Reigning in the casters?

1) How many encounters per day are you using?
2) How much gear do the fighters have?
3) Do the fighters get buffed by the casters through Haste etc.?
4) What supplements do you use, if any?*

In short, tell us something about your group. If you can, could you post all the PCs? That makes it more easy for us to analyze everything.

* I have found many groups which have a low amount of magical gear available (boots of speed, magical weapons and armour), yet allow lots of extra feats, such as greater Spell Focus, DC boosting Wizard prestige classes, persistant spell etc.).

Rav
 

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MaxKaladin said:
I am aware of AoOs. Getting folks in melee with the casters has helped when they can. Unfortunatly, the wizard has a habit of flying around all the time. That hinders things. I wonder if monks can flying kick someone in midair?

Winged creatures. Or a monk with a ring of flying. Heck, a swarm of stirges sucking the blood out of him will take a wizard's CON down to nearly nothing pretty quick. :D
 
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Your main problem seems to be Save or Die spells. Completely understandable.

Generally, I find that increasing the number of bad guys helps in this case. Keep the EL constant, just don't rely so heavily on one or two 'bosses'. Basically spread the danger among six monsters rather than two.

That way, the wizard can take out a couple of moderate threats, but there are still opponents to challenge the party every turn.

Don't forget to add the occasional evil spellcaster who can buff your baddies. A simple Prayer spell can actually make a difference.

A few archers with Readied actions (fire when he casts a spell) can also keep 'em on their toes.
 

Today I ambushed the party with 3rd-level wererat rogues in the sewers. The (10th-12th) level casters proved quite ineffective against their sneak attacking, harrassing tactics. Their Evasion let them dodge the Sorceror's Cone of Cold, while hitting him with sneaky slingstones.
In fact, the 9th-11th level fighters in the group did most of the work, once a cleric's 'Daylight' spell revealed the enemy positions.
If it had been a tough/balanced fight - 9th level wererat Rogues, say - the wererats might well have won.

Spellcasters dominate when you have one big fight against big dumb opponents (or hordes of weak ones), and if they get to prep & buff in advance of the combat. If the party is attacked by surprise, they're less effective. If they're worried about running out of spells, they're less effective.

Use a variety of foes with unusual ablities - like the wererat rogues, or demons with Spell Resistance - and the spellcasters are brought back into line.
 

Wisdom of the ancients: Divide and conquer.

Casters have a ball when dealing with enemies that are far away and charging, but they run into problems when confronted face to face. Grappling is always a problem for casters, and there are plenty of beasties who can do that. Ambushes and readied actions can go a long way to reducing the effictiveness of casters. Cast silence on a monk and have him do a kung-fu demonstration on the wizard's face.

The casters will complain, but this is also a reasonable tactic: the group's enemies will know all about them. Their strengths and weaknesses. If the group has been blasting the bejesus out of everything for the past few months, the bad guys will know to take out the magical support. All they have to do to accomplish this is to engage the party once every seven hours. Three times a day. That shouldn't be hard if the party has gained the notice of high level baddies.

If the wizard has been polymorphing and feebleminding every bad guy group leader in sight, start using illusions to make him waste spells. Disguise the leader. Outfit the baddies with rings of stable form, mind protection headbands, and instant getaway devices. Have some of these bad guys be lasting; if things don't go their way, they retreat, and the party won't get their stuff.

Use nets to stop the caster's somatic components from being possible. Equip bad guys with anti-magic stuff. Send Forsakers after them. Go to dead magic zones.

Have the government place a ban on all divine or arcane magic not sanctioned by the Ministry of Magic.

Lots of things you can do to nix casters. They just won't like it.
 

The wizards current favorite tactic: Find the enemy mage or nastiest opponent if no mage and polymorph other him into a snail, goldfish, turtle or other basically helpless critter.

Some creatures are immune to polymorph. Undead and constructs are immune to all effects calling for a Fort save, which is both polymorph and a lot of your other all-or-nothing spells. If you make the undead nasty enough, like high-level vampires or a lich, then the cleric's turning won't be that effective (and from the sound of things, I'm guessing he hasn't put too many feats into boosting it).

