DM needs some advice

[Lonewolf147]

I've been DM'ing for many years. But I seemed to have made some mistakes with my current group and game in giving them access to too much stuff, which is making their characters very overpowered. Because I'm actually a nice guy, I don't want to just take stuff away. They did actually buy their stuff.

I'm currently running the group through a mega-module called Rappan Athuk by Necromancer Games. If anyone is familiar with it, they will know that this dungeon is a true killer of a place, culminating in a battle with Orcus.

My error in judgement started when I allowed them to play Gestalt characters (an option from Unearthed Arcana). This immediately set them above the normal power level for the design of the module. Then my other mistake was in allowing them access to my one stop shop of magic, Bob's. (Bob's has been a long standing store and NPC in all of my games). The problem with that was the players now have access to buy just about any magic item in all of the WoTC books. Of course they still have to pay for them, and in most cases must wait for the item to be created. But with the amount of loot they've been collecting and selling to fund their greedy desires, they have equipped themselves in such a manner that they are probably 4 or 5 ECL's higher than their actual.

So here's the thing. As I said I'm a nice guy and don't want to take stuff away (well, not directly, I have plans for how to have them 'lose' the occasional item) but I need to beef up the dungeon to be a more realistic challenge for them, as it should have been. Right now they are walking through most of it. It's easy enough for me to buff up, level up, some of the main enemies in the module but just leveling them up doesn't help with all the specific tailoring the players have done with their characters.

Here's a brief of the PC's (I'm not going to break down all their different Gestalt levels)

1: 10th level Rogue/Warlock. (specialized in shadow jumping, d-door, hiding and sneak attacks). With feats and magic can sneak attack undead. Has magic that makes him Non-Detectible and innate abilities to fly and be invisible (along with great hide checks) nearly at will. Pounces and gets multiple full attacks a round when using certain special abilities

2: 10th level Paladin/Cleric (of St. Cuthbert). Not so broken of the group, but a very powerful caster/turner. Some magic, most notably armor that protects him from incorporeal touches.

3: 9th level Cleric/Wizard (of St. Cuthbert). Again not so broken, just uber powerful. With a huuuuge array of spells, wands and rods.

4: 9th level Stonechild/Fighter. Specialized in two weapon fighting and critical strikes. (15-20 range on both weapons) Has a very high attack bonus that gets through everyone's AC. Has full fortified armor that prevents criticals and a high HP (which is appropriate for the tank of the group). Has spring attack.

My biggest problem is the rogue. By himself he could walk through the dungeon and probably put up a good fight with Orcus at the end. So whenever there is an encounter, I can buff up the enemies enough to make it a challenge for the other three, but the rogue just hides and pounces around and kills everything and they can't get attacks back. The only way to 'see' him right now, unless he's physically hiding, is with True Seeing. Not everyone is going to have that. I don't have the time to scour all the books to find all the special items and abilities to boost my enemies to make them a challenge for the whole party, like they do but only having to focus on their one character.

So I'm asking for advice from the community at large at some ideas at how I can adjust some of the encounters, or magic or feats I can use to help occasionally counter some of the players' specialness. I really don't want to kill them, I want to make it a challenge, not a walk in the park.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Lifesense, which some undead possess, can still spot the Rogue (unless he has the Darkstalker feat). Tremorsense is another good way to detect him.

How is he pouncing? If he's using Glaivelock, do keep in mind that the act of using Eldritch Glaive is a full-round action. Also do keep in mind that Dimension Door prevents any further actions that turn, so he can't teleport then blast. It has to be the other way around. The only real way around this is Shadowpouncing, which generally requires levels in a PrC. Since he doesn't have Flurry of Blows, he can't have access to Sun School.

[Canarr]

I'd be really, really interested in seeing the build for that Rogue/Warlock. How does all that work? :smallconfused:

As to detecting and/or challenging the rogue: you're forgetting Scent, Tremorsense and Blindsight/-sense (I keep mixing these up). Guard dogs (wolves, krenshar...), Monstrous Scorpions... there's plenty of those.
Then, go for enemies, spells or traps that target his Fortitude Save - that's bound to be the weakest, right? Remember that Undead don't need to breathe and are immun to poison, so having poisonous gas in the room with the Undead they're targeting should ramp up the CR nicely.

[Sturmcrow]

Hey rogue!
Glitterdust...

