Your best balance tips for higher-level play

[WarKitty]

I have a level 11/mythic 1 party. The higher level they get, the more I feel like I'm having trouble balancing things out. I have a controller druid, necro wizard, buffer cleric, cavalier charger, and melee rogue. And I kind of feel like the party is turning into "the druid and maybe the wizard." I'd like to combat that, but I'm not really sure what to do at this level.

[Eldariel]

I have a level 11/mythic 1 party. The higher level they get, the more I feel like I'm having trouble balancing things out. I have a controller druid, necro wizard, buffer cleric, cavalier charger, and melee rogue. And I kind of feel like the party is turning into "the druid and maybe the wizard." I'd like to combat that, but I'm not really sure what to do at this level.

That's just how the game is designed. Though the Cleric could easily play the same game by just changing up their spell selection, as well as the Wizard. The non-casters are hopelessly outclassed past level 11, Mythic or not (in fact, Mythic is mostly worse for the martial classes). You can try and give the martials some versatile, cool, class-or-whatever-personal magic items that shore up their weaknesses, or extra levels or templates or whatever, but whatever you do, the casters are like to rule the house.

[Tuvarkz]

I have a level 11/mythic 1 party. The higher level they get, the more I feel like I'm having trouble balancing things out. I have a controller druid, necro wizard, buffer cleric, cavalier charger, and melee rogue. And I kind of feel like the party is turning into "the druid and maybe the wizard." I'd like to combat that, but I'm not really sure what to do at this level.

Allow 3rd party, and let the Cavalier and the Rogue rebuild into Path of War classes. Damage numbers are going to get a bit crazy, but otherwise they won't be able to compete at all with the fullcasters.

[Particle_Man]

Have the players pass their character sheets to the player on the right once every half-hour. :smallbiggrin:

[WarKitty]

Allow 3rd party, and let the Cavalier and the Rogue rebuild into Path of War classes. Damage numbers are going to get a bit crazy, but otherwise they won't be able to compete at all with the fullcasters.

A lot of the problem isn't damage levels so much as rocket tag issues. When faced with a big boss (even with minions), the casters tend to pile everything onto one or two big spells to take out or incapacitate the boss as quickly as possible. Hit point damage ends up being entirely irrelevant when the fight is mostly decided by "how long does it take the boss to fail the save."

[Eldariel]

A lot of the problem isn't damage levels so much as rocket tag issues. When faced with a big boss (even with minions), the casters tend to pile everything onto one or two big spells to take out or incapacitate the boss as quickly as possible. Hit point damage ends up being entirely irrelevant when the fight is mostly decided by "how long does it take the boss to fail the save."

Many enemies have various immunities to various save-or-X effects; most obvious being undead-types and death effects or such. Also magical warding can reduce the effectiveness of save-or-Xs. Further, more damage can of course make it more relevant as you can cut down on the number of turns the martial types need to kill the enemy making damage more effective than save-or-Xs. In general though, first layer of defense is stuff like Death Ward, Freedom of Movement, magic items, reroll effects, types that make you hard to kill with various save-or-Xs, etc. Martials can only really do damage in combat so they need to do a lot of damage to be relevant on these levels. Combat really favours offense and immunities the higher you go; numbers begin to matter less and less.

The martials can of course fight some lesser enemies and defend the casters from swarms while the casters deal with the bigger targets, but that gets old and less glamorous rather quick. It is, however, the nature of the beast; magic just takes off and completely defines the game around level 9.

EDIT: One houserule I like that makes these two strategies synergise a bit more is to apply debuffs based on damage enemy takes (I use 25%/50%/75% as the cutoffs). I just use a general penalty on all rolls including saves (-1/-3/-5); thus a damaged enemy is more likely to fail a save (and as a corollary, many save-or-X effects do damage on a successful save so they all kinda work towards the same goal).

