[3.P] How do you handle PCs starting at level 7?

[Endarire]

(This post was heavily inspired by a DM who complained that Evard's black tentacles made things way too easy, though in our defense, he herded the enemies into a small space. Most of our work was done for us.)

The post's title may be misleading. I don't necessarily mean campaigns that begin at ECL7; however, I've noticed that once casters start doing things level 7 casters are expected to do, things change.

By level 7 (spell level 4), people have (almost) outgrown their 'normal' capacities. Spells in general are the focus of this post, since they're the biggest spikes in power. In general, I'll stick to core examples since they're the most common (and open content (http://www.d20srd.org/); yay!), and because they're an assumed part of every 3.P game.

Dimension door, polymorph, minor creation, Evard's black tentacles, scrying, divine power, freedom of movement, and death ward are perhaps the most famous and most potent level 4 spells, and things escalate from here.

Also, a Druid8 can turn into a Dire Lion with pounce. Assuming core only, a well-built Barbarian may be able to keep up damage-wise. With splat, a well-built Barbarian can pull -far- ahead damage-wise, but still can't turn into a bear who summons bears, calls down lightning, heals people, and safely hugs people while coated in black lotus extract.

Character level 9 (spell level 5) bring us raise dead, lesser planar binding, teleport, wall of force, telekinesis, magic jar, righteous might, dominate person, contact other plane, fabricate, plane shift (Cleric), true seeing (Cleric), and others have a great potential to make a single-classed caster a one-man army. A caster could also prepare Quickened level 1 spells in level 5 slots, however likely that is to occur.

From my experience, most campaigns don't last past level 10. In the off chance yours does, consider the following information.

Character level 11 (spell level 6) adds to our abilities antimagic field (Wizard), flesh to stone, contingency, greater dispel magic, harm, heal, and Quickened L2 spells, like Quickened glitterdust or a Quickened web. Pickins are slim at this level, but you can still use your level 6 slots for level 5 spells.

Things escalate from here, and we're only at character level 13! Level 7 Wizard spells are a revolution akin to how level 4 spells and level 9 spells are. In this list, we have blasphemy/holy word/cloak of chaos/dictum, plane shift (Wizard), spell turning, forcecage, simulacrum, project image, reverse gravity, and limited wish. "Democracy" means a lot less when you can trap them in a forcecage for 2 hours per level. Non-flyers -die- to reverse gravity. Make a simulacrum of an efreeti for wishes. Yeah.

Level 8 spells aren't that much better than 7s, but I'll certainly take maze, prismatic wall, mind blank, greater shadow evocation, clone, and polymorph any object. If I banned Evocation, go go shadow contingency! If I feel like riding the RAW, PAO myself twice into a planetar and have Cleric casting too, not that I condone this polymorph interpretation.

We're probably well famililar with level 9 spells, at least in name. If done properly, each level 9 spell can drastically change the world. Maybe not prismatic sphere, true resurrection, or meteor swarm, but definitely gate, shapechange, and TIME STOP. NOTE THE CAPS. THE SPELL IS THAT GOOD.

[Ormur]

Things certainly change, not necessarily for the worse, the DM just has to throw similarly powerful enemies at the group and change the nature of challenges. The biggest problem is if there are lower tiers in the groups, it can probably be compensated for to a certain degree depending on optimization and competence but if the campaign is expected to last longer than up to 7th level spells I'd really recommend for the party to span no more than two tiers.

Edit: that was supposed to be "no more than".

[Alleran]

Most of the campaigns I DM and play in tend to change by level 10-12. At that point, our characters aren't just crawling through dungeons like kiddies looking for their first +1 longsword. We're getting more involved with the politics, with other things, and so on. Killing monsters for treasure is so passe at that point.

[Aron Times]

There is no single answer to your question. Some DMs resort to mass bannings of game-breaking spells, while others form a social contract with their players not to break the game. Yet others limit player characters to certain tiers, like tier 3 and 4 (balanced game) or tier 1 and 2 (high power game).

