Reining in player power for group fun

[Chuupag]

So so my group I DM for consists of 3 relatively new players. Tiefling dual welding ranger hunter archetype, water genasi college of valor bard, and silver dragonborn nature cleric. We just finished the lost mines of phandelver a few weeks back and I'm running some filler to lead them into the princes of the apocalypse book. Some of that filler has been a sidequest to recruit a flameskull.

So back in the mines there is a flameskull that is basically a miniboss. They of course decided to talk to it, and after some conversation asked if he could come with them, fateful nat 20 later I come up with some spiel about being bound to this very room and they would have to go find some help to set him free before he could accompany them. In the long run I'm fine with them having him since they have been severely lacking in the aoe department at times and having a blaster will probably be useful.

So they found a halfling wizard, who is a secret member of the Harpers, who agreed to help them free Marvin the flameskull(they are totes going to find a centurian helm with fire resistance or something a la Marvin Martian) if they help her get some information on Tinderstrike from a cambion who ran her off from an old monastery where she was researching.

Trying to pull in the elemental aspects of the next book I'm running for them, I had the cambion have 2 gargoyles reskinned without flying as dog statues and a fire myrmidon as his backup. The party at the time was all level 5 with the halfling wizard tagging along at 3. So the ranger rolled very well on stats at the beginning, along with some house rules about the TWF feat has been doing 80% of the party's damage. They are also the only one with a magic weapon, sword of alertness. All 3 have rings of spell storing that they forget about half the time, among some other minor magic items.

So all of those enemies I threw at them were resistant to nonmagical physical attacks, so the ranger was only pulling like 75% of their normal damage. The elemental and the cambion also had relatively high AC then what they have gotten used to. I have also been doing max HP on most enemies since otherwise the ranger has been known to 1 shot or nearly so many medium level threats, combined with often going first in initiative due to the sword of alertness and high dex, before anything interesting even happens.

The ranger told me later that they feel if the "difficulty" is going to keep going up like that it doesn't seem as fun anymore. Something along the lines of 'well my damage is plateaued or even dropping and enemies are still hitting us harder and harder' despite 9 consecutive hits from the elemental missing due to smart protection from evil and good from the cleric giving it disadvantage.

I feel like the player just doesn't understand the bounded accuracy thing keeping monsters relevant. They just hit 6 after all that, so they are sorta in the middle of a drought of cool class stuff or ASIs. Just trying to figure a way to make the ranger's player feel more involved over the next level or 2 until the next power spike.

[Azgeroth]

wait, i'm not sure what it is your asking for here.

are you asking..

a) the ranger is OP compared to the other 2, how do i address this?

b) the ranger is upset that i have re-balanced the combat, so he doesn't just 1 shot everything like he used to do


some questions..

who gave/decided the ranger should get the magic weapon?

how do the other 2 players feel about the ranger being so ahead in damage?

how do the other 2 players feel about the re-balancing, how has it affected them?

are you looking to reduce the rangers lead over the other party members? i've worded it this way specifically, as to convey that perhaps your best solution is to buff the other party members, give them some magic stuff, build encounters that they will shine in.


but, the biggest question, is, how does the rangers power level, and want for yet more power and super awesome damage, affect the other players??

[Willie the Duck]

Characters just reaching 6th level with a sword of alertness, a bunch of rings of spell storing, and a flame skull ally? This seems like you've kind of given them too much already, such that they are expecting too much.

It sounds like the ranger is expecting the class to be a damage-dealing machine, which isn't really what it is for (it is a half-caster, the entire point is that it has a bunch of other class features, along with reasonable combat prowess). What it gets for the next several levels is 2nd and 3rd level spells, plus class features, which greatly increase the number of fields in which it can be helpful. Suggest that they look at the spell list and start dreaming of ways that the ranger can either 1)make a situation be resolved without combat even happening, or 2) make the outcome of combat be a forgone conclusion by the time initiative is rolled. If they cannot (or do not enjoy) finding ideas there, perhaps they should multiclass.


