Hellcat! What the hell??

[Jon_Dahl]

This OP has plenty of drama in it. If you hate drama, please don't continue reading.

The mini-adventure (if you can even call it that) was simple:
An ancient dungeon had a long corridor with plenty of Phosphorescent Fungus on its walls and ceiling. At the end of the corridor, there was a round hall. The hall had five everburning torches that illuminated the area and a large silver statue with sapphire eyes stood in the middle of the hall.

The corridor had a secret door. A hellcat lurked behind the secret door and could see anyone passing in the corridor through a hidden peephole. Once he saw someone trying to enter the hall, he warned the intruder telepathically in Infernal: "Leave or die." If the intruder continued, the hellcat quietly opened the secret door, went after the intruders and killed them in the hall.

The PCs walked in the corridor and received an unknown telepathic message. They didn't understand it. They went to the hall and searched it. The hellcat attacked the PCs from behind and killed them one by one, mostly in grapple. The fight lasted about 14 rounds, after which the sorcerer fled and the rest of the group died.

A hellcat is a CR 7 opponent.
The party consisted of Human Fighter 1/Battle Sorcerer 10 (escaped), Human Warmage 5/Silver Dragon Disciple 4 (perished), Halfling Rogue 8 (perished) and Dwarf Fighter 5/Dwarven Defender 3 Fighter 7/Dwarven Defender 1 (perished). They could do very little against the hellcat during those 12 to 16 rounds.

How come hellcats are so powerful?? I don't get it. They are supposed to be suitable opponents for a group of four 7th-level characters who are supposed to be able to kill it without spending that many resources, let alone dying against it. The APL in this case was over 9, but the PCs were still completely annihilated by the devil even though it was the only battle they fought that day. What is this?

[Name1]

The hellcat has two advantages: It's invisibility and it's high grapple. It uses it's invisibility to sneak up on others (or if it can be seen, to charge) and the grapple via improved grapple and rake the victim to death. A group of 4 ECL 7 is supposed to be able to win this encounter by using up about a quarter of it's resources, so one death (25% of the party) are relatively acceptable.

I'd assume that everyone walked in a straight line without trying to confirm that their allies are still there, right? This was probably what caused the near TPK: Hellcat snuck up from behind, everyone failed their listen against the hellcats move silently, so the first one goes down. No one hears the attack either, so the hellcat lies down the victims body and goes again. No one looks around to confirm the other peoples presence, thus no one sees the dead body. Another failed round of listen checks later, that repeats. My assumption is that the reason the hellcat rocked them so hard was a series of dice rolls going against the party's favor and probably the Rogue/Skill Monkey being the first to go down and the rest lacking skill points (no one was an int- or wis-based class either). The party composition also suggests high damage output, but a lack of utility, so if they'd seen the situation, the Wizard that would normally put up See Invisibility (or the Druid that puts up Faerie Fire) was lacking too...

All in all, this was a encounter that took advantage of the parties weaknesses and was thus able to easily dispatch of them.

[ExLibrisMortis]

14 rounds... so your party wasn't even doing 5 damage per round to the hellcat. I'm guessing this was because of the invisibility and DR 5/good? Between 50% miss chance and the DR, I imagine the fighter (sword and board?) and rogue (finesse?) were useless, the warmage wasn't beating the SR 19, and the battle sorc only knew gish spells, so they were suffering from the miss chance, as well.


Sounds like a low-OP party foiled by a monster with somewhat more special abilities than expected. The invisibility is nasty, unless the party has glitterdust available.

[Emperor Tippy]

That's what happens to higher level parties that don't bother to take things seriously.

Mindsight would have let you track the Hellcat to at least some extent. Permanent See Invisibility would have negated a lot of its advantages.

Without knowing the exact spell lists of all of the casters I can't tell you what, specifically, the party should have done but the biggest mistake they made was going into an unknown dungeon without taking any of the proper precautions.

In addition, why don't any of them speak Infernal? Seriously, that is one of the first extra languages that you should take.

Did everyone skip out on Speak Language?

---
You also have the problem that your party is lacking any kind of support caster. A Hellcat is a Devil, you generally want at least one full caster with you when you face Devils.

[Blackhawk748]

Wisdom of the Emperor

Or barring a full caster, why doenst the Rogue at least have some way to detect Invisible stuff? I know the skill trick Clarity of vision doesnt come online till 9th level, but im pretty sure you can use Listen vs its Move Silently to figure out what square its in.

Also AoE Dispels are amazing.

[Eldariel]

That's only possible if the party was hilariously incompetent and poorly equipped. You'll have to describe what's going on in a bit more detail. This is 3.5, right? Well, Hellcat is a bogstandard grappler/DPS creature. Even invisible, the party should be able to maul it easily enough: once it grapples someone, others just pile onto him and hack the invisible cat dead. However, See Invisibility is a 2nd level spell: there's no excuse for a level 8-11 party to have no See Invisibility prepared. Hell, on these levels, the party should have at least some way to access True Seeing; Wizards get it on level 11, Clerics on level 9. There should at least be a scroll to go around for when it's needed.

Hellcats have 60 HP (every character in that party aside from the Rogue probably has more), +13/+13/+8 attacks (every character in your party can probably match that) OR +15/+15/+15/+15/+10 on a charge, minor DR, minor spell resistance and the usual feline Pounce/Rake/Improved Grab line-up. Against a completely clueless party, things make sense up until the charge. Okay, so it charges somebody out of nowhere (partial charge in surprise round, full attack since Pounce is stupid, initiate grapple): assuming their flat-footed AC is...say 15, that's 46 average damage from the Claws + Rakes + Bite plus grapple (plus one more Rake for ~7 damage). Yeah, that hurts but there's no way the character should be down unless it's precisely the Rogue and he has no Con (and he has Uncanny Dodge so his AC should be much higher and thus be fine).

Okay, now, what happens? You have a grappled, badly hurt character and a full party's worth of teammates within hearing range. Even if the Hellcat goes first and grapples for damage (Rake + Bite) it's only doing 2d8+3 + 1d8+3 assuming it hits everything. This might be getting close for the squishier party members but they should still be standing. And then, the character who got attacked; talking is a free action taken out of turn order, he's yelling for help! The other characters certainly see that something is attacking her and either move in to pound the living daylights out of the invisible grappler, cast their see invisibility or cast something debilitating or save the grappled guy. And then it can't charge anymore since its attackers are right next to it and it can't do impressive damage and it gets pounded into submission (seriously, in a straight-up fight without a surprise Invisible Pounce it has no chance against any of the characters in that party in a 1v1, let alone a 4v1).

It has DR 5/Good; was that a problem? Rogue has +3d6 Sneak Attack (a grappling creature is denied dex bonus to AC vs. others), Battle Sorcerer probably has a lot of Strength, Polymorph for even more, a billion ways to buff his damage and so on, Fighter has Strength and two-hander, Dragon Disciple has Strength. All of them should do enough damage to punch through the DR. And if they're specifically fighting Devils, some Oils of Bless Weapon, actual Holy Weapons and such seem like a given. Perhaps it's just a random monster and they didn't really know to expect it but still, you'd think few 50gp Oils would be worth your while. Though really, DR 5 should not be enough to keep it alive on these levels.


And this is assuming a party that doesn't keep any variant of See Invisibility, True Seeing, Detect Evil or similar active. Which seems foolhardy at best. They probably haven't prepared for needing to actually fly either, right? Or burrow. I wonder what they would do against a Huge Earth Elemental (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elemental.htm#earthElemental) just Earth Gliding and attacking 'em from the ground in a similar place (CR7, can't Tremorsense but can just use senses from Improved Cover)...


Also AoE Dispels are amazing.

Well, Dispels are useless against it since their Invisible in Light is Ex. You need some source of See Invisibility. Though its outlines are visible in a dark area; ironically if they rolled Knowledge, they could've tried to darken the room by doing something about the torches but it's probably more effective to use the old standbies like flour, nuts or whatever to figure out the square it's in, surround it and kick its ass (or cast spells on it).

[Name1]

When the hellcat has someone grappled, a use of a wand of faerie fire works too, and that thing costs like 750 gp for 50 charges...

[Blackhawk748]

Well, Dispels are useless against it since their Invisible in Light is Ex. You need some source of See Invisibility. Though its outlines are visible in a dark area; ironically if they rolled Knowledge, they could've tried to darken the room by doing something about the torches but it's probably more effective to use the old standbies like flour, nuts or whatever to figure out the square it's in, surround it and kick its ass (or cast spells on it).

Ah. I just knew a Hellcat was Invisible, i assumed it was Su or something and would go away for a few turns if you nailed it. Well i learned something today.

[Psyren]

Combat is LOUD, and presumably the grappled PCs have voice boxes. How was it killing everything without the others realizing what was up and at least trying to do something about it? And while it's grappling a victim, everybody knows what square it's in. This is a case not of a difficult foe but of a woefully underprepared or unskilled party.

[Eldariel]

Ah. I just knew a Hellcat was Invisible, i assumed it was Su or something and would go away for a few turns if you nailed it. Well i learned something today.

You're not entirely wrong: in PF it is Su. I'm assuming this is 3.5 though since there's nothing indicating otherwise.

[Psyren]

I'm assuming 3.5 as well given the party comp. (Silverbrow Human, Dwarven Defender, Battle Sorcerer etc.)

EDIT: Misread that first one

[Boci]

This is a case not of a difficult foe but of a woefully underprepared or unskilled party.

Possibly combined with an inexperienced DM. As you said, the party should have heard their companion in the back being murdered, so maybe the DM misinterpreted move silently and allowed the hellcat to roll that without penalty to avoid being detect even as it snacked on PC throatbox.

Granted even then someone in the party should be able to beat the hellcat's MS check, but with the -20 penalty it would have been all but guaranteed.

[Psyren]

This also goes back to a larger issue with this type of encounter - namely the "single boss monster". It's almost never a good idea - either it will be quickly swarmed and trivialized, or it will curbstomp the entire party (as happened here) and the odds of landing in the sweet spot of challenging yet beatable between these two extremes are very small.

[ace rooster]

Mindsight would have let you track the Hellcat to at least some extent. Permanent See Invisibility would have negated a lot of its advantages.


Lol, I don't think tracking the monster mauling the halfling would have been the issue :smalltongue:. See invisibility would at least have given them a better idea what it was though. As a DM I would probably throw them a scroll a little before throwing a natural invisible enemy at them, and facepalm inside as they sell it.

What sort of ACs was the party rocking? The bite is only a +8, so getting grapples established should have been pretty unreliable. The rogue and dwarven defender would have had uncanny dodge, so should not have been in too much trouble. Were the frontliners getting no buffs? Enlarge person is a first level spell that can easily save life against improved grapplers, because they need a size difference. With enlarge person up I would be tempted to try to grapple it! Grappling negates it's advantage from invisibility, and keeping it pinned would allow the rest of the party to finish it off.

I can't imagine this being the result of anything beside bad play. The melee guys dog piling it should have been more than enough, even with it's total concealment. As it grapples it would lose it's dex to AC, which was a good chunk of it. It's DR could have been messing with them though, and not having vision of it might mean that they didn't know how little damage they were doing. You would have to be unprepared against both invisible targets and improved grapplers to mess it up though.

How do you think this party would have faired against a pixie? they are CR 4! They even use a bow, so don't have to give their position away.

[Jon_Dahl]

Maybe when I said "one by one" I gave the wrong idea, sorry. The whole crew was trying to kill it since the first round. I meant that it killed them "one by one" because it grappled and struck one character, killed it slowly, then moved on to kill another character, and then another. Meanwhile everyone was trying to kill it, from the beginning to the end. Everyone was there doing all they could, unhindered (unless they were grappling, which hinders lots of things).

[Jon_Dahl]

That's only possible if the party was hilariously incompetent and poorly equipped. You'll have to describe what's going on in a bit more detail. This is 3.5, right?


Of course. It's 3.5.

The hellcat chose the battle sorcerer as its first target because he was the easiest target. When it charged, I rolled MS with -20 penalty but the result was still too good for most of the characters, including the battle sorcerer, so it got the surprise round. The battle sorcerer received minor scratches from the attack and he ended up grappling. While the hellcat was trying to rip the battle sorcerer apart on the ground, rest of the guys tried to figure out what was going on with the prone battle sorcerer. The dragon disciple ran over the battle sorcerer, but the hellcat dodged it. The dwarven defender tried repeatedly to hit it with an battleaxe and almost always failed. The halfling rogue used a wand of cure light wounds to help the battle sorcerer.

The battle sorcerer ordered everyone to grapple the beast, but when the dragon disciple and the dwarf tried, they didn't manage to do anything. The sorcerer almost died and the hellcat proceeded to beat the crap out of the dwarf who just couldn't hit it... The dwarf scored one nasty critical, though! The dwarf had AC 29 and the bite never touched him. Dragon disciple tried hit it and failed about 95% of the time. The halfling used the wand of CLW to heal the battle sorcerer but he feigned dead and kept his eyes closed at all times. The dwarf died. Then the dragon disciple managed to roll a very good Knowledge Planes check and he knew that if the place were dark, they could see it. So the halfling and the dragon disciple spread out and ran around killing the lights, but the hellcat killed the halfling who received no help from his mates. The battle sorcerer ran to a dark corner so that the hellcat couldn't approach him without being seen. The dragon disciple was climbing in order to get one of the everburning torches but he fumbled his climb check and fell to the ground. The hellcat punished him severely while he was on lying on the ground. The battle sorcerer fled.

The hellcat wanted to know more about the characters so it tried Infernal, then Celestial and then Draconic. The dragon disciple understood Draconic so they could talk, and he tried to reason with the invisible cat but rolled 4 on his diplomacy roll so they duelled until the bitter end. The dragon disciple did no damage before he died.

The battle sorcerer fled from the dungeon. He had 15 hp at the point.

[Gruftzwerg]

So many issues (many already pointed out) that I don't know where to start.


- no full caster/supporter.
- not enough burst (a decent Half-Ork Barb should have done easily enough dmg to bypass DR and kill it in a few hits = lesser than 5 round imho, even considering invisibility)
- since no full caster/supporter is in the group, the 2 gish and the rouge should have some scrolls/wands for these kind of situations. as others said, glitter-dust, fairy fire, detect evil (before the fight, as they did get the telepathic message) , and so many more options of making this encounter almost EZ-mode.
- did your group had any kind of equipment that wasn't either weapons or armor? I did run several times with lowlvl parties (2-4) into invisible creatures without the proper magic in group and we could always find something to make it more visible. lantern oil (+fire^^), any kind of powder or dust, heck you could even use dirt, water, someone whirling a rope around or whatsoever. Imho either you DMed for a group of kids, or your party didn't even try to solve the issue.
- The party setup already suggests that most of the players only cared for their own character and their cool stuff they wanted to play and not what was needed. I mean you could have used a caster or 2 (dps & heal), but you got 2 gish. Nothing against gish, I like to play em too but as said, nobody was prepared for team-play (seems even the Dwarven Defender wasn't optimized to taunt via intimidate and stop the hellcat from grappling with high AC and his abilities).

[ExLibrisMortis]

That does sound like the party being horribly ineffective (and unlucky, too). In-combat healing, and cure light wounds no less? Why are you spending actions healing, when you could be stabbing the thing that's causing the wounds in the first place? You're right there, you can full attack, that should be 3-4 chances at a decent hit. The warmage isn't casting any spells, in that story, but maybe they were all attack roll spells (hard to AoE in a grapple, of course).

Then taking down the torches, when there are five of them, and using Climb? If you are going to do something like that, use fly, deeper darkness, or run into the corridor and defend the door (possibly burn the fungus with a fireball or similar).


As an example, a CL 11 Empowered orb of acid with +5 Warmage's Edge averages 16d6 + 5 = 61 damage, enough to kill the hellcat in one shot. A moderately optimized warmage would surely have invested in some metamagic reduction, especially for empower/maximize and orb of acid specifically, thus being able to cast it as 5th, a couple of times per day. It's possible that it's above the optimization level for your group, of course, in which case your question is answered, as well.

[Telok]

I had a campaign with a number of hellcats, no problems. Yeah, at level 6 there was a 3/4 tpk but it was to the demon after the hellcat (protip: demon summoning evil altars are not xp boxes). By level 9 they could take two at a time on rocky ground next to a lava flow. In a side event two level 8 characters (ranger and fighter) took out a hellcat and a babu just by retreating into a mud pit.

Seriously, phantom fungus and imps are low level invis monsters. A bag of flour or See Invis are standard adventuring gear by level 4.

[Recherché]

I've had one party crush a piece of chalk and use the chalk dust to defeat invisibility before. A tactical retreat could also have been able option if they could have gotten the battle sorcerer free for even a round. It sounds like you're party wasn't thinking outside of the box to things beyond attacking and healing.

[Eldariel]

Of course. It's 3.5.

The hellcat chose the battle sorcerer as its first target because he was the easiest target. When it charged, I rolled MS with -20 penalty but the result was still too good for most of the characters, including the battle sorcerer, so it got the surprise round. The battle sorcerer received minor scratches from the attack and he ended up grappling. While the hellcat was trying to rip the battle sorcerer apart on the ground, rest of the guys tried to figure out what was going on with the prone battle sorcerer. The dragon disciple ran over the battle sorcerer, but the hellcat dodged it. The dwarven defender tried repeatedly to hit it with an battleaxe and almost always failed. The halfling rogue used a wand of cure light wounds to help the battle sorcerer.

The battle sorcerer ordered everyone to grapple the beast, but when the dragon disciple and the dwarf tried, they didn't manage to do anything. The sorcerer almost died and the hellcat proceeded to beat the crap out of the dwarf who just couldn't hit it... The dwarf scored one nasty critical, though! The dwarf had AC 29 and the bite never touched him. Dragon disciple tried hit it and failed about 95% of the time. The halfling used the wand of CLW to heal the battle sorcerer but he feigned dead and kept his eyes closed at all times. The dwarf died. Then the dragon disciple managed to roll a very good Knowledge Planes check and he knew that if the place were dark, they could see it. So the halfling and the dragon disciple spread out and ran around killing the lights, but the hellcat killed the halfling who received no help from his mates. The battle sorcerer ran to a dark corner so that the hellcat couldn't approach him without being seen. The dragon disciple was climbing in order to get one of the everburning torches but he fumbled his climb check and fell to the ground. The hellcat punished him severely while he was on lying on the ground. The battle sorcerer fled.

The hellcat wanted to know more about the characters so it tried Infernal, then Celestial and then Draconic. The dragon disciple understood Draconic so they could talk, and he tried to reason with the invisible cat but rolled 4 on his diplomacy roll so they duelled until the bitter end. The dragon disciple did no damage before he died.

The battle sorcerer fled from the dungeon. He had 15 hp at the point.

...huh. I'm getting flashbacks from your RHoD journal. So...to recap, not a single spell was cast by the Warmage who wasn't grappled, nor attempted by the Battle Sorcerer? And the Rogue wasn't attacking it? And they tried to grapple it instead of just beating it? And then they decided to start running around putting away the torches instead of just beating it up while it's grappling somebody or casting See Invisibility. And the Dragon Disciple and the Dwarf manage to be poor enough in combat as to be unable to combat it?

I see. Well, the problem is not the monster but the party. No excuse for such poor preparation against invisible foes. If they had some Potions, Scrolls or items (Scout's Headband from Magic Item Compendium gets the job done extremely well for instance) or just plain oldfashioned prepared spells to see it or to Glitterdust/Faerie Fire/whatver it, life would be easy. There are various creative solutions.

But, the real issue is that they somehow are stymied by AC 21, 50% miss chance and DR 5/Good. I guess nobody is two-handing, nobody has very high strength, only Rogue has bonus damage (which he can't use against enemies with concealment). What about area spells? I guess Battle Sorcerer doesn't have Glitterdust or he would've cast it defensively. The Hellcat's Will-saves are decent but nothing a level 11 caster can't punch through (18 casting stat, 2 level-ups, +4 item = 24; Will DC 19 which it fails 50% of the time) and regardless of whether it saves, that'd light it up. Not to mention, it's just one of the most useful spells in the game.


Either way, I guess those characters are just significantly less optimized than the average playtest characters and thus any curveballs will throw any expectations off the rails.

[MisterKaws]

Doesn't Telepathy have an automatic translation function? It doesn't actually specify a shared language, although the lesser forms(Pseudodragon et al) do have that limitation.

[Friv]

Of course. It's 3.5.

The hellcat chose the battle sorcerer as its first target because he was the easiest target. When it charged, I rolled MS with -20 penalty but the result was still too good for most of the characters, including the battle sorcerer, so it got the surprise round. The battle sorcerer received minor scratches from the attack and he ended up grappling. While the hellcat was trying to rip the battle sorcerer apart on the ground, rest of the guys tried to figure out what was going on with the prone battle sorcerer. The dragon disciple ran over the battle sorcerer, but the hellcat dodged it. The dwarven defender tried repeatedly to hit it with an battleaxe and almost always failed. The halfling rogue used a wand of cure light wounds to help the battle sorcerer.

The battle sorcerer ordered everyone to grapple the beast, but when the dragon disciple and the dwarf tried, they didn't manage to do anything. The sorcerer almost died and the hellcat proceeded to beat the crap out of the dwarf who just couldn't hit it... The dwarf scored one nasty critical, though! The dwarf had AC 29 and the bite never touched him. Dragon disciple tried hit it and failed about 95% of the time. The halfling used the wand of CLW to heal the battle sorcerer but he feigned dead and kept his eyes closed at all times. The dwarf died. Then the dragon disciple managed to roll a very good Knowledge Planes check and he knew that if the place were dark, they could see it. So the halfling and the dragon disciple spread out and ran around killing the lights, but the hellcat killed the halfling who received no help from his mates. The battle sorcerer ran to a dark corner so that the hellcat couldn't approach him without being seen. The dragon disciple was climbing in order to get one of the everburning torches but he fumbled his climb check and fell to the ground. The hellcat punished him severely while he was on lying on the ground. The battle sorcerer fled.

The hellcat wanted to know more about the characters so it tried Infernal, then Celestial and then Draconic. The dragon disciple understood Draconic so they could talk, and he tried to reason with the invisible cat but rolled 4 on his diplomacy roll so they duelled until the bitter end. The dragon disciple did no damage before he died.

The battle sorcerer fled from the dungeon. He had 15 hp at the point.

Sounds like a mix of bad tactics, bad builds, and bad die rolls. Any one can be survived.

From a build perspective, dragon disciple and dwarven defender are both kind of garbage classes, and your party had no dedicated buffers. So there's that.

Tactics-wise, it's a clown show. The dwarven defender did the best he could (run over and hit it with an axe forever), but he was the only one. The rogue wasted his actions on the weakest cure possible, healing miniscule amounts each round instead of using his skills to get in and stab the thing. He could have at least had a better curing wand. The sorcerer faked being dead while his comrades were in danger, and thus survived, but he never unleashed any spells to turn the tide, even when he ran off. The dragon disciple didn't use any of his spells, either for damage, buffing, or movement. A single casting of Magic Missile from him would have, assuming Int 16 (which is still low, but I assume he was playing martial with some spells) done 15-24 damage, a full third of the creature's health.

And luck-wise, things didn't go your party's way either. Your battle sorcerer was stuck in a grapple, so he couldn't do anything early on. The hellcat has an AC of 21; the dwarven defender should have had at least a +12 or +13 to hit, so even flailing invisibly he should have had a 1/3 chance on his main attack and 1/6 on his secondary, dealing a huge chunk of damage per hit. Instead, he got one crit and it seems that was all? And the hellcat needed 16+ to hit the dwarf, and needed to hit him about 6-7 times to drop him, but it didn't take the full ten to fifteen rounds that statistically were needed to kill him, since that was the entire duration of the fight.

The dragon disciple botched a climbing check at a bad moment and also wasn't rolling well to hit. The rogue apparently got torn to shreds really fast, and that means a lot of lucky high-power hits from the hellkite, because a Level 8 halfling rogue should have, at a minimum, an AC of 22-24. The claws should have less than 50% accuracy, and the bite should be a crapshoot. And with at least 40 HP, it should take a solid 4-5 hits to drop the rogue in the first place. That's 3-5 rounds of dedicated fire right there.

In essence, this wasn't a "hellcats are strong" moment. This was a perfect storm of failure on every conceivable level, and it's going to make a great story for you some day.

[ace rooster]

Ah yes, the old +3Cr from giving the party information that they should probably ignore. :smallwink: It probably does get a +1 from being an effective ambush though.

I am going to go against the grain and say that I don't mind the rogue's actions. A halfling built for precision damage has no place in combat with a concealed grappler. If throwing out a cure light wounds is all they have, then that is what they should do. Probably a build error for that to be your most appropriate wand (though if you are in a party that low op maybe not), but might not be a play error. Getting killed after was probably a mistake, though a grappled halfling is probably dead without help. Should have been behind someone more solid.

