Moving forward...

[Threadnaught]

So I've begun the hotly anticipated Nine Elder Evils Campaign, the party is a Pixie Druid//Sorcerer, who hasn't properly used a spell so far, a Wild Feral Half-Minotaur Neanderthal Barbarian//Swordsage, and a Half-Celestial Human Crusader//Knight.

All level 1, with LA completely ignored for those with only one Template, or who managed to stay under ECL5.

The Minotaur destroys all encounters almost single handed and plans to go Clericzilla starting level 3, after getting Wis to AC. The weakest and most balanced party member (the Crusader//Knight), played by that ******* Druid, almost beat a 3rd level Orc Warrior and a 3rd level Orc Sorcerer on his her own.

That's the power level I'm working with so far, players are currently pursuing cultists who worship a god named Ragnorra and have been kidnapping travelers around the Shadow Marches, they're in the local HQ based in an old Daelkyr ruin. I'm toying with encounters to find a level that is difficult enough to threaten the Pixie, won't be solved by the Minotaur, but won't be too much for that ******* Druid's character.
Talking to the players OoCly won't solve the issue, that's what got me here in the first place, remember? I literally asked for this.


I've already managed to shut down the Minotaur's charging every combat by adding obstacles, that was easy. And combat lasts more than one round because I have multiple opponents all around the party, not always in the Minotaur's reach, also easy.
I'm struggling to think of ways to engage the Pixie without completely negating the Invisibility.

Crusader//Knight made the tactically solid choice of murderlizing the Sorcerer first, though he didn't use much of his Maneuvers and whined after giving away an AoO. He'll be fine if I bump up the challenge to the point he experienced during the last session.


So for those of you who didn't read the above.
I need a way to engage a character with permanent Greater Invisibility without constantly negating a player's choice.
I need a way to toughen up encounters so they can give more damage to/take more from the Minotaur.
I need to do this without completely screwing over the Crusader//Knight.

[urokia]

Group tactics! As a DM I find that enemies get a whole lot scarier when they start using complex or tried and true group tactics. For example, longspear phalanx can create a horrible situation for the Minotaur who decides to charge. That's a bunch of enemies getting attacks of opportunities, and dealing massive damage is they were set against a charge. Even if the minotaur great cleaves a bunch to death, the nature of reach gives the phalanx a bunch of attacks the next round and some with flanking. Medium sized creature phalanx not enough? Try it with ogres! Why not mix in together some creatures? If you have two ranks of medium sized creatures in front and a rank of longspear wielding ogres behind them, that even MORE devastating attacks! Now that's what I call mixed unit tactics!

But why stop there? Behind the orc/ogre phalanx is a bunch of archers! Getting through the phalanx will take time, so those archers are going to have a lot of time to pepper the PCs! If only someone could get through the phalanx line to those archers, maybe someone with invisibility? So many devastating attacks from that phalanx, guess the minotaur is going to have to be careful or ripped to shreds. Looks like the PCs are gonna have to get tactical!

[Ephemeral_Being]

Can we back up for a second?

You're running an Elder Evil campaign starting at level 1? May I ask what changes you made, or how this works? Are you planning on playing for 2+ years?

[prufock]

So for those of you who didn't read the above.
I need a way to engage a character with permanent Greater Invisibility without constantly negating a player's choice.
I need a way to toughen up encounters so they can give more damage to/take more from the Minotaur.
I need to do this without completely screwing over the Crusader//Knight.

1. Remember that you can detect an invisible creature in 30' with a DC 20 spot check. Depending on check bonuses, a certain percentage of enemies should detect the pixie without any special preparations. The pixie still gets 50% miss chance and +20 to hide checks. In a multiple enemy fight, there should be one that sees him.

More prepared enemies have other options. A bag of flour, glitterdust, see invisibility, etc. But use those sparingly.

2. Multiple enemies are a good start, but one idea is to have one enemy stronger than the rest. It's a leader and his minions. Without knowing how much damage the minotaur is dishing out, it's hard to say what the enemy needs, but he should be able to splatter the weaker ones, and take a few rounds to kill the stronger one. There are a number of ways to deal with chargers, as urokia pointed out.

3. The crusader//knight is a self-healing tank. The weaker minions should be dogpiling him, hitting his steely resolve, etc.

