Helping my DM

[JoeYounger]

I'm in a bit of a bad place campaign wise, and I'd appreciate any help you can give me.

My DM is a great guy, published author, wonderful storyteller. That being said, he has a horrible understanding of the game mechanics. Our party wants to play at a (high end of) low-med OP level, but our DM just doesnt know how to handle it. He dislikes my dragon shaman/marshall because I'm "****ing stupidly overpowered". After 12 years of off and on DMing last Saturday was the first time he ever built his own badguys. They've always been straight out of the MM before that, and with the party on average being mediumly OP'd we've always just destroyed them even when they were several CR's ahead of us.

Well, these new baddies he built for us, are just ****ing stupid. we are all level 8 now, and hes putting us agains Ogres with 5 class levels of their own, who are not restricted by WBL, but all of their gear is cursed to turn the weilder into an Ogre first round its put on. Story reasons keep us from all just turning into Orgres. Our party consists of a PF Fighter 8, PF Ranger 8, PF Monk 8, Swash/rouge/scout 8, druid 8 and myself marshal 4/dragon shaman 3 / crusader 1 with a PF cleric 5 cohort.

When we broke for the night we bullshat for a half hour or so talking about the game and he expressed a LOT of frustration at our party. Our druid is literally the only pcin game that doesnt have limitless resources here. After any combat, I can vigor everyone to half hp, and my cohort can use the spark / glorious heat combo to top everyone off. So we're in a situation where everything we go into, we go into with damn near full resources and he's not sure how to really challenge us without it being a big hard (read that as two hour long) combat, because he cant just attrition us down to where we have to run away. I've offered to retrain the vigor aura, and I've offered him the errata for glorious heat, but he says that even without glorious heat we'd just have my crafter make a wand for 20% of book price and we'd heal that way.

It seems to me that the only resource he can really use to hurt us is time. If he can keep us in combat we'll never get to heal. But a 12 hour session of non-stop combat is SUPER bogged down, and loses its fun very quickly as we found out when he threw 23 ettins at us.

Do you guys have any ideas of what he/we could do that would help alleviate this problem? I mean, hes right, if we didn't have the fast healing and unlimited cleric healing we would just drop a very small amount of party wealth to use wands to get us full, and that would have us back at full a lot faster than 2 hp/round spread out over 8 people.

Thoughts? Opinions? Halp?

[limejuicepowder]

I don't really see this as being a huge problem, unless the Dm's stated goal is to kill someone. Who cares if you start at each battle at full? If I was the Dm I would think that was cool; I wouldn't have to keep party resources in mind when planning multiple battles/day.

Plus, I don't think danger of a battle is how long the damage lasts - if my character ended the fight in the single digits, even if I got healed I would still think that was a close call.

How often does the Dm use monsters with alternate forms of attack? I know you mentioned he has a low grasp of the system, but it sounds like the only monster he uses is "damage. MORE DAMAGE!" I would suggest to use some monsters with simple but dangerous abilities, like poison, paralysis, stuns, etc. I'm AFB right now but Gelatinous Cube, Bodaks, (big) snakes, and Shades all come to mind. They are very straight forward but different than ogres swinging swords.

[JoeYounger]

Yeah, we just had a stint where we we're fighting a bunch of undead and were taking some negative levels and also some poisonous stuff that was hitting the party with ability dmg. The problem there is that we're all boyscout types and have things like a staff with lesser restoration. Or alchemical items that give bonuses to saves vs poison.

We're real low on charges of lesser restoration, I suppose I'll suggest he goes back towards ability dmg.

[limejuicepowder]

Another big part of fun combat is the setting - are the monsters just walking down hallways towards the party in a completely methodically and predictable way, or are they attacking at night, or when the PC's are climbing a huge cliff, or stalking them through the wall paper (freddie!), or luring the PC's in to traps? Depending on the setting a CR 11 monster could be a cake walk and a CR 7 monster is a near TPK. The book of challenges is a fantastic source for combats just that, especially for a DM that isn't great with the combat rules - it includes everything you'd need.

[some guy]

First:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG216.jpg
Then some:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG104.jpg
Maybe throw in some black pudding traps.

