Behind the screen thread - combat among other things

[ddude987]

Hello everyone! I have recently started a campaign and I've been asking questions, so I have another. When you are the DM, what levels of crowd control do you find to be fair?

As a player, its very boring to effectively lose your turn for the entirety of combat, or near enough, but as a DM CCing a problematic character not only makes the combat harder for the players but also increases realism that the enemies would have spellcasters, or similar, too.

Also if anyone else has questions about being behind the screen, feel free to post them here, would be interesting discussion.

[Fax Celestis]

Your role as DM is twofold: you need to challenge the players, but you also need to let them have fun. Sitting out while your character is stunned or dead or similar is not fun, but enemy casters should use those functions to defeat their enemies. I generally solve this problem by giving my spellcasters status effect spells that only inflict solvable conditions: blind, deaf, trip, etc.

[Enguebert]

At low level, no spell put a character completly out of fight, or if the player if out of fight, it is easy for the rest of group to put him back in fight (example : sleep spell)

At higher level, spells like dominate, flesh to stone, finger of death could completly remove a player from fight.
And it is normal for smart opponent to use those spells, and to use on most dangerous players. But you can't remove those options from opponents or they aren't worth their CR.

Some solutions
- If the scenario allows the players to know who is their opponent, allow them to prepare. Hey, the enemy boss is a medusa, let's buy some scrolls of stone to flesh first'
- If the group has some NPC with them (hireling, leadership cohort, animal companion,...) target them first, so your player can still play
- If the group has only one solution to counter the danger, don't target the only player who can help his companions. For example, if the group has purchased some stone to flesh scrolls, don't petrify the mage who carry them !

Note : at higher level, the group must think about those attacks and must be prepared to face it :
- Scroll of protection from evil to protect the fighter from dominate
- Scrolls of stone to flesh to counter petrification. And more than one : one for the wizard who can cast it, one for the rogue who can UMD it (if the wizard is petrified),...
- deathward spell ready if you know you will face a necromancer,...

[Fax Celestis]

At low level, no spell put a character completly out of fight, or if the player if out of fight, it is easy for the rest of group to put him back in fight (example : sleep spell)Not true.

Glitterdust, color spray, web, entangle, sleep, blindness/deafness, blinding spittle all can effectively remove a character from combat completely.

[FleshrakerAbuse]

I'd suggest using weaker forms of debuffs, as the previous poster stated, with conditions that hamper one aspect of the character. Blinds, deafen, silence, etc.

Also, battlefield control and slowing effects might work best: they give an option for tactics and maneuvering around it, while still having the option to fight in it with possibilities of only some hamper.

[watchwood]

I second the option for weaker massed debuffs. Slow is a good example, a powerful AoE debuff that doesn't leave the PCs completely out of the fight. Most of the necromancy school's debuffs are good picks for this as well.