To the rest of the party, is the nature cleric using shillelagh or thorn whip as their cantrip? A Spiritual Weapon + Spirit Guardians + Shilelagh (which is a magic weapon, I believe), plus perhaps a SCAG cantrip through Magic Initiate can out damage a ranger until you've burned through your spells. Other people prefer to rely on the Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians and use their main action to dodge. The valor bard does seem to have gotten the shaft a bit, what with the ranger getting a super magic weapon before they get even a +1 one, but learning to adapt to it is part of the game (valor bard at 5th should be mostly using bardic inspiration, plus Hypnotic Pattern or Stinking Cloud, particularly if running up against weapon-resistant opponents.

[stoutstien]

So so my group I DM for consists of 3 relatively new players. Tiefling dual welding ranger hunter archetype, water genasi college of valor bard, and silver dragonborn nature cleric. We just finished the lost mines of phandelver a few weeks back and I'm running some filler to lead them into the princes of the apocalypse book. Some of that filler has been a sidequest to recruit a flameskull.

So back in the mines there is a flameskull that is basically a miniboss. They of course decided to talk to it, and after some conversation asked if he could come with them, fateful nat 20 later I come up with some spiel about being bound to this very room and they would have to go find some help to set him free before he could accompany them. In the long run I'm fine with them having him since they have been severely lacking in the aoe department at times and having a blaster will probably be useful.

So they found a halfling wizard, who is a secret member of the Harpers, who agreed to help them free Marvin the flameskull(they are totes going to find a centurian helm with fire resistance or something a la Marvin Martian) if they help her get some information on Tinderstrike from a cambion who ran her off from an old monastery where she was researching.

Trying to pull in the elemental aspects of the next book I'm running for them, I had the cambion have 2 gargoyles reskinned without flying as dog statues and a fire myrmidon as his backup. The party at the time was all level 5 with the halfling wizard tagging along at 3. So the ranger rolled very well on stats at the beginning, along with some house rules about the TWF feat has been doing 80% of the party's damage. They are also the only one with a magic weapon, sword of alertness. All 3 have rings of spell storing that they forget about half the time, among some other minor magic items.

So all of those enemies I threw at them were resistant to nonmagical physical attacks, so the ranger was only pulling like 75% of their normal damage. The elemental and the cambion also had relatively high AC then what they have gotten used to. I have also been doing max HP on most enemies since otherwise the ranger has been known to 1 shot or nearly so many medium level threats, combined with often going first in initiative due to the sword of alertness and high dex, before anything interesting even happens.

The ranger told me later that they feel if the "difficulty" is going to keep going up like that it doesn't seem as fun anymore. Something along the lines of 'well my damage is plateaued or even dropping and enemies are still hitting us harder and harder' despite 9 consecutive hits from the elemental missing due to smart protection from evil and good from the cleric giving it disadvantage.

I feel like the player just doesn't understand the bounded accuracy thing keeping monsters relevant. They just hit 6 after all that, so they are sorta in the middle of a drought of cool class stuff or ASIs. Just trying to figure a way to make the ranger's player feel more involved over the next level or 2 until the next power spike.
Giving out magical weapons and really good magical items early on? I think you spoiled your players. And it's probably really messing with the balance of encounters.
Few Qs
What exactly is your home brewed change the two weapon fighting feat?

If the ranger has a magical weapon why wasn't it bypassing the resistance the gargoyles had?

are your players expecting this to be more like a hack and slash game where they cut down hordes of enemies? (Some people don't play d&d for a challenge they play for release. So this is more of a question of player expectation.)

how familiar is this player with the spell list of rangers? I can think of at least a few spells I would have prepped that would definitely help with an encounter with these enemies.

[Chuupag]

Yea realized I left out some stuff, was just trying to make sure I didn't leave out context related things.

