Are these too unoptimized against a decent party?

[danielxcutter]

I have this idea for an OotS-style comic on the backburner, and for some of the "NPCs" I have a Khaasta Blackguard (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GOPOoPpX0Yi8uOMNLt2ljbRImqwAHDy4yilGjAeknWE/edit?usp=sharing) and a Khaasta Tactician (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v1F9ZDtLUf5m-twKQsPx10-zZjxwnEGodpati2Kn8ag/edit?usp=sharing). Note that these are very WIP; I recently decided to bump them both up a level, I don't know how to allocate their skill ranks yet, and I'm really not sure about the maneuvers the tactician would have.

The idea is that the blackguard was a leader of a khaasta warband and the tactician is her second-in-command, and there would be a decent number of other khaastas with character levels as well in the fight. I was thinking of a couple of duskblades(khaastas have a small Int bonus and great physical stats) and fighter/barbarians, maybe one or two fighter/rangers as well.

But then I thought, "hey, wouldn't spells totally clown this fight?"

Of course, there are limits; the casters of the "PC" party are mostly multiclassed so there wouldn't be that many high-level spells they could use(I was thinking maybe ECL 14th for them, so at most 6th-level spells with the Sorcerer maybe having a 7th-level spell known), they wouldn't have the action economy as slanted in their favor(there would be seven PCs but they'd only slightly outnumber the khaastas at best, if not outnumbered themselves for once), and the PCs are only moderately optimized and not going full Pun-Pun(low end is sword-and-board Ironsoul Forgemaster, high end is RKV/Church Inquisitor - withoutDivine Metamagic, before you ask).

But the khaastas won't have any full casters themselves and I'm only giving them NPC budgets(as it wouldn't make much sense for them to have PC wealth). And while they do have high stats, as I use a modified version of 32-point buy that's 1-to-1 for stats, that's the same for the PCs.

I am aware that in a story, I can control the "rolls" to make a better story, and the narrative intention was this to be only moderately difficult, but I still wonder if the blackguard is seriously underoptimized. Obviously her damage isn't great, which is why the first few rounds will be hitting and running with smites, and Blackguard without ex-paladin levels kinda sucks, but still. The idea is for the warband to retreat before getting wiped out and the blackguard to appear later with more levels and gear, but I'm wondering if even that would require me to completely fiat the entire fight.

What do you guys think? And do you have suggestions without totally ripping out most of the ideas? I want to preserve the core builds of the two I have linked at least.

[ciopo]

Both links point to the tactician

I'm not familiar with tome of battle, I don't know at the top of my mind what the maneuvers/stances do, so I'll ask you questions

how will they get out of an entangle/web/equivalent, do they have some form of "freedom of movement"/blinking available?
how will they deal with invisible enemies? or flying invisible enemies? I see a potion of flying, but if invisibile?

these are two big "shut down" things I can think of, being unfamiliar with the tome and thinkign of those characters as melee dudes

maybe give to them some ways to produce silence / AMF, they should have some tactics of their own to shut down casters, since they reached those levels.

is their WBL as 15th levels or as 12th level?

a permanent rune of silence costs something like 12k gp, ( from the runecrafter PrC) , maybe they bought

[danielxcutter]

Both links point to the tactician

First of all, thanks for pointing that out; it's been fixed.


I'm not familiar with tome of battle, I don't know at the top of my mind what the maneuvers/stances do, so I'll ask you questions

Fair.


how will they get out of an entangle/web/equivalent, do they have some form of "freedom of movement"/blinking available?

Hmm, that's a good point. Kerez has FoM prepared, but it's only one spell and CL 9 is vulnerable to dispelling.


how will they deal with invisible enemies? or flying invisible enemies? I see a potion of flying, but if invisibile?

Also a good point - the tactician has that potion, yes, and I've used the Draconomicon rules to give the blackguard a fiendish wyvern companion, but invisibility is something I haven't thought about enough. Especially since one of the PCs is going to be an Arcane Trickster/Spellwarp Sniper...


these are two big "shut down" things I can think of, being unfamiliar with the tome and thinkign of those characters as melee dudes

Well most of all of them are going to have longbows and the blackguard has Blessed Aim prepared, but primarily melee yes.


maybe give to them some ways to produce silence / AMF, they should have some tactics of their own to shut down casters, since they reached those levels.

I dunno, AMFs do shut off magic items... the blackguard wouldn't want that, or the Silence, but that might be put on the ground while she flies outside the range?


is their WBL as 15th levels or as 12th level?

Appropriate NPC wealth for their CR; I've spent most of that done for the blackguard and tactician though.


a permanent rune of silence costs something like 12k gp, ( from the runecrafter PrC) , maybe they bought

I dunno, that's kinda expensive for NPCs... or at least, they don't have enough surplus funds to buy that currently. Though considering the blackguard at minimum is planned to escape, maybe that would be decent treasure for them.

