Flickerdart
2016-03-05, 03:08 PM
You know the drill - your party busts down a door inside the BBEG's castle, only to encounter a badass-looking dude who is working for the enemy. The dude draws his awesome weapon. Roll initiative.
Two rounds later, your dude is smeared across the wall because action economy, NPC WBL being super low, and general inferiority of most class levels VS monsters of the same CR conspire against him. The NPC you spent so much time building lies bisected at the bottom of a pit. You resolve to use only stock monsters at this point, and for the rest of the storyline the PCs battle hordes of identical constructs.
In the next story arc, you make a guy who's much stronger than the PCs, to avoid the two-round casualty. He has top-end armour, a mix of magic and martial powers, the works. As soon as he encounters the PCs, he kills one and the rest run away! Turns out he was too strong, and instead of a suspenseful pre-boss battle where your PCs find out exactly how strong they got, they have to run away and don't even meet the real BBEG for two more movies, I mean plot arcs.
How do we fix this? How to we find the balance between "overpowering" and "cannon fodder" when it comes to encounters with just a single humanoid opponent whose power comes from PC class levels? Please contribute ideas, which I will chronicle in this post.
Alternatives to the lone badass
"How can I make my monk better at..." Don't play a monk. "I want to build a wizard killer who..." Build another wizard. We love saying this kind of stuff. Good frame challenges will go in this section, to serve as less badass alternatives to "lone warrior messes up your entire party right in their stupid faces."
Minions! No, not the yellow ones. An antipaladin and his nightmare mount, a blackguard with bound demonic servants, a necromancer with undead under his thrall, a psion mentally controlling the kingdom's princess to fight alongside him. Also a pretty cool encounter, but an aesthetic more fit for the BBEG himself. We're going for the badass solo fighter taking on the entire party by himself.
DM Fiat: The enemy is two orcs (http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/). That's cool. But we're trying to stay within the existing rules as much as possible, because I find it more interesting.
Skitty on Wailord ancestry: Adding templates is a great way to "monster up" an NPC. But after a certain point (a point reached all too soon) the monsterness outweighs the class levels and you get yet another monster encounter. Which is fine, but there are already loads of monsters that fit the bill of yet another monster encounter.
Solutions to the Darth Maul Problem
Make it a higher CR!
If a CR+1 fight is challenging, a CR+3 fight should be twice as challenging, right? Wrong. Because of the way 3.5's math works, advancing two levels might make some characters fall off the RNG. When fighting two weak dudes, they can spread their attacks among two different PCs, and their own defenses will be low enough that everyone has a chance of doing something. A lone higher level creature does not have that option - every attack is the encounter focus-firing on one PC, every defense is aggregated so that some numbers become simply too low.
So how do we make this work? Resist the urge to optimize. One-handed magic weapon + STR might be enough, you know? Give him dual-wielding so he can spread damage over more of the PCs. Make him trip and bull rush (without Improved Trip or Dungeoncrasher) so the PCs feel the pressure without their hitpoints dropping too fast. The enemy won't kill anyone just by having a high AC. If you have miss chance as your primary defense, even a low attack bonus might make it through and make a difference. Since mages are usually good at things, once you've hit sufficient attack and AC to cause trouble for the melees, you should boost your guy's saves and immunities with everything you've got. A badass boss who goes down to a single mind-affecting spell is just sad.
Tilt the action economy
For melee guys:
More attacks! Every attack action is still an action, and can be used for more than just damage. There are many abilities that let you turn attacks into more things:
Knockdown: Trigger a trip attempt on an attack that does 10+ damage.
Knockback: Trigger a bull rush attempt on an attack.
Duskblade Arcane Channelling: Deliver a touch spell to everyone you hit in a full attack. 20-target irresistible dance? Don't mind if I do.
Exploit these! You can get more attacks through:
Two-weapon/multi-weapon fighting feats (more arms = more attacks, get more arms using multi-limbed races or Prehensile Tail feat)
Natural attacks (they can follow iterative attacks gained from BAB if all are made as secondary attacks)
The Monk's Flurry of Blows (extra attacks when using monk weapons)
Snap Kick (extra unarmed attack every time you attack)
War Mind's Sweeping Strike (attack two threatened squares every time you attack) or War Hulk's Mighty Swing (same thing but 3 squares)
Just make sure not to aim all the attacks at a single guy. Increasing your reach can help you hit more PCs at the same time.
Person Man has a great collection (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?103358-3-X-Ways-to-get-Pounce-or-Free-Movement) of ways to move and full attack. Many of these are also ways of moving without using a move action, which essentially means getting free move actions! Move actions are not the best actions, but they are still actions, so you still play the economy.