I would love to see the build too.


If you are good at bumping CRs I would just buff up the fights to make them a decent challenge. This tweaking must be done with caution as it is easy to make fights to hard still at 10th level.

Find enemies that are strong against some members of the party and weak against others so if they fight strategically it will work out. Add miss chance to fights sometimes to curb sneak attack if the Rogue/Lock is killing things to easily.

[Lonewolf147]

I can't recall the feat/ability that gives him the full attack after pounce/shadowstep. I'm waiting for a complete feat list from him now and will get that posted when I can. But, here's a copy of his character sheet (not including all the magic items).

http://wolfslair.dns2go.com/share/Gainen Shade - 5 Page.pdf

http://wolfslair.dns2go.com/share/Shadow Rogue.docx

http://wolfslair.dns2go.com/share/Shadowdancer.docx

Tremorsense won't work because he flies everywhere. Scent could work, but he has a feat that make it so if someone uses scent they still need to make a spot check, and when he has such a crazy hide, it's still very difficult to make.


EDIT: I added changed the original download link to the full character sheet. I also added two more links that have the Shadow Rogue and the ShadowDancer classes we are using.

[Canarr]

Holy Mother of... I can see your problems here.

I've never seen a Gestalt character, so I can't really comment on whether or not that character is out of the ordinary, or how far. Still, I noticed: how come he gets the Shadowdancer abilities at will? Shouldn't the Shadow Jump be limited to a certain distance in feet per day?

[nedz]

AMF, dusty floor, monster with good spot, ...
Another Rogue doing similiar things - set a thief to catch a thief.
True Seeing + good spot
Glitterdust on a magical trap - which he might be able to counter, if he takes the time.
Alarm spell + caster with AoEs (not ones with reflex saves)

[Lonewolf147]

Holy Mother of... I can see your problems here.

I've never seen a Gestalt character, so I can't really comment on whether or not that character is out of the ordinary, or how far. Still, I noticed: how come he gets the Shadowdancer abilities at will? Shouldn't the Shadow Jump be limited to a certain distance in feet per day?

Shadow Rogue is where he's getting most of his abilities from, letting him dimension slide via shadows and dimension door at will. There's a special ability/feat that let's him take a full attack after any 'teleport' type movement. Once I get that specific info I'll post it too.

The list of immunities they all have are quite impressive, as are all their saving throws. Poison is pretty useless to me at this point. I like the Glitterdust idea, and I'm currently trying to create a rogue to send after them as an assassin (the head priests and Orcus himself are starting to get really annoyed with them).

[Taffimai]

1) In a gestalt game, it is entirely reasonable to make the enemies into gestalt characters as well (not big monsters that are more properly advanced by HD, but all the humanoids they run into).

2) Those gestalt levels are well spent on any class with Improved Uncanny Dodge. It's not a zombie, it's a zombie//barbarian! Shamble... Shamble... Snif, snif, brains? RAAAAAAGE!

That, and all the scent, tremorsense, blindfight, glitterdust advice other people have already given. Glitterdust is especially effective in a trap.

[Thumperganker]

Be warned, you start cranking up the CR of things you can start one shoting the PCs. Numbers help, and ready actions. If two things are standing there and the rogue jumps one, if the other is ready or both are than they get their attack off before his.

Also, and i'm surprised no one has mentions this, anti magic field, or something to that effect. You want them to not have as powerful items? temporarily making there items useless can be a fun thing to do.

Gestault characters are usually for situations where you have less than the full party for players. So if you do have the full group of players, i would say it is perfectly reasonable to make everything there go up against gestault.

Also about 60 percent, i believe, of the encounters they are running into should be pretty easy for them. with only about 20 percent being more of a challenge, and maybe 5 being difficult, if i remember correctly.

If they don't have ghost touch or the equivalent, ethereal things can help, 50 percent miss chance, plus there is a greater shade i think that gets spring attack, hit and run back into the walls.

Traps, traps, and traps, be inventive, something as simple as a kobold opening up a bag of flour to spray the room with, yes no dmg, but pretty sure if you're covered in flour its going to make it a lot easier to spot you

touch attack rays that do dmg (ability or otherwise) , there is a bunch that allow no save, emfeeblement being one.

Thats all for now, hope some of it helps

[Phaederkiel]

Why does he hit with such big numbers? A melee Attack bonus of 11 plus a plus 1 sword should not equal 19.

even worse with whatever "sublety SS" might be.


