the party spends any time searching bodies or rooms after a fight, enough time has probably passed that the socerer's 1m/level spell have worn off, and he'll have to recast them for the next fight. At 10th level, figure the 10 minutes of II + Fly that he has lasts long enough for the fight itself (1 minute), then catch breath and heal up (3-5 minutes) plus searching, etc ... most likely gone by the next encounter.

The only time those spells should last for multiple fights is if as soon as the last enemy falls, the party moves directly on to start the next fight without taking intervening actions.

 

[pntbllr]

At one point I think he had over 150,000GP worth of equipment..



How did he carry it all? Or where did he keep it? It sounds very tempting for thieves.

 

[WayneLigon]

I've never seen the need for metagaming to the extent of saying 'all the stuff this guy was carrying goes away'. If someone dies, we usually redistribute their stuff or sell it if no-one can use it. The new PC gets his standard wealth for that level in whatever he wants, for the most part. If it's something someone else can use better, that person usually get it; we're not very attached to Stuff since we know it can go away at any point.

 

[BSF]

I wanted to address this point. How do I stop a PC taking other PCs' gear? That's entirely in the control of the surviving PCs. And it's pretty hard to make a case for NOT gathering equipment to help you survive in a dungeon full of dangerous monsters.

Thanks for all the good advice folks.

Completely metagame it if you need to. Explain that you use wealth guidelines by the total wealth the *party* has. Five PCs? The party will have approximately the wealth of 5 PCs. Then, if one PC is hogging all the treasure, new PCs are found as captured slaves that need to be freed.

It is harsh, but if the players are going to use new PCs to stockpile treasure instead of recovering it while adventuring, you are well within bounds to equalize things.