Help me Balance power scaled encounter.

[zazq]

Party is lvl7. They have robot suits that give them x10 damage, move speed and spell effect area and range. They take 1/10 damage. They think they are hot ****. Can a lvl20 wizard take them down? He'd probably die in 1 hit, so don't get hit. They can move a lot faster than him too, and damage effects won't be that great it would take 700 damage to drop 1 character. What tricks can the wizard pull off to win?

[Sir cryosin]

Ummmmmmmmmmm. Why? Why did you give them robot suits that makes them gods? Do they have magical weapons. If not then throw a monster with immunity to non magical weapons and just hit away. Other than that nothing you can do other than say that a god comes down and destroys their suits.

[The_Jette]

A couple of casting of Wish to remove teleport them without their suits to whatever battlefield the Wizard desires, then some castings of things like web and grease to limit movement, followed up with high damaging spells. The important thing is to remove them from their Mechs, and remind them that they are just the play things of the Gods. Normally, I'm all for empowering a player to feel important. But, there's a difference between feeling important, and feeling untouchable. Anyone can die.

[Sir cryosin]

Sorry to answer your question no I don't think a 20lv wizard can destory them. I've played a 20lv wizard and I wasn't able to one shot a custom purple worm that was stronger than a ancient red dragon and a tarrasque. Your best bet would be to catch them off guard when they are not in there suits. DON'T FIGHT THEM WHILE THEY ARE IN THE SUITS. Have rogues attack when they are sleeping.

Oh you can have a group of wizards with blink and mirror image up cast command. Then to SHUTDOWN or STRIPE.

[Findulidas]

I dont understand whats the problem when you are the dm. You decide the rules. You can literally just pop out a saitama character that punches thier suits to dust like he against the hammerhead dude. As a lvl 20 wizard just wish for saitama to appear and kick thier asses.

How did they get the suits anyway?

[coredump]

They seem to have regular saves.
So go against their saves.

Or spells that also bypass saves
Power word kill/stun seems like a good start.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Giving the players access to something so mind-numbingly powerful without planning for it wasn't a great idea on your part. I'm not trying to chastise you here, but try not to do this in the future, because it really makes your life as a DM hell. You're almost guaranteed to either undercompensate and make the game boring or overcompensate and destroy them all. And you'll be doing complex algebra the whole way through, even if you screw it up.

I'd say you have three options here.
1.) Sharply limit the operational time of the suits. Surely they don't have infinite energy? Maybe they can't recharge them one way or another.
2.) Destroy the suits. This is a huge contrivance and will probably make your players upset when you do it, but frankly this is the answer least likely to destroy the rest of your game.
3.) Give their enemies power suits like it. Now you can use *most* enemies around their level. Savvy players might recognize that this is basically no different from no one having suits. This is correct.

You can combine 1 and 3 together to make your game play like Power Rangers.

[zazq]

I fully intend them to feel absurdly powerful and the beauty of the thing is that using a grid of 50 foot squares instead of 5 feet, with equally scaled monsters makes combat play identical to normal. Only difference is village huts take up 1 square instead of 10. And there's plenty of nasty power scaled beasties to murder them. I'm not like oh no what do. Their ac and saves remain untouched, a grease spell still screws them. Lvl7 doesn't really have access to see invisible, flight, freedom of movement, death effect resistance, it seems entirely possible to put them in line with a battlefield control wizard. And egg on their face of it's an un-power scaled by the book wizard. Bonus points for plans workable at even lower level. Hosing them with a lvl10 would be glorious.

Power scale is going to keep increasing as campaign progresses until it's dbz planet melting fireball nonsense.