Then, when all your gear is gone, let the casters be grabbed to a watery death by some giant octopi.

And when the casters are gone, let these guys finish it off:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/MM35_gallery/MM35_PG258.jpg
That's constitution drain, not damage.

I dunno. I just looked up some critters. But things like that. My point is that your DM needs to target some other unexpected things here. He needs to be mean. Let monsters retreat once they got what they wanted. A T-rex is not a problem. But if that T-rex runs away once he swallowed someone? Still a large chance on survival for the swallowed one. But I'll bet people start to worry about it.
And then if monsters retreat in some area in which they have the advantage? A normal choker is not a problem for a level 2 party, but if that party is in a cave system with small tunnels intersecting the cave at an higher level, and the choker only attacks when it suits him? It could ambush a small character, drag him/her in small tunnels in which medium characters have trouble following him and have a high chance of getting lost. Bam, your friend just got carried off by some monster and this place is a maze. Good luck finding even his/her bones.
Same with octopi, krakens and aboleths. Someone just got carried down a dark place in which it's not possible to breath. Did you prepare some spells? Yeah, maybe, depending on the player's expectations. But maybe the water is a surprise. Did you have some water-equipment? Yeah, maybe. But maybe it just got filched by that ethereal filcher.

[abcd_z]

I read this and immediately thought of Tucker's Kobolds (http://www.tuckerskobolds.com).

For specific advice on how the build one of these dungeons, one old thread on the subject is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94232). I wouldn't advise reading it yourself unless you want spoilers for what you might be up against.

[Elboxo]

So it's the combat that needs flaring up? He's fine with NPC reactions and things?

I think two things could make this more enjoyable for him and you, one being NPC reactions, like holding grudges, etc. Taken to the next level, people complaining to local authorities in towns, basically NPC shenanigans that result in two things:
1) Plot twists
2) Extra time created which you have made a point of, though I do not think it is a great substitute, it's like saying quantity over quality. Anyhoo, when the Ettin attack and everything's fine, what do you do when your healer is taken out by an angry NPCs assassins, who are opportunists and strike mid-combat?

Just small things that can increase fun as well as reasons for him to include various characters/characterization.

The other suggestion for combat is the area, it's been said before that the ground can change the way the combat goes, my DM recently used Xorn (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/xorn.htm) on us, which have the ability to earthglide. Now when I was the only PC who saw it pop out of the ground when it bit me, then hide again, made things rather interesting as no-one believed me that there was an alien in the floor. Not until it ended up killing me, while we were distracted later on.

Seriously though, the terrain can introduce many various changes, height can dramatically create a sense of urgency, when the PCs are below a bunch of archers/mages firing down on them, as well as making use of the sizes of various races ( My DM loves kobolds, and always has them in tiny hidy-holes with slings, though nothing stops the slings from being magical or filled with sneak-attack ) as well as racial abilities ( Like earthglide )

Another thing I'm seeing here is your DM is using things straight from the MM and then monsters with class levels, yet he's never sent more.... ordinary humanoids with class levels after you? Like assassins, mages, bandits, etc.
Sometimes the most fun enemies are the ones with good old Silent Image where you least expect it. Though of course at your level, an arcane caster can have quite a lot of power behind them, if need be.

One final idea, which is one I'm sad I don't see or hear of being used too often is PUZZLES, or dangerous traps, make use of those classes with evasion or the ability to fly! Puzzles where the PCs actually have to think! Straight combat 24/7 gets boring, when plot twists, interesting characters and puzzles are involved, then it gets interesting.

Puzzles in the terrain make combat much more challenging!

A little while ago ( In the same session the Xorn killed me ) the party was in a large room with tiles on it, the room was basically minesweeper, as the party wizard I used detect magic and then spellcraft to determine which of the tiles were 'mines' and which were just images that would pop up telling us how far the next mines were from it, this was difficult on it's own, before an invisible pixie started sneak-attacking everything and scared off our rogue, who was making his way to loot, making the most of his evasion to bypass the 'mines'.

