Encounter help(My players stay out)

[jjpickar]

So I'm running a 3.5 game again with three characters who, while not using TO builds and infinite loops, they are VERY experienced and know all the standard tricks. Binder 10, Totemist (built for melee) 10, and Psion (Telepath) 10.

So what I need help on is how to design encounters for them. One cannot stand variations from the rules so fiating changes into monsters to cover unforseen weaknesses is out. He's very knowledgeable about monster and class capabilities (more than me even) so I'm pretty sure he would call my bluff if I implied he may be mistaken. Also using homebrew or altered monsters might frustrate him though he would probably grudgingly accept them from time to time. He is also very in tune to my using of metagame knowledge to have divination and magical detections used when they be really useful and generally disapproves. Most of these are offenses that will cause him to walk from games.

I have another player who cannot stand failure. And by failure I mean random failure, he doesn't mind being outsmarted but failing a lucky die roll irritates him no end. He is more at peace with this sort of thing, since he knows the nature of the beast that is 3.5, but still I want my encounters to not depend on snagging luck save or dies.

Essentially, they use stealth all the time with a high degree of paranoia and deliberation. They then alpha strike unaware enemies and generally plan to knock them out in one round. If this does not work out, they will either nova, if they feel they can get away with it, and bug out before reinforcements arrive or they will abort and run in the opposite direction.

I am prepared to to a great deal of work to make as many of my encounters challenging but I fear that I may be better served to just not overcompensate and let them walk over most encounters. I can live with that. But I would like to know if it is possible, given their preferences, to actually challenge them in mostly by the book, and not metagamed ways?

As a recap, they assaulted a small temple with two planned encounters. The first, had a rocky hill with a narrow path leading up, 5 weretigers (built as spotters using scent), a hill giant (I was going to use him as a tank) and a green hag for some nasty surprises. The temple had a large stone door that was easy to barricade. The binder simply used his Major image ability (I can't recall the vestige, point is it fools scent) to simply walk the party past the first encounter and silently barricade themselves in the temple.

On the second, they got the drop on my clay golem, dark naga (I redid the spell list for controller spells), and half-fiend Azurin Incarnate 8 (built to melee). They used Major image to gain a surprise round (in which they killed the naga and nearly killed the incarnate) and then got higher initiative (no helping that) and finished them all off in the second round.

The last encounter of the night was finally in my favor and only because they wanted to negotiate with a young adult black dragon that was trying extort money from a gnome village. They won initiative but they had not spotted the dragon's two brothers flying overwatch (it was night and distance spotting penalties helped) and I got something of the drop on them. One dragon died in the second round due to failing both:smalleek: saves on a Phantasmal killer from the binder, one died in the fourth from failing a save on massive damage from the totemist and the last was unable to defeat the telepath in a grapple (share pain) and thus had to drop the telepath and continue fleeing without even a consolation prize.

Is this a good level of challenge or am I dropping the ball here? Rocket tag, I can deal with but I feel like two easy encounters followed by one that merely challenged them because they dropped their guard may be too easy.

[Righteous Doggy]

Throw high will save or divine creatures on them. Or a Psionic Slayer or a Holy Liberator. Things that are pretty well immune to mind things and usually have higher hit dice/ac as to not die immidiately or fall for simple tricks. And don't forget buffs! What, didn't think the gaurd would have arcane sight or detect spells? Nope! They protect themselves to.
And not liking variations? The main books are guidelines for basic things, creating your own creatures and adventures is half the fun! I love saying "Thats no ordinary dragon, its one with five levels of sorcerer" "Thats no ordinary sorcerer, its a balor with 5 levels of sorcerer in disguise!"
or... well... at least thats what I got out of your examples. With a pair of binders they're bound to get a high level witch slayer tracking them aren't they?

[Randvek]

Can't stand customized monsters? Frustrated by a home brew monster? I hope he's a friend of yours; he sounds like a real pain in the butt to deal with.

[Averis Vol]

yea thats really unreasonable, he can't meta the exact stats of the creature? no fair.

but yea, use mundane traps they cant easily find; drop away floors, covered pits, enemies hiding in holes on the side of the road and covering themselves with the original layer of grass (can you say free surprise round?), hide the enemies in trees, have them hide behind innocents

all stuff i've effectively used and can guarantee work.

also, tell the MM master to chill and homebrew whatever you want, your the DM, thats your job to make something new and challenging.

