Resist Energy, Mass - Encounter Problem

[Cheiromancer]

Make sure that they get *some* benefit from the resist energy spells. You want to encourage them to use foresight when adventuring, and prudence should be rewarded.

 

[borc killer]

Look at the feat "Energy Substitution". Or heck, have the frost giants use electricity-based attacks and the fire giants use acid-based ones. It's still elemental, but it throws a curve ball at your players...

/agree

It would be asinine for a Fire Giant to not expect people to attack it with cold and it would be equally stupid for a Fire Giant to not expect the person attacking it to be smart enough to have at least some resistance to fire. Monsters are not stupid (well some are...).
Resist Elements should help some… but it should not help from every attack.

 

[Wolfwood2]

Look at the feat "Energy Substitution". Or heck, have the frost giants use electricity-based attacks and the fire giants use acid-based ones. It's still elemental, but it throws a curve ball at your players...

Look at the OP. He specifically doesn't want to do that sort of thing in order to preserve a sense of theme and atmosphere.

It might make sense from a logical perspective (sort of), but theme is more important than logic.

 

[Winding Road]

There's a metamagic feat in CA called Lord of the Uttercold that might be of help. It turns half the cold damage from spells into negative energy damage, so it bypasses some of the energy resistance without making it completely useless. The feat doesn't raise the spell level, and its prereqs are Knowledge (planes) 9 ranks, Energy Substitution (cold), and knowing a spell with the [cold] descriptor.

 

[Obergnom]

First of all, thanks for many great replies.

Lord of the Uttercold seems to be an amazing way to at least solve part of the problem. And as I do not want to punish my players for choosing to use Energy Resistance, a very good solution for the casters.

I should have made it more clearly though, that I know there are a lot of ways to bypass or dispel the spell, but as Wolfwood2 stated, thats not what I want to do. I want to create some really thightly themed "dungeons" like the old Against the Giants Dungeons (but much shorter).

I need ways to make a Fire Giant and his 6 pet hellhounds dangerous without him using Dispel Magic or the Hellhounds not using their breath at all.
(The X Damage per Attack is what really ruins that for me. Am I wrong, or was it X Damage per Round in previous Editions, maybe even 3.0?)

 

[Tumbler]

Focus the hellhounds on working like police dogs. Let them grapple opponents and then have the Giant beat the crap out of the PC's while they don't even threaten him.

Trade out their feats for Combat expertise and either improved grapple or improved trip. Prone PC's let the giant move 4 points of his attack bonus to 6 power attack damage, so who cares if the PC's are fire resistant. Grappled PC's lose their dex bonus to AC against the giant.

Give the giant 3 levels of rogue so he can evade your pc's cone of cold (et. al.) and get +2d6 when flanking with the hounds.

Fill a cavern with hot mud that drowns small characters and reduces movement for medium characters, but only prevents the giant from charging.

 

[blargney the second]

Environment-based tactics is the key. If the fire giant and hellhounds are immune to fire and the PCs aren't, they'd be stupid not to do everything possible to get the PCs in a pool of lava.

 

[billd91]

Resist Energy won't protect them from a giant-sized beat-down. Go light on the non-buffing magic. Since the giants are mostly oriented toward melee combat, go with magic to enhance their prowess and send them on in.

For the occasional offensive spell, remember that a fire giant spell-caster might also have to fight fire giants from time to time, possibly to keep order if an authority figure or even just because giants get into lots of belligerant brawls. If all his attacks are fire-based, he won't be effective against his own kind. Mix in some other elements in moderate measure.

 

[Nail]

I'm a bit surprised that no one else has mentioned this=> Resist Energy, Mass is just the wrong level. Compare it to any other Mass spell, or indeed any other similarly powered defensive spell.

Resist Energy is 2nd level.

A Mass version should be 3 levels higher, at least.

 

[Markn]

Personally, I think the game works just fine without Mass Resist Energy. It's a spell that I have banned and my players were fine with it. I don't want to get into a war with this but I just wanted to point out that taking out for future campaigns does not hurt anything either.