Little NPC twists, large scale terrain twists, all things that can make combat more interesting. Remind him of the variety and uses of spells too, stuff straight from MM rarely has strong casting potential, so the occasional mini-boss caster would light things up.

EDIT: That turned out much larger than I expected. xD Hope it's helpful.

[NichG]

So my understanding of the situation is as follows (please correct me if I'm wrong):

1. The players want to play medium optimization.
2. The players want to be challenged
3. The players want this challenge to be rules legit.

4. The DM is a good storyteller, but does not have either time or ability to optimize as well as the players.
5. The DM is feeling frustration about challenging the party (w.r.t. point 2, giving them what they're asking for).
6. Players and DM seem to be willing to accomodate eachother to try to make this happen.

Given this, I think the people involved are being reasonable and are coming up on limitations of their own skill and desires rather than any kind of actual conflict.

That said, my advice would be pretty simple: the DM should use MM creatures as written but assume that the party's level is 5 higher than it actually is. I'd suggest that the DM use between 3 and 12 creatures per combat, but never fewer than 3 and never fewer than 6 in any battle that is meant to be climactic (this could be 1 bigbad and 5 mooks of course). Because of your party's particular build, the DM should probably avoid dungeon crawls and not even bother with trying to force multiple encounters per day - instead, just recognize that one or four doesn't matter and only run the big plot-important encounters (this is effectively what you're doing by running at CR+5 all the time).

I'd also advise against using humanoid NPCs due to escalation due to gear (something the DM recognized when he was giving the ogres 'NPC-only' equipment). Humanoid NPCs are a good resource when the DM is willing and able to optimize, but without that ability they're basically just walking treasure troves that will just make the party even more powerful relative to their level. If the DM gets more comfortable with D&D's particular tricks, much of NPC gear can be provided by long duration temporary spells such as Greater Magic Weapon cast by their employer. This would allow such things as buffed up Lv3 Fighter mooks by giving them effectively +3 weapons that are unlootable (because they're a spell).

[JoeYounger]

You guys are awesome. I'll shoot my dm an email with these suggestions! Thanks for the help!

[blacksabre]

Seperate them from some of their equipment...
dozens of ways to do this...and not be cheesy..

[Jornophelanthas]

I have a piece of advice for this DM: He should seek assistance from someone else who is better at optimizing monsters/encounters.

This is not a co-DM, but rather someone from outside the game who is willing to "stat up" enemies and design encounters to be used by the DM (including combat tactics of such foes).

Because of conflicts of interest, it is better to not have one of the players fulfill this role, unless you are all comfortable with some kind of "let's each submit one cool monster for our party to fight without telling each other exactly what" deal.

[Kol Korran]

hhhmmmm... first of all it's good that both players and DM are ready to make this a better play, and improve. here are some thoughts:

1) challenges are not only about battles.
2) battles are not all about the monsters.
3) monsters can be made challenging with very little effort, or use of tactics.

i'll try to explain each of my points in turn. i shall use examples from my own campaign to illustrate. (the better examples at least :smallsmile:):

1) challenges are not only about battles
in fact, i'd reckon that many times the more interesting and fun challenges are not the particular battles themselves. puzzles have allready been mentioned, but i find puzzles alone, out of some greater context are often game stoppers or not fun.

instead, i suggest to find complex situations that force the party to think a bit outside their usuall battle tactics. some ideas in my campaign:
- the party was captured by superior forces (the story dodesn't matter, but since you lack casters that shouldn't prove too hard), and then they had to find a way to escape without equipment, seperated, with the risk of people dying if they flee.

- later on some of the party went under a curse/ ritual that forced some continued suffering. this was done by the same captors. they were given a mission to eradicate a real danger in return of getting the curse off, but they wanted revenge on the captors. how to achieve that?

- the party was at one point under a complex siege by a necromancer, yaun ti and some drow (your DM could find other alliances). they were obviously over matched- how could they find leverage? what was this strange alliance? what did they even want? the party was losing this siege, and tried to protect the warriors they fought next to.

