dm help again

[hoborobot]

in my game that im running have a cryptic, who is a freaking tank. first i cant send anything against him because he metamorphosis to a very small size, and all my current cr monsters attack miss. next he uses disruptive pattern, which all the monsters obviously have a very low touch ac, and if he takes any damage somehow he can eat a pp or 2 to gain hp back. the final thing he has burrowing so no creature witout tremmorsence can, well, sence him. its basicly like hes the whole party, and the rest are useless baggage. i want to try and make it fun for the whole party, not just him.

is there something i can throw that will make him be less useful and the rest of the party more useful? i tried looking trough the bestiary and notyng came out at me.

please help!

(its not like i want to send a psion-killer after the the party, its only 3 people all lvl 5)

[Alex12]

Speaking as one of the other players in this campaign for a bit more context and some suggestions.

The Cryptic is a Blue. His favorite power is an augmented Minor Metamorphosis (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/psionic-powers/m/metamorphosis#minor), to the point that it's one of the only 4 powers I recall ever seeing him use (the other three being Chameleon, augmented Vigor, and Far Hand). He's got ridiculous to-hit bonuses, and since his preferred mode of attack (Disrupt Pattern) is a touch attack, he hits a lot, and deals significant damage. Not to mention he's got something like 40hp. He's the skillmonkey, tank, and blaster of the group.

I'm playing the group's full caster, party face, crowd control, and mobility character. I'm a pegasus pony sorcerer (Ponyfinder rules) focusing on non-damaging effects (Grease, Glitterdust, Color Spray, Beguiling Gift as a bloodline spell, and so on) though I've got Acid Splash and Magic Missile. I'm also the party face, since I've got Diplomacy as a class skill with max ranks. I'm easily the squishiest of the party, and I don't go armed (I don't have hands, and pony gear would require custom commissioning since my presence is essentially a magical accident). My current base fly speed is 50 feet, with average maneuverability (I took a couple feats to improve it from base Pegasus stats- it turns out Pathfinder is not balanced with the expectation of level 1 characters having access to at-will flight).

The third character is a human Inquisitor that started off as hoborobot's character before he took over as DM due to life events with the prior DM. In the interests of not having things be totally unbalanced, he's still coming along with us, justified as "Iomedae told him to" and we're controlling him in combat. He's got some neat tricks, but I haven't got a great feel for what he can do yet.

We're doing okay, though one recent combat had me at 2 hp for most of it (it was a crit during the first round, essentially before I reacted). It was just me and the cryptic against 5 goblin dogs, and we basically fled (the dogs are still alive, though the cryptic burrowed in to get to our ultimate target and blasted him to oblivion while I was distracting him and his guards by sitting on the roof they were under and using Diplomacy- IC I had no idea he was doing it)


As far as recommendations go, disrupting pattern is a single-target ability with a range of 30 feet. If you get someone who can hit from further away (with archery or magic), or have a lot of targets or something that's immune to single-target spells (like a swarm), that might be more challenging.

[StoneCipher]

It seems like he's spending a lot of PP per encounter. If you up the frequency of the encounters, it will make him think twice about doing all of what he is doing in one go. They don't have to be harder, just more things coming at them more often.

[TandemChelipeds]

Troll him with pixies armed with wands of Magic Missile. Touch AC of 17, miss chance due to invisibility(which is unbroken when they attack) and attacks guaranteed to hit no matter how small the cryptic gets. If you want to boost their AC even further, give them 1 level in monk.

[Angelmaker]

If my experience, an arms race has a hig chance of colateral damage. If you throw something at an optimised character, lesser optimized ones will suffer inevitably. So apart from him being the highest threat ( with a go(o)d wizard being there unlikely ) you should have an apparent in story rewson that stronger enemies really target the cryptic instead of the debuffer which would be the logical choice. So either no intelligent enemies or reasons like a vendetta.

Other than that? I dont know anything you can do except the usual. Flying enemies and stuff like that, but if you specifically target his weaknesses he might be fed up with that too.

Let him have fun as well. Best solution imho is to run bigger fights with reinforcements trickling in to drain his resources as has been mentioned. Reincorfements also allow you to squish two encounters into one without being overpowering due to action economy. Maybe a summoner nearby, stuff like that.

[TheMonocleRogue]

Tiny creatures tend to have very high AC but very low CMD and there are plenty of creatures that can grab them using reach if they really want to.

According to the pathfinder burrow rules:

A creature with a burrow speed can tunnel through dirt, but not through rock unless the descriptive text says otherwise. Creatures cannot charge or run while burrowing. Most burrowing creatures do not leave behind tunnels other creatures can use (either because the material they tunnel through fills in behind them or because they do not actually dislocate any material when burrowing); see the individual creature descriptions for details.

So if he can't burrow through solid rock, concrete, or other dense materials then you can severely limit the number of time he's able to use his burrow speed to avoid confrontation.

And always remember: A DM's best defense against spellcasting munchkins is to lengthen encounters and limit the amount of rest the party gets. It won't hurt anyone whose abilities can be used once per day but all spells require 8 hours of rest.

[Undertucker]

How small is he making himself with the power? My understanding from reading it over just now from that link would indicate he could only go down by one size category, due to "You may not choose the same option twice" at the end of the description.

If he's not breaking this limitation and it's still an issue then +1 to longer encounters with more enemies to drain his resources. Sure the enemies may be individually weaker so he can still blow them away, but for how long?

[jiriku]

It looks like you have two players and a DMPC. Your two players are dps and a controller and the DMPC is, well, no one cares. Is the cryptic really a problem? It looks like both players have well-defined roles and neither really treads on the other's toes. Sure, they win combats, but that's what PCs are supposed to do. Are they both having fun with it? If they are, then there is no problem to fix.

[Alex12]

To everyone suggesting draining the cryptic's resources through attrition, I just want to point out that his primary mode of attack, Disrupt Pattern (a 3d6+Int damage 30 foot ray) consumes no resources.

We did have a longer grind fight like what's being suggested, though. We're running through Council of Thieves, and (with our last DM running things, and with a party of 4, the 3 mentioned and a Fighter/Rogue) fought against the Bastards of Erebus. We got into a part of their encampment before one of them yelled out that there were intruders, and we subsequently fought the entire group as they trickled in. This was at level 3, and the cryptic was the main contributor in that fight by a considerable margin.