And where does he get this plus 27misc on his hide check? 4 are racial. But the rest? He does not wear any items except the rings, even if darkhiden (which i do not know) grants a bonus to hide. But is this bonus 23?

I am afraid I have to call shenanigans...

By the way, his move silently is not nearly as good as his hide. Perhaps you can make things hear him.

[Phaederkiel]

oh, and then:

the obvious. Make someone flee the battle. He tells his friends about the dangerous tactics. Next time Mr. wonderrogue uses them, he gets specifically bombed. Monster 1: "our info was right, he is doing it again!" Monster 2:"perfect! he walked into our trap!" and then some stinking cloud /solid fog / death cloud...

[nedz]

Shadow Rogue is where he's getting most of his abilities from, letting him dimension slide via shadows and dimension door at will.

Bright light would seem to stop most of this, so just have lots of continual flames around.
There are lots of ways of stopping Dimension Door.
Forbiddance is a bit obvious, Planer Portals, ...

[Kuulvheysoon]

And where does he get this plus 27misc on his hide check? 4 are racial. But the rest? He does not wear any items except the rings, even if darkhiden (which i do not know) grants a bonus to hide. But is this bonus 23?

I am afraid I have to call shenanigans...

By the way, his move silently is not nearly as good as his hide. Perhaps you can make things hear him.

His Hide modifier is probably so high because he spends a lot of time invisible, according to the OP. Even while moving, Invisibility grants you a +20 bonus to Hide.

[Phaederkiel]

okay, if he puts that directly to his sheet...I was afraid he would be invisible on top of that 45.



Well, perhaps he does not get that invisibility against them beasties with an alternate way of sensing you? I mean, I always found it strange that darkstalker made beasts that only can sense you via smell roll a spot against a hide, but you could rule that "spotting" as well as "hiding" does not specify the process to be a visual one.

What I mean: you could rule that invis doesnt modify his hide against monsters with special senses. Problem is, naturally, that such monsters most of the time have pretty crappy spot (since they normally do not need it).

still, he is probably better caught with hearing.

[Lonewolf147]

His Hide modifier is probably so high because he spends a lot of time invisible, according to the OP. Even while moving, Invisibility grants you a +20 bonus to Hide.

Yes, and I make sure he takes the negatives for when he moves and does re-hide actions after attacks.


Bright light would seem to stop most of this, so just have lots of continual flames around.
There are lots of ways of stopping Dimension Door.
Forbiddance is a bit obvious, Planer Portals, ...

Yes, the light is something that is happening more now. That at least would remove some of his special blur effects, but there would still be shadows around to use. I forgot about the Forbiddance spell and have been pondering how to logically implement Dimensional Anchor.


Why does he hit with such big numbers? A melee Attack bonus of 11 plus a plus 1 sword should not equal 19.

even worse with whatever "sublety SS" might be.


And where does he get this plus 27misc on his hide check? 4 are racial. But the rest? He does not wear any items except the rings, even if darkhiden (which i do not know) grants a bonus to hide. But is this bonus 23?

I am afraid I have to call shenanigans...

By the way, his move silently is not nearly as good as his hide. Perhaps you can make things hear him.

oh, and then:

the obvious. Make someone flee the battle. He tells his friends about the dangerous tactics. Next time Mr. wonderrogue uses them, he gets specifically bombed. Monster 1: "our info was right, he is doing it again!" Monster 2:"perfect! he walked into our trap!" and then some stinking cloud /solid fog / death cloud...

There are already two things (they found the third later on and killed it) that are out and spying on them telling their tactics. There's a wererat that's been stalking them from afar for quite a while and just last game session a vampire got away (and is pissed because they killed his Succubus lover LOL).

As for his attack rolls, I can't answer that off the top of my head right now. The character sheet is one from HeroForge, so it doesn't show all his items that provide circumstance bonuses and such. I'm waiting for my player to email me a fuller copy of his stuff so I can use it to discuss and explain with you all.



Be warned, you start cranking up the CR of things you can start one shoting the PCs. Numbers help, and ready actions. If two things are standing there and the rogue jumps one, if the other is ready or both are than they get their attack off before his.

True enough. That's why I'm not too concerned over the piddly stuff that they can walk through, but the major boss battles and such are the ones I'm most concerned about re-constructing appropriately. I just last night did readied actions against them, something that I apparently have forgotten about LOL and it worked great.


