[3.PF] Help me help my DM with an optimized party

[Fenryr]

Yo, hi! Bear with me. It's kinda complicated.

First, I want to make my intentions clear: I want to help my DM. He's somewhat discouraged and is not enjoying being a DM of a party with 3 optimizers and 1 casual. I apologize in advance for any confusion or lack of clear statements (English is not my native language).

Short story: Any optimized module for DMs? Any homebrew or DM campaign with optimized monsters? A list of powerful monsters? Beyond MM3, of course.

Long story: Right now we're playing The Return of Tomb of Horrors where we are supposed to face the true form of Azererak (dunno where he got that module).

The party right now consists of a Drow Noble Cleric (Level adjustment 2) with HEAVY focus in Necromancy and undeads minions, a simple Barbarian, a Summoner with powerful summons and me, Inquisitor/Swordsage. 25 point buy, two traits, Hero/Anti Hero option. Standard wealth per level. We're 14.

The DM thinks we're too powerful for him to handle. We already beat an Ancient Green Dragon (CR17) and now it's the zombie pet of the Cleric (our only loss was a random Bard of a player who seldomly comes so he's not included in the party). The Cleric also has a frost giant skeleton and a void zombie, the 3 undead minions (Counting the dragon) are intelligent and has feats and skill points as as well. The Barbarian ... is simple because he has a +5 weapon. He's no threat. No uber charger or something similar. The Summoner has quite powerful summons with templates and teamwork feats. The Inquisitor has high AC and nifty tricks with Judgments and spells.

Our last fight was with an Incorporeal Devil who had Damage Reduction 10 unless Good. The Summoner missed the session. At the beginning the Barbarian got paralyzed and the Inquisitor called the wrong Judgements. The only threat was the Frost Giant skeleton who managed to get a Crit of 125 damage. 125/2 - 10 = 52 (half damage to incorporal and the DR). Then Inquisitor called the right Judgments (more damage and ignore proper DR). The Barbarian flees due to a lack of ranged weapon and he got sickened and paralyzed more than once. The Cleric tries a couple of spells and half fail. After a tedious battle we won. At this point, the DM was bored because he couldn't hit the Inquisitor and the Barbarian fled. The Cleric was surrounded by its undead pets. The Summoner was absent.

Now, I tried another solution before: I recommended books (3.5 mostly) that he could use to counter us or to make things more interesting. He claims "I don't have enough time". I KNOW he has time because he likes to play videogames and read other books about fantasy (non RPG stuff).

Why he's the DM? Because he wants to. He has been our DM for almost 4 years with one abandoned campaign and several breaks. In those breaks we have two different DMs (a friend of mine and me). Last time my friend was being a DM, he pressed him to finish early so he could be the DM again (even though he missed a lot of sessions as a player). We ignored him and I was the DM for a two sessions adventure that I could stretch to make it a four sessions adventure but he insisted again. I resigned and allowed him to be DM again.

Then all this happens. Couple of battles where we somewhat domain and lots of roleplay. And he feels down.

So, solutions so far:

1) Tone down the optimization. I could try to convince the party to tone down the numbers and options but I'm sure a single player will refuse.
2) Give more material to my DM. The frustrating part is that I already gave him ideas, feats, monsters, specific locations and such and he doesn't want to use those options. Metagame? No, I will not use it. Also, I gave him a general review, not specific ideas, so it's kinda impossible for me to guess what he's gonna try.
3) Ask him to step aside and make him a player. Perhaps this way he will learn to optimize or he will take time to himself and read more books and options that could be used later.

So, dear Giants and Pixies, what ya got in mind?

[Wermus]

ya forgot to say, the HEAVY focus on necromancy is just undead minions, not real necromancy. (btw im the bard who died,). This DM is not bad, but like Fenryr said, we like to optimize, and the summoner, fenryr and myself(but i cant go all the time) like to keep the things simple to the DM, but sometimes he doesnt know how to counter something as simple as Metamagic feats.

[Griffin]

ya forgot to say, the HEAVY focus on necromancy is just undead minions, not real necromancy. (btw im the bard who died,). This DM is not bad, but like Fenryr said, we like to optimize, and the summoner, fenryr and myself(but i cant go all the time) like to keep the things simple to the DM, but sometimes he doesnt know how to counter something as simple as Metamagic feats.

Hey I have necro magic as well, thing is I don't use it as much xD, anyway, as you guy probably guessed, I'm the cleric, our DM is not bad, but in my opinion he is giving up or is lazy or I don't know, because we have given advise, we all optimize, so we expected he would optimize as well, but seems he doesn't want to, I normally won't have a problem if he wants to do other stuff besides preparing the session, if, he of course was another player, however, he asked and was quite pushy about been the DM and finishing his campaing, which really bothers me, so any help you could provide will be greatly appreciated, I think a list of optimized monster would be the best alternative to asking him to step aside for another person to be DM

Thank you!

[prufock]

The simplest solution that comes to mind is, if he's using modules, use adventures intended for characters a couple levels above yours. For a party that's optimized, it's ok for the DM to inflate their ECLs and assume they can handle higher-CR threats.

[rockdeworld]

The simplest solution that comes to mind is, if he's using modules, use adventures intended for characters a couple levels above yours. For a party that's optimized, it's ok for the DM to inflate their ECLs and assume they can handle higher-CR threats.
+1. That was my first thought as well.