The battle sorceror was probably best staying down, as AoO bite grapple attacks are... problematic, and being a prone full caster beside a full attacker is not a good place to be. Should probably be able to cast when it has moved away though. They must have had something useful.

The dragon disciple gets 0 points though. Volunteering for climb checks in combat? The rogue might have time for that, having found themselves useless in this combat, but the rest of the party certainly don't. They must have had a touch spell against the monster while it was grappling the sorc, which would have been against AC9. Even if it missed because of concealment, they keep the spell until they hit.

Sounds like fun though. Competance is overrated. :smallsmile:

[Big Fau]

A hellcat is a CR 7 opponent.
The party consisted of Human Fighter 1/Battle Sorcerer 10 (escaped), Human Warmage 5/Silver Dragon Disciple 4 (perished), Halfling Rogue 8 (perished) and Dwarf Fighter 5/Dwarven Defender 3 (perished). They could do very little against the hellcat during those 12 to 16 rounds.

Why come hellcats are so powerful?? I don't get it. They are supposed to be suitable opponents for a group of four 7th-level characters who are supposed to be able to kill it without spending that many resources, let alone dying against it. The APL in this case was over 9, but the PCs were still completely annihilated by the devil even though it was the only battle they fought that day. What is this?


Your party is of vastly different levels.
Your party is poorly optimized (seriously).
Your party was not equipped with the ability to see invisible creatures (something imperative by EL 6).


Seriously, one of your players took 10 levels in Sorcerer, another took levels in Dragon Disciple, another is a 5th level Fighter with levels in Dwarven Defender, and the last is straight Rogue. The encounter went exactly as planned, and your party didn't plan for such a circumstance.

[Thurbane]

Doesn't Telepathy have an automatic translation function? It doesn't actually specify a shared language, although the lesser forms(Pseudodragon et al) do have that limitation.

That was my understanding too, although the ability description isn't entirely clear.


Telepathy (Su): A creature with this ability can communicate telepathically with any other creature within a certain range (specified in the creature’s entry, usually 100 feet) that has a language. It is possible to address multiple creatures at once telepathically, although maintaining a telepathic conversation with more than one creature at a time is just as difficult as simultaneously speaking and listening to multiple people at the same time.
Some creatures have a limited form of telepathy, while others have a more powerful form of the ability.

Hellcats use a natural telepathy to communicate with one another and those they encounter. A hellcat measures about 9 feet long and weighs about 900 pounds.

It's not unreasonable to assume Infernal is their default language, but I'd read the above as they are to communicate without language barriers.

...I'm going to echo the others above. Your party was very under-prepared for their level. There may have been some errors in how an invisible attacker was handled as well, if the party were totally unaware of their fellow party members being mauled to death a few feet behind them...

[Friv]

...I'm going to echo the others above. Your party was very under-prepared for their level. There may have been some errors in how an invisible attacker was handled as well, if the party were totally unaware of their fellow party members being mauled to death a few feet behind them...

Based on the description, the party was aware that something was up, but not what exactly - the Hellcat got a surprise round, and the rest of the party spent the first round (?) racing over to see why their sorcerer had fallen over and started screaming a lot. From there, we had the following steps, each filled with tactical missteps and bad rolls:

1) Fighter and Disciple tried swinging their weapons into the space, but missed a lot, presumably due to bad luck on the 50% miss chance. At this point, the sorcerer was grappled and the rogue was casting cure spells to keep him alive. This step is mostly bad luck, although the disciple missed a chance to cast spells and the rogue missed a chance to have better wands on hand.

2) Fighter and Disciple made the terrible decision to switch to grappling. This did nothing useful, because their low hit chance was even lower now. At about this point the hellcat finished mauling the sorcerer, and the rogue healed him again to keep him alive. This step is mainly bad tactics.

3) The hellcat rolled really well several rounds in a row while the fighter rolled really poorly (given that it managed to kill a Level 8 Dwarven Defender with AC 29). During this time, the disciple was still trying grappling, maybe? The rogue was healing, and the sorcerer was playing dead. This is both bad luck and bad tactics; good tactics would have been to lure the cat away from the sorcerer so he could get up, and for the disciple to jump in with some spells. On the other hand, the defender should have been able to kill the hellcat one-on-one just swinging away with an axe, so bad luck there.
*EDIT* Wait, I didn't think about DR/good. The defender couldn't actually win on average, because each of his hits is doing half as much damage; instead of killing the hellcat in an average of 5-6 rounds, it'll take him 10-12, and the hellcat only needs an average 8-9 to kill the fighter. Still, he should have done significant damage. If he has Power Attack, strength-boosting gear, or a better than +1 axe, things swing back in the defender's favour, but I sort of suspect he had none of those.

4) The disciple and the rogue split up to physically put out all the lights in the room, which is kind of too little, too late. The sorcerer ran for a dark corner of the room and continued to not cast any spells, which is just awful. The hellcat chased down the rogue, got lucky again, and killed him. So bad tactics and bad luck combined again.

5) The disciple tried to climb a wall, fell over and got pinned and mauled to death. The sorcerer ran away completely. This is bad tactics combined with bad luck for the disciple. The sorcerer, at this point, had made the right call.

[Thurbane]

Yeah, bad luck and bad rolling can certainly make a bad situation lethal in a hurry in D&D.

Human Fighter 1/Battle Sorcerer 10 (ECL 11)
Human Warmage 5/Silver Dragon Disciple 4 (ECL9*) (*in theory - DD is probably a quite a poor choice for this character, especially after 5 Warmage levels. 1 more level would have gotten him 3rd level spells)
Halfling Rogue 8 (ECL 8)
Dwarf Fighter 5/Dwarven Defender 3 (perished) (ECL 8) (side-note : I know there's a temptation to get into PrCs as soon as possible, but level 5 of Fighter does nothing for this build. Soak up another level of Fighter, or take a level of another full BAB class like Ranger or Barbarian. A player at my table did exactly the same with his Dwarven Defender, despite my suggestions otherwise) Actually, don't you need BAB +7 for Dwarven Defender?

This is an effective party level of 9.3.

In regards to the DR, one would hope that the warrior types have access to power attack. This can do A LOT to mitigate DR.

[Jon_Dahl]

Friv's depiction of the events is spot on and better than mine. A couple of details:
- While in the corner, the battle sorcerer had a ready action prepared to cast magic missile as soon as the hellcat was visible, since his comrades were putting out the lights. The beast never appeared.
- I think my estimate of 14 rounds is not accurate. I will say that the battle took at least 16 rounds after which the battle sorcerer fled. I'm not even counting the hopeless duel between the dragon disciple and hellcat as part of the battle. That thing was a joke, I didn't even have any initiative count there.

[Psyren]

Sounds like you have your answer then:



Why come hellcats are so powerful?? I don't get it. They are supposed to be suitable opponents for a group of four 7th-level characters who are supposed to be able to kill it without spending that many resources, let alone dying against it. The APL in this case was over 9, but the PCs were still completely annihilated by the devil even though it was the only battle they fought that day. What is this?

i.e. the answer is they're not; rather it's the party that was lacking (skill and strength, and also luck.)

The latter they can't control, but the former two would have mitigated it considerably.

[ace rooster]

Based on the description, the party was aware that something was up, but not what exactly - the Hellcat got a surprise round, and the rest of the party spent the first round (?) racing over to see why their sorcerer had fallen over and started screaming a lot. From there, we had the following steps, each filled with tactical missteps and bad rolls:

1) Fighter and Disciple tried swinging their weapons into the space, but missed a lot, presumably due to bad luck on the 50% miss chance. At this point, the sorcerer was grappled and the rogue was casting cure spells to keep him alive. This step is mostly bad luck, although the disciple missed a chance to cast spells and the rogue missed a chance to have better wands on hand.

2) Fighter and Disciple made the terrible decision to switch to grappling. This did nothing useful, because their low hit chance was even lower now. At about this point the hellcat finished mauling the sorcerer, and the rogue healed him again to keep him alive. This step is mainly bad tactics.

3) The hellcat rolled really well several rounds in a row while the fighter rolled really poorly (given that it managed to kill a Level 8 Dwarven Defender with AC 29). During this time, the disciple was still trying grappling, maybe? The rogue was healing, and the sorcerer was playing dead. This is both bad luck and bad tactics; good tactics would have been to lure the cat away from the sorcerer so he could get up, and for the disciple to jump in with some spells. On the other hand, the defender should have been able to kill the hellcat one-on-one just swinging away with an axe, so bad luck there.
*EDIT* Wait, I didn't think about DR/good. The defender couldn't actually win on average, because each of his hits is doing half as much damage; instead of killing the hellcat in an average of 5-6 rounds, it'll take him 10-12, and the hellcat only needs an average 8-9 to kill the fighter. Still, he should have done significant damage. If he has Power Attack, strength-boosting gear, or a better than +1 axe, things swing back in the defender's favour, but I sort of suspect he had none of those.

4) The disciple and the rogue split up to physically put out all the lights in the room, which is kind of too little, too late. The sorcerer ran for a dark corner of the room and continued to not cast any spells, which is just awful. The hellcat chased down the rogue, got lucky again, and killed him. So bad tactics and bad luck combined again.

5) The disciple tried to climb a wall, fell over and got pinned and mauled to death. The sorcerer ran away completely. This is bad tactics combined with bad luck for the disciple. The sorcerer, at this point, had made the right call.

3 is explained by the thing being invisible. The defender may well have had power attack, but have been unaware that the cat had DR. They should have been aware that the cat was only hitting on high numbers, and considered fighting defensively though. It would reduce damage taken by ~40%, so is better if you are hitting on a 11, even neglecting the rest of the party. I'm assuming that the AC29 was in defensive stance, so the defender could not move. It is not like they died fast though, so they should probably have withdrawn when they were getting close to death (Dwarf wanting an honorable death?). The could have even asked the rogue for healing, as 1d8+1 per round would probably be faster than they were taking damage! Asking the rogue to distract it (aid another for AC) could also be viable, though that would put them in considerable danger.

Not thinking to use power attack on a defensive character is forgivable, though defensive builds are pretty bad PC builds anyway. Not thinking about defensive options on a defensive character is just bad.

So many missed chances.

[Friv]

3 is explained by the thing being invisible. The defender may well have had power attack, but have been unaware that the cat had DR. They should have been aware that the cat was only hitting on high numbers, and considered fighting defensively though. It would reduce damage taken by ~40%, so is better if you are hitting on a 11, even neglecting the rest of the party. I'm assuming that the AC29 was in defensive stance, so the defender could not move. It is not like they died fast though, so they should probably have withdrawn when they were getting close to death (Dwarf wanting an honorable death?). The could have even asked the rogue for healing, as 1d8+1 per round would probably be faster than they were taking damage! Asking the rogue to distract it (aid another for AC) could also be viable, though that would put them in considerable danger.

Not thinking to use power attack on a defensive character is forgivable, though defensive builds are pretty bad PC builds anyway. Not thinking about defensive options on a defensive character is just bad.

So many missed chances.

The stats I was using for my calculations, which are to be fair wild guesswork because I don't have this guy's sheet in front of him, were as follows:

BAB +8, Str 18 (16 at level 1 and then two +1s at level-up), +1 magic axe (because level 8), stance bonus for +2 Str. Total attack bonus +14/+9. The hellcat has AC 21, so if it weren't invisible the defender's attacks have a 70% and 45% chance of hitting. Add the miss chance, and the defender's attacks should have a 35% and 22% chance of hitting, for 2-9 damage per hit. That gives him an average of almost exactly one hit per round, and since the hellcat has 60 HP, that means around 9-10 rounds to drop it. When I wasn't including DR into that mix, I was assuming 7-14 damage per hit, and an average of 5 rounds to kill the thing.

Meanwhile, the hellcat has +13 to hit an AC of 29, twice. That's two 25% chances to hit, or roughly a 45% chance of scoring at least one hit per round, and about a 6% chance to hit twice. He deals 7-15 damage per hit, so it'll take him seven or eight hits to drop the defender, for a total of around fifteen rounds of combat.

Of course, that's only true for the first six rounds. At the end of that, an average fight would see the hellcat at 25-30 HP and the defender at 40-60 HP. After that, the DD loses 4 points of AC, 2 points of attack bonus, and 2 points of damage. This is bad for him; his chances of landing a blow drop to 40%, for average damage of only 2.6, and the hellcat's chances go up to 75%. The defender needs another 20 rounds to kill the cat, and the cat only needs another 6-9 rounds to kill the defender.

But even so, that's not what seems to have happened. The defender didn't hold out for fifteen rounds alone, since the whole fight was over in fourteen. He also didn't take out half or more of the hellcat's health.

*EDIT* I was glancing over stuff, and I just realized something else. Since dragon disciples are hot garbage, spellcasting directly on the hellcat would probably not work. The disciple only had a caster level of 5, meaning only a quarter of his spells would land. As a dragon disciple, he'd have been better off casting Fist of Stone for boosting unarmed attack and damage, and then True Striking his way to victory. Although I guess that would require True Strike being prepared, which... come on, who does that.

[Boci]

The stats I was using for my calculations, which are to be fair wild guesswork because I don't have this guy's sheet in front of him, were as follows:

BAB +8, Str 18 (16 at level 1 and then two +1s at level-up), +1 magic axe (because level 8), stance bonus for +2 Str. Total attack bonus +14/+9. The hellcat has AC 21, so if it weren't invisible the defender's attacks have a 70% and 45% chance of hitting. Add the miss chance, and the defender's attacks should have a 35% and 22% chance of hitting, for 2-9 damage per hit. That gives him an average of almost exactly one hit per round, and since the hellcat has 60 HP, that means around 9-10 rounds to drop it. When I wasn't including DR into that mix, I was assuming 7-14 damage per hit, and an average of 5 rounds to kill the thing.

Meanwhile, the hellcat has +13 to hit an AC of 29, twice. That's two 25% chances to hit, or roughly a 45% chance of scoring at least one hit per round, and about a 6% chance to hit twice. He deals 7-15 damage per hit, so it'll take him seven or eight hits to drop the defender, for a total of around fifteen rounds of combat.

Of course, that's only true for the first six rounds. At the end of that, an average fight would see the hellcat at 25-30 HP and the defender at 40-60 HP. After that, the DD loses 4 points of AC, 2 points of attack bonus, and 2 points of damage. This is bad for him; his chances of landing a blow drop to 40%, for average damage of only 2.6, and the hellcat's chances go up to 75%. The defender needs another 20 rounds to kill the cat, and the cat only needs another 6-9 rounds to kill the defender.

But even so, that's not what seems to have happened. The defender didn't hold out for fifteen rounds alone, since the whole fight was over in fourteen. He also didn't take out half or more of the hellcat's health.

Should hellcat be getting +2 to hit from being invisible?

[Friv]

Should hellcat be getting +2 to hit from being invisible?

A Level 3 Dwarven Defender has Uncanny Dodge, granting him immunity to the invisibility bonus.

[Boci]

A Level 3 Dwarven Defender has Uncanny Dodge, granting him immunity to the invisibility bonus.

I thought that only prevented you from losing dex to AC:

Starting at 2nd level, a dwarven defender retains his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) regardless of being caught flat-footed or struck by an invisible attacker.

[ngilop]

Like.. I don't know if I forgot how to read English or not But I am really confused.

Bsically what happened was the whole party just kinda stood around the grappled sorcerer for a few rounds yelling at saying things like "what going on"?

Then spent the rest of the time trying to hit the thing they did not see with random weapons, Even though the Warmage/Dragon Disiclple Had access to magic missle and refused to do anything of the sort and instead just kept trying to hit it?

A couple of rounds of magic missle should have done some damage to the hellcat

And how did the part roll so bad that literally nobody hit for 84 seconds straight?

OR is just my grasp on English completely gone after all these years?

[Gruftzwerg]

A couple of rounds of magic missle should have done some damage to the hellcat

And how did the part roll so bad that literally nobody hit for 84 seconds straight?



If I remember correct Magic Missile needs line-of-sight and since the hellcat was invisible all the time, they couldn't even cast one. After the party realized (with knowledge check) that the hellcat would become visible if the lights are turned off, they tried to do that. But it was already to late to turn the lights manually off, cause already a few died and it was a really bad idea to split the remaining group to do that. They got caught one by one.
If they had tried that while the Defender was tanking the Hellcat, it could have worked.

@the DM
The group setup had no optimization, no strategy.
They fell into panic and lost sight of what is a good or bad idea and started to do anything anybody yelled before thinking.
- the 1st victim asks other player to grapple > they try it without thinking about if they are good grappler (they are not, and shouldn't have listened to that stupid idea).
- they realize that the hellcat would become visible when the lights are turned off > they don't think about how foolish it is to split the remaining group without some1 distracting/tanking the Hellcat.


The group (including the DM) should read this thread to learn from their mistakes for the next adventure. I would advise the group to play at least one adventure with the typical newbie-setup (DPS Fighter, Rouge, full arcane Caster, Healer). I know that this setup isn't much fun for most people, but it should help to learn what a good setup needs (& what can be exchanged via magic items or other build option in later sessions). Your group just needs to learn the strategy rules for higher lvls. Learning by doing.
The group had to many overspecialized characters that didn't covered the needs of a good group setup. It could have worked with the setup if the players would have been high experienced and optimized (e.g. the rouge could have been a much better help with a better arsenal of lvl 1-2 wands).

I assume that the DM isn't capable of playing a NPC casters to a degree to be a worthy thread. Otherwise this problem would have occurred much earlier (and maybe than not so deadly). Cause if the DM would have used a few badass casters till yet, the group would have been much better experienced in solving strategic combat encounters.
I don't want to be offending, don't get me wrong. I just want to point out, that the situation implies, that the group has been playing Tank & Spank so far and not D&D 3.5 .
We all made this mistakes at one point, so there is nothing to be ashamed off. It's just part of the learning process.

[Eldariel]

If I remember correct Magic Missile needs line-of-sight and since the hellcat was invisible all the time, they couldn't even cast one. After the party realized (with knowledge check) that the hellcat would become visible if the lights are turned off, they tried to do that. But it was already to late to turn the lights manually off, cause already a few died and it was a really bad idea to split the remaining group to do that. They got caught one by one.
If they had tried that while the Defender was tanking the Hellcat, it could have worked.

No, it was a mistake to even try in combat. There were five Everburning Torches (not on ground-level) and these guys apparently needed to even climb up to them to put them off, not to mention phosphorescent fungus (though that might not have had an effect deep enough). Even a cursory situational analysis would immediately tell you that unless you have (1) Magic that can be used to put all the lights off immediately OR (2) Block light getting to the target area without using magical darkness, it simply takes too long.

You don't have 5 standard actions and god-knows-how-many move actions to waste in a fight. Like, the characters are in the process of being killed and they choose that time to start spending half a dozen turn's worth of actions to try and see the target's outlines. Even if they did, it would still have concealment (at least against the ones without Darkvision; whether faint outline is sufficient to consider target "seen" is another matter). They can already estimate its location simply by it grappling someone or just it being Large, not to mention any number of mundane tricks you can find from any given fairytale. What they need to do is to kill it; thus they should be putting their actions into either disabling it (through magic I'm sure this party would never prepare since it doesn't deal damage...) or dealing damage to it.

And if they can't even bypass its DR, they should just cast away their shields, two-hand their weapons and hammer it into submission (except casters but that depends on what spells they have available, something that's hard to figure out off the bat) which is probably perfectly sufficient with a 4v1 action economy and superior AC/to hit/damage/HP in spite of the concealment, particularly if it's grappling (sitting duck vs. the rest of the party, being denied its Dex-bonus to AC; Power Attack for full and pound it into submission).

[Psyren]

I'm willing to bet that they made that knowledge check, you gave the info about the light invisibility, and they thought that was a specific hint needed to beat this thing - never mind the sheer impracticality of climbing up to extinguish 5 magical torches while an invisible demon is wreaking havoc on the group.

Which again points to lack of skill/experience, but with players that misguided I think you may have to be careful about which info you give them or how you convey it.

[Eldariel]

I'm willing to bet that they made that knowledge check, you gave the info about the light invisibility, and they thought that was a specific hint needed to beat this thing - never mind the sheer impracticality of climbing up to extinguish 5 magical torches while an invisible demon is wreaking havoc on the group.

Which again points to lack of skill/experience, but with players that misguided I think you may have to be careful about which info you give them or how you convey it.

I'd say that's already more than inexperience; it's more like a complete and utter lack of tactical acumen on a general level for the whole party, not just regarding D&D but in general. I guess they don't have any leader-type who'd forge some order in the chaos either? Could be intentionally suboptimal choices too. It's possible none of the characters are very smart or wise (two Charisma-casters, Fighter and Rogue) so perhaps they were roleplaying their mentals?

[Boci]

I'm willing to bet that they made that knowledge check, you gave the info about the light invisibility, and they thought that was a specific hint needed to beat this thing - never mind the sheer impracticality of climbing up to extinguish 5 magical torches while an invisible demon devil is wreaking havoc on the group.

Fixed that for you :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

[Jon_Dahl]

Psyren's instinct is 100% right, but I just couldn't do anything about that. I did it by the rules: I gave the PCs a hint like it should be. According to the rules, I had to give a ("you recall another piece of useful information") hint. I'm willing to hear what would have been a useful hint (remember: just one hint allowed) in that situation... Well, just in case I put another hellcat in my game someday...


I'd say that's already more than inexperience; it's more like a complete and utter lack of tactical acumen on a general level for the whole party, not just regarding D&D but in general. I guess they don't have any leader-type who'd forge some order in the chaos either? Could be intentionally suboptimal choices too. It's possible none of the characters are very smart or wise (two Charisma-casters, Fighter and Rogue) so perhaps they were roleplaying their mentals?

Sure they had a leader. The battle sorcerer who got two guys trying to grapple the creature. He always wants someone else to be the de jure leader but he's always the de facto leader.

Halfling's int was 16 and the dragon disciple had a good INT too.

[Calthropstu]

Your party is of vastly different levels.
Your party is poorly optimized (seriously).
Your party was not equipped with the ability to see invisible creatures (something imperative by EL 6).


Seriously, one of your players took 10 levels in Sorcerer, another took levels in Dragon Disciple, another is a 5th level Fighter with levels in Dwarven Defender, and the last is straight Rogue. The encounter went exactly as planned, and your party didn't plan for such a circumstance.

Actually, I am playing in a group with zero ability to see invisible creatures except sense minds used by my character. 11th level pathfinder psionics game.

But we would fare immensely better than this. Fold space the grappled character out, put our melee on it, then grease, energy blast, and wave after wave of aoe.

This literally sounds like an immensely underprepped and inexperienced party. Actually, this was good for them. To be honest, most adventuring groups end this way... tis why super high level characters are so rare in the stories.

[Friv]

I thought that only prevented you from losing dex to AC:

Starting at 2nd level, a dwarven defender retains his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) regardless of being caught flat-footed or struck by an invisible attacker.

Oh, huh. When we were D&Ding, my group wasn't using Uncanny Dodge correctly.

God, Dwarven Defender is just the worst class.

[Psyren]

I'd say that's already more than inexperience; it's more like a complete and utter lack of tactical acumen on a general level for the whole party, not just regarding D&D but in general. I guess they don't have any leader-type who'd forge some order in the chaos either? Could be intentionally suboptimal choices too. It's possible none of the characters are very smart or wise (two Charisma-casters, Fighter and Rogue) so perhaps they were roleplaying their mentals?

Maybe they thought that once they doused the lights and the thing became visible it would abandon the battlefield due to their superior numbers. It's a slim chance at best, but a chance.


Fixed that for you :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Mea culpa :smallredface:


Psyren's instinct is 100% right, but I just couldn't do anything about that. I did it by the rules: I gave the PCs a hint like it should be. According to the rules, I had to give a ("you recall another piece of useful information") hint. I'm willing to hear what would have been a useful hint (remember: just one hint allowed) in that situation... Well, just in case I put another hellcat in my game someday...

I would have simply said their attacker is naturally invisible, and leave out the tidbit about how to reveal it, since trying to do so would (as happened here) almost certainly get them all killed. If they think they have to endure its invisibility - which they did, since they had no practical way to remove it - they wouldn't have even considered the tactically inferior option and they might have actually returned to attacking and possibly even drove it away or won outright. Or at the very least they might have tried running sooner.

Instead they heard "torches!" and their minds immediately shifted into Puzzle Boss mode. But it was a puzzle where they left half the pieces at home on the couch, where the hint sheet had all but one line smeared into illegibility and they were holding it upside-down besides.

