This session... just... this session

[ZamielVanWeber]

I need to write this down in the hopes of never forgetting the shenanigans. This starts off in Magma Keep of the Hellspike Prison module.

So, first let us set the scene: We started the session with 2 of us, a Druid 9, decently optimized, and a Binder 6/KotSS of Eurynome 1. The DM, noticing the sizable level discrepancy grants the Binder 7000 exp. So far so good. He levels up and we start mucking about.
We encounter 3 chain devils and quickly discover we have neither good nor silvered weapons upon us. Now combat proceeded a bit oddly. I was in celestial desmodu hunting bat form with a monk's belt + clasp, 30 Wis, and Luminous Armor. I was not getting hit ever, but was depending entirely on spells. My animal companion was a celestial animal with VoP, so his AC was 26 and he had dr/magic, which the chains devils could not penetrate. Then we have the Binder 6/KotSS 2 who had AC 17, was sticking entirely in melee as his vestiges were Focalor and Eurynome, and has Strength 12; seriously this guy has a +8 to hit for 2d6 + 2 damage. He managed to roll 5 nat 20s in 6 rolls though so he did okay. That is, until the chain devils realized that they could only hit me on a natural 20 and and they could barely hit my companion, so they dogpiled the Binder and crit twice. My DM let me scoop him up and out of there as a bat in order to stabilize him (he was a -9). So for a bit it was just my companion versus 3 chain devils. The only thing that any of them could do that was relevant was my companions touch of golden ice, which was stacking up like crazy on the kytons. I run back after stabilizing the Binder and attempt to trip these guys up.

Long story shortened, they all end up paralyzed (although I had to call my DM out on one trying to hunt down the stabilized binder. Seriously, if you have 7 hits of golden ice ticking down do you A: run to reinforcements or B: risk your life trying to kill the dude who may already be dead?)

So we are close to when a third player was going to join us so we decide to explore the area rather than sit on our hands (mostly so the DM can get more use out of his module). So we putter around, stay away from a kyton chained to a floor that has magic weapons (ouch). So onto area two!

Now, as for this third player, he is a warlock 3/wilder 4/homebrew theurge PrC/2. He currently has no way of bypassing spell resistance other than "hope for the best" so the DM also homebrewed "practiced invoker" for him to his eldritch blast and caster level for warlock weren't so useless.

Okay, so one of the kytons escaped to warn the next room before he was paralyzed, which in turn alerted an imp, which in turn alerted the entire room. When we strolled in we ended up with:
12 lemures, 8 barghests, 7 vargouilles, an erinyes, a decanter goblin cleric 5/malconvoker 5, 2 barbed devils and an imp. And guess which party rolled badly on initiative?

So 2 vargouilles go and managed to stun the Binder... for 8 rounds. I would have failed if literally everyone hadn't forgotten that Focalor was lowering my saves. I remembered yesterday and this session was Wednesday. I told the DM and he didn't mind since even he forgot. The barghests all move closer to us.

So my animal companion spends his turn refocusing his initiative and then I am up. (Yay +12 initative mod. Thank you eggynack!)

I cast Control Winds. Who fails the save? 12 lemures, 6 barghests, 7 vargouilles, the erinyes, the malconvoker, the imp, and both barbed devils. Thank you DC 25! This leads to 2 things: 1) the DM realizing that the cleric has no ranks in Concentration and thus cannot make the DC 25 concentration check to cast and 2) the barbed devils just use greater teleport to close to melee.

Enter the discovery that we are unable to meaningfully damage the barbed devils. Their damage output was equal to my companion's on the companion's hits (thanks to barbed defense) but his DR was lower than theirs and they could attack on their turn so he uses improved grab to try to grapple one. Big mistake. They have a higher grapple mod and do damage on successful grapple checks. Thankfully the cleric had to flee using an item, so they left too. This left us to expand the safe zone and clear out the enemies. The erinyes had been blown to kingdom come and the barghests quickly surrender when the cleric left. So we poke at the lemures from afar and negotiate the terms for surrender with the barghests.

End result was the largest exp gain I have ever had: over 8000 for the 2 9's and over 10000 for the binder. Combined with the experience from the chain devils and the free exp the binder ended up with over 22000 experience from the session and leveled twice, which was mind boggling to me. This entire session was mind boggling to me.

3 final notes: 1) the barbed devils were supposed to appear 6 turns later, but since we didn't run right into the room and waited for the other player we were penalized by them showing up immediately (naughty DM) and
2) the binder had a just under 14% chance of damaging the barbed devils at all on an attack and a roughly 60% chance of dealing no damage while taking some himself on a hit and
3) this module was played to a T. It apparently assumed a greater level of optimization than the average party has?

Thus ended the most painful session I have ever been in.