[Malachei]

Incredible. Sometimes, I long for the sweet start, when I had no idea about a monster's abilities, and I really enjoy when encountering a surprise.

As a DM, the more rules-savvy my players are, the more I vary monsters. I think metagame thinking is taking away suspense and transforms D&D into a tactical game of optimized combat. If that is the game you want to play, that's fine, but maybe it is just the game he wants to play?

The other, playing D&D and not coping with randomness? How is that supposed to work out?

How are you supposed to challenge them when they seemingly don't want to be challenged at all?

Actually, before designing encounters, I'd suggest you sit with them and clarify and redefine your role as DM. IMO, players are meant to be surprised and part of the suspense is not knowing what to expect and having random results affect the game.


Is this a good level of challenge or am I dropping the ball here? Rocket tag, I can deal with but I feel like two easy encounters followed by one that merely challenged them because they dropped their guard may be too easy.

The encounters are challenging enough if all of you are having fun and the players don't have easy wins throughout. If they are just playing chess and trying to be resource-efficient, it is probably not challenging enough. Not all encounters should be difficult (DMG, pp. 49 provides some guidelines, which you probably know), and it also depends on game style and the specific adventure: If they are in a large dungeon with no good place to rest, perhaps with time pressure, then several easy encounters are still wearing them down. In general, in the wilderness, you often have less encounters per day, which would then be more challenging on average.

From what I read in your OP, you are doing a good job. I'm not sure this interpretation is accurate, but maybe the spirit in the group is too much "PCs vs. what our DM throws at us", and you feel like you are in an arms race?

If yes, you could tell them, out-of-game, that they can't win an arms race against the DM. If they don't believe you, show them in-game.

[moritheil]

One cannot stand variations from the rules so fiating changes into monsters to cover unforseen weaknesses is out. He's very knowledgeable about monster and class capabilities (more than me even) so I'm pretty sure he would call my bluff if I implied he may be mistaken.

That's not really part of the social contract as it stands with DMs and gaming groups. A DM is permitted to occasionally fudge the rules to make for a more interesting game. It sounds like your friend doesn't want to play your game. In which case, why are you the DM? In fact the rules contain a lot of options for DMs to customize monsters, from the "Improving Monsters (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm)" core SRD entry to all the templates and variants.

[jjpickar]

For the record, both players a fairly reasonable, they are just sensitive to these sorts of things. I may have been a tad polemic in my first post due to juvenile feelings of inadequacy at having my encounters so easily bypassed.:smallredface: The one who doesn't like variation developed this due to playing with DMs that completely disregarded the rules all the time to the point that his characters had all of their capabilities removed due to the perception that he was "broken" (he was not by the way but for the sake of brevity I will spare you the builds). Mostly I just want to try and avoid obvious house rules and try and use existing monster builds but I have reserved the right to throw the occasional curve ball. As to the other, well, he actively prefers rules lite low challenge games. Really most of the trouble has been keeping the highly tactical preferences of the one satisfied without making it the game's focus so that the other does not get blown apart by the escalation.

In short, I do talk to them about my concerns but their preferences aren't necessarily invalid nor do they expect me to run a game that is completely devoid of such things. Mostly I just want to minimize the unpleasantness. After all, the game should be able to cater to both of these tastes.

@Righteous Doggy: Witchslayers :smallamused: totally forgot about those dudes. I think more active encounters wherein they must defend themselves against prepared hunters would actually solve some of the problems I just encountered. I have a tendency to use too many passive defender scenarios. Thanks for the inspiration.

@Averis Vol: You know, I just realized they don't have a dedicated trapsmith. That there is something I should exploit.

I may also need to have a talk with them again about the meta. I really just want them to have a good time. If they really don't want to be challenged that's actually fine by me. Sometimes I think, even though they try not to, that players can subconsciously develop an adversarial view of the game due to its frequent combats. At the same time my players like to resort to combat and I don't want them to just walk all over everyone. But yeah, rereading my post and ya'll's comments has made me realize I just need to communicate better.

Anyone have any suggestions for terrain and such for higher level play would also be appreciated.