- the party had a straight mission- go to some caves, kill a monster, get an item. but the caves were underwater, with a slow mutating effect, and they themselves were ever changing, making navigation a headache. the only clues were a mysterious druidic sign language. (though the party found some other way to solve this)

- in another dungeon the party was in, once they've reached it's end and got their goal, suddenly it closed on them, and turned to be one huge time trap which the party had to escape (with new monsters as well on the way, but not just)


the main idea here is that combat on it's own doesn't necessarily solves the problem, but just a mean to overcoming SOME obstacles. some things that might be useful:
- too many enemies/ returning or rejuvenating foes.

- perhaps ambiguous enemies- should they be attacked or not? (frightened civilians, paladins who think you're someone else, possessed people)

- the enemy is performing some deed that must be stopped, and you must find what the deed is, where it's at and how it is to be stopped.

- my favorite: TIME limit. really effective. also- even you have resources- wands, scrolls and potions all go away, as do X/day uses per day items.

- secrets: more is unknown than known, and the party keeps making mistakes due to not having enough information.

- complications of the site/ terrain/ time of year/ time in history/ magic gone wrong and so on.

2) battles are not all about the monsters.
surprise, cover, CONCEALMENT (big with a combative group), traps, other terrain, manufactured and magical contrivances can make a simple battle with monsters so much more interesting. they sort of raise the CR in interesting ways.

example: my group is 11th level (cleric, Ultimate magus, duskblade and ranger). they foughta CR 9 and CR 7 earth elementals, and another CR 7 air elemental. by the books it's a CR11 encounter, right? they came in nearly full resources to it. shouldn't be a problem.

it was nearly a TPK. why? due to terrain, concealemnt and surprise. the area was earth bridges over an earth liquid (not magma) slide to a sort of earth crusher, and there was mist all around. they couldn't hit the elementals unless they got to their reach (couldn't see them beyond that), and the elementals threw (by awesome blow) people of the bridges, and those who flew met the air elemental and it's vortex.

other examples:
- in one battle early on the battle field was booby trapped by some mines. as the party came to, the traps were set, and started the party at low- mid hp at the start of the big fight. surprise. ambush.

- later on there was a Gauth (i think it's called? a small beholder) who had a web of tunnels under the dungeon the party was in. it could rise from it's tunnels or retreat at many points, making it a very, very dangerous foe. crafted terrain. the tunnels themselves were with water and a pair of swimming carrion crawlers. terrain.

- That same dungeon, they later fought a guardian (i'll get to that) archer, who moved inside the aura of some fleshy things that caused all who got near to save vs. a high save or be nauseated or the like (i don't remember). the party who was mostly melee guys, found a difficult situation

- the siege battle i mentioned before: the battles took over massive bridges, with sort of psionic barriers on them, where the effort was to either take down or keep up a barrier. and they had to do it fast- before reinforcement could come. use of magic as a blocking factor. time limit.

- one adventure took place in fully underwater tunnels. the party had a bugger of a time learning to fight there- reduced speed, less damage from weapons and more...

- the party once traveled in a weird land (the Mournland from Eberron) in which healing magic didn't work properly and could even backfire, and teleportation magic didn't work as well. this was an ongoing effect for many kind of battles, some it just slightly complicated, some a LOT! (think of wounding ability). it made the party more cautious.

- one of the greatest long series of battles was in another siege, in a HUGE cathedral (over 3 conjoined battle grids). the enemy came in waves, quite powerful ones. the party needed to block exit, organize the supporting forces and so on. the windows were a weak point, as idd the many entry points. there were vital strategic people to protect as well, so it was a complex, interesting and epic challenge. use of terrain and allies/ noncombatants.

the DMG somewhere says something on the liens of "first think of the scene, then how to get the party there, then what's in there". (i may be mistaken). the idea is to give the party LOTS of different challenges inside the battle that aren't combatants themselves, but if possibly- synergize with the enemy.

3) monsters can be made challenging with very little effort, or use of tactics.
even monsters themselves can be a great use for a challenge. some ideas have allready been mentioned, but a few more general advice:
- rarely use just 1 kind of monster, try to aim for 2-3 kinds if possible. it makes things more challenging, but also mroe interesting. more than that- try to choose monsters who's ability mix nicely together.