[Flickerdart]

Honestly, this seems like a great session for you - you got to do a bunch of stuff, and had to sweat a bit even though you're a twinked out T1 caster. It sucked for everyone else though, because they weren't even remotely in your league op-wise.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Honestly, this seems like a great session for you - you got to do a bunch of stuff, and had to sweat a bit even though you're a twinked out T1 caster. It sucked for everyone else though, because they weren't even remotely in your league op-wise.

It was hilarious for me aside from the barbed devils being way above our pay grade. Well, the chain devils were painful, but sending that erinyes flying was the highlight on the night. The warlock player commented "Looks like team evil is blasting off again!"

Honestly given how disgustingly nasty this DM's encounters normally are (he never takes into account the class or OP level of his party) a twinked out T1 is something we need. I seriously have played a ton of classes under T1 and the only other one I had success with was a paladin optimized for crit-smiting and that involved a lot of luck.

[Flickerdart]

Honestly given how disgustingly nasty this DM's encounters normally are (he never takes into account the class or OP level of his party) a twinked out T1 is something we need.
It sounds like you need more than just one twinked out T1. Have you considered helping your fellow players optimize? Maybe craft some items for them or something.

[ZamielVanWeber]

It sounds like you need more than just one twinked out T1. Have you considered helping your fellow players optimize? Maybe craft some items for them or something.

They refuse my help. I tried helping most of them on multiple occasions and end up with dreck for allies instead. I wouldn't care at all if the DM didn't consistently throw encounters at us that make me question is T3's are strong enough. The Binder/KotSS went to the DM for advice on a melee build and the DM built that for him. Did I mention his Str is 12? He finally got an item that bumps it to 14... at the end of last session.

Our current party (which rarely meets in full) is a snow elf Swashbuckler 8, a lesser svirfneblin Rogue 7 focusing on ranged attacks (outside of a single encounter I have seen him land sneak attack once), lesser d'hin'ni Binder 6/KotSS 2, hombrewed planetouched elan warlock 3/wilder 4/homebrew 3 who does not like to take powers that are PR:No, and an anthropomorphic bat druid 10 that was built with the help of eggynack's guide.

[Fizban]

It sounds like your DM needs a serious talking to then. He built a character on request for player, which was unable to contribute to the fight. If the other players don't want your help well fine, their loss, but if the DM is providing them with builds that aren't good enough that's unacceptable. What sort of characters does the DM play when he has the option, assuming he's not always DM? Maybe try and get the group to do a test: take the normal party minus your character plus the DM, and you run them through one of his old encounters. If the DM normally runs high-op characters, he will now be running someone else's character, one of the skillmonkeys or the binder. I don't mean this as a confrontational thing, but the fastest way to find our your build is useless is to get stomped on.

Because you really shouldn't be playing that high op of a character in that party. The fact that you need to in order for them to survive means the DM does not know how to build encounters, and I would expect everyone else is suffering for it.

[Twurps]

first of: Great story

It sounds like you've gotten yourself involved in an arms race with your DM, and that's never good. With the rest of the party suffering from it espescially. Your DM might never realize his chalenges are to hard, if you keep saving the day. I would suggest talking to your DM, as that is ALWAYS the best sollution. But with the power gap between you and the other players, there's little he can do to stop you from out-performing the others. So some effort on your side is required as well.

Best scenario would be to have a little Geneva Summit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Summit_%281985%29) with your DM, and try toning things down from both ends. (Using your spells to buff your teammates would be the simplest route, I guess).

Or if you like the passive-agressive more: Reroll a T4 character and see how many TPK's it takes for your DM to tone down on his encounters. Seriously though: have the summit.

[ZamielVanWeber]

It sounds like your DM needs a serious talking to then. He built a character on request for player, which was unable to contribute to the fight. If the other players don't want your help well fine, their loss, but if the DM is providing them with builds that aren't good enough that's unacceptable. What sort of characters does the DM play when he has the option, assuming he's not always DM? Maybe try and get the group to do a test: take the normal party minus your character plus the DM, and you run them through one of his old encounters. If the DM normally runs high-op characters, he will now be running someone else's character, one of the skillmonkeys or the binder. I don't mean this as a confrontational thing, but the fastest way to find our your build is useless is to get stomped on.

He likes the wackiest builds. I am the wackiest, so his power level oscillates between T1 and T5. He hasn't wandered into 6 yet...


Because you really shouldn't be playing that high op of a character in that party. The fact that you need to in order for them to survive means the DM does not know how to build encounters, and I would expect everyone else is suffering for it.

I know the warlock and binder players tend to get upset at his consistent invalidating of their abilities. I admit I wish the warlock player didn't dislike crystal shard (come on, it's PR:No!)
but at this stage, between this character and the last two (I swapped out one to play the druid and the previous one was taken from me for plot reasons) I am doing more damage than the rest of the party combined and now can dramatically affect the battle field.