On the other hand, high level D&D requires some degree of system mastery by the DM. An Ancient Green Dragon is a (weak) CR21 encounter and 13th level spellcaster, so probably shouldn't lose against an ECL 14 party that isn't packing Shivering Touch (although I admit that's a rare case). It has an array of abilities and tons of prep time. If the DM doesn't take advantage of that, it may be 1-sided, and probably will be with any monster he throws at you. Let him throw a Titan or Balor or Mr. T at you guys just to see how you handle it.

The last thing I want to note is that being a DM means losing. Not in every battle, but most. That can be a downer. The question is whether he has the fortitude to take it and not turn into a Killer DM or quit.

[bookguy]

To the DM:

In pathfinder, I've found the CR system is a little bit off. You want to keep regular encounters at about CR ECL+2 with an un-optimized party, and ECL+3 for boss fights. I don't even understand a lot of what your party is doing in terms of optimization, but with all of that optimization you may want to throw CR 18 or 19 encounters at them.

One way to increase the challenge of encounters is to assume the enemy has time to prepare. Maybe the enemy spied on the party a minute ago (or scryed on them if the enemy is a spellcaster). Have the enemy buff itself precombat, get in a tactically good location (like higher ground or something similar), and ambush the party when they're low on spells not expecting it. Also keep a few surprises on the battlefield (maybe there's a pit trap right in front of the enemy that the barbarian will charge into if he's not being careful).

I agree with rockdeworld that you should expect to lose. However, you should manage to inflict a little bit of damage before you go.

I'm against meta-gaming as a DM, so enemies shouldn't be selected specifically to prey on the party's weaknesses. However, any enemy with an in-game reason to be ready for exactly what the party has can prepare accordingly.

As an example difficult combatant, how about a level 17 wizard? He's basically omniscient by this point and he can learn any 8th level or lower arcane spell he wants. He can scry on the party over the course of a couple of days to learn their strengths and weaknesses. When he's ready for the fight, he can buff himself (or pay someone else to buff him) against cold, acid, ability damage, and whatever else the party and their undead minions commonly use. He can prepare spells to take advantage of their known vulnerabilities. Then he can teleport into the party's camp when they're about to rest and cast quickened command undead on whichever one he thinks it's most likely to affect. After that, he has access to 8th level spells specifically chosen for this fight, while the rest of the party just has whatever spells they have remaining after a day of adventuring.

If you don't want to spend the time preparing anything so elaborate, you could just put the party through some pre-written adventure for 15th or 16th level characters. However, if you don't want to be doing extra work you shouldn't be DMing in the first place.

Also, don't let the party level up any more. High level spells are just too ridiculous to put in the hands of the PCs. Or you could tell them they can only take levels in martial classes from now on.

Honestly, the fight against the incorporeal devil sounds good to me. One party member got effectively neutralized, the crit was just lucky, and the inquisitor had to figure out the enemy before he could start being effective. It sounds like a perfect fight to me. The party seems to play like a blue Magic: the Gathering deck. The one issue I have is that it is surprising to me that the devil wouldn't have any abilities that could affect the inquisitor at all. Perhaps you just didn't spend enough prep time looking at its abilities.

To the Players:

Perhaps you could tone down on the optimization a little bit. Instead of purposely taking on weaker abilities, what if you tried to optimize with only Core Rulebook and APG as options? It might be even more fun that way. Restrictions breed creativity.

To Fenryr specifically:

Your English is great! Don't sell yourself short. Many native English-speakers seem to lose the ability to express themselves as clearly as you do as soon as they go on the internet.

As I said above, the combat with the incorporeal devil seems fine to me. I'm not exactly sure why you thought that fight was underpowered.

To Griffin specifically:

You say that he's a good DM, but then you complain that he doesn't spend enough time preparing. If that bothers you too much, then he's not a good DM for you. Perhaps he should just play in you group if it's that bad, and maybe DM a group that doesn't optimize quite that much.

[Fenryr]

Dear bookguy, thanks for your special reply. Thanks as well for the other ideas, peeps.

Personally I think the DM wants an easy party. Too bad we're not easy... Let's see how the next sessions develop. According to the new (or old) attitude we should talk with him.

Thanks again. I really needed to get it off from mah chest.

[Incorrect]

Personally I think it is important to realize that your party of 4 people, is actually a party of 7 with the necromancers powerful minions, and perhaps a party of 10 with the summons. The encounters need to reflect this fact.
Would it make a difference if the GM just doubled or tripled the amount of enemies? It sounds like he is running a prewritten adventure, and doesn't advance monsters on his own.
As a GM, I calculate minions as part of the group when determining XP rewards. Perhaps introducing this would make you consider leaving some of them behind?
I also agree with the suggestion of running higher level adventures.

[GilesTheCleric]

If your DM isn't opposed to using 3.5 material (I'm not very familiar with pathfinder - I was so confused about the 1/2 dmg incorporeal thing for the whole thread until I realized it was PF), then he could try using some 3.0/3.5 stuff. The Book of Challenges is fun, and so is Elder Evils.

Alternatively, he could do like my DM does - rather than sending one big creature of CR ~25 at us, send a bunch of CR ~20s. Dealing with the Terrasque alone is easy, but it's less easy when there's also a Hellfire Wyrm, a Remmanon (sp), 6 Erinyes, and a continuous stream of Pit Fiend Duke simulacrums. And yes, we killed them all. As a party of level 15 and 16s. It helps when you've got a cleric on your side who knows what he's doing ^^ =P
Needless to say, increasing the number of attacks headed your way will decrease your chances of survival, especially if those attacks have a fair chance of landing. Boss fights are too easy in 3.X (unless it's an optimized T1) -- go with several creatures of a very slightly lower CR.