Two related encounter problems for a DM

[Ormur]

Players stay out!

I've been running my first campaign with some success despite an ambitious scale, at least my players don't complain. Still I'm far from perfect and could appreciate some advice.

The first problem is a mild party imbalance I don't think I'm compensating well enough for. The part has two full casters and two rogueish characters and they are on levels 11-12. One of the casters is a sorceress/wild mage and the one closest to level 13. The player picks very powerfull (but not broken) offensive spells and plays very cautiously, taking time to prepare for combat while the others take a beating and then saves the day. When I try to target the character specifically the wild mage random deflector usually takes care of it and this isn't a dungeon crawl so she doesn't run dry easily. The player is a good tactician but I don't think it's fair that the rogueish characters just barely hang on to their hit points thanks to the tireless effort of the other fullcaster (a dedicated favoured soul buffbot) while the sorceress is hardly ever in any real danger.

The others certainly contribute and their builds are effective and versatile but I'm not very good at thinking up encounters that would threaten the sorceress without nullifying or overwhelming the rest of the party. Any suggestions.

My second problem is variety in encounter design. The campaign is about figthing an evil, human dominated, Hextor worshiping, expansionistic empire. This means I'm mostly throwing humanoids with class levels at them. I think they might be getting tired of figthing mostly clerics and warblades.

I'm trying to think up ways to justify more monster encounters but they have to be related to the plot, a beholder random encounter isn't going to be any more fun than figthing another cleric when it at least advances the plot. It's also simply not plausible that they'd just stuble upon a level appropriate monster in the middle of the evil empire. How could I plausably tie some tough mechanically fun monsters of all types into the plot?

As a first time DM I'm also much less experienced in practical monster optimization than class level optimization. What's a good way to start?

[holywhippet]

Golems will cause problems for spellcasters since they are immune to a large number of spells.

You could always arrange for a mirror of opposition to be placed in their way.

If they have been facing evil clerics then an assault of undead is a reasonable option.

Are there any spell the sorceress tends to favour? A few castings of spell immunity could cause her some headaches.

Clerics have access to summon monster spells - try to surround the sorceress with fiendish dire wolves and have them set to keep tripping her and taking AoOs whenever she tries to cast.

[Ormur]

Golems and undead bork the sneak attack reliant meleers just as hard as the sorceress, sadly. Not that they couldn't run into a few but it wouldn't balance the party much.

The sorceresses favourit spells are wings of flurry, cloudkill, invisibility and ray of stupid. She has the heighten and quicken metamagic and maybe some others I've forgotten.

[holywhippet]

I was more thinking that golems and undead would break up the monotony of warblades and clerics attacking them. Undead would be a good counter for cloudkill and ray of stupid since I don't think either can affect an undead.

Wights are especially good vs. a spellcaster since they can drain levels with each hit.

Invisibility can be countered with invisibility purge, true seeing or dispel magic depending the situation.

Keep in mind, given the number of battles against them, the party enemies should have a fair idea of the sorceresses spell list and have plans on how to counter it.

[graeylin]

a warlock with dispel magic, primed to counter your sorcerer.

How about effective use of Silence spells?

Add some pet monsters to your minions: add a Warg or two to a scouting party. Toss in a chimera or gargoyle as a sentry, or with any group of villians. Soldiers have been using K-9's for centuries, why wouldn't BBEG's use monsters?

[bloodtide]

Outsiders. The evil Hexor folks should be summing plenty of devils. As well as a couple shadow or such monsters. Not to mention a good number would live on the Prime for real and join the empire(or be enslaved or such).


Outsiders are nice as they have magic immunities and spell resistance. Both give casters a hard time. And on top of that, give each outsider a template. Templates are a great way to boots an outsiders power.

Example-Some half white dragon hellcats(immune to both fire and cold)..

Outsiders are also good for packs...groups of creatures they have to waste good spells on
For example, add in a couple of Hell hounds, half-white dragon hellhounds, of course....or half rust dragon hell hounds.


And any monster with an intelligence of over 5 might want to join the evil empire. A beholder would love to be a member of the empire, as would tons of other monsters like dragons, trolls, and yaun-ti.

And don't forget about pets and guards...someone can have a behir as a pet. Even if by 'pet' they just let it run wild in an enclosed area.

As Hexor is LE(right) there should be tons of enslaved creatures and monsters...both magically and the old fashion way.

[DwarfFighter]

The sorceresses favourit spells are wings of flurry, cloudkill, invisibility and ray of stupid. She has the heighten and quicken metamagic and maybe some others I've forgotten.

Well...


Quicken Spell [Metamagic]
Benefit: Casting a quickened spell is a free action. You can perform another action, even casting another spell, in the same round as you cast a quickened spell. You may cast only one quickened spell per round. A spell whose casting time is more than 1 full round action cannot be quickened. A quickened spell uses up a spell slot four levels higher than the spell’s actual level. Casting a quickened spell doesn’t provoke an attack of opportunity.