It sounds like you've gotten yourself involved in an arms race with your DM, and that's never good. With the rest of the party suffering from it espescially. Your DM might never realize his chalenges are to hard, if you keep saving the day. I would suggest talking to your DM, as that is ALWAYS the best sollution. But with the power gap between you and the other players, there's little he can do to stop you from out-performing the others. So some effort on your side is required as well.

Best scenario would be to have a little Geneva Summit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Summit_%281985%29) with your DM, and try toning things down from both ends. (Using your spells to buff your teammates would be the simplest route, I guess).

Both the warlock player and I have spoken to him about this on many occasions. He writes up complete encounter tables before he announces to anyone that the campaign is going to start and refuses to take in account his party's strengths and weaknesses when he rolls up encounters. End result is a group where everyone but me enjoys playing T3 and under (often under) while I enjoy druid, T2, and T3 so I end up dragging the party around entirely because of his refusal to adjust plans based on his party. Ironically it means I can win an arms race against him, but that means everyone but me loses. As a druid I am trying to focus more heavily on BFC so I don't overshadow my allies.

[Theodred theOld]

It sounds like you might have more fun if you ran a game or two while the current dm played. People who play druids tend to make good dms due to the amount of prep time and book-combing that goes into playing an effective druid and if you can manage to craft a few level appropriate encounters and a decent story everyone might have a much better time.

[ZamielVanWeber]

It sounds like you might have more fun if you ran a game or two while the current dm played. People who play druids tend to make good dms due to the amount of prep time and book-combing that goes into playing an effective druid and if you can manage to craft a few level appropriate encounters and a decent story everyone might have a much better time.

I was actually going to run a Rod of Seven Parts campaign on Sundays but ran into two problems: someone currently runs on Sundays and then someone else is following up immediately after that on Sundays. I am hoping the new DM for Sundays is a bit better. If his flops I will try to get mine going.

To be clear that, despite the temptation to quit, the story line is quite fun and he doesn't mind our individual eccentricities. He if wasn't screwing us over on encounters he would be a fantastic DM.

[Zombimode]

It has to be said that Hamatulas are actually quite impressive enemies.

[ZamielVanWeber]

It has to be said that Hamatulas are actually quite impressive enemies.

They really are. Thankfully my animal companion can now pass dr/good.

[Pluto!]

Do other people think this session sounds unreasonable?

The only red flags I see are from the Druid build relative to the other players. I'm not sure if I'm the only person confused.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Do other people think this session sounds unreasonable?

The only red flags I see are from the Druid build relative to the other players. I'm not sure if I'm the only person confused.

The warlock player was happy I brought in a druid. Honestly it is very nice being able to back people up. I mostly take BFC so the other players can run in and do their thing.

And I know the warlock player was unhappy with this session until I wrecked most of it with Control Winds. Then we all got upset when we realized that we were a joke in this face of those barbed devils.

[Crake]

What I don't understand is why the barbed devils could teleport into the safe zone, but the erinyes couldn't? They have both greater teleport and +17 concentration after all

[ZamielVanWeber]

The DM probably forgot. There was no actual safe zone outside of the squares occupied by the party, but the barbed devils had decent saves and dealt damage when hit so it was just wracking up the pain there, but the erinyes was flying and so was sent back on every failed save.

[ZamielVanWeber]

So next session was today. And it seemed to go well. We ended up doing a lot of RP. This is where the first problem came up. The warlock player managed to mostly hog the spotlight. I tried to get in edgewise but it was largely ineffectual. The binder player did not even bother to try. The swashbuckling spent a lot of time making references to previous campaigns in the same world but barely actually roleplayed. At this point when it comes to social encounters he dominates on sheer filibuster power.

So that was... "fun." His fiance, who was there but not participating (not a DnD fan), felt unwell and they left. The swashbuckler, binder, and I ended up wandering the southern pole on a guard mission and we're ambushed by two remorhaz.
The first utterly misses me (polar bear shape with all sorts of defensive buffs) and the second hits and grapples the swashbuckler. Surprise round over everyone rolls initiative. Swashbuckler fails the grapple to not be swallowed and is dropped to -8 and bleeding. The binder is in melee with that remorhaz already and crits twice (his rolls were 20, 20, 20 18). Then my animal companion pounces and finishes it off. The DM let him cut out the swashbuckler with the rest of his pounce. In the meanwhile I am flailing in effectually at the remorhaz as he keeps making his rolls but my AC is too high for him to hit except on a natural 20.

So the binder wanders over and finishes off the other remorhaz after I blind it. In the meanwhile my animal companion used stigmata to heal the swashbuckler back into the positives. End result was the binder being highly effective because of his infinite supply of hammeer and 3 crits in a row (he failed to confirm the fourth by one...) and I did well for myself while the swashbuckler was only saved because my animal companion took the feat stigmata.