Those gestalt levels are well spent on any class with Improved Uncanny Dodge. It's not a zombie, it's a zombie//barbarian! Shamble... Shamble... Snif, snif, brains? RAAAAAAGE

hahaha, I love that idea. Now so long as I can get the undead engaged long enough to show off their 'extra spiffy side' before the paladin turns and destroys them all.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Sounds like you need to take a really hard look at that Rogue's sheet. The only things that I know of that give you pouncing on teleport is either Shadowpouncing (which can come from one of two PrC's) or a tactical feat in Complete Warrior that requires Flurry of Blows, which means unless he's got Monk levels tucked away in there somewhere (difficult to do with Warlock on the other side), he doesn't qualify for that either.

Also, this sounds like a job for... Disposable Golem Minions! Immune to sneak attack (although the rogue probably can get hold of a Wand of Golemstrike to re-enable, assuming he didn't pick up the ACF that lets him get half his sneak attack damage anyways), NOT undead, relatively difficult to kill, immune to most magic, and should pose a fair fight for these guys.

Also remember that SLA's have major problems when encountering Spell Resistance, so since the Rogue//Warlock isn't level 11 yet, he can't have access to Vitriolic Blast, so he can't tack his EB damage on top of his SA damage.

[Lonewolf147]

Oooooo :rubshands: golems. Yes, I need more of those.

Let me ask this, there's been mention of AMF a few times. I actually tried to use this in a trap once before but found out it failed when I didn't read the rules right. AMF is a personal only spell. So that means it needs to be cast on a person, not just in an area. So things like Anti-Magic Zones don't seem to exist in 3.5. Or are there rules on that somewhere that I'm missing?


Oh, and one other thing that I'm definitely going to have to start introducing is Psionics. I keep psionics as a separate system from arcane and divine.

[Kuulvheysoon]

There's an anti-magic trap written up somewhere; source, anyone?

You could also turn an Antimagic Torc (Und) into a warforged component so that your PCs can't access it's 1/day AMF (CL11) and toss it on a random WF mook.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Oooooo :rubshands: golems. Yes, I need more of those.

Let me ask this, there's been mention of AMF a few times. I actually tried to use this in a trap once before but found out it failed when I didn't read the rules right. AMF is a personal only spell. So that means it needs to be cast on a person, not just in an area. So things like Anti-Magic Zones don't seem to exist in 3.5. Or are there rules on that somewhere that I'm missing?First off, there are rules for making custom magic items (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm). I do not suggest letting your PC's use this, but you can use it just fine. A Continuous magic item of AMF would emanate the AMF from the item itself.

Furthermore, there are rules for making magical traps (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm) that could do things like generate an AMF.



Oh, and one other thing that I'm definitely going to have to start introducing is Psionics. I keep psionics as a separate system from arcane and divine.

Then you will have your solution with one little power (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/touchsight.htm). Bypasses invisibility and hide checks completely.

[Varil]

There are a million ways to beat invisibility. Listen checks(remember, you can't move silently if you're fighting! Murderin' things gives away your position pretty much immediately.), glitterdust, bags of flour(Dungeonscape), enemies with nonstandard senses, Deeper Darkness(blind everyone, even the field a little), AoE attacks(He has evasion? No problem! Evard's Black Tentacles will make him behave just fine.), scent...

[Gavinfoxx]

Things which can defeat invisibility:

-Visible Clutter in the areas where characters would walk or fly
-Swarms
-Area of effect spells (fireball and such)
-Area of effect alchemical substances
-Fairy Fire
-Torch Bug Paste
-Scent
-Glitterdust
-Dawnburst
-Invisibility Purge
-See Invisible
-Flour bombs or dust bombs or other such things
-Arcane Sight
-Detect Magic
-Detect Invisibility
-True Seeing
-Blindsight
-Blindsense
-Mindsight
-Lifesense
-Touchsight
-A very high listen score can pinpoint invisible creatures
-Spot can actually be used to see invisible
-There is a skill trick which can help spot see invisible
-Large numbers of enemies with nets
-Any sort of light fog or water or snow or whatever which can show movement in the substance could defeat invisibility.
-Cast light on some glue or tar or something in a method that is throwable as a splash weapon, and throw it: the light will stay in the glue, and it will stick to whatever it hits, even something invisible (this is a jury rigged version of Torch Bug Paste).