[Psyren]

A lot of the problem isn't damage levels so much as rocket tag issues. When faced with a big boss (even with minions), the casters tend to pile everything onto one or two big spells to take out or incapacitate the boss as quickly as possible. Hit point damage ends up being entirely irrelevant when the fight is mostly decided by "how long does it take the boss to fail the save."

As I mentioned in your last thread, the main problem here is the encounters themselves. Specifically, single-monster encounters. If you have one boss that everyone can spam their spells onto, then either it needs to be immune to everything or its going to fail a save eventually and the fight is going to be trivialized. Give your boss backup (particularly magical backup that can dispel and counter) and you won't have as many of these problems.

[Cosi]

If you want to give non-casters something to do, you can always go with the tried and true solution of giving them artifacts with totally arbitrary bonuses that get them where they need to be.


Allow 3rd party, and let the Cavalier and the Rogue rebuild into Path of War classes. Damage numbers are going to get a bit crazy, but otherwise they won't be able to compete at all with the fullcasters.

Does Path of War solve the problem Tome of Battle has where non-casters still don't have anything important to do when the combat music isn't playing.


A lot of the problem isn't damage levels so much as rocket tag issues. When faced with a big boss (even with minions), the casters tend to pile everything onto one or two big spells to take out or incapacitate the boss as quickly as possible. Hit point damage ends up being entirely irrelevant when the fight is mostly decided by "how long does it take the boss to fail the save."

Multiple monsters always works. You can try staggering several waves of monsters, mixing chaff-ish monsters (something between Ogres and Hill Giants at this point) and more elite stuff (like Stone Giants or Ettin Casters).

[Kitsuneymg]

If you want to give non-casters something to do, you can always go with the tried and true solution of giving them artifacts with totally arbitrary bonuses that get them where they need to be.

Does Path of War solve the problem Tome of Battle has where non-casters still don't have anything important to do when the combat music isn't playing.


Almost. But it is very easy to get diplomacy, intimidate, and sense motive as class skills using PoW. Also, I've found that PoW kinda sorta takes the pressure off of making every feat and point of ability go towards killing stuff in combat. So you can take some of those social feats and skills. There's a feat that lets you take 10 on discipline skills. So you could get 10 on intimidate, diplomacy, and sense motive. Bluff may be in there too? Can't remember. But there's no real class features that make out of combat stuff plain better.

Cavalier and rogue are generally accounted t5 classes. Unless you've got a halfling cav riding a wolf and an unchained rogue, that is. Just giving them the archetype (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/archetypes-for-non-martial-classes/) maneuver progression and any 4 styles (and make those skills class skills) will let them breathe easier in combat and allow them to maybe pick up some out of combat stuff.

FWIW, anyone with Weapon training and levels that count as fighter can buy +1 shurikens of training (it's ammo, so 8.3k gets you 50, and they can be different) to get a lot of +1 training (Advanced Weapon Training(Item Mastery(X))) things that enable you to cast from a decent list of utility spells. So let the martials retrain into VMC fighter and pick up a toolkit of SLAs for pocket change. Funily enough, since all the martial flexibility type feats all specify that you must count charges for the day when you regain a feat with charges (they all say *combat feat*) and training doesn't, depending on your ruling, they may be able to spam these spells all day.

The only other way I've seen of closing the gap is to enforce use of Spheres of Power and disallow advanced talents. That makes the ceiling basically t3 with maybe mind-sphere specialists hitting 2 if you don't check them. But this is a massive change to your game and you're players may feel you're nerfing them (you are) unfairly.

[Albertus Magus]

I'll leave some links here:

1) GM's Guide to challenging encounters (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2pxiv?GMs-Guide-to-Creating-Challenging-Encounters)
An excellent intro to encounter design and why some things work and some things don't.

2) The 9 classic ways to make PF combat difficult (https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/5kms8x/need_help_with_creating_challenging_encounters/)
Here are the main ways you can adjust combat difficulty with.

