Dealing with an Ubercharger

[kjones]

My party just hit 3rd level, and the guy playing a barbarian told me that he's planning on eventually going the Leap Attack + Shock Trooper + Frenzied Berserker route. Ostensibly, all the relevant books are allowed, but I've told everyone that I reserve the right to veto stuff if it's too "broken".

What I'm wondering is:

At (approximately) what level does the broken-ness start happening?
Are there simple modifications I can make to my encounters so that not every one is uberchargeable? (For example, difficult terrain, flying foes, no solo enemies) Or is this the sort of thing where every single encounter would need to be tailored to prevent the ubercharger from dominating?
Are there simple tweaks or bans that will prevent total broken-ness, while still allowing the fun of the build? For example, banning Leap Attack but not Shock Trooper, or vice versa - does that help?

[Little Brother]

Level 6 is when it starts, assuming he times his fighter levels right.

Terrain, a caster with solid fog, flight, a Knight, that sorta thing

And, no. The basis of the build is broken. You really shouldn't allow it. To solve a couple things, ban Headlong Rush(He is an orc, right?), Pounce, and maybe Leap Attack, or, in other words, cripple it. And he should be slapped for trying to bring it in when not trying to make a point.

[Alabenson]

With regards to how broken this is, did he take the Spirit Lion Totem ACF from Complete Champion? That is a major factor in the power of this build since it gives pounce. Without a way to full-attack on a charge, the build he's proposing would not be overwhelmingly powerful.
Of course this also depends on the builds of the other party members. What is everyone else playing?

For what its worth, charging is generally a powerful, but fairly binary option. You've already mentioned several of the ways to mitigate its ability to dominate an encounter.

[Hyudra]

I wouldn't go so far as to ban pounce or the like. Something like pounce is sort of necessary to be good melee if you're not going ToB.

As for Uberchargers, when built right, they can vaporize a single foe a round. If you throw a healthy variety of encounters at the group, you can force him to adapt. A cleric with a horde of zombies between her and the group. A half dozen trolls. A vrock that flies over the party shooting lightning bolts at them. A harpy that tries to lure them into traps. A room that contains hazards.

The thing about an Ubercharger (and I don't know that it sounds 100% like your player is going strictly Ubercharger, at least, until he starts stacking the "double damage" stuff) is that it's one note. It can't answer every threat, so you need to ask yourself if you're okay with him trivializing some encounters while being reliant on other party members to handle others. If not, you need to talk to him about that.

[Sir Swindle89]

You could just make him use Leap attack as it was intended. I.E. making him land on top of his target more or less.

You can always just kill him in a legit way. He runs up one shots one of their buddies in a grusome way while basically asking to be attacked (lowering his AC) and he expects not to be focus fired???? Figure after one rez he'll be a bit more conservative.

Multiple opponents spread out further than his reach can at least get turns plausibly.

Making tunnels too tight or curvy to charge through is another method.

Fianlly if he's a FB he has no choice but to attack what you throw at him. (I prefer advanced mimics. But thats just me.)

[Seerow]

Are there simple modifications I can make to my encounters so that not every one is uberchargeable? (For example, difficult terrain, flying foes, no solo enemies) Or is this the sort of thing where every single encounter would need to be tailored to prevent the ubercharger from dominating?


Also consider enemies that use settable weapons, with hold the line, power attack, and elusive target. Something like that will teach the player real quick that dropping all of his AC isn't a good idea. Not something to use in every encounter, but having it pop up every so often is enough to make the player think twice. Or really Elusive Target + anything that grants extra attacks (Robilar's Gambit/Karmic Strike for example) is going to be devastating to the character.

[Sception]

I hate to be "that guy", but is this so much worse then an arcanist or diviner who, by the same level, can just as easily negate one or more enemies a round pretty much on their lonesome, and in ways that are much more difficult to design around as a DM?

If they're going for the full ubercharge set up, then yeah, their average charge damage will be positively silly, to the point that they should be able to kill a creature in a single charge, but charging is itself no nearly so reliable as all that. As mentioned, flying enemies, blocked los, crowded areas, burrowing enemies, incorporeal enemies, difficult ground, miss percentages, invisible enemies, environmental hazards, all of that can hamper his gimmick.

Especilly group combats, which are ideal in that they challenge the charger without negating his abilities. So the charger wiped out a troll in a single attack. He's still relying on some fire or acid damage from someone else to keep it down, and he just left himself surrounded by three other trolls who have every reason to tear him a new one.


It really comes down to comparative power. Will the charger throw off the power of your group, making it difficult to design encounters that equally engage all the players? If the rest of the party is a two weapon ranger, a monk, a healer, and a warmage, then the answer is probably yes, and you should talk to the barbarian about it. But if the rest of the party is a beguiler, a wizard, a druid, and a cleric, then, provided the casters know how to get the most out of their spells and features, the answer is a resounding no, and the barbarian will in fact likely the member of the group that least challenges your encounter-building abilities.

[kjones]

I don't think he's going the "full ubercharger" setup. He's a half-orc Barbarian 2 with PA, and he's taking 2 levels of fighter in there somewhere, but he doesn't have pounce. So, I guess what I should ask is, how bad is a Frenzied Berserker with Leap Attack + Shock Trooper?

The rest of the party consists of a rogue, a sorcerer, a druid, and a swashbuckler (planning to go into Dervish, eventually). I know how to deal with sorcerers and druids - if it won't be any worse than that, then I'll be relieved.

[Mooncrow]

I don't think he's going the "full ubercharger" setup. He's a half-orc Barbarian 2 with PA, and he's taking 2 levels of fighter in there somewhere, but he doesn't have pounce. So, I guess what I should ask is, how bad is a Frenzied Berserker with Leap Attack + Shock Trooper?

The rest of the party consists of a rogue, a sorcerer, a druid, and a swashbuckler (planning to go into Dervish, eventually). I know how to deal with sorcerers and druids - if it won't be any worse than that, then I'll be relieved.

Even at it's most "broken", ubercharger is far less difficult to deal with than even a semi-optimized sorc or druid. Without pounce, it drops even lower than that.

[Seerow]

I don't think he's going the "full ubercharger" setup. He's a half-orc Barbarian 2 with PA, and he's taking 2 levels of fighter in there somewhere, but he doesn't have pounce. So, I guess what I should ask is, how bad is a Frenzied Berserker with Leap Attack + Shock Trooper?

The rest of the party consists of a rogue, a sorcerer, a druid, and a swashbuckler (planning to go into Dervish, eventually). I know how to deal with sorcerers and druids - if it won't be any worse than that, then I'll be relieved.

Personally I'd ask him to stay away from Frenzied Berserker, not because it's extraordinarily broken and hard for you to deal with, but because dealing with him potentially TPKing the rest of the party, or having the spellcasters keep slots reserved just to keep him in check, isn't something I think anyone wants to mess with.

A Barbarian with Leap Attack+Shock Trooper is strong enough to kill most enemies assuming he took the ACF for pounce(Edit: Just saw you said he doesn't have pounce. Which lowers his damage potential significantly). Honestly from there he'd be better off taking some class that adds to his versatility rather than trying to get more power. Psiwar, Warblade, or Crusader are all pretty solid options that would give him more flexibility to contribute when charging isn't available while making his charging something manageable yet powerful.



If he really does have his heart set on the berserker though, like I said it's not going to break things on your end, the same stuff will still shut him down, it's just going to be far more annoying for the rest of the party.

And the Druid and Sorcerer will still be far better than him if they're even moderately optimized.

[Urpriest]

I don't think he's going the "full ubercharger" setup. He's a half-orc Barbarian 2 with PA, and he's taking 2 levels of fighter in there somewhere, but he doesn't have pounce. So, I guess what I should ask is, how bad is a Frenzied Berserker with Leap Attack + Shock Trooper?

The rest of the party consists of a rogue, a sorcerer, a druid, and a swashbuckler (planning to go into Dervish, eventually). I know how to deal with sorcerers and druids - if it won't be any worse than that, then I'll be relieved.

Without pounce he won't be too bad. Throw in some variety in encounter design and you should be fine. Also, make sure the party has a way of dealing with his frenzies.

[SaintRidley]

Without pounce's not an ubercharger and you have nothing to worry about.

[CTrees]

Weapons that can be set against a charge (even a simple longspear)+readied action to attack, then five foot step to the side, if charged. AC will be atrocious, making it rather fun. Reach+readied trips are also funny.

Caltrops are also fun. Relevant bits: "The caltrops make an attack roll (base attack bonus +0) against the creature. For this attack, the creature’s shield, armor, and deflection bonuses do not count." and "A charging or running creature must immediately stop if it steps on a caltrop." When the AC is dropped through the floor, most bonuses to AC don't count, and it's a cheap item which can be tossed around... it works pretty well against a non-flying ubercharger. The real difficulty is figuring, with Leap Attack, where the take-off point is, so where the ubercharger is no longer on the ground.

Really though, if he's as effective as one might worry about, "word of your deeds have spread, and all have learned to fear the wrath of the one they call, "the (descriptive adjective) bull." Suddenly lots of people are readying actions to just move out of the way of the charge.

Shieldbearers are a concept I like, but which I never see used in D&D. Have someone carrying a tower shield for you, giving you cover, and putting themselves between you and some enemies. Guarding your flank, as it were. Cover and a roadblock in one fungible package. "Ready action to interpose myself between my liege and anyone rushing to attack him" sounds perfectly reasonable for a shieldbearer, regardless of who the pair is facing.

[hisnamehere]

With any (role-playing) game, if players are optimizing their characters, you need to simply adapt.
If any character is so powerful or versatile that they outshine the other characters (in the players' eyes), that is a problem. Rule #1 is actually: Have fun. If the other players are going to be negatively affected by the build of one character, you're going to need to deal with that.
One option is to ask the player to tone down his/her build, stating that they've "won" and their prize is to dumb themselves down a bit. You'll have to judge your player's potential reaction to this to determine if it is the best option for your game/group.
Another option is to tailor encounters, as you've mentioned. You can tell the player you are going to do this, or you cannot.
If you don't, you're going to need to be creative and "realistic" with your encounters. Having every encounter have a flying creature that always has a vendetta against the charger will get repetitive for the player. Remember to play your monsters/NPCs as smart as they are. The average football player has Int 10 and is schooled in offensive and defensive options for numerous situations. If the enemies see the charger blitzing and taking out creatures with ease one per round, they are going to adapt their strategies to deal with that threat (swarming, avoidance, etc.).
Another option, that most of us have forgotten about with the mass of crunch out there, is to inhibit these builds. Just because all the books are available, doesn't mean the skills/feats/PrCs/items are immediately available to the characters at all times. Make them work in-game for their builds. Frenzied berserkers are the giants of barbarian legends, not just a barbarian who chooses a PrC. Don't just let him skip into the PrC, make the character need to seek out a master of rage to learn how to tap into the frenzier in him. Make this take a level's worth of adventuring so he's unable to make the build at the lowest possible level. Maybe he gets a ritualistic brand during the initiation into the frenzying order that marks him as an "uber-charger" and people react differently to him.
The possibilities are endless.

I believe this is important for all games/players. You don't need to limit the players (short of game killers like Mr. P-P), just challenge them. If they are optimizing for situational encounters, they're going to find that their one-trick-pony doesn't always fit in the dungeon door. Think of some of the best fight scenes you've seen in da muvees - are they just stand at the line and exchange blows; are they just letting the protagonist do the same series of combat moves from the last scene? No, they are unique and memorable for the ingenuity of the filmmakers and fight choreographers (the DMs) to create a lasting impression.
We should all see over-optimization as a challenge to your DMing skillz. The most fun you can have as a DM is challenging your players with sub-CR encounters that give their characters a schooling, forcing them (the players) to adapt and evolve their tactics (or run away to fight another day).

[Gullintanni]

Ostensibly, all the relevant books are allowed, but I've told everyone that I reserve the right to veto stuff if it's too "broken".


This is pretty fair. Uberchargers are pretty broken, and every encounter is going to have to be tailored around the Charger in some way shape or form if you don't want the fight to end immediately...that being said, building encounters for a charger is trivially easy.

Some if not all of this has probably been mentioned but...for completeness.

1. Chargers go in a straight line, or with the Twisted Charge skill trick can turn 90 degrees. Put your Major enemy behind mooks. The charger will have to go through them to get to the real threat.

2. Rough terrain and obstacles are usually difficult for chargers. Use them.

3. Chargers can't charge through allies. Put some of your enemies behind the charger, and make the party travel in single file.

4. Reach Weapons - If your charger doesn't have some reach (in which case, he's probably not doing it right), then set some reach weapons against him. Lances and spears for double damage when set against a charge. Combined with the fact that Charger's shock trooper AC is effectively zero, and you can make your Charger think twice about rushing in headlong.

5. Illusions. Make your Charger rush a Major image of a goblin. Then shoot him with arrows from the surrounding balconies.

In short...you'll have to put a little thought and creativity into your encounters. You can work with a charger to some extent. It's not as bad as trying to deal with Schroedingers wizard. If you can manage to build encounters that'll stay challenging, then let the Charger have his ball. Sometimes melee needs nice things :smalltongue:

[kjones]

All right everyone, thanks for the advice. I think I'm not going to veto anything the player wants to take, though if he finds some way to consistently get pounce, I'll probably ask him to reconsider. If the party gets sick of defending themselves against his berserker rage... well, that's up to them to deal with :smalltongue:

[CTrees]

Another option, that most of us have forgotten about with the mass of crunch out there, is to inhibit these builds. Just because all the books are available, doesn't mean the skills/feats/PrCs/items are immediately available to the characters at all times. Make them work in-game for their builds. Frenzied berserkers are the giants of barbarian legends, not just a barbarian who chooses a PrC. Don't just let him skip into the PrC, make the character need to seek out a master of rage to learn how to tap into the frenzier in him. Make this take a level's worth of adventuring so he's unable to make the build at the lowest possible level.


