DM Seeking Help Curbing a Dread Witches Intimidation

[tortor]

I have a player who is building a pure spoopy dread witch, complete with Never Outnumbered, and that +5 intimidate armor and he started as a dread necromancer so he has the AOE fear aura etc and has thwarted several combats before his allies could kill anyone by just spooking the enemy away.

When that fails he laters debuffs until he can spoop them better, and it's just going to scale up from there.

I can only put so many constructs and oozes in front of the party, and I need a way to protect standard BBEG types from a single well rolled spoop ending the boss battle.

[Ortesk]

I read the dread witch a little, and it says anything with 4 HD more than your CL is still immune to your fear. Monsters tend to have more HD than the party, so there is that. Shouldn't be hard for you to give monsters non associated class levels to artificially bump the HD (15% of the encounters just got 4 levels of commoner)

Also, correct me if I am wrong, but doesnt immunity to fear beat intimidation? the paladin spell lionheart, as an item costs 16k. Your BBEG should have that, if they know the party. toss that on with 4 levels of commoner, and well....problem solved?

[tortor]

He's been solving HD problems with liberal use of the Skull Bomb spell and dread witch gets to overcome certain fear immunities

[HammeredWharf]

I'd consider asking them to play something else. Dread Witch's shtick is hard and annoying to counter, and countering it makes the character useless in that encounter.

[Ortesk]

I'd consider asking them to play something else. Dread Witch's shtick is hard and annoying to counter, and countering it makes the character useless in that encounter.

This seems the best way with what information I have heard.

Effectively you have a one trick pony. He is going to be really amazing at that trick. If you shut that schtick down, he is useless as all get out. However, if you (OP) want to take him down, toss a cleric his way. Cleric X/Commoner X? Deathward. No negative levels. Or start having soulfire armor, or the cheap version. But this is a bad deal because when you gave to hard counter a player, in one direct way, he gets shafted and the enemy will be wide open to the party dismantling it. Talking to him will be a he best route, but a hard counter does exist

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'd consider asking them to play something else. Dread Witch's shtick is hard and annoying to counter, and countering it makes the character useless in that encounter.

That's a bit of an exageration. A dread witch is still a caster even if she can't intimidate the enemy.

You are using HoH's alternate fear rule where frightened is a -4 instead of having to flee, yeah?

[HammeredWharf]

That's a bit of an exageration. A dread witch is still a caster even if she can't intimidate the enemy.

Yes, I guess I went too far with that. Still, building a character around something only to find out the important monsters are suddenly immune to that thing is really annoying.

[Triaxx]

Throw shielded necromancers at him. Necromancer under death ward is immune to Skull Bomb and it'll make his minions stronger. It'll force the party into retreat and force him to come up with an alternative plan.

[Doctor Despair]

Remember that making your BBEG immune to fear doesn't HAVE to make him useless. You could have henchmen that he could intimidate for information or perhaps even intimidate into helping in the combat for a short while. I don't remember the strict rule, but aren't intimidated foes considered helpful for X minutes? It could be a good way for him to still feel useful and important in the fights where you decide to turn him off. Also, you could try awarding full XP for him in encounters when he does this, but only 1/2 XP for the party. That way he has to make strategic decisions on when to preempt an encounter -- they could be losing valuable XP (and loot, since the enemy runs away unless they're cowering).

[Telonius]

Maybe a mirror foe? Fighting another Dread Witch would cause some laughs when he tried to Intimidate them. (EDIT: Not sure if Reflective Fear on both of them would result in a paradox...)