I prefer the social contract approach. When building my characters, I stay away from broken and poorly-worded rules elements like Polymorph, which has gone through so many changes that the RPGA back in 3.5 decided to just outright ban it. When DMing, I remind my players of the difference between practical optimization and theoretical optimization. A good aluminum baseball bat is also good for misbehaving players. :smallsmile:

When I really want a balanced game, I play 4e. After having dealt with all the broken stuff in 3.5, 4e felt like a breath of fresh air. Pathfinder doesn't really fix much of what was broken in 3.5. In fact, it adds even more wallbanger rules to the game, not to mention the anti-intellectual groupthink over at the official Paizo forums. :smallmad:

[Thrawn183]

I like to change the way missions are shaped. At low levels, you run around killing things. You might even talk to people to figure out who to kill first. At high level? You learn of a terrible threat from a scrap of paper. You have to divine who to kill, travel to a different plane or two to get the resources you need to kill them and then actually go do it. In one day.

Instead of saying, "oh gollly, the casters have all these incredible resources available to them" say "lets make a mission where the casters have to use every resource available to them to succeed" instead.

[Flickerdart]

Instead of saying, "oh gollly, the casters have all these incredible resources available to them" say "lets make a mission where the casters have to use every resource available to them to succeed" instead.
But how can Joe McFighter contribute to any of those things?

[Jan Mattys]

But how can Joe McFighter contribute to any of those things?

"These are not the adventureres you are looking for"

[Snake-Aes]

But how can Joe McFighter contribute to any of those things?

Mostly, they can't, which is what Ormur said.

[Thrawn183]

But how can Joe McFighter contribute to any of those things?

I never said he could. Though frankly you only need one person in the party able to cast plane shift, etc.

[Flickerdart]

I never said he could. Though frankly you only need one person in the party able to cast plane shift, etc.
If he can't, your model isn't solving anything, is what I'm getting at.

[shadow_archmagi]

SOLUTION 1: Your party doesn't actually break the game with spells! Maybe they're blasters, maybe they just don't put gallons of thought into every problem to find an ideal solution, etc. I personally find this to be the most common one, as unless considerable thought is put into one's arsenal, having the right spell in the right place can be tricky.

SOLUTION 2: Everyone has it! The party is a psion, a sorcerer, an artificer, and a druid!

SOLUTION 3: No one has it! The party is a factotum, beguiler, warblade!

SOLUTION 4: Your party totally *could* be insanely game-breaking, but chooses to do things your way for maximum enjoyment.

[ericgrau]

I've seen evard's tentacles in action as a highly effective but not dungeon ending spell. If the problem is appearing right at level 7, then the first thing the DM needs to do is give more encounters per day. IMO this is best handled with a world that moves on whether the PCs are there to interact with it or not. Killing a few monsters in a dungeon then leaving or hiding to rest is a surefire recipe for being hunted by the entire dungeon, having the monsters evacuate the mcguffin to another location, continue with their evil plans unopposed, set up new defenses against the last PC infestation, etc.

There are many, many other solutions. Such as not sending in many weak monsters too dumb to avoid a tight cluster in a world where area spells exist. But if the problem first appears at level 7 the above is where to start.

[Snake-Aes]

I've seen evard's tentacles in action as a highly effective but not dungeon ending spell. If the problem is appearing right at level 7, then the first thing the DM needs to do is give more encounters per day. IMO this is best handled with a world that moves on whether the PCs are there to interact with it or not. Killing a few monsters in a dungeon then leaving or hiding to rest is a surefire recipe for being hunted by the entire dungeon, having the monsters evacuate the mcguffin to another location, continue with their evil plans unopposed, set up new defenses against the last PC infestation, etc.

There are many, many other solutions. Such as not sending in many weak monsters too dumb to avoid a tight cluster in a world where area spells exist. But if the problem appears at level 7 the above is where to start.

I'm an advocate of not letting players have their ideal scenarios play out ideally. If the plan does not plan for problems outside the plan, then it isn't a plan at all!
Another thing I suggest is straying away from what has apparently become a dogma. I talk about the "4 cr appropriate encounters per day". It's crap. 4 fights per day? Not gonna happen. If you're in a dungeon crawl, odds are you'll either find a ton of stuff or almost no stuff. And both ways work.