So the swashbuckler was upset at being ineffectual for the 2nd session he was in in a row.

So post game discussion all this boils out:
The binder is mad at me for being so much stronger than him, but his build is grossly unoptimized which annoys me.
The warlock is mad at me for being so much stronger than him while he makes one bad decision after another, which drives me bonkers.
The swashbuckler resents being made useless time after time.
The rogue is almost never there.
The DM is starting to have trouble threatening me while not steam rolling the party.

So here is where we stand: some of the party is resent me for being strong while I am resenting them for being weak all the time and no matter what character I am using carrying the party. I am also getting annoyed at being shoved out of the roleplay. My character has fluff darn it.

I enjoy the tricky plot the DM is weaving though, so I do not want to leave without seeing this through so I am stumped. My DM is stumped about how to balance encounters so advice there would be appreciated.

[Crake]

It sounds to me like you're the problem player to be honest. You're the outlier, everyone else isn't optimized and you are, making you the one that's messing up the blance in encounters. As for the roleplay encounters, well, if they come down to just rolling, then yeah, the one with the highest numbers is gonna be the one doing everything. The trick is to be opinionated and act on those opinions. If you just sit around and hope people will make room for you, then it'll never happen. Don't wait for people to give you permission, get involved. If your opinion doesn't differ from the party, then well, it's basically a non-factor anyway, because you have a party representative who's good at talking to people to convey your message to the NPCs.

If you don't like playing in low op games, and cant bring yourself in line with the party out of distaste, then you have 2 options, convince the others to up their optimisation level, or quit and find a different game. It sounds like you've already tried the first and failed, so its either drop your character down, or quit.

[Telonius]

Zamiel is an outlier among the players, but the other outlier is behind the DM screen. That's a really tricky situation to be in, where the DM and just one of several players is used to high-op. I'm in a similar situation right now. Fortunately my powergamer is playing a melee monster, not a spellcaster, so it makes balance a little bit easier.

So here's the heart of the problem, from my perspective. The DM wants to make sure the encounters he's planning are challenging for everybody. Zamiel's playing a character that's stronger than the rest of the group, but the DM's taking the Druid as the balance point and amping up the difficulty so that it's a challenge for the Druid. The others are (understandably) unable to contribute because they're built much weaker than the Druid, and end up feeling useless. So here's what (imo) needs to happen: both Zamiel and the DM need to dial it back a little. The DM needs to stop playing the "Let's Make Things Difficult for Zamiel" game, take a good hard look at what the supporting characters are actually able to do, and make sure that they have the means to injure (at all) the things that he's throwing at them.

This is going to involve some work for everybody. The players really, really need to realize that (as imperfect of a measurement CR is) the game assumes that players should have a base level of competence if they're facing a certain foe. A 14-Strength melee frontliner just isn't going to cut it, outside of some seriously odd circumstances.

One other thing I noticed - in your description of this, I'm noticing an awful lot of natural 20s and generally-high rolls, both for players and DM. Are you sure the dice are fair? Not suggesting outright cheating, but sometimes they can get biased over lots of use.

[ZamielVanWeber]

The warlock player rides roughshod over anyone else's attempt; I am talking about him simply ignoring other people's attempts to participate. If you and he start a sentencr at the same time he nevers stops for you. We have not rolled a social skill in months either. It is just disastrous.

As for the mechanical issues I cannot take all the credit. My DM has made fairly difficult encounters that crushed the party in many campaigns so with him it is my nature to bring my A game. Even outside of that these guys are just a pile of bad decisions. Bringing down to their level essentially involves making intentionally bad decisions.

As for quitting I actually tried. My DM asked me not to. I am the only person who shows up to every session and always has a fleshed out backstory for... all... four... of my characters. (Real bad luck there). (Also I seem to be mortally offended by the concept of the Storm wind Fallacy).

Aside from the depressing task of making another character, what could I make? My go to here would be psychic warrior or crusader and they would outshine the party. Heck a paladin with any love could (aside from the fact that this campaign has a dearth of Evil foes).

I may ask if he would be willing to split the party. I go one way and do stuff and the rest of the party goes another and we can meet back up if we decide later.

Edit: You have it inverted. The DM makes insane encounters. Thus far my habit of making strong characters is the only thing that has held back multiple TPKs. If we had a pile of T3s and T2 I would snag a 3 and be happy as a clam. At this point the entire party but me is sitting in T5 (even the binder somehow). Even a solidly built T3 would outshine them.

