making combat last longer without overcomplicating the game

[King of Nowhere]

I ended a long campaign.
I have some possible plan to run a new campaign in the same world, in the future. the events of the previous campaign will have shaped the world in many ways. This means tech has progressed. especially magic has progressed.
In the previous campaign, i enforced a relatively low optimization ceiling, especially for casters. the thing is, if you start to optimize, combat becomes rocket tag, because attack can be optimized much more than defence. you can still mount an effective defence, but you have to rely on avoiding the attacks (cover, concealment, breaking line of effect, and so on). This leads to the game becoming much more complicated than we'd all like. Also, some party members were total noobs and could not have handled it (those guys dropped out, so it's no longer a concern).
Now, I want to give the feeling that things have progressed by removing many limitations on magic. Away with most stops on metamagic abuse, all the way to mailman builds. still banning the most ludicrous campaign-ending stuff, and probably action economy abuse. Anyway, I'll give the casters the capacity to smoke pretty much any target.
But I don't want the game to be too fast. I need to come up with suitable defences.

One thing I can use is that the campaign world was already well above the normally assumed wealth. they used undead and constructs for menial labor, which gave them the resources for widespread public schooling, which meant tons of casters up to mid level. So, magic and items were very common. I plan for the world to keep on this course, and to be at industrial revolution level technology - with magic providing elements more commonly associated with the information age.
So, my plan is to have some relatively cheap magic item(s) that provides some necessary defensive buffs to let people tank a few attacks.
But what?

I have the following needs for the defence
- it must stop a mailman from instakilling with a force orb barrage, but without making offensive spells useless.
- weaker attack options must still be available
- it must allow to survive a full attack or ubercharge, without making those attack useless.
- it must work at high level, but it must also not completely stop combat at low level
- it must not be mechanically too complex to use

So... not easy to find something fitting the requirements.
Stuff that I considered but mostly discarded
a) damage reduction from most sources
- pros: it will mitigate damage from a mailman or a full attack to acceptable levels
- cons: it does not scale well between high and low levels.

b) A sort of shield that absorbs a certain amount of incoming spells/damage before collapsing
- pros: it gives everyone a good defensive buffer
- cons: it is mechanically clunky, working poorly in most corner cases.

c) An abrupt jaunt effect, possibly working as a contingency, to push people out of danger
- pros: it will stop exactly one effect every round
- cons: it doesn't work that way; it's too powerful against melee attacks and not doing much against magic.


d) A free revive: you die the first time in a combat, you are immediately raised (as per that spell that raises you if you died less than one round ago, don't remember its name) and healed.
- pros: it makes everyone exactly twice as durable
- cons: it doesn't really shore up any weakness. and having to kill anyone twice can be boring.

So, I'm looking for options. Can you suggest something working better?
thanks

[noce]

If you want something that is relevant both at low and high levels, and that reduces optimized damage while not rendering unoptimized damage useless, you need percentage reduction.

For example, all incoming damage is reduced by a percentage equal to your Armor Class.
I mean total Armor Class: even if a touch attack hits you while flat footed, you still use total Armor Class to reduce its damage. It works against all damage, fireballs too.

This way you get a 15-20% damage reduction at low levels, and up to 30-50% reduction at mid-high levels.
Remember to apply things like Damage Reduction and Resist Energy AFTER you reduced incoming damage by percentage.

This mechanic has several advantages:

It is simple, you just need a calculator.
Scales with level and Wealth.
Helps Armor Class mechanic, which is often regarded as not worth increasing.
Now uberchargers with Shock Trooper have to watch out to counterattacks.
Dispel Magic now gets interesting.

[King of Nowhere]

If you want something that is relevant both at low and high levels, and that reduces optimized damage while not rendering unoptimized damage useles, you need percentage reduction.

For example, all incoming damage is reduced by a percentage equal to your Armor Class.
I mean total Armor Class: even if a touch attack hits you while flat footed, you still use total Armor Class to reduce its damage. It works against all damage, fireballs too.

This way you get a 15-20% damage reduction at low levels, and up to 30-50% reduction at mid-high levels.
Remember to apply things like Damage Reduction and Resist Energy AFTER you reduced incoming damage by percentage.

This mechanic has several advantages:

It is simple, you just need a calculator.
Scales with level and Wealth.
Helps Armor Class mechanic, which is often regarded as not worth increasing.
Now uberchargers with Shock Trooper have to watch out to counterattacks.
Dispel Magic now gets interesting.

looks like a good idea. thanks!

[martixy]

Why is it more complicated than more HP?

[Aotrs Commander]

As I have observed before, if you want to have boss fights last longer, the answer is simply to do what videoggames learnt long ago, and not give them the same hit points as the characters.

A while back, I took the idea of 4E's solo and back-ported the concept to 3.x, creating the Defiant template (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?125737-3-5-Why-won-t-you-just-die-!). (Note that wow, this is well beyond the necro limit, so don't post anything! Wow, 2009, we bin usin' this for eleven years, then!)

In essense, a creature gets maximum hit points, and then one or more additional blocks of maximum hit points (one for each application of the template). For each block of hit points (i.e. template application), the creature additionally gets one reroll of a failed save (at the cost of effectively giving it the penalties of a negative level). It can expend a whole block of hit points if it is battle-winningly save-or-suck'd (death paralyse etc) to negate that effect. It can additionally,at the end of it's turn, use a whole block of hit points to effective Iron Heart Surge away any effect on it and end that effect (e.g. Ray of Enfeeblement). (As these uses require a whole block of undamaged hit points, it means once it's down to the last block, it can't do it.)

(Note that this explictly does't modify the saving throws of the creature (or armour class), nor should it. It ostensibly just changes the magnitude of the effect of a save, not how hard it is to achieve that effect; so that if it fails that save, it will always do SOMETHING).

What this means is that the creature can cheerfully stand up to six to eight mid-high optimisation PCs (whose players are using very high levels of co-operation) and still present a challenge that last more than one or two rounds, because it will survive longer (and thus be able to take more actions). It means the PC's abilities do need to be altered; even bad stuff that might end the encounter undramatically (like Baleful Polymorph) are still viable (even if it doesn't end the fight, it'll have done effectively a frack-ton of damage) and in fact, and tacitly encouraged to be used as finishers.

Bonus: it require minimal effort on the DM's part (I mea, ypou can add it in on the fly if you want) and none on the players, no rules modification etc, and it works pretty much on any level. (Though, granted, you might find you need more applications at very bottom level to give some longevity!)



It has done wonders for our games, it really has (for the past decade, apparently!) I cannot recommend this approach enough.




Why is it more complicated than more HP?

The above also means that save-or-loses (nor no-save-loses)are also mitigated without sucumbing to Final Fantasy Death syndrome (i.e. anything worth using it on is immune), but the core concept is fundementally that, yes.

[Gruftzwerg]

Imho altered HP rules are the way to go.

1. max HP for everyone, no rolls. you don't roll your eventual dmg gain on level up, why should HP be a variable? Max HP is the first step to balance dmg output with HP totals.