This is okay, iff it's spelled out in advance. If I had carefully planned out my build, and then went to take my first level in a given prestige class, only to to have my DM say, "nope! you need to undergo a long, arduous quest first!" well... Best case, I'd put off leveling up until after it was done. More likely, he'd see all the justification he'd need for me to qualify as a frenzied berserker, using a PHB as an improvised melee weapon.

That goes for any houserules, though. "In advance of play, preferably before the start of character creation" is when they should come up. The "that's always been my houserule, I just never mentioned it until it was time to screw you over" types of houserules are... not my favorites.

[Big Fau]

Without pounce, a mount, the mounted combat feats, and several other multipliers, he is not an ubercharger and you have nothing to worry about.

Fixed that for you.

Uberchargers are significantly more questionable than a normal Charger build.



@OP: Even throwing a bunch of mooks in the Charger's path is enough to prevent his tactic from ending the encounter. Sure, one or two minions get turned into a fine red mist, but the encounter will continue. Outnumbering a Charger build is often the easiest way to tailor the encounter towards him.

[Mooncrow]

All right everyone, thanks for the advice. I think I'm not going to veto anything the player wants to take, though if he finds some way to consistently get pounce, I'll probably ask him to reconsider. If the party gets sick of defending themselves against his berserker rage... well, that's up to them to deal with :smalltongue:

Why? Even with pounce, it's still not a huge deal, really. He has one, easily planned for, powerful trick.

[hisnamehere]

This is okay, iff it's spelled out in advance. If I had carefully planned out my build, and then went to take my first level in a given prestige class, only to to have my DM say, "nope! you need to undergo a long, arduous quest first!" well... Best case, I'd put off leveling up until after it was done. More likely, he'd see all the justification he'd need for me to qualify as a frenzied berserker, using a PHB as an improvised melee weapon.

That goes for any houserules, though. "In advance of play, preferably before the start of character creation" is when they should come up. The "that's always been my houserule, I just never mentioned it until it was time to screw you over" types of houserules are... not my favorites.

Please don't take my suggestions as demands. :-)
I'm very much in agreement. Limiting your players is a subtle art, and should be discussed (among other topics) pre-campaign and pre-character generation. The gaming atmosphere should be a joint project agreed upon by all (players and DMs).
I'm much more in favour of adjusting encounters to "deal with" (over-)optimized builds, as was one of my other suggestions.

[zanetheinsane]

Ubercharger vs Somewhat Optimized Charger is almost a non-issue. There gets to a point in the stacking of damage multipliers where it can pretty much become irrelevant.

Does it matter that your charger is doing 1d12+200 or 1d12+1500? It gets to a point where one-shotting everything in the entire monster manual with just raw damage is on the very low end or what any charger should be able to accomplish. Adding more and more damage on top of that really only serves the purpose of charging through walls.

A level 6 mundane charger with just power attack and shock trooper can pretty much one-shot any creature of equivalent encounter level without any real optimization. A level 6 caster can easily dismantle one or more enemies with one spell.

If all of your encounters are simply won and lost by the adversaries running up and hitting each other until one side runs out of hit points then it's really more of an issue of encounter design.

[Pigkappa]

My party just hit 3rd level, and the guy playing a barbarian told me that he's planning on eventually going the Leap Attack + Shock Trooper + Frenzied Berserker route.
Save yourself a lot of trouble and don't let him play that character.

He will eventually (quite soon) be able to one shot every opponent he can charge. This is really, really annoying. There are ways to prevent him from doing this (at least for 1 round), but that character is going to be disruptive anyway. You will have to tailor every encounter for that character and that's annoying.

A caster buffing the whole party up is likely stronger, but he doesn't require much work on your part; you just need to make the monsters stronger now and then.

Also, would you send them an ubercharger as an enemy? That would be an awfully stupid encounter - if he wins initiative, one character dies, if he doesn't, they win in 1 round. It would be annoying for them, it will be annoying for you.

[Mooncrow]

Save yourself a lot of trouble and don't let him play that character.

He will eventually (quite soon) be able to one shot every opponent he can charge. This is really, really annoying. There are ways to prevent him from doing this (at least for 1 round), but that character is going to be disruptive anyway. You will have to tailor every encounter for that character and that's annoying.

A caster buffing the whole party up is likely stronger, but he doesn't require much work on your part; you just need to make the monsters stronger now and then.

Also, would you send them an ubercharger as an enemy? That would be an awfully stupid encounter - if he wins initiative, one character dies, if he doesn't, they win in 1 round. It would be annoying for them, it will be annoying for you.

So, you don't allow Save or Lose spells in your games either? That's the same thing, only there are fewer ways to shut spells down. And I absolutely would (and have) use an ubercharger as a NPC; if the players haven't taken precautions against those types of tactics, then they deserve what they get.

[JaronK]

First of all, this is not an Ubercharger. This is just a charger. Stock standard. Calling him an Ubercharger is like calling some guy who wants to play a Kobold Pun Pun.

Anyway, multiple enemies let chargers do their thing without instantly ending encounters... they can only kill one enemy at a time if the enemies are spaced out (especially if they lack pounce). Terrain can hose them entirely. Defenses like Mirror Image and that feat that counters Power Attack can let enemies just survive the attack. And obviously encounters that aren't combat based take out their main ability. Heck, just something that flies or attacks from out of range or takes up a fortified position or something will stop them.

Charging is a potent tactic... when it works.

JaronK

[Pigkappa]

So, you don't allow Save or Lose spells in your games either? That's the same thing, only there are fewer ways to shut spells down.
Save or lose spells usually come with saving throws. I don't allow spell cheese, of course (which involves 90% of metamagicked spells discussed on this forum, and a little amount of spells used by RAW such as Polymorph).




And I absolutely would (and have) use an ubercharger as a NPC; if the players haven't taken precautions against those types of tactics
Well, ok, but that encounter is certainly out of the D&D standard and we're not discussing peculiar games here.
These "precautions" would be quite complicated for the average party to be effective in any situation (e.g. unsuspectable guy who suddenly attacks you).

[Seerow]

Save or lose spells usually come with saving throws. I don't allow spell cheese, of course (which involves 90% of metamagicked spells discussed on this forum, and a little amount of spells used by RAW such as Polymorph).

And charges require attack rolls, and have to deal with any miss chances the target may have. Plus all of the other restrictions inherent to charging, like needing a clear line to the target.


Also a guy with no pounce, no extra charge damage multipliers, just leap attack and shock trooper is doing something like 1d12+100 at level 20. This really isn't enough to one shot on its own. And if he does that his AC is so low that any enemy can power attack him in return, and your melee enemies typically have higher HD/more BAB and more strength, so they're going to hurt just as much.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I would remind the player that perhaps the drawbacks of Frenzied Beserker aren't worth the benefits, and nudge him towards initiator dips, or bear warrior, or something that doesn't have a chance of being compelled to one-shot a party member. If this doesn't work, remind him that a level 1 goblin sorcerer can wtfpwn him by spamming grease over and over. More damage isn't worth that.

Leap Attack and Shock Trooper are okay IMO, unless the rest of the party is low op. Then it's just a generic "different levels of optimization" problem.

[Mooncrow]

Also, I am reminded that "ubercharger" is the wrong term for this, and I was using it incorrectly as well. I mean that I have used chargers before; and yes, ones that could, in theory, one round PCs if they manage to hit. Anyway, back to business;

edit: and Seerow posted the rest of what I was going to say.

[Saph]

The problem with charger builds is that they reduce every combat to a binary solution set: you can hit the enemy with a charge (in which case it dies) or you can't (in which case your character is mostly useless).

Sure, there are counters to charging - lots of them. Difficult terrain, flight, fortifications, concealment, meat shields, lack of visibility, fatigue, invisibility, mirror images, traps, spell walls, readied actions, trips, and about a million more. And bringing these in is fine, once or twice. But once you realise that you need to do this in every single encounter ever - at least, for any encounter in which you want a given enemy to live beyond 1 round - it starts getting really damn tedious. As a general rule, if you regularly find yourself needing to design encounters around one PC, something's wrong.

What you have here is a choice between rebuilding every encounter in the campaign and rebuilding one PC once. Personally I think the second is easier. So, possible options:

1) Ask the player to balance it himself. Basically, he can take whatever he wants as long as it's reasonably balanced against standard-CR monsters and the rest of the party (ie no automatic one-hit-kills). How he does it is up to him. This is my preferred solution.

2) Ban a part of the combo. Shock Trooper is probably the best choice, as it takes away pretty much all of the skill in using Power Attack by changing Power Attack's penalty from something that matters (your attack bonus) to something that can be bypassed (your AC).

[Optimator]

I hate to be "that guy", but is this so much worse then an arcanist or diviner who, by the same level, can just as easily negate one or more enemies a round pretty much on their lonesome, and in ways that are much more difficult to design around as a DM?

If they're going for the full ubercharge set up, then yeah, their average charge damage will be positively silly, to the point that they should be able to kill a creature in a single charge, but charging is itself no nearly so reliable as all that. As mentioned, flying enemies, blocked los, crowded areas, burrowing enemies, incorporeal enemies, difficult ground, miss percentages, invisible enemies, environmental hazards, all of that can hamper his gimmick.

Especilly group combats, which are ideal in that they challenge the charger without negating his abilities. So the charger wiped out a troll in a single attack. He's still relying on some fire or acid damage from someone else to keep it down, and he just left himself surrounded by three other trolls who have every reason to tear him a new one.


It really comes down to comparative power. Will the charger throw off the power of your group, making it difficult to design encounters that equally engage all the players? If the rest of the party is a two weapon ranger, a monk, a healer, and a warmage, then the answer is probably yes, and you should talk to the barbarian about it. But if the rest of the party is a beguiler, a wizard, a druid, and a cleric, then, provided the casters know how to get the most out of their spells and features, the answer is a resounding no, and the barbarian will in fact likely the member of the group that least challenges your encounter-building abilities.

I concur with this completely.

As an aside, in my last campaign I sent War Troll Spirit Lion Totem Frenzied Berserkers with the Blood-Spiked Charger tactical feat against the party. After one pounce they learned to deal with them first and fast.

[Keld Denar]

Honestly, ban just Shocktrooper. ST is the lynchpin. It removes the risk vs reward aspect of Power Attack. With ST, there is no point when you SHOULDN'T be PAing for full. Ever. At all. Without ST, the player has to be a lot smarter with how much he PAs for. If he swings for the bleachers, he'll probably miss, if not with his primaries, at least with his iteratives (assuming Pounce).

Its not gonna matter much if his AC is 15 or 1. Most foes you are gonna send at him are gonna hit on most of their hits. D&D is skewed toward the offensive, and Shocktrooper brings it all the way there. This, since there is no REAL drawback to PAing your full AC away, there is no risk. Since there is no risk, there shouldn't be the huge rewards that Shocktrooper gives.

Leave all the other multipliers in place. Leap Attack is fine. Pounce is fine. All that is fine, and needed. Just nix Shocktrooper so that the player actually has to THINK about what to do on any given combat round, rather than ubercharging being the only powerful option.

[Little Brother]

{{Scrubbed}}

[Seerow]

Little Brother: You're going a little off the deep end with your claims. The OP has clearly stated the character in question DOESNT have pounce, and has only mentioned leap attack/shock trooper/frenzied berserker as multipliers. That means no battle jump, no headlong rush, no mounted charging, no valorous lance, etc.

Seriously, we already know the PC in question doesn't have any of these things, so why are you assuming them? What REALLY worried me is the assertion that anyone who knows anything about the game is going to take all of them. At least two of the things you listed are FR specific, and assuming 200 damage at level 6, or 432 attacks in a single round ever, says to me you read too many threads about broken combos on the charop boards, and don't actually play the game with real people ever.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Honestly, ban just Shocktrooper. *snip*Whenever I see this (reasonable) idea bandied about, my dungeoncrasher fighter sheds a single tear. Don't ban ST; nerf it by removing the Power Attack option. Then it's just a delightful niche feat.

[Pigkappa]

But once you realise that you need to do this in every single encounter ever - at least, for any encounter in which you want a given enemy to live beyond 1 round - it starts getting really damn tedious. As a general rule, if you regularly find yourself needing to design encounters around one PC, something's wrong.

This is what I was trying to say :smallbiggrin:.

Also, I agree that Shock Trooper is a stupid feat. It's one of those crazy (as in, "extremely better than any option designed to do a similar effect") things they put into the game without thinking it twice (such as DMM or Celerity).

[Little Brother]

{{scrubbed}}

[Mooncrow]

That logic presumes that your not already designing encounters with the individual players' abilities in mind; something I find pretty mind-boggling. I mean, casters basically change encounter design every time they get a new spell level; DMs are expected to handle that. I don't see how this is harder to handle then when the wizard learns fly.

[Seerow]

Seriously, the guy doesn't even have spirit lion totem ACF, and you're expecting him to have the (far more obscure) setting specific options like Heedless Charge and Battle Jump... just because he's a half orc? How about this? Half orc is the only core race with a strength bonus, it's very plausible, even likely, he went with half orc for that reason.

[Little Brother]

{{scrubbed}}

[CactusAir]

If he doesn't have pounce, why are we even still having this discussion? He's not overpowered. Move on.

[NineThePuma]

If he pulls out Teh Broken, then things get gritty and you inflict some major damage to him. IRL.

But if it's all in the name of fun, let him have his fun.

[Seerow]

So? Headless charge is hardly obscure and is online. Battle Jump? It looks to me like he took a quick skim over some charger builds and said "Oh, hey, I bet I can win with this," and went with it.

