olthar
2011-06-23, 01:55 AM
I've been playing a game with a new DM and we've run into a minor problem. He started off the game telling us that he would allow any race and that he wanted full optimization (starting level 3 with WBL and no restrictions on what to buy), but we could only choose core classes/feats.
This means the party is pretty spread across tiers:
It's a five person party.
lv 4 Human Warblade: The player originally rolled an elven fighter because he didn't understand the concept of optimized. His constitution score of 10 meant he spent the first two combats unconscious while the rest of us just trounced everything that came at us. His warblade is still not fully optimized, but it's a step in the right direction. The dm has slightly compensated by making encounters slightly more geared towards his particular abilities.
lv 3 (ecl 4) Half-minotaur Cleric: He is the group's primary tank. He is playing this pretty much as a tier 1. When things get near him they die. He hasn't really needed to use much magic, though recently he entered a 1v1 tournament in which he needed to play to his full abilities. Doing so he took out both opponents within 3 rounds (1 was a bit weak, but the 2nd was a moderately powerful 5th level (elite array) barbarian that I put together for the dm on the fly cause his first creature was so weak)
lv 4 halfling rogue: This player has read OOTS (hopefully not this board) and decided to put together a short Haley. Major item Amber Amulet of Vermin.
lv 4(5) halfling rogue: The DM's GF and the reason we're playing (to introduce her to the game). She put together a nontraditional rogue due to inexperience, but it has actually been rather fun and helpful for the party. Also has the amber amulet of vermin.
myself lv 4 (5) dragonborn whisper gnome wizard: Specialist in conjuration. Unquestionably Tier 1, has a fetish for alchemical items. I told the DM I'd put together a character that could save the party if badness occurred but would otherwise not be too intrusive. Until 3 hours ago 3 of the 4 players thought that I was useless
The problem has come with creating encounters for the party. We just walked through all of the early encounters with no problems at all. At first I thought it was because of rules issues, but once those were sorted out we were still walking through battles like they didn't exist. In fact, in our most recent session we kinda screwed with his game a bit too much (the reason for this post).
The party split up while in town. Three of the players decided to go join some tournament while myself and the nontraditional rogue went and investigated the plot some. The two of us stumbled on the "plot encounter" and managed to successfully run away. While sending for help, we decided to investigate more and make sure that the plot encounter couldn't screw us more. We stumbled upon it again and this time were too involved and had to fight it.
The encounter was 1 cr5 (bearded devil), 2 cr2 (imps) and 2 cr3 (hell hounds). Between summoning the large scorpion, the devil, an imp and a hel hound failing their save against glitterdust, and 2 crits by the rogue, the rogue and I took it down almost without taking and damage. We were then joined by the other rogue and took out 8 more imps. (Glitterdust and color spray coming to good effect again).
Now I know part of the problem is that the DM didn't play the monsters well at all. Until checking the SRD just now I didn't realize how wrong he had played them (I knew it at the time but didn't quite realize all of the errors), but regardless, less than half of the party shouldn't be able to take out the plot encounter.
Even played correctly the two of us probably would have taken it down as the first round started with 3 of the 5 monsters blinded by glitterdust (we didn't even know the imps were there until the spell lit them up like an xmas tree) and a large scorpion really annoying the devil. Once everything was blind it wasn't too hard for the scorpion to screw with the devil while the rogue sneak attacked everything down. My adding more save or sucks was an afterthought Granted, since my character's job is not to be a wizard god, but to ensure that we have fun and don't get screwed. So I probably won't do stuff like that all the time (plus I used up my glitterdust scrolls). But what should have been an obvious run situation shouldn't be turning into an easy win fight like that very often. Oh, and since the two of us took down the plot encounters duo we leveled while everyone else kinda sat twiddling their thumbs (well, fighting in 1v1 tourney stuff, but as far as the plot goes twiddling their thumbs).
The DM now needs to try and figure out how to make an encounter for us that won't completely destroy the party, but will be actually challenging. I sent him to the tucker's kobolds article with instructions that intelligent creatures fight intelligently and I'm going to tell him to be sure he knows his monsters abilities and to use all of them (the devil should have summoned a friend to really screw with our day). But even with that I don't know if that's enough since that only solves the problem of half of the party taking out plot encounters without any trouble.