2. altering HP rule values
I always did find it odd that you are only disabled on 0 Hp, which almost never happens after the first few lvls but in reality is a common condition in deadly fights. Further, the gap between disabled and dead is very marginal on later lvls (and higher dmg optimization on both ends pc/npc). This leaves a more binary impression of "minor non handicapping wounds" and "dead" with nothing else between. For this we will alter the "disabled" and "dying" values.

a) Disabled: 0 till -1/2 max HP(rounded down)
Every values from 0 to the negative of half your max hp. This will cause the disabled condition to happen much more frequently and it will last longer than with regular rules.

b) Dying: -1/2 max Hp till -max HP(+1)
With these values for Dying it should be less of a problem to not get things instakilled by sole dmg. max hp +50% quasi HP due to extended disabled values leaves some room. Even if your wizard got hit by a truck/dragon, you can try to heal him up instead of looking for a way to resurrect him.

c) Dead: -max HP

While at the first few levels your low HP may shorten the regular values for "Dead" (e.g Wizard1 with 4 hp would die at -4hp), later levels will profit from these changes. If this should be a real issue you could still add the regular -10 to the negative values. But beside from that, this is imho a much more realistic ruling of the disabled and dying conditions.

An example: 5th lvl fighter with +2 Con mod would always have 60 max. HP and would be disabled between 0 and -30, dying from -31 to -59 and the dead status would start at -60HP.

[martixy]

~

Ah. More hp, but cleverly. This is not even my final form. :smallbiggrin:

Meanwhile Gruft addressed the player side. Agree with max HP, makes things simpler. For dying, I'm partial to Pathfinder's idea (dead at -Con SCORE). I'd add disabled until -Con MOD.

[Aotrs Commander]

Ah. More hp, but cleverly. This is not even my final form. :smallbiggrin:

Meanwhile Gruft addressed the player side. Agree with max HP, makes things simpler. For dying, I'm partial to Pathfinder's idea (dead at -Con SCORE). I'd add disabled until -Con MOD.

We use max hit points and (PC) death at -half max hit points (or -Con stat, which ever is more favourable).



(It is also perhaps worth noting in passing that the amount that Cure/Inflict spells deal has been SIGNIFICANTLY increased, as what they dealt before was a carry-over from AD&D and simply laughable in 3.0, let alone later (the spells barely heal one hit's worth of MELEE damage, let along anything else). Fundementally, I made it a number of hit points to what the plus at max used to be (so 5/10/15/20 etc), and D8/level equal to half of that (3/5/7/10, respectively). CLW, for instance, now heals 5 hits plus D8/level (max 3D8).

So now Cure Critical at max will at least heal slightly more damage to one target (15+7D8 = 46.5) than Fireball will deal at max (10D6 = 35), which is as it should be, since healing should really outpace damage, because you expect to have multiple sources of damage in a round and it's much easier to do mass damage as well (multlple attacks etc).)

[Gruftzwerg]

Ah. More hp, but cleverly. This is not even my final form. :smallbiggrin:

Meanwhile Gruft addressed the player side. Agree with max HP, makes things simpler. For dying, I'm partial to Pathfinder's idea (dead at -Con SCORE). I'd add disabled until -Con MOD.

While I did give an example for the player side, imho the npc side profits too. And not only in combat power.

Imagine this:

You fight a crowd of lets say Bandits. When would the Bandits consider to retreat? In real life maybe even when just a few are disabled. But in normal 3.5 this is a really rare condition. With altered rules, enemies will be much more common in this state. And disabled is a really handicapped state where some may reconsider if it worth to fight any longer. This enables much more options to retreat, give up and beg for mercy and other nice roleplay options.

[King of Nowhere]

As I have observed before, if you want to have boss fights last longer, the answer is simply to do what videoggames learnt long ago, and not give them the same hit points as the characters.



i'm sure it works for your games, but that's not what i'm doing. first of all, most action in my campaign is pc on npc. relatively few monster opponents. that high cleric of an evil deity should be no more and no less powerful than other clerics of his level; at most he may have better equipment and a few special tricks, but it wouldn't make sense to slap a boss monster template on him.
on the other hand, this npc has the full gamut of offensive abilities of high level pcs, including the capacity to smoke multiple opponents in a single round. I need to protect pcs too.
and finally, since this is an already established world with already established combat mechanics, it would be much more consistent to say "but since last time they discovered how to mass produce a lot of those items that change things" rather than slap on a few templates and pretend it's always been like this. which is also the reason why

Why is it more complicated than more HP?
I won't just give more hp. although I may give more hp and justify it by saying "it's actually this thing that reduces damage, but we're giving more hp so it's easier to calculate". but for me, keeping up the pretense that the core mechanics of the world are the same is important.

I'm envisioning a sort of combat suite / padded armor giving % damage reduction from almost any source, and perhaps one saving throw reroll per hour and some other related effects.going forward, more powerful version may include partial protection against dispelling of your items (the last campaign had so many disjunctions flying around, and now i would introduce chain dispelling) and whatever more bits of resistance i want to be commonplace. basically, if i see a mechanic becoming too powerful, I can introduce the new deluxe version (or new discovered verion) offering a resistance against that. I learned that when designing some large modifications to the game it's easy to face unforseen consequences, and so it's good to always leave open some plausible excuse to fix them on the spot

[Seerow]

So if your goal is to actually stop mailman levels of damage, more than a 50% damage reduction may be necessary. At high level a mailman build is casually tossing out a couple thousand damage in a round, against targets with HP in the 200-300 range. On the other hand if nobody actually goes full mailman, but is instead just using 1-2 reduced metamagics applied to a couple of spells per round, it is much more reasonable and the 50% reduction may be enough.

My point here is how much extra you need to give is going to vary a lot based on the players current level, as well as their optimization level. Be prepared to be flexible and adjust as your campaign progresses, or it's likely to fall apart pretty easily. There's simply too much variability in capability to have a one-size-fits-all answer.

That being said, here are some suggestions that may help out:

-Refreshing temporary HP pools (refresh at start of round). I actually tried this as a variant on Armor once, and it was pretty successful at making people in general more durable. It lets lower damage still be relevant by wearing down that temp HP so others could get through, unlike high levels of DR, and is relatively simply to adjudicate compared to options that utilize percentages and/or multiplication and division. Also if you are doing it as a custom item rather than a core part of the system, you can easily tune the amount of temporary hp to where it feels good for your campaign at any given time.

-As someone else mentioned above, improving the cure spells. Besides the straight numerical increases, consider giving them some extra range or better action economy (or also buff the spells that provide those things). When in combat healing becomes a viable option, combat automatically becomes longer as long as the combatants are taking advantage of it. It means more actions being spent not killing each other, in addition to the time gained from recovering the hp in the first place.

-There's a Psionic Power called Dampen Power. It takes a spell/power that is affecting you and makes it deal minimum damage as an immediate action. If spellcaster damage in particular is getting out of control, this is a great defensive tool that doesn't totally negate the incoming damage, but generally brings it to a much more manageable level.

-Elusive Target is an awesome feat with awful prereqs that lets you basically negate power attack for one enemy of your choice. If Uber Chargers are your bigger problem with damage, this is a great way to bring their damage back down to the stratosphere. It has high prereqs so most people aren't going to have it, but if you're making custom defensive magic items....

-On that note, if you are having problem with chargers in general, abilities that grant immediate action movement, difficult terrain, or obstacles are all options.

-Starmantle Cloak is an item that gives a low reflex save to cut any damage from a magical weapon in half (and make you immune to non-magical weapons) you may not want to make this one a case of "everyone has it" but keep it in your back pocket for NPCs you want to be particularly durable.