[ExLibrisMortis]

@Crake and Telonius: Zamiel previously mentioned that the DM pre-made his encounters, and that the OP-level of the party was not taken into account. That means that rolling up a character on the OP-level of the party will only result in a wipe, and quitting will not make the situation better for other players. It also means that the DM can't stop his "Let's make things difficult for Zamiel" game, because he doesn't have one.

I would suggest rerolling into, hiring or cohorting a high-OP psionic artificer. Get the fusion + astral seed trick online ASAP, and merge the whole party into one. Manifest astral seed once for each person in control, then mass suicide and regrow your bodies. Now everybody has everyone's class abilities, and OP-level is strictly equal. Have fun.

[Crake]

@Crake and Telonius: Zamiel previously mentioned that the DM pre-made his encounters, and that the OP-level of the party was not taken into account. That means that rolling up a character on the OP-level of the party will only result in a wipe, and quitting will not make the situation better for other players. It also means that the DM can't stop his "Let's make things difficult for Zamiel" game, because he doesn't have one.

I must have missed that bit, because the first line of the OP was that it was an adventure module, which tend to be fairly low op, and I assumed that the DM was trying to balance the existing encounters to match Zamiel's level. Re-reading the thread, I saw that the DM was normally like that, but i mean, it's the DM's job to adjust to the party, so if Zamiel drops to the same op as the rest of the party, and mentions that to the DM, then it'll either end in a party wipe, which means the DM can't really tell the story he clearly wants to, or the DM will adjust to the party, as a DM should. But right now, Zamiel's high op is giving the DM an excuse to continue to throw high op encounters at the party.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I must have missed that bit, because the first line of the OP was that it was an adventure module, which tend to be fairly low op, and I assumed that the DM was trying to balance the existing encounters to match Zamiel's level. Re-reading the thread, I saw that the DM was normally like that, but i mean, it's the DM's job to adjust to the party, so if Zamiel drops to the same op as the rest of the party, and mentions that to the DM, then it'll either end in a party wipe, which means the DM can't really tell the story he clearly wants to, or the DM will adjust to the party, as a DM should. But right now, Zamiel's high op is giving the DM an excuse to continue to throw high op encounters at the party.

This is the DM'S single biggest flaw. He literally never does that. He has been told multiple times by multiple people that he needs to, but steadfastly refuses as "the encounter tables are drawn up before I know party composition." All the darn time. I seem to be the only one who takes this into account when making characters though.

[Crake]

This is the DM'S single biggest flaw. He literally never does that. He has been told multiple times by multiple people that he needs to, but steadfastly refuses as "the encounter tables are drawn up before I know party composition." All the darn time. I seem to be the only one who takes this into account when making characters though.

It's one thing to run status quo encounters (something I personally agree with strongly), but it's another thing to ramp up the encounters. Rolling on an encounter table might just as easily get you an easy or overwhelming challenge, which the party should be able to gauge and potentially escape from, but from the sounds of things the DM is taking otherwise normal encounters and ramping them up. Or am I missing something here?

I mean a remorhaz is a CR7 encounter, 2 of them is flat even with the party level. The fact that the swashbuckler got immediately eaten is unfortunate, but it's not unexpected. I mean, it is worth noting that, since i assume the remorhaz were under the snow to begin with because they have no ability to hide whatsoever, their surprise round should have just been "tunnel out of the snow". Tremorsense requires line of effect to function, so at best the remorhaz would have known that there were people approaching, but not exactly where they were, so they would not have been able to charge and attack, and they obviously can't attack while underground, so their only option would have been to emerge from underground. From there it would have been initiative, so the swashbuckler should have actually been able to act the first round of combat. It's also worth noting that unless the remorhaz was taking -20 on it's grapple check, which would put it at a much more managable +3, it would be incredibly vulnerable to outside attacks at this point, as it would be considered grappled, and be flat footed (admittedly only getting -1 to it's AC, but it does mean that anyone with sneak attack or the like would get it automatically), but also not provoke attacks from people moving within it's 10ft reach, which is also a big factor.

I might be wrong in that assumption, and maybe the DM rolled natural 20s for their hide checks over a small snow dune, and you guys all rolled natural 1s (it cant be that they had total cover, otherwise they would not have been able to charge and attack). The only other circumstance i can think of is a snowstorm where the party cannot see, but the remorhaz could due to their tremorsense, though that would have warranted an ad-hod CR increase i think. But otherwise if the above is true, then it's a mixture of your party not adapting to the encounters they're thrown, the DM not giving the players enough information to adapt properly, the DM handling monsters incorrectly, or some combination therof.

If your complaint isn't about the DM adjusting optimization to the party, but rather expecting the DM to tailor encounters for the party, that's a very different issue. If what I understand is correct, then there is no problem, just the players needing to adapt. If the DM is running a module, that's the very epitome of status quo. The adventure is what it is, the players need to adapt to the adventure, not the world adapting to the players. If the DM isn't jacking up encounters, but merely, at times, throwing things that the party is weak against (and i'd imagine occasionally throwing things that the party is strong against), then that's not an issue, you just need to roll with the punches, and know when to flee.