Other than that, if a caster is set on doing things on its own, there's little the noncasters can do. That's simply a flaw of the d20 system and there's nothing to be done to solve that that won't make the system unrecognizable.

Archmagi's proposal #1 is really the way to go to have fun and challenges. If a player is far too hung up on his own obsession with being optimal to be able to play a caster without breaking the game to the other players, then he should not play a caster at all. Give him something else that he can obsess with without breaking the game, it's better than messing the fun of the other players.

[Acrux]

Sounds like perfect reasoning for an E6 campaign to me.

[Keld Denar]

Its just a casting of EBT though. Its not like the player is taking levels of Beholder Mage or anything. Its one of the most popular 4th level spells, and has been a staple of adventurers since 2nd ed. Its no Celerity or Polymorph, but it is VERY effective, probably as effective when you get it as Glitterdust was at 3rd level.

I mean, saying "don't break the game" boils down to "don't cast any spell that doesn't do CLd6, and even then, don't do that as well as you potentially could". Yea, its a good spell, and it alone can win some encounters, just like Glitterdust can, or Freezing Fog, or even a well timed Finger of Death (which isn't even a GOOD spell...). Its just an aspect of the game. A good DM will deal with it.

[jiriku]

How do you "handle" them? Well, you crush them in your encounters, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their players. That's a DM's job. :smallcool:

Seriously, there's very little wrong with a mid- to high-level wizard that a war troll with Mage Slayer, Stand Still, air walk, and freedom of movement can't fix. Few Druidzillas will consider an encounter against four flying artificers with twinned empowered wands of enervation to be a cakewalk. Clericzilla will pause for thought when he realizes that the mind flayer he's fighting is a King of Smack build.

As for the types of challenges, here's a quick rubric that I use. Consult the following list to see the maximum challenge level your adventure poses, and don't use it if your PC group is above that level.

EL 1-2: survive in harsh environment
EL 3-4: overcome natural obstacle or secure facility, find cure for plague
EL 5-6: overland travel through dangerous area, murder mystery, negotiate alliance
EL 7-8: traditional dungeon crawl, locate lost macguffin, break a siege, raise an army
EL 9-10: participate in mass combat between armies
EL 11-12: single-handedly defeat mundane army
EL 13-14: handle 3-5 lesser threats in one day over a large geographic area
EL 15-16: found or topple a nation
EL 17-20: evacuate an entire civilization to another continent or plane, wipe out all civilizations on a continent

With some work (or if your PCs are weak), you can create a situation where a challenge has legs for a level or two longer, but it's a lot of trouble, and you may have to railroad.

[Ormur]

Yes, after about level 12 our party started teleporting everywhere. There were pretty much no more random encounters, either we sought out the enemies or they sought us out. Sometimes we teleported to places where we didn't know what was going to happen or we went to some event the bad guys attacked but mostly it was scry'n'dies. Because we could to a large extent control whether we fought, and that usually meant never more than once a day, the DM started throwing us against encounters with very high challenge ratings, even epic ones lately.

In those cases the Barbarian in our otherwise tier one group was simply buffed up before we teleported in and then leap attacked the biggest enemy as soon as we went in. That both meant we had to hold ourselves a bit back and the DM had to make sure there was something she could fight. Without lower tiers the DM's only worry is to hit a level of challenge that doesn't get laughed at or doesn't cause an instant TPK since the party should always be able to bail if things are to tough.

[Endarire]

How does Pathfinder bias things toward casters?

Also, as GM, I prefer to build enemies with class levels, usually casters or martial adepts. I was asking advice for my compatriots who seem dumbfounded that my playing "average" is still PWN.

The tier system comes into play around level 7, and remarkably so. When a DM of another group nerfed all save-or-lose spells, I switched to summoning. When that stopped working, I relied on heavy buffing. My ultimate fallback position is blasting, but I am loathe to blast, if only out of principle.