-Traditional DR and ER are actually surprisingly good options at low-mid op levels (or against high-op PCs already having their effectiveness dropped by one of the above options). It's also a good place to let players customize a little bit. If you are planning to do one catch-all defensive item that everyone has, I'd give them a certain number of points they can distribute as they'd like into DR or different energy resistances, so everyone is slightly more resistant to different attack types, in addition to the more broad catch-all defenses.

-Remember that damage isn't the only thing, and at some optimization levels is particularly ineffective. Consider options like save rerolls, the ability to take HP damage to throw off a status condition, short range teleports/freedom of movement, and so on to help against alternative attack options. I'm particularly fan of spending hp to throw off status, because it lets the status effect still do something, but allows the affected target continue to take actions rather than sit out the combat or auto lose.

[Gruftzwerg]

.

I'm envisioning a sort of combat suite / padded armor giving % damage reduction from almost any source, and perhaps one saving throw reroll per hour and some other related effects.going forward, more powerful version may include partial protection against dispelling of your items (the last campaign had so many disjunctions flying around, and now i would introduce chain dispelling) and whatever more bits of resistance i want to be commonplace. basically, if i see a mechanic becoming too powerful, I can introduce the new deluxe version (or new discovered verion) offering a resistance against that. I learned that when designing some large modifications to the game it's easy to face unforseen consequences, and so it's good to always leave open some plausible excuse to fix them on the spot

Imho you are talking about buffs. And what you are looking for is a basic guide for clever buffing:

- encounters where the enemy is aware of the PCs
Ambushes, Alarm (traps, spells), guard dogs (or animals)... . These kind of things will give the encounters time to buff up. Any caster should have his long duration spells always on, and apply some of his short time buffs before the fight starts.

Abuse action economy altering tricks

- Contingency (spell) should be used by almost all casters that have access to it by class lvl. The upside is, that is leaves no special loot for PCs.

- Rod of Many Wands can activate up to 3 wands at the same time and should be a thing for big bad evil casters. Displacement + Mirror Image + Polymorph/Stoneskin is a nice basic combination of defensive spells your npc caster could use with a single action.
Sure not an item for every caster. But the more important ones and those that might be ambushed by the PCs are in need of this.

- Contingency (feat) is another method for action economy wile leaving no special loot for PCs.

- Higher lvl buff Scrolls. Won't leave loot when the enemy uses it (e.g. before the fight even starts). At higher lvls a scroll of Time Stop is available and another option for even more action economy.

[Aotrs Commander]

i'm sure it works for your games, but that's not what i'm doing. first of all, most action in my campaign is pc on npc. relatively few monster opponents.

Actually, I much prefer classed enemies and certainly do for boss fights. If it's something I've written myself an not an AP I'm converting, far and away the majority will be classed enemies.



Look, you're going to have to decide what you want to do.

There are simple solutions (which have been suggested) that mean you have to sacrifice your own personal ludonarrative dissonace quotient to have a better mechanical game mechanical experience for, or there's complicated solutions that will take a great deal of work to have to do (even just to make lists of what is and what is not being altered). If you're looking for a simple silver bullet to solve your problem... Well, I'm afraid to say, there isn't one.

The sort of thing you are talking about is a deceptively major re-work of the basic game engine. I mean, that's fine, but just be aware that it will be, in practise, not be a simple soultion and it will require a lot of work and revision to get runnign properly. I mean if you're up for that level of rules-smithing, look, I'm the guy that just spend six months practically writing his own edition and has one campaign world that makes massive changes to the way magic items and spells work, so I'm the last person who say "don't do it," I'm just saying be aware that what you're trying to do isn't one of the simple solutions.



(It's the sort of thing under other circumstances to which I'd say "play Rolemaster, which is technically a much better versimilitudistic simulation than D&D." But RM is explicty terrible at boss fights because of that.)

[Quertus]

So, even if your parties generally only kill other humans, why not, as a reward for the success of the characters in the previous campaign at "modernizing" their homeland, have the PCs be from the cool, advanced empire, and their foes be from more backwater kingdoms, that don't have the PCs' advantages?

Then, you can potentially focus on the differences, and have the NPCs forced to utilize some alternative tech - numbers, calling on alien powers for this "percentage defense based on AC", whatever.

Also, figure out what your monsters - who of course won't have any of this tech - will do. "Roll over and die" is, of course, a valid option.

[King of Nowhere]

Actually, I much prefer classed enemies and certainly do for boss fights. If it's something I've written myself an not an AP I'm converting, far and away the majority will be classed enemies.


How do you justify it when the enemy humanoid boss can do a lot of stuff that the players cannot ever do? Are you just able to "roll with it"?:smallconfused:
well, i guess your "personal ludonarrative dissonace quotient" is much lower than mine.



Look, you're going to have to decide what you want to do.

There are simple solutions (which have been suggested) that mean you have to sacrifice your own personal ludonarrative dissonace quotient to have a better mechanical game mechanical experience for, or there's complicated solutions that will take a great deal of work to have to do (even just to make lists of what is and what is not being altered).

me making preparatory work away from the table is all well and good. I already did a lot of such work in the previous campaign to try and keep the power level consistent.
On the other hand, me having to keep track of too much stuff while i am at the table leads to poor dming, i have experienced. and the players having to keep track of too much stuff leads to one player - the one most adept and interested in mechanics - telling everyone what to do.

But I am optimistic that the "indirectly increase hp" option will mostly do the trick.

P.S. Nice to meet another fellow with my same attitude towards d&d mechanics. As for learning a different system, by now i am set enough in my own ways that I find it easier to just tweak d&d to fit my ideas. my fellow rpg gamers also know enough d&d that it's easier to explain them "d&d, but with the following changes" than it is to introduce them to a new system.


So, even if your parties generally only kill other humans, why not, as a reward for the success of the characters in the previous campaign at "modernizing" their homeland, have the PCs be from the cool, advanced empire, and their foes be from more backwater kingdoms, that don't have the PCs' advantages?

Then, you can potentially focus on the differences, and have the NPCs forced to utilize some alternative tech - numbers, calling on alien powers for this "percentage defense based on AC", whatever.

Also, figure out what your monsters - who of course won't have any of this tech - will do. "Roll over and die" is, of course, a valid option.

humans from the less advanced nations trying to invade the more modern ones is akin to a backwater third world country trying to invade a major power. too much power imbalance to make it even fun. good thing there are still enough options to sow mayem.
as for regular monsters, they stopped being a realistic threat to civilization already before the previous campaign. But I have some ideas to bring in some new monsters to have more plot hooks. And classic high-cr monsters are still going to be a legitimate threat to a mid level party.

[Troacctid]

There are a few tried-and-true tricks that I usually recommend for things like this.

Multistage bosses. This was already touched on, but the gist of it is that you defeat the boss, and then a "cutscene" happens and the boss gets back up, but in a more powerful form. Perhaps when near defeat, they inject themselves with a super-serum that transforms them into a monster. Perhaps they're wearing power armor for the first stage, and once that power armor is broken, they climb out of it to fight hand-to-hand. Either way, you can treat the new version of the boss as if an entirely new monster had entered combat—full HP, no debuffs, etc. This could also be accomplished by having a secondary boss arrive because the first one was killed—for example, the portal the boss was trying to open goes haywire as they die and a powerful aberration comes through, or the boss themself comes back as a vengeful ghost.