[rweird]

Does one of your players have a problem with preexisting, rules legal templates being applied to preexisting, rules legal monsters? If so, I think the Dark Creature Template (ToM, shadow magic monsters) would help. Have a dark room with different places for things to hide on multiple levels. (Balconies, pillars, ground floor, catwalks, etc.) have a low-level wizard with arcane sight or Detect Magic active in a study before the room, he will most likely see the players with his magic seeing spells. (He won't see through the illusions, though he will see them.) Have him be permanently Telepathicly Bonded with on of the creature in the following room. (Rary's Telepathic Bond) The Dark creatures will use Hide in Plain Sight and wait for the PCs. Have the room the fight will take place in be covered by the wizard's Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum. Have at least one of the Dark Creatures be a caster that can use battlefield control to cover pieces of the room with fog, and Haste the other combatants. (Silent Spell is great for making him able to cast while hidden) Wait until the Pcs are in the center of the room, if they don't detect the ambush by listen/spot. (Not much fools a good hide check.) Then have the monsters attack using sniping, spring attack, or flyby attack, try to separate the PCs and use battlefield control to cut off the way they came in. The monsters shouldn't be all that hard to beat (EL +1 or 2), though hard to catch without expanding resources. They should retreat into a network of side passages if the battle goes against them, where they will divide and hopefully have one of them tell the monsters further in of the PCs powers and how to foil them.

[Clustered Chaos]

{{Scrubbed}}

[jjpickar]

@rweird: I like the wizard look out suggestion. I have trouble with detect magic in that it requires constant concetration (and therefore foreknowledge of incoming threats) but I Arcane Sight looks like just the thing for this. Also when I looked up Arcane Sight I found another little goodie: Arcane Eye. Templates and Advancement work just fine so those make good suggestions, its just that I like to justify the templates that the creatures have just for the sake of appearances. The dark templates would work well, for example, due to my frequent uses of shadow plane and permanently darkened regions (I just like the occasional "Dark World" encounter). Half-Templates are also easy to fit.

[Malachei]

What, another level 10 game? Damn. Is someone trying to give me opportunities here?

Well in any case. This looks like another job for the Truenamer! :D

*watches Malachei flee in fear again*

Fear? No, just no time to exchange endless arguments via PM as we agree to disagree on a few points. Almost forgot about it, actually, but good you keep remembering it... *shrugs* Need a courtesy hug?

But a Truenamer can work well. I'd say, the more exotic, the better.

[Clustered Chaos]

{{Scrubbed}}

[Malachei]

then I saw you acting scared over what I presume was you realizing it was me that helped the guy and I thought it was funny, so I cracked a joke about it. If that wasn't what you were shuddering about, that makes the mental image much less entertaining.

Could have been someone else you confuse with me, perhaps. Anyway, has nothing lost in this thread.


Either way, whatever grudge you think I'm holding, I'm not. I don't especially care about that anymore, even if you do.

Well, I didn't bring it up, you did. *shrugs again*

[Clustered Chaos]

I brought up the Truenamer referencing the other thread in which a DM needed help with his level 10 party, I gave him that, and he seemed to like it then shortly thereafter this thread came up. It actually had nothing to do with you other than cracking a joke about your reaction to my optimization ability which clearly didn't go over well.

And credit where it's due: Your game did give me the initial idea. Whatever you think about me, props for that.

But back on topic. Mr. DM guy, what if I told you you could give your party a good fight with a Truenamer of all things?

[rweird]

@rweird: I like the wizard look out suggestion. I have trouble with detect magic in that it requires constant concetration (and therefore foreknowledge of incoming threats) but I Arcane Sight looks like just the thing for this. Also when I looked up Arcane Sight I found another little goodie: Arcane Eye. Templates and Advancement work just fine so those make good suggestions, its just that I like to justify the templates that the creatures have just for the sake of appearances. The dark templates would work well, for example, due to my frequent uses of shadow plane and permanently darkened regions (I just like the occasional "Dark World" encounter). Half-Templates are also easy to fit.

I'm glad I could help, a few more things.

A template that gives blindsight, and/or the winged template (SS) would be useful for hit and run tactics. Maybe have a dark monster use Hide in Plain Sight and follow them around though not attack, giving telepathic warnings the the BBEG so he can counter there plans as well.