And you presume this is core only. If he were thinking like that he'd be a Goliath. He's not. Therefore, the only logical explanation is that he is going for Headlong Rush. Therefore, he will not do it half-assed, and will go all the way. If I had to guess, the only reason he's not an Orc is because of the Light Sensitivity.

Honestly, what you're saying is similar to seeing a Kobold Paladin/Shaper Psion/Any other pun-pun base and saying "No, he probably isn't, even though he asked if Serpent Kingdoms is being used in this game."


I never said I presumed core only, that would be stupid since he is using shock trooper. What I presumed was he went with a familiar strength boosting race, rather than digging for a more obscure one from a splat book. Besides the alternative you suggest, Goliath, has a level adjustment, and if they don't play with LA buyoff, that can be a major turn off for most people.

Seriously, you are determined to believe the guy is out to wreck the game, when every sign points to that not being the case. That's being exceedingly unfair to the player. Especially since he hasn't mentioned anything (at least the DM posting here hasn't) about wanting access to those splats, or him having those feats (I believe battle jump or headlong rush is required to be taken at level 1, possibly both).

The better comparison would be someone asking to play a Kobold Sorcerer, and you jumping in saying "Well he can have infinite everything if he tries, he's clearly trying to break your game!" when nothing about the Sarrukh, or even Dragonwrought, has been mentioned at all.


If he doesn't have pounce, why are we even still having this discussion? He's not overpowered. Move on.


Because Little Brother believes despite him not having pounce, he IS using a bunch of other damage multipliers, so that he can deal 10,000 damage a hit even without the extra attacks. Oh and also said something about 432 attacks a round without trying.

Because people who don't even grab an easy ACF regularly do these things in a mid op group.

[MukkTB]

#1 We're not talking about an ubercharger. It sounds like a fairly generic charger.

#2 What are the other characters in the group? Are they all tier 4 and below? If there's a druid running around its totally unreasonable to talk about nerfing the party fighter.

#3 Braced weapons, twisty corridors, that fight where PCs on horseback chase a fleeing carriage while its inhabitants fire crossbows at them, that fight between two dudes hanging off the side of a cliff, the mooks standing in the way... If that fighter consistently gets to charge the enemy leader with little effort you're probably doing something wrong.

Just by having combats in varied interesting settings with varied interesting terrain you encourage the fighter to diversify away from shock tactics.

#4 Furthermore all intelligent characters should 'know' shocktrooper rules. When the fighter charges he should always know that if anyone is left to retaliate all the intelligent hostile NPCs are gonna come take advantage of his nonexistent AC.

#5 The DM probably should tailor encounters to his party. Not all the time. I personally like designating 'zones' to be certain levels and having the random encounters evolve naturally from that. And there is a certain elegance to predesigned encounters that any party could roll through. Those encounters would have to be pretty robust though.

[Big Fau]

Oh and also said something about 432 attacks a round without trying.

Actually, that's fairly easy. IUS+Snap Kick.


The wording on Snap Kick allows for infinite attacks, since you can jut keep stacking the -2. Who cares if you are taking a -100,000,000,000,000,000 when you are going to hit them anway with nat 20s?

[Psyren]

What Keld and Saph said - ST is what turns this trick binary.

[Little Brother]

I never said I presumed core only, that would be stupid since he is using shock trooper. What I presumed was he went with a familiar strength boosting race, rather than digging for a more obscure one from a splat book. Besides the alternative you suggest, Goliath, has a level adjustment, and if they don't play with LA buyoff, that can be a major turn off for most people.Obscure? You have an odd definition of obscure.

And there are still better races.

Seriously, you are determined to believe the guy is out to wreck the game, when every sign points to that not being the case. That's being exceedingly unfair to the player. Especially since he hasn't mentioned anything (at least the DM posting here hasn't) about wanting access to those splats, or him having those feats (I believe battle jump or headlong rush is required to be taken at level 1, possibly both).He wants the two feats critical to the build. And he wants to use them like the build. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Also, no. One requires 5-ish ranks in jump, the other requires BAB 4.

The better comparison would be someone asking to play a Kobold Sorcerer, and you jumping in saying "Well he can have infinite everything if he tries, he's clearly trying to break your game!" when nothing about the Sarrukh, or even Dragonwrought, has been mentioned at all.He's clearly mentioned desire for part of the trick. As in, the big part. So that's like asking if everything in Eberron is available and RotD is available.

It's obvious.

Because Little Brother believes despite him not having pounce, he IS using a bunch of other damage multipliers, so that he can deal 10,000 damage a hit even without the extra attacks. Oh and also said something about 432 attacks a round without trying. With one attack? Try more. Frenzied Berserker give one, rage gives one(Well, the only one anyone takes), so three attacks there. Plus, there are plenty of other methods of pounce.

And I said I could do 432+ attacks, I never said he could do it.

But, with about a minute, here's the least I think he can do: 6(3(2d6+100+30))+6(6(2d6+100+30)), or ~7400 without any stupid tricks, give or take a thousand, I forget some prereqs.

Because people who don't even grab an easy ACF regularly do these things in a mid op group.Yes, if they want to win, like I suspect he's doing. If he's asking about the ability to one-shot everything, he's dodging "fun" at that point. He's trying to win. Maybe he couldn't find Complete Champion. Maybe he found out after creation? He'd still nab Headlong Rush immediately.

[NineThePuma]

Maybe he saw Frenzied Berserker in a book and went "Wow, this is a good class! I wonder if it works with everything else?"

Or maybe he wanted to play something that could go "RAWR, I BREAK THINGS!"

[Seerow]

Maybe he saw Frenzied Berserker in a book and went "Wow, this is a good class! I wonder if it works with everything else?"

Or maybe he wanted to play something that could go "RAWR, I BREAK THINGS!"

No. Anybody who plays a half orc with leap attack and shock trooper is an ******* looking to break the game as thoroughly as possible, and is aiming to win the game by dealing tens of thousands of damages on every attack. WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING THIS METAGAMING MUNCHKIN SCUM??!

[Pigkappa]

That logic presumes that your not already designing encounters with the individual players' abilities in mind; something I find pretty mind-boggling. I mean, casters basically change encounter design every time they get a new spell level; DMs are expected to handle that. I don't see how this is harder to handle then when the wizard learns fly.
I've been a DM for quite a long time and I didn't change the encounters based on the party. I like to think that there's a world out there and the PCs are supposed to interact with it. This is also how pre-built adventures (that are often much better than the ones a DM can make up with his limited time and creativity; I'm speaking of the good ones, of course) work.

There may be cases in which exceptions are needed. If the wizard starts using Fly in an intelligent way and becomes impossible to hit in some encounters (let's say 25%), it's okay. If he'd become impossible to hit in all of the encounters, than the DM has to make some changes. However, if the adventure is good, this shouldn't be the case.

With chargers able to one-shot everything they can charge, however, you would need to modify almost every single encounter in which there is an opponent that should at least play a couple of rounds. And this will make the charger feel useless, so he'll notice what you are doing. Again, binary problem.

[NineThePuma]

No. Anybody who plays a half orc with leap attack and shock trooper is an ******* looking to break the game as thoroughly as possible, and is aiming to win the game by dealing tens of thousands of damages on every attack. WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING THIS METAGAMING MUNCHKIN SCUM??!

In the immortal words of R2-D2.

He's not a munchkin. He just wants to maximize his potential.

[Hiro Protagonest]

No. Anybody who plays a half orc with leap attack and shock trooper is an ******* looking to break the game as thoroughly as possible, and is aiming to win the game by dealing tens of thousands of damages on every attack. WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING THIS METAGAMING MUNCHKIN SCUM??!

And that is what Little Brother implied when she said "He is a half-orc. What reason would he have for it other than Headlong Rush?".

[NineThePuma]

And that is what Little Brother implied when she said "He is a half-orc. What reason would he have for it other than Headlong Rush?".Hey, buddy, Pst...

The blue is sarcasm.

[Little Brother]

No. Anybody who plays a half orc with leap attack and shock trooper is an ******* looking to break the game as thoroughly as possible, and is aiming to win the game by dealing tens of thousands of damages on every attack. WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING THIS METAGAMING MUNCHKIN SCUM??!Exactly. Sarcastic or nor, you're absolutely right, just as it'd be for a Loredrake Kobold.

And that is what Little Brother implied when she said "He is a half-orc. What reason would he have for it other than Headlong Rush?".Well? What other reason would there be? There are many superior races. The only thing it has is Headlong Rush and the implied squickiness in the PHB.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Hey, buddy, Pst...

The blue is sarcasm.

I know. That doesn't hurt my point.

And it's Pete, not R2!


Well? What other reason would there be? There are many superior races. The only thing it has is Headlong Rush and the implied squickiness in the PHB.
I don't know. Maybe because he *gasp* wanted to play a half-orc?

[NineThePuma]

Hey, LB, have you ever stopped to think for a moment and guess that maybe the players a n00b? They thought a Barbarian would be cool, and the Half-Orc race has it as a favor class. Clearly that means Half Orcs are good Barbarians.


I can find a huge number of regions for the build to be non-gamebreaky. Just cause there IS a game breaking build doesn't mean the player is using it.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Exactly. Sarcastic or nor, you're absolutely right, just as it'd be for a Loredrake Kobold.My dungeoncrasher fighter with shock trooper sheds yet another tear. I may give him Zhentarim Warrior sub levels so he may use emotimidate more efficiently.

But for serial, not everyone who takes Shocktrooper is trying to destroy the game. Maybe you want to play mundane, the DM banned ToB, and you want to keep up (a smidge) with some optimized mid-level casters by doing respectable damage.

[Psyren]

The problem isn't that it's overpowered. Being able to one-shot some targets is nothing compared to what a wizard can do.

The problem is that it removes all agency from the player and makes more work for the DM. There's no downside to PA for full on every attack, so the player will always do it. The DM has to use tricks to keep his monsters alive longer than one charge, so he'll always do that. It makes combat 2-dimensional.

Compare to a wizard; sure they have the tools to handle everything, but at least they have to pick the right ones. There's some thought involved. And the DM only has to use regular encounters to force this variation of style - he can just send a vrock out, rather than forcing the vrock to stay in the air, or he can send a sorcerer out without forcing her to open with mirror image or show up with an army of minions.

Winning isn't a bad thing - the players are supposed to win more than they lose. What's bad is when they don't need any strategy to win.

[Big Fau]

just as it'd be for a Loredrake Kobold.

Stop. Stop stop stop stop stop.

You have a very big misunderstanding of the term "Game Breaker".

Game Breaker: This is something that can put the entire campaign arc not only off the rails, but off the damn planet. This is the kind of stuff that absolutely wrecks any plot the DM has prepared, and can solo premade modules without needing to metagame. This is the type of stuff that should not be allowed at all.

Encounter Breaker: Also called Rocket Tag. These abilities are much easier to work with, as there are numerous counter-strategies to each one.


A Charger build, like the OP's player is requesting to use, is a potential Encounter Breaker, but it is easily controlled by not sending singular enemies to do battle with the suspected encounter breaker.


Loredrake Dragonwrought Kobold is a game breaker. It's only purpose is to bring higher level spells to the table far faster than intended by the designers, thus allowing the character to overwhelm the plot and bypass the storyline.


One of these can be counteracted with simple terrain features, multiple enemies instead of one brute, or other tricks. The other one requires killing off a character entirely.

[Little Brother]

I don't know. Maybe because he *gasp* wanted to play a half-orc?Explain. As I said, squicky and bad. I see no reason to play the race.

Hey, LB, have you ever stopped to think for a moment and guess that maybe the players a n00b? They thought a Barbarian would be cool, and the Half-Orc race has it as a favor class. Clearly that means Half Orcs are good Barbarians.

I can find a huge number of regions for the build to be non-gamebreaky. Just cause there IS a game breaking build doesn't mean the player is using it.Build is broken
Person is noob
Therefore, the only use of the build, the one he intends to use, isn't? I don't get it.

My dungeoncrasher fighter with shock trooper sheds yet another tear. I may give him Zhentarim Warrior sub levels so he may use emotimidate more efficiently.

But for serial, not everyone who takes Shocktrooper is trying to destroy the game. Maybe you want to play mundane, the DM banned ToB, and you want to keep up (a smidge) with some optimized mid-level casters by doing respectable damage.->Wants to keep up with caster as a meleer
->Not TOB?
->Horizon Tripper, Facototum, Incarnum, Binder, Runescarred Berserkers, Duskblades, King of Smack, melee Bard, or CoDZilla.
-> Doesn't like the only workable options?
->Accept being meat-shield with sword that won't do anything.

That's how it works. Anything the Charger can do practically, the Mailman can do better. Anything a warrior can do, a Sorcadin can do better. Anything a monk can do, a Swordage/Psywar can do better.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I said mundane. None of your options are mundane. That means the only option you've allowed someone who wants to play a badass normal is to suck. That game is broken. You can't play both sides of the field; if the mailman can do it better, then why call someone playing a charger (NOT an ubercharger) a munchkin? Why accuse him of that level of shenanigans when he's just trying to compete?

Above a very low level of optimization, lower tier classes need to optimize more than higher tier classes to remain relevant; it's a simple corollary of JaronK's main argument, and IMO a more useful point. So why are you instantly assuming that someone optimizing a low tier class is out to ruin everything? Maybe he's out to, I dunno, balance the game a little bit.

[NineThePuma]

... *head desk* You remind me of someone. It's not a particularly good reminder.

Since the OP has spoken...

By the by, Seerow, how did that old homebrew thingy for TWF go for you?

[Hiro Protagonest]

Explain. As I said, squicky and bad. I see no reason to play the race.

For character. Not stats. Otherwise, everyone would just not care about concepts and go play pun-pun, or tier 1 if they don't want the game to end immediately.