Edit: Looking back at your OP, you mentioned for example that the party didn't have good or silver weapons when fighting devils. Did the party know they were going to be fighting devils? Were they invading some keep or something? Was there any mention of devils at all, or did they just come out of nowhere with no warning? If you knew you were going to be fighting devils, then doing some research into them and finding their strengths, weaknesses and immunities might be useful. For example, learning that they're weak to good/silver weapons, or that they're all immune to fight and can see in the dark (you know, basic information about devils). If it just came out of nowhere, ok, sure, you were at a disadvantage, and since they can teleport, you may have been at a SIGNIFICANT disadvantage. But if you were aware, then the onus of blame is on you guys for not doing your research and being thorough. If your DM is throwing status quo encounters at you, then it's incredibly important to know what you're up against, and how to combat it.

[Reshy]

I wonder, are you going into Planar Shepherd? I had started working on an extension for Eggynack's guide that went over that class in depth, though I stopped working on it recently due to college.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I wonder, are you going into Planar Shepherd? I had started working on an extension for Eggynack's guide that went over that class in depth, though I stopped working on it recently due to college.

Nope. Straight druid. Planar Shepard is famously for how abusable it can be and I like straight druid.


It's one thing to run status quo encounters (something I personally agree with strongly), but it's another thing to ramp up the encounters. Rolling on an encounter table might just as easily get you an easy or overwhelming challenge, which the party should be able to gauge and potentially escape from, but from the sounds of things the DM is taking otherwise normal encounters and ramping them up. Or am I missing something here?

His average encounter would be difficult for a party of 4 T3s. We never have that. I guess what frustrates me is he is known for doing this all the time and no one but me seems to ever plan for it. They will get angry at him for doing it, but never themselves plan for it. Also I believe his overwhelming challenge rate for this campaign is over 30%.


I mean a remorhaz is a CR7 encounter, 2 of them is flat even with the party level. The fact that the swashbuckler got immediately eaten is unfortunate, but it's not unexpected. I mean, it is worth noting that, since i assume the remorhaz were under the snow to begin with because they have no ability to hide whatsoever, their surprise round should have just been "tunnel out of the snow". Tremorsense requires line of effect to function, so at best the remorhaz would have known that there were people approaching, but not exactly where they were, so they would not have been able to charge and attack, and they obviously can't attack while underground, so their only option would have been to emerge from underground. From there it would have been initiative, so the swashbuckler should have actually been able to act the first round of combat. It's also worth noting that unless the remorhaz was taking -20 on it's grapple check, which would put it at a much more managable +3, it would be incredibly vulnerable to outside attacks at this point, as it would be considered grappled, and be flat footed (admittedly only getting -1 to it's AC, but it does mean that anyone with sneak attack or the like would get it automatically), but also not provoke attacks from people moving within it's 10ft reach, which is also a big factor.

My spot and listen (36 each as I was taking 10) failed to see either of them hiding in the snow beneath us.
Combat proceeded as such:
Remorhaz 1 attacks me while I am in polar bear form. My AC is 31 with a -4 penalty from Luminous Armor (I have uncanny dodge from Primal spells). Misses.
Remorhaz 2 attacks Swashbuckler. Her AC is 21: hits. Immediately starts a grapple check with improved grab and wins.
Initiative time:
Remorhaz 2 makes a grapple check to swallow Swashbuckler and succeeds. Swashbuckler is reduced to -8 and bleeding by gizzard.
Binder attacks twice and crits twice with Eurynome's Warhammer. The first attack destroys the hammer so he uses a swift between the two to recreate it. (Note he does not add his Str or magic weapon damage to those damage rolls. This was also the combat where we discovered that he does not know how iterative attacks work).
I provoke an AoO, which misses, to cast Kelpstrand targeting the two remorhaz. DM rolls 19 and 20, respectively, on their grapple checks.
Animal Companion charges Remorhaz 2 and finishes it off, taking 32 fire damage from the 8d6. DM permits me to use other 4 attacks to cut Swashbuckler out of gizzard.
Swashbuckler falls to -9 and bleeding.

Remorhaz 1 does a full point power attack on me. Misses.
Binder charges Remorhaz 1. Misses due to extreme penalty from power attack. Crits. Eurynome's Warhammer is destroyed and brought back via swift action.
I cast Sudden Stalagmite. DM rolls wrong save so Remorhaz 1 passes. (I found out later when I commented that the remorhaz rolled 18, 19, and 20 to oppose my spells. He rolled Fort instead of Ref).
Animal Companion activates Stigmata, taking 4 points of Constitution damage to heal the swashbuckler for 16.
Swashbuckler stands up and throws a warhammer for minimal damage. Hammer is destroyed by heat.