3)The Bestiary Guide for Dungeon Masters (https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/3tjle9/bestiary_guide_for_dungeon_masters/)
Know your monsters' strengths and weaknesses; proper monster selection can drastically limit caster dominance.

4)The Adventuring Day (https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/3q6193/the_adventuring_day/)
A short treatise with examples how to fill a day with encounters.

5)The Comprehensive Guide to Alternate Goals in Combat (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?454210-Thread-from-the-Wizard-Forums-Guide-to-Alternate-Goals-in-Combat)
When "kill everything" is too boring, and you want to spice it up, here are plenty of alternate goals in combat.

6)A few hints how to run Spellcasters as "Boss" (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/5zqfe3/harder_better_faster_stronger_using_enemy_wizards/)

7)Campaign structure: How to use recurring villains (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/625zah/harder_better_faster_stronger_entry_2_recurring/)

8)Traps & Hazards in combat encounters (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/6550t5/harder_better_faster_stronger_entry_3_using_traps/)

9)A simple and well-written treatise about Trap design (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/5r3pzg/traps_101/)

10)Campaign structure: How to design dungeons / story arcs (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/5rgm0a/dungeon_creation_stacking_the_5_room_dungeon_and/)

11)Include non-standard challenges - PF has "libraries", which can be researched with time pressure and enemies attempting to disrupt the players, turning this into a sort of defensive "Tower defense" (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/intrigue/#Research)

12)Pathfinder has Idols, nearly indestructible animated statues that feed of the faith of their followers to gain awesome power, if a lich, psychic lich, ghost or other recurring monster is too boring (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/variant-magic-rules/idols/)

13)Pathfinder has social combat - a well-constructed heist can engage your entire party (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/intrigue/)

[ATHATH]

Prepare to have your mind blown (adapt to PF as necessary, of course).

http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/
http://theangrygm.com/elemental-boogaloo/
http://theangrygm.com/oh-no-more-bosses-oozes-slimes-and-a-duplicating-wizard/

Boom.

Pseudo-edit: Hm. It appears that theangrygm's site went down. I hope that it recovers soon/shortly.

[Tuvarkz]

Does Path of War solve the problem Tome of Battle has where non-casters still don't have anything important to do when the combat music isn't playing.

As Kitsuneymg said, it's mostly skillchecks (With some exceptions, eg a Creation zealot creatively using power points to make a wall of ectoplasm path or an ordained defender warder using some inquisition utility stuff), with particular note in the fact that most initiators will end up grabbing one or two of the Display of X universal path abilities due to incredible combat synergy. That, and Path of War already outdoes plenty of the combat mythic path abilities, meaning there's chance to grab some of the noncombat stuff (Divine Source being the most effective, although that would defeat the point of getting by without SLAs)

[Serafina]

Path of War maneuvers can also explicitly be used outside of combat - spammed even, without need to regain them. Which is great for maneuvers which enhance your mobility or offer other utility.
Stuff like swift-action jumps with large bonuses (Leaping Dragon is a 1st-level boost) or becoming incorporeal (Ghostwalk is a 3rd-level boost), swift-action Intimidate (Taunting Laugh, 3rd level) and some other things such as this.

You obviously get nothing competing with the flexibility and direct problem-solving ability of higher-level spells.
However, if you want to get around that, you can use rules for Occult Rituals (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/occult-adventures/occult-rules/occult-rituals/) - some PoW-classes ought to have high Intelligence anyway, and many of them get enough skills to be decent at Occult Rituals. Allow PoW-classes to take Practiced Ritualist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/practiced-ritualist/) or similar effects with their Bonus Feats, Stalker Arts or the like, or even go for the fluff of Martial Traditions and add that they also teach certain rituals to those who follow them. Oh, and allow Initiator levels to count as spellcaster levels for the purpose of enhancing rituals, of course (or at least if you know a supernatural maneuver).
And of course Mythic allows you to pick up SLAs and the like, which won't make you as flexible as a full caster but will give you more to do outside of combat.