Also, I think some types of shapeshifters may be able to get around polymorphing by just resuming their natural form, but I don't have any rules to quote you.

I think a lot of it just comes down to a question of how much you want to meta-game the foes. Granted, not every encounter in the world is going to be specifically tailored for the PCs, and the enemy won't always know the party's capabilities. But if they've got this entire cult (or whatever) after them, and all kinds of people being sent out, then there's a good chance the organization is familiar with their tactics by now. So it does make sense that the other side would be more prepared for them.

As a side note, I've found that, more than CRs or equipment or anything else, knowing what you're about to fight and being prepared is generally what determines the way the fight is going to go.

Consider this idea: the bad guys get tired of loosing henchmen to the PCs and decide to contract some outside help. They find a group of vampires, formerly an adventuring party, with class levels around 6 or 7 per person. These vampires are under an unusual curse- they can't survive on normal blood, it has the be the blood of powerful people, ie those with higher levels, more magic, etc. Therefore, the group hires itself out as assassins to evil organizations who want to get rid of pesky heros, earning both blood and gold.

Classes are up to you, of course, since you know your party best. I'd suggest at there be a cleric to heal/buff the bad guys, and of course your typical assortment of fighter types. And then, a specialist abjurer. I had a PC playing one IMC, his entire purpose was to deny spellcasting to the enemy. With a load of dispels and a couple of counterspelling feats from the FR books, he was generally able to prevent one or two spells being cast per round.

One thing to remember is that, if you're going to use undead, the party rogues will be next to useless without their sneak attacks. Hopefully they have ways of distracting the bad guys without those abilities, or you could throw some non-undead in there- but expect your wizard to make quick work of them.
 

Ravellion said:
1) How many encounters per day are you using?
2) How much gear do the fighters have?
3) Do the fighters get buffed by the casters through Haste etc.?
4) What supplements do you use, if any?*

In short, tell us something about your group. If you can, could you post all the PCs? That makes it more easy for us to analyze everything.

* I have found many groups which have a low amount of magical gear available (boots of speed, magical weapons and armour), yet allow lots of extra feats, such as greater Spell Focus, DC boosting Wizard prestige classes, persistant spell etc.).

Rav

1. 1
2. Magic arms and armor. It's not the damage they can deal out. It's that the casters often end the fight by the time they get done with one or two low level foes.
3. Not happening.
4. We have quite a few suppliments, but aside from a couple of Relics and Rituals spells the cleric and mage are pretty much core characters. The only one who has really made any use of them is the ranger's character. He's a god of archery because of it. That said, I could use stuff from them myself more. I've got the Relics and Rituals books, the Book of Eldrich Might I and III, Spells and Spellcraft, a bunch of the Mongoose Press books, a bunch of the splatbooks and so on. Frankly, the wizard and cleric have mostly focused on item creation feats and spend lots of time/xp on scrolls and potions.

I don't have the PCs in electronic format to post.
 

With one encounter per game day, I can see why you're tearing your hair out!

Lots of good advice on this thread, but the first thing you should do is increase the amount of encounters between rest periods.
 
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Felix said:
Outfit the baddies with rings of stable form, mind protection headbands, and instant getaway devices. Have some of these bad guys be lasting; if things don't go their way, they retreat, and the party won't get their stuff.

I've not seen rings of stable form of mind protection headbands, but they sound like just what I need. As for getaways, that's one of the things that prompted all of this. It's pretty much standard procedure for my baddies to have teleport and things like that. The wizard likes the polymorph tactic because it deprives them of the chance to teleport away with "his" stuff. He has also been known to chase departing enemies down, which leads me to a nasty idea...

(Wanders off muttering something about mongols, fake retreats and teaching that mage to be so ruthlessly greedy.)
 

Its about time their enemies changed tactics. They've lost enough teams to them that its about time they sent someone with a plan specifically formulated to take them out. There have been enough survivors to give them info.

I admit to wondering it dopplegangers can be polymorph other'd and then change back to their own form....
 

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