[Siosilvar]

Explain. As I said, squicky and bad. I see no reason to play the race.Fluff. Like it or not, some people use it. And where else are you going to find a Strength-boosting race that's relatively common (i.e. in core and/or no LA) and acceptable in general society (i.e. not a full orc)?


Build is broken
Person is noob
Therefore, the only use of the build, the one he intends to use, isn't? I don't get it.

Which part of PA + Leap Attack + Shock Trooper is "broken"? It's three feats, and pretty obvious ones to take for anyone with a two-handed weapon. You're assuming they're going to do everything in their power to optimize their character, but some people just want to play the game.

Is every fourth-level elf an Omniscificer (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19868070/LoPs_Omniscificer)? Is every first-level kobold Pun-Pun? I think not. Why assume that everyone who takes Leap Attack and Shock Trooper is going for Ubercharger-level damage? It doesn't make any sense.

[Little Brother]

Stop. Stop stop stop stop stop.

You have a very big misunderstanding of the term "Game Breaker".

Game Breaker: This is something that can put the entire campaign arc not only off the rails, but off the damn planet. This is the kind of stuff that absolutely wrecks any plot the DM has prepared, and can solo premade modules without needing to metagame. This is the type of stuff that should not be allowed at all.

Encounter Breaker: Also called Rocket Tag. These abilities are much easier to work with, as there are numerous counter-strategies to each one.


A Charger build, like the OP's player is requesting to use, is a potential Encounter Breaker, but it is easily controlled by not sending singular enemies to do battle with the suspected encounter breaker.


Loredrake Dragonwrought Kobold is a game breaker. It's only purpose is to bring higher level spells to the table far faster than intended by the designers, thus allowing the character to overwhelm the plot and bypass the storyline.


One of these can be counteracted with simple terrain features, multiple enemies instead of one brute, or other tricks. The other one requires killing off a character entirely.I know a guy who made a charger destroy the moon. Jump check and everything. That game-breaking enough for you? He had enough HP that the exposure didn't kill him(By multiplying the damage from Nailed to the Sky by three or so), killed the moon, and jumped back. Don't remember the build, though.


I said mundane. None of your options are mundane. That means the only option you've allowed someone who wants to play a badass normal is to suck. That game is broken. You can't play both sides of the field; if the mailman can do it better, then why call someone playing a charger (NOT an ubercharger) a munchkin? Why accuse him of that level of shenanigans when he's just trying to compete?Warblade is mundane. Horizon tripper is mostly mundane. Crusader is mundane. So don't blame me, blame the person who banned ToB.


Above a very low level of optimization, lower tier classes need to optimize more than higher tier classes to remain relevant; it's a simple corollary of JaronK's main argument, and IMO a more useful point. So why are you instantly assuming that someone optimizing a low tier class is out to ruin everything? Maybe he's out to, I dunno, balance the game a little bit.Except it doesn't work. You can pump out absurd amounts of damage. Broken amounts of damage. Yet you're still worse than the Wizard 5 levels below you. They can fly, you can't. They have grease, sleep, etc. You don't. You just end the encounter in one round. Then you die. Being able to one shot 50 Big Ts is broken. It still is worse than the wizard, except at dealing damage. A really optimized one, like the moon destroyer, can outdamage a sorcerer. Probably. The one he's talking about? No. You guys are assuming broken=T0.

No, I do not assume everything that takes Shock Trooper is an Ubercharger. Add half-orc into the mix? It is.

Is every 4th level elf an Omnicificer? No. Is every 4th level Elf Artificer? Maybe, they're dumb enough to weed out of games, regardless. Is every level 1 Kobold Punpun. No. Is every Kobold PALADIN punpun? Probably, just as every Dragonwrought is going for Epic feats and/or Loredrake/Wyrm of War/etc.

[Saph]

The problem isn't that it's overpowered. Being able to one-shot some targets is nothing compared to what a wizard can do.

The problem is that it removes all agency from the player and makes more work for the DM. There's no downside to PA for full on every attack, so the player will always do it. The DM has to use tricks to keep his monsters alive longer than one charge, so he'll always do that. It makes combat 2-dimensional.

This is worth repeating. As a DM, I'm happy to have a full caster like a wizard or cleric in the party, whereas I'm not happy to have a charger in the party. I'll expect - and will generally get - less problems out of the full caster, because casters aren't binary and chargers are.

[Big Fau]

I know a guy who made a charger destroy the moon. Jump check and everything. That game-breaking enough for you? He had enough HP that the exposure didn't kill him(By multiplying the damage from Nailed to the Sky by three or so), killed the moon, and jumped back. Don't remember the build, though.

Sounds like that was well into the Epic-territory. For the record, the Earth is an average of 238,857 miles from our own moon. If the game was designed with a similar distance in mind (instead of the DM winging it), the Jump DC to reach it would be 1,262,836,959. Barring TO, nothing pre-Epic can make that Jump check (Chuck counts as TO).

And the DM likely didn't resolve it properly: It would have taken a minimum of 6 days, in game, to resolve that action (3 for each Jump check). He would have been under exposure for 6 days, and then had to deal with reentry.

Even then, unless the moon was ground into a fine powder from the attack, the gravity of the moon itself would prevent it from falling appart. In other words, to destroy something that big with just a sword would be impossible.

Never mind calculating the HP of the moon. It has a Hardness of 8 and 15HP/inch of thickness. Saying it has an HP total in the billions is a shot in the dark at best.

So, yes, the problem is not the Charger. The problem was the DM fudging damn-near everything he could have fudged. That's what happens when someone does't understand what they are talking about.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Warblade is mundane. Horizon tripper is mostly mundane. Crusader is mundane. So don't blame me, blame the person who banned ToB.Actually if you're going to yell at anything that smells like an ubercharger, even if it's not an ubercharger, I'll go ahead and blame you.
Except it doesn't work. You can pump out absurd amounts of damage. Broken amounts of damage. Yet you're still worse than the Wizard 5 levels below you. They can fly, you can't. They have grease, sleep, etc. You don't. You just end the encounter in one round. Then you die. Being able to one shot 50 Big Ts is broken. It still is worse than the wizard, except at dealing damage. A really optimized one, like the moon destroyer, can outdamage a sorcerer. Probably. The one he's talking about? No. You guys are assuming broken=T0.No, we're not assuming broken = T0. Uberchargers are indeed broken. A bog standard pounce-less charger is not broken by any stretch of the imagination. It's barely T4 if that. It's just someone trying to contribute something simple in spite of limitations. If the casters optimize as much as you do? You're screwed. If they optimize less than you do, you're not screwed. You can contribute, and they can contribute, and everyone's happy unless you wanted versatility. Then you were screwed no matter what.

[Little Brother]

Sounds like that was well into the Epic-territory. For the record, the Earth is an average of 238,857 miles from our own moon. If the game was designed with a similar distance in mind (instead of the DM winging it), the Jump DC to reach it would be 1,262,836,959. Barring TO, nothing pre-Epic can make that Jump check (Chuck counts as TO).

And the DM likely didn't resolve it properly: It would have taken a minimum of 6 days, in game, to resolve that action (3 for each Jump check). He would have been under exposure for 6 days, and then had to deal with reentry.

Even then, unless the moon was ground into a fine powder from the attack, the gravity of the moon itself would prevent it from falling appart. In other words, to destroy something that big with just a sword would be impossible.

Never mind calculating the HP of the moon. It has a Hardness of 8 and 15HP/inch of thickness. Saying it has an HP total in the billions is a shot in the dark at best.

So, yes, the problem is not the Charger. The problem was the DM fudging damn-near everything he could have fudged. That's what happens when someone does't understand what they are talking about.Dunno, got it second hand. And it's 2,052,047,250~HP. Hardly impossible. given that there are builds with over a million attacks. And with items, it's possible to survive the exposure, so whatever.

Actually if you're going to yell at anything that smells like an ubercharger, even if it's not an ubercharger, I'll go ahead and blame you.No, we're not assuming broken = T0. Uberchargers are indeed broken. A bog standard pounce-less charger is not broken by any stretch of the imagination. It's barely T4 if that. It's just someone trying to contribute something simple in spite of limitations. If the casters optimize as much as you do? You're screwed. If they optimize less than you do, you're not screwed. You can contribute, and they can contribute, and everyone's happy unless you wanted versatility. Then you were screwed no matter what.It is broken. It disrupts the game in a way that negatively affects gameplay. Therefore, it is broken. Even a decently built charger should one-shot everything it charges, especially in as much of a low-power game as the OP is implying.

[Seerow]

By the by, Seerow, how did that old homebrew thingy for TWF go for you?


It worked out pretty well, actually. The end result led a TWF Fighter being pretty well balanced against a THF Fighter, which was my goal... the problem I ran into was in doing so, TWFing became too strong for classes with bonus damage from other sources. (Which was a predictable result to be honest). So I either need to figure out how to incorporate Sneak Attack and the like into the rules, to streamline it and keep them from getting out of hand, or accept that in some situations one style will be much better, and they're just balanced at the baseline pre-class features.

[Big Fau]

Dunno, got it second hand. And it's 2,052,047,250~HP. Hardly impossible. given that there are builds with over a million attacks. And with items, it's possible to survive the exposure, so whatever.

And those builds are squarely in the TO territory. AKA: This is not meant to be used in an actual game.


It is broken. It disrupts the game in a way that negatively affects gameplay. Therefore, it is broken. Even a decently built charger should one-shot everything it charges, especially in as much of a low-power game as the OP is implying.

No, a decently built Charger should be able to one-shot a heavily clustered group of minions, not the entire freaking encounter.

You keep thinking that there's only one monster. This is a bad thing, as the developers admitted that solo enemies tend to die horribly in the first round of combat, even when played smartly. It doesn't matter if a Charger build is present or not, a group of 4 or more characters can easily overwhelm an equal-leveled solo enemy (and, in the case of moderately optimized parties, do the same to much stronger enemies).

The problem is not the Charger. The problem is sending singular enemies at an optimized character. A Charger build is not going to be able to kill 4 enemies in one round unless every single one of them is in a postion where he can charge just one and have all of them in his melee reach.

This is fixed by spacing them out properly, using difficult terrain, or by utilizing feats/items that can hinder chargers (Elusive Target, for example, can render the Charger unable to hit one particular enemy for the whole round that he uses Shock Trooper).


Really, you are like those people who complained about Ice Man when MvC2 was first released. There's a reason he's bottom tier these days.

[Hiro Protagonest]

It is broken. It disrupts the game in a way that negatively affects gameplay. Therefore, it is broken. Even a decently built charger should one-shot everything it charges, especially in as much of a low-power game as the OP is implying.

Did you even bother tallying up the numbers? Level 6 barbarian with Leap Attack and Shock Trooper. Let's assume 24 strength while in rage/whirling frenzy. Full PA with a greatsword on a charge gives you 2d6+10+18 damage, which is an average of 35 damage. A polar bear, which is CR 4, has 68 HP.

[Big Fau]

Did you even bother tallying up the numbers? Level 6 barbarian with Leap Attack and Shock Trooper. Let's assume 24 strength while in rage/whirling frenzy. Full PA with a greatsword on a charge gives you 2d6+10+18 damage, which is an average of 35 damage. A polar bear, which is CR 4, has 68 HP.

Which is assuming Pounce, something the Op's character doesn't even have.

It takes two or three attacks at average damage for the example Charger to kill a single Polar Bear, a creature that (at 6th level) is little more than a mook. Sounds appropriate.

[Sception]

There are options that are part of completely busted builds that a player who isn't out to break the game could still select purely for roleplaying or casual optimization (ie, lets take five minutes building my character so they don't suck at everything) without ruining the game.

Saying there's no way a half orc barbarian would exist unless the player is out to break the game is absolutely silly when half orc is the iconic race for barbarian while barbarian is the favored class for half orc, and saying there is no way a half orc barbarian would take power attack, leap attack, or shock trooper unless they were going the whole nine yards into theoretical optimization is equally ridiculous.

I've played a half orc barbarian with these feats without going full ubercharger myself. It was a matter of playing the 1/2 orc barbarian because it was iconic and fun, and then taking the feats that exist to make sure there was at least one thing I could bring to the party. Not so far fetched, really.


And even with something closer to the ubercharger, something that can reliably kill any enemy in a single charge, why would that be worse then an optimized wizard or druid with literally dozens of ways to just as thoroughly ruin an encounter? It is possible to design encounters that can challenge a party with an ubercharger. In fact, it is trivially easy since it's such a narrow, straight forward, easily interdicted gimmick. Is is entirely impossible to do the same for an optimised full caster since for every broken spell you design around they have access to two more, completely different ways to trash your encounter design.

Actually, as already mentioned, every encounter should be against multiple enemies. Every single one. And any important enemy should start an encounter in a difficult to reach location, whether flying or behind lines of other guys or what have you. It doesn't matter whether the party has a character capable of one-shotting the monster through its hit points or not. Single enemy encounters do not work due to action economy alone, a charger doesn't change that, and the party will always kill the most important mob they can reach first, so if the BBEG is leading the charge he's going down in a round, anyway.

If the best answer to make the charger not ruin encounters is required for the encounter to not have been ruined in the first place, I don't see the issue.

[charcoalninja]

Fixed that for you.

Uberchargers are significantly more questionable than a normal Charger build.



@OP: Even throwing a bunch of mooks in the Charger's path is enough to prevent his tactic from ending the encounter. Sure, one or two minions get turned into a fine red mist, but the encounter will continue. Outnumbering a Charger build is often the easiest way to tailor the encounter towards him.

And would just like to add that it makes the Charger feel incredibly badass. Which is a great thing for a DM to do for his players.

[Gullintanni]

And would just like to add that it makes the Charger feel incredibly badass. Which is a great thing for a DM to do for his players.