[Quertus]

EDIT: One houserule I like that makes these two strategies synergise a bit more is to apply debuffs based on damage enemy takes (I use 25%/50%/75% as the cutoffs). I just use a general penalty on all rolls including saves (-1/-3/-5); thus a damaged enemy is more likely to fail a save (and as a corollary, many save-or-X effects do damage on a successful save so they all kinda work towards the same goal).

I'd have to play around with it, but that sounds like a cool way to make dealing damage and SoD synergistic.

Instead of, you know, opposed schools of thought, like they feel in most games.

[Godskook]

My best tip is to simply not play higher-level games. I enjoy running E6-esque games, and generally speaking, such games are great for dealing with power-creep in that the power they get comes at slower intervals by necessity. The version I use ends up with more versatile characters than in even normal E6, due to the huge amount of skillpoints. This lets random skills like Knowledge(Local: Kintarra) be something you as the DM encourage players to use.

My ruleset, if you're curious(or you can look up E6 rules) https://docs.google.com/document/d/16FfgVpvPDWm2DAHznP5AU4BRkI3nf_mfBOekEv4750s/edit?usp=sharing

[WarKitty]

Ok, let's assume we're in the middle of a game and want to play with higher level abilities. E6 is all well and good, but I want to play with demigods. I just don't want to play with half demigods and half sorta powerful guys.

[Godskook]

Ok, let's assume we're in the middle of a game and want to play with higher level abilities. E6 is all well and good, but I want to play with demigods. I just don't want to play with half demigods and half sorta powerful guys.

Entirely fair. Everyone else looked to have covered the primary "answer zone" as far as I can tell, so I posted an alternative that I use, in case it held any interest for you

[daryen]

... but I want to play with demigods. I just don't want to play with half demigods and half sorta powerful guys.

Mundane classes don't play with demigods without help. They just don't. So, either don't use mundane characters, or give them help. Even in actual legends and myths, the mundane characters always get something that allows them to pull above their weight. What are you going to give them?

[WarKitty]

Mundane classes don't play with demigods without help. They just don't. So, either don't use mundane characters, or give them help. Even in actual legends and myths, the mundane characters always get something that allows them to pull above their weight. What are you going to give them?

I'm really not sure. They're already pretty heavily decked out in magic items, but all the items I have seem to be "do hit point damage better/in more situations." The trouble is that hit point damage is rapidly becoming less and less important.

[Cosi]

I'm really not sure. They're already pretty heavily decked out in magic items, but all the items I have seem to be "do hit point damage better/in more situations." The trouble is that hit point damage is rapidly becoming less and less important.

I'm telling you. Give them some arbitrary artifacts of arbitrary power. Rogue batting under part? Give them the Cloak of Shadows which comes with some at-will illusions (which are permanent, or at least longer-than-concentration), a shadow-blink ability like Zeratul, the ability to have their shadow sneak around and gank people, and maybe some other abilities like a miss chance or something. Cavalier not doing enough? Maybe the party finds the Lance of the Crusaders (or some setting-specific holy war) which causes an army to rally behind them and gives them some angel powers. Look at Weapons of Legacy, take out the drawbacks, add some extra SLAs, and go from there.

[BoutsofInsanity]

For fights add environmental effects and things to do.

Ill give an example:

Your incredibly famous and powerful adventuring team (Level 11/Mythic 1) have heard through the grapevine (Caviler and his noblility and rumors) that Krovok the Tempter has managed to turn Salve the famous Tiefling Paladin to darkness. Salve, being a high ranking member of the Order of the Sun has led them to a hidden temple to commit a ritual that will darken the sun, allowing an Eldritch Horror locked away to return to the mortal plane.