Intelligent magic items (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/intelligentItems.htm) have their own actions, which they can use to activate all sorts of special abilities. Intelligent items are also super cool, and add to the coolness of the NPC in the encounter (plus the coolness of the loot).
Dancing swords (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicWeapons.htm#dancing) are pretty dang cool. They cost a standard action to activate, but then they fight by themselves for 4 rounds (pretty much the entire encounter). If you have multiple standard actions, you can launch a bunch of these!
There are ways of straight up getting more actions. Belt of Battle, maneuvers like Time Stands Still, and so on. Pile them upon your dude, and watch your PCs exclaim "this guy is us!" because your PCs have been doing this for ages.
For magic guys:
The most important thing about being a magic guy is casting spells. Here's how to cast loads of spells:
War Weaver's Quiescent Weaving: Cast a bunch of buffs into your "weave" and release them all as a move action. Handy for when you encounter upstart PCs unexpectedly.
Duskblade's Arcane Channeling: As mentioned before. Full attack, everyone you hit eats a touch spell.
Schism psionic power: Psions can manifest, and then manifest again using their split personality.
Control body plus solicit psicrystal: Give your psicrystal command of your body, so he can make you move or attack while you manifest powers.
Swiftblade's Perpetual Options: While under the effects of haste, gain an extra standard action per round.
Elocater's Accelerated Actions: 5 rounds/day, make an extra attack in a full attack, or make a full attack and also manifest a power.
Multivoice or Multiple Head Casting (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fc/20010223a) feats: Cast two spells per round, if you have two heads
Time Stop or temporal acceleration or Swiftblade's Innervated Speed: Stop time, allowing you to cast area-of-effect spells and spells that affect you.
Acquire area attacks
This might seem obvious - if you can strike over an area, you can hinder more than one PC with one action. Casters excel at this, since they can just cast an area of effect spell.
Clones
This is not about ice assassin shenanigans - as the DM, you could just say there are two of the NPC - but in-combat abilities. Mirror image lets your guy live longer; the greater version can be used as an immediate action in response to an attack. The feat Trickery Devotion can make a duplicate, as can a couple of spells like project image.
A timely escape
Your PCs are smart, and by smart I mostly mean powerful, since their players are full of dumb ideas. Regardless, they will pull something out of their butts and kill your awesome guy no matter what you come up with. Since the NPC probably wants to live even if he is losing the fight, a teleportation, invisibility, or unexpected arrival of a fast-moving mount can make the difference between "that guy was a wimp" and "we need to find that guy and kill him for good!"
I'd love to hear any ideas you guys have.
Two rounds later, your dude is smeared across the wall because action economy, NPC WBL being super low, and general inferiority of most class levels VS monsters of the same CR conspire against him. The NPC you spent so much time building lies bisected at the bottom of a pit. You resolve to use only stock monsters at this point, and for the rest of the storyline the PCs battle hordes of identical constructs.
In the next story arc, you make a guy who's much stronger than the PCs, to avoid the two-round casualty. He has top-end armour, a mix of magic and martial powers, the works. As soon as he encounters the PCs, he kills one and the rest run away! Turns out he was too strong, and instead of a suspenseful pre-boss battle where your PCs find out exactly how strong they got, they have to run away and don't even meet the real BBEG for two more movies, I mean plot arcs.
How do we fix this? How to we find the balance between "overpowering" and "cannon fodder" when it comes to encounters with just a single humanoid opponent whose power comes from PC class levels? Please contribute ideas, which I will chronicle in this post.
Alternatives to the lone badass
"How can I make my monk better at..." Don't play a monk. "I want to build a wizard killer who..." Build another wizard. We love saying this kind of stuff. Good frame challenges will go in this section, to serve as less badass alternatives to "lone warrior messes up your entire party right in their stupid faces."
Minions! No, not the yellow ones. An antipaladin and his nightmare mount, a blackguard with bound demonic servants, a necromancer with undead under his thrall, a psion mentally controlling the kingdom's princess to fight alongside him. Also a pretty cool encounter, but an aesthetic more fit for the BBEG himself. We're going for the badass solo fighter taking on the entire party by himself.
DM Fiat: The enemy is two orcs (http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/). That's cool. But we're trying to stay within the existing rules as much as possible, because I find it more interesting.
Skitty on Wailord ancestry: Adding templates is a great way to "monster up" an NPC. But after a certain point (a point reached all too soon) the monsterness outweighs the class levels and you get yet another monster encounter. Which is fine, but there are already loads of monsters that fit the bill of yet another monster encounter.
Solutions to the Darth Maul Problem
Make it a higher CR!
If a CR+1 fight is challenging, a CR+3 fight should be twice as challenging, right? Wrong. Because of the way 3.5's math works, advancing two levels might make some characters fall off the RNG. When fighting two weak dudes, they can spread their attacks among two different PCs, and their own defenses will be low enough that everyone has a chance of doing something. A lone higher level creature does not have that option - every attack is the encounter focus-firing on one PC, every defense is aggregated so that some numbers become simply too low.