I don't know if anyone here has read The Sword of Truth novels, but the warriors there describe themselves as being the "Steel against Steel" while wizards are the "Magic against Magic".

The setting acknowledges the fighter linear, wizard quadratic trope and offers a single easy solution: Magic is Rare, Steel is Plentiful. Treat your encounter design the same way. A swarm of mooks against whom your charger can be the steel against red mist steel and a few out of reach special attackers, capable of being the magic against your parties magic.

As described, your Charger will feel like he's contributing, and really, he is, because he's keeping the enemy mooks attention while your wizard is busy. The system gives you the tools you need to balance a charger in combat. He can kill one enemy per turn, pretty much guaranteed. If that breaks your game, then that probably says more about your ability as a DM than about his "broken" build.

[leegi0n]

My party just hit 3rd level, and the guy playing a barbarian told me that he's planning on eventually going the Leap Attack + Shock Trooper + Frenzied Berserker route. Ostensibly, all the relevant books are allowed, but I've told everyone that I reserve the right to veto stuff if it's too "broken".

What I'm wondering is:

At (approximately) what level does the broken-ness start happening?
Are there simple modifications I can make to my encounters so that not every one is uberchargeable? (For example, difficult terrain, flying foes, no solo enemies) Or is this the sort of thing where every single encounter would need to be tailored to prevent the ubercharger from dominating?
Are there simple tweaks or bans that will prevent total broken-ness, while still allowing the fun of the build? For example, banning Leap Attack but not Shock Trooper, or vice versa - does that help?



Give all your front line baddies the "hold the line" feat and weapons with reach (like guisarmes) once he lands and does what he's gonna do, have 'em spread out of his reach, but where they can still get to him and apply that flanking bonus. Mix an invisible caster in there to blind/pound him with exhaustion.

[Saph]

As described, your Charger will feel like he's contributing, and really, he is, because he's keeping the enemy mooks attention while your wizard is busy. The system gives you the tools you need to balance a charger in combat. He can kill one enemy per turn, pretty much guaranteed. If that breaks your game, then that probably says more about your ability as a DM than about his "broken" build.

Or maybe the DM doesn't want to rebalance every encounter for the rest of the campaign around a single character?

I've got a hypothetical situation for those of you who like the idea of charger/ubercharger characters. Your 6th-level party gets into combat with a group of enemies. One of them wins initiative, charges you, deals 100+ damage to your flat-footed PC, and insta-kills you. (Yes, a charger can do that much damage by level 6. No, it's not difficult.)

Would you be having fun at this point?

If your answer is "yes" then you're saying you like higher-op, higher-power games, where preparation is crucial and characters can die very quickly if they make a mistake or just get unlucky. And this is a completely valid playstyle. I've played in these sort of campaigns and they can be a hell of a lot of fun.

In my experience, though, the answer most players will give is "no". In which case, if you don't want the DM targeting your PC with these kind of one-shot-kills, it's reasonable for the DM to ask that you return the favour.

Dialling down the rocket tag aspect of the game makes combats last longer than 1-2 rounds and generally gives both players and opponents more leeway to make mistakes without said mistakes resulting in instant death. Not all players prefer this way of running games, but in my experience, most do.

[kjones]

LittleBrother, you're making a lot of unfair and unwarranted assumptions about my player. First of all, he's playing a half-orc for flavor/background reasons, and I generally only allow core races anyway. (Again, for flavor reasons, more than mechanical.) Second of all, this guy knows about the Lion Totem ACF - he didn't take it because it "seemed kind of broken". Third, I've made it clear to this player, and to the group, that I maintain veto power over any non-core options (yes, I know that Core has a lot of broken stuff, but it's the devil I know) so it's not like he can "slip one past me" or anything.

My main question coming into this was, "How hard is a LA + ST + FB barbarian to deal with?" and I've gotten a good sense of the ways in which I'd need to modify my encounters. I also really appreciated the advice Saph and Keld Dener gave about banning the troublesome aspect of Shock Trooper - I think I'm going to talk to the player about that and see if he thinks that's fair.

[Mooncrow]

Or maybe the DM doesn't want to rebalance every encounter for the rest of the campaign around a single character?

I've got a hypothetical situation for those of you who like the idea of charger/ubercharger characters. Your 6th-level party gets into combat with a group of enemies. One of them wins initiative, charges you, deals 100+ damage to your flat-footed PC, and insta-kills you. (Yes, a charger can do that much damage by level 6. No, it's not difficult.)

Would you be having fun at this point?

If your answer is "yes" then you're saying you like higher-op, higher-power games, where preparation is crucial and characters can die very quickly if they make a mistake or just get unlucky. And this is a completely valid playstyle. I've played in these sort of campaigns and they can be a hell of a lot of fun.

In my experience, though, the answer most players will give is "no". In which case, if you don't want the DM targeting your PC with these kind of one-shot-kills, it's reasonable for the DM to ask that you return the favour.

Dialling down the rocket tag aspect of the game makes combats last longer than 1-2 rounds and generally gives both players and opponents more leeway to make mistakes without said mistakes resulting in instant death. Not all players prefer this way of running games, but in my experience, most do.

I'm going to say this again; if you're not re-balancing written encounters for your group, and they're still being challenged - you're not playing at any level of optimization. In that case, yes, it's fair to ask that no one optimizes.

In any other circumstance, asking a melee to require "multiple rounds" to kill one thing is a resounding shout of "Melee can't have nice things!"

[Pigkappa]

I'm going to say this again; if you're not re-balancing written encounters for your group, and they're still being challenged, you're not playing at any level of optimization, and then, yes it's fair to ask that no one optimizes.
There are decent characters who are overall more useful than a charger and can go along with the usual encounters. A cleric making smart use of his spells to keep the party buffed and alive is handy to have around and doesn't really require the DM to change 100% of the encounters with difficult terrain, mooks, flying opponents.

[Sception]

That's certainly true, if nobody else is optimizing at all, it's totally fair to ask the barbarian to hold back as well. Even a druid, capable of breaking games three ways from sunday, can still be a pretty weak character in the hands of a player who either doesn't know or doesn't care how to get the most out of them, mechanically (typical druid player, ime: "my animal companion falcon because falcons are cool! I'm filling the healer slot, so I'm mostly going to prepare cure spells! Wild shape is confusing and time consuming, I'm just going to skip it, or save it for non-combat encounters where I can turn into a wolf or a bird without having to spend the time looking the stats up!").

In an even casually optimized environment, a DM is going to have to take the party into account,

And even if you don't, single enemy combats already don't work, because of action economy no matter what your party consists of, so the primary means of mitigating the power of an charger - fielding multiple enemies per combat, is already required by basic encounter design to begin with.

[Saph]

And even if you don't, single enemy combats already don't work, because of action economy no matter what your party consists of, so the primary means of mitigating the power of an charger - fielding multiple enemies per combat, is already required by basic encounter design to begin with.

I've run plenty of single enemy combats which did work, as have many other DMs. Might want to ease off on the blanket statements there.

[Gullintanni]

I've got a hypothetical situation for those of you who like the idea of charger/ubercharger characters. Your 6th-level party gets into combat with a group of enemies. One of them wins initiative, charges you, deals 100+ damage to your flat-footed PC, and insta-kills you. (Yes, a charger can do that much damage by level 6. No, it's not difficult.)


That's a fair criticism, but if you're the DM building chargers to kill your players then that sounds a bit to me like the "DM vs. PC" mentality at work. It's okay to let your PCs be awesome without turning their awesome and frequently lethal tactics back on them. They're supposed to win remember.

I do realize that it's more work to balance encounters around a Charger...but IMHO, that point doesn't really hold up because the amount of extra work is pretty trivial. If you don't want your Titan one shotted by your charger, put 3 hobgoblins and some difficult terrain in front of him.

Refusing to accommodate a Charger in your game is well...insofar as it's sometimes prudent, it's also to a degree, lazy. Which is fine. The DM is absolutely justified in doing whatever she needs in order to decrease the workload associated with being the DM. It's just that in the abstract sense, it's not particularly difficult to incorporate Chargers into the game. Pretty much any Tier 1 is going to require a lot more work.

And if you're willing to do the work to let your PC feel awesome, then IMHO, you should. Otherwise, disclose ahead of time that Chargers won't be allowed and let your player rebuild I guess.


Or maybe the DM doesn't want to rebalance every encounter for the rest of the campaign around a single character?

Also, as point of contention, if there's a Wizard, a Cleric or a Druid in your party, aren't you already doing this anyway? :smalltongue:

[Sception]

Again, if the rest of the party isn't even casually optimized, then it's completely fair to ask the barbarian to hold back as well.

If they are even casually optimized, I fail to see how any single monster is going to pose a challenge to an entire group of adventurers past level 5 or so without pulling the kinds of shenanigans (flight, invisibility, burrowing, miss chances, extremely favorable terrain set ups, etc) which generally bypass or at least mitigate the charger's gimmicks regardless.

[Mooncrow]

There are decent characters who are overall more useful than a charger and can go along with the usual encounters. A cleric making smart use of his spells to keep the party buffed and alive is handy to have around and doesn't really require the DM to change 100% of the encounters with difficult terrain, mooks, flying opponents.

You seriously think that even a semi-optimized cleric doesn't change the encounter to the same extent that a charger does? I... I don't know what to say to that. Even at 6th level, the cleric already has several Save or Lose options -even ones that target different saves, not to mention augury, dispel magic, wind wall - all of which change the playing field more than "hey, if I can get a straight line to a guy, I can maybe kill him"


I've run plenty of single enemy combats which did work, as have many other DMs. Might want to ease off on the blanket statements there.

Right, but outside of a handful of monsters designed for that very thing (hydras, etc), a much, much higher CR than the party, or playing around with terrain/previous buffs/etc; against players with any degree of optimization, the single creature dies in a couple rounds, tops.

[Saph]

I do realize that it's more work to balance encounters around a Charger...but IMHO, that point doesn't really hold up because the amount of extra work is pretty trivial.

Individually, it's no trouble to rebuild one encounter so that a charger will find it challenging rather than impossible/trivial. Doing it for four encounters? Still pretty easy. Doing it for twenty encounters while still keeping it fresh and interesting . . . a bit harder. And by fifty encounters it's really damn difficult without getting incredibly contrived.

"Okay, so Mr. BBEG is invisible with a swarm of mirror images, Mr. Recurring Villain is in plain view except that we know from last fight that he's using Dodge/Elusive Target, and Mr. End-of-Session-Boss is standing in difficult terrain and wielding a guisarme."
"You could attack Mr. Disposable Mook or Mr. Not-A-Boss-Or-A-Recurring-Villain-But-Just-Important-Enough-Not-To-Die-In-One-Round."
"Uh huh. Mr. Disposable Mook wouldn't happen to be standing exactly between me and Mr. Not-A-Boss-etc, would he?"
"Yeah, he is."
"Funny how that always seems to happen."


Also, as point of contention, if there's a Wizard, a Cleric or a Druid in your party, aren't you already doing this anyway? :smalltongue:

Actually, no. Being higher-tier doesn't mean you're harder to design encounters for and it doesn't even necessarily mean that you're more powerful. It means you have more options. One-trick-pony characters like chargers are actually much harder to design good encounters for than highly versatile spellcasters.

[kjones]

Let me describe the rest of the party, if it will help the conversation:

Human druid 3. Dire rat animal companion. Tends to cast a lot of summons. I proposed the Shapeshifter ACF from PHB2 to the player, who didn't like it but said that they would be interested in doing "something like that". Player also has said that they're not planning on swapping out their animal companion.
Human sorcerer 3. Spells are Silent Image, Mage Armor, and Lesser Orb of Electricity. Keeping an eye on this one, of course.
Human swashbuckler 3. TWFing and planning on going the Dervish route.
Human rogue 3. Took Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot.


EDIT: Saph, the situation you describe is precisely what I am worried about.

[Psyren]

Also, as point of contention, if there's a Wizard, a Cleric or a Druid in your party, aren't you already doing this anyway? :smalltongue:

Actually, no, you're not. T1s have the tools to beat any encounter - but they are the ones that have to choose the right tools, not the DM. If I'm sending Vampires after the T1 party, it's the player's job to make sure they don't fill their slots with charm spells, not mine. And when the Druid and Cleric catch on and start preparing Sunburst, I can simply throw out another CR-appropriate monster that fits my story instead.

Compare this scenario to a charger. He doesn't care if he's up against a vampire, or a golem, or a dragon. His strategy is the same every time. He does so much damage that all he has to worry about is hitting (DR is meaningless), and to keep him from hitting requires active tailoring of the encounter on my part. Suddenly, all my vampires need to start the fight in gaseous form, or show up surrounded by disposable spawn, and the minute I don't take a silver-bullet precaution like this they don't live long enough to even get a speech out.

Again, this is not a power problem. This is an agency problem. There is a very key difference.

[Gullintanni]

Actually, no, you're not. T1s have the tools to beat any encounter - but they are the ones that have to choose the right tools, not the DM.

Alternately, your Vamp can simply ready an action to avoid the charge...and then he's sitting right next to the charger. But I take your meaning. The fact is though, that a charger uses the same tactic every time, and you know it's coming...so in theory it should be easy to prepare for. You can disarm it using the same tactics every time too.

The T1s, on the other hand, can bring 50 different encounter breaking tricks to the table at a time, and you have to be aware of each of them in order to throw out a monster that won't be immediately trivialized by a properly selected spell.

I can build a cleric that can quite literally shut down any encounter against nearly any type of opponent at any given time without having to rest or prepare new spells. That means you, as the DM, have to find the single silver bullet monster that I won't eliminate, which requires you to first know all the tricks my Cleric has available AND know my spell selection for the day well enough to find the hole that I haven't covered with it. Add a Druid and Wizard to the party too and between the three of us, we can cover every possibility 3 times over. At this point, the Charger in the party is a blessing. He's the simplest part of the encounter to deal with.