[Zorku]

Welp, this whole premise sounds ridiculous. If you insist on continuing it anyway, and the wizard knows what he was in for, then he's going to use some kind of projection to talk to them (illusory doubles can look just like the real thing, and are available-enough through various class features, so nothing special there.) The really important thing, is that the illusion was standing in the mouth of a hallway, and there was a glyph of warding right in the entryway. First superrobosuit that steps on it is inflicted with crown of madness, and no, the players do not find out what this spell is called, just that the player involuntarily attacks whatever suit he starts a turn next to. Wizard is level 20, and presumably has 20 INT, so the save DC is 19, so most likely the players fail this. There is another glyph of warding that the wizard steps onto to gain greater invisibility, and then he rolls to hide and approaches the party. If you hate these robot suits, then the wizard had proficiency in stealth and high stealth. He enters the room and casts confusion on as many players as he can hit, then tries not to laugh.

Based on what you've said these suits do not fly, so if he's used another ward to gain flight then he can chill out well out of reach so long as nobody figures out where to launch a super-fireball, and when most players has shrugged off the confusion he flies by to cast heat metal on one of these suits. Yeah, you said that the suits reduce damage to 10%, but when the suit itself is cooking whoever is riding it I don't think that applies.

Wizards aren't glass cannons, they are controllers. They use mind control effects and they counter what other people are trying to do. At level 20 you're also swimming in gold so you can afford to just poop out a few glyphs of warding to bypass concentration limits. He can do things like make the other party members see him in the pilot seat of one of these suits, put somebody to sleep in the corner (and nobody can shake them awake because the suit keeps reducing the violent motion to 1/10th of its power,) and transform one of the party members into a chicken... permanently if nobody's got dispel.

The only weak spot in this is that the party will hear him casting any spells with verbal components, but you can abuse the hell out of glyph of warding if you think that's gonna be a problem.

[Tetrasodium]

- Wish: "I wish that the six people who have names written on this paper were transportred to the plane of fire"
- Go have breakfast

[zazq]

alright this is what i'm talking about. glyph of warding abuse is my kind of encounter.

I don't hate the suits, they are the point of the campaign. If you've watched gurren lagann then you know where the campaign is heading. Right now they have a mere x10^1 multiplier, but i expect to get to x10^5 or more by the end. That's running about 2000 miles in a turn and fireballs that cover texas. And they'll be zipping around in outer space shooting laser arrows and wielding beam swords and WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM.

But right now they just got the suits and got to completely dominate the goons that almost killed them on the way in. Then they went back and saved the town from the x10^1 scaled demon that needed killing, and they are feeling super macho.

So its time to put them in their place, and the they are going after the wizard who made the demon, and it would be thematically cool to have him be a level 20 wizard.

However, i'm not sure they can take a reasonably prepared wizard. Globe of Invulnerability (level 6) can stop all spells the party can cast. Flight or invisibility or both can practically negate melee attacks. The fight could take place in a relatively small throne room, reducing the party ability to zip 500 feet away. I really like the mind control/confusion route and simply have the party hit each other. that's fun stuff there. None of this looks like level 20 is even required.

The key to victory looks to be big area or multi-target save based spells that don't do damage.

I mean there's timestop, powerword kill powerword kill powerword kill the end. but that's no fun. and a flying (can't punch it) gust of wind (can't shoot it) globe of invulnerability (cant spell it) wizard is a lot of not fun either. I like the glyph of warding crown of madness/confusion approach. that's going to be freaking hilarious.

So what other save based non damaging multi-targeting spells should be used?

[zazq]

Here's the actual mechanic. The party currently has a Tier Multiplier of 10.

-=Generic Power Scaling=-
Melee weapons and touch attacks are considered to have Reach(1). This indicates that you may target an enemy up to 1 square away. Weapons that normally have Reach now have Reach(2), indicating that you may target an enemy up to 2 squares away.

Your character has a Tier Multiplier that starts at 1. Multiply all distance measurements of your character by T. This includes walking speed, attack and spell range and areas, and melee and touch reach.
Multiply all damage you do by T, divide any damage you take by T.
You may lift T times as much, hold your breath T times as long, and see and hear T times further.
You may elect to reduce areas of spells, and you may choose to reduce your damage multiplier per individual effect.

Be aware that Tier Multiplier has no effect on attack bonus, spell DCs, saves or AC, or your actual hit point total. It doesn’t let you fly, do the impossible, see the invisible, touch the untouchable or break the unbreakable. Row row fight the powah.