So, my question is: Since the dm's encounter wasn't enough for a decently optimized wizard and a moderately optimized rogue, which means it would have failed miserably for the full party. How do you balance an encounter for a moderately to highly optimized party that spans multiple tiers?
This means the party is pretty spread across tiers:
It's a five person party.
lv 4 Human Warblade: The player originally rolled an elven fighter because he didn't understand the concept of optimized. His constitution score of 10 meant he spent the first two combats unconscious while the rest of us just trounced everything that came at us. His warblade is still not fully optimized, but it's a step in the right direction. The dm has slightly compensated by making encounters slightly more geared towards his particular abilities.
lv 3 (ecl 4) Half-minotaur Cleric: He is the group's primary tank. He is playing this pretty much as a tier 1. When things get near him they die. He hasn't really needed to use much magic, though recently he entered a 1v1 tournament in which he needed to play to his full abilities. Doing so he took out both opponents within 3 rounds (1 was a bit weak, but the 2nd was a moderately powerful 5th level (elite array) barbarian that I put together for the dm on the fly cause his first creature was so weak)
lv 4 halfling rogue: This player has read OOTS (hopefully not this board) and decided to put together a short Haley. Major item Amber Amulet of Vermin.
lv 4(5) halfling rogue: The DM's GF and the reason we're playing (to introduce her to the game). She put together a nontraditional rogue due to inexperience, but it has actually been rather fun and helpful for the party. Also has the amber amulet of vermin.
myself lv 4 (5) dragonborn whisper gnome wizard: Specialist in conjuration. Unquestionably Tier 1, has a fetish for alchemical items. I told the DM I'd put together a character that could save the party if badness occurred but would otherwise not be too intrusive. Until 3 hours ago 3 of the 4 players thought that I was useless
The problem has come with creating encounters for the party. We just walked through all of the early encounters with no problems at all. At first I thought it was because of rules issues, but once those were sorted out we were still walking through battles like they didn't exist. In fact, in our most recent session we kinda screwed with his game a bit too much (the reason for this post).
The party split up while in town. Three of the players decided to go join some tournament while myself and the nontraditional rogue went and investigated the plot some. The two of us stumbled on the "plot encounter" and managed to successfully run away. While sending for help, we decided to investigate more and make sure that the plot encounter couldn't screw us more. We stumbled upon it again and this time were too involved and had to fight it.
The encounter was 1 cr5 (bearded devil), 2 cr2 (imps) and 2 cr3 (hell hounds). Between summoning the large scorpion, the devil, an imp and a hel hound failing their save against glitterdust, and 2 crits by the rogue, the rogue and I took it down almost without taking and damage. We were then joined by the other rogue and took out 8 more imps. (Glitterdust and color spray coming to good effect again).
Now I know part of the problem is that the DM didn't play the monsters well at all. Until checking the SRD just now I didn't realize how wrong he had played them (I knew it at the time but didn't quite realize all of the errors), but regardless, less than half of the party shouldn't be able to take out the plot encounter.
Even played correctly the two of us probably would have taken it down as the first round started with 3 of the 5 monsters blinded by glitterdust (we didn't even know the imps were there until the spell lit them up like an xmas tree) and a large scorpion really annoying the devil. Once everything was blind it wasn't too hard for the scorpion to screw with the devil while the rogue sneak attacked everything down. My adding more save or sucks was an afterthought Granted, since my character's job is not to be a wizard god, but to ensure that we have fun and don't get screwed. So I probably won't do stuff like that all the time (plus I used up my glitterdust scrolls). But what should have been an obvious run situation shouldn't be turning into an easy win fight like that very often. Oh, and since the two of us took down the plot encounters duo we leveled while everyone else kinda sat twiddling their thumbs (well, fighting in 1v1 tourney stuff, but as far as the plot goes twiddling their thumbs).
The DM now needs to try and figure out how to make an encounter for us that won't completely destroy the party, but will be actually challenging. I sent him to the tucker's kobolds article with instructions that intelligent creatures fight intelligently and I'm going to tell him to be sure he knows his monsters abilities and to use all of them (the devil should have summoned a friend to really screw with our day). But even with that I don't know if that's enough since that only solves the problem of half of the party taking out plot encounters without any trouble.
So, my question is: Since the dm's encounter wasn't enough for a decently optimized wizard and a moderately optimized rogue, which means it would have failed miserably for the full party. How do you balance an encounter for a moderately to highly optimized party that spans multiple tiers?