The time you spend familiarizing yourself with your T1's tricks of the day definitely counts as preparation time towards encounters. At least I would think. Maybe I'm making some assumptions here, and if there any holes in my logic feel free to point them out...but like I said, I'm convinced at the moment that the Charger is the easy part of the equation to deal with.

[Mooncrow]

So, because casters have a lot of ways to completely shut down an encounter, they're fine. But because the barbarian only has one way to shut down an encounter kill one guy, he can't have it?

I'm really trying to understand the logic here.

[sirpercival]

My philosophy for characters in my games is "play what you want, it won't help you." This will often lead to characters that other DMs might term "game-breaking" or at the very least "encounter-breaking", but IMO it's the DM's job to make the game fun for everyone, and if you start nerfing players' character concepts then that goes downhill quickly (how many times do players come on these boards and complain about restrictive DMs?). The player AND the DM have more fun if the player is very invested in a character because they got to build it exactly the way they wanted.

So, my methods for dealing with a character like a charger:
1) Design encounters that are not solvable with combat. Puzzle and roleplaying encounters can be just as much fun as combat encounters, and often more rewarding (especially for a character to whom combat is not so difficult).
2) Design encounters where one-shotting the biggest threat has consequences. Sure, the charger can take out the black dragon in one round. And, allow the pool of necromantic energy the dragon was sitting on to spew forth a horde of undead. Or, the goal of the encounter is to capture the BBEG alive. The point is to make the player THINK about what tactics they actually want to use.
3) Give the charger a few encounters that they CAN breeze through, which are not as important to the plot.
4) However, every so often throw in something that looks like a mook but is more than it seems, again to make the player think.
5) If all else fails, throw overly-challenging opponents at the party and then allow the crazy ingenious ideas they have to defeat it to WORK.

Are these strategies more work for me than just throwing multi-enemy combats at the party? Sure, somewhat. But the point is that everyone will have more fun if (a) they can play the characters they want to play, (b) the story is more interesting than a charger one-shotting a bunch of enemies and everyone going home.

As an example, I ran a Wheel of Time d20 campaign for a long time, and there were at least three channelers in the party at any time. Also, the party size went from 8 to 12 players on a variable timescale. Anyone who has played that system knows that channelers above a certain level (usually level 1) are completely borked, far more than full casters in normal 3.5.

Everyone had a great time in that campaign even though the party was huge, unwieldy, and overly powerful, because while there were occasionally encounters they could breeze through, more often than not just doing massive amounts of damage to a given enemy was a terrible strategy, and they had to think about how to use their resources and abilities in effective ways to achieve their goals.

This won't work for a lot of DMs, especially those who rely on published (usually combat-heavy) materials or those who are relatively inexperienced, but if you can do it, do it.

[Psyren]

Alternately, your Vamp can simply ready an action to avoid the charge...and then he's sitting right next to the charger. But I take your meaning. The fact is though, that a charger uses the same tactic every time, and you know it's coming...so in theory it should be easy to prepare for. You can disarm it using the same tactics every time too.

One more time:

The problem isn't that you can counter the charger.
The problem is that you have to.
All the agency is on you.

If the shoe was on the other foot, and the DM was using one-hit-kill monsters on the players - as Saph rightfully said, most players would be crying foul. And even if they're fine with a game like that, it's still much, much more work for the DM, who has to come up with 50 builds instead of one.


The T1s, on the other hand, can bring 50 different encounter breaking tricks to the table at a time, and you have to be aware of each of them in order to throw out a monster that won't be immediately trivialized by a properly selected spell.

And yet, this is still less trouble for the DM. Coming up with 50 ways to challenge a T1 is easy - pick 50 different CR-appropriate encounters and send them after the party. The T1 can handle them all, but he'll have to use 50 different tricks to do so. The game stays interesting, the player feels smart, and the DM can focus on their story.

Coming up with 50 ways to challenge a charger? Much more difficult. Either you shut down his build entirely or you let it do its thing and you may as well not even have rolled initiative.

And the other fact that most TO-players gloss over - Playing a T1 to potential and playing a charger to potential require vastly different levels of skill. In a real actual D&D game, the cleric who is "literally shutting down any encounter" in 50 different ways is much more seldom than you think. But even if you get a skilled, spotlight-stealing player at your table, the variety of ways that a T1 can and must handle each situation keeps combat fresh and engaging.


Maybe I'm making some assumptions here, and if there any holes in my logic feel free to point them out...but like I said, I'm convinced at the moment that the Charger is the easy part of the equation to deal with.

You're correct; chargers are easy to deal with. The first time. Or the first ten times. Or the first twenty.

After awhile, any player with a Wisdom score above 6 is going to realize that you're specifically countering his build. Or you don't counter his build, and forget about running any encounter with less monsters than PCs, story be damned.

[Saph]

Add a Druid and Wizard to the party too and between the three of us, we can cover every possibility 3 times over. At this point, the Charger in the party is a blessing. He's the simplest part of the encounter to deal with.

It just doesn't work this way. I've DMed these sort of parties and the 1-trick-pony guy is the biggest problem, every time. To people who spend lots of time on CharOp boards this seems counterintuitive - after all, Wizards are full casters, right? So they're the most powerful, right? So they'll always cause the most trouble and be the most effective and any DM who restricts DPS characters in any way must just not get it, right?

Well, no. In practice the Wizard who uses buff/debuff spells to boost his party is far less trouble to deal with than the 1000-damage charger. The problem is with the nature of one-trick-pony characters - when designing encounters for them it's much harder to hit the sweet spot between "trivially easy" and "impossible".

[Sception]

You don't need invisible mirror imaged etc enemies every fight, because the vast majority of fights should be multiple combats where the charger gets to kill one single enemy in their first charge (and feel awesome doing it), and then finds themselves surrounded by other enemies, with the most dangerous enemy still out of reach, with a lowered AC, generally relying on help from team mates to survive the round, let alone set up another charge set up in the same encounter. Which is fine.

If you're fighting a single enemy, then you can bet it better be invisible/mirror imaged/etc, otherwise you won't need an ubercharger to trivialize it. Those kinds of fights should be the exception, and as such it shouldn't be an onerous burdon to tailor in a way that mitigates the charging issue, and even if you don't it shouldn't be that bad a thing if every once in a blue moon one character gets to solo an encounter out of existence (the charger isn't even the only guy who gets to do this - the cleric pulls of a SOL on a single enemy, stealthed rogue sneaks poison into the guards' wine without them noticing, ranger wild empathies that tyranosaurus from one combat encounter to make short work of a second as well, dread necro's invisible imp familiar sneaks his magic jar into a roomful of enemies and possesses them one by one, bard takes advantage a brief parley session to convince the hobgoblins that there's really no reason for you guys to be fighting each other to begin with, the BBEG totally plans on betraying you anyway, and your warband should totally join up with us before they get the chance, etc).


So yeah, if your bog standard encounter design hinges on single monster fights without any special movement modes or defenses, then sure, the charger's going to be an issue. but I think your encounters in general are going to start running in to trouble against any party sooner rather then later.



That said, OP's party looks pretty unoptimized to me (haha, I so totally called your druid - ineffective animal companion chosen for fluff, doesn't want to bother with wild shape or learning the intricacies of his available spell list. It's not bad, it's just that this is the common household druid that I'm familiar with, a far cry from the CoDzilla one hears stories of).

I don't think your current barbarian will be a problem in that group, but I would ask him to stop short of taking any pouncing option unless the rest of the group starts getting a lot tougher (which they might, depending on how much time the sorcerer and druid spend getting to know their spell lists, in which case you might want to take steps to buff your rogue and swashbuckler as well)

[Gullintanni]

1.One more time:

The problem isn't that you can counter the charger.
The problem is that you have to.
All the agency is on you.

2. If the shoe was on the other foot, and the DM was using one-hit-kill monsters on the players - as Saph rightfully said, most players would be crying foul. And even if they're fine with a game like that, it's still much, much more work for the DM, who has to come up with 50 builds instead of one.



3. And yet, this is still less trouble for the DM. Coming up with 50 ways to challenge a T1 is easy - pick 50 different CR-appropriate encounters and send them after the party. The T1 can handle them all, but he'll have to use 50 different tricks to do so. The game stays interesting, the player feels smart, and the DM can focus on their story.

Coming up with 50 ways to challenge a charger? Much more difficult. Either you shut down his build entirely or you let it do its thing and you may as well not even have rolled initiative.

And the other fact that most TO-players gloss over - Playing a T1 to potential and playing a charger to potential require vastly different levels of skill. In a real actual D&D game, the cleric who is "literally shutting down any encounter" in 50 different ways is much more seldom than you think. But even if you get a skilled player at your table, the variety of ways that a T1 can and must handle each situation keeps combat fresh and engaging.



You're correct; chargers are easy to deal with. The first time. Or the first ten times. Or the first twenty.

4. After awhile, any player with a Wisdom score above 6 is going to realize that you're specifically countering his build. Or you don't counter his build, and forget about running any encounter with less monsters than PCs, story be damned.

1. Heard you the first time. No need to get snippy :smallsmile:
I'm of the opinion that it's more work for the DM to familiarize with the T1's ever changing bag of tricks than it is to deal with the charger.

The agency, as you describe, to deal with the charger is all on the DM.
The agency to maintain familiarity with the T1s tricks is also all on the DM.

I'm of the opinion that the second scenario requires more work than the first. YMMV.

2. I agreed with Saph then, and I agree with your restatement now.

3. Agreed insofar as playing Tier 1's well is both more interesting and more fun than playing a Charger. However; if a player derives as much satisfaction from playing a T1 as a Charger, then who am I to disagree? The only factor left before me is which of the two produce more work for me the DM...in my experience, tossing out any level appropriate monster to a group of well played T1s has about the same results as throwing a pillow into a wood chipper, so producing encounter after encounter that doesn't end up this way means doing research into my T1s tricks and putting out monsters who they've neglected to cover in their spell selection.

This may be an experience unique to my group and their style of play. You and Saph are welcome to confirm this for me if your experience differs, but like I said, I'd spend much more time, in terms of the agency issue, in dealing with T1's.

4. There are a few different ways to challenge a charger, and I agree, they don't change too much. Sometimes you have to let the charger steamroll an encounter and sometimes you have to shut the charger down a bit harder and sometimes you need to throw in groups of enemies. Balance is the key to making room for one trick ponies in a game. I agree that Chargers are boring, 1 dimensional characters and my group tends to play them with very little frequency, but in my experience it's never been problematic. Again, perhaps my experience is different from the norm here.

[Sception]

My experience is more in line with Gullintani's. T1's I've run for have encounter ending gimmicks that they will spam until I build around them, and then we don't get challenging encounters, they just shift to another entirely different yet similarly encounter ending gimmick. Sure they do something different most fights, while the charger's more boring in that he always tries to charge, but muggles are always going to be more boring in 3e, regardless of whether they can contribute anything to a combat. A fight that the wizard casually dominates with a polymorph is no less pointless then the one they casually dominated with a magic jar or a shivering touch. The DM may find it more exciting to have their pants handed to them in seven different ways, but that doesn't change the fact that all seven of those encounters were entirely trivial, and that there's very little the DM can do to create an encounter that a full caster past a certain level won't brush off as trivial, apart from an arms race of throwing npc full casters back at them.

[Psyren]

1. Heard you the first time. No need to get snippy :smallsmile:

I'm really not - if I came across that way, I apologize.

1. I disagree with that assessment, and here's why - monsters themselves innately possess an ever-changing bag of tricks too.

Pick a CR. Start pulling monsters. Chances are that if you pull 10, several among that 10 will have radically different tricks. Without lifting a finger or changing anything, you're forcing the T1s to change tactics. If you want to challenge them more, it's as simple as going up a few CR and doing the same thing. This takes a trivial amount of work from you - certainly less than making sure every single monster for the rest of the campaign can either not get one-shot by a charge, or just checking to make sure you don't care if they die on round 1 or not.

Note that challenging a T1 does not involve shutting off its build. You can throw undead at an enchanter wizard; he may end up in trouble for a few rounds or even a whole day, but once he can rest he can come up with an answer.

Meanwhile, a charger is a 1-trick pony. You come up with something that can handle it (e.g. terrain) - say, your story has the bad guy retreat somewhere that charging is difficult, like into a forest with thick undergrowth. Immediately your story and gameplay segregate - the Charger has no other options, so now you have to worry about non-story considerations like how many combats you should have in this area, how the charger can contribute without his signature move, are the encounters too difficult for the party now that they're almost down a teammate etc.

2. Okay.

3. You're vastly overestimating the level of "research" involved in challenging a T1. Even a T1 that is perfectly prepared for everything you can come up with, has a limited number of times per day that they can fire their silver bullets. If you have a monster that you know will be difficult for them to overcome once they run out of X spell, you can just add more of it. And even when the player is prepared, they will want to use the weakest solution they can just in case there is something worse around the corner; it balances itself.

Compare once again to charging - there is no limit per day on that. Unless you physically keep them from doing it, they have no reason not to do it to every enemy. It's like having Implosion as an at-will. Worse even, since there's no fort save (well, there is, but it doesn't actually matter) and it affects objects.

4. There are a few different ways to challenge a charger, and I agree, they don't change too much. Sometimes you have to let the charger steamroll an encounter and sometimes you have to shut the charger down a bit harder and sometimes you need to throw in groups of enemies. Balance is the key to making room for one trick ponies in a game. I agree that Chargers are boring, 1 dimensional characters and my group tends to play them with very little frequency, but in my experience it's never been problematic. Again, perhaps my experience is different from the norm here.[/QUOTE]

4. It's not problematic for you because you don't seem to have an issue with coming up with 30 answers to the same tactic. Which is fine, but I think the odds of that applying to most DMs are unfavorable.