Waves of enemies. Another classic right here. Instead of introducing all the opponents at once, you stagger their arrival so that reinforcements arrive on later rounds. This works really well in any situation where the players are unable to simply flee from the fight without abandoning their objective, and it also has a nice side benefit of allowing you to tune the encounter balance on the fly by adding, removing, or upgrading monsters in the next wave depending on how the players are doing. Imagine a horde of undead attacking the players' base, or formian soldiers pouring out of the tunnels as you fight their queen.

Puzzle bosses. Because of an environmental feature (or some other reason), the boss can't be killed, or is much more difficult to kill, unless you meet the proper conditions first. My go-to example for this is the boss is drawing power from four obelisks in the room, and as long as the obelisks are intact, she gets, like, bonus HP, damage reduction, spell immunity, etc. However, the players can attack the obelisks to destroy them, weakening her until she's vulnerable to their attacks. Of course, they have to do all this while she's attacking them. You get the idea.

[Gorthawar]

Not sure about the game mechanics but the energy shields in Frank Herbert's "Dune" work only against fast moving attacks. This could work against those force missiles and similar ranged attacks and might block an uebercharger as well but do less against normal melee.

[Gruftzwerg]

Not sure about the game mechanics but the energy shields in Frank Herbert's "Dune" work only against fast moving attacks. This could work against those force missiles and similar ranged attacks and might block an uebercharger as well but do less against normal melee.

well there are several spells that reduce you to a single standard action per turn, single-target, multi-target or even just straight AoE. And others that block some magical dmg or just straight spell resistance.

As mentioned earlier, imho with spells (spells from items) and good action economy, most of these things can be can be accomplished within the rules.

[ciopo]

timeskip so far that your advanced civilization are now "precursors", the current civilizations know not of magic... because some bitter loser changed the plane laws to have a planewide permanent anti magic field.

and thus there are only martials and at most masterwork items, it is sapients vs monsters again.

or maybe the rise of techonology?


On a more serious note, are your players wanting to make a mailman/ubercharger? "high op" is not necessarily some of these (in)famous builds, at what level would you be starting?

it could be very well that "to prevent the destruction of the world", there are worldwide enchantments that apply contingent "damp power" to every spell ever casted for forevermore.

I'd also imagine that divination... no longer works, because too much interference

Also, maybe important, how do divine classes works on your campaign?

[King of Nowhere]

Not sure about the game mechanics but the energy shields in Frank Herbert's "Dune" work only against fast moving attacks. This could work against those force missiles and similar ranged attacks and might block an uebercharger as well but do less against normal melee.
having energy shields that provide increasing protection against high amount of damage would also be a nice idea i can try.



On a more serious note, are your players wanting to make a mailman/ubercharger? "high op" is not necessarily some of these (in)famous builds, at what level would you be starting?


my party spontaneously tends towards those builds. people start with limited options, then they start to look up for better stuff, perhaps retrain a feat or two when they realize they could have taken better, and gradually bit by bit... before anyone realizes it, the wizard can nova for 400 damage no save, and the fighter can deal 150 damage every charge. and we could do better if we were not deciding to not take the even more powerful stuff.

take a player that is moderately competent at optimizing, put in him an interest towards optimization, give him internet access, and he will spontaneously tend towards high-op builds. could be a law of thermodynamics.



Also, maybe important, how do divine classes works on your campaign?
what do you mean by that? I mean, clerics pray whatever god they serve, and they get spells regularly. the gods in turn get power from the faith of the people. paladins also have a patron god. i've never made a decision on druids, they either get power from some of the nature-oriented deities, or they get it from the magic naturally emanating from all life forms. is that what you intended?

[ciopo]

what do you mean by that? I mean, clerics pray whatever god they serve, and they get spells regularly. the gods in turn get power from the faith of the people. paladins also have a patron god. i've never made a decision on druids, they either get power from some of the nature-oriented deities, or they get it from the magic naturally emanating from all life forms. is that what you intended?
Because in the pursuit of power, the mailmen are the kind of personality that would try to ascend to godhood / usurp the gods,.
So, if gods still exists, they might not be the same as they were previously, and they might have a vested interest in preventing mailmen from happening.

I'm giving you fluff reasons to have blanket worldwide effects that don't tie specifically to items.

What do you think of the "Dampen power" power that Seerow put forth? Assuming magic/psionic trasparency, a custom item of Dampen power is a trivial 2400gp per daily charge


what about something similar to the 5e half orc relentless endurance?

I honestly don't think you can prevent rocket tag short of vetoing things, I feel kinship to you wanting a item solution, because I dislike houserules that make the game "not DnD anymore"

Maybe permanent slotless items of share pain? they'd cost 24000gp, but in your world I imagine that is trivial, so let's pretend there are commonplace hardness X and HP Y psycristal of permanent share pain. Each such crystal by definition halves every damage the owner take, and this damage is reduced by X on the crystal itself.

At mid levels, people have 2 such crystal, so that's 75% reduction, 50% damage geos to the bigger crystal with higher hardness and 25% goes to the smaller crystal

at high levels, 3 crystals for 87.5% reduction

and so on, this all applies before DR/resistance that the character itself has

[King of Nowhere]

Because in the pursuit of power, the mailmen are the kind of personality that would try to ascend to godhood / usurp the gods,.
So, if gods still exists, they might not be the same as they were previously, and they might have a vested interest in preventing mailmen from happening.

I'm giving you fluff reasons to have blanket worldwide effects that don't tie specifically to items.


in the previous campaign, the high priest of vecna tried to ascend by sucking the souls of several million people at once, and distillating the divine spark that is in every sapient being.
the players gained some minor divine powers after being suffused by divine essence when they interrupted the aforementioned ritual. they ascended fully after an orc pc became the messiah of his race - and everyone else hailing them as world saviors.
A dragon also had a plan to ascend by forcing people to pray him and offer him sacrifices, but it never went far.

basically, in my world powerful magic does not provide a direct route to godhood. the most straightforward way is to have people put faith in you - the gods would be more worried by a highly popular actor or singer. otherwise one has to find some kind of hack; here being good with magic helps, but it's more of a "research new spells" kind of good than a "blast people really hard" kind.

If I were to decide on a "the magic is dampened", I'd probably use a "magic is a finite resource, and it's being overexploited" argument. Which would be a cool idea for another campaign. But right now, I mostly want to explore a society with a high level of magitek. magic beind dampened, whatever the reason, would interfere with that.



What do you think of the "Dampen power" power that Seerow put forth? Assuming magic/psionic trasparency, a custom item of Dampen power is a trivial 2400gp per daily charge


what about something similar to the 5e half orc relentless endurance?

I honestly don't think you can prevent rocket tag short of vetoing things, I feel kinship to you wanting a item solution, because I dislike houserules that make the game "not DnD anymore"

Maybe permanent slotless items of share pain? they'd cost 24000gp, but in your world I imagine that is trivial, so let's pretend there are commonplace hardness X and HP Y psycristal of permanent share pain. Each such crystal by definition halves every damage the owner take, and this damage is reduced by X on the crystal itself.

At mid levels, people have 2 such crystal, so that's 75% reduction, 50% damage geos to the bigger crystal with higher hardness and 25% goes to the smaller crystal

at high levels, 3 crystals for 87.5% reduction

and so on, this all applies before DR/resistance that the character itself has
dampen spell has many drawbacks. for once, it only affects casters. and it's too harsh, turning a fireball into 10 damage. It also makes maximize spells something that every caster will want to grab.
I can consider a weakened version, but the effect as it is won't work.
I'm not familiar with psionics in general, I'd have to look into the other things.