[Phaederkiel]

the problems with many of the mentioned ways to catch him are threefold:

a) he has definitely darkstalker, which causes alternate senses to not apply

b) he can teleport out of any jam that has any kind of shadowy component. if he is clever (and it sounds like he is too clever), he has some ability to produce shadow himself.

c) he has a BIG mundane hide modifier. Even if you can see invisibility, he just might beat your spot easily with 20 plus 1d20 hide. This also works against glitterdust (he might just not care about minus 20 on his hide, when his hide was 45 before). It is, in short, quite improbable that the same guy that has the Skills to spot him can also cast the glitterdust.


and then there is the minor problem of his big tohit and quite big dmg.
A dedicated spotter / listener might just be easy to kill for him.

I think he wants to meet a lot of dragons. The true seeing, sky high spot /listen, big HP and dangerously clever kind.

[Soranar]

I think it's time to break out the tier 1 enemies.

First thought: Tuckers' kobolds, evil I know but it works. His search is only at 21 so traps can still ruin his day + facing tons of low HP enemies is really not his thing (unless he has great cleave, having his feat list would really help)
also his Hide check can't possibly be this high unless you gave him an Item familiar... but then again maybe you did.

Illusions, lots and lots of illusions to give him pointless targets to attack and waste rounds on.

Exploding flour trap: homebrew trap filled with sticky colored (usually white) stuff that gives you a huge negative circumstance modifier to hide checks.

beads curtains: same as above but a negative circumstance modifier to move silently checks (basically strands of noise making things that make noise whenever they're moved/touched, they should cover the entire area of a hallway)

note that both options are non-magical and thus harder to counter

enemies that attack squares (without a reflex save), hulking hurlers to the rescue

Or you could just hit them with DM fiat with a really high level Mage's disjunction that ''happens'' to destroy their more annoying magic items (again this is really evil but you put yourself in a corner here)

Finally a high level caster (with an arbitrarily huge save or suck DC)

by the way, his saves seem way too high for his level, I don't think he counted that right (a level 10 character with high saves only has a +7 but he counted +8) and where is he getting a +10 to reflex saves from?

note: basically every other character but the warlock/rogue is highly unoptimized so don't worry about them really, I doubt they're that efficient

[BerronBrightaxe]

there are usually 3 variables in a battle: the players, the soon-to-be-spoils NPC's and the terrain. You can manipulate all three, so think of stuff which makes it challenging.

f.g. have a room full with caltrops and the like and fill it with monsters with damage reduction. In this way the players are slowed while the NPC's can move freely around. Or have a room with a resetting symbol of Power Word: blind and have them fighting against a creature without eyesight.

Also there are a ton of other races/templates out there which aren't undead and give sneak immunity.

if you have some enemies of the group, have them study the tactics. Have a (invisible) wizard cast dominate person/monster on the rogue and have the rogue go bananas on the group.
Have several assassins flank the various members with 'Staggering strike' (Comp. Adv) and improved blink. This will even work against the full fortification, considering it isn't a sneak attack/crit, although the dc will be pretty low...

Have someone rob/steal/kill Bob's... this should give some leanway on the magic items department (and might give a nice plothook)

Anyway.. hfgl

[Lonewolf147]

Some great ideas, thanks!

Here is his full character sheet and two documents with the Shadow Rogue and Shadowdancer classes we're using.

http://wolfslair.dns2go.com/share/Gainen Shade - 5 Page.pdf

http://wolfslair.dns2go.com/share/Shadow Rogue.docx

http://wolfslair.dns2go.com/share/Shadowdancer.docx


I do need to note, before someone asks how he has so many feats, one of my house rules that we've been using for years is the ability to purchase 1 extra feat each level starting at 2nd at the cost of XP and gold. It gets more expensive as you go up in levels, but helps to flesh out your lower level characters.

Something I found in Book of Vile Darkness is the spell Phantasmal Thief. I'm going to use this to help relieve them of some of their stuff when they are resting. I love how it can even take stuff out of their bags of holding.

[Yahzi]

The only way to 'see' him right now, unless he's physically hiding, is with True Seeing.
The way to counter invisibility... is to make everyone invisible.

Fight in total darkness, fog clouds, or pyrotechnics clouds. Sure, the rogue still has a big advantage, but he can't sneak attack what he can't see.