Realized a bit after the bard actually does have the spider staff...they've just been forgetting to use it. I rolled on some random tables a few times to give them things different than what was in the adventure. Like when they adamantantly insisted on taking down venomfang and had a decent plan about it, had to roll up some stuff in his hoard. I probably have given them higher quality stuff...but even as a DM it's hard to get excited about random scroll/potion of questionable usefulness.

The bard is definitely the player with the least know how. They are rarely using bardic inspiration despite regularly reminding that they have it. They keep wanting to use invisibility to sneak around for no apparent reason and prefers to use cloud of daggers when given a choice. Also is very into the water aspect of her race, constantly asking if there is water around so she can manipulate it.

I feel cleric wishes he could kill off the character and start a new one. He doesn't seem super into the nature theme. Think he was expecting druid-lite and only got some plant and rock spells. He's been mainly just buffing and casting guiding bolt to give advantage. Spiked growth is one of the few aoes the group has.

The house rule I made for TWF was to allow dex to be used for weapons that are not light. So it upgrades d6s to d8s basically. She also has collosus slayer and hunters mark, so she is regularly rolling 3d8+1d6+8 when she hits as long as it has been damaged already. The extra attack gained last level obviously doing less as once per round things not procing again.

Think the bard is having fun doing whatever. Think I'm going to offer the cleric to retire his character and roll another before heading to the desarrin valley, and just worried about keeping the ranger's interest really, as it seems like if she is not ending combat in 1 round she's bored.

[Kadesh]

So so my group I DM for consists of 3 relatively new players. Tiefling dual welding ranger hunter archetype, water genasi college of valor bard, and silver dragonborn nature cleric. We just finished the lost mines of phandelver a few weeks back and I'm running some filler to lead them into the princes of the apocalypse book. Some of that filler has been a sidequest to recruit a flameskull.

So back in the mines there is a flameskull that is basically a miniboss. They of course decided to talk to it, and after some conversation asked if he could come with them, fateful nat 20 later I come up with some spiel about being bound to this very room and they would have to go find some help to set him free before he could accompany them. In the long run I'm fine with them having him since they have been severely lacking in the aoe department at times and having a blaster will probably be useful.

So they found a halfling wizard, who is a secret member of the Harpers, who agreed to help them free Marvin the flameskull(they are totes going to find a centurian helm with fire resistance or something a la Marvin Martian) if they help her get some information on Tinderstrike from a cambion who ran her off from an old monastery where she was researching.

Trying to pull in the elemental aspects of the next book I'm running for them, I had the cambion have 2 gargoyles reskinned without flying as dog statues and a fire myrmidon as his backup. The party at the time was all level 5 with the halfling wizard tagging along at 3. So the ranger rolled very well on stats at the beginning, along with some house rules about the TWF feat has been doing 80% of the party's damage. They are also the only one with a magic weapon, sword of alertness. All 3 have rings of spell storing that they forget about half the time, among some other minor magic items.

So all of those enemies I threw at them were resistant to nonmagical physical attacks, so the ranger was only pulling like 75% of their normal damage. The elemental and the cambion also had relatively high AC then what they have gotten used to. I have also been doing max HP on most enemies since otherwise the ranger has been known to 1 shot or nearly so many medium level threats, combined with often going first in initiative due to the sword of alertness and high dex, before anything interesting even happens.

The ranger told me later that they feel if the "difficulty" is going to keep going up like that it doesn't seem as fun anymore. Something along the lines of 'well my damage is plateaued or even dropping and enemies are still hitting us harder and harder' despite 9 consecutive hits from the elemental missing due to smart protection from evil and good from the cleric giving it disadvantage.

I feel like the player just doesn't understand the bounded accuracy thing keeping monsters relevant. They just hit 6 after all that, so they are sorta in the middle of a drought of cool class stuff or ASIs. Just trying to figure a way to make the ranger's player feel more involved over the next level or 2 until the next power spike.