Remorhaz 1 does a 4 point power attack on Binder. Misses by 1.
At this point we screwed up initiative, with me accidentally going before the Binder. I step out of reach to cast Blinding Spittle. Hits. Remorhaz 1 is now blinded.
Binder full attacks Remorhaz 1. Hits, then rolls another natural 20. This is when we discover he was not taking the -5 penalty for iterative attacks. Fails to confirm. Finishes off the Remorhaz regardless.

Combat ends.

I have Spontaneous Rejuvenation and a Wand of Lesser Restoration so I bring the party back up to full as appropriate as we camp for the night. I get the nudge of exp I need to level to 11, the Binder and Swashbuckler fail to level.


I might be wrong in that assumption, and maybe the DM rolled natural 20s for their hide checks over a small snow dune, and you guys all rolled natural 1s (it cant be that they had total cover, otherwise they would not have been able to charge and attack). The only other circumstance i can think of is a snowstorm where the party cannot see, but the remorhaz could due to their tremorsense, though that would have warranted an ad-hod CR increase i think. But otherwise if the above is true, then it's a mixture of your party not adapting to the encounters they're thrown, the DM not giving the players enough information to adapt properly, the DM handling monsters incorrectly, or some combination therof.
My DM seems to have an odd relationship with spot and listen. I had to argue that with a 31 on Spot and Listen I should be able to detect a huge creature that is not attempting to hide before I entered into its 120 foot blindsight radius.


If your complaint isn't about the DM adjusting optimization to the party, but rather expecting the DM to tailor encounters for the party, that's a very different issue. If what I understand is correct, then there is no problem, just the players needing to adapt. If the DM is running a module, that's the very epitome of status quo. The adventure is what it is, the players need to adapt to the adventure, not the world adapting to the players. If the DM isn't jacking up encounters, but merely, at times, throwing things that the party is weak against (and i'd imagine occasionally throwing things that the party is strong against), then that's not an issue, you just need to roll with the punches, and know when to flee.
I believe, especially after reading your comments, that it really is a combination of problems. The DM makes difficult encounters without taking the party into regard and the party (aside from me) never takes his habit of doing this into account when they build characters. Right now I feel this is more the party's fault than his. This really is his modus operandi.


Edit: Looking back at your OP, you mentioned for example that the party didn't have good or silver weapons when fighting devils. Did the party know they were going to be fighting devils? Were they invading some keep or something? Was there any mention of devils at all, or did they just come out of nowhere with no warning? If you knew you were going to be fighting devils, then doing some research into them and finding their strengths, weaknesses and immunities might be useful. For example, learning that they're weak to good/silver weapons, or that they're all immune to fight and can see in the dark (you know, basic information about devils). If it just came out of nowhere, ok, sure, you were at a disadvantage, and since they can teleport, you may have been at a SIGNIFICANT disadvantage. But if you were aware, then the onus of blame is on you guys for not doing your research and being thorough. If your DM is throwing status quo encounters at you, then it's incredibly important to know what you're up against, and how to combat it.
We found out when we were trying to stop a spam sacrifice. We discovered devils were there when we rounded a corner and three chain devils attacked us from a room full of chains. The module then expects that the party will immediately enter the next room, so we had no time to prepare any counter measures beyond the generic ones we had.

This was also where the Warlock player made a flub: he did have one psionic power that could damage the barbed devils reliably and safely, Amethyst Burst. He refused to use that, instead spamming Eldritch Blast where he needed a 14 or higher to penetrate SR (and even that works only because of a homebrewed feat to fix his caster level and eldritch blast damage).

That being said this has certainly given me another side to things. Thank you.

[Arbane]

You don't need to quit the game, just take a few weeks off.

After the second or third TPK, maybe someone will re-evaluate their strategies.

[Hal0Badger]

This is the DM'S single biggest flaw. He literally never does that. He has been told multiple times by multiple people that he needs to, but steadfastly refuses as "the encounter tables are drawn up before I know party composition." All the darn time. I seem to be the only one who takes this into account when making characters though.

Well, I can understand the desire to continue for the plot reasons, but an important question you should simply answer is "Are you having fun?". After that, "Are the other players having fun?" should come. From your posts, it is obvious that others cannot enjoy this game. It would be very likely that others would leave by not showing up, or with a Rage Quit. If talking to DM or to other players for a mutual power-level does not work, I don't think there is no other friendly options here. You either bring your power-down, which will end up with TPK because of your DM's attitude, or others will leave the game unhappy.