A couple of things can occur pre-adventure start

The Rogue

Using thieves Cant can learn several things the party wouldn't know otherwise
Such as, Salve was attacked and ambushed by his "Friends"
His party slaughtered, he spent weeks in the clutches of Korvok
The attack occured in the docks, and no one approaches the building


Using this information, the Cleric can speak with dead and learn from the fallen companions what transpired in first person, giving advantages to being able to potentially save Salve from falling forever into darkness.

Let the adventurers use what resources they can to pull together a picture of this hero, that evil has taken a hold of, and also that they are the only ones powerful enough to prevent the end of times.


So they travel via teleport to the temple. They can't enter inside via teleport because of Magic and a blessing by Sarenrae. So they have to walk in and up the large stair case that leads to the large room that contains the sun alter.

Inside the following effects are in place due to the ritual being performed.


Due to Korvok performing the ritual, he will not participate in the fight
He will complete the ritual within 6 rounds if you don't interupt him in some way
He can be interupted by overloading the five arcane cirlces that are channeling energy into him.
You do this by Standing inside the circle, sacrificing a spellslot as a full round action. This will deal damage equal to Spell LvL D12 to Korvok and increase the time you have for the ritual to be completed by a number of rounds equal to the spell level
However, if you are moved off the arcane circle while attempting this action you are unable to interupt Korvok and the spell slot is lost.
Korvok cannot be harmed by any other means, as he is protected by his god while performing the ritual
This can be figured out with knowledge Arcana/Spellcraft DC equal to 25


Furthermore, sacrificed innocent people have been nailed to the 6 pillars that hold of the ceiling, they are constantly screaming whenever any character gets within 15 feet of them. This deals 3d10 sonic damage (Fort Save for Half) to any humanoid character.

Also at the back wall are 13 children chained up. Hiding beside them (DC 28 perception) or line of sight is a small cultist. They are linked via a religious soul link to each of the enemies in the room (Salve, enemy party, devils), anytime one of the enemy is killed, the cultist kills a child, restoring to half hp a fallen devil or Salve.

Taking a full round to use a religion check and channel energy burn to break the chains binding the children to the enemy will remove this feature. But you most be adjacent to the children at the wall.

Salve himself can be convinced to turn away from darkness by engaging in banter with him during the fight. If the party has done research on him, they can find which buttons were pushed to make him turn to darkness, and which talking points they can roll to convince him that he can be redeemed. This will require the character to fight defensivly or take total defense, and 3x make a diplomacy or intimidate roll at a DC 30 or 25 if they push the right talking points. If they are successful Salve will turn away and fight for them. Otherwise he attacks without mercy utilizing smites against the casters first.

The enemy should be counterspelling, tossing spells, attacking casters, and using all of their power to fight the party. As the party should also be doing as well. The time limit, extra ****ty things that are happening, and extra mechanics that can be figured out with knowledge rolls should cause the party to feel challenged, and scared as they go forward.

[ATHATH]

Prepare to have your mind blown (adapt to PF as necessary, of course).

http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/
http://theangrygm.com/elemental-boogaloo/
http://theangrygm.com/oh-no-more-bosses-oozes-slimes-and-a-duplicating-wizard/

Boom.

Pseudo-edit: Hm. It appears that theangrygm's site went down. I hope that it recovers soon/shortly.
The site is up again! Huzzah!

[daryen]

I'm really not sure. They're already pretty heavily decked out in magic items, but all the items I have seem to be "do hit point damage better/in more situations." The trouble is that hit point damage is rapidly becoming less and less important.

Something that will help with your campaign. Others have given ideas above, but some more are:
- Demigods are usually pretty resilient. Give one of the mundanes a weapon that can kill/affect the demigod. It doesn't have to be damage based. One story (title long since forgotten) had a sword, but it didn't do damage, but rather stripped anyone touched from their lies. Since the enemy was pretty much just a lie at that point, it defeated the enemy.
- Make the special item do non-combat stuff. But make sure the stuff is necessary for the quest/campaign. Whether invisibility that is immune to True Seeing, a transportation method, or a source of information; whatever is necessary for the story. But, it's still a weapon, so the mundane gets it.
- Something that provides low powered, but still useful SLAs. Now they have more options.
Remember, the point is that this should be an artifact level item, not just another magic item.