So how do we make this work? Resist the urge to optimize. One-handed magic weapon + STR might be enough, you know? Give him dual-wielding so he can spread damage over more of the PCs. Make him trip and bull rush (without Improved Trip or Dungeoncrasher) so the PCs feel the pressure without their hitpoints dropping too fast. The enemy won't kill anyone just by having a high AC. If you have miss chance as your primary defense, even a low attack bonus might make it through and make a difference. Since mages are usually good at things, once you've hit sufficient attack and AC to cause trouble for the melees, you should boost your guy's saves and immunities with everything you've got. A badass boss who goes down to a single mind-affecting spell is just sad.
Tilt the action economy
For melee guys:
More attacks! Every attack action is still an action, and can be used for more than just damage. There are many abilities that let you turn attacks into more things:
Knockdown: Trigger a trip attempt on an attack that does 10+ damage.
Knockback: Trigger a bull rush attempt on an attack.
Duskblade Arcane Channelling: Deliver a touch spell to everyone you hit in a full attack. 20-target irresistible dance? Don't mind if I do.
Exploit these! You can get more attacks through:
Two-weapon/multi-weapon fighting feats (more arms = more attacks, get more arms using multi-limbed races or Prehensile Tail feat)
Natural attacks (they can follow iterative attacks gained from BAB if all are made as secondary attacks)
The Monk's Flurry of Blows (extra attacks when using monk weapons)
Snap Kick (extra unarmed attack every time you attack)
War Mind's Sweeping Strike (attack two threatened squares every time you attack) or War Hulk's Mighty Swing (same thing but 3 squares)
Just make sure not to aim all the attacks at a single guy. Increasing your reach can help you hit more PCs at the same time.
Person Man has a great collection (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?103358-3-X-Ways-to-get-Pounce-or-Free-Movement) of ways to move and full attack. Many of these are also ways of moving without using a move action, which essentially means getting free move actions! Move actions are not the best actions, but they are still actions, so you still play the economy.
Intelligent magic items (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/intelligentItems.htm) have their own actions, which they can use to activate all sorts of special abilities. Intelligent items are also super cool, and add to the coolness of the NPC in the encounter (plus the coolness of the loot).
Dancing swords (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicWeapons.htm#dancing) are pretty dang cool. They cost a standard action to activate, but then they fight by themselves for 4 rounds (pretty much the entire encounter). If you have multiple standard actions, you can launch a bunch of these!
There are ways of straight up getting more actions. Belt of Battle, maneuvers like Time Stands Still, and so on. Pile them upon your dude, and watch your PCs exclaim "this guy is us!" because your PCs have been doing this for ages.
For magic guys:
The most important thing about being a magic guy is casting spells. Here's how to cast loads of spells:
War Weaver's Quiescent Weaving: Cast a bunch of buffs into your "weave" and release them all as a move action. Handy for when you encounter upstart PCs unexpectedly.
Duskblade's Arcane Channeling: As mentioned before. Full attack, everyone you hit eats a touch spell.
Schism psionic power: Psions can manifest, and then manifest again using their split personality.
Control body plus solicit psicrystal: Give your psicrystal command of your body, so he can make you move or attack while you manifest powers.
Swiftblade's Perpetual Options: While under the effects of haste, gain an extra standard action per round.
Elocater's Accelerated Actions: 5 rounds/day, make an extra attack in a full attack, or make a full attack and also manifest a power.
Multivoice or Multiple Head Casting (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fc/20010223a) feats: Cast two spells per round, if you have two heads
Time Stop or temporal acceleration or Swiftblade's Innervated Speed: Stop time, allowing you to cast area-of-effect spells and spells that affect you.
Acquire area attacks
This might seem obvious - if you can strike over an area, you can hinder more than one PC with one action. Casters excel at this, since they can just cast an area of effect spell.
Clones
This is not about ice assassin shenanigans - as the DM, you could just say there are two of the NPC - but in-combat abilities. Mirror image lets your guy live longer; the greater version can be used as an immediate action in response to an attack. The feat Trickery Devotion can make a duplicate, as can a couple of spells like project image.
A timely escape
Your PCs are smart, and by smart I mostly mean powerful, since their players are full of dumb ideas. Regardless, they will pull something out of their butts and kill your awesome guy no matter what you come up with. Since the NPC probably wants to live even if he is losing the fight, a teleportation, invisibility, or unexpected arrival of a fast-moving mount can make the difference between "that guy was a wimp" and "we need to find that guy and kill him for good!"
I'd love to hear any ideas you guys have.