BTW, at first glance it seems your fault that game goes like this, but a better reading shows that DM is the only one responsible here. Building encounters theme-vice is something, but not adjusting your adventure or "your players", that's just bad DM'ing. For a player, a suggestion coming from another player is sometimes irritating, especially if he did not ask for that, but a suggestion from DM should be considered as a warning. If your DM loves his encounter table this much, he should suggest better builds for his players as well, or at least try to create a mutual power-play ground for the players.

[Arbane]

BTW, at first glance it seems your fault that game goes like this, but a better reading shows that DM is the only one responsible here. Building encounters theme-vice is something, but not adjusting your adventure or "your players", that's just bad DM'ing. For a player, a suggestion coming from another player is sometimes irritating, especially if he did not ask for that, but a suggestion from DM should be considered as a warning. If your DM loves his encounter table this much, he should suggest better builds for his players as well, or at least try to create a mutual power-play ground for the players.


The obvious solution for the DM is to bring along an NPC who can shore up their weaknesses by being better than them at everything. That way, the players don't have to change their character concepts, and he doesn't have to change his encounters. Everyone wins!

[Hal0Badger]

The obvious solution for the DM is to bring along an NPC who can shore up their weaknesses by being better than them at everything. That way, the players don't have to change their character concepts, and he doesn't have to change his encounters. Everyone wins!

What made me chuckle is, I have made something like that, when I first started to DM, like 10 years ago :smallbiggrin:. It was a good experience that thought me to simply talk to players about builds, a simple line like "That won't survive in my game" can do wonders.

But your suggestion also works. Mechanically :smalltongue: .

[ZamielVanWeber]

I'm going to try to talk to the Warlock player tonight. Honestly this drama is almost not worth it; the plot is really fascinating.

[Crake]

My previous post was quite late last night, but I had a re-read of tremorsense. What I always assumed to be line of effect is actually incorrect. It's "If no straight path exists through the ground from the creature to those that it’s sensing". So "through the ground" does seem to imply it can pinpoint creatures above it and charge. It would have to be at most 20 feet under you guys (assuming you walked directly over it) otherwise they would have needed to burrow through the snow to get to you (which would have prompted listen checks vs their move silently, obviously at a penalty for 20ft of snow, but still with your 36 shouldn't have been too hard.

[Twurps]

You don't need to quit the game, just take a few weeks off.

After the second or third TPK, maybe someone will re-evaluate their strategies.

This.

I made a joke along these lines in my first post. But reading the rest of the thread, I'm starting to believe it might be a good course of action.
You might not be actually to blame/doing anyting wrong, but you are providing your DM with the perfect excuse to continue building his encounters the way he does. Stop doing that. A few weeks off are a good short term sollution. In the long run, you need a different character. (Either that, or all the others have to rebuild...) You obviously like to bring your A game, so build something with a lower A-game level. (I hear monks provide an excellent chalenge).

Who knows: once you're not outshining the other players in the 'game mechanics' department, they might even have less of an urge to outshine you on the roll-playing.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Ugh. I think I should just quit. I changed to a dread necromancer so so far so good, right? Well we are in the middle of a session and I discover that the DM had a secret session where he awarded experience. The week he canceled...

By highlights thus far: corrupt 7 headed cryohydra. That took some planning but was beaten. He acidentally revealed we need to get through an iron golem (which I will struggle to affect) and we previously fought a construct so yay. But hey, good devotion was actually useful so I got that going for me.

What is also annoying me is that he threatened he apply the Dread Allip template (Advanced Bestiary) to the cryohydra should one of the allips I summoned to distract it slay it via wisdom damage.

Everyone but me is currently leveling so I do not have much better to do. Odds that they will soldier on when I level?

[Crake]

It can sometimes be hard to tear yourself away from a game that you're playing, but honestly, if you feel negatively toward the game, and you've spoken to the DM, getting negative responses, and they play games behind your back that's pretty bad.

I can understand for example, running a separate session to play out parts of, like, a party split, and being open about it, but it sounds like they deliberately excluded you from the session. As for the DM stomping out any ideas you have, I've had experience with that myself. I didn't realise what was happening until another player, who the DM had told while they were just chatting online at some point, came to me and explained that the DM was actually specifically just fiating away anything I tried to do that was creative or interesting, something about me being a powergamer and not wanting me to steal the spotlight or something, i dunno, it was a long time ago now. I quit that game within the week after hearing that, and I felt much better afterwards. After a few months, the other players convinced me to re-join as a martial class and play, that things might be better if the DM couldn't just fiat away my magic, but it was just as bad, so once more I just dropped and haven't even thought about going back since. I mention this because your situation is very reminiscent of mine, so I'm wondering if you aren't experiencing the same issue.

As for the allip thing, your DM is aware that an allip's wisdom drain doesn't kill things, right? The hydra would just fall unconscious and stay that way until someone came along and cast restoration on it to restore it's wisdom drain.