[Canarr]

Or bring in a few enemies with just enough barbarian levels to give them Uncanny Dodge - no more sneak attacks for the rogue.

[navar100]

Be honest. Admit you made a mistake and work with the players to tone down their magic items by fiat. Compensate them in cash they can use for minutiae like staying at the best tavern and live like kings. While they can't keep everything, they can keep what's really important. Have them pretend they got hit with Disjunction. What items would really upset them on losing and what don't they care about?

This is a metagame problem you inadvertently created so fix it metagame. Doing it in game via thievery, a real Disjunction, or some other method will unfairly upset your players for a crime they did not commit.

[SimonMoon6]

Having played through that module as a player with a somewhat optimized wizard (along with an optimized archer and some non-optimized characters), I recall there being significant threats, though we seemed to find them in random order (here's a CR 1 goblin, here's a CR 25 demilich, here's a CR 5 something else).

Have they found the box with the demilich in it? Make sure they do. Make sure they have things to boost their chances to open it. (My wizard had some Perform skill because he entered a prestige class that he later decided not to take; that plus the "+20 to any skill" spell made it easy enough to open the box.) If they're not good at Perform, give them more magic items (hee hee) so that they can succeed. That just about wiped out our party.

And I recall plentiful areas of anti-magic fields. My character was planning to come back and wipe them out with Disjunctions, but I don't think he ever got to do so.

And speaking of Disjunction... it's a dirty trick, but having spellcasters cast that on the PC party is a surefire way to get rid of their equipment. It's a terrible weapon in the DM's hands because it's a weapon that the players *could* use but never want to use.

And then, there's always a Deck of Many Things. It's a gamble, but one thing that *might* happen is a PC losing all their equipment. It happened to one of the PCs in our game, but the DM let the PC avoid this somehow. If nothing else, you can certainly thin the crowd a bit with the Deck.

And then, there's Orcus himself. He was really pretty rough for our group. One thing I recall as being annoying: he summons vampire with full spellcasting levels. If the Pcs are gestalts, have Orcus summon gestalt vampires.

[Phaederkiel]

unfortunately, your files do not open for me.

So can anyone tell me how he got his saves, and his to hit (and his armor, if he really doesnt wear any) so high?

I think your problem is your way to use homebrew that is really disbalanced. You give for those who take, and he took. The other guys did not take. So you have a disbalance. but you cannot really blame him for taking what you offered.

I think the most mature way would be talking to him. Make clear that you will have to change your rules somewhat to balance the party.

[Gavinfoxx]

a) he has definitely darkstalker, which causes alternate senses to not apply


Definitely NOT all of them! Several of those senses defeat Darkstalker and hide modifiers. Lifesense, Touchsight, Mindsight specifically.

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=11034.0

[Lostbutseeking]

Mindsight in particular with an Ex source of telepathy (mindbender being the obvious one) overcomes just about anything short of a lobotomy automatically and is always on.

[Lonewolf147]

Why does he hit with such big numbers? A melee Attack bonus of 11 plus a plus 1 sword should not equal 19.

even worse with whatever "sublety SS" might be.


And where does he get this plus 27misc on his hide check? 4 are racial. But the rest? He does not wear any items except the rings, even if darkhiden (which i do not know) grants a bonus to hide. But is this bonus 23?


Ok, here's the schtick. He has one shortsword. He has it listed twice because he the sword is a Sword of Subtlety (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Sword_of_Subtlety). It grants him a +4 while sneak attacking. So he has the weapon listed twice for easy reference, once with it once without it. The breakdown of his attack bonuses are:

BAB +8
Weapon Finesse +5
+1 Weapon +1
Size Mod +1
Clever Strike +4 (must be used with weapon finesse weapons)
Subtlety +4 (Can only be used with Sneak Attacks)



And where does he get this plus 27misc on his hide check? 4 are racial. But the rest? He does not wear any items except the rings, even if darkhiden (which i do not know) grants a bonus to hide. But is this bonus 23?


He has other circumstantial magical items that DO stack to give him the extra bonuses on his hide. Heroforge doesn't let you enter in circumstantial magic items.


The way to counter invisibility... is to make everyone invisible.

Fight in total darkness, fog clouds, or pyrotechnics clouds. Sure, the rogue still has a big advantage, but he can't sneak attack what he can't see.