Also, one other point I'd like to bring up - the cat itself may have been CR 7, but this was not an EL 7 encounter. The Hellcat had both surprise and favorable terrain (i.e. unextinguishable bright light) on its side. I'd peg this at least a level or two higher than its actual CR.

[icefractal]

No, it was a mistake to even try in combat. There were five Everburning Torches (not on ground-level) and these guys apparently needed to even climb up to them to put them off, not to mention phosphorescent fungus (though that might not have had an effect deep enough). Even a cursory situational analysis would immediately tell you that unless you have (1) Magic that can be used to put all the lights off immediately OR (2) Block light getting to the target area without using magical darkness, it simply takes too long.This is completely true, but it's the opposite of the "common wisdom" around D&D.

The idea of "think outside the box" / "use the environment" has a lot of rhetorical weight in D&D discussions. Like, if the group hadn't tried to put the lights out (after getting the info about it), then I bet we'd have at least one person posting "There's your problem, they didn't use the environment. Players these days, only thinking with their character sheet! Why in my day ..."

And sometimes using the environment is a great idea! I'm not saying it doesn't work, it's just that you have to consider the action cost of doing so. But the way it gets talked about, all problems in existence can be solved by outside the box thinking, and if you disagree then you're a min/max-er void of creativity.


On the OP:
It sounds like the encounter went perfectly - for a horror game. Mysterious invisible creature running around killing people, everyone scrambles to deal with it but they're not sure how ... in the end, only the guy who played dead and then ran survives. Maybe not ideal for D&D, but it makes a good story.

As others have mentioned, it sounds like a combination of being underoptimized, bad tactics, and bad luck. The first of those isn't necessarily a problem. If you want to run published adventures as is, then yeah, you may want to beef the characters up to par. But if you're running home-made stuff anyway? Just mentally note that unusual creatures will be deadlier than their normal CR would indicate, and enjoy the low-op change of pace while it lasts.

As for the tactics, the biggest take-away here is that D&D combat is fast (in IC time), and you don't have enough time to switch plans several times or have everyone off doing their own thing. Pick a strategy and go with it, unless there's a very strong case to do otherwise.

[Gallowglass]

*meanwhile, in the random monster encounter break room*

//interior. A small, blandly tiled break-room with fluorescent lights, a few fridges, a sink with paper towel holder and an old microwave. Kuerig machine on top of the microwave. Sign on the microwave that says "If you are going to microwave your smelly otyugh biriyani, clean out the damn microwave!"

*A displacer beast, two nilbogs, a deathknight and a vrock sit watching family feud on the small television.*

*A frostman sits down with a bowl of soup. He smiles, picks up a spoon and, as he brings the soup up to his mouth he reflexively blows. The spoon ices over, the soup bowl freezes. He sighs sadly*

Suddenly, the door opens but nothing comes in. The door swings shut. A chair at the frostman's table slides out and slides back in.

Frostman: "Hey Carl, how'd it go? You already resurrected or something?"

HellCat: "No man, you won't believe this! I took them out! All of them. Well except for this one wizard-fighter guy. He got away. But other than that I wiped them out!"

Frostman: "What? Come on, man, you were supposed to be an average encounter!"

Hellcat: "I know!"

Murmured congratulations from the rest of the encounters.

Door opens again. A kobold comes in with a poster and thumbtacks it to the wall. Its a picture of an empty square. Underneath is says "Hellcat Carl: Random Encounter of the Month"

[ExLibrisMortis]

*meanwhile, in the random monster encounter break room*

[...]

"Hellcat Carl: Random Encounter of the Month"
Yes! Have a cookie:
http://100weeksinrome.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Super-Stroopwafel.jpg
Yes, I know it's a waffle. Where I come from, that's a cookie :smallbiggrin:.


On the OP:
It sounds like the encounter went perfectly - for a horror game. Mysterious invisible creature running around killing people, everyone scrambles to deal with it but they're not sure how ... in the end, only the guy who played dead and then ran survives. Maybe not ideal for D&D, but it makes a good story.
Now that everyone (including myself) has explained, in lengthy detail, what is wrong with your party, I want to add my voice to these posts. Despite the unintended TPK, this is a great, great encounter, and more memorable than any thousand random encounters. I hope your players remember it fondly (maybe in a year or so)!


(if you want to, you can consider it a great case for not fudging rolls: this outcome is cool as hell, but nothing you would've chosen if the dice hadn't forced you)

[Eldariel]

Maybe they thought that once they doused the lights and the thing became visible it would abandon the battlefield due to their superior numbers. It's a slim chance at best, but a chance.

*shrug* Whatever the case, it wasn't just a chain of poor decisions but more like a complete meltdown of fundamental combat logic and first principles.


Also, one other point I'd like to bring up - the cat itself may have been CR 7, but this was not an EL 7 encounter. The Hellcat had both surprise and favorable terrain (i.e. unextinguishable bright light) on its side. I'd peg this at least a level or two higher than its actual CR.

While that's how it turned out, I'm not sure that's really enough to adjust the CR. It didn't have surprise because of circumstantial advantages, it had surprise because a level 8-11 party isn't prepared for a level 2 spell (CR 3 strategy). I'd estimate extinguishable light is more an exception than a rule; the fact that it's probably invisible is a part of the creature's CR. The fact that the party can't replicate any of a set of very useful level 1-2 spell (Faerie Fire, See Invisibility, Glitterdust, etc.) or their higher level variants on these levels is not really a fault of the CR system.

So rather than consider it higher CR, I'd consider the party lower EPL due to their complete and utter lack of preparation, tactical acumen and mechanical build competence. It's probably closer if you treat that party as an EPL5 party or something, with further +2 CR adjustment for anything that has any abilities that would require any lateral thinking or where powers other than "blast it or attack it" would make the battle significantly easier.


Incidentally, I'm going through various CR7 creatures in my head and many of them sound like the death of this party. Remorhaz eats somebody, burrows, digests them, repeats. Huge Earth Elemental could probably just ground'n'pound them but it also Earth Glides. Ghost, I really don't think they're ready to face immortal, manifesting ethereals. Aboleth, judging by their tactics here fighting illusions is probably not their strong suite. Succubus, again, would require superior problem analysis. Invisible Stalker would probably approximate this encounter rather nicely, except with more moving and less putting off torches.

[Starbuck_II]

Good thing they aren't walking on the beach. That Damn Crab would grab one and walk into the water never to be seen again. But it wouldn't be a TPK at least.

Could the party handle a swarm?

[MisterKaws]

I just took another look at the appropriate version of That Damn Crab for this party - the CR10 Gargantuan Monstrous Crab. Wouldn't that thing just obliterate the Dwarven Defender? It hits on a 4, and I don't see them escaping a +45 Grapple, even though they should, according to their level, have access to Freedom of Movement.

[Hurnn]

Your players were poorly optimized, Poorly equipped and prepared, took a ton of wasted actions (as you describe it the sorcerer actually did nothing for several rounds, played dead and then ran away), had apparently tragically bad dice rolls(at least one should have been almost able to solo it according to Frivs math) , while you had what must have been a pretty hot streak (there is no way it should reliably hit the Dwarven Defender it needs a 16 16 and 20 to hit with its attacks and improve grab is off its bite.) Also the Telepathy thing they should have been able to understand it.

[ksbsnowowl]

A single casting of Magic Missile from him would have, assuming Int 16 (which is still low, but I assume he was playing martial with some spells) done 15-24 damage, a full third of the creature's health.A minor nit pick... you can't use Magic Missile on a target that you can't see... and thus can't target.

The rest of the analysis from you and everyone else is spot on. Poor builds. Poor tactics. Bad luck.

[Friv]

A minor nit pick... you can't use Magic Missile on a target that you can't see... and thus can't target.

The rest of the analysis from you and everyone else is spot on. Poor builds. Poor tactics. Bad luck.

That's my second bad (the first being that Spell Resistance pretty much shuts that approach down hard against a dragon disciple). Dragon Disciple gets Blindsense at Level 5, and I misread the OP and thought that was the character's level. Since Blindsense lets you pinpoint location of creatures, it would let you target a magic missile. But the disciple didn't have that yet.

(Also I just noticed that warmages use Charisma for their casting stat, but Intelligence for their damage boost on spells, because you wouldn't want class features to be useful. So the magic missiles would be doing a lot less damage than I listed, since I had assumed a high Intelligence score.)

Although, and this may be beating a dead horse, there's also an illegal build in play. Dwarven Defender requires a +7 BAB before entering, but the listed defender was Fighter 5 / Dwarven Defender 3.

[Mechalich]

This situation really seems like an opportunity to drastically retool this party to something more conventional and stronger. Inexperienced players should simply not be allowed to operate without a full divine caster serving as a healer (in combat healing is un-optimized, but allows victory is cheesy damage races in many cases or at least buys sufficient time for a group to run away). The party is using two severely under-optimized prestige classes. Even if they routinely used great tactics they'd be at a disadvantage against many level-appropriate monsters.

[Jon_Dahl]

Although, and this may be beating a dead horse, there's also an illegal build in play. Dwarven Defender requires a +7 BAB before entering, but the listed defender was Fighter 5 / Dwarven Defender 3.

No, we have a DM with a bad memory in play. It was in fact Fighter 7/Dwarven Defender 1. Sorry about that. I'll edit the OP.

Gallowglass's Random Encounter Break Room was too much, thank you for making me laugh! I have to have that in my game, somehow... Maybe if they ever planar travel and visit Sigil, I could imagine that city having one.

I also want to say that I agree with Eldariel that the CR should not be increased. After all, the PCs had a chance to negotiate with the beast. It had INT 10, low morals and it found the whole "let's wait and threaten people" thing pretty dull and unbecoming for a self-respecting feline... Anything was possible.

[Fizban]

Nothing new, now that I've read the thread, but I've already typed it so:

The party consisted of Human Fighter 1/Battle Sorcerer 10 (escaped), Human Warmage 5/Silver Dragon Disciple 4 (perished), Halfling Rogue 8 (perished) and Dwarf Fighter 5/Dwarven Defender 3 (perished).
Well that's their first mistake. Warmage/Dragon Disciple is failing in every direction and there's only half a real caster (the battle sorc) when there should be two (wiz and cleric). Also: why are they so far apart in levels? Either you're making people bring in characters at a way reduced level, or everyone is dying and being raised a ton in order to be that far behind the sorc.

And then they did literally everything wrong.

While the hellcat was trying to rip the battle sorcerer apart on the ground, rest of the guys tried to figure out what was going on with the prone battle sorcerer.
Failure to comprehend the situation.

The dragon disciple ran over the battle sorcerer, but the hellcat dodged it. The dwarven defender tried repeatedly to hit it with an battleaxe and almost always failed. The halfling rogue used a wand of cure light wounds to help the battle sorcerer.
"Ran over" is not an effective descritption of what happened. The dwarf's bad luck is acceptable. The rogue's use of Cure Light during combat is so bad I don't have words for it.

The battle sorcerer ordered everyone to grapple the beast, but when the dragon disciple and the dwarf tried, they didn't manage to do anything.
I don't know how the sorc is higher level than everyone else if he doesn't know the first rule of grappling: you lose. Telling people to grapple was his mistake, and the rest of them actually doing it was theirs.

The sorcerer almost died and the hellcat proceeded to beat the crap out of the dwarf who just couldn't hit it... The dwarf scored one nasty critical, though! The dwarf had AC 29 and the bite never touched him. Dragon disciple tried hit it and failed about 95% of the time.
At this point bad luck stops being an excuse and it becomes clear your melee based party has terrible attack rolls.

The halfling used the wand of CLW to heal the battle sorcerer but he feigned dead and kept his eyes closed at all times.
Which does make the rogue's actions more sensible, given that the rogue's attack will be lower than the rest and your primary attackers can't even hit and sneak attack won't help thanks to invisibility. The sorcerer made the right choice to stay out of it while at low hit points, but when it became clear they needed help he should have got back in.

The dwarf died.
How many turns did this take, and what's his hp?

Then the dragon disciple managed to roll a very good Knowledge Planes check and he knew that if the place were dark, they could see it.
Knowledge checks should be rolled on sight of a creature, not several turns after, but since most players ask for it themselves I won't blame this on you.

So the halfling and the dragon disciple spread out and ran around killing the lights, but the hellcat killed the halfling who received no help from his mates. The battle sorcerer ran to a dark corner so that the hellcat couldn't approach him without being seen. The dragon disciple was climbing in order to get one of the everburning torches but he fumbled his climb check and fell to the ground. The hellcat punished him severely while he was on lying on the ground. The battle sorcerer fled.
This is a classic bait, good on you for setting it up. Whoever built the space ensured the hellcat would have the best possible lighting so that it couldn't be easily detected. The party then wasted a ton of time trying to put out the many light sources when they should have been fighting. We're back to failure #1: failure to comprehend the situation. Also: climbing, ha.

The hellcat wanted to know more about the characters so it tried Infernal, then Celestial and then Draconic. The dragon disciple understood Draconic so they could talk, and he tried to reason with the invisible cat but rolled 4 on his diplomacy roll so they duelled until the bitter end. The dragon disciple did no damage before he died. The battle sorcerer fled from the dungeon. He had 15 hp at the point.
What was your intent here? The only thing that I can see which makes sense is that if it stopped fighting for a couple rounds to talk the remaining people could flee, but someone decided to stay and fight anyway.

First question: WHY IS NO ONE CASTING ANY SPELLS?
You have a 10th level battle sorcerer who cast no spells whatsoever. You have a 5th level warmage who's spells are not great in that situation (can't see to target, AoEs hit allies, low cl vs SR), except for TRUE STRIKE, the spell that makes attacks hit (I bet he doesn't have Power Attack either).

Some more questions:
How are you running grappling? The only way I see the dwarven defender dying that fast is from grapple checks. Grapple checks for damage on a hellcat are 1d4+7 nonlethal (not listed in the statblock, you have to look up grapple and then unarmed damage). Each round during a grapple the hellcat gets one natural attack and two rakes, or two grapple checks for (nonlethal) damage (-0/-5) and two rakes. That is not much, especially not against AC 29, and nonlethal damage ensures that when you fall unconscious you're perfectly stable, so the dwarf only would have died if you coup de grace'd him before moving to the next.

There's also the question of how the sorcerer apparently couldn't tell the party he was being clawed by an invisible beast. You can prevent a creature from speaking when you pin them, but not when you're just grappling, so that can't be it.

What are the character's stats and how were they generated? Your PCs seem to have consistent trouble hitting things in spite of enemy AC being low and the party being attack roll focused. And are they rolling for hp? Because this would explain why their hp never seems to work.

How's their gear? I remember your RHoD journal and their gear was terrible. You can't fight highly magical creatures without the right magic items, or at the very least some competent full spellcasters, and your party does not have the latter. Of course they couldn't be bothered to bring so much as a bag of flour (1sp for a ready throwing pouch, see Dungeonscape or any movie) so even if you shower them in gold at this point I expect they're hopeless.

In sum, your group is really, really bad at DnD. Based on your journal I know you have an extremely closed box style that probably causes a lot of flailing about like this. As Psyren noted, your players are probably taking everything you say as special important clues, when you're actually doing the exact opposite. Yet another reason I disagree with that style, but they also really should have figured it out by now considering this is at least your second campaign. If the battle sorc is going to be the leader (and he should realize by now that it's him or no one), he needs to go study so he can stop giving the worst possible advice. And since you clearly like to make encounters that don't suck, they all need to learn how to build and run characters.

The battle sorc is particularly bad, I had one in my game who did the same, or arguably worse: party was flanked, battle sorc didn't cast any spells until he thought he was going to be captured. In trying to kill himself he nearly wiped out the whole enemy force with nothing but basic fireballs, just think of how easy it would have been if he'd actually done that from the start.

Could the party handle a swarm?
Probably. A Tiny swarm can be killed with weapons: the problem is they probably wouldn't recognize it as a creature, since I'm guessing Jon_Dhal's descriptive style would not paint it as a single entity they could disperse by attacking. But with something that obvious they'd probably jump to AoE spells and the warmage would actually do something so even a smaller swarm would then be fine.

[Grek]

As far as the whole "use the environment" thing goes, some flour would have also saved this party's bacon.

[Firest Kathon]

Some more questions:
How are you running grappling? The only way I see the dwarven defender dying that fast is from grapple checks. Grapple checks for damage on a hellcat are 1d4+7 nonlethal (not listed in the statblock, you have to look up grapple and then unarmed damage). Each round during a grapple the hellcat gets one natural attack and two rakes, or two grapple checks for (nonlethal) damage (-0/-5) and two rakes. That is not much, especially not against AC 29, and nonlethal damage ensures that when you fall unconscious you're perfectly stable, so the dwarf only would have died if you coup de grace'd him before moving to the next.

The hellcat does full lethal damage when grappling because it has the Improved Grab (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#improvedGrab) special ability:

Each successful grapple check it makes during successive rounds automatically deals the damage indicated for the attack that established the hold
So each round it's two claw attacks at -4, a grapple check with the bite, plus two claw attacks from the rake, all doing full lethal damage. Against AC29 that would be an average of 37hp damage per round.

[Jon_Dahl]

The hellcat does full lethal damage when grappling because it has the Improved Grab (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#improvedGrab) special ability:

So each round it's two claw attacks at -4, a grapple check with the bite, plus two claw attacks from the rake, all doing full lethal damage. Against AC29 that would be an average of 37hp damage per round.

Wow, this went very differently in my case! It didn't make any grapple checks, just attacked with a claw attack with -4 penalty and then two rakes without any penalty. I guessed I made a mistake there, but I think it was a positive mistake. And it didn't really grapple anyone except the sorcerer because it couldn't hit with its bite. Hopeless that bite... I remember that it grappled the rogue but he was down to 10 hp or less at that point.


"Ran over" is not an effective descritption of what happened.

He wanted to bump into the creature. I let him roll the miss chance and he failed to hit it.


How many turns did this take, and what's his hp?

A very difficult question. I'd say about 8 rounds. About!


What was your intent here?

Have the PC sweet-talk the cat. It's a big cat. You can flatter it and serve it. Maybe. Maybe if you look and smell nice... And have nice stories to tell about death and destruction.


What are the character's stats and how were they generated?

Standard rolling system, but the overall ability bonuses must be +5 or more. I don't remember exactly but for instance the dwarf had dex 18. How could he have dex 18? I wonder...


WHY IS NO ONE CASTING ANY SPELLS?

Grappling messed up with area spells, and then the battle sorcerer wanted everyone to grapple, and then the race to the torches... But other than that, I don't know.


How's their gear?

It's kind of ok... Close to what I had in my RHoD, so it's pretty bad actually.

[Pugwampy]

This a perfect example of why we give good money and underage kids for the "choir" to the church .

I know the walking healing potion is sometimes viewed as sucky grunt work , while ol Butch with his giant axe gets to fart things to death , but its essential for demon and undead encounters .

It already gave itself away by speaking infernal to them and thats easily sorted with a protection from Evil spell or two .

Your whole party is made up of heroes specializing in killing normal things that are visible with no DR . Thats okay but then you have to avoid demons and dead things and funny things . If you hear an infernal whisper , you should go back out the cave and kill a dire boar in the forest or something.

One of the players needs to switch to a CLAARIC !!!

[Fizban]

The hellcat does full lethal damage when grappling because it has the Improved Grab (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#improvedGrab) special ability:
That's probably the second or third time I've read that or been reminded of it by now. I probably forget every time I look up a giant or something. It's the missing component of making a T-Rex deal damage, and of course makes constrictors even better.

So each round it's two claw attacks at -4, a grapple check with the bite, plus two claw attacks from the rake, all doing full lethal damage. Against AC29 that would be an average of 37hp damage per round.
The rest of this is wrong though. Rules Compendium (because I don't feel like srd): "A creature can attack with only one of its natural weapons on its turn while grappling, unless it has a special ability that allows it to do otherwise or its description provides an exception. This attack is usually made with the creature’s primary natural weapon." Rake is a special ability that adds two attacks. Improved Grab lets you use your IG weapon damage (bite here) instead of unarmed, but doesn't change anything else here. When grappling you are not full attacking, so you can't add the rest of your natural weapons*. You get full round action grapple, in this case giving you two grapple checks at -0/-5, which you can replace with natural weapon attacks (doing so locks you into that natural weapon even if it doesn't cut you down to a single attack).

So the hellcat can make two grapples for bite damage (-0/-5) and two rakes, or two claw attacks at -4 (-0/-5) and two rakes, but that's it. The former has better damage at 24 from the grapplebites (assuming no failure) and I'll give 5 from the invisible rakes vs AC 29, total 31.

*The counter would be that there's no "grapple" action on the actions table, but text continues to trump table. The grapple section allows you to use a full attack to attempt to start a grapple, and use the remaining attacks to make grapple checks, but the section that actually defines what you can do in a grapple never says you can full attack. You can make grapple checks that happen to correspond with your iterative attacks, and you can exchange those for other attacks. But you cannot actually make the full attack action required to add your secondary natural weapons at -5, and indeed the grapple->attack with (natural) weapon line specifically says you can only use one natural weapon. Depending on exact reading could be limited to a single attack at -4 period but at best allows iteratives with a one natural weapon at an extra -4, and definitely not your full natural weapon routine at -4.

Wow, this went very differently in my case! It didn't make any grapple checks, just attacked with a claw attack with -4 penalty and then two rakes without any penalty. I guessed I made a mistake there, but I think it was a positive mistake. And it didn't really grapple anyone except the sorcerer because it couldn't hit with its bite. Hopeless that bite... I remember that it grappled the rogue but he was down to 10 hp or less at that point.
So it killed everyone with just claw attacks? That is just sad. Probably best to keep the weaker grapple interpretation, once you dig down through the rules grapple monsters are pretty ridiculous.

He wanted to bump into the creature. I let him roll the miss chance and he failed to hit it.
That's a better deal than the standard (50% miss including a touch attack roll), but also confirms that he was being dumb. Your friend falls over and starts bleeding profusely and your response is to wave your hand in the air? It's maximum attack or nothing.

A very difficult question. I'd say about 8 rounds. About!
At AC 29 I'm seeing an average of no more than 8-9 per round if the dwarf isn't being grappled, hence why the hp total. If you've got fighters running around with 12 con and bad hp rolls that's a lot different from the usual assumption of 18+ con taking average. A typical Dwarven Defender would also have Adamantine armor by now for DR 2/- or 3/-.

Have the PC sweet-talk the cat. It's a big cat. You can flatter it and serve it. Maybe. Maybe if you look and smell nice... And have nice stories to tell about death and destruction.
So no actual endgame, just hoping they'll talk nice and surrender to live another day. The particular point is the diplomacy roll, since it turns a servile surrender into a roll that can fail, but if it was the players idea to roll diplomacy and then fight to the death when it failed (because duh), well that's back on them.

Standard rolling system, but the overall ability bonuses must be +5 or more. I don't remember exactly but for instance the dwarf had dex 18. How could he have dex 18? I wonder...
Grappling messed up with area spells, and then the battle sorcerer wanted everyone to grapple, and then the race to the torches... But other than that, I don't know.
[gear] It's kind of ok... Close to what I had in my RHoD, so it's pretty bad actually.
While officially it's +0, the actual practical minimum is +5 (as the elite array), minimum. Add that on to poorly built, undergeared "gish" characters and I can easily see their attacks being +5 or more less than they should be.

Homework: You need to stop not knowing about your PC's abilities. While I'd like to think they had the capability to win this fight if they didn't do literally everything wrong, you have no way of knowing because you don't even know for sure what's on their sheets (unless you just don't feel like getting your notes right now, which would be fair).

There are three pillars of success: tactical ability, character build, and gear.** Your players are clearly lacking in the first two, which means they absolutely cannot afford to be low on the third. If you want to keep using interesting encounters then you need to make sure they have the tools to succeed. Not just throwing cash at them until they meet WBL, I mean giving them the correct items for upcoming encounters, because they don't have the skill to know what to buy. If you want to use a Hellcat, then first you need to give them an item that can See Invisibility. If you want to have shear drops and pits, give them an item with Spider Climb. If you want to use something with DR of any sort, they need to already have a weapon that can bypass it. If you want a dragon, they need to have resistance. Not all of these need to be permanent and they can all be handed out far in advance, waiting so it feels like they thought of using it rather than you telling them to. But they're never going to learn what to buy or even do until they've seen it in action.

**There's also strategic/information, but that's a whole 'nother hurdle.

[Willie the Duck]

Your whole party is made up of heroes specializing in killing normal things that are visible with no DR .

That is my takeaway as well. There were tactical decisions that were poorly made. There were instinctive decisions that worked against them (hearing torchlight is what makes it invisible and running around the killzone trying to douse the torches). There was even a DM who wasn't following the grappling rules (which is no dig at the DM, since the whole grapple section of the rulebooks should be taken out back and shot). None of it compares to an (effectively) spell-less party with no invisibility-detection (magical or mundane) that relies on attacks which can't get past DR which is routine for their level of play.