There seem to be a few things here;

1. Rolling for stats. This is garbage, trash tier, and not fun for balanced play. Either the player ends up being ****ter than the rest of the party, or you throw them a pity party and give them stat ups/mitigations. Same for rolling for hit points. Just give them Point Buy/Stat Array options.
2. Houserules; pretty much can guarantee this won't be balanced due to some oversight.
3. apparently not knowing the rules fully; as per the bolded, the Ranger should have been doing full damage, the Sword of Alertness is a magical weapon, it doesn't need to be a +1 etc.

Now, in regards to balance; the Myrmidon and the Cambion have AC18 and 19 respectively. At 6th level, and with a 16-18 in Dex (certainly a possibility, if not expectation from a Dex++ class), they should not be needing more than a 9 through to 11 to hit. A 50% chance to hit something isn't exactly ridiculous, even if it is on the slightly higher end of the scale. Sure, there are monsters who only only have AC14 at that CR, and they are at an upper extreme, but not to the extent that a party melee guy is going to be feeling put upon.

That said, you've got a CR5, a CR6 and 2 CR2 - the lack of flying isn't a huge swing in the favour of the party as they likely have to engage them in melee anyway being melee gargoyles. That's an expected challenge rating of 13. Being a 5th level party, a deadly encounter threshold is 3700 XP. You've thrown an effective 10000 XP at them, nearly 3 times the difficulty. Even without the gargoyles there, you're looking at 6150XP making it a budget twice what is considered deadly.

Advice? Get the calculator on your favourites bar. Remove the houserules. Find some ways to hand some stat bonuses to the rest of the party so that everyone's on the same wave length. I'd also remove the DMPC Wizard and ditch the Flameskull at the earliest opportunity. This is the players playing the game, and you shouldn't need to have a wizard tag along - and if it takes a 3rd level Wizard to do something, it's something the party should be able to do.

They need some AoE? Give them a scroll of Lightning Bolt, or a partially used necklace of fireballs.

Also, if you worried about heroic adventurers clearing through encounters - well, that's kinda the point of playing this game. It sounds a little bit like you might have low-balled the party with a lot of easy early fights, where blowing resources doesn't matter that much, but they've not learned how to manage resources, and so you've tried to balance that by making overpowering encounters. Combined with a low optimized party (I think there's barely one single synergistic stat among them) and new comers, they've been left a bit high and dry by this uptick in difficulty. maybe if they were supposed to avoid this fight, it should have been made more clear.

[Chuupag]

The ranger was doing full damage with the magic sword but half damage with the nonmagical sword..hence the 75% damage. 100% main hand 50% offhand.

[stoutstien]

Yea realized I left out some stuff, was just trying to make sure I didn't leave out context related things.

Realized a bit after the bard actually does have the spider staff...they've just been forgetting to use it. I rolled on some random tables a few times to give them things different than what was in the adventure. Like when they adamantantly insisted on taking down venomfang and had a decent plan about it, had to roll up some stuff in his hoard. I probably have given them higher quality stuff...but even as a DM it's hard to get excited about random scroll/potion of questionable usefulness.

The bard is definitely the player with the least know how. They are rarely using bardic inspiration despite regularly reminding that they have it. They keep wanting to use invisibility to sneak around for no apparent reason and prefers to use cloud of daggers when given a choice. Also is very into the water aspect of her race, constantly asking if there is water around so she can manipulate it.

I feel cleric wishes he could kill off the character and start a new one. He doesn't seem super into the nature theme. Think he was expecting druid-lite and only got some plant and rock spells. He's been mainly just buffing and casting guiding bolt to give advantage. Spiked growth is one of the few aoes the group has.

The house rule I made for TWF was to allow dex to be used for weapons that are not light. So it upgrades d6s to d8s basically. She also has collosus slayer and hunters mark, so she is regularly rolling 3d8+1d6+8 when she hits as long as it has been damaged already. The extra attack gained last level obviously doing less as once per round things not procing again.