[Mooncrow]

Since this got lost, I'm going to post it again:

So, because casters have a lot of ways to completely shut down an encounter, they're fine. But because the barbarian only has one way to shut down an encounter kill one guy, he can't have it?

I'm really trying to understand the logic here. Take away the charge feats, and what do you have? The barbarian that still basically does the same thing every fight, only now way less effectively.

[Sception]

You don't need to come up with 30 answers when the easiest and best answer (the one that stops the charger from dominating the encounter on its own without taking its gimmick away altogether) is to use multiple enemies per combat as a default, which is just good solid encounter building advice to begin with, regardless of whether you have a charger in the party. You only need to come up with an extra answer if you're running a single enemy encounter, or a boss encounter where there's one particular enemy who you'd like to still be there in round three. Both of these should be exceptions to the usual run of the mill encounter that deserve the additional attention to tailor them to your party, anyway.

Asking the T1 to change tactics isn't the same as challenging them. The whole point of being T1 and not T2 is that it's trivially easy for them to change tactics. The Wizard with the wrong spells prepared is no worse off (and probably still better off) then the barbarian who doesn't get to charge. Let the melee character completely rebuild their character every night, and you get something equivalent. So you're in an area where your ubercharging doesn't work. Fine, take a breather, and now you're optimized for full attacking from range with a great bow. Next day you're in some narrow, twisty dungeon? Suddenly your a chain tripper.

That's what the T1 does, although their potential gimmicks are all more powerful then any of the above gimmicks. Throw 10 different encounters at the ubercharger and you get three that they trivialize, three that they hardly contribute to at all and rely on their party, and four that they have to work at to be helpful. Throw the same 10 encounters at a T1, and you get five encounters that they trivialize, and five encounters that they come back to trivialize tomorrow.

Having to put a time limit or night time ambushers and divination stoppers as a fundamental aspect of every single adventure to stop the T1s from scrying out each individual encounter and bringing an entire set of toys targeted around killing it is, to me, far more narratively disrupting then making sure that most of your encounters don't consist of a single enemy encountered across open floor space, which is all it takes. Don't use boring 10 by 10 foot rooms with a monster in it. That's just encounter building 101.

[Gullintanni]

I'm really not - if I came across that way, I apologize.

It's not problematic for you because you don't seem to have an issue with coming up with 30 answers to the same tactic. Which is fine, but I think the odds of that applying to most DMs are unfavorable.

It's all good. It's hard to convey tone on the internet. :smallsmile:

I'm only going to answer your last point. I only use about 3-4 different tactics (5 if you consider letting the charger solo the encounter once in a while...rewarding someone for their schtick with an outright win every now and then does wonders for player satisfaction) and rotate through them on an encounter by encounter basis. This seems to work out fine and keep the Chargers in the group (as infrequent as they are) happy enough. The other issue is that I don't really enjoy running 4v1monster encounters. I like group combat...it's what 3.5 seems to be best at*, so Chargers tend, by default, to be less troublesome in my games.

Regarding the rest...for me planning for T1's takes longer than for Chargers. It's just how it's worked out in practice. I suspect we're going to differ here fundamentally owing to different experiences around the table, so I move to let the notion drop. The OP can read and evaluate for himself based on what's already here and decide whether or not to permit Chargers in his game.

Fair?

*Opinion

[Big Fau]

So, because casters have a lot of ways to completely shut down an encounter, they're fine. But because the barbarian only has one way to shut down an encounter kill one guy, he can't have it?

I'm really trying to understand the logic here.

Same here.

Saph, have you not considered that it is flat-out impossible to challenge a Tier 1 caster if they are played to their Encounter-Breaking potential? Planning out 50 different encounters is a pain in the ass compared to just throwing in two more mooks, never mind that the caster is able to end most of those encounters in 2 rounds with the right spell selection.

Seriously, the DM doesn't even need to set up terrain or defenses for every enemy. All the DM has to do is add in a few somewhat competent, if weaker, mooks that are in the Charger's path. Have the Charger attack those enemies, and let him have his Shock Trooper fun. He gets his way and you've successfully prevented him from turning the entire encounter into a binary situation.



You don't have to deny the Charger his only tactic. You just need to point the cannon at the right enemies.

[Triskavanski]

One more time:

The problem isn't that you can counter the charger.
The problem is that you have to.
All the agency is on you.

If the shoe was on the other foot, and the DM was using one-hit-kill monsters on the players - as Saph rightfully said, most players would be crying foul.


The reason the players would cry foul isn't because the DM is using what the players are using, but because the DM is going beyond that.

As a DM, I can make any number of characters to fight the PCs. If I wanted to, I could make 1000 enemies and keep attacking the players. Sure, the players may eventually killing them, but then I could make another 1000, and repeat the process until i get a TPK.

As a DM, I have infinite resources at my disposal. I can bend the rules, ignore them, create new ones or obliterate anything I want. Giant laserbeam from the sky? I can do that. Deck of many things? Cursed items? Causing deformations in my PC's... Yep. I'm the DM. I can do anything like that.

If my characters die as a DM, I can make it a shapeshifter or whatever allowing me to put him away for later use. I can fudge rolls, in whatever favor I wish. As a DM my power is unlimited. Remember this. If I say you are a pig, well you are a pig.

As a PC I don't get anything like this. I'm limited to what the book and my DM says I'm limited to.

[Triskavanski]

I think what you're really driving at here is that using high lethality tactics against the DMs monsters is just fine because the DM has infinite monsters, whereas the same tactics, used by the DM, ruin the fun for the PCs because the PCs have effectively one character at their disposal.

When Lethality tactics regularly succeed against the DM, the game proceeds as normal.
When Lethality tactics regularly succeed against the players, the game sucks.

Accordingly, the players would cry foul of the DMs lethality tactics, and they should. Whereas the DM should not cry foul over PC lethality tactics, because well...that's the point of the game.

There's an inequality of position there. When the PCs lose, they lose a lot. When the DM loses, they lose very little. Lethality should be scaled accordingly to each sides resources.

Pretty much.

Doesn't mean that the DM should wimp out either. As a DM its your responsibility to create a balance with your lethality. Having a game be too lethal against the players or too weak creates a boring game.

A few months back, I had a character who I built for damage (DM said to make a damage dealer) and it did damage.. in fact it dealt nearly 4 times the amount of damage anyone else could do. The others were so weak in their damage, I had to hit everything to make it die (as they couldn't).

The DM didn't cry foul though. Some of the other PCs were a little put out though cause I completely out damaged them, and I didn't want to be "the one" who was needed to defeat every single encounter like some shonin anime.. So I asked to change characters to something that did a bit less damage.

But it is also important on the other side as well, I mean with the PC's Defense. Truthfully PC's having a mostly balanced defense is FAR more important than the damage they deal. If one character has an ac of 14 while another has an ac of 44, In order to challenge the 44 AC, you will have to make monsters that will always hit the 14 except for a 1. If the 44 AC also has 400 HP and the 14 has 50, you are very likely to kill the 14 ac character trying to give the slightest challenge to the 44 ac.

[Psyren]

I'm fine with rewarding them once in awhile for their schtick. Which is why I support Saph's solution of not banning the entire build, just Shocktrooper. He'll still get the satisfaction of owning something on a good charge, the only difference is that he now has a meaningful choice to make between potential damage and accuracy. This forces the player to strategize (just like any T1 would have to) and moves the game beyond a binary solution set.


The other issue is that I don't really enjoy running 4v1monster encounters. I like group combat...it's what 3.5 seems to be best at*, so Chargers tend, by default, to be less troublesome in my games.

Even when you don't run 4v1 combat, charging is still an issue. Note my analogy of Implosion at-will - 1 dead per round, and unless you take specific steps to counter it, it does so with no save and no SR.

And you have to take those steps, or ones like it, in every single combat for the rest of the campaign. If you have any enemies that you want to have a chance to survive that combat, anyway, or even just live long enough to have a lasting impact.


If my characters die as a DM, I can make it a shapeshifter or whatever allowing me to put him away for later use. I can fudge rolls, in whatever favor I wish. As a DM my power is unlimited. Remember this. If I say you are a pig, well you are a pig.

As a PC I don't get anything like this. I'm limited to what the book and my DM says I'm limited to.

This is all a rather blatant strawman and does nothing to advance the discussion. Yes, the DM can be a jerk if he wants to be, but jerk DMs get ousted or abandoned.

I'm not talking about "1000 monsters" and "making the players into pigs" and "forcing a TPK." I'm talking about the DM having access to every source the players do, by gentleman's agreement. I'm talking about the DM building just one charger of his own (not "1000"), and then "combat" between the two coming down to which one won initiative. Even if the rest of the party goes on to obliterate the charger, the one player that died before he could do anything probably wouldn't be happy. Would you?

[Saph]

Same here.

Saph, have you not considered that it is flat-out impossible to challenge a Tier 1 caster if they are played to their Encounter-Breaking potential?

1) I'm the DM. Of course I can challenge a Tier 1 caster.
2) Literally any character class can break encounters with enough optimization. Yes, even NPC ones. It's the player and build that matter, not the class.
3) I already said why I find a charger more difficult to design encounters for than a druid or wizard, but if you don't agree with that, try Psyren's explanation (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12158505&postcount=92).

[Gullintanni]

I'm fine with rewarding them once in awhile for their schtick. Which is why I support Saph's solution of not banning the entire build, just Shocktrooper. He'll still get the satisfaction of owning something on a good charge, the only difference is that he now has a meaningful choice to make between potential damage and accuracy. This forces the player to strategize (just like any T1 would have to) and moves the game beyond a binary solution set.

Even when you don't run 4v1 combat, charging is still an issue. Note my example of Implosion at-will - 1 dead per round, and unless you take specific steps to counter it, it does so with no save and no SR


I'm entirely comfortable with 1 dead per round. Like I said, I like group combat. 2 powerful enemies and 4-6 weaker ones (aka Cannon Fodder). It works out pretty well. You've also gotta consider that the Charger's AC is in the toilet after he hits his intended target. If he gets swarmed by the survivors after, he:

A. Can't charge anymore because all his targets are under 10 feet away and;
B. He's going to start taking loads of damage, meaning he's gotta pick targets far enough away that charging isn't suicide.

There are ways to account for each of these deficiencies to be sure, but it's still something to consider.

RE: Saph's solution, I actually don't like banning Shock Trooper...limiting it though seems more reasonable if you can't otherwise handle chargers. For example, Shock Trooper functions once per four character levels or some similar clause. That way, your Trooper gets a potent tool he can use to kill something that really needs to die, and the rest of the time he just hits pretty hard.

[Mooncrow]

1) I'm the DM. Of course I can challenge a Tier 1 caster.
2) Literally any character class can break encounters with enough optimization. Yes, even NPC ones. It's the player and build that matter, not the class.
3) I already said why I find a charger more difficult to design encounters for than a druid or wizard, but if you don't agree with that, try Psyren's explanation (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12158505&postcount=92).

"Sorry melee; in theory there's a nifty tactic that could work for you, but because it's the only tactic you could use, instead you get nothing. What, the wizard? See, he has lots of tactics that are way more powerful than that one, but because he has a lot, it's fine"

Seriously, what?

[Psyren]

At least we agree, if not to ban Shock Trooper, then to alter it. Not because it's too powerful, but to reintroduce strategy to the combat.

As far as the crowd of mooks in the way, the charger simply has to delay until he has a clear path (say, waiting for the sorcerer or cleric to AoE), or simply reposition. This is again more work for you as you have to cover 8 different directions of attack on any bad guy you want to be around longer than 1 round. This postpones the problem rather than solving it; with ST in play, if the charger hits he kills.


"Sorry melee; in theory there's a nifty tactic that could work for you, but because it's the only tactic you could use, instead you get nothing. What, the wizard? See, he has lots of tactics that are way more powerful than that one, but because he has a lot, it's fine"

Seriously, what?

No one is saying to ban charging entirely, please reread the thread.

[Seerow]

No one is saying to ban charging entirely, please reread the thread.



No, just to reduce charging to being as ineffective as any other standard action attack that a melee uses.

[Mooncrow]

At least we agree, if not to ban Shock Trooper, then to alter it. Not because it's too powerful, but to reintroduce strategy to the combat.

As far as the crowd of mooks in the way, the charger simply has to delay until he has a clear path (say, waiting for the sorcerer or cleric to AoE), or simply reposition. This is again more work for you as you have to cover 8 different directions of attack on any bad guy you want to be around longer than 1 round. This postpones the problem rather than solving it; with ST in play, if the charger hits he kills.



No one is saying to ban charging entirely, please reread the thread.


Who was talking about charging by itself? "Tactic" refers to the entire setup. A druid's/sorc's/cleric's/etc plethora of Save or Lose spells are ok, because they have a lot of them. But the potentially to maybe kill one guy in one round is not ok, because it's the only Save or Die he can manage.

That's what your argument is.

[Big Fau]

At least we agree, if not to ban Shock Trooper, then to alter it. Not because it's too powerful, but to reintroduce strategy to the combat.

This much I'll agree with. Perhaps just having it capped to the base 10 of your AC?

[Gullintanni]

1. At least we agree, if not to ban Shock Trooper, then to alter it. Not because it's too powerful, but to reintroduce strategy to the combat.

2. As far as the crowd of mooks in the way, the charger simply has to delay until he has a clear path (say, waiting for the sorcerer or cleric to AoE), or simply reposition. This is again more work for you as you have to cover 8 different directions of attack on any bad guy you want to be around longer than 1 round. This postpones the problem rather than solving it; with ST in play, if the charger hits he kills.