I get it. I like the idea of people saying "I don't want to play some CoDzilla bulls*** or some web-designed OP crap. I want to roll dice and throw fireballs and swing swords." That, however, requires full-group buy-in (including the DM, who thought they were playing basic 3e). It also means that a lot of specific monsters will have vastly higher effective CRs than the book values.

My advice is dependent on what the group wants. Solution 1)Encourage them to at least think about party composition, what gaps they have, and maybe even enlist an NPC. Stock up on basic situation-negators (including bags of flour, and make sure they know about this trick) for this and other common scenarios. Have each on do a self-reflection ("I am a rogue. I sneak attack. What are the situations where I can't sneak attack, and what am I prepared to do in that situation?"). Solution 2) If they prefer to play these kind of PCs, then it doesn't matter what level they have reached, they are destined to go around smashing orcs and ogres and trolls and never get past that. That is a fine way to play the game. I've mentioned on another thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?498442-What-Abilities-Should-Players-Have) recently that the game is split into three distinct styles of play (levels 1-4, 5-8, 9+), and maybe they don't want to leave early play. In that case, start leveling up some orc barbarians and Troll fighters.

[Jon_Dahl]

There was even a DM who wasn't following the grappling rules (which is no dig at the DM, since the whole grapple section of the rulebooks should be taken out back and shot). .

I know, but read the Rake ability description, please. I think you will understand why it made a claw attack with -4 penalty and two rake attacks per round.

[Willie the Duck]

I know, but read the Rake ability description, please. I think you will understand why it made a claw attack with -4 penalty and two rake attacks per round.

Honestly, I just don't want to. Can we just leave grappling in its own little corner to die? I am a big proponent of the "people have gotten way too invested in bleating at each other just how broken 3e is, and that's only true if you actively attempt to ruin it for yourself" mindset, but I make an exception for grappling. The grapple rules are just a dumpster fire. I said I wasn't digging at you, and I mean it.

[Beheld]

Yeah, spoiler alert, monsters of CR X are hard, and if you have a party of extremely optimized characters like Dwarven Defender and Dragon Disciple and a Sorcerer with no good spells, and then they also make bad decisions, then they are going to die a lot.

This was a level 10ish party. They could have also been expected to face:

Invisible Stalker: literally just invisible.
Lammasu: A pounce/rake monster that is also a Cleric that buffs up first, and also casts Greater Invis twice a day. A lot like a Hellcat.
Androsphinx: A pounce/rake monster that buffs itself first.
Criosphinx: Pounce/Rake monster
GynoShpinx: Pounce/Rake, but also the entire party saves against death, insanity, sleep, and stunning when the fight starts.
Dire Tiger: Objectively better pouncer in all ways (daamge/HP/grapple mod) but your rogue, if not played like an idiot, could get SA whenever the Tiger is grappling someone.
Lillend: An improved grab + Constrict Monster.
Gray Render: another improved grab+rend monster.
Behir: which would kill people by hitting them and grappling them and raking them to death.
Chuul: improved Grab, constrict, and also a paralysis attack on those grappled.
Mohrg: Improved Grab and Paralysis.
Roc: Literally just picks on person up, flies away with them and eats them.
Bodak: Literal save or die twice a round if you don't avert your gaze, or one if you do, or you literally just choose for the entire party to play blind.
Chaos Beast: Save or die on attack.
Medusa: Save or be turned to stone, as Bodak.
Zelekhut: Fear and Hold Person at will.
Bebilith: Does damage, destroys armor to do more damage, also poison and web.
Vrock: Constant Mirror Image plus spores, also telekinesis or 5 attacks on a full attack.
Bone Devil: Makes walls of Ice, harasses the party from invisibly flying, using Major Image at will to confuse party and waste resources, finally uses attack routine on separated worn down party.

Sounds to me like 50% survival rate for your party is being extremely generous, and that includes just basic CR 7s. Your party is destined to die if they don't change, or you don't use only monsters much weaker than CR, or use the monsters deliberately as stupid as conceivably possible.

[Necroticplague]

Grappling isn't that complicated. Touch attack, grapple check, grappled condition. It's not really worse than Trip.

Actually, rules for grapple should have made this a very short fight. Rogues can sneak attack anyone who's lacking their DEX to AC, you lose DEX to AC while grappling, so the rogue should have turned the hellcat into a fillet easily while it was grappling the sorceror. Of course, that assumes they ignored the concealment from invisibility, which shouldn't have been that big a challenge (I mean, they have enough skill points to afford a trick every level, and See the Unseen is one of the better ones)

[Deophaun]

I can forgive no permanent see invisibility, because that's expensive and who wants it being dispelled at the next encounter. I can forgive no glitterdust and no emergency scroll of true seeing. I can forgive having absolutely no magic items to detect invisible creatures whatsoever.

What I cannot forgive is that, with that complete lack of magical ability, none of them--not one--spent a single silver on a flour pouch. That's something you pick 10 of up at level 1. There's no build or party composition or financial reason or weight restriction not to have that.

[Beheld]

While the rogue should definitely have some way of getting to the hellcat and SAing through invis in a competent party.... this party isn't that party, so it makes perfect sense that rogue was as useless as the spellcasters who refuse to cast spells under and circumstance and the fighters all the time.

As for repeated calls for flour... Flour would basically do nothing. It doesn't negate the total concealment, just tells you the square, and so the Rogue still can't SA, and the party already knew what square it was in (the one with the guy being eaten this round.)

[Jon_Dahl]

As for repeated calls for flour... Flour would basically do nothing. It doesn't negate the total concealment, just tells you the square, and so the Rogue still can't SA, and the party already knew what square it was in (the one with the guy being eaten this round.)

This. This is it. I just didn't want to say anything because I don't want discourage advising.

[Deophaun]

As for repeated calls for flour... Flour would basically do nothing. It doesn't negate the total concealment, just tells you the square, and so the Rogue still can't SA, and the party already knew what square it was in (the one with the guy being eaten this round.)
It changes total concealment to partial concealment. So yes, it does quite a bit.

[Willie the Duck]

In this one instance, where we are worried about SA damage, yes. Knowing which square an invisible enemy is in, however, is in general an important ability. The fact that they were trying to quash the torches meant that they too were interested in changing the situation from total concealment to partial concealment.

[Beheld]

It changes total concealment to partial concealment. So yes, it does quite a bit.

DO you have any rules cite for this? Honestly, I can't even find any rules for flour to even track position at all, but surely some item somewhere is listed that you throw flour on invisible people. But yeah, absent a rule, that doesn't change total concealment to partial.


In this one instance, where we are worried about SA damage, yes. Knowing which square an invisible enemy is in, however, is in general an important ability. The fact that they were trying to quash the torches meant that they too were interested in changing the situation from total concealment to partial concealment.

They probably had Darkvision. Again, they definitely knew what square it was in. It's the one with the guy screaming on the ground.

[Jon_Dahl]

It seems that Beheld writes exactly what I'm thinking. I'll be waiting for a citation/explanation. There has to be something that we don't know here... Some earlier thread, somewhere?

[Eldariel]

When talking about spells, I'd like to point out that Warmage list contains Hail of Stone (and Warmages explicitly know their whole list). That's 5d4 no save no SR (CArc version randomly has SR but this was fixed in Spell Compendium) per 5gp & Standard Action right there. It's a Large creature so hitting only it and not the target it's grappling is easy. He could just be spamming that; average 12.5+Int Mod damage. That's a 1st level spell, probably killing it in 4-5 turns alone (depending on her Int).

[ComaVision]

DO you have any rules cite for this? Honestly, I can't even find any rules for flour to even track position at all, but surely some item somewhere is listed that you throw flour on invisible people. But yeah, absent a rule, that doesn't change total concealment to partial.

AFB but I believe that there is a flour pouch in Dungeonscape that serves such a purpose. One of my player's characters usually has a flour pouch or two.

[Beheld]

AFB but I believe that there is a flour pouch in Dungeonscape that serves such a purpose. One of my player's characters usually has a flour pouch or two.

Indeed, in my quest for the Flour rules, I finally found that after some abortive attempts in the DMGs, Rules Compendium, that Dungeonscape has the Flour Pouch which says:


Flour Pouch: This deceptively simple burlap satchel of flour is tied loosely on purpose. While it could be used to bake a loaf of bread on a particularly long expedition, its true purpose is to locate invisible opponents. You can attempt to strike an invisible opponent with a flour pouch as a touch attack. You still must pinpoint the target or choose a space to attack into, and the normal miss chance for total concealment applies. If you hit the target, the pouch bursts open, spilling white flour over a portion of the invisible creature. You can also throw a flour pouch as a splash weapon; any invisible creature standing in the space struck is covered in flour, as are all other creatures within 5 feet.

Coating an invisible creature in flour lets you keep track of its position and reduces the miss chance to 20% (instead of the normal 50% for total concealment). While an invisible creature is coated in flour, its bonus on Hide
checks is reduced to +10 if the creature is moving, or to +20 if it is not moving (PH 76). If the creature moves through water, is subjected to a gust of wind, or spends a full-round action brushing the fl our off, all the flour is removed from its body.

So even though there are no actual rules saying that flour does anything but location in the core books, or any of the rules books, some random item description says that you can reduce the miss chance (although, again, that would hardly help, since the Dwarven Defender and the other garbage fighter are both garbage fighters who aren't going to do anything anyway.)

[Deophaun]

So even though there are no actual rules saying that flour does anything but location in the core books, or any of the rules books, some random item description says that you can reduce the miss chance
But the important thing is that they got it eventually in a splatbook that you have to give them more money for.

[Beheld]

But the important thing is that they got it eventually in a splatbook that you have to give them more money for.

Jokes on them, I was going to give them the money anyway :)

[Willie the Duck]

I'm genuinely a little disappointed that they felt the need to provide rules for that one.

[Beheld]

I'm genuinely a little disappointed that they felt the need to provide rules for that one.

??

How would the game be better if you don't have rules for the effect of flour on invisible people? You could argue for three different effects with equal justification, it's much better to have rules so that everyone agreeing to play the game knows what they are getting into and can thus make reasonable in character decisions.

[Jon_Dahl]

I just finished reading through my very, very old ban list and it seems that I have banned Dungeonscape. I can't remember why.

[ComaVision]

I just finished reading through my very, very old ban list and it seems that I have banned Dungeonscape. I can't remember why.

Factotum? Some DMs have a problem with that class.

[Jon_Dahl]

Factotum? Some DMs have a problem with that class.

Thank you. I don't know about the coma part, but you certainly have good vision.

[Beheld]

Yeah, the Factotum is a pretty terribly written class that even after you rewrite it from scratch still offers nothing particularly interesting on fluff or mechanics as compared to other options, but I never ban books for bad material, because then I'd ban all the books.

[Willie the Duck]

??

How would the game be better if you don't have rules for the effect of flour on invisible people? You could argue for three different effects with equal justification, it's much better to have rules so that everyone agreeing to play the game knows what they are getting into and can thus make reasonable in character decisions.


Not all of us are on the RAW uber alles train. Besides, are there specific rules for smoke? being underwater? A generalized rule (and one that is in the DMG, and not in a late-in-the-edition, semi-obscure splatbook) would be much more beneficial to actually accomplishing play.

[Knaight]

This is completely true, but it's the opposite of the "common wisdom" around D&D.

The idea of "think outside the box" / "use the environment" has a lot of rhetorical weight in D&D discussions. Like, if the group hadn't tried to put the lights out (after getting the info about it), then I bet we'd have at least one person posting "There's your problem, they didn't use the environment. Players these days, only thinking with their character sheet! Why in my day ..."

It's also an idea that has a lot of validity in this scenario. We'll start with how the characters were right next to a hallway, a.k.a a choke point. If the grapple could be broken somehow, the entire fight could have been relocated to a hall where the Hellcat has one high defense target to deal with.

[Eldariel]

Y'know, I keep saying how poorly CRd creatures in the books are but sometimes I forget just how bad it is. Having read through the whole list of SRD CR7s again, I'm reminded of just how bad it gets. Like, somehow:
Elasmosaurus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dinosaur.htm#elasmosaurus) is the same CR as Dire Bear (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/direBear.htm), Sperm Whale (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/whale.htm#cachalotWhale) or Elephant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elephant.htm). A cursory look at the stats will tell you that no, Elasmosaurus is not even on the same planet in spite of being amphibious.

Hill Giant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/giant.htm#hillGiant), Ogre Barbarian (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ogre.htm) & Flesh Golem (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/golem.htm#fleshGolem) are just rather weak for their CR. Decent melee, poor range, lack any combat maneuvers, spells or special durability and have a bunch of weak saves, low AC, a stack of HP. Hill Giant is the best of the bunch but that's not saying much. Any of the Huge Elementals (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elemental.htm) for example completely show them up (though their saves aren't the best either). Then there are some total walkovers like Black Pudding (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ooze.htm).

Phasms (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/phasm.htm) are total lulz (as is well-established): they have an unrestricted form of Alternate Form up to Large (no HD cap grandfathered in anywhere) and apparently it's enough that they can roll Knowledge on the thing. Take 10 leads to 28 in any given Knowledge, or any Large- forms of 18 HD or smaller, so they can just turn into a e.g. Cornugon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/devil.htm#hornedDevilCornugon) or something and hulksmash with their absurd stats.

Spectres (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/spectre.htm) are never killing anyone on these levels in spite of their Incorporeal bonuses but on the flipside, they're handing out double Negative Levels like candy. Quite weak and at the same time really annoying creatures; the Rust Monsters of these levels (Remorhaz is kinda similar too, destroying weapons it's attacked with).

Gargantuan Animated Object (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/animatedObject.htm), as ever, has the same CR regardless of whether its hardness is 0 or 20. Because sense!

And then there's stuff like Chaos Beast (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/chaosBeast.htm) that has completely rubbish stats because a failed save is extremely brutal. But it needs to land its +10 attack and then the target needs to fail a DC15 Fort-save for it to literally do anything more than 1d3+2 damage; and it has 44 HP, no AC and average saves. Medusa (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/medusa.htm) has better stats almost across the board (Medusa's Fort-save sucks) and doesn't need to hit an attack to use its ability. Logic!


And of course, there's a bunch of spellcaster monsters with random stuff. Succubus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#succubus) has its high save DCs in 21, Formian Taskmaster (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/formian.htm)/Lillend (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lillend.htm)/Aboleth (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/aboleth.htm)/Drider (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/drider.htm)/Nymph (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/nymph.htm) look at 16-18 (but of very different severity; Aboleth Enslave is an undispellable Dominate, and the Slime (DC19) is a pretty severe condition itself, Nymph causes permanent Blindness (not a real problem though) plus Druid-spells, Lillend's best spells are like Hold Person or Charm, while Formian Taskmaster can use exactly Dominate Monster.

Drider is the hardest to categorize since they can be Clerics or Wizards (always weaker than a comparable level 7 caster though, being only level 6 and having poor casting stats; DC16 on Cleric). Water Naga (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/naga.htm#waterNaga) meanwhile has DC15 saves, 3rd level spells and pretty much nothing to show for it. They're just by far the weakest of the bunch. Of course, Aboleths are probably the trickiest of the bunch with their ability to prepare an area with illusions, but a lot can be said for a Succubus's options as well. A Nymph can be very powerful but also so very fragile; compared to a Druid 7, they fall short lacking the native Animal Companion and Wildshape enhancements.

[Beheld]

Not all of us are on the RAW uber alles train. Besides, are there specific rules for smoke? being underwater? A generalized rule (and one that is in the DMG, and not in a late-in-the-edition, semi-obscure splatbook) would be much more beneficial to actually accomplishing play.

1) The rule being in the DMG is better than it being in Dungeonscape, but you are arguing that having the rule is somehow bad.

2) Are there specific rules for smoke (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm#smokeEffects) and being (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm#waterDangers) underwater (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#aquaticTerrain) ? Yes, Yes there are. Good thing too, because those are situations that come up, so you want everyone at the table to be able to know about and plan in advance for how to deal with them.

[Jon_Dahl]

(lots of sensible points and general sense-making

I have thought about this and I have this really bad logic that I use to explain all that. The explanation is so crappy that I have put behind spoiler tags.

You're a Finn. It's an early January morning and you leave for work. It's -20 C, ice, snow and darkness everywhere, kind of windy. You are demoralized in two seconds. Some of your colleagues have caught the flu and everyone is stressed out and pissed off. You get paid normally.

Then it's a beautiful May morning and the birds are singing. You leave your house and everything is so great, the weather is just marvellous. Your colleagues are in a great mood, customers smile and people talk about their holiday plans. You get paid normally.

The monster that are overly difficult compared to their CR are the January mornings. The PCs get "paid" in XP normally.

The monster that are easy compared to their CR are the May mornings. The PCs get "paid" in XP normally.

Sometimes there are January mornings, sometimes there are May mornings. It all evens out.

[Deophaun]

Y'know, I keep saying how poorly CRd creatures in the books are but sometimes I forget just how bad it is. Having read through the whole list of SRD CR7s again...
Heh, check out the Ephemeral Swarm in MMIII.
- Swarm.
- Is ethereal, so laughs at your flasks of alchemist's fire.
- 12HD, so... between the swarm type and 50% miss chance, basically 360 effective HP. Oh, you thought your Cleric should be able to turn it? Hah!
- Automatic 1d6 strength damage.
- Flies, because why not?

All for the low, low price of CR5.

[Willie the Duck]

but you are arguing that having the rule is somehow bad.


I'm not arguing for anything, and we're definitely derailing this thread.

[Beheld]

Because I have an ongoing war against people complaining about CR:


Y'know, I keep saying how poorly CRd creatures in the books are but sometimes I forget just how bad it is. Having read through the whole list of SRD CR7s again, I'm reminded of just how bad it gets. Like, somehow:
Elasmosaurus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dinosaur.htm#elasmosaurus) is the same CR as Dire Bear (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/direBear.htm), Sperm Whale (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/whale.htm#cachalotWhale) or Elephant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elephant.htm). A cursory look at the stats will tell you that no, Elasmosaurus is not even on the same planet in spite of being amphibious.

One monster has slightly lower attack and damage than others of it's CR, even though it's the only amphibious one! CR IS BROKEN GUYS.


Hill Giant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/giant.htm#hillGiant), Ogre Barbarian (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ogre.htm) & Flesh Golem (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/golem.htm#fleshGolem) are just rather weak for their CR. Decent melee, poor range, lack any combat maneuvers, spells or special durability and have a bunch of weak saves, low AC, a stack of HP. Hill Giant is the best of the bunch but that's not saying much. Any of the Huge Elementals (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elemental.htm) for example completely show them up (though their saves aren't the best either). Then there are some total walkovers like Black Pudding (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ooze.htm).

1) The Golem is immune to magic, the Hill Giant has a 1200ft ranged attack. And you say that Elementals have more HP and hit slightly harder in melee? Who cares which one beats the other up, to a party, they may all pose about the same resources expenditure/threat.
2)Oozes are all puzzle/trap monsters, if you solve the puzzle, of course they are easy.


Gargantuan Animated Object (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/animatedObject.htm), as ever, has the same CR regardless of whether its hardness is 0 or 20. Because sense!

It's a Gargantuan Non flier. It's a puzzlemonster, where the puzzle is "stop it from destroying things" solving the puzzle is not really meaningfully more difficult with or with the Hardness. (Unless you are very bad at solving the puzzle and try to fireball it to death.)


Spectres (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/spectre.htm) are never killing anyone on these levels in spite of their Incorporeal bonuses but on the flipside, they're handing out double Negative Levels like candy. Quite weak and at the same time really annoying creatures; the Rust Monsters of these levels (Remorhaz is kinda similar too, destroying weapons it's attacked with).

Are you going to provide any explanation of how these monsters are poorly CRed? Or just describe appropriately CRed monsters and move on.


And then there's stuff like Chaos Beast (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/chaosBeast.htm) that has completely rubbish stats because a failed save is extremely brutal. But it needs to land its +10 attack and then the target needs to fail a DC15 Fort-save for it to literally do anything more than 1d3+2 damage; and it has 44 HP, no AC and average saves. Medusa (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/medusa.htm) has better stats almost across the board (Medusa's Fort-save sucks) and doesn't need to hit an attack to use its ability. Logic!

You can close your eyes and be immune to the Medusa. So those challenges are pretty comparable.


And of course, there's a bunch of spellcaster monsters with random stuff. Succubus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm#succubus) has its high save DCs in 21, Formian Taskmaster (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/formian.htm)/Lillend (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lillend.htm)/Aboleth (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/aboleth.htm)/Drider (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/drider.htm)/Nymph (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/nymph.htm) look at 16-18 (but of very different severity; Aboleth Enslave is an undispellable Dominate, and the Slime (DC19) is a pretty severe condition itself, Nymph causes permanent Blindness (not a real problem though) plus Druid-spells, Lillend's best spells are like Hold Person or Charm, while Formian Taskmaster can use exactly Dominate Monster.

The Lillend is also a Constrict Grapple Monster. Yes, different caster monsters with different limitations on the range of their abilities, who they effect and what spells they can use, and what defenses they have, have save DCs that differ by as much as 5 points. Also the ones that stab people or otherwise fight as well as cast, have worse casting. Almost like the Bard is a PC class that doesn't cast or sword as well as casting or Swording PCs, and this was carried over into (some) monster designs, but sometimes they can still sword fine because monsters are better balanced than PCs.


Water Naga (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/naga.htm#waterNaga) meanwhile has DC15 saves, 3rd level spells and pretty much nothing to show for it. They're just by far the weakest of the bunch.

Well I mean, except more HP than a Sorcerer, a poisonous bite to be used on people that fail the save, and being aquatic. I mean yeah, they aren't that strong, but their DCs are literally one point worse than a level 7 NPC Sorcerer with the Elite Array.

[Eldariel]

I have thought about this and I have this really bad logic that I use to explain all that. The explanation is so crappy that I have put behind spoiler tags.

You're a Finn. It's an early January morning and you leave for work. It's -20 C, ice, snow and darkness everywhere, kind of windy. You are demoralized in two seconds. Some of your colleagues have caught the flu and everyone is stressed out and pissed off. You get paid normally.

Then it's a beautiful May morning and the birds are singing. You leave your house and everything is so great, the weather is just marvellous. Your colleagues are in a great mood, customers smile and people talk about their holiday plans. You get paid normally.

The monster that are overly difficult compared to their CR are the January mornings. The PCs get "paid" in XP normally.

The monster that are easy compared to their CR are the May mornings. The PCs get "paid" in XP normally.

Sometimes there are January mornings, sometimes there are May mornings. It all evens out.

Sadly enough, that might very well be not too far from the truth, at least far as the thinking of the devs is concerned... In fact, they've gone on record saying that e.g. Dragons are way tougher for their CR than monsters of similar CR. They seem to have forgotten the rather key point that a system telling a DM how difficult an encounter is should strive to tell a DM how difficult an encounter is - then the DM can use higher difficulty monsters if he wants harder encounters or lower difficulty monsters if it's an easy day. Rewards would need to be based on a different system if varying rewards for the same task is what they wanted to accomplish (and in fact, there is a huge amount of variety in treasure within a CR, but it's all influenced by CR as well). The current iteration is kinda akin to scales that randomly show you higher or lower numbers than the actual weight of the weighed object - not very useful for its intended purpose (of course, then there's also the problem of the ridiculous variety of power levels in the party's end of the scale, as well as the effect of circumstances and tactics).


Heh, check out the Ephemeral Swarm in MMIII.
- Swarm.
- Is ethereal, so laughs at your flasks of alchemist's fire.
- 12HD, so... between the swarm type and 50% miss chance, basically 360 effective HP. Oh, you thought your Cleric should be able to turn it? Hah!
- Automatic 1d6 strength damage.
- Flies, because why not?

All for the low, low price of CR5.

Yeah, this isn't even the worst tier but it's pretty bad here too.


Because I have an ongoing war against people complaining about CR:

Sorry, I'm not willing to invest the time in this discussion right now.

[Jon_Dahl]

Sadly enough, that might very well be not too far from the truth, at least far as the thinking of the devs is concerned... In fact, they've gone on record saying that e.g. Dragons are way tougher for their CR than monsters of similar CR. They seem to have forgotten the rather key point that a system telling a DM how difficult an encounter is should strive to tell a DM how difficult an encounter is - then the DM can use higher difficulty monsters if he wants harder encounters or lower difficulty monsters if it's an easy day. Rewards would need to be based on a different system if varying rewards for the same task is what they wanted to accomplish (and in fact, there is a huge amount of variety in treasure within a CR, but it's all influenced by CR as well). The current iteration is kinda akin to scales that randomly show you higher or lower numbers than the actual weight of the weighed object - not very useful for its intended purpose (of course, then there's also the problem of the ridiculous variety of power levels in the party's end of the scale, as well as the effect of circumstances and tactics).