[ciopo]

I'm not familiar with psionics in general, I'd have to look into the other things. Share pain is essentially an inverted Shield other, instead of redirecting to the caster 50% of the damage the target takes, 50% of the damage you take is redirected to the (willing) creature you are sharing pain with.

A popular combo is to share pain with the psion own psicrystal, which is pretty much the psionic familiar, with the caveat that it has a hardness rating.

I don't see it too much of a stretch in your world that items that function as share pain batteries are made, let's pretend they work like armor crystal augments? depending on the type of armor/level of the equipment a person can have from 0 (low level, robes) to N , and the hardness rating and HP pool of these crystals is varied too.

so a high level adventurer in magical robes might have only two crystals with a hardness of 50 and a HP pool of 150

in comes a mailman/ubercharger they do a single something for 700ish damage , one crystal takes 350-50 damage and breaks, the other crystal takes 175-50 damage and barely doesn't break. the character itself takes the remaing 175 damage reduced by whatever resistance/DR/other he has to mitigate it. next round he only has one crystal remaining so his "flat % damage reduction" dropped from a total of 75% to a total of 50%.
Have these crystals automatically repair in N time ( between encounters? between long rests?)

a high level adventurer in heavy power armor might instead have 4 crystals, not necessarily with the same hardness and crystal HP pool of those used in magical robes. this means that until the first crystal is depleted of HP for the day the person in power armor only takes 6,25% damage from all sources.

at low levels, perhabs only 1 crystal at most even on power armor, and the hardness is a 5 with 30 hp.

Note that this "solution" is especially punishing to "lots of damaging effects" instead of "one big nuke", because if the hardness of the crystals is never overcomed the crystals don't "turn off" for the day.

My grip with all this is that, this simply moves the optimization elsewhere, to "save or die" or ability damage, for example.

But if there is a gentleman agreement between the nations to stick to the "do HP damage" side of things, it could work?

[Yahzi Coyote]

I'm envisioning a sort of combat suite / padded armor giving % damage
Isn't that called "mooks?"

If the PCs can get in the same room with the BBEG, then the BBEG is gonna die. The trick is to put stuff in their way. My players managed to kill a state minister, but they had already won his trust and could arrange a meeting on fairly neutral ground.

It is true D&D focuses on offense at the expense of defense, but that's just the shape of the world. Have your major NPCs put lots of lower level guys between them. No more just waltzing into the throne room to have a chat with the king.

[Quertus]

So, let's look at this from the opposite direction: what would an optimized nation look like?

Hmmm… well, I think that it would actually encourage the standard 4-man party, almost. You'd have the Fighter dealing somewhere between "enough" and "infinite" damage with an übercharger or crit fisher build, and/or locking down the battlefield. You'd have the Wizard dealing "enough" damage (maybe) with a mailman build, or more likely throwing high-DC SoD/SoL(including BFC) effects. You'd have the Rogue dealing "enough" damage with buffed sneak attacks, or striping their opponents naked with optimized Hide and Sleight of Hand. And the Cleric… would have to try to be a Clericzilla while also being a buff bot and a Heal bot. Between them, they should be able to "enough" most any threat.

Resurrection would be freely available from high-level Arcane Spellcaster Tainted Sorcerer builds (or epic Eschew / Ignore Materials) that don't need diamonds any more, if some Wondrous Architecture, summoned creature, magical location, or other trick wasn't covering it. Death would be a revolving door; the only thing lost through conflicts would be items. So items would all be designed to only work for particular bloodlines, to keep them from falling into enemy hands. All magic item shops are state run, or at least state licensed, forced to comply with state guidelines for the non-reusability of magic items. The state would have researched Divinations that bypass the known defenses that the lesser nations use, to track down stolen items even if "warded" by lead or Mind Blank.

WBL would be a thing of the past - epic levels of magic items would simply be inherited once a relative refuses to be further resurrected, as only their bloodline can utilize their items. This makes things like arranged marriages, blood purity, etc be very important to an optimized society. Bastard sons who can "steal" a family's power are anathema, making that a real curse. Adventurers and wenching are no longer nigh synonymous.

Public Nudity would be common, especially in schools, as Rogues practice their trade. That said, true permanent theft would likely carry a state-enforced death penalty. So, even if Rogues could fake being the male descendent of Sir Awesome, the state says no.

The gods have likely either been overthrown, or "peacefully" replaced with ascended adventurers who are more in line with the state's outlook. Alive or not, worship of the old gods is forbidden. Adventuring families related to the gods are held in high esteem, although the gods themselves are little more than tools of the state. Clerics are less "holy men" and more "civil servants".

Defenses are… boring, I suppose. Things either die to "enough" damage, or the target laughs because of their immunity.

-----

So what, then, is the purpose of this thread? It sounds like it's, "my table's no good with the gentleman's agreement", followed by… what? Is it, "how can I wield the Ban hammer with surgical precision?" Or "what exists in RAW to counter this game state?" Or "what can I homebrew to counter this game state?" Or some other question entirely?

-----

Similarly, how do you want the game to feel / flow? The solutions range from "numbers are all that matter" (your original abrupt jaunt solution) to "lesser beings become even more irrelevant then they used to be" (DR-based solutions). And I don't remember any of the proposed solutions doing anything but encouraging the already supposedly superior caster strategy of using SoD effects. For the Fighter, the initial abrupt jaunt plan encouraged the generally superior size and reach, or the generally considered inferior use of ranged weapons.

So, what do you want fights to look like, and what tools do you want to use to achieve that?

[King of Nowhere]

-----

So what, then, is the purpose of this thread? It sounds like it's, "my table's no good with the gentleman's agreement", followed by… what? Is it, "how can I wield the Ban hammer with surgical precision?" Or "what exists in RAW to counter this game state?" Or "what can I homebrew to counter this game state?" Or some other question entirely?

-----


wasn't that clear enough? the purpose is to tweak the fight dinamics to make fights last longer without wielding the banhammer or resorting to overly complicated tricks of active defence.
wielding the ban hammer is what i did in the previous campaign, and i maintain that it was the best thing to do for that table, which included several players with no interest towards numerical optimization and thus needed to keep things clear and simple. i am already good at it, i don't need a thread for banning too-powerful offensive options.
but it's especially not a matter of gentlemen agreement. we do want to stretch our muscles. We do want to hit harder. We don't want to intentionally curtail our power anymore. but we'd also want it to not change the established combat dynamics. so, we want to hit harder, and we need things to be thougher. and this includes the pcs, because the npcs will also hit harder.




Similarly, how do you want the game to feel / flow? The solutions range from "numbers are all that matter" (your original abrupt jaunt solution) to "lesser beings become even more irrelevant then they used to be" (DR-based solutions). And I don't remember any of the proposed solutions doing anything but encouraging the already supposedly superior caster strategy of using SoD effects. For the Fighter, the initial abrupt jaunt plan encouraged the generally superior size and reach, or the generally considered inferior use of ranged weapons.

So, what do you want fights to look like, and what tools do you want to use to achieve that?
my original experience from the previous campaign is that SoD is much weaker than it was supposed to be. At least, it is when everyone (at least, everyone that matter) in the campaign world can afford the best level of saving throw boost. not to mention immunities. between death ward, mind blank, saving throws pumped to the stratosphere, and contingencies to protect from disjunction, it was very difficult to land a successful sod. direct damage at least provided some certainty, although the pcs and the really powerful bosses all managed to get resistance 30 to all elements; combined with the aforementioned saving throws, also nuking got quite hard (though it worked wonders against "mooks").
So, I'm not worried about encouraging sod. it's something you can defend from by increasing a certain number.
and what i want in terms of flow of combat is for passive defence (AC, saving throws) to stay important, and i want combat to last a handful of rounds. more than that it's hard to explain, but in my head it's clear.