Think the bard is having fun doing whatever. Think I'm going to offer the cleric to retire his character and roll another before heading to the desarrin valley, and just worried about keeping the ranger's interest really, as it seems like if she is not ending combat in 1 round she's bored.
How much experience do you have DMing? Not an attack, we started at the bottom. It just sounds like you falling in the common pit fall of yo-yoing player power in relationship with the world they are interacting with.
There's already a lot of good advice on this thread like don't use rolled stats, don't use random treasure tables(or if you do what to use them and you roll up something that you feel is not appropriate just reroll), homebrews and house rules are good but not for new players and not for new DMs, the players not having fun with the character and they let you know that let them change their character (having fun is a point of the game for all people involved it's not having fun it's a problem), and as a DM you always have to reserve the right to just flat-out say you screwed up i might need to back up a little bit or start over. If this honesty bothers your players a lot they're playing the wrong system.

[Kadesh]

The ranger was doing full damage with the magic sword but half damage with the nonmagical sword..hence the 75% damage. 100% main hand 50% offhand.

I'm still not sure what the issue is apart from you throwing ridiculous challenges at your players.

[Fryy]

I'm running some filler to lead them into the princes of the apocalypse book.

Sounds like a perfect time to reboot the campaign for the princes book. The cleric wants to change his/her character anyway.

Kadesh and others made great points.

1. Rolling for stat 'can' be really problematic. Point Buy is less headache... just my humble opinion and experience.
Rolling for stats allows for disparity in player abilities/power... probably not the best for new players. It can turn off the new players who rolled lower and spoil the players who rolled higher. It does not seem like you have player balance. Also, if you get extra generous (allow everyone to have great stats), then you'll just end up increasing the challenge for the whole book... which is not fun for you.

2. You gave the players a lot of magic items. It seems like you are spoiling them. Also, it sounded like you did that because they were not familiar with and not using their class features. (I may have misread that, though). Then, you went and increased monster HP to max.

3. House rules are another source of potential imbalance in character class and challenge level vs. the published book adventure. Why not focus instead on teaching the standard rules to the new players? (sorry for sounding preachy here)

4. Find out what kind of a challenge/game experience each player wants. For example, maybe playing a ranger is not the best fit for the ranger player. From what I have read, rangers are not considered to be the most OP class to put it mildly. That player seems to want a power bump at every level (which is not necessarily realistic for any class). You should set expectations about that as well... not all levels bumps are equal.

[Willie the Duck]

I'm still not sure what the issue is apart from you throwing ridiculous challenges at your players.

Well, that's what the game sounds like--GM handed out a bunch of candy (favorable houserules, tier 2-3 magic item loadout in the first tier), and now is having to increase the challenge to match. High bonus PCs facing increased threat leads to increased swinginess, which honestly increases the risk of an eventual TPK. Also sounds like people like playing 5-6th level like an extension of 1-2 level (ranger thinks he's plateaud because he's already got his 2nd attack, cloud of daggers and guiding bolt are referenced favored spells).

Honestly, it sounds like a group that maybe could have started with the starter set or something like it, to get them into the game. They seem to have grabbed some of the more complex options, used them simply, and are running into buyer's remorse situations.

[Throne12]

One you gave too many magic items. In all games I've been in I would be lucky to have 2 Attunement items by lv10. We would have good bit of consumables. The Ranger, bard and cleric has plenty of AoE's.

Ranger has ( Hail of Thrones "they can use darts, javalns if they are Str", and Spike Growth.

Bard has (Earth Tremor, Thunder Wave, Cloud of Daggers, Shatter, Stinking Cloud.)

Cleric has ( Spike Growth, Spirit Guardians)

Now they may not be fireball but that's easy to fix give them a necklace of fireball. Or a potion of fire breath or scrolls. My table have a house rule where anyone can use a scroll but it requires a Arcane skill check if your not prof it's a higher DC if it a spell on your class spell list no check at all.

[Malifice]

The house rule I made for TWF was to allow dex to be used for weapons that are not light. So it upgrades d6s to d8s basically. She also has collosus slayer and hunters mark, so she is regularly rolling 3d8+1d6+8 when she hits as long as it has been damaged already. The extra attack gained last level obviously doing less as once per round things not procing again.