Wow, I feel like a D&D dev!

[Beheld]

Sorry, I'm not willing to invest the time in this discussion right now.

Not everyone is as insane as me, I understand.

[ace rooster]

I probably should have asked this sooner, but how did the players take it? I like to think I would be able to laugh at it, but I know some people would not.

[Fizban]

DO you have any rules cite for this? Honestly, I can't even find any rules for flour to even track position at all, but surely some item somewhere is listed that you throw flour on invisible people. But yeah, absent a rule, that doesn't change total concealment to partial.
I cited the source in my first post, but apparently it took two pages and multiple people to figure it out :smallfrown: Can't blame them for not having it when the book is banned. . .

Not everyone is as insane as me, I understand.
I'll back you up on that one, spent quite some time arguing the same point in another thread.

[Marlowe]

The amount of time the players wasted in clever/stupid indirect tactics instead of just whaling on the thing (or the square they knew contained the thing) makes me think that this was a group very much not confident in their own mechanical abilities. It sounds like already demoralised people panicking and frantically hunting for a magic bullet because they've had previous experience failing at the standard thing.

Granted, there's obviously some serious failings with the builds of the group and what they've prepared for, and luck was against them. But their tactics were what turned it into a disaster.

I do wonder what's happened to them previously to make them think this way, and how they got to the level they are were with this mindset.:smalleek:

[Jon_Dahl]

I probably should have asked this sooner, but how did the players take it? I like to think I would be able to laugh at it, but I know some people would not.

The session was overly long, way too long, so the players were a bit tired at the end. I did ask them if we could continue, and the answer was "yes", but they were dead tired when we finished. Their comments were that this monster was insanely difficult because it was invisible (duh?) and that they had liked my little hint. They thought it had been very useful. One of the players wished that they wouldn't have more fights that last for hours. I said that my genuine intention was to have a 30-minute fight with this creature (truth: almost 3 hours) and that I would never have this group face another hellcat ever again. He was happy with my answer. I think that the session worked well as a horror game session, and not as a session of D&D.

[Big Fau]

The session was overly long, way too long, so the players were a bit tired at the end. I did ask them if we could continue, and the answer was "yes", but they were dead tired when we finished. Their comments were that this monster was insanely difficult because it was invisible (duh?) and that they had liked my little hint. They thought it had been very useful. One of the players wished that they wouldn't have more fights that last for hours. I said that my genuine intention was to have a 30-minute fight with this creature (truth: almost 3 hours) and that I would never have this group face another hellcat ever again. He was happy with my answer. I think that the session worked well as a horror game session, and not as a session of D&D.

There needs to be a life lesson about See Invisibility here.

[Beheld]

There needs to be a life lesson about See Invisibility here.

Or Faerie Fire, or Invisibility Purge. But yeah, almost like maybe they should manage to scrounge together some method of fighting invisible opponents 3 levels after Greater Invisibility comes online, seven levels after invisibility comes online, and three levels after you are supposed to be able to fight permanently invisible monsters.

[Fizban]

I will maintain that I don't think it's entirely the players' fault. They have very little cash to buy such items, but before that they simply lack the skill, knowledge, plain experience to know what to do. It's like sending a kid to take a critical reading test, when he's never read a book before. Jon_Dahl has posted before, and his party consistently gets wrecked by these simple tactical and equipment errors to the point where it's clear they aren't learning anything from the experience.

Their comments were that this monster was insanely difficult because it was invisible (duh?) and that they had liked my little hint. They thought it had been very useful.
This shows point blank that they did not learn anything from this fight about what their actual problems were. They thought this was a useful tip, when in actuality trying to put out the lights was their second and most egregious tactical error. And they never will learn as long as they keep getting ganked, as far as they can see there's nothing to learn from that fight. To them, a Hellcat is some crazy overpowered monster because as far as they've seen it's unkillable. They don't even know what they're doing wrong because they've never seen it done right. They don't know that they should be bringing this or that piece of gear because none of them as ever had such a piece of gear when they needed it, likely they haven't had one at all or even know that such gear exists. They've never been taught how to read, so they fail the test.

They need to be shown how to play the game. Nudged into it by finding the right items and getting the right hints*, so that they can see the correct solution immediately, and learn how to do it again in the future. Otherwise they're just going to die over and over again. If you want to have interesting tactical encounters and your players are terrible at DnD, there are only two options: stop using interesting encounters, or teach your players how to fight. There is no substitute or excuse.

[Deophaun]

They need to be shown how to play the game. Nudged into it by finding the right items and getting the right hints*, so that they can see the correct solution immediately, and learn how to do it again in the future. Otherwise they're just going to die over and over again. If you want to have interesting tactical encounters and your players are terrible at DnD, there are only two options: stop using interesting encounters, or teach your players how to fight. There is no substitute or excuse.
I'll add that saying afterwards "Don't worry, I'll never throw a monster like that at you again" is also harmful, as you are telling the players that they were right to think the encounter unfair, as opposed to forcing them to proactively look for solutions. And when they ask "what could we have done" tell them.

And if they said "but we didn't have any of that," you point out that you dropped such and such magic items that would have been really useful two and three encounters ago, and they sold them.

[Necroticplague]

Even more importantly than giving them the tools ahead of time, is giving them a dissection of where they went wrong. We've done a pretty good job of that in this thread. Providing them with a similar dissection whenever they complain is a good way to let them learn. Based on their complaints and reactions, their current issue is mindset as to problem cause. They seem to view difficulty as entirely outside themselves, while they should be looking inside themselves for what made it hard. Classical mistake people do when playing games that have developeable skills: not asking 'what did I do wrong?' and seriously considering it.

[Jon_Dahl]

I'm not sure exactly how to follow your advice since it mostly has to with their future characters and they are already made. I require players to have their next characters always ready. So they just need to pull out new characters when required.

New characters:
Human Ranger 8 CG (previously played the Dwarven Defender)
Human Rogue 1 / Scout 1 / Paladin of freedom 1 / Barbarian 1 / Wizard 1 (divination) / Cloistered cleric 3 CG with Schizophrenia flaw (Previously played the halfling rogue)
I'm a bit unsure about his details: Human Cleric (and Radiant Servant?) 8 (NG) of Pelor with a Severe Schizophrenia (double flaw) (previously played the Dragon Disciple)

Then there's the almost-12th-level Battle Sorcerer (neutral).

I'm not sure how to apply your advice here. Can anyone give me a hand? I know that I should ask them to work better together, I know that. But don't worry, I will make a summary of the advice I have received here, but you can help me out keeping in mind that a. the characters are ready and b. no Dungeon-what-was-it-splatbook with flour.

[Beheld]

Step 1: Stop making one character way higher level than everyone else.

Step 2: UGGGHHHHHH. Point out how terrible and useless a few second level spells a day would be again CR 10 opposition.

Step 3: The eternal quest to have players make better characters fails again. :smallsigh:

[Jon_Dahl]

Step 1: Stop making one character way higher level than everyone else.



He always survives. So this is what happens.

[Gallowglass]

I'm not sure exactly how to follow your advice since it mostly has to with their future characters and they are already made. I require players to have their next characters always ready. So they just need to pull out new characters when required.

New characters:
Human Ranger 8 CG (previously played the Dwarven Defender)
Human Rogue 1 / Scout 1 / Paladin of freedom 1 / Barbarian 1 / Wizard 1 (divination) / Cloistered cleric 3 CG with Schizophrenia flaw (Previously played the halfling rogue)
I'm a bit unsure about his details: Human Cleric (and Radiant Servant?) 8 (NG) of Pelor with a Severe Schizophrenia (double flaw) (previously played the Dragon Disciple)

Then there's the almost-12th-level Battle Sorcerer (neutral).

I'm not sure how to apply your advice here. Can anyone give me a hand? I know that I should ask them to work better together, I know that. But don't worry, I will make a summary of the advice I have received here, but you can help me out keeping in mind that a. the characters are ready and b. no Dungeon-what-was-it-splatbook with flour.

Ha ha, No... no, no one can help you out. That's just too much pain.

[Boci]

He always survives. So this is what happens.

So then you can have the other characters come in at the same level.

[Deophaun]

He always survives. So this is what happens.
Rewarding the character who runs away and doesn't contribute to the fight while penalizing those putting their necks on the line. The incentive structure is all wrong here.

[Beheld]

He always survives. So this is what happens.

He survived by literally just standing by and watching his team die while refusing to cast spells. Don't reward him.

[Gallowglass]

Rewarding the character who runs away and doesn't contribute to the fight while penalizing those putting their necks on the line. The incentive structure is all wrong here.

I actually like to imagine that this Battle Sorcerer is actually a serial murderer. He goes to the inn and recruits lower level PCs, acting like an all powerful "I'm higher level than you" Gandalf, promising them riches beyond their CR level, then he leads them to pre-established ambushes, gives them poor advice purposefully to hinder them then runs away after getting his "high" from their murders.

I feel you should point out to the party, at the end of their first night on the road, that the CR 11 battle sorcerer makes a very level appropriate encounter for the other three newcomers. And he has a wealth of equipment and treasure in his loot pouches.

[Deophaun]

I actually like to imagine that this Battle Sorcerer is actually a serial murderer. He goes to the inn and recruits lower level PCs, acting like an all powerful "I'm higher level than you" Gandalf, promising them riches beyond their CR level, then he leads them to pre-established ambushes, gives them poor advice purposefully to hinder them then runs away after getting his "high" from their murders.
I'm imagining this guy when he's level 20, asked to give a speech for the graduating class of the Magicians Institute of Theurgy: "Who will answer the call? If you're smart, not you! Abandoning my comrades to certain death has made me the successful mage I am today. When the world sends a hellcat to rip out the throats of your friends, you stay on that floor and milk as much healing out of your healer as possible."

Is this the guy you want to go into the demonic crypt with? Surely there must be enough rumors swirling around this guy by now that he's placed himself in the adventurer's version of the untouchable caste. If Jon_Dahl doesn't want to raise the level of the other characters, I'd say there's plenty of basis to retire the battle sorcerer as well.

[Friv]

I'm not sure exactly how to follow your advice since it mostly has to with their future characters and they are already made. I require players to have their next characters always ready. So they just need to pull out new characters when required.

Cool. I'm willing to take a look at...


New characters:
Human Ranger 8 CG (previously played the Dwarven Defender)
Well, it's straightforward, at least. A bit of skill use and a bit of magic to back up the party. Of course, it's easy to build a ranger badly, but...


Human Rogue 1 / Scout 1 / Paladin of freedom 1 / Barbarian 1 / Wizard 1 (divination) / Cloistered cleric 3 CG with Schizophrenia flaw (Previously played the halfling rogue)

what

what is

what have you

what

wwhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Why is he taking so many class? Why is he trying to mix two spellcasting classes (!) with four levels of non-spellcasting classes? What is he even trying to do here? He's a level 8 character with a BAB of +3, who's devoted half his levels to direct combat and also took the non-combat cleric variant class. He's a level 8 character with a single level of wizard. He's mixed charging at the enemy screaming with sneak attack. He's mixed a class focused on Strength and Con, a class focused on Intelligence, a class focused on Dexterity and Charisma, and a class focused on Wisdom, so he has actually reached peak MAD.

And he has Schizophrenia! Which is not a RAW Flaw that I know of, but I just know it's going to be awful.

This is a character who should be hit by a rolled-up newspaper. This is a character who makes the previous characters look like paragons of customization. This may be the actual worst D&D character I've ever seen, and I saw someone try to build a sorcerer with Strength 18 and Charisma 12.

I have a serious question. Are your players playing a prank on you? If not, just tell this jerk to make a bard and call it a day. (Or maybe a Bard 6/Barbarian 2, if he really wants to charge into the middle of enemies a lot.)


I'm a bit unsure about his details: Human Cleric (and Radiant Servant?) 8 (NG) of Pelor with a Severe Schizophrenia (double flaw) (previously played the Dragon Disciple)

ABORT ABORT ABORT

Half of your party is made up of people who suffer from severe hallucinations and delusions. I don't even want to know what a "double flaw" is in this context, but I assume it is really, really, really bad.

Actually, I lied, I have morbid curiousity. What is a double flaw?


Then there's the almost-12th-level Battle Sorcerer (neutral).

Yeah, everyone needs to be closer to his level, at least.


I'm not sure how to apply your advice here. Can anyone give me a hand? I know that I should ask them to work better together, I know that. But don't worry, I will make a summary of the advice I have received here, but you can help me out keeping in mind that a. the characters are ready and b. no Dungeon-what-was-it-splatbook with flour.

There is no advice. There is no help to be given. Your world is shadow and ruin.

(On the bright side, the next TPK should come around pretty quick!)

[Gallowglass]

Human Rogue 1 / Scout 1 / Paladin of freedom 1 / Barbarian 1 / Wizard 1 (divination) / Cloistered cleric 3 CG with Schizophrenia flaw (Previously played the halfling rogue)

Wait a minute. I think I get it.

Is this actually 6 low level kobolds in a coat pretending to be one 8th level character?

[Willie the Duck]

I'm not sure how to apply your advice here. Can anyone give me a hand?


Yes. First of all...


I require players to have their next characters always ready. So they just need to pull out new characters when required.

Stop doing this. If they cannot put any lessons that they learned into practice in the form of character build, then they can only change their behavior. In which case...

I know that I should ask them to work better together, I know that. But don't worry, I will make a summary of the advice I have received here
Is best that they are going to get. Please do share this with them.


but you can help me out keeping in mind that a. the characters are ready

That is all on you. You are making that decision, expect to suffer the consequences. Instead of being so very well prepared to recover from their inevitable demise, be prepared to help them put that demise off a bit?


New characters:
Human Ranger 8 CG (previously played the Dwarven Defender)
Human Rogue 1 / Scout 1 / Paladin of freedom 1 / Barbarian 1 / Wizard 1 (divination) / Cloistered cleric 3 CG with Schizophrenia flaw (Previously played the halfling rogue)
I'm a bit unsure about his details: Human Cleric (and Radiant Servant?) 8 (NG) of Pelor with a Severe Schizophrenia (double flaw) (previously played the Dragon Disciple)

Then there's the almost-12th-level Battle Sorcerer (neutral).

A Ranger is a fine, mid-tier choice. Hard to argue with that without knowing the exact build. The rest range from grossly unoptimized (the battle sorcerer, who also apparently doesn't do anything) to utterly useless. It sounds like your players want to horse around and be zany. If that's what they want, and you want to encourage them, please see the advice we have previously given regarding having them fight exclusively leveled-up low-CR creatures. Otherwise, please, for your sake and theirs,
1) show them our analysis
2) discuss it together
3) have them discuss their party composition and coordinate roles
and
4) build new characters, choosing spells and equipment appropriate to the level and style of play you are approaching.

[Friv]

Wait, no, I have new advice.

Go play Dungeon World.

I think your players would have fun playing Dungeon World.

[Deophaun]

And he has Schizophrenia! Which is not a RAW Flaw that I know of, but I just know it's going to be awful.
Wait, the character has schizophrenia? I thought it was the player, and that was why the classes were that way.

[Big Fau]

He always survives. So this is what happens.

You really ought to let them be equal level (or at least 1 level behind) the Battle Sorcerer. It's skewing the CR since you have to accommodate for the level difference (4 levels is a huge gap for an encounter).

And be aware that no amount of advice will help someone who doesn't want to be helped. Players like your upcoming Rogue/Paladin/Whatever are going to lose out no matter what we tell you, since they're nearly hell-bent on ignoring mechanical benefits.

[Jon_Dahl]

Actually, I lied, I have morbid curiousity. What is a double flaw?





I made this homebrew quasi-realistic (in other words, not realistic at all) flaw 'schizophrenia'. The player wanted to have a very severe version of it, so I made it worse ex tempore and the worsened (improved?) flaw is now worth two feats (instead of one, as per rules). Basically he will imagine that a tavern wench tells him that all the food and drink is poisoned in the whole kingdom if he fails a Will save in our next session.

Edit: This is how I will simulate the condition in my game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb8wQjwVu2g).

[Gallowglass]

I made this homebrew quasi-realistic (in other words, not realistic at all) flaw 'schizophrenia'. The player wanted to have a very severe version of it, so I made it worse ex tempore and the worsened (improved?) flaw is now worth two feats (instead of one, as per rules). Basically he will imagine that a tavern wench tells him that all the food and drink is poisoned in the whole kingdom if he fails a Will save in our next session.

Have the tavern wench instead tell both schizophrenia suffererers that the battle sorcerer is a secret mass murderer, who lures other pcs into traps to harvest their young fears for magic wine.

you will be one step closer to solving your problem.

While you are at it, having the tavern wench convince the one multiclass pc that he is six low level kobolds in a coat.

[Recherché]

That seems like the kind of flaw that will kill the character, the party or possibly the campaign. Seriously.

[Big Fau]

That seems like the kind of flaw that will kill the character, the party or possibly the campaign. Seriously.

Seconding this. I've been in campaigns where the DM allowed a player to be schizophrenic and they universally used it as an excuse to be Chaotic Stupid or worse. You need to sit that player down and talk to him about how that decision affects the campaign.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Suggestions based on the presented characters, and how to adjust them:

1) Instead of the usual ranger, use:

- Wildshape ranger with Master of Many Forms. Provide three pre-printed stat cards: meat-ripping dinosaur (fleshraker), scouting bird (eagle or owl), funky third-domain choice (some sort of shark). Tell the player they can take a lot of forms, but they have to print the stat card themselves.
- Mystic ranger with Shooting Star sub levels, despite slight RAW issues combining the variants, and throw in Practiced Spellcaster and a bonus 5th-level slot (at level 10) for free, as well (that may sound powerful, but it's quite alright).

2) Instead of the theurgic swift hunter rogue paladin (?????) setup, recommend a bard, as mentioned, or maybe a necromancer. You can have a lot of fun with Paladin of Tyranny and Dread Necromancer, or possibly Divine Bard with Prestige Paladin (of Freedom)?

3) Human cleric is fine. Radiant Servant is meh, maybe try Church Inquisitor (sees through illusions, good at dispelling) + Divine Defiance (counterspell as immediate).



A divine bardic sage/prestige paladin can be a nice LG companion to a Church Inquisitor and a Mystic Ranger with FE(Arcanists). Basically, you're the Misuse of (Arcane) Magic Response Team.

[Serafina]

Your problem seems to be, first and foremost, that your players are clueless about way too many things regarding D&D.
Now this can have a plethora of reasons, obviously. But consider fixing their ignorance.

You can do this in multiple ways.
You can do out out-of-character. For this encounter, you could just tell them what they could have done instead. Flour, any magic that sees invisible creatures, not trying to out-grapple a grappler, getting an unseen servant or familiar to put out the torches instead, a single casting of a darkness spell that lowers the light level. Do this for other encounters they fail to beat.
Probably more importantly - explain the strengths of their characters to them, as well as what options they have. This is something they should know - the in-game characters obviously know what they can do, the players should as well.

But you can also do this in-character.
Have them be hired by a higher-level NPCs, possibly as bodyguards. Have them run into challenging encounters, where the NPC provides the support they don't have. A Wizard would be ideal, due to their ability to basically do anything. In this case, the Wizard would have cast Glitterdust or Invisibility Purge or combined See Invisibility with a Familiar blowing flour onto the enemy or just cast Darkness.
Use that NPC to avoid the many stupid deaths of them - and then, if they don't notice it themselves, have the NPC point out how they can avoid that mistake next time.
Don't make that NPC obnoxious. Make them like Gandalf or Dumbledore, and concerned with the PCs well-being. Any advice should be friendly and helpful, and along the lines of "you can do this too".
The NPC should not win encounters on their own. Again, Wizard is particularly well-suited for this. You can obviously cheat and ensure that they have just the right support-spell prepared - and maybe they can't cast too many spells because they need their other spell slots for scrying/warding off grand evil magic/something like that.
The NPC should also not call the shots all the time. The group decides how to pursue the goal they are hired for - maybe the NPC isn't actually an experienced adventurer, or actually wants the group to accomplish this on their own.

A combination of the two could go well - as long as you handle it well.


Oh, and really - stop having your players characters be at different levels, and stop having them die all the time.
It's D&D. Resurrection magic is a thing. In 3.5 it does sadly have permanent level loss - but even that can be bypassed if someone shells out for high-level resurrection magic. But even with level loss, having a player stick to a character for a bit is quite preferable - especially when the player obviously has so much to learn about the game!
As for the different levels with replacement characters - it's absolutely not justified. Sure, it's nice if a player earns a higher level and is rewarded for keeping a character alive - but in this case, the one surviving player sure hasn't earned it! And if the players can start at level 8, they sure can start at a higher level than that.

[ace rooster]

I'm not sure exactly how to follow your advice since it mostly has to with their future characters and they are already made. I require players to have their next characters always ready. So they just need to pull out new characters when required.

New characters:
Human Ranger 8 CG (previously played the Dwarven Defender)
Human Rogue 1 / Scout 1 / Paladin of freedom 1 / Barbarian 1 / Wizard 1 (divination) / Cloistered cleric 3 CG with Schizophrenia flaw (Previously played the halfling rogue)
I'm a bit unsure about his details: Human Cleric (and Radiant Servant?) 8 (NG) of Pelor with a Severe Schizophrenia (double flaw) (previously played the Dragon Disciple)

Then there's the almost-12th-level Battle Sorcerer (neutral).

I'm not sure how to apply your advice here. Can anyone give me a hand? I know that I should ask them to work better together, I know that. But don't worry, I will make a summary of the advice I have received here, but you can help me out keeping in mind that a. the characters are ready and b. no Dungeon-what-was-it-splatbook with flour.

Ranger is solid. Not great, but not insane. Do they at least know what they mostly be fighting, so favoured enemy living up to par? Should be fine as long as they don't think of themselves as a frontline. A CR 4 bear will tend to chew up a badly built ranger that tries to dance with it. Are they built for range or TWF (I'm guessing not THF)?

The only thing I can see that the second is thinking is that they want an ubercharger, but have hit wide of the mark. I guess they want to true strike-SA-skirmish-smite charge flanked by familiar, and then be a cleric when it settles. Pity they are worse at it than a druid wild shaped into a tiger, never mind a good swift ambusher build. Maybe suggest those? Decent saves though. They do seem to have avoided all the defensive abilities, from cha to saves to uncanny dodge. They get proficiencies at least, so can build AC. Probably wants to be a two hander though, as this looks like it wants to be an assassin build (kill it before it kills you).

The other cleric is sweet if they are expecting undead, and otherwise just good. The empowered healing might encourage them to use it in combat. On the plus side, they are still a cleric, which is good. Between heavy armour, shield proficiency, magic vestment, and shield of faith you can get an AC of 28 in core without any magic items. SC offers delay death, as well as divine protection. Best bit about being a cleric is that they can go this way without any changes at all! Can stand toe to toe with most CR8 monsters just fine, especially when you throw on divine power. Next level comes righteous might, pushing AC to 32. This is your frontline I guess. Make sure that they know it.

The battle sorc is defined by their spell selection, which we haven't really seen much of. Bad spell selection and the straight cleric is probably better. Should be hiding behind the cleric, and cowardly as it seems, running away if they don't have a meatshield between them and something dangerous.

Teamwork will come from everybody knowing their own and each others strengths and weaknesses. Throw them some encounters designed to highlight strengths of individuals, and weaknesses in the party, but be aware that if you are aiming at a weakness you do not want to use CR as a guideline. As you found, it can go TPK very easily. You are in a far better position to judge where those are, so I can't really be more specific. The players might go CS for a while, as a reaction to feeling powerless (even though they should not have been). The story might have to suffer a little for the sake of teambuilding, and getting some better tactical awareness. If they get some good fights under their belt (even against town guards) they will probably calm down. Don't worry too much about it, and just roll with it. Have fun, whatever happens, and good luck!

[Calthropstu]

I really hope they don't come here because they will get ripped to shreds.

On a plus note, I have been giggling and laughing because the analysis they are giving (6 kobolds in an overcoat... superb.) are quite amusing.

These characters look like experiments by new players. I agree with the make them all same level. 11th would be fine, 10th at the absolute worst.

Apart from that, drill into them the fact that "character concepts are a thing, so are spells." It looks a lot like these guys are trying things that simply DO NOT WORK. Maybe help them build their characters.

[Elkad]

Whatever they do, first encounter vs their new characters should be the same Hellcat.

2 sessions later give them another Hellcat, except use a big floating chandelier where they can't climb to it.