No one is saying to ban charging entirely, please reread the thread.

1. Well...we agree to a point. Banning anything for melee is kind of heavy handed. With a limited uses per day clause, Shock Trooper becomes just a save or day spell that keys off of the opponents AC for a DC and can only be used situationally. Like I said...I have no problems with Shock Trooper as is in my games, but it is a very strong option and I can definitely see limiting uses per day if you want to try and preserve a certain style of play in your game.

2. The average combat last about 4 rounds correct? So, if I "...postpone the problem" for say, 3 rounds and the Charger gets the last kill on the 4th, then have I not solved the problem? :smalltongue:

In all seriousness, this is less difficult than you make it seem. It's just a game of chess, with you, the DM, trying to protect your piece from the opponents Queen for long enough to call the encounter a "success". And frankly, if the resolution of the fight comes down to the casters moving enemies out of the way so that the charger can charge at his target, then you've forced the party to leverage all their advantages and spend resources (spells). Plus they're still under fire from mooks.

I have no problems with this style of play. Not at all. It just works for me and my party.

[Psyren]

Who was talking about charging by itself? "Tactic" refers to the entire setup. A druid's/sorc's/cleric's/etc plethora of Save or Lose spells are ok, because they have a lot of them. But the potentially to maybe kill one guy in one round is not ok, because it's the only Save or Die he can manage.

That's what your argument is.

That is my argument, yes. Charges are universally applicable. I can Disintegrate a Lich or Shivering Touch a dragon, but reverse the two spells and I'm wasting my actions twice. There is strategy involved.

But physical damage in the hundreds, guaranteed to take out anything appropriate to my CR? Why would I do anything else, even if I could?



2. The average combat last about 4 rounds correct? So, if I "...postpone the problem" for say, 3 rounds and the Charger gets the last kill on the 4th, then have I not solved the problem? :smalltongue:


No, because mooks still make the situation binary. While the charger isn't charging, he's doing nothing. Again the choice is dominate or stagnate.

[Gullintanni]

No, because mooks still make the situation binary. While the charger isn't charging, he's doing nothing. Again the choice is dominate or stagnate.

Not necessarily. If the mooks are weaker, he can jump in and start fighting normally. If the charger's desired target isn't within reach, then he charges the nearest mook and starts fighting normally. Except that this time he just power attacks without using Shock Trooper for a little extra damage, and hopes to clear a path to the boss mook all by himself.

The charger doesn't lose the option to fight normally, when it's advantageous, just by gaining a situationally powerful option. Heck, if he's got levels in a ToB class and Barbarian, he can be a charger and still have decent standard actions in combat for when his primary tactic is unavailable or unwise.

[Lapak]

That is my argument, yes. Charges are universally applicable. I can Disintegrate a Lich or Shivering Touch a dragon, but reverse the two spells and I'm wasting my actions twice. There is strategy involved.

But physical damage in the hundreds, guaranteed to take out anything appropriate to my CR? Why would I do anything else, even if I could?Taking this as an actual example: an Ubercharger is the equivalent of a wizard whose spellbook contains nothing but Shivering Touch and Burning Hands. He has it memorized in every available slot, metamagiced up to the point where it's a one-shot on anything that it can affect. His low-level slots are all Burning Hands.

Every round of every combat, he picks an appropriate target and hits it with Shivering Touch.

The DM either accepts that the Wizard is going to take out one (or more; just as the charger might be able to Cleave or Pounce his way into multi-kills the Wizard could Chain Spell or whatever) opponents per round, or he can apply appropriate countermeasures: opponents with immunity to that spell, or counter-spell casters, or creatures immune to Dex drain, or just more creatures - the same kind of strategies people are suggesting for the charger. But after three or four combats, it'll become clear that he's either shutting down that tactic or letting the Wizard steamroll the fights the same way every time. And the tactics, and the interest, are largely gone. The Wizard could throw Burning Hands around instead, but it's almost never the better option.

The problem with an Ubercharge build is not that it's too powerful - melee needs powerful options. The problem is that it's boring for everyone involved when the wizard's turn, every turn, is 'I cast Maximized Shivering Touch on Enemy X' or the charger's turn, every turn, is 'I charge Enemy Y.' With the Wizard, things can be changed up by memorizing something else, but you can't just swap out a melee build that way. It's the basic problem with melee in 3.x: many builds have one 'best' option that you're going to want to use pretty much all the time.

[Seerow]

The problem with an Ubercharge build is not that it's too powerful - melee needs powerful options. The problem is that it's boring for everyone involved when the wizard's turn, every turn, is 'I cast Maximized Shivering Touch on Enemy X' or the charger's turn, every turn, is 'I charge Enemy Y.' With the Wizard, things can be changed up by memorizing something else, but you can't just swap out a melee build that way. It's the basic problem with melee in 3.x: many builds have one 'best' option that you're going to want to use pretty much all the time.


While this is true, it does not mean that Charging in particular needs a huge nerf. It already has its share of drawbacks. It is FAR easier to shut down a charger than it is to shut down a Wizard who spams shivering touch or whatever other equivalent spell he chooses. No, what needs to happen is melee classes need more options that are equivalent in power so the character can switch tactics as needed.

But it's far easier to nerf charging, and make the mundane character sit pretty with no useful actions at all rather than just a single useful action, so that's what people suggest. I suggest if you're going to do that, go ahead and just ban the Barbarian and other mundanes. If someone wants to play melee, let them pick up a Gish.

[Gullintanni]

While this is true, it does not mean that Charging in particular needs a huge nerf. It already has its share of drawbacks. It is FAR easier to shut down a charger than it is to shut down a Wizard who spams shivering touch or whatever other equivalent spell he chooses. No, what needs to happen is melee classes need more options that are equivalent in power so the character can switch tactics as needed.

But it's far easier to nerf charging, and make the mundane character sit pretty with no useful actions at all rather than just a single useful action, so that's what people suggest. I suggest if you're going to do that, go ahead and just ban the Barbarian and other mundanes. If someone wants to play melee, let them pick up a Gish.

Seriously...Slap a ToB class on your charger...Warblade or some such thing, and in situations where Charging is sub-optimal (ie. any time charging is shut down, or any time where having an AC = 0 is a bad thing) you have maneuvers and other decent options available.

[Mooncrow]

While this is true, it does not mean that Charging in particular needs a huge nerf. It already has its share of drawbacks. It is FAR easier to shut down a charger than it is to shut down a Wizard who spams shivering touch or whatever other equivalent spell he chooses. No, what needs to happen is melee classes need more options that are equivalent in power so the character can switch tactics as needed.

But it's far easier to nerf charging, and make the mundane character sit pretty with no useful actions at all rather than just a single useful action, so that's what people suggest. I suggest if you're going to do that, go ahead and just ban the Barbarian and other mundanes. If someone wants to play melee, let them pick up a Gish.

I would say this sums up my feelings on the matter pretty well.

[Lapak]

While this is true, it does not mean that Charging in particular needs a huge nerf. It already has its share of drawbacks. It is FAR easier to shut down a charger than it is to shut down a Wizard who spams shivering touch or whatever other equivalent spell he chooses. No, what needs to happen is melee classes need more options that are equivalent in power so the character can switch tactics as needed.Oh, I agree completely. I'm just saying that I think it's where the instinct to block these things comes from; not power as such but tedium.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I think one-trick-ponies need fair warning rather than a nerf. Anyone in-game who does a modicum of research on them (read: the really tough enemies, where you need to do your best) will have worked out their enemies' main shticks. Shivering Touch? Death Ward. Enervation? Ray Deflection. ST Charger? A well-placed patch of mud.

If the charger is warned that he'll need various ways to deliver the pain, he'll have to expand his repertoire at the cost of more damage. Maybe take Fighter up to Zhentarim so he can intimidate those he can't splatter. Maybe dip initiator classes for Sudden Leap and the Diamond Mind save counters (oh, but you can't go FB and use Concentrate... guess you'll just have to dump that awfully designed PrC). Eventually he'll make enough sacrifices to damage such that it's still relevant while not being encounter ending, and his trick won't be so situation dependent that you have to work hard not to counter it. T3 for the win.

[Triskavanski]

This is all a rather blatant strawman and does nothing to advance the discussion. Yes, the DM can be a jerk if he wants to be, but jerk DMs get ousted or abandoned.

I'm not talking about "1000 monsters" and "making the players into pigs" and "forcing a TPK." I'm talking about the DM having access to every source the players do, by gentleman's agreement. I'm talking about the DM building just one charger of his own (not "1000"), and then "combat" between the two coming down to which one won initiative. Even if the rest of the party goes on to obliterate the charger, the one player that died before he could do anything probably wouldn't be happy. Would you?


The only straw man here is saying that the a DM with a (insert thing) is equal to a player with a (insert thing).

Even if the DM took the exact same stats of the character including equipment and all that from the PC and sent the clone against the party, the two are STILL not on equal grounds.

The DM has infinite resources at his disposal. The players only have their character. Hence the reason they are referred to PCs. This is the reason it is rightfully so for PCs to call foul when the DM makes monsters that do lethal damage on the first turn.

When a PC does it on the other hand, the DM shouldn't be calling foul, BUT He should nudge, but only for the purpose of balancing the PCs against other PCs. but he should just hit the tall nail on the head, he should also be nudging the weaker player as well.

As a DM you ultimately want the PCs to be balanced amongst each other. This includes both offense and Defense. Players who end up doing more damage than others, make it so you need that player to kill anything. Players who end up blocking every attack end up making it more likely monsters will do lethal damage vs the weaker defense characters.

My basic point is though, the DM isn't tied down to his monsters, while the players are tied to their characters. Once a character dies for a PC, that's the end of it unless they can raise it.

and really if you want "it comes down to initiative" that would still be a spell caster. Hold Person for example.

[Psyren]

My basic point is though, the DM isn't tied down to his monsters, while the players are tied to their characters. Once a character dies for a PC, that's the end of it unless they can raise it.

The DM may have less attachment to a given monster/Big Bad/what have you than a PC does to their character. But one-shotting the wrong monster still ruins hours, if not days' work on the DM's part.

Unless the DM takes steps to prevent it... every single time.


and really if you want "it comes down to initiative" that would still be a spell caster. Hold Person for example.

A will-negates, SR: Yes, humanoid-only, mind-affecting compulsion? Compared to a charge? Really?

[Seerow]

The DM may have less attachment to a given monster/Big Bad/what have you than a PC does to their character. But one-shotting the wrong monster still ruins hours, if not days' work on the DM's part.

Man where were you during that argument recently where people were insisting that a DM could stat up any enemy in 3.5 in under 5 minutes?

[Psyren]

Man where were you during that argument recently where people were insisting that a DM could stat up any enemy in 3.5 in under 5 minutes?

Was it a {redacted} thread? Because I know better than to read more than a few pages of those.

Whoops, didn't realize he'd been banned. Made my saving throw I hope.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Why does one shotting an enemy "ruin" the work? Writing down those abilities and stats is a commitment by the DM to be fair to the players while still being able to adjudicate most things that could happen involving that character. Sure, one-shotting such a character made it unnecessary to give most of those stats in hindsight, but how is that different from a group choosing to avoid a city you've put a lot of work into?

[Psyren]

It's fine for villains to fall. I know of only very few DMs that want their players to fail, so at some point their monsters will end up rendered into dust and their miniatures toppled.

But the fight should at least be memorable. And while your players (or at least, the charger's player) may fondly remember one-shotting the fearsome villain that was at the centerpiece of your campaign - or even his dreaded henchman - they're more likely to remember it like this. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJOXLryzs8g)

You may personally be fine with that, and that's ok.


As far as the city analogy, whichever locale the players avoided will still be there when you come up with another plot hook to lead them back. Bringing back a slain foe is much more contrived, particularly when the players don't feel threatened by it.

[Gullintanni]

Was it a {redacted} thread? Because I know better than to read more than a few pages of those.

Whoops, didn't realize he'd been banned. Made my saving throw I hope.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=221056

That thread IIRC. The OP was claiming that 3.5 was unwieldy and difficult to use. Others were arguing that with the right degree of knowledge one could stat up NPCs and encounters relatively quickly (5-10 minutes each). The exception being major plot villains and the like.

[Triskavanski]

Why does one shotting an enemy "ruin" the work? Writing down those abilities and stats is a commitment by the DM to be fair to the players while still being able to adjudicate most things that could happen involving that character. Sure, one-shotting such a character made it unnecessary to give most of those stats in hindsight, but how is that different from a group choosing to avoid a city you've put a lot of work into?

It ruins it because the DM bottle-necked the campaign into that one creature, must like the city.

Perhaps the DM made that creature look like a bad guy, but it was a goodguy who would give important information or the red key so you can open the red door.

Perhaps it was the campaign boss. In which case the DM should have expected this and made it a shapeshifter or gave it escape route of some sort, even if lethal damage is dealt.

Final Boss (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xhb_j_GWuso#t=389s)


For one campaign I ran, one of my bosses, I took a deflated basketball and placed it on the table. While they still destroyed it easily, it was somewhat rememberable.

Of course those things get over shadowed by events that kill PCs.

Nearly died while riding a horse when it suddenly stopped.
Died after falling 80+ feet on top of an 80 foot or so monster.
Died due to boars critting me. To this day, jokes are still made about this one.
Died due to whiptail centipede
Died due to troll getting a full attack on me and hitting every time with a crit..


As far as monsters

Doridan - a DMPC who was our guide. Completely worthless though and annoyed the PCs.
Silph - Doridans greatest enemy, also annoyed the PCs

There is a number of others, but it was never just combat to make something epic. I once used a deflated basketball for a huge monster. If just using monsters ability combat to define it as epic.. itll never work. You need things outside its abilities to do damage. And remember, True villains have escape routes even if they should have no way of doing it.