Sudden Metamagic Feats Rock!

[Psion]

Sometimes as a story element, I will dangle a BBEG who is WAY higher a CR than the group should encounter, just to build up some tension to the story elements. In these situations I want some level of verisimilitude to realism, meaning, the BBEG SHOULD WIN if he pulls out all the stops. The PCs SHOULD RUN AWAY. I intentionally pull the NPC punches for the betterment of the story LATER when the PCs are ready for the showdown of the century.

As I have been discussing in a thread over on RPGnet, it's the NATURE of RPGs that you can't expect to explicitly plan every event. In fact, it's probably the thing that it has over literature... things can happened that weren't planned, weren't obviously designed to have a certain impact. So long as you still continue to manage your game as if it were a story, it seems to me that you are going to run into trouble.

To me, this vantage point strikes me as very similar to people complaining about instant death traps, and I find it pointless for the same reason. If someone dies due to an instant death trap, you are faced with the fact that if you didn't want it to happen, you should have not created the possibility for it by putting it in your adventure.

Same goes in your situation. They players don't understand that they aren't meant to fight the BBEG. They just understand where he is and are operating by the rules to take him down. You created the possibility, you should be willing to deal with the consequences of it.

Edit: Of course, capping PC damage is one way to deal with controlling expected outcomes, but if you are running brushes that are intended to be that close that one feat makes the difference, I sort of think you were courting dissapointment in the first place.

 

[swrushing]

You see a massive flaw in having an ability that can only be used once a day that costs a feat, one you only get a handful of, as being unbalancing.

I do?

News to me.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I do?

News to me.

Perhaps it's just the internet but there seem to be signs that ya, you do. You mentioned several times the oddity of a 6th level character taking out a 10th level one due to the abilities that the feat couped with the magic item provide and go on about could a similiar circumstance happen with other classes.

If I'm mistaken, I apologize but the internet doesn't let us 'see' the meaning behind the words. I don't know if you're trying to be cute, but post 15 for example, is a pretty good indication of where my belief that you do, is coming from.

 

[swrushing]

Perhaps it's just the internet but there seem to be signs that ya, you do. You mentioned several times the oddity of a 6th level character taking out a 10th level one due to the abilities that the feat couped with the magic item provide and go on about could a similiar circumstance happen with other classes.

If I'm mistaken, I apologize but the internet doesn't let us 'see' the meaning behind the words.

I do indeed actually have an issue with, or would question if it happened in my game, the notion of a sixth level character one-shotting an active and prepared 10th level character. A 10th level character is supposed to be about the power level of an entire party of four sixth level guys, so that the fight between them would be a 50/50 win/lose proposition. (based on the CR definitions.) obviously, this is adjusted by excessive/low magical gear and such and various RPS issues.

This is however a far cry different a concern than the broadly sweeping recap you ascribed to me, both in scope and severity.

You see a massive flaw in having an ability that can only be used once a day that costs a feat, one you only get a handful of, as being unbalancing

This said, of course the CR system is at best an abstract, and as everyone knows the CRs must take into account circumstance and the highly variable items and such... so the real test is the play and whats a EL-10 for one group might really only be an EL6 for others.

heck, with a quick one-shot kill, its arguable it even qualifies as an even cr, depending on resources expended.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

cool, and does he often one shot Ko fighters 4 levels higher?

Fighters have a class feature the wizards lack: a d10 hit die. Wizards aren't anywhere near as durable, no matter what the source of the damage. The wizard should have included lesser globe of invulnerability among his buffs. Then it wouldn't have mattered how much damage the fireball did.

 

[JoeGKushner]

heck, with a quick one-shot kill, its arguable it even qualifies as an even cr, depending on resources expended.

Well, he almost killed the entire party. I escaped unharmed because as I've noted, I wasn't grouped with them.

As far as buffed... well, unless he had the Minor Globe going or some type of resistance...

As far as our own expenditure... lots of potions of healing... lots of potions of fly... that he promptly dispelled sending some people tumbling to the ground... for me... mage armor, shield, bullstrength, and of course, the 1/day use of my feat, the fireball spell itself, and the use of my magic item. Would it have been better if he killed half of us or ?

 

[Cerubus Dark]

He didn't. He cast the fireball himself and Empowered it with his metamagic rod and Maximized it with his feat.

Don't you have to have the spell prepared before hand to use a Metamagic feat? I was under the understanding that preparing a spell in that manner acutally used up a spell slot, I can understand using the rod but not just randomly applying the feat.

 

[Doug McCrae]

As far as our own expenditure... lots of potions of healing... lots of potions of fly... that he promptly dispelled sending some people tumbling to the ground... for me... mage armor, shield, bullstrength, and of course, the 1/day use of my feat, the fireball spell itself, and the use of my magic item. Would it have been better if he killed half of us or ?

That sounds like a good, tough fight. On the Globe of Invulnerability issue - hey, even 10th level wizards make mistakes sometimes. 10th level PC wizards certainly do.

 

[Voadam]

Don't you have to have the spell prepared before hand to use a Metamagic feat? I was under the understanding that preparing a spell in that manner acutally used up a spell slot, I can understand using the rod but not just randomly applying the feat.

That's what the feat does, 1/day you can apply the metamagic to any prepared spell you are casting.

 

[JoeGKushner]

This is however a far cry different a concern than the broadly sweeping recap you ascribed to me, both in scope and severity.

heck, with a quick one-shot kill, its arguable it even qualifies as an even cr, depending on resources expended.

cool, and does he often one shot Ko fighters 4 levels higher?

is the bit I was thinking of. See, I may be unaware of it, but I don't know of too many fighter feats that are only useable one time a day.

Help me out with that and expalin your reasons there, I think I don't understand how you're comparing a class with d4 hit dice and the ability to often do more damage dice in d6s than they have hit points with a fighter getting a one hit kill when they use a much higher hit die and can't automatically hit their enemies with their attacks.