[jindra34]

John new characters should be at most 1 or 2 levels behind the party average (so 10-11 in this case). At the very least grant them the extra levels to hopefully help.

[J-H]

What age range are your players? Based on the lack of understanding of moderately basic system concepts, I'm getting the impression they might be under the age of 16.

[Starbuck_II]

Human Rogue 1 / Scout 1 / Paladin of freedom 1 / Barbarian 1 / Wizard 1 (divination) / Cloistered cleric 3 CG with Schizophrenia flaw (Previously played the halfling rogue)


Did you ask him what he is going for with this?

A Spellthief has magic and sneak attack.

So, a spellthief 3 would be better than each of levels in Barb, Rogue, Scout.
Now, we can make him spellthief 4 unless he has a really food use for Wiz 1.
Then we deal with CC 3 and Pal of Freedom. He gains nothing from Pal 1, at least should have been Pal 2 if looking for Grace.
So Spellthief 5/CC 3 would work way better for him. Is he aiming for Mystic Theurge?
Unless he wants Lore and divine spells badly, he could be Spellthief 8.

If he takes Master Spellthief feat, he can cast in armor.

Steal Energy Resistance for example would let him steal the fire resist of the Hellcat so fire spells work on it.


Another path: Spellthief 4/Wizard 3 then go into Ultimate Magus. Master Spellthief feats. Why master spellthief feat? Your spellthief and arcane spellcaster levels also stack when determining your caster level for all arcane spells.
Take Master Spelltheif as 6th level feat. You now has a CL of 7 for ST, and 7 for Wizard, correct? Now, you take a level of UM. UM1 grants a +1 existing caster level for whichever has the lower CL. Since both ST and Wiz have the same CL, which ones gets more spells/day? You choose.

Get Hunter's Eye spell somehow. It gives +1d6 SA/3 CL. Take all of an enemy's spells in one attack.

[Troacctid]

Another path: Spellthief 4/Wizard 3 then go into Ultimate Magus. Master Spellthief feats. Why master spellthief feat? Your spellthief and arcane spellcaster levels also stack when determining your caster level for all arcane spells.
Take Master Spelltheif as 6th level feat. You now has a CL of 7 for ST, and 7 for Wizard, correct? Now, you take a level of UM. UM1 grants a +1 existing caster level for whichever has the lower CL. Since both ST and Wiz have the same CL, which ones gets more spells/day? You choose.
Spellthief 2/Wizard 3 via the Trickster variant seems like a much more efficient entry.

[Sayt]

Wait a minute. I think I get it.

Is this actually 6 low level kobolds in a coat pretending to be one 8th level character?
This is. ..amazing.

Anyway, actual advice:

1. Lock in your party arty the same level. If a player voluntarily retires a character (they refuse to be redirected or leave the group), that player's new character comes in 1 level below party average. Characters cannot be further below character averge than one level.

2. Give your charcaters their full WBL when they come in. If they try to game this by cycling characters, loot doesn't drop until parity. Consider dictating what they come in with (ie scrolls of x spell, a +3 weapon of their choice.) Use uee to teach them. This encounter Coyle have been a lot easier with a scroll of darkness, fer Chrisake.

3. Strongly consider playing e6 until your party has the nous to deal with trik monsters like Hellcat or birds.

Side note, I know there aren't rules for it, but aerosolized flour is extremely flammable. I advise chalk dust as an alternative.

[Jon_Dahl]

I'm hoping that the Battle Sorcerer will die soon so we could have lower APL group. My wish is to have a party with a lower APL, not higher. Having three 9th-level characters instead of three 8th-level characters goes strongly against that wish. I'm getting the Battle Sorcerer soon, don't worry. Everything is going to be fine (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/962/640/658.png).

[Boci]

I'm hoping that the Battle Sorcerer will die soon so we could have lower APL group. My wish is to have a party with a lower APL, not higher. Having three 9th-level characters instead of three 8th-level characters goes strongly against that wish. I'm getting the Battle Sorcerer soon, don't worry. Everything is going to be fine (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/962/640/658.png).

Whilst the sorceror here is far from blameless and as noted shouldn't be rewarded for running away...deliberately targetting him to kill off his PC is generally considered a DM no-no.

[Jon_Dahl]

What age range are your players? Based on the lack of understanding of moderately basic system concepts, I'm getting the impression they might be under the age of 16.

Cleric of Pelor? Around 28.
Human Ranger? Maybe 37 or 38.
Multiclass? Around 26. Maybe 27.
Battle Sorcerer? He turns 36 this year. I think.

[Deophaun]

I'm hoping that the Battle Sorcerer will die soon so we could have lower APL group. My wish is to have a party with a lower APL, not higher. Having three 9th-level characters instead of three 8th-level characters goes strongly against that wish. I'm getting the Battle Sorcerer soon, don't worry. Everything is going to be fine (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/962/640/658.png).
Seriously, don't bother "getting" him. His last party died, and by the level differential this has obviously happened a couple times before. No one is going to want to adventure with this guy. That group is done. Everyone brings a new sheet. I'd even make him an NPC and play him as the coward he was.

[Fizban]

He always survives. So this is what happens.
He didn't survive that fight, you let him survive. Absolutely nothing was stopping that Hellcat from running him down and finishing the job. Take responsibility.

I actually like to imagine that this Battle Sorcerer is actually a serial murderer.
This is gold.

I have a serious question. Are your players playing a prank on you?
Indeed, at the sight of that build I have to wonder myself if these players are not in fact masterful trolls. This is the kind of build you'd see in a revenge against the DM thread, "Oh he's gonna restrict your books because they're overpowered? Well make a character with one level in every class and just fail at everything because waaaaah." Maybe his players have already been here. . . dun dun dun!

[re: pre-building replacement characters]
Stop doing this. If they cannot put any lessons that they learned into practice in the form of character build, then they can only change their behavior. In which case...
That is all on you. You are making that decision, expect to suffer the consequences. Instead of being so very well prepared to recover from their inevitable demise, be prepared to help them put that demise off a bit?
What he said. They build characters at a certain level, you make them pre-build replacements at the same level. This means that they expect their current characters to die and stop caring, and when they do die they lose all progress. Then they bring in the new character, build a new spare at the same level, and never level up. You've taken almost all the agency you can out of the system.

I made this homebrew quasi-realistic (in other words, not realistic at all) flaw 'schizophrenia'.
By not only allowing flaws (a dubious plan for beginners) but also homebrewing one that incentivizes being literally crazy, you have caused this problem yourself.

I'm hoping that the Battle Sorcerer will die soon so we could have lower APL group. My wish is to have a party with a lower APL, not higher. Having three 9th-level characters instead of three 8th-level characters goes strongly against that wish. I'm getting the Battle Sorcerer soon, don't worry. Everything is going to be fine (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/962/640/658.png).
You missed your chance to do this properly and have him die with the rest of the party. Intentionally killing his character at this point is even worse, instead of admitting a mistake this plan tries to cover it up by harming one specific player.

None of these are problems with the game, they are all problems that you have created and you need to recognize them in order to fix them. The books clearly state that the party should not be more than a level apart, and you have all the power needed as DM to just say that they aren't, just make the party the same level. There is no reason to force people to pre-generate backup characters. There is absolutely zero reason to incentivize garbage characters.

I argued with you a lot in the Red Handbook thread, but I decided to accept your "black box" DMing style. It has become clear that there is far more and far worse going on than just leaving your players in the dark. You're acting like there there are all sorts of restrictions on what you can do, like it's not your fault that the game is messed up when you are the one who messed it up by inventing those restrictions.

I'll add that saying afterwards "Don't worry, I'll never throw a monster like that at you again" is also harmful, as you are telling the players that they were right to think the encounter unfair, as opposed to forcing them to proactively look for solutions. And when they ask "what could we have done" tell them.

And if they said "but we didn't have any of that," you point out that you dropped such and such magic items that would have been really useful two and three encounters ago, and they sold them.
I can't believe I missed that part. No wonder they won't learn anything, you actually told them that there was nothing to learn.



Stop, just, stop. Wipe everything and start from scratch. You are not running a game next session, the sorcerer isn't getting axed, no one is playing a schizophrenic.

Instead you are all going to sit down and start again from level 1 (or 3, or 5, but no higher). You will not incentivize or suggest bad character design with things like "schizophrenia flaw" or "morally grey" or "low-magic game." You will ensure that they receive proper WBL on creation and as they level up. Every time they level you will total up their gear, and if they don't have enough items they will get cash to make up the difference, and use that cash to buy whatever items they want, as the game intended (consumable budget is 10% at each level, and bad items are sold or not given out in the first place). Any character who dies, is retired, or needs replacement for any reason is replaced by someone at the same level. In fact, you are no longer tracking xp individually: the party all levels at the same time, period. Characters that die or leave take their gear with them, because this is not a video game you can abuse, and we are going to maintain balance via DM authority until it can be maintained by the skills of both the players and the DM.

You will ignore death penalties and slash all raising costs by 90%, this means Raise Dead costs 500gp and no level loss (sharp eyes will note 500gp is the 3.0 cost). The only serious penalty for death is getting dragged back to town, as long at the party survives. Conversely, the only reward for staying alive is knowing that you won, and when/if you go back to 3.5 rules you'll know how to not die. You will allow people to switch out or "rebuild" at least part of their character every session if needed, and there will be no penalties for dropping and old character to try a new one. This is learning time, not hardcore mode.

This means if someone is attached to a character, they get to keep playing it, and if they want to try a new one they can. The player decides when they have a character they like, and sticking with one character is rewarded by actually being part of the world. This does not mean people can do whatever they want and get away with it. If a character's "personality" says that they can't work with the game, then that character will be removed weather it's being uncooperative, a compulsive thief, literally crazy, etc.

Every time someone messes up, such as by building a garbage character, buying useless gear, refusing to cast spells or take action, or doing something mind-numbingly stupid, you are going to tell them. If you have to, you are going to tell them no. The players are here to play the game, and if they refuse to even try then they can get out. This will likely cause frustration and cries of "Well what am I supposed to do?"

Every time someone asks you a question, you are going to include an honest assessment of whatever they need to know, even if they didn't ask about it specifically. If they ask about doing something dumb, you are going to tell them it is a bad idea in addition to whatever else they wanted to know. If they are on to an actually good idea, you will tell them it's a good idea and why. If they run into anything that uses a rule they have not previously used themselves, you are going to tell them exactly how it works before they actually start rolling or even interacting with it. This means things like skill checks and DCs, grappling, damage reduction and bypass, regeneration and bypass, incorporeality and bypass, every, single, thing. These are 100% available rules, every player has the right and need to know how they function.

You will not withhold information based on game contrivances like knowledge checks. This means that yes, they are going to see Trolls and you are going to tell them those are Trolls and explain Regeneration before they even fight. If they hit a creature and it doesn't work, you tell them exactly why: did they miss AC? Did they miss because of Invisibility? Did DR soak the damage? You will then remind them of any abilities they have which might help. You will not use any encounters for which the characters do not have any abilities that can help, so if something happens and you can't tell them what they should be doing, then you have screwed up. In order to facilitate this, you will keep a copy of every character sheet with you, or direct them to keep their sheets online for easy reference.

You will seed their loot with items that you know will be useful later on, leave hints about upcoming areas, and so on as previously discussed.

You may relax and eventually discontinue some of these practices when your players finally have a full grasp of the rules of the game, how to build characters, how to purchase gear, how to fight tactically, and so on. For example, once they understand the majority of standard monster abilities/defenses, you may go back to using Knowledge checks instead of just telling them what the monster is for free. You will not stop answering questions, ever.

Finally, and the one you'll probably like the least: you will stop attempting to balance the game by banning entire books, period. You will listen to all requests for printed material that you have easily available and evaluate them on based on their own merits. You may refuse something if it is actually overpowered, but you are not going to prohibit flour pouches just because you don't like Factotums. You will lean towards permissiveness, and if you are not sure then you will ask the forum while presenting the rest of the party for comparison as well as any other pertinent information. Such as an explanation of why you are concerned about the ability, upcoming encounters, and the fact that everyone is relearning how to play from scratch.

Edit:

Cleric of Pelor? Around 28.
Human Ranger? Maybe 37 or 38.
Multiclass? Around 26. Maybe 27.
Battle Sorcerer? He turns 36 this year. I think.
Jeeze, I just can't catch a break. Every time I lay into the DM, the players get worse. Then I lay into the players and the DM reveals more underlying problems.

The Ranger and Battle Sorc are older, quite possibly have played DnD since the olden days before things like balance and player agency were invented. This means they play simple builds that aren't terrible, but fail to take advantage of the full 3.5, and they tend towards passive "welp I guess we suck" responses instead of expecting the rules to work for them. Meanwhile the other two are apparently still in their idiot 20's, both deciding to play crazy people because it's lol fun. Auuuuuuuuugh.

[Calthropstu]

The Ranger and Battle Sorc are old, quite possibly have played DnD since the olden days before things like balance and player agency were invented. This means they play simple builds that aren't terrible, but fail to take advantage of the full 3.5, and they tend towards passive "welp I guess we suck" responses instead of expecting the rules to work for them. Meanwhile the other two are apparently still in their idiot 20's, both deciding to play crazy people because it's lol fun. Auuuuuuuuugh.

37 IS NOT OLD!!!!!
I've actually been playing D&D since '93. In my current group, I have someone well into their 50s, and know 2 people who play who are in their 70s and played the original.

And I have never seen any of them play a 3.5/pathfinder character that bad. Except once as a joke. We had a party once where everyone took one level of every base pf class to see how it would go.
The answer was: not well. Their saves were actually decent, and the fact that every single skill was a class skill really helped them. But the whole not having any major abilities kind of restricted them to melee and archery with negligible spell backup. The entire party did pick up true strike though, and we all had good bow skills. But the entire party was tpk'd by the first serious caster we hit.

[Fizban]

Depends on what you mean by old, but I can change it to older if that makes you feel better :smalltongue:. Regardless of how old 3.5 is by now, when I hear people closer to 40 talking about dnd they still usually started on an older edition. That doesn't mean you can't learn a new one, but if your 3.5 game ignores most of the 3.5 paradigm shifts you won't actually learn it. I will also note that I myself am 27, so when I say the other two are in their idiot 20's it is intended as an insult because what the heck?

[Calthropstu]

depends on what you mean by old, but i can change it to older if that makes you feel better :smalltongue:. Regardless of how old 3.5 is by now, when i hear people closer to 40 talking about dnd they still usually started on an older edition. That doesn't mean you can't learn a new one, but if your 3.5 game ignores most of the 3.5 paradigm shifts you won't actually learn it. I will also note that i myself am 27, so when i say the other two are in their idiot 20's it is intended as an insult because what the heck?

thac0 forever!

[MisterKaws]

Stop, just, stop. Wipe everything and start from scratch. You are not running a game next session, the sorcerer isn't getting axed, no one is playing a schizophrenic.

Instead you are all going to sit down and start again from level 1 (or 3, or 5, but no higher). You will not incentivize or suggest bad character design with things like "schizophrenia flaw" or "morally grey" or "low-magic game." You will ensure that they receive proper WBL on creation and as they level up. Every time they level you will total up their gear, and if they don't have enough items they will get cash to make up the difference, and use that cash to buy whatever items they want, as the game intended (consumable budget is 10% at each level, and bad items are sold or not given out in the first place). Any character who dies, is retired, or needs replacement for any reason is replaced by someone at the same level. In fact, you are no longer tracking xp individually: the party all levels at the same time, period. Characters that die or leave take their gear with them, because this is not a video game you can abuse, and we are going to maintain balance via DM authority until it can be maintained by the skills of both the players and the DM.

You will ignore death penalties and slash all raising costs by 90%, this means Raise Dead costs 500gp and no level loss (sharp eyes will note 500gp is the 3.0 cost). The only serious penalty for death is getting dragged back to town, as long at the party survives. Conversely, the only reward for staying alive is knowing that you won, and when/if you go back to 3.5 rules you'll know how to not die. You will allow people to switch out or "rebuild" at least part of their character every session if needed, and there will be no penalties for dropping and old character to try a new one. This is learning time, not hardcore mode.

This means if someone is attached to a character, they get to keep playing it, and if they want to try a new one they can. The player decides when they have a character they like, and sticking with one character is rewarded by actually being part of the world. This does not mean people can do whatever they want and get away with it. If a character's "personality" says that they can't work with the game, then that character will be removed weather it's being uncooperative, a compulsive thief, literally crazy, etc.

Every time someone messes up, such as by building a garbage character, buying useless gear, refusing to cast spells or take action, or doing something mind-numbingly stupid, you are going to tell them. If you have to, you are going to tell them no. The players are here to play the game, and if they refuse to even try then they can get out. This will likely cause frustration and cries of "Well what am I supposed to do?"

Every time someone asks you a question, you are going to include an honest assessment of whatever they need to know, even if they didn't ask about it specifically. If they ask about doing something dumb, you are going to tell them it is a bad idea in addition to whatever else they wanted to know. If they are on to an actually good idea, you will tell them it's a good idea and why. If they run into anything that uses a rule they have not previously used themselves, you are going to tell them exactly how it works before they actually start rolling or even interacting with it. This means things like skill checks and DCs, grappling, damage reduction and bypass, regeneration and bypass, incorporeality and bypass, every, single, thing. These are 100% available rules, every player has the right and need to know how they function.

You will not withhold information based on game contrivances like knowledge checks. This means that yes, they are going to see Trolls and you are going to tell them those are Trolls and explain Regeneration before they even fight. If they hit a creature and it doesn't work, you tell them exactly why: did they miss AC? Did they miss because of Invisibility? Did DR soak the damage? You will then remind them of any abilities they have which might help. You will not use any encounters for which the characters do not have any abilities that can help, so if something happens and you can't tell them what they should be doing, then you have screwed up. In order to facilitate this, you will keep a copy of every character sheet with you, or direct them to keep their sheets online for easy reference.

You will seed their loot with items that you know will be useful later on, leave hints about upcoming areas, and so on as previously discussed.

You may relax and eventually discontinue some of these practices when your players finally have a full grasp of the rules of the game, how to build characters, how to purchase gear, how to fight tactically, and so on. For example, once they understand the majority of standard monster abilities/defenses, you may go back to using Knowledge checks instead of just telling them what the monster is for free. You will not stop answering questions, ever.

Finally, and the one you'll probably like the least: you will stop attempting to balance the game by banning entire books, period. You will listen to all requests for printed material that you have easily available and evaluate them on based on their own merits. You may refuse something if it is actually overpowered, but you are not going to prohibit flour pouches just because you don't like Factotums. You will lean towards permissiveness, and if you are not sure then you will ask the forum while presenting the rest of the party for comparison as well as any other pertinent information. Such as an explanation of why you are concerned about the ability, upcoming encounters, and the fact that everyone is relearning how to play from scratch.

'Scuse me, I'll be keeping this for future reference.

On a side note, I personally use a Truenamer DMPC instead of just "disabling" Knowledge checks. People tend to call it a weak and trash class, but it's actually a pretty solid T3, and it's a better babysitter than the bard. And also a ridiculously effective Pokedex...

[ComaVision]

Meanwhile the other two are apparently still in their idiot 20's, both deciding to play crazy people because it's lol fun. Auuuuuuuuugh.

Everyone in my groups except one person is in their 20s. It's actually the only person that is older that is the worst at making characters.

[Friv]

Seriously, though, please include a campaign report of your next session, because this is going to be hilarious.

[Gallowglass]

Seriously, though, please include a campaign report of your next session, because this is going to be hilarious.

Kobold Infilitration Troupe log, day five:

"So far the infiltration has been nearly flawless. We ran into a small problem last night when the ranger wanted to know how we "avoid all the sleeping while fully dressed" penalties because we won't remove our coat. He is a tricky one, because his badger knew something was off about us. When we arranged for the badger to fall in the first combat, we thought we'd solved that problem, but the Ranger will have to be dealt with if he continues to suspect our treachery. The rest of the party is oblivious, even when Simon messed up and cast his magic missile even though it was Gustav's turn to act. Yes SIMON it WAS Gustav's turn! Shut up Simon, I'm transcribing. Because I'm the 3rd level one, that's why! Luckily, I yelled "Quickened Magic Missile!" to cover the slip up. Thankfully the battle sorcerer doesn't even understand metamagic or we'd have been in for real trouble."

"It is two more days until the Dungeon. Once there, we will enact our ultimate plan! Which will be good because I'm getting major callouses from Trent and Billy standing on my shoulders all the time. CUT YOUR DAMN TALONS BILLY! And Simon would it KILL you to prestidigitate the stink off of Gustav's feet?"

"Commander Killkill, signing off."

[Jon_Dahl]

Seriously, though, please include a campaign report of your next session, because this is going to be hilarious.

We agreed to have a short "half-session" this Saturday. I'm not going to bring schizophrenia into play but I will make a full report of the proceedings.

[ComaVision]

We agreed to have a short "half-session" this Saturday. I'm not going to bring schizophrenia into play but I will make a full report of the proceedings.

What are you going to put them up against?

Are we allowed to make bets on GitP? My money's on the monster.

[LordOfCain]

We agreed to have a short "half-session" this Saturday. I'm not going to bring schizophrenia into play but I will make a full report of the proceedings.

No kobold stacking? Aw....

[Jon_Dahl]

What are you going to put them up against?

Are we allowed to make bets on GitP? My money's on the monster.

Battle sorcerer wants to get their lost gear back... My God...

[Recherché]

Eh I can understand being really concerned about gear when you're already behind on WBL.

[Friv]

Battle sorcerer wants to get their lost gear back... My God...

Wait, they're going back to fight the Hellcat again?

http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/gallery/popcorn-gifs/tumblr_ljh0puClWT1qfkt17.gif

Have they picked up anything new, gear or tactics-wise, that could change what's about to happen?

[ComaVision]

Battle sorcerer wants to get their lost gear back... My God...

Now you can justify the Hellcat singling out "the one that got away".

[J-H]

Now the Hellcat is wearing their Amulets of Natural Armor, Rings of Protection, Bracers of Dexterity, and Cloaks of Resistance.

Oh, and it's using any left-over potions.

[ComaVision]

Now the Hellcat is wearing their Amulets of Natural Armor, Rings of Protection, Bracers of Dexterity, and Cloaks of Resistance.

Oh, and it's using any left-over potions.

YESSSSSSSSSSS. They are smart, after all. This Hellcat is going to make bank.

[Jon_Dahl]

Now you can justify the Hellcat singling out "the one that got away".



Now the Hellcat is wearing their Amulets of Natural Armor, Rings of Protection, Bracers of Dexterity, and Cloaks of Resistance.

Oh, and it's using any left-over potions.

https://media.giphy.com/media/3o72F8t9TDi2xVnxOE/giphy.gif

[Gallowglass]

last one. I promise*.

*meanwhile, in the random monster encounter break room*

//interior. A small, blandly tiled break-room with fluorescent lights, a few fridges, a sink with paper towel holder and an old microwave. Kuerig machine on top of the microwave. Sign on the microwave that says "Have a care for sensitive snouts. Leave your spicy gnome cuisine at home!"

*A hill giant, two wraiths, A Gug and a Rakshasa a playing settlers of Catan on a corner table. The Gug is cheating, but its okay because he thinks he's playing monopoly.*

*A frostman is sitting there eating a popsicle and watching QVC. They are selling hewards handy haversacks.*

Suddenly, the door opens but nothing comes in. The door swings shut. A trail of blood dots the floor and a heavy weight collapses with a groan into the chair next to him*

Frostman: "Wow, Carl you don't look like hell. What happened? Harder group?"

HellCat: "No man, you won't believe this! It was that fighter-wizard guy from last time. But this time I took him out first. Then I was doing my normal thing. Grapple rake, Grapple rake through the rest of them."

Frostman: "Really? well you can't win them all. Some monk or something got you?"

Hellcat: "No... it was.. well this guy and when I got to him, I went to grapple him and he... came apart into like six pieces. Then they swarmed me. I don't really know what happened... But I heard one of them say "Smite Evil!" then everything went black."

Door opens again. A kobold comes in with a poster. He is preening, proud. He smiles wickedly at the frostman and literally skips to the wall where he thumbtacks it over the prior poster.

Its a picture of six smiling kobolds drawn in crayon. Underneath is says "Six Kobolds in a Coat: random encounter of the year!"


*//I don't promise

[Starbuck_II]

Battle sorcerer wants to get their lost gear back... My God...


I think

I actually like to imagine that this Battle Sorcerer is actually a serial murderer.

This poster was right.

[Douglas]

Battle sorcerer wants to get their lost gear back... My God...
...I think this response is appropriate:

Now the Hellcat is wearing their Amulets of Natural Armor, Rings of Protection, Bracers of Dexterity, and Cloaks of Resistance.