Another idea is to make one of the mundanes the Chosen One, who is the only one who can truly win. The spellcasters may be important, but they aren't the Chosen. So, the Chosen then has to drive the action. In one Earth-Sea story, a fighter (for all intents and purposes) was only able to do his quest because of the powerful sorcerer who was with him, but he was still the one who had to finish the quest.

[Psyren]

The trouble is that hit point damage is rapidly becoming less and less important.

Then make it important. Add things to your encounters that divide the casters' attention if the martials don't get involved. When the lich finally shows his face, give him a couple of quantium golem bodyguards or something. When the Balor decides to take matters into his own hands, a pack of Babaus spamming dispels can give the casters fits if the martials don't chop them up first. And that ancient dragon didn't live that long without recognizing the importance of backup.

The nice thing about hit point damage is that it's the most common monster vulnerability in the game, and martial classes are one of the most efficient ways of delivering it - each one comes packaged with its own wealth, feats, actions, and separate player to focus on optimizing it. It's very easy to make encounters where that vulnerability matters, at all levels, and even in Mythic games. (Well, not so much in Epic, but then, Epic is a broken system to begin with.)

[WarKitty]

I'm telling you. Give them some arbitrary artifacts of arbitrary power. Rogue batting under part? Give them the Cloak of Shadows which comes with some at-will illusions (which are permanent, or at least longer-than-concentration), a shadow-blink ability like Zeratul, the ability to have their shadow sneak around and gank people, and maybe some other abilities like a miss chance or something. Cavalier not doing enough? Maybe the party finds the Lance of the Crusaders (or some setting-specific holy war) which causes an army to rally behind them and gives them some angel powers. Look at Weapons of Legacy, take out the drawbacks, add some extra SLAs, and go from there.

One point my players have made is that my non-casters don't necessarily want to play like casters. They want to play more like Hercules or Perseus, and they play non-casters because they find playing casters uninteresting. The trouble is the game doesn't seem to have a lot of support for being that type of character.

[martixy]

At this point? Your best bet is giving your non-casters a few bonus feats they can invest in tactical stuff or proficiencies or what-have-you.

If you were just starting this:
http://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/

In essence you need to free character building resources such that non-casters can afford the acquisition of feats and features that expand their options during combat to more than "go there, hit it with the stick I specialized in".


Prepare to have your mind blown (adapt to PF as necessary, of course).

http://theangrygm.com/return-of-the-son-of-the-dd-boss-fight-now-in-5e/
http://theangrygm.com/elemental-boogaloo/
http://theangrygm.com/oh-no-more-bosses-oozes-slimes-and-a-duplicating-wizard/

Boom.

Pseudo-edit: Hm. It appears that theangrygm's site went down. I hope that it recovers soon/shortly.

In general I agree with that guy, but BY PELOR, do I hate his gimick with a burning fury.

[EldritchWeaver]

One point my players have made is that my non-casters don't necessarily want to play like casters. They want to play more like Hercules or Perseus, and they play non-casters because they find playing casters uninteresting. The trouble is the game doesn't seem to have a lot of support for being that type of character.

Have you looked at Spheres of Power? It provides a different magic system, which gives access to at-will powers and others which have to paid with spell points. It is definitively easier to play than using vancian casters. Considering that generally you have a fixed list of powers, you won't be as flexible as a wizard, so that might be a turn-off for some. Otherwise, there is Spheres of Might in playtest, which is basically Spheres of Power for martials. It is somewhat simpler to use than Path of War. PoW requires maneuvers to be readied before you can use them, and every class has a different way of recovery. SoM at worst requires a focus to be dedicated or to be spent, and the ways to regain it don't depend on the classes.