CoDzilla and Large Scale Battles [Pathfinder]

[Kira_the_5th]

Ok, so here's my situation; for the last few months, my group has been playing through a campaign in which they discovered the theocracy they were working for was, in fact, evil, and began to raise an army against the corrupt government. On our next session on Friday, the party will be taking said army to storm the gates of the capital city.

There's just one problem. How do I stop the party Druid from completely overshadowing the rest of the party? The current plan is to have high level casters stationed on the wall with the sole purpose of counterspelling anything the party tries to cast, but that doesn't deal with the druid's shapechanging and companion Roc, who can just fly up and attack the casters. I want to make this battle difficult, but not impossible. How can I go about getting a better balance?

For reference, the party is 18th level, made up of the aforementioned dwarf druid, a human, greatsword wielding paladin who leads the army, an elf fighter specializing in scoring critical hits, and an elf magus focusing mostly on melee spells.

[CTrees]

True Form (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/t/true-form) can temporarily tone down the wildshape. For the Roc, there are more than enough ways to make the flying seriously difficult. Control Winds, Control Weather, Hurricane... The Roc companion is going to be at least large, and if you force skill checks at big penalties every round, followed by, oh... an air elemental or three to handle the successful checks? Or just, you know, a large net if it gets too close? Actually that helps combat both the druid and the companion flying. Now, teleporting up to the ramparts, wildshaping into something like a T-Rex, and mauling the enemy casters? You're on your own for how to deal with that.

[PinkysBrain]

For reference, the party is 18th level, made up of the aforementioned dwarf druid
18th level and only the druid can fly?

Either you are doing something wrong or your players are. A 18th level non caster should be able to fly, turn invisible, see invisible and a whole lot of other things without being helped out by the caster. Hell ... a 18th level martial character should probably have a major ring of spell storing for shapechange alone (affordable by WBL).

an elf magus focusing mostly on melee spells.
Wow, that's a masochist (PF doesn't really do arcane melee buffs much).

[bloodtide]

I don't get the whole 'powerful druid' thing myself. A guess a druid is all powerful in some very low level magic games.

Things to do:

1.Summoned creatures. All sorts of fun stuff, demons or elementals and such.

2.Just a Roc? At a city can't take it out? It would be easy enough for one person in the city of say 10th level/cr to take out a Roc. How about a nice mix maxed archer or thirty.

3.Archers and ranged attacks would be good all around, in fact.

4.Make the Mooks tough. Don't have them be 1st level human warriors, make them 1st level drow warlocks.

5.Enemy druids...fight nature with nature.

[Kira_the_5th]

I've tried archers before, the roc just shrugs most of the off on AC It's an animal companion roc, so it has 15 extra HD, more natural armor, and it's armored too with the best armor it can reasonably get after it almost died in the third session. The rest of the party can fly, or has abilities to replicate it, it's just they've never gotten to use anything like it given the druid just flies in and kills anything at range before the party can get to it. The rest of the party isn't particularly optimized, just this one player.

Anyway, my current plan is to line the wall with an antimagic field, putting the caster towers between the points were the fields overlap (think just outside the top of a two circle Venn diagram) On the wall are siege engines set to fire nets full of alchemist's fire bottles at the roc. If that fails, hopefully the antimagic fields will negate the Ant's Haul spell the druid keeps on his pet and overloading its encumbrance. Meanwhile, the walls can be flown up to as closely as the field are allowed, and can be scaled as normal.

[bloodtide]

I've tried archers before, the roc just shrugs most of the off on AC It's an animal companion roc, so it has 15 extra HD, more natural armor, and it's armored too with the best armor it can reasonably get after it almost died in the third session. The rest of the party can fly, or has abilities to replicate it, it's just they've never gotten to use anything like it given the druid just flies in and kills anything at range before the party can get to it. The rest of the party isn't particularly optimized, just this one player.


Your just using the wrong archers. 2nd level orc warriors are not the archers you should be using. You want more drow warlocks, for example. How about some Colossal Animated Objects, like catapults? Or a couple of Rakshasa(they get 5 lightning bolts a day...each. How about a Yrthak air cavalry? Or anything with a breath weapon/spell ability...

Plus, lots of stuff ignores armor...like enchantment/charm spells. And all the wind and weather effecting spells.

[true_shinken]

Wow, that's a masochist (PF doesn't really do arcane melee buffs much).

And the Magus SUCKS.

[Aemoh87]

Where does CoDzilla come from in the title?

Also whenever you have one optimizer and the rest aren't it's easy. Gandolf it. Aka create a great threat that the Druid MUST deal with, whiles the party has to deal with the other threats that whiles weaker are just as important. Also make the druids threat prepared for him. If the druid uses the same spells and wildshapes let his opponent know this and prepare ahead of time.

This should keep the battle epic for everyone as long as you keep the goal as follows: Challenges the Druids back up plans and secondary abilities whiles at the same time making the other three party members shine in situations designed to showcase them.

As a DM you feel dumb making encounters for a character to dominate (Not easy but focused on that characters strengths) but just think how much fun he will have when his character who is used to being smothered under the weight of a druid is shining brightly in an epic moment.