That's a good idea for the group as a whole, but the rogue has the See Invisible ability (from his Warlock side). But adding more physical visual restrictions, like fogs and dust (and I like to flour trick) would hinder him.


I think he wants to meet a lot of dragons. The true seeing, sky high spot /listen, big HP and dangerously clever kind.

Yes, Dragons. There are several that they haven't encountered yet and have plans for one of the Red's to attack their homebase town while they are away in the dungeon. This attack is going to destroy a lot, including Bob's shop of magic (thanks BerronBrightaxe for the idea!). I'm in the process of altering their as written stats. My personal belief is that dragons RAW are too weak for what they are supposed to be. In essence, a Dragon should be on par (when they reach very very old ages) with fighting deities. So that means I need to scale them up from early ages. Luckily I have a nifty little excel sheet to help me do that quickly.



Have they found the...

Nope not yet. There are still quite a few of the major encounters that they haven't reached or found. I'm just getting tired of when they do find these major encounters, the battle lasts 3, maybe 4 rounds and it's over. There's not much feeling of pride in a battle that one or two PC's essentially took care of in a matter of seconds. I generally don't even get the time to use the special abilities and tactics of the 'bosses' before they are dead.


And speaking of Disjunction... it's a dirty trick, but having spellcasters cast that on the PC party is a surefire way to get rid of their equipment. It's a terrible weapon in the DM's hands because it's a weapon that the players *could* use but never want to use.

Yes, this is something I've considered too. We as a group know the dangers of overusing this. They don't have access to it yet, but I do :) I have its use planned for a few of the bigger battles. I don't want to suddenly drop it all on them at once (well, there's an ambush being prepared on them right now that may turn into a TPK.

They just finished killing the Succubus and driving off the Vampire (the two lovers) and have holed up in the secret chamber where the grassy field at night illusion was (they dispelled that). Now they are essentially trapped in a hole with the enemy mounting an ambush outside. Hmmm, wonder how they would deal with lava suddenly pouring down the stairs from the ONLY exit and starting to fill the room?



And then, there's always a Deck of Many Things. It's a gamble, but one thing that *might* happen is a PC losing all their equipment. It happened to one of the PCs in our game, but the DM let the PC avoid this somehow. If nothing else, you can certainly thin the crowd a bit with the Deck.

I always use the Deck once in every campaign I run. I love it. But I'm not sure if now is the best time to bring it out. Since it can be as beneficial as it can be detrimental, I think I need to wait a bit longer until I can get their power level under control a bit more.


And then, there's Orcus himself. He was really pretty rough for our group. One thing I recall as being annoying: he summons vampire with full spellcasting levels. If the Pcs are gestalts, have Orcus summon gestalt vampires.

It'll be a while before they encounter him directly, but they've already destroyed the upper level temple and so the other two temples are building strategies to hunt them down and kill them before they reach the others.



Thanks all for the help so far. I'm getting great ideas on how to fix my problem and make it a more level playing field again.

Just in case people are interested in the story so far, I've been summarizing it at my forum. Here's a link to the thread: http://www.triplebotch.com/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=1914

[Arbane]

And then, there's always a Deck of Many Things. It's a gamble,

I'd advise against this - the Deck can be a cure worse than the disease. To quote Penny Arcade on it, "That thing EATS campaigns."

[Kuulvheysoon]

Yes, Dragons. There are several that they haven't encountered yet and have plans for one of the Red's to attack their homebase town while they are away in the dungeon. This attack is going to destroy a lot, including Bob's shop of magic (thanks BerronBrightaxe for the idea!). I'm in the process of altering their as written stats. My personal belief is that dragons RAW are too weak for what they are supposed to be. In essence, a Dragon should be on par (when they reach very very old ages) with fighting deities. So that means I need to scale them up from early ages. Luckily I have a nifty little excel sheet to help me do that quickly.

Actually, you don't really need to scale them up.

What you need, friend, is the Draconomicon. Specifically, the 12 level PrC (Dragon Ascendant) that has, as a capstone, turning into a DEMIGOD. Advancing the CR of the dragon (assuming Great Wyrm age) should put most at or near the CR 30 range, I believe. Stack additional dragon PrCs as you see fit.

Just remember; dragons qualify for [epic] feats after hitting Very Old, I believe. Could someone confirm this for me ?