Special: This feat can’t be applied to any spell cast spontaneously (including sorcerer spells, bard spells, and cleric or druid spells cast spontaneously), since applying a metamagic feat to a spontaneously cast spell automatically increases the casting time to a full-round action.

If you enforce this rule then the sorceress will not be able to cast two spells per round. This should at least force a change in her standard operating procedure.

-DF

[Cyrion]

I think you could actually get away with an encounter or two where you do target the sorceress by overwhelming the other party members. If you've got opponents who pay attention to tactics, they'll likely try to target the spell-users first.

Prime your villains with a couple of disabling battlefield control spells that remove the rogues from play quickly- you're trying to delay their entry into the battle until after the sorceress and the other caster have softened them up a bit, and then leave the rogues in a position to step in and save the day.

Maybe something with a couple of scrolls or other one-off uses of Maze or Shadow Well.

Balance and timing will be important here, but you should be able to do this once or twice.

[Diarmuid]

Dwarf, that may not be the case if the Sorc has the ACF that allows MM to be applied as normal.

[DwarfFighter]

But as the GM he can apply RTM on that MBS and then the sorc is up SC without even a paddle.

-DF

[person29]

But as the GM he can apply RTM on that MBS and then the sorc is up SC without even a paddle.

-DF

RTM?

MBS - major bovine stuff?

SC - Spell compendium? :)

[holywhippet]

If you enforce this rule then the sorceress will not be able to cast two spells per round. This should at least force a change in her standard operating procedure.

-DF

There are a couple of ways around that. For one I think the PHB 2 had a rapid metamagic feat which lets spontaneous casters do quickened spells. For another, there is a feat which lets a spontaneous caster use slots to prepare spells.

[Ormur]

a warlock with dispel magic, primed to counter your sorcerer.

How about effective use of Silence spells?

I have to check out the warlock but one problem is that the other caster is pretty good at counterspelling she should be able to block the first dispel. Of course I could just target the other characters first, fail and try to survive into round two with another dispel for the sorceress.


Add some pet monsters to your minions: add a Warg or two to a scouting party. Toss in a chimera or gargoyle as a sentry, or with any group of villians. Soldiers have been using K-9's for centuries, why wouldn't BBEG's use monsters?

I've been doing more of this but the problem is that the pet-like evil monsters are hardly a challenge anymore. I've been thinking of templates and even class levels that could prevent them being one-shotted.


Outsiders. The evil Hexor folks should be summing plenty of devils. As well as a couple shadow or such monsters. Not to mention a good number would live on the Prime for real and join the empire(or be enslaved or such).


Outsiders are nice as they have magic immunities and spell resistance. Both give casters a hard time. And on top of that, give each outsider a template. Templates are a great way to boots an outsiders power.

Example-Some half white dragon hellcats(immune to both fire and cold)..

Outsiders are also good for packs...groups of creatures they have to waste good spells on
For example, add in a couple of Hell hounds, half-white dragon hellhounds, of course....or half rust dragon hell hounds.


And any monster with an intelligence of over 5 might want to join the evil empire. A beholder would love to be a member of the empire, as would tons of other monsters like dragons, trolls, and yaun-ti.

And don't forget about pets and guards...someone can have a behir as a pet. Even if by 'pet' they just let it run wild in an enclosed area.

As Hexor is LE(right) there should be tons of enslaved creatures and monsters...both magically and the old fashion way.

Excellent advice, I'll check out those monsters. I guess they could have planar bound outsiders or something specifically for those purposes.


Well...

[INDENT]Quicken Spell [Metamagic]...
If you enforce this rule then the sorceress will not be able to cast two spells per round. This should at least force a change in her standard operating procedure.

-DF

Ah, forgot to mention that she's a metamagic specialist precisely so she can apply metamagic to spells as normal. I think it's an ACF.


I think you could actually get away with an encounter or two where you do target the sorceress by overwhelming the other party members. If you've got opponents who pay attention to tactics, they'll likely try to target the spell-users first.

Prime your villains with a couple of disabling battlefield control spells that remove the rogues from play quickly- you're trying to delay their entry into the battle until after the sorceress and the other caster have softened them up a bit, and then leave the rogues in a position to step in and save the day.

Maybe something with a couple of scrolls or other one-off uses of Maze or Shadow Well.

Balance and timing will be important here, but you should be able to do this once or twice.

That's an interesting suggestion, reversing the roles so that the sorceress takes the heat for the first part of the battle. The trick would be to make sure the rogues (actually rogue/swordsage/assassin and rogue/factotum/warblade) would only be unable to contribute for a few rounds and could then clean up the battlefield. Something with a short duration (stun ray?) or some kind of barriers.