Oh, and it's using any left-over potions.

And if they're stupid enough to deliberately go hunting a Hellcat without preparing in advance for, well, exactly the same factors (mainly invisibility) that slaughtered them last time, let them reap the consequences of that. Then give them a lecture about exactly how stupid it was and why.

I'd be especially amused if they fail this second time, because with a cleric/Radiant Servant in the party the only preparation they need is one core spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/invisibilityPurge.htm).

[Starbuck_II]

Looking over the Hellcat, it is interesting that it is visible in the dark, but invisible in the light.
If the lights weren't magic lights, that hint would make more sense.

[Beheld]

Looking over the Hellcat, it is interesting that it is visible in the dark, but invisible in the light.
If the lights weren't magic lights, that hint would make more sense.

I mean, I don't know if it is actually visible in the dark, but like, I've never met a party with zero people with darkvision, and I haven't played in a game without everyone having darkvision for at least a few years now.

[Calthropstu]

I mean, I don't know if it is actually visible in the dark, but like, I've never met a party with zero people with darkvision, and I haven't played in a game without everyone having darkvision for at least a few years now.

I prefer playing humans because the extra feat and skill levels really help my builds. Generally, it isn't a problem as I can get around not being able to see in the dark.
But yes, I have noticed many people going for dark vision with race myself at many tables.

[Beheld]

I prefer playing humans because the extra feat and skill levels really help my builds. Generally, it isn't a problem as I can get around not being able to see in the dark.
But yes, I have noticed many people going for dark vision with race myself at many tables.

Even if you are human, you can easily have darkvision in about a thousand ways by level 7 (And hell, these characters could be level 11). Heck, you can be Human and then Get Last Breathed into another race if you really want. But you can also just buy an item that gives your Darkvision.

Being able to give all enemies in the entire dungeon advance notice that you are coming has never been worth a feat to me, but like I said, if you are human, you can totally just get Darkvision anyway.

[Willie the Duck]

I mean, I don't know if it is actually visible in the dark, but like, I've never met a party with zero people with darkvision, and I haven't played in a game without everyone having darkvision for at least a few years now.


Invisible in Light (Ex): A hellcat is invisible in any area lit well enough for a human to see. In a darkened area, it shows up as a faintly glowing outline visible up to 30 feet away (60 feet if the viewer has low-light vision). Magical darkness smothers the glow and conceals the outline.

I guess in normal darkness, darkvision isn't much help, since it will glow anyways.

[Beheld]

I guess in normal darkness, darkvision isn't much help, since it will glow anyways.

I don't know if a faintly glowing outline means fully visible, or total concealment. Even still, you are still blind which means half speed, and 30ft is often less than 60ft, so Darkvision is still very useful.

[Fizban]

We agreed to have a short "half-session" this Saturday. I'm not going to bring schizophrenia into play but I will make a full report of the proceedings.
Well that's a bit of a step in the right direction.

Battle sorcerer wants to get their lost gear back... My God...
Bwahahahahaaha!

Everyone in my groups except one person is in their 20s. It's actually the only person that is older that is the worst at making characters.
Sorry, I will speak with maximum clarity. People in their teens, let alone 20's, should be able to get over this nonsense. When asked what their ages were it was an appropriate guess that they might be kids, but turned out they're actually later 20'. "Idiot 20's" is meant to be reminiscent of "terrible 2's," except most people would have figured out "lol crazy person" isn't funny by this point.

If it weren't for the two younger players being possible trolls in disguise, the older players would have the worse characters: straight ranger and dwarven defender are not considered very good by most people. But since it is how it is, the stable/simple characters are the best off.

[Thurbane]

I kind of get the impression that most of the players into this group are role-players more than roll-players.

They are either inexperienced at creating remotely optimized characters; or they make their build around fluff, and effectiveness of the character be damned!

The latter is a perfectly valid style of game, but requires a DM who accommodates this style of play...

...if not, they are destined to accumulate reams of deceased character sheets.

[Calthropstu]

Well that's a bit of a step in the right direction.

Bwahahahahaaha!

Sorry, I will speak with maximum clarity. People in their teens, let alone 20's, should be able to get over this nonsense. When asked what their ages were it was an appropriate guess that they might be kids, but turned out they're actually later 20'. "Idiot 20's" is meant to be reminiscent of "terrible 2's," except most people would have figured out "lol crazy person" isn't funny by this point.

If it weren't for the two younger players being possible trolls in disguise, the older players would have the worse characters: straight ranger and dwarven defender are not considered very good by most people. But since it is how it is, the stable/simple characters are the best off.

I am going to disagree here, a dwarven defender makes sense. The mechanics are ok, and as long as you stick with it, it's a solid t4 with some decent feat support.

But I am betting this is a "role play" heavy group where more emphasis is placed on talk and story than actual fighting. My psionics group is like that, with maybe one or two fights a 5 hour session.

I love it, honestly.

Still, I would seriously advise OP talking with the PCs about their characters. Rp heavy is one thing, lemming rushing a hellcat over and over is another.

[lord_khaine]

Kobold Infilitration Troupe log, day five:

"So far the infiltration has been nearly flawless. We ran into a small problem last night when the ranger wanted to know how we "avoid all the sleeping while fully dressed" penalties because we won't remove our coat. He is a tricky one, because his badger knew something was off about us. When we arranged for the badger to fall in the first combat, we thought we'd solved that problem, but the Ranger will have to be dealt with if he continues to suspect our treachery. The rest of the party is oblivious, even when Simon messed up and cast his magic missile even though it was Gustav's turn to act. Yes SIMON it WAS Gustav's turn! Shut up Simon, I'm transcribing. Because I'm the 3rd level one, that's why! Luckily, I yelled "Quickened Magic Missile!" to cover the slip up. Thankfully the battle sorcerer doesn't even understand metamagic or we'd have been in for real trouble."

"It is two more days until the Dungeon. Once there, we will enact our ultimate plan! Which will be good because I'm getting major callouses from Trent and Billy standing on my shoulders all the time. CUT YOUR DAMN TALONS BILLY! And Simon would it KILL you to prestidigitate the stink off of Gustav's feet?"

"Commander Killkill, signing off."

Bwahahahaha! :smallbiggrin:


You missed your chance to do this properly and have him die with the rest of the party. Intentionally killing his character at this point is even worse, instead of admitting a mistake this plan tries to cover it up by harming one specific player.

None of these are problems with the game, they are all problems that you have created and you need to recognize them in order to fix them. The books clearly state that the party should not be more than a level apart, and you have all the power needed as DM to just say that they aren't, just make the party the same level. There is no reason to force people to pre-generate backup characters. There is absolutely zero reason to incentivize garbage characters.

I argued with you a lot in the Red Handbook thread, but I decided to accept your "black box" DMing style. It has become clear that there is far more and far worse going on than just leaving your players in the dark. You're acting like there there are all sorts of restrictions on what you can do, like it's not your fault that the game is messed up when you are the one who messed it up by inventing those restrictions.

Though more seriously, then i agree with Fizban's rather long post here. It sounds more and more like the entire situation is one that should be blamed on the DM. If the party is undergeared and in some way ignorant of how the world actually work, then i dont think you can blame them for dying to something so potentially tricky as an invisible opponent.

[Grim Reader]

I've seen similar things happen. I'm one of the old ones, and I've seen adventuring parties come and go since 1st ed.

Its mostly a 3.5 thing, which we call the "Thug party". A group of players, generally not too experienced with play above the low levels. They make character that they think are cool, often inspired by Conan, Clint Eastwood characters or similar. They end up with a group of mundanes where the caster, if they have one, focus on direct-damage spells.

Then, if they manage to advance in levels, they get wiped out by creatures with abilities they never considered and have no way of dealing with.

You need to tell them that as they advance in level, they will increasingly encounter challenges and monsters with exceptional abilities. And if they want to survive, they have to have some kind of response to these. They include, but are not limited to invisibility, etherealness, teleportation, flight, burrowing, illusions, damage resistance, regeneration, save-or-dies, etc. Long list really, but some responses can cover multiple problems.

To me, actually figuring out how to have counters for these things is one of the more entertaining parts of the game, but your players seem to have a different playstyle.

[Thurbane]

This shows point blank that they did not learn anything from this fight about what their actual problems were. They thought this was a useful tip, when in actuality trying to put out the lights was their second and most egregious tactical error. And they never will learn as long as they keep getting ganked, as far as they can see there's nothing to learn from that fight. To them, a Hellcat is some crazy overpowered monster because as far as they've seen it's unkillable. They don't even know what they're doing wrong because they've never seen it done right. They don't know that they should be bringing this or that piece of gear because none of them as ever had such a piece of gear when they needed it, likely they haven't had one at all or even know that such gear exists. They've never been taught how to read, so they fail the test.

They need to be shown how to play the game. Nudged into it by finding the right items and getting the right hints*, so that they can see the correct solution immediately, and learn how to do it again in the future. Otherwise they're just going to die over and over again. If you want to have interesting tactical encounters and your players are terrible at DnD, there are only two options: stop using interesting encounters, or teach your players how to fight. There is no substitute or excuse.

Sorry for the very. very late reply to this but...yes! A thousand times yes!

These payers have not learned from their experience. I'm willing to bet that at least a couple of them assume you threw some insanely hard, way-out-of-their-CR-range beast at them, and don't think they actually could have handled the encounter better.

I mean, if your players are having fun, that's the main thing - but I suspect in the near future some of them may get dejected at not being able to develop a long term character, and possibly quit the group.

If any of them were to sit in on a game with another group, their jaws would probably hit the floor when they see how even semi-optimized parties deal with tough encounters.

While everyone has commented on the poor performance of the players, I think there is a bit of DM failure here too. If you want your players to flourish and learn to "master" the 3.5 system, I don't think you are going the right way about encouraging them. Instead, they probably just assume that 3.5 D&D is some insanely tough system where it's normal to roll up a new character every other week (Paranoia, anyone? :smalltongue: )

[Necroticplague]

If any of them were to sit in on a game with another group, their jaws would probably hit the floor when they see how even semi-optimized parties deal with tough encounters.

For this one in particular, a mid-op party could have this settled in less than one round.
*Hellcat grapples sorcerer*
Rogue: Wait, do I see anything?
DM: Nope.
*Rogue uses See the Unseen skill trick*
Rogue: Now do i see anything?
DM:Yep, being grabbed by a fiendish cat.
Rogue:Sweet, so it's denied dex to AC. I charge and pounce.
*Three attacks augmented by Craven and Sneak Attack later*
DM:Whelp, while your daggers would normally barely scratch it, your very precise attacks while it's distracted eating your friend help considerably, it's dead as a doornail.

[Thurbane]

For this one in particular, a mid-op party could have this settled in less than one round.
*Hellcat grapples sorcerer*
Rogue: Wait, do I see anything?
DM: Nope.
*Rogue uses See the Unseen skill trick*
Rogue: Now do i see anything?
DM:Yep, being grabbed by a fiendish cat.
Rogue:Sweet, so it's denied dex to AC. I charge and pounce.
*Three attacks augmented by Craven and Sneak Attack later*
DM:Whelp, while your daggers would normally barely scratch it, your very precise attacks while it's distracted eating your friend help considerably, it's dead as a doornail.


That's assuming Complete Scoundrel isn't on the ban list. :smalltongue:

[Grim Reader]

What is the ban list here, again?

[Friv]

I am going to disagree here, a dwarven defender makes sense. The mechanics are ok, and as long as you stick with it, it's a solid t4 with some decent feat support.

I will, in turn, disagree with you. Dwarven Defender is a trap class. It's one of those things that looks really cool, but whose mechanics are all in opposition to each other and doesn't actually work in play.

First, it has three feat requirements. Endurance is generally regarded as a bad feat; it gives bonuses on a variety of very edge situations that many DMs don't ever put into practice, and lets you sleep in armor lighter than what you'll want to wear as a dwarven defender. Dodge is also a bad feat; it gives you a very small bonus in a single situation. Toughness is just straight-up garbage. Dodge also require Dexterity 13, which means your "stand still and wear heavy armor" dwarf needs to have another decent stat.

This means that if you aren't a fighter, Dwarven Defender takes all of your feat slots, and fighter isn't a very good class to start with.

Secondly, Dwarven Defender has an even weaker skill set than Fighter, with only four class skills, so it's kind of bad there, too. It does give you Will saves, so props to that.

Finally, Dwarven Defender gives you two things at Level 1 - a +1 AC bonus, which is pretty decent, and Defensive Stance. Defensive Stance looks cool! Huge AC bonus! Small attack bonus! Extra HP (that go away in a few rounds and kill you if you were relying on them, but...). But it has huge drawbacks: it only lasts (Con) rounds, it tires you after using it, and you can't move at all while it's active. Obviously this means that if enemies take a five-foot step back from you, there's nothing you can do, but there are a lot of RP reasons they wouldn't do that. It also means that if you're fighting one enemy, kill it, and want to go fight another one... you can't. You have to give up your stance and take a Str penalty. The class is actively penalizing you from defending other people.

At Level 2, you get Uncanny Dodge, which lets you keep your +1 AC bonus (because again, heavy armor) when flanked. Whoo. And at Level 3 you get a second use of your terrible class feature. At Level 4 you get Trap Sense +1, which is a very small bonus to one thing you're no good at, and one thing you're already great at. Seriously, you came in via Fighter and you have poor Reflex saves, +1 is not going to help at high levels. You do get an extra point of AC, although at this point you're up to Level 11 overall and AC as a defense is starting to flag. Level 5 gives you a third use of your terrible class power.

At this point, compared to almost any class, you have garbage. You've got three uses of a bad power, two abilities that synergize with being a lightly-armored Dexterity character, and a +2 AC boost. Someone just dipping Barbarian 5 would have a couple of rages, the same Trap Sense and Uncanny dodge as the defender plus the upgraded version, faster movement, better skills, and more HP. A dedicated Barbarian has picked up two more uses of Rage, boosted their Trap Sense to a useful level, upgraded their Rage to Greater Rage, developed Damage Reduction three levels ago, and has better HP and skills. You're probably slightly ahead of a dedicated fighter, although the fighter does have three feats of their choice in place of your AC boost and defensive stance, and the dedicated fighter didn't have to take Toughness or Endurance, so they're actually five feats up. (I'm willing to say that people might take Dodge as dedicated fighters, since it opens up a lot of feats.)

Level 6 is nice. You finally get a good Uncanny Dodge (no flanking or sneak attacks, which since you can't move is pretty sweet) and a bit of damage reduction that should have come online five levels ago. Level 7 is another point of AC, which isn't terrible. At Level 8 someone finally notices that moving is kind of important and slaps a band-aid on the worst aspect of your sheet, and at Level 9 they give you yet another stance use. Finally, Level 10 gives your character a slightly more useful damage reduction, although now you're at least Level 17 so DR 6 is probably not going to cut it.

Net result, comparing a Fighter 7 / DD 10 to a Fighter 17: The defender has five uses of a power that mostly keeps them out of a fight, DR 6, +4 AC, Improved Uncanny Dodge, and a weak trap sense. The fighter has five additional feats, and two feats that are better than the feats that the defender is required to take. So the question is, can you find seven feats that'll do more interesting things than giving you a defensive bonus, a defensive stance, and two abilities you can't use well? I can.

Is it possible to make a dwarven defender that works? Yeah, sure. But it takes serious system skill, and these guys obviously don't have that. More likely, you accidentally make a character who can't do what they're supposed to do.

[Jon_Dahl]

I advise my players if they ask me to. Other than that I just write my adventures and most of the time the PCs survive. Funnily enough, the worst PC mass killings occurred in a published adventure. I had about 7 PCs die in two sessions against a published NPC wizard, whom I had weakened quite a bit. The wizard survived. My own NPCs are total crap compared to him.

[ComaVision]

I advise my players if they ask me to. Other than that I just write my adventures and most of the time the PCs survive. Funnily enough, the worst PC mass killings occurred in a published adventure. I had about 7 PCs die in two sessions against a published NPC wizard, whom I had weakened quite a bit. The wizard survived. My own NPCs are total crap compared to him.

I call shenanigans. There is no way that a wizard could kill a Dwarven Defender tier character unless by DM fiat.

[Jon_Dahl]

I call shenanigans. There is no way that a wizard could kill a Dwarven Defender tier character unless by DM fiat.

No Dwarven Defenders but plenty of other stuff and classes and races were included in those 7-or-so dead PCs.

[Starbuck_II]

I will, in turn, disagree with you. Dwarven Defender is a trap class. It's one of those things that looks really cool, but whose mechanics are all in opposition to each other and doesn't actually work in play.

First, it has three feat requirements. Endurance is generally regarded as a bad feat; it gives bonuses on a variety of very edge situations that many DMs don't ever put into practice, and lets you sleep in armor lighter than what you'll want to wear as a dwarven defender. Dodge is also a bad feat; it gives you a very small bonus in a single situation. Toughness is just straight-up garbage. Dodge also require Dexterity 13, which means your "stand still and wear heavy armor" dwarf needs to have another decent stat.

They thought dodge was a good feat, but it wasn't, due to only targeting 1 target.


This means that if you aren't a fighter, Dwarven Defender takes all of your feat slots, and fighter isn't a very good class to start with.

Or Ranger since, they get endurance for free.


Finally, Dwarven Defender gives you two things at Level 1 - a +1 AC bonus, which is pretty decent, and Defensive Stance. Defensive Stance looks cool! Huge AC bonus! Small attack bonus! Extra HP (that go away in a few rounds and kill you if you were relying on them, but...). But it has huge drawbacks: it only lasts (Con) rounds, it tires you after using it, and you can't move at all while it's active. Obviously this means that if enemies take a five-foot step back from you, there's nothing you can do, but there are a lot of RP reasons they wouldn't do that. It also means that if you're fighting one enemy, kill it, and want to go fight another one... you can't. You have to give up your stance and take a Str penalty. The class is actively penalizing you from defending other people.

Well, depends on weaponry. A bowman is fine in the stance, same as a thrower, but yeah melee users are in trouble (even reach only adds 5 ft to range, 10 ft if whip).



Is it possible to make a dwarven defender that works? Yeah, sure. But it takes serious system skill, and these guys obviously don't have that. More likely, you accidentally make a character who can't do what they're supposed to do.
Totally agree, you have plan it out. Carry throwing axes if go in stance (meaning you now need Quick draw).

[Necroticplague]

They thought dodge was a good feat, but it wasn't, due to only targeting 1 target.

Even if dodge wasn't restricted to only one target, it would still be a pretty crap feat. A good deal less of a crap feat than it is now, but still a pretty crap feat.

[Bucky]

Even if dodge wasn't restricted to only one target, it would still be a pretty crap feat. A good deal less of a crap feat than it is now, but still a pretty crap feat.

Any feat that's a subset of what you could get from +2 to an attribute is bad, and being situational certainly doesn't help. Dodge, point blank shot and Weapon Focus all fail this test.

About the only exception is a feat that gives +1 to the DC of a Save or Lose ability.

[LastOblivion]

In my group, if we have any nameless enemy that wipes the floor with a party (regardless if its luck or poor player actions) become a reoccurring villain. We up his stats, advance him a bit, so when he makes his return its all the more amusing.

I would say that with the gold and items left behind, the hell cat can do a lot more than just give himself a few buffs, maybe he went and hired a couple of goons, maybe defeating the party (a cr 13.1 encounter) gave him enough exp to level up to either advance a hitdie or gain a level in barbarian.

I once saw a DM take a forest stag and have it grow to high king of the forest, and it all started with a few separated and wounded party members wanting to kill some woodland animals for easy exp.

Since the party is going back to fight the hellcat, its in your right to amp it up since its a optional encounter now and they know what they are getting into (hopeful not once you add some icing on the cake)

I'm feeling a hell cat family reunion myself. One party members get pounced and they turn in on it only for 2 more hellcats to jump out. 3 hellcats is also in your right to throw out as its only a CR 10.2, a bit tough but more than winnable for a party of their level.

[Eldariel]

CR 7 creature killing 4 targets that high in levels would certainly gain a couple of levels; Hellcat Cleric with various buff spells sounds delicious :smallbiggrin:

[lord_khaine]

CR 7 creature killing 4 targets that high in levels would certainly gain a couple of levels; Hellcat Cleric with various buff spells sounds delicious

Cant, no matter how high the challence, you cant gain more than one level at the time :smalltongue:

[FearlessGnome]

Cant, no matter how high the challence, you cant gain more than one level at the time :smalltongue:

Clearly, the next day it killed a mouse.:smalltongue:

It's reasonable for it to gain at least one more exp in between the two encounters, so two levels seems very reasonable.

[LastOblivion]

I should mention that defeating the party would have given the hellcat 18900 exp, giving it 2 levels to either spend on more racial hit die or class levels.

[Jon_Dahl]

I should mention that defeating the party would have given the hellcat 18900 exp, giving it 2 levels to either spend on more racial hit die or class levels.

I love you guys. This is me, starting the game tomorrow:
https://media.giphy.com/media/49M0YGdMjt0Pu/giphy.gif
"What are you going to do(, my dear players)?"

[Boci]

Clearly, the next day it killed a mouse.:smalltongue:

A mouse wouldn't give a hell cat any XP, its way too weak. Maybe it was 50 XP for roleplaying really well?

[LastOblivion]

Cant, no matter how high the challence, you cant gain more than one level at the time :smalltongue:

I was not aware of that rule. Most likely because I don't think its happened in any of my games yet. How would it affect the experience gained the hell cat then? would it be reduced? or would it delayed till a later point?

[Calthropstu]

I will, in turn, disagree with you. Dwarven Defender is a trap class. It's one of those things that looks really cool, but whose mechanics are all in opposition to each other and doesn't actually work in play.

First, it has three feat requirements. Endurance is generally regarded as a bad feat; it gives bonuses on a variety of very edge situations that many DMs don't ever put into practice, and lets you sleep in armor lighter than what you'll want to wear as a dwarven defender. Dodge is also a bad feat; it gives you a very small bonus in a single situation. Toughness is just straight-up garbage. Dodge also require Dexterity 13, which means your "stand still and wear heavy armor" dwarf needs to have another decent stat.

This means that if you aren't a fighter, Dwarven Defender takes all of your feat slots, and fighter isn't a very good class to start with.

Secondly, Dwarven Defender has an even weaker skill set than Fighter, with only four class skills, so it's kind of bad there, too. It does give you Will saves, so props to that.

Finally, Dwarven Defender gives you two things at Level 1 - a +1 AC bonus, which is pretty decent, and Defensive Stance. Defensive Stance looks cool! Huge AC bonus! Small attack bonus! Extra HP (that go away in a few rounds and kill you if you were relying on them, but...). But it has huge drawbacks: it only lasts (Con) rounds, it tires you after using it, and you can't move at all while it's active. Obviously this means that if enemies take a five-foot step back from you, there's nothing you can do, but there are a lot of RP reasons they wouldn't do that. It also means that if you're fighting one enemy, kill it, and want to go fight another one... you can't. You have to give up your stance and take a Str penalty. The class is actively penalizing you from defending other people.

At Level 2, you get Uncanny Dodge, which lets you keep your +1 AC bonus (because again, heavy armor) when flanked. Whoo. And at Level 3 you get a second use of your terrible class feature. At Level 4 you get Trap Sense +1, which is a very small bonus to one thing you're no good at, and one thing you're already great at. Seriously, you came in via Fighter and you have poor Reflex saves, +1 is not going to help at high levels. You do get an extra point of AC, although at this point you're up to Level 11 overall and AC as a defense is starting to flag. Level 5 gives you a third use of your terrible class power.

At this point, compared to almost any class, you have garbage. You've got three uses of a bad power, two abilities that synergize with being a lightly-armored Dexterity character, and a +2 AC boost. Someone just dipping Barbarian 5 would have a couple of rages, the same Trap Sense and Uncanny dodge as the defender plus the upgraded version, faster movement, better skills, and more HP. A dedicated Barbarian has picked up two more uses of Rage, boosted their Trap Sense to a useful level, upgraded their Rage to Greater Rage, developed Damage Reduction three levels ago, and has better HP and skills. You're probably slightly ahead of a dedicated fighter, although the fighter does have three feats of their choice in place of your AC boost and defensive stance, and the dedicated fighter didn't have to take Toughness or Endurance, so they're actually five feats up. (I'm willing to say that people might take Dodge as dedicated fighters, since it opens up a lot of feats.)

Level 6 is nice. You finally get a good Uncanny Dodge (no flanking or sneak attacks, which since you can't move is pretty sweet) and a bit of damage reduction that should have come online five levels ago. Level 7 is another point of AC, which isn't terrible. At Level 8 someone finally notices that moving is kind of important and slaps a band-aid on the worst aspect of your sheet, and at Level 9 they give you yet another stance use. Finally, Level 10 gives your character a slightly more useful damage reduction, although now you're at least Level 17 so DR 6 is probably not going to cut it.

