PC spinning out of control

[Mr.Black]

My group has a rule about dead PCs and their treasure. A dead PCs treasure never goes to the other PCs, it goes to the family or anyone other than the other PCs. This way, one PC will never become rich by scavenging on dead PCs. It makes treasure much more balanced. We also divide our treasure equally and all new PCs have treasure according to their level.

I'm DMing for my group right now, and I have to hold back to make sure I don't kill my friend's 11th level wizard. He's just too fragile. At this level the DM has a good number of tactics to use against the PCs:
1.Archers: A 9th level ranger with evasion and greater magic weapon on his bow can cut down a caster in no time.
2.Against Invisibility: Invisibility purge, see invisible, glitterdust, true seeing. NPCs can have casters too, who are built to survive at least two fireballs.
3.Teleport or D.Door: One time I had an enemy sorcerer teleport with two raging orc barbarians next to the wizard. The look on his face was priceless.
4.Feeblemind: Knocked him out on the first round.
5.Against Fly: You can have casters too. Let them cast fly on their friends and go after the sorcerer.

Basically, I don't try to wear down my wizard's spells because it would take too long and he would never be in danger. It's much easier to go straight for him. Never have them fight just melee creatures. I always make sure that my PCs face a group of enemies with a variety of abilities that make them almost as adaptable as the PCs.

 

[Aaron L]

If the sorcerer makes a conspicuous target of himself so often... well then, he should be attacked on sight. And enemy parties should include spellcasters frequently.

Always remember: The guy in robes is Target Number One. Always. And there is no metagaming in this, as anyone in a D&D world knows that wizards and sorcerers are walking artillery peices.

 

[Kristivas]

I've had a problem of overlooting in my games too. Basically, the guys want to loot everything, even in-game story stuff. They'll often say so before the DM gets done fully describing the place. Well, it's just two guys in particular.

I'm not even the DM in the game right now, I'm a player. The games we've played have always been kinda.. realistic. Meaning, if an adventurer dies in a dungeon, his stuff isn't going to vanish. Unless he told someone where he was going ahead of time and who he was with, no "Epic level fighters" are going to know who to come looking for. Scry and whatnot? Hell, we usually sell stuff before we go rest at the inn. Sure, the person's family can scry to find out where the item(s) are, but unless they do so RIGHT AS the PC is killed, all they'll detect is a merchant/black market dealer.

We've never really liked metagame stuff. The only real metagame stuff my DM is doing right now is keeping the PCs from slitting each others throats. It happened in the campaign prior to this one, and I think two of the PCs are still sore about it lol. My cleric (which you glorious EN world folks helped me to build) and the paladin ended up beating down the Sorceress and Wizard (a real life girlfriend and boyfriend pair) after the Wizard broke out of jail and murdered the sleeping guard, stringing his dead body up over the judge's desk. It was a Ravenloft game, and I think he was getting into it a bit too much.

Anywho, that last campaign ended and I can look over and see them both lookin' at me every now and then. The paladin that helped me do the beatin' down is the DM, so they can't go after him!!!! Argh!

But yeah, we're not much for metagame stuff. What are some other ways we could deal with the loot-whores?

 

[smootrk]

One way to control wealth that ultimately ends up in PC's hands, is to make the bad guys have lots of levels and abilities, but a general lack of gear (when the pc's confront them). Any piece of magic that an npc holds (and is meant to do battle with) ultimately becomes PC property, so be careful not to give the npc's anything that you wouldn't want the pc's to have.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

If you're having a problem with a flying, invisible sorcerer, there's a good counter with a Warlock with See the Unseen, Fell Flight, Retributive Invisibility, and Devour Magic. Load him up with a cadre of mooks to keep the rest of the party busy while he goes after the real dangerous target. Unless the Sorc can see invisible most of the time, he probably won't see him coming, and it's a touch attack to target a greater dispel on him that grants temporary HP to the warlock. If the warlock's invisibility is dispelled, he explodes in a burst of damage and stunning, and can just reactivate it as a standard action. Of course, for the invisibility, he needs to be 16th level or better, so if you don't want to go that far, just use some potions of Greater Invis. Other magic items include energy resistance for the sorc's favourite blasting spells.

In general, warlocks make good counters to that sorcerer tactic of "you dispelled my buff? Well, I've got more where that came from!" because Warlocks always have more.

If he really becomes a problem, just Disjoin him and his toys.

 

[ForceUser]

Four words--dungeons with arcane oozes.

 

[Zappo]

What we do for PC wealth is as follows: when a PC dies, all of his equipment that was bought with starting wealth vanishes. Depending on circumstances, it may be returned to the family, given to charity, destroyed by the monster's attack, appropriated by NPCs, or, if all else fails, buried with the character according to ancient custom (hey, all that loot lying around in the dungeons has to come from somewhere). The only important thing is that it vanishes.