Hunters Mark is +1d6 damage per attack on the Marked creature.

With TWF and Extra attack (and your house rule) that's 3 attacks on the marked creature, each attack dealing 1d8+1d6+Dex (+ an extra d8 damage for Colossus slayer).

So (presuming he's attacking a creature he's Marked with Hunters mark via using a bonus action) he deals 1d8+1d6+Dex [x3] + 1d8 for a total (all attacks hit) of 4d8+3d6+12 damage per turn.

Remember the Ranger must constantly be shifting Hunters mark as a bonus action on the first round of each combat (taking away his off hand attack for that turn), and also on every other turn he shifts the mark following the death of a creature.

Is he making Constitution saves every time he takes damage to maintain concentration on it?

[Malifice]

The ranger was doing full damage with the magic sword but half damage with the nonmagical sword..hence the 75% damage. 100% main hand 50% offhand.

You're falling into the easy trap of 'dial up encounter difficulty'.

Instead, I suggest adding more encounters per long rest (and nixing your HR to TWF, using point buy instead of rolling, and taking away most of those magic items!)

[Shuruke]

I'd recemend asking your players what they find fun etc

If the ranger likes doing well in combat then make sure the enemies aren't extremely hard to hit alomg with the max hp homerule you have.

As someone who has DM'd alot o recemend keeping to hit rate at about 60-65% generally people don't like missing and would rather hit and roll damage then not.

As for magic items I wouldn't worry about it for now, just have them find some Silvered weapons for off hand or etc. And as long as you run normal xp threshholds it sounds like everybody will have fun.

I generally do 2 medium, a short rest, a hard a medium, short rest, and depending on how they are looking either puzzle / non combat encounter or a hard encounter followed by an easy encounter.
In total 3 medium
2 hard and 1 easy
Replacinf a hard and easy with a puzzle or other obstacle.

Tbh I'd just go with it, the ranger wants to excel at combat, which spunds like it is making up for the bard who wants to and is having fun with rp.

Talk to the cleric and see if they wanna swap or even see of theirs something you can do to make cleric feel more fun
Have the ring of spell storing they forget become a ring of wild shape etc.


In the end its important to habe fun!!
Good luck!

[Shuruke]

I'd also like to add that most pf the campaigns I've been in or DM we did roll for stats , but it was 4d6 drop lowest
Re roll anything under 10
Roll 3 sets of 6 and choose favorite


We've also used lots of homerule and etc.

So in my opinion dont take away items, don't change your homerule just spread out encounters and talk to your players to see what they want out of the game and talk to them about making the rings of spell storing something fun.

Let the bards be a ring of water control
Allowing the shape water effect from WoTFE monk and add in some other fun water stuff. Don't be scared to add water near occasional combats or even having obstacles for water. For combat you could gove them Wofte monk water whip and fist of unbroken air(Reflavored as ice or a water blast) as known spells.

Give the cleric something druid light for theirs. Have it give two uses of wild shape a dawn scaling like a moon druids and allow channel divinity to be used on a wild shape. Also give it the shepherd circle beast speech for flavor. Don't be scared to have beast and plant enemies as part of a fight or nearby so the cleric can channel divinity.


For the ranger have their ring be a ring of blademasters
Let them choose two martial adept manuevers and they can use them each once a short rest. Also allow it to instead of dealing 1d8+dex with off hand for twf give a double slash attack allowing a bonus action to be used as part of an attack to add 2d6 to it. 1d8+3 (7.5) 2d6 (7) sure for to hit etc it would be different DPR wise and for crit
But they sound like they like rolling damage dice. And of they aren't liking having spells as a ranger ask them if they wanna replace spell casting with it capping at 5d6 at level 12. Until then allow 2d6 at 6 , 3d6 at 8 , 4d6 at 10, 5d6 at 12th.


Jist see what you can do for everyone to have fun, in the end the books are a guidline play for fun and your ok