My standard advice:

I usually employ one or more of the following methods to make encounters harder if players are running wild like Hulkamania.
Increase enemy stats. Enemies normally use flat (10,10,10,11,11,11) or elite (15,14,13,12,10,8) arrays. I increase flat to elite array, and elite to "champion" array (17,15,13,12,10,8). This improves the enemy in most respects by a small amount.
Increase enemy hit points to maximum. This makes enemies last longer, though not more dangerous in any other way.
Increase number of enemies. The rule of thumb is doubling the number of enemies increase the encounter level by 2. So I'll add 50% to 100% more enemies, giving them an action economy advantage.

Really, you've got a party level around 5 (level 1 + 4 templates + 1 gestalt), so EL 5 is only a standard challenge, which we'd expect to use 25% of a party's resources. If you want more challenge, you're going to have to kick the EL up.

[Threadnaught]

Can we back up for a second?

You're running an Elder Evil campaign starting at level 1? May I ask what changes you made, or how this works? Are you planning on playing for 2+ years?

Seeing as Zargon's Adventure effectively starts at 2nd level and Kyuss' Sign begins manifesting at 3rd, no changes seemed necessary. We will play for as long as the Campaign lasts.
The bit that impressed others here, when I asked for help with building their characters was, all nine attacking Eberron at once.


1. Remember that you can detect an invisible creature in 30' with a DC 20 spot check. Depending on check bonuses, a certain percentage of enemies should detect the pixie without any special preparations. The pixie still gets 50% miss chance and +20 to hide checks. In a multiple enemy fight, there should be one that sees him.

Well that really helps out a lot, I'd completely forgotten about this, and it's not like Circa tries to hide, because Invisible.


More prepared enemies have other options. A bag of flour, glitterdust, see invisibility, etc. But use those sparingly.

I know, I don't want to constantly use these, so having Spot be able to fight Circa's Pixie, is rather helpful.


2. Multiple enemies are a good start, but one idea is to have one enemy stronger than the rest. It's a leader and his minions. Without knowing how much damage the minotaur is dishing out, it's hard to say what the enemy needs, but he should be able to splatter the weaker ones, and take a few rounds to kill the stronger one.

Oh yeah, he has a medium sized Spiked Chain (2d4+14), a Gore attack (1d8+14), two Claw attacks (2d6+7) and a Greatclub (2d8+14). He gets +4 Strength from Barbarian, with Pounce from Spirit Lion Totem so he can full attack on a charge and is aware of this.
That's how much damage he deals, he has one more HP per HD than that ******* Druid's Crusader//Knight and Fast Healing 2.

I forgot to mention the Wild Half-Minotaur is also Feral. Yeah I know, I did this to myself.


There are a number of ways to deal with chargers, as urokia pointed out.

Yeah, rough terrain, obstacles, tripping, Grease. He wasn't able to charge at all last session because of a whole bunch of open pit traps in a tight corridor. :smallamused:


3. The crusader//knight is a self-healing tank. The weaker minions should be dogpiling him, hitting his steely resolve, etc.

Pretty much what happened during the last session, I threw a max HPed Orc Warrior and Sorcerer at him, both 3rd level. They brought her down to 2HP when the Minotaur came in dealing 23 damage (non-lethal) to the Warrior, who had 28HP at the time, of 36HP. Of course, they were the strongest two enemies in that encounter, which I'd made to test the abilities of the weakest party member to gauge their strength.
That ******* Druid made a point to remind me that the Warrior would take a -4 penalty to attacking the Minotaur's AC, which is already higher than that ******* Druid's AC.


Really, you've got a party level around 5 (level 1 + 4 templates + 1 gestalt), so EL 5 is only a standard challenge, which we'd expect to use 25% of a party's resources. If you want more challenge, you're going to have to kick the EL up.

5 templates, I forgot Feral, lemme fix the OP. Not that it's super important.

[prufock]

5 templates, I forgot Feral, lemme fix the OP. Not that it's super important.
For some reason I assumed the barbarian was feral... odd.

Anyway, I meant that each character has about +4 LA, and with gestalt they can probably go one EL higher. The barb is technically only +2 LA, but he's got two strong +1 LA templates, and is almost certainly higher in reality. I'd say EL 5 is an "appropriate challenge" for them, so ramping up the difficulty is probably necessary.