If I ever find myself with a group that disagrees with this rule, I will consider it a violation of MAD and I will retaliate by breaking out the Improved Sunders and Disjunctions (what, Disjunction is too high level? Evil guys can use scrolls too...).

 

[LightPhoenix]

I don't particularly think that the player is the problem. People have suggested any number of tactics to counter his.

The real problem here is that the very nature of the game changes drastically around these levels, and if you haven't sat down and thought it through, it can be very difficult to deal with. And then you get people banning Teleport and nerfing spells and the like.

Because the PCs are vastly more mobile than they used to be, that produces several problems with the DMing you've been doing the last ten levels, through no fault of your own. Like you said, you can't really control when, or even where, they rest. They can scry, they can teleport and fly and wind walk.

The key here is that you control the world. You have to go from thinking locally to thinking globally. What does the Big Bad do when the heroes start an assault and then teleport out to rest? The dungeon changes! It's not an inorganic thing, a static thing. The world can change too. Maybe the BB goes and attacks the town as a retaliation for attacking his stronghold, knowing the players will be weaker and off-guard. Maybe he lets them teleport back in and then attacks. The point being, the kind of thinking required to run a higher-level campaign changes from a simple us-vs-them to much more complex.

And as a caveat, because I just know someone will point it out if I don't; lower-level play can be complexly thought out too. It's just that it becomes so much more necessary in the high-level game because of the drastic jump in mobility.

RttToEE isn't the best module for it though, IMO. I feel that most of the printed adventures tend to be much more meat grinders than really tactical.

 

[swrushing]

I too think the basic issue is that at this level your challenges need to change.

1. More time driven stories which push the PCs to push on and not rest willy nilly.

2. more proactive adversaries who will exploit weaknesess and downtime to their advantage.

3. More challenges which necessitate use of higher level spells to even get in play. let teleport and scry and dimensional anchor et al become part of the "getting to the challenge" not answers to the challenge.

4. Adversaries in order to be challenging need more resources, especially magical ones. Just bigger beasts with more BAB and Ac and hit points do not cut it. magical protections and things that see invisible or reveal invisible like glitterdust or faeries fire are a must. BRUTES do not threaten mid level guys (at least, not without magic support.)

5. Equally sneaky adversaries who look for sneaky people and loners and take them one-on-one sound good. How good would this sorcerer be when a rogue with a silenced item and see invis closes to knife range? the adversaries are not ignorant of magic if they are to be credible.

As for frequent PC death, you gotta realize you have instituted a system which REWARDS getting lots of PCs killed. that seems a design error on your part.

If new PCs come in with standard gear at the same level or close, and the group gets to pile on the gear from fallen comrades, then you are REWARDING letting PCs die, if (as it seems to be) your guys don't care about their PCs. i mean at the face of it, given the choice between using our cure potions on sammy (assumeing we are about to leave) and letting sammy die, taking his stuff and getting a new "sammy" with MORE GEAR... the "by the numbers" player has no difficulty. I am not normally inclined to pnish "accidental death" but acceptance of these losses again and again moves beyond "accidental" and into "culpable." i might suggest smething drastic like "start new guy 3 levels down and with half normal gear for that level" for any character you are not convinced was unavoidably lost.


Honestly, this wouldn't be an issue in my games 'cuz my players tend to care about their guys and after at most a couple rounds of this they would start not going along with the "you die, so i get rich" plans.

One other thing to keep in mind is casting spells is loud and easily noticeable.

But remember, its your JOb to run challenging scenarios and stories, not to just continue throwing inadequate "simulations" at them. So, if you script a good story which also happens to throw this guy off his preset gameplan, thats cool, not "cheating", not "going after him" just "challenging him".

you are not in competition with them.
You don't "win" if they die or "lose" if they win.
So "be mean" in a "fun" way.

 

[painandgreed]

Sounds like the pixie I run in my current D&D game except he's an fighter usign a bow rather than sorceror. If he's casting spells and not doing it silent, then there's probably a listen check to tell where he is. Then there's area effect spells and missle weapons. If he's set up too far from combat, there's always wandering monsters and such which he'll have to deal with himself. Otherwise, the power limiter I always use is that if the PCs do it, then so can the bad guys. Have them run into a couple of flying, invisible, sorcerors who summon monsters from out of sight and let it be known OOC that they'll run into more if he keeps using those tactics everytime. After all, if it's such a great tactic, then others should be using it also.

As for getting too much stuff, simply say that none of the experienced adventurers will team up with a guy that keeps getting his party killed and taking their stuff. Then make all new PCs come in at 1st level and play them up to a suitable level. Hopefully, he'll cough up some gear for them to give them a couple of effective levels so they can gain some experience pretty quick and bring them back in line with the rest of the party. That's pretty much what I do because I like it better when everybody plays their characters from the begining up anyway.