[Tvtyrant]

I would probably create hit point thresholds, so a character can only take 25% of their HP as damage in a turn. They can also shrug off effects by sacrificing 25% of their total HP, so save or dies or SoS act more like Power Word Kill.

[HouseRules]

Hit Point Adjustment (Taken from 4E)

0) No Rolling Hit Points from Hit Dice
1) Minion gets 1/4x Hit Points, CR-3
2) Elite Minion gets 1/2x Hit Points, CR-1
3) Regular Monsters, PC, and NPC get 1x Hit Points, CR+1
4) Elite Monsters, and "Named NPC" get 2x Hit Points, CR+3
5) Solo Monsters get 4x Hit Points, CR+5

d4) 1, 2, 4, 8, 16
d6) 1 even 2 odd, 3, 6, 12, 24
d8) 2, 4, 8, 16, 32
d10) 2 even 3 odd, 5, 10, 20, 40
d12) 3, 6, 12, 24, 48

Effect: Similar to 4E; Combat last 2x longer against regular monsters. Elite Minion tend to have 1 HP per 2 HD less than "regular monsters before the house rules". Hit Points from Constitution is not multiplied.

Death Effects Nerf: Death Effects convert to caster level (d12) damage.

[Bucky]

You want longer encounters without changing the mechanics.

Have you tried running larger encounters? Having lots of enemies spread out over a large area makes it inconvenient for your blasters to do all the work; At the very least, your lower-op characters will have something to contribute because your blasters won't have time to engage everyone before they act.

Have you tried running tactically complex encounters? If, for example, the enemies are maneuvering to deny LOE to the most dangerous party members, you have an extra encounter phase to flush them out.

[Quertus]

wasn't that clear enough? the purpose is to tweak the fight dinamics to make fights last longer without wielding the banhammer or resorting to overly complicated tricks of active defence.
wielding the ban hammer is what i did in the previous campaign, and i maintain that it was the best thing to do for that table, which included several players with no interest towards numerical optimization and thus needed to keep things clear and simple. i am already good at it, i don't need a thread for banning too-powerful offensive options.
but it's especially not a matter of gentlemen agreement. we do want to stretch our muscles. We do want to hit harder. We don't want to intentionally curtail our power anymore. but we'd also want it to not change the established combat dynamics. so, we want to hit harder, and we need things to be thougher. and this includes the pcs, because the npcs will also hit harder.


my original experience from the previous campaign is that SoD is much weaker than it was supposed to be. At least, it is when everyone (at least, everyone that matter) in the campaign world can afford the best level of saving throw boost. not to mention immunities. between death ward, mind blank, saving throws pumped to the stratosphere, and contingencies to protect from disjunction, it was very difficult to land a successful sod. direct damage at least provided some certainty, although the pcs and the really powerful bosses all managed to get resistance 30 to all elements; combined with the aforementioned saving throws, also nuking got quite hard (though it worked wonders against "mooks").
So, I'm not worried about encouraging sod. it's something you can defend from by increasing a certain number.
and what i want in terms of flow of combat is for passive defence (AC, saving throws) to stay important, and i want combat to last a handful of rounds. more than that it's hard to explain, but in my head it's clear.

Huh. So you did go the "all the important people are immune" path. And here I figured you'd consider that solution too boring to implement.

Well, I certainly don't disagree with that, or with your findings that SoD effects aren't as powerful as is generally expoused on the Playground. Still, against your "all but exclusively humanoid" opponents, especially with a good Rogue in the party, they aren't exactly useless, either.

Even after clarification, I'm still not sure where you stand on raw vs homebrew solutions. Or on whether you care if the dynamic is changed; ie, if ranged suddenly becomes optimal, or healing becomes useless, do you care?

… Honestly, I'd ask the players. I would ask what they all want to build, and then ask how they would like their characters to survive for 2+ rounds against similar builds. Let them look at the problem in light of their own builds, and several similar builds you provide, and ask how they'd like to avoid rocket tag.

I really couldn't say what I'd do, as most of my characters have more defense than offense. But, if I were in your group? And I wasn't playing infinite defense? I guess… I would vote for "rocket tag" and "death is a revolving door"? But, if the other players don't like that style? Hmmm… IIRC, 2e had an item that just straight-up doubled your HP… I guess I would look for similar RAW items, or suggest something similar as homebrew? Regenerating versions of the Construct that constantly uses Shield Other on its maker, maybe? (Shield Guardian?) An epic dwoemer that spans the country if not the world, that reduces all damage dealt to "Citizens" logarithmically? (So, for simple math, take the square root of the damage dealt… or use a program to calculate some better formula on the fly)?

Although it wouldn't work without homebrew, I actually do like the feel of giving everyone "flash step".

Or… maybe have a list of defenses, and each character gets one free, as an "alternate class feature" that's traded for three invisible space after the class name. So, everyone can have flash step, or divine shield golems, or power armor, or shadow clones, or free self-resurrection, or deathless, or Vow of Immunity, or…

Why can't anyone get 2(+)? Because they're ACFs, and you already traded the invisible space after your class name. (Actually, you probably want to make them scaling racial features of the "citizen" variants of races, so that someone doesn't dip multiple classes, so prestige classes don't cause issues, etc)

EDIT:
Hit Point Adjustment (Taken from 4E)

0) No Rolling Hit Points from Hit Dice
1) Minion gets 1/4x Hit Points, CR-3
2) Elite Minion gets 1/2x Hit Points, CR-1
3) Regular Monsters, PC, and NPC get 1x Hit Points, CR+1
4) Elite Monsters, and "Named NPC" get 2x Hit Points, CR+3
5) Solo Monsters get 4x Hit Points, CR+5

d4) 1, 2, 4, 8, 16
d6) 1 even 2 odd, 3, 6, 12, 24
d8) 2, 4, 8, 16, 32
d10) 2 even 3 odd, 5, 10, 20, 40
d12) 3, 6, 12, 24, 48

Effect: Similar to 4E; Combat last 2x longer against regular monsters. Elite Minion tend to have 1 HP per 2 HD less than "regular monsters before the house rules". Hit Points from Constitution is not multiplied.

Death Effects Nerf: Death Effects convert to caster level (d12) damage.

At the very least, PCs need to be bumped to the "x4" rung.

[malloc]

Once, I ran a campaign about hunting witches. I used a unique HP mechanic--"lives". Each witch had 3-5 "lives", that were exhausted when a player made a single attack that exceeded a damage threshold. Early levels, it was fairly small--either about a max damage roll or a crit for a minimally optimized (or unoptimized) character. It scaled with my players' power, of course--we had one player who was playing a charger, and did the whole shock trooper shtick. He was able to function at full capacity without me having to penalize the fact that he was swinging for 400 damage a charge while other players were in the 40-50 range because it only removed one life per hit.

Now, that may not be the exact way you want to handle it, but consider breaking bosses into chunks--I suggest 3-5, maybe 2 chunks for mini-bosses or "veteran" opponents--where all damage past that amount stops. Let's do an example:

Grok, goblin shaman, is a boss with 16 hp. We decide to give him 4 chunks, lives, wounds, whatever. Each of those is a single 4 HP chunk (1/4 the total).

