King of Nowhere
2018-04-10, 01:30 PM
after getting a huge load of money for story reasons, my lead player expressed the intention of outfitting the whole party with items of permanent death ward, strenghtened with a wish spell so that they'd be immune to dispelling.
I don't know of a death ward item, but it probably exists somewhere in some splatbook. a ring of freedom of movement is 40k, so a ring of death ward should be a similar price. using a wish to make an item dispel-immune seem reasonable, and it is within the limits of what I allowed the spell to do in the past. Buying 5 wishes is not cheap, but it is possible, and within the party's finances.
On the down side, I run at an optimization level where caster superiority isn't that huge, and I already placed a lot of nerfs on them. metamagic reduction and CL increase severely limited, contingencies limited to 1, nothing to break action economy (besides quickened spells) or xp economy or monetary economy, no abuse of SLA from alternate forms or summoned creatures. I run a general guideline that nothing can screw you up without giving you some chance at counterplay. And I fear hurting too much npc casters, which are having troubles keeping useful against the party:
- illusions? everyone can see invisibility, and they have a couple of true sight effects
- mind influence? everyone is protected from evil, and what's left isn't that powerful. Plus, everyone has bought huge buffs to saving throws.
- summon monsters? nothing that will last even one round
- immobilizers? everyone has freedom of movement
- forcecage/walls? everyone has tattoos that grant single use teleportation
- buff yourself and go in melee? a single dispel will end that (no CL abuse = easier dispelling)
basically, the only thing left for casters to do (especially for clerics, which lack direct damage anyway) was spamming save-or-die and hope for a low roll. That, or being stuck fireballing the party for minimal damage. I am sure a highly optimized casters has more tricks up her sleeve, but not at the level of optimization we play - and if I pull too many new tricks on my more casual gamers, they would rightly cry foul.
On the other hand, casters still retain several area spells to potentially outdamage melees when used against a party, and they could use them to support their melee allies. It would mean throwing more mixed parties and less pure casters at the party, but feasible. and there really is no reason to not allow such an item except for metagaming balance reasons.
I could also go for something halfway: this item is imperfect death ward, it grants +10 to saving throw, not total immunity.
Or, it works just fine, but disjunction will still suppress it for 1d4 rounds - a big step up over permanently lose power, but still exploitable in combat.
This last one is the option I'm favoring at the moment. But I'd be curious to hear some opinion.
I don't know of a death ward item, but it probably exists somewhere in some splatbook. a ring of freedom of movement is 40k, so a ring of death ward should be a similar price. using a wish to make an item dispel-immune seem reasonable, and it is within the limits of what I allowed the spell to do in the past. Buying 5 wishes is not cheap, but it is possible, and within the party's finances.
On the down side, I run at an optimization level where caster superiority isn't that huge, and I already placed a lot of nerfs on them. metamagic reduction and CL increase severely limited, contingencies limited to 1, nothing to break action economy (besides quickened spells) or xp economy or monetary economy, no abuse of SLA from alternate forms or summoned creatures. I run a general guideline that nothing can screw you up without giving you some chance at counterplay. And I fear hurting too much npc casters, which are having troubles keeping useful against the party:
- illusions? everyone can see invisibility, and they have a couple of true sight effects
- mind influence? everyone is protected from evil, and what's left isn't that powerful. Plus, everyone has bought huge buffs to saving throws.
- summon monsters? nothing that will last even one round
- immobilizers? everyone has freedom of movement
- forcecage/walls? everyone has tattoos that grant single use teleportation
- buff yourself and go in melee? a single dispel will end that (no CL abuse = easier dispelling)
basically, the only thing left for casters to do (especially for clerics, which lack direct damage anyway) was spamming save-or-die and hope for a low roll. That, or being stuck fireballing the party for minimal damage. I am sure a highly optimized casters has more tricks up her sleeve, but not at the level of optimization we play - and if I pull too many new tricks on my more casual gamers, they would rightly cry foul.
On the other hand, casters still retain several area spells to potentially outdamage melees when used against a party, and they could use them to support their melee allies. It would mean throwing more mixed parties and less pure casters at the party, but feasible. and there really is no reason to not allow such an item except for metagaming balance reasons.
I could also go for something halfway: this item is imperfect death ward, it grants +10 to saving throw, not total immunity.
Or, it works just fine, but disjunction will still suppress it for 1d4 rounds - a big step up over permanently lose power, but still exploitable in combat.
This last one is the option I'm favoring at the moment. But I'd be curious to hear some opinion.