Net result, comparing a Fighter 7 / DD 10 to a Fighter 17: The defender has five uses of a power that mostly keeps them out of a fight, DR 6, +4 AC, Improved Uncanny Dodge, and a weak trap sense. The fighter has five additional feats, and two feats that are better than the feats that the defender is required to take. So the question is, can you find seven feats that'll do more interesting things than giving you a defensive bonus, a defensive stance, and two abilities you can't use well? I can.

Is it possible to make a dwarven defender that works? Yeah, sure. But it takes serious system skill, and these guys obviously don't have that. More likely, you accidentally make a character who can't do what they're supposed to do.

Point conceded. I could make it work, and I did stipulate with proper feat support... and these guys likely do not know how to assign feats well. So yes, this dwarven defender was likely crap.

[FearlessGnome]

I was not aware of that rule. Most likely because I don't think its happened in any of my games yet. How would it affect the experience gained the hell cat then? would it be reduced? or would it delayed till a later point?

By RAW, what happens it it gains one level and enough exp to be just one exp away from levelling up again. Any exp in excess of that is simply wasted.


A mouse wouldn't give a hell cat any XP, its way too weak. Maybe it was 50 XP for roleplaying really well? Very well, we shall award it 50 exp for remembering to poop, and we'll see what the party thinks of that!

[Bucky]

You could instead award it XP for someone that tried to scavenge the PC's treasure.

You: You see the remains of four bodies piled outside the entrance, stripped to their underwear. Some of them look like they've been torn at and gnawed on.

Party: Wait, four?

[LastOblivion]

what was the size of the room the players fought the hellcat in?

Because if it is long enough, the Arrow Demon (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20040815b&page=4) is another CR 7 creature that hellcat might have befriended. I've had some fun with these guys in the past.

[Calthropstu]

what was the size of the room the players fought the hellcat in?

Because if it is long enough, the Arrow Demon (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20040815b&page=4) is another CR 7 creature that hellcat might have befriended. I've had some fun with these guys in the past.

I don't see anything from hell getting along with anything from the abyss any time soon in D&D. Particularly when it comes to devils or demons.

[Eldariel]

Cant, no matter how high the challence, you cant gain more than one level at the time :smalltongue:

They clearly were 4 separate encounters. It fought them one by one after all, many in duel sorts of situations, so 4 consecutive encounters. And it actually defeated the Sorcerer twice, once when he forced it to retreat from the fight and another time when the sorcerer escaped tail between his legs :smalltongue:

[Douglas]

I love you guys. This is me, starting the game tomorrow:
https://media.giphy.com/media/49M0YGdMjt0Pu/giphy.gif
"What are you going to do(, my dear players)?"
So you're going to level up the Hellcat and have it equip any appropriate gear from the dead PCs? Please report how it goes.:smallamused:

[Thurbane]

What is the ban list here, again?

Dungeonscape, among others. The DM blanket bans books if he doesn't like any of the content. Bags of flour got lumped in with Factotum for brokenness.


I advise my players if they ask me to. Other than that I just write my adventures and most of the time the PCs survive. Funnily enough, the worst PC mass killings occurred in a published adventure. I had about 7 PCs die in two sessions against a published NPC wizard, whom I had weakened quite a bit. The wizard survived. My own NPCs are total crap compared to him.

I'm hardly surprised - some pre-published modules are real meat grinders, and assume a certain level of optimization and distribution of classes in a party.

Still, you don't seem to tailor your homebrew adventures to your party's strengths and weaknesses, so I guess it doesn't matter much either way.


In my group, if we have any nameless enemy that wipes the floor with a party (regardless if its luck or poor player actions) become a reoccurring villain. We up his stats, advance him a bit, so when he makes his return its all the more amusing.

Storywise, I love this.

For this group, it's an epically bad idea.

This group already have trouble handling basic encounters. If you pump up a creature they have already shown they are completely unprepared to deal with, you're pretty much guaranteed another TPK.

There's been a lot of finger pointing at the players in this scenario and laughing at their ineptitude, but I honestly think most of the blame lies with the DM.

From what I've gathered, he offers the players no build advice, gives them little in-game or out-of-game knowledge of the type of challenges they can expect to face, and takes a "killer DM" type delight in watching the PCs lose characters. In fact, it's so expected that PCs will die like flies, it's required that they have backup characters rolled in advance.

I also strongly suspect the DM is showing favoritism to the player of the Battle SOrcerer, and is continually ignoring or flat out refusing suggestions to have they new players characters be close in level to the BS. Apparently it's a better option for the BS to be the target of a DM assassination to bring the whole party level down.

I'm genuinely amazed none of the players have walked from this group. My guess is that they have not played in another group, and think this is the norm. Either that, or it's the only-game-in-town or they are long term friends who don't want to split up the gaming group. It actually makes me a bit sad to think about any of those scenarios.

From my perspective, there's pretty much four options for this group to continue:

1.) DM helps the player's build better character, gives them more appropriate WBL, gives them a better idea of the challenges their characters are likely to face so they can be prepared, and generally helps the players with their system mastery, to the point where they aren't churning over new characters every couple of weeks.

2.) The DM lets the players continue stumbling around like the Three Stooges, and changes the campaign and gameplay to suit their level of skill. No more "puzzle monsters". Throw things at the party intended for an effective party level lower than the actual EPL. Have the monsters be as tactically inept as the party to level the playing field.

3.) Everyone walks to a new group, or elects a new DM.

4.) Things continue the way they are and the group continues to believe that 3.5 is an "unwinnable" game where only one player gets to have any character development.

[Dr.Zero]

This thread is great. I've laughed all the time. :smallbiggrin:
And, honestly, if the players had fun with this kind of encounters (because RPing the panic and whatever, and living it like the protagonists of a horror movie, like someone pointed out), I would say to keep going this way.
But apparently they are not having so much fun: they blamed the difficult encounter, they were not excited at the end of it, but tired and complained about the length of the fight.

I know: experimenting is fun. Trying to discover by yourself some nice build combo is fun as well, but who has fun doing this stuff, then doesn't complain about "difficult encounters", so they are either really trolling you or are completely clueless about the game.

Therefore, probably, you would do better following Fizban's advices, before they get bored with the experimental builds and declare that DnD is a horribly difficult, unplayable game and quit. Anyway, if you really want to go ahead with this trend, don't forget to tell us what happens during "The Hellcat vs Clueless Party 2- The Clueless Party strikes back!" :smallbiggrin:

[Jon_Dahl]

We just finished the "half-session".

The PCs visited a major city close to the "hellcat cave". I had a dwarf mercenary First Sergeant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4%C3%A4peli) Dugritt join the group for 10 or 20 gp per day and half a share of treasure. The idea was that the merc was doing some unauthorized solo work with the PCs but his death would have meant that his mercenary company would have sought revenge on the PCs (in other words, an adventure hook).

The PCs put the dwarf in peril as much as they could. They made him march alone in front etc. The dwarf complained about the infernal speech in his head before entering the hall, but the PCs were "Yeah yeah, move along".

The dwarf merc took the brunt of the hellcat's first charge and almost died right there. The cleric had Invisibility Purge on, so they could see the hellcat this time. The multiclass PC and dwarf merc flanked it while the cleric healed the dwarf and the BS (love the acronym, thanks Thurbane!) cast magic missile while hiding behind the ranger who was firing arrows. The BS had Stone Skin on him too. The dwarf said that he just couldn't take all that punishment from the 'cat so he had to withdraw. The PCs mostly insulted him for saying that. The cat tried to kill the cleric next. It wasn't doing that much damage, mostly because it never hit anyone with its bite. Ranger fired arrows, multiclasser flanked with a glaive, cleric tried casting scorching rays (immune) and sanctuary (failed) and the BS occasionally damaged the cat with magic missiles. The BS tried some other spell too but it failed so no matter.

The dwarf quaffed a CLW potion and then flanked the cat and he hit it critically (confirmed nat 20) and did about 20 damage. He did more damage than any of the PCs. That strike from his battleaxe managed to barely kill the cat. Now the PCs will recover their items and give half a share plus some gold to the dwarf (40 gp, I think).

This is the dwarf (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx0NhN0o9JzxOTNhR3prU0VwcG8/view?usp=sharing). At worst he was down to 8 hp. Please comment the vääpeli!

[CharonsHelper]

The hellcat has two advantages: It's invisibility and it's high grapple. It uses it's invisibility to sneak up on others (or if it can be seen, to charge) and the grapple via improved grapple and rake the victim to death. A group of 4 ECL 7 is supposed to be able to win this encounter by using up about a quarter of it's resources, so one death (25% of the party) are relatively acceptable.

That's... not how CR works.

[FearlessGnome]

Does Invisibility Purge work against enemies that are naturally invisible? Glitterdust would work, but does Invisibility Purge?

[Jon_Dahl]

Does Invisibility Purge work against enemies that are naturally invisible? Glitterdust would work, but does Invisibility Purge?

A very good question. I ruled "yes", but it would be nice to know the truth.

[Necroticplague]

Does Invisibility Purge work against enemies that are naturally invisible? Glitterdust would work, but does Invisibility Purge?

Yes. It specifically 'negates all forms of invisibility'.

That being said, nice to know they can at least learn a lesson for the second go-round.

[Fizban]

That's... not how CR works.
Almost, kinda, maybe. A foe of CR=level should be able to go 50/50 against a single party member. If no one else helps and that party member dies, it did indeed exhaust an appropriate amount of resources (actually slightly more, 20% is the number). When the party has no resources other than hp, if only one PC takes damage then they should be almost dead by the end of the fight.

The idea was that the merc was doing some unauthorized solo work with the PCs but his death would have meant that his mercenary company would have sought revenge on the PCs (in other words, an adventure hook).
The PCs put the dwarf in peril as much as they could. They made him march alone in front etc. The dwarf complained about the infernal speech in his head before entering the hall, but the PCs were "Yeah yeah, move along".
That's not an adventure hook, that's just. . . fail.

I give up, you all deserve each other :smallsigh:

[Starbuck_II]

Well, they are learning...
They noted how to stop the invisibility. And did it.

They hired help so someone else takes the hit.

Why did he cast Scorching Ray? Does he forgot it is a "Hell" Cat? Fire not a good idea.

[Jon_Dahl]

Why did he cast Scorching Ray? Does he forgot it is a "Hell" Cat? Fire not a good idea.

I have no idea. It's a good question.

[Beheld]

Does Invisibility Purge work against enemies that are naturally invisible? Glitterdust would work, but does Invisibility Purge?

InvisibleStalker specifically says Invisibility Purge does not work on it's natural invis. However the Hellcat (or Pixie) invis does not have that line, so it does work on those.

[ace rooster]

We just finished the "half-session".

The PCs visited a major city close to the "hellcat cave". I had a dwarf mercenary First Sergeant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4%C3%A4peli) Dugritt join the group for 10 or 20 gp per day and half a share of treasure. The idea was that the merc was doing some unauthorized solo work with the PCs but his death would have meant that his mercenary company would have sought revenge on the PCs (in other words, an adventure hook).

The PCs put the dwarf in peril as much as they could. They made him march alone in front etc. The dwarf complained about the infernal speech in his head before entering the hall, but the PCs were "Yeah yeah, move along".

The dwarf merc took the brunt of the hellcat's first charge and almost died right there. The cleric had Invisibility Purge on, so they could see the hellcat this time. The multiclass PC and dwarf merc flanked it while the cleric healed the dwarf and the BS (love the acronym, thanks Thurbane!) cast magic missile while hiding behind the ranger who was firing arrows. The BS had Stone Skin on him too. The dwarf said that he just couldn't take all that punishment from the 'cat so he had to withdraw. The PCs mostly insulted him for saying that. The cat tried to kill the cleric next. It wasn't doing that much damage, mostly because it never hit anyone with its bite. Ranger fired arrows, multiclasser flanked with a glaive, cleric tried casting scorching rays (immune) and sanctuary (failed) and the BS occasionally damaged the cat with magic missiles. The BS tried some other spell too but it failed so no matter.

The dwarf quaffed a CLW potion and then flanked the cat and he hit it critically (confirmed nat 20) and did about 20 damage. He did more damage than any of the PCs. That strike from his battleaxe managed to barely kill the cat. Now the PCs will recover their items and give half a share plus some gold to the dwarf (40 gp, I think).

This is the dwarf (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx0NhN0o9JzxOTNhR3prU0VwcG8/view?usp=sharing). At worst he was down to 8 hp. Please comment the vääpeli!

A half share? Why a half share? Sounds like he did a full share of work. He has at least as much of a claim as any of the other new party members, and level doesn't exist in universe! The other quibble is that the wis 14 invisible cat stuck around, despite knowing that it's invisibilty was negated and it was very outnumbered. He had home turf advantage, a move speed advantage, and was facing an opponent relying on temporary buffs. In contrast the wis 8 dwarf withdrew. The party would still have been able to get their stuff back, but getting back to town could have been interesting.

Worth thinking about is that even though the dwarf was moonlighting, he would probably blag to his drinking buddies. He might even blag to his company mates, and they might spread the story of how he was ripped off and almost killed by this group specifically, and that this is why moonlighting is against the rules! Getting help should be harder from this point on.

As for the dwarf, why does he have a PC class? Not a massive thing, but automatically using a PC class for a relatively generic NPC is a pet peeve.


I have to confess that I don't like bags of flour either. To me it epitomises abstraction breakdown, and encourages clunky simulationist gameplay as opposed to more streamlined abstractions. Tricks like bags of flour or kicking dust off the floor are how skill tricks to pinpoint invisible opponents and blind fight work. Glasses to avoid gaze attacks are covered in your base save. Greasing up your clothes to aid escape artist is covered by ranks in escape artist. At a pinch I might temporarily grant the benefit of blind fight to somebody who came up with something original and interesting in a desperate situation, but not often. bonus xp though.

[Jon_Dahl]

As for the dwarf, why does he have a PC class? Not a massive thing, but automatically using a PC class for a relatively generic NPC is a pet peeve.



DMG page 132:
https://s9.postimg.org/84564yfv3/Untitled.png
We are talking about a First Sergeant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4%C3%A4peli) here, not just some punk.

[CharonsHelper]

I have to confess that I don't like bags of flour either. To me it epitomises abstraction breakdown, and encourages clunky simulationist gameplay as opposed to more streamlined abstractions. Tricks like bags of flour or kicking dust off the floor are how skill tricks to pinpoint invisible opponents and blind fight work. Glasses to avoid gaze attacks are covered in your base save. Greasing up your clothes to aid escape artist is covered by ranks in escape artist. At a pinch I might temporarily grant the benefit of blind fight to somebody who came up with something original and interesting in a desperate situation, but not often. bonus xp though.

I will say - Pathfinder actually has official rules for white powder (chalk/flour etc) versus invisibility. It allows you to see them for one turn. Pathfinder also has smog pellets - which are smoke pellets except that when thrown they cancel invis on the target for a few rounds. (it's standard gear on pretty much all of my characters - especially martials)

[Fizban]

A half share? Why a half share? Sounds like he did a full share of work.
It's a standard way of giving a cut of the profits to someone who is being hired to work for less than the full partners. In particular, the DMG says that Cohorts usually get a half share of treasure.

None of that changes the fact that he should have immediately deserted once it was obvious the party was using him as an expendable meat shield. But the DM included him specifically so they could get him killed as an excuse for more mercenaries to attack them, so the behavior is obvious.

[Jon_Dahl]

It's a standard way of giving a cut of the profits to someone who is being hired to work for less than the full partners. In particular, the DMG says that Cohorts usually get a half share of treasure.

None of that changes the fact that he should have immediately deserted once it was obvious the party was using him as an expendable meat shield. But the DM included him specifically so they could get him killed as an excuse for more mercenaries to attack them, so the behavior is obvious.

Yes, you nailed it. This is all true.

[Bucky]

He should still argue that he deserves a full share because he's the one that actually killed it. Although a Diplomacy check could substitute, if they replace the potion he used...

[ace rooster]

It's a standard way of giving a cut of the profits to someone who is being hired to work for less than the full partners. In particular, the DMG says that Cohorts usually get a half share of treasure.

None of that changes the fact that he should have immediately deserted once it was obvious the party was using him as an expendable meat shield. But the DM included him specifically so they could get him killed as an excuse for more mercenaries to attack them, so the behavior is obvious.

Sure, but why are the rest of the new PCs full partners? They don't bring anything in the way of investment or infomation to the venture, so arguably the only one who should be getting a full share is the battle sorc! The dwarf was filling a general core role, rather than support or niche role, and had no special reliance on the group. He is much better regarded as a DM PC than a cohort, despite being very underleveled. He even had PC levels! A warrior who was recruited particularly to guard one of the PCs might get a half share, but a fighter brought in as a frontline is a full partner.

I'm not saying that they couldn't get the wis 8 dwarf to agree to it, but he will have been mighty pissed when he realises. As for deserting, dwarves are stuborn, and his professional pride might get in the way.

[Fizban]

In a game where those sort of things existed sure, but you are trying to apply too much logic to this party/group. They are a party because they're all played by the players, they are full partners because they are played by the players, they reach mid-high levels in spite of crippling psycological disorders because they were written by the players.

That is assuming of course that they don't abandon each other the moment anything goes bad, as the players are wont to do.

[Jon_Dahl]

You're right that the dwarf was filling a critical role but still getting very little compared to the PCs. I made a mistake by letting the PCs just use him as a meat shield. Senseless, really. Not my proudest moment as a DM.

Edit: But there's still something I can do. The dwarf get 10% of the loot, right? Since there are five guys and four get full shares and one gets ½... He will participate in the sharing process and demand that he can get his stuff in the same way as the PCs. What always happens with PCs is that everyone just takes what the want and no one argues. So the dwarf will take some extremely vital, like a Flaming Greataxe +1, and expect no one to argue, especially since that weapon doesn't seem that useful to any of the weak-armed PCs. That will do it. And if a 4th-level dwarven fighter gets a Flaming battleaxe +1, how could he feel robbed regardless of the circumstances?

According to my calculations, the dead PCs and the hall treasure should be around 100k gp, maybe a little less. 10k gp "half share"... Nice!

[FearlessGnome]

You're right that the dwarf was filling a critical role but still getting very little compared to the PCs. I made a mistake by letting the PCs just use him as a meat shield. Senseless, really. Not my proudest moment as a DM.

Well, only one thing for it. The Dwarf obviously feels tricked and abused, and retreats to drink, cursing the PCs. The drinking takes over everything. Eventually he is fired and his wife leaves him, unable to deal with his addiction and the crippling poverty. He loses everything. At his lowest, he reaches out for something, anything to ease the guilt and help him not see himself as the cause of all that went wrong. This is when a devil whispers in his ear that it is all their fault. The people who stole from him and wronged him. That was when it all began to go wrong. With this thought he manages to rise above the senseless cycle of self destruction. He has purpose now. A new lease on life, and new friends too! He can't die until he has taken revenge on those who did this to him. Especially not before he can get back at that damn Battle Sorcerer!

[Friv]

You're right that the dwarf was filling a critical role but still getting very little compared to the PCs. I made a mistake by letting the PCs just use him as a meat shield. Senseless, really. Not my proudest moment as a DM.

Edit: But there's still something I can do. The dwarf get 10% of the loot, right? Since there are five guys and four get full shares and one gets ½...
Technically at that point he's getting 11.111% of the loot, or more precisely one-ninth.


He will participate in the sharing process and demand that he can get his stuff in the same way as the PCs. What always happens with PCs is that everyone just takes what the want and no one argues. So the dwarf will take some extremely vital, like a Flaming Greataxe +1, and expect no one to argue, especially since that weapon doesn't seem that useful to any of the weak-armed PCs. That will do it. And if a 4th-level dwarven fighter gets a Flaming battleaxe +1, how could he feel robbed regardless of the circumstances?

On the surface, that makes sense. I can't help but shake the feeling that you do, in fact, expect the PCs to argue about this.


According to my calculations, the dead PCs and the hall treasure should be around 100 gp, maybe a little less. 10k gp "half share"... Nice!

Are there a few 0s missing here? Or are you saying that three dead 8th-level PCs only had 100 gp worth of stuff between them?

[Jon_Dahl]

Are there a few 0s missing here? Or are you saying that three dead 8th-level PCs only had 100 gp worth of stuff between them?

I was missing a k. I added it now. Sorry, I was a bit tired.


On the surface, that makes sense. I can't help but shake the feeling that you do, in fact, expect the PCs to argue about this.

Yes, certainly. They find the dwarf a total NPC, his life and opinion are meaningless... I think.

[Marlowe]

The irony of three people apparently capable of cutting their heads off while combing their hair and one guy who survives by hiding under a metaphorical blanket the entire time finding ANYONE else's life meaningless.:smallannoyed:

[Fizban]

According to my calculations, the dead PCs and the hall treasure should be around 100k gp, maybe a little less. 10k gp "half share"... Nice!
And yet another reason why this revolving door of replacements is bad. Dead PCs are not supposed to result in more money for the other PCs. If it wasn't abundantly clear by now they lack the ability to figure it out, a savvy group would just suicide parties until they had a nice pile of money to "stumble" upon with their real party down the line.

Of course this leads back to the old-school "everyone starts at level 1 with a wooden stick." Which is why you either go full 3.5 or nothing.

[Jon_Dahl]

And yet another reason why this revolving door of replacements is bad. Dead PCs are not supposed to result in more money for the other PCs. If it wasn't abundantly clear by now they lack the ability to figure it out, a savvy group would just suicide parties until they had a nice pile of money to "stumble" upon with their real party down the line.

Of course this leads back to the old-school "everyone starts at level 1 with a wooden stick." Which is why you either go full 3.5 or nothing.

You have a point there. I feel powerless.

[Calthropstu]

You guys are missing the real tragedy here.

The poor hellcat who was robbed and murdered. The battle sorcerer is obviously guilty of cruelty to extraplanar animals and needs to be hunted.

I am placing a 15k gp bounty on his head.

[Fizban]

You have a point there. I feel powerless.
Are you mocking me? :smallconfused: I have a whole massive post up there about all the power you are refusing to excercise that could fix these problems, which a good number of other posters have all seconded, thirded, etc. Unless your players were somehow dictating these terms, but we already know they aren't.

You are not powerless against "the game," you are not powerless against your players, and I find it unlikely that you meant "powerless against Fizban."

[Jon_Dahl]

Are you mocking me? :smallconfused: I have a whole massive post up there about all the power you are refusing to excercise that could fix these problems, which a good number of other posters have all seconded, thirded, etc. Unless your players were somehow dictating these terms, but we already know they aren't.

You are not powerless against "the game," you are not powerless against your players, and I find it unlikely that you meant "powerless against Fizban."

I meant that I'm powerless to stop them doing that "trick" now, but I won't be in the future when I have fixed things with the tips I've received here.

[ace rooster]

I meant that I'm powerless to stop them doing that "trick" now, but I won't be in the future when I have fixed things with the tips I've received here.

You mean you were powerless to have the hellcat sell half the loot, and organise an epic hellcat party that the PCs accidentally crash? :smallbiggrin:

Enemies are never idle.

[Jon_Dahl]

You mean you were powerless to have the hellcat sell half the loot, and organise an epic hellcat party that the PCs accidentally crash? :smallbiggrin:

Enemies are never idle.

They already saw all their stuff. All the clw potions are gone, though.

[Deadline]

Point conceded. I could make it work, and I did stipulate with proper feat support... and these guys likely do not know how to assign feats well. So yes, this dwarven defender was likely crap.

It's a pretty terrible PrC, which is why it made a great Iron Chef ingredient. Many of the solutions folks came up with to circumvent it's issues were creative, to say the least, including the gold medal submission. :smallbiggrin:

[Thurbane]

It's a pretty terrible PrC, which is why it made a great Iron Chef ingredient. Many of the solutions folks came up with to circumvent it's issues were creative, to say the least, including the gold medal submission. :smallbiggrin:

There are worse martial PrCs out there, though. And if we're looking at core only (not sure if this is the case with OP), it's not that much better or worse than more levels in Fighter (not that that is saying much).

[Fizban]

I'll throw in on the Dwarven Defender too: by core-only standards it's actually pretty huge. Notice how AC is not tied to level? Core Fighter feats are mostly garbage, but DD gives you AC bonuses and DR that are flat impossible to gain from levels in any other way (and actually remain fairly rare in splatbooks). The only reason it's not well-liked is because char-op is obsessively offense-oriented (for good reason) and so taking DD means sacrificing offensive power you could have from other stuff: without all those splatbooks I'm pretty sure the winds would turn.