Player 1 hits Grok for 4 damage. That is sufficient to remove one chunk. Grok now has 12 HP.
Player 2 hits Grok for 16 damage. That is sufficient to remove one chunk, because damage doesn't spill over. Grok now has 8 HP.
Player 1 hits Grok for 3 damage. That is insufficient to remove a chunk, but still does damage. Grok now has 5 HP--one chunk with 1 hp, one chunk with 4 hp. The next hit will deal 1 damage, removing the 3rd of 4 chunks, leaving Grok with 4 HP (in my original system, this would have done nothing, as it did not meet the damage threshold, and Grok would still have 2 chunks, but for a game that wasn't explicitly focused around this mechanic, maybe better to allow partial damage).

It's not RAW, it's not within the system, and it's completely and utterly homebrew. But it lets you as the DM pace fights really precisely, without the players feeling like they're doing less damage or being less effective.

You might institute a rule that if a player does something really creative, it can remove a chunk--or allow them to bypass the one chunk threshold.

You might create scenery in the dungeon that breaks as the boss loses chunks. I had candles go out, columns break, parts of a ritual circle fill with blood, etc to show players the effective remaining HP of the witches, but that was a known mechanic--YMMV if you try to both demonstrate the boss's remaining stamina AND hide the system specifics from the players.

Your players, of course, don't need this type of protection. If you're concerned about the monsters rocket tagging the players, just...reduce the monster damage. That's something you can very easily control.

[Quertus]

.Your players, of course, don't need this type of protection. If you're concerned about the monsters rocket tagging the players, just...reduce the monster damage. That's something you can very easily control.

I mean, I am personally a fan of "the PCs are cool", and having them be among the only ones in the world to actually utilize such optimal builds, but… what about groups who want their PCs to be special because of the decisions that they make, not because they are a cut above everyone else? (I think that the OP falls into that group.)

So, Bob the Butcher of Baskerville could also slay a Dragon in one hit, just like the PCs. So… how do the PCs survive an encounter with B³ for more than a single round?

Also, to my sadness, the OP apparently doesn't have PCs fight "monsters", so much as PC-esque NPCs. So it's like asking, "how do I make high-powered PvP not just rocket tag?".

[HouseRules]

At the very least, PCs need to be bumped to the "x4" rung.

I'm not sure of that; but surely, the scaling I've suggested is only a suggestion, and implementation could be at different rungs.
My suggestion scaled up hit points to the same level as 4E; I also suggest scale the xp upwards as well.
Maybe the scaling by multiplier is too large in comparison to the xp scaling.

Increase more for the players would make more emphasis and importance on buff and debuff.

A simple 20x scaling of hit points could make the old "one figure" represents a score of men like Chainmail.

Edit:
Increase Healing Rate also increase combat length
cure light wounds - caster level d4 to a max of 5d4
cure moderate wounds - caster level d6 to a max of 10d6
cure serious wounds - caster level d8 to a max of 15d8
cure critical wounds - caster level d10 to a max of 20d10

[ngilop]

just give everybody quintuple the HP.

for me, every other suggestion so far is more complicated tat just taking the regular HP total and multiplying it by 5 ( or whatever other number you want)

BANG, now combat last as much longer as you want it to, wholly dependent on whatever multiplier you use.

[King of Nowhere]

My ideas are cristallyzing...
1) everyone get full hit dice. it sucks to have a single dice determine if you're tanky or squishy anyway
2) there will be a sort of energy shield (probably in the vest slot, that is rarely used) that most people will have, at least in its basic form. It will provide
- % reduction of incoming damage. the basic version that everyone has will be like 20%, while more expensive versions will be more effective. still uncertain if this applies before or after other damage reductions. This lets me scale damage reduction more as damage output scales more than hp. it also will give me an excellent excuse to tweak values without retconning anything.
- increased reduction if the damage taken is above a certain amount. this will provide greater protection from single effects, but it will also help balance the players; those who optimize less will be less hampered by the shields.
- one reroll of a saving throw every encounter. or perhaps one use of "remove any debuff". anyway, something to also protect from non-hp attacks.

as this reduces the lethality both of phisical and magical hp assault, and also helps against crowd control and debuffing. The one thing I see that won't be covered is a melee trip-lockdown build. I will see if something needs to be done about it, but probably not; the previous campaign featured a colossal dragon with a trip build, and the party was able to get through it simply by teleporting in melee, as everyone has some uses of swift teleportations.
But I think I covered all the essentials, while leaving me enough wiggle room to change things as needed without rretconning.



Huh. So you did go the "all the important people are immune" path. And here I figured you'd consider that solution too boring to implement.


well, wasn't really a path we choose. when i started the old campaign i still wasn't mechanically proficient enough to know well where i wanted to go.
it started with the barbarian reading that protection from evil suppressed compulsions, and asking me a permanent item of it. and me just using the rules in the dmg for custom items and making one pretty cheap, because it was just a 1st level spell. and then since there was this cheap item available, and there were plenty of low level npc martials with an abysmal will save, it made sense that they'd get one...
you know, the kind of mild optimization that springs at a table when the players gradually discover that they can do new things.




Even after clarification, I'm still not sure where you stand on raw vs homebrew solutions. Or on whether you care if the dynamic is changed; ie, if ranged suddenly becomes optimal, or healing becomes useless, do you care?


as i want to create a world with more advanced magic (but without epic magic, although some of it can maybe be used as rituals), and industrial tech mixing with magic, of course I am going to homebrew a lot.
I mean, already the previous campaign featured a golem with a mounted machine gun with an enhancement bonus that used a grease effect to keep from jamming and a cold effect to keep from overheating, and it fired alchemically incendiary rounds. and it was just a prototype, and super expensive, but surely by now they made more of those things. and that golem with its crazy mix of magic and technology could also be a poster of what I want to get with this new world.

at the same time, magic also has some limitations that it doesn't have by the books.
one of them is that you cannot permanently create something from nothing without paying a cost. it's something like a law of termodynamics. the book says you can cast a wall of iron and the iron is perfectly nonmagical and you can sell it and break the economy, but in my world that wall would gradually dissolve, because what magic creates is only temporary. unless you sacrificed xp to make it permanent, or burned diamonds, or did some other sacrifice. And you cannot erase those costs, except perhaps getting someone else to pay for it; the laws of the universe simply demand that there is a cost. For the same reason, after you get a healing spell you will need to eat a lot in the following days, and eating nothing but conjured food for prolonged times is dangerous.
another hard law is that you cannot mass produce magic. you can't have a machine printing spell scrolls, for example. the only way to make magic items faster is to get more wizards to forge them. so, even though they have industry, and they have a lot of casters because they can afford to send to school everyone showing a scrap of talent, still they have limits in how much stuff they can actually do.
and there are a few more.

all in all, I'm using the basic mechanics of the game, but I am homebrewing mostly anything about the setting.

As for dynamics, well, some will probably change. In the previous campaign the rogue had troubles hittting high AC and rarely had the chance for a full attack. Here there will be revolvers available with armor penetration factor, and I think a rogue full sneak attacking with revolvers could be much more powerful.
I also assume that dispelling will be more important, both because there will be more items, and because i will be allowing chain dispel magic (which was forbidden in the previous campaign).
As long as people remain relatively difficult to kill despite all the new offensive toys, and as long as the game does not become 5d chess.