- i know your DM lieks to use monsters directly out of the MM, but a few things that can still help with little effort: templates are nice (they often give resistances and DR), but i often find that altering 2-3 characteristics of the monster on my own (which should make sense to the game world!) often gives experienced players a bit of a pause, and gives everyone an interesting challenge.

- tactics. tactics can change SOOOOO many things, even the simple "oil puddle and alchemist fire" or use of cover can change everything. note that this ESPECIALLY means using anything of the terrain/ conditions suggestions i mentioned in my previous part.

i'll detail some of these in my examples:
- the guardian of the fleshy thing that i mentioned in the previous part was a medusa, who kept on blinking. (the fleshy thing morphed her a bit) this was a serious power addition, as it negated many effects, but it was very helpful and forced people to actually try and look at her, or they had nearly not chance to hit.

no template, just a simple "blinks as a free action" addition.

- the siege with undead, yuanti and drow. they kept on changing who attacked, making about 4 kinds of different assault teams to different effects. at first the party crushed them, but later they learend their tactics and devised counter tactics (till one of the player's changed a character and mixed everything up again).

- a battle with two fiends proved as challenging as hell. there was a big cave, and the bug like mezzoloth (MM3) kept the party at bay with his cloudkills and dispelling their magic, while behind an arrow demon (MM3) peppered them with arrows like a mini machine gun. two creatures working well together.

- in the big siege in the great cathedral there was the same old battle ground (with new breaches perhaps). how could i keep this interesting? by different kind of monster combinations and tactics:

1st wave was a sort of "bring in the masses!" kind of fight
2nd one they tried to take down key opposition and terror, including using petrifying creatures and osme with fear auras.
3rd they tried to bring in big brutes sort of creatures, and seperate the defenders up.
then came a suprisingly small force of invisible stealthy assasins,
then usage of powerful nearly epic magic and so on.

the first wave didn't really challenge, but then it wasn't supposed to. it was a "first taste" kind of thing. but the rest did, and the game kept interesting. why? because different tactics were used, different kind of creatures (and complimenting combinations!) so it all just felt different.

- in our last meeting the party met a purple owrm, only it was an earth elemental worm- gave it elemental traits, and DR 5/- it gave them pause and was interesting. perhaps most interesting was that it didn't have a tail, but rather another head... :smalltongue:


ok, i think this has gone too long. to summarize:
- think of challenges outside of battle, strategic ones, investigative ones, time limit ones. in battles use other elements other than the monster themselves. it creats more interesting and more fun battles. and lastly- remember that you don't have to invent monsters or load character classes unto monsters to make good use of them- slight changes (you're the DM after all), good combination and above all- tactics can make for an exceelent monster challenge.

phew! enough. i hope it helps. :smallsmile:
Kol.

[Slipperychicken]

There are pre-made NPC statblocks/generators somewhere on the internet. Go search something like "3.5 NPC generator" or "3.5 NPC statblocks". That could help with his badguy-creation deficiency.

[jiriku]

It seems to me that the only resource he can really use to hurt us is time.

To rephrase this, and perhaps show you a solution, it seems the only way he can challenge you is to threaten you with failing to succeed at your goals. So, since that's working, roll with it! A common mistake that DMs make is to create encounters in which the two sides have no goal other than to kill each other. A more interesting basis for conflict is to give both sides different goals, neither of which requires wiping out the other side. For example,
The players must cross a bridge. The villains must make it impossible for the players to cross.
The players and villains enter an abandoned temple containing three dormant artifacts. The players must activate all three artifacts. The villains must destroy at least one.
The players are helping to defending a castle wall against an assault by villains. The players must hold the wall until reinforcements arrive. The villains must kill the NPC commander who is allied with the players.
Villains with a flotilla of ships are assaulting a port city defended by four towers. The players are charged with destroying all of the enemy fleet's capital ships, while the villains must destroy all four defensive towers.

In each of these situations, it's possible for either, both, or neither side to accomplish its goals, and for either side to succeed without wiping out its opponents. These fights are much more interesting than a kill-fest, and no one will really care about PC resource depletion or the lack thereof. Conveniently, they also don't require your DM to put more time or effort into monster design.