… Honestly, I'd ask the players. I would ask what they all want to build, and then ask how they would like their characters to survive for 2+ rounds against similar builds. Let them look at the problem in light of their own builds, and several similar builds you provide, and ask how they'd like to avoid rocket tag.


actually, a few hours ago one of my players messaged me that he saw the thread and he is enthusiastic about the idea. he basically said "I am happy that i can go full power without breaking the campaing world".

I mean, I am personally a fan of "the PCs are cool", and having them be among the only ones in the world to actually utilize such optimal builds, but… what about groups who want their PCs to be special because of the decisions that they make, not because they are a cut above everyone else? (I think that the OP falls into that group.)

well, most npc, even at high level, are not optimized to pc level. pc also tend to acquire unique dm-given abilities during the campaign, which also put them above others of similar level.
but still, the same rules apply to pc and npc. i also feel that being special because you are a pc is much less cool than being special because you did stuff.


So, Bob the Butcher of Baskerville could also slay a Dragon in one hit, just like the PCs. So… how do the PCs survive an encounter with B³ for more than a single round?

Also, to my sadness, the OP apparently doesn't have PCs fight "monsters", so much as PC-esque NPCs. So it's like asking, "how do I make high-powered PvP not just rocket tag?".
yes, you get that part right. those who say "just send in more enemies" apparently do not.

[Bucky]

2) there will be a sort of energy shield (probably in the vest slot, that is rarely used) that most people will have, at least in its basic form. It will provide
- % reduction of incoming damage. the basic version that everyone has will be like 20%, while more expensive versions will be more effective. still uncertain if this applies before or after other damage reductions. This lets me scale damage reduction more as damage output scales more than hp. it also will give me an excellent excuse to tweak values without retconning anything.
- increased reduction if the damage taken is above a certain amount. this will provide greater protection from single effects, but it will also help balance the players; those who optimize less will be less hampered by the shields.


How about "50% of all damage taken, except for the first 20 each round"?

[Asmotherion]

-Introduce Spells of a higher degree of optimisation; encourage your players to do the same; Nothing delays Combat more than two enemies both under the effects of various Wards and Abjurations, Such as Starmantle and Ruin Delver's Fortune.

-Use homerules such as Max HP per HD and Armor and Shields applying their Hardness as DR to the wearer.

-Extra HP Bars; One could represent endurance, and the second Vitality for example.

[ciopo]

A curiosity King of Nowhere, now that you're allowing high OP except for infinite loops ( did I understand that right? ) , what's are the item-based counters to optimized shivering touch?

[Asmotherion]

A curiosity King of Nowhere, now that you're allowing high OP except for infinite loops ( did I understand that right? ) , what's are the item-based counters to optimized shivering touch?

An item that prevents ability damage/drain such as a continuous Death ward item for example.

[ciopo]

An item that prevents ability damage/drain such as a continuous Death ward item for example.
Ehr, death ward does nothing against shivering touch (or ability damage in general unless the source is specifically tagged as negative energy).
Shivering touch is tagged as Necromancy, sure, but it is not tagged as negative energy, and it is pretty clear the fluff of it ( and crunch, given the subtype) is because of cold.

It wouldn't prevent a touch of idiocy, for example, or any of the various poisons/diseases, not even the ghoul bite disease, which is kind of silly but it is what it is. Ability damage =/= negative energy.

A wraith constitution drain would be covered, I think, but one might argue that as written it is not actually said to be negative energy ( I would obviously rule that yes, it is prevented by death ward, but I can totally see how it can be read differently, and I'd make my ruling based on it having a fort save)

[Asmotherion]

Ehr, death ward does nothing against shivering touch (or ability damage in general unless the source is specifically tagged as negative energy).
Shivering touch is tagged as Necromancy, sure, but it is not tagged as negative energy, and it is pretty clear the fluff of it ( and crunch, given the subtype) is because of cold.

It wouldn't prevent a touch of idiocy, for example, or any of the various poisons/diseases, not even the ghoul bite disease, which is kind of silly but it is what it is. Ability damage =/= negative energy.

I thought there was a clause for necromancy spells that cause ability damage to be negative energy.

No? Then Kiss of the Vampire/ Veil of Undeath + Life ward.

[ciopo]

I thought there was a clause for necromancy spells that cause ability damage to be negative energy.

No? Then Kiss of the Vampire/ Veil of Undeath + Life ward.

I know that the most common counters to it are either going undead or going cold, I am curious if in his campaign world everybody and their dogs are either/or (and I am not familiar enough with optimizing shivering touch to know for sure that there aren't counter specialization to no-save bypass undead traits or the cold subtype, I have never played with unbanned Shivering touch after all, I find it likely that if a character concept is "I want to make the most ever of applying shivering touch", making sure you can "nu uh" the immunities to it is a essential step on the optimizing pipeline. We are in a world of mailmen after all)

A continous kiss of the vampire is 360k by the way, there are cheaper item options if I recall correctly.

I don't remember reading that clause, I find it a reasonable inference, but I'd like actual text of that case

[King of Nowhere]

A curiosity King of Nowhere, now that you're allowing high OP except for infinite loops ( did I understand that right? ) , what's are the item-based counters to optimized shivering touch?

no, shivering touch is still off the table.
some abominations should have never been allowed to crawl out of their dark crevices

[Asmotherion]

I know that the most common counters to it are either going undead or going cold, I am curious if in his campaign world everybody and their dogs are either/or (and I am not familiar enough with optimizing shivering touch to know for sure that there aren't counter specialization to no-save bypass undead traits or the cold subtype, I have never played with unbanned Shivering touch after all, I find it likely that if a character concept is "I want to make the most ever of applying shivering touch", making sure you can "nu uh" the immunities to it is a essential step on the optimizing pipeline. We are in a world of mailmen after all)

A continous kiss of the vampire is 360k by the way, there are cheaper item options if I recall correctly.

I don't remember reading that clause, I find it a reasonable inference, but I'd like actual text of that case

Nah, I double checked, there is no clause, was my imagination.

That said, going undead is the cheapest way by becoming a Necropolitan. I was just attempting a solution that would not require a permanent change to your PC. There's also Ghostform but it's practically the same price. Sheltered Vitality is the cheapest item to make/buy to my knowlage, though it lacks other useful undead imunities.

To my knowlage the only thing that bypasses undead regular imunities to ability damage are positoxins, special poisons that work on undead. To bypass undead imunities they are listed as alchemical substances instead of poisons. So I doupt there's a feat around it, such as Searing Spell for Fire Damage for example.


no, shivering touch is still off the table.
some abominations should have never been allowed to crawl out of their dark crevices

Shivering Touch is less of an OP spell in the sence that it can't be bloked, and more so in the sence it's unbalanced. It's too strong when it comes online in compareson to what you have available.

[Gruftzwerg]

A curiosity King of Nowhere, now that you're allowing high OP except for infinite loops ( did I understand that right? ) , what's are the item-based counters to optimized shivering touch?

Depends a bit on which way the build was optimized, but there are always some options:


- high touch AC (Dex, Dodge, Deflect bonus...)
- stacking misschances (Displacement, Ethereal, Cover, Mirror Image)
- higher mobility and range
- Clones
- Grease (Wand) (against non flying enemies/builds)
- Globe of Invulnerability, Lesser (Wand) (if optimized for ranged shivering touch)
- spellresistance
...