[ciopo]

Kerez herself could have silence prepared, which seems relatively reasonable to me since it's a good counter to casters in general, hardly anyone takes silent metamagic.

Without knowing the general modus operandi of your PCs casters it's difficult to give feedback, the way I wreak ( and have been wrecked ) melee encounters in general is entangle/web, these are the kind of effect that if you have an appropriate counter they are no issue, but if you don't they are encounter-ending, my druid for example now *always* have heart of water on himself, ever since that one time the whole PC party got webbed and almost TPK against one wizard... the wizard died in *one* melee attack once we got out of those webs, but that was 3 rounds and 3 fireball-on-whole-party later, at level 6ish.

So, yeah, they reached CR 15, they should have experienced these "oh **** I'm going to die" moments and prepared accordingly to *not* have those happen to them again.

Anklet of translocation are a reasonable thing for all of them to have at these levels, maybe?

[danielxcutter]

Kerez herself could have silence prepared, which seems relatively reasonable to me since it's a good counter to casters in general, hardly anyone takes silent metamagic.

What the hell are you talking about? Silence isn't a blackguard spell.


Without knowing the general modus operandi of your PCs casters it's difficult to give feedback, the way I wreak ( and have been wrecked ) melee encounters in general is entangle/web, these are the kind of effect that if you have an appropriate counter they are no issue, but if you don't they are encounter-ending, my druid for example now *always* have heart of water on himself, ever since that one time the whole PC party got webbed and almost TPK against one wizard... the wizard died in *one* melee attack once we got out of those webs, but that was 3 rounds and 3 fireball-on-whole-party later, at level 6ish.

So, yeah, they reached CR 15, they should have experienced these "oh **** I'm going to die" moments and prepared accordingly to *not* have those happen to them again.

Hmm... well that's what the Freedom of Movement Kerez prepared is for. Maybe one of the X/day items for some of the others; I'll have to check the MIC again.


Anklet of translocation are a reasonable thing for all of them to have at these levels, maybe?

Er, not for Kerez at least. Not unless she wants to teleport herself off Kurik over 30 feet off the ground. Maybe for the tactician.

[ciopo]

What the hell are you talking about? Silence isn't a blackguard spell.



Hmm... well that's what the Freedom of Movement Kerez prepared is for. Maybe one of the X/day items for some of the others; I'll have to check the MIC again.



Er, not for Kerez at least. Not unless she wants to teleport herself off Kurik over 30 feet off the ground. Maybe for the tactician.

I had a mindfart at the blackguard spell list, my bad

I was thinking of the squad with the anklet, then I got thinking, blackguard can cast darkness, perhabs you could theme around that? with either shadowdancers with their shadow step thing, or those other "teleport through shadows" stuff that's here and there ( google tells me of shadow jaunt/stride)

[Quertus]

ever since that one time the whole PC party got webbed and almost TPK against one wizard... the wizard died in *one* melee attack once we got out of those webs, but that was 3 rounds and 3 fireball-on-whole-party later, at level 6ish.

Fire doesn't burn webs any more?

Even if the opposing Wizard was *also* 6th level, that's still an average of 63 damage - I'm not sure I've built many level 6 characters who could have survived that.

[danielxcutter]

I had a mindfart at the blackguard spell list, my bad

Honestly, I practically wish they had Silence. Aside from maybe the Investure line, their list mostly sucks.


I was thinking of the squad with the anklet, then I got thinking, blackguard can cast darkness, perhabs you could theme around that? with either shadowdancers with their shadow step thing, or those other "teleport through shadows" stuff that's here and there ( google tells me of shadow jaunt/stride)

First of all, Shadowdancer is absolute crap; I'd rather give some of them swordsage levels than that atrocity. Second, Darkness is kind of weird and I'm not planning on using it like that, but I do have Kerez preparing Veil of Shadow, which gives a 20% miss chance unless someone either has True Seeing(far from impossible at this level, yes, but not super common yet either) or tags her with a [Light] spell(which is arguably even less likely, considering how niche they are).

Giving one to the tactician or maybe the duskblades could work. Not the ragers though; can't activate most items while raging IIRC.


Fire doesn't burn webs any more?

Even if the opposing Wizard was *also* 6th level, that's still an average of 63 damage - I'm not sure I've built many level 6 characters who could have survived that.

Yyyyyyeah, I'm wondering if that was just a crap DM; even if the rules worked like that a DM who shoves you in a near inescapable death trap made a huge mistake at best and a red flag at worst.

[ciopo]

Fire doesn't burn webs any more?

Even if the opposing Wizard was *also* 6th level, that's still an average of 63 damage - I'm not sure I've built many level 6 characters who could have survived that.

we were in a location that was fire aligned, so I had prepared accordingly and my lonely 3rd level slot at the time was used for mass fire resistance, the only casualty was the kidnapped NPC we were there to rescue, ironically. (Also our table goes with first five level are maximized HD, I think I had 59 or so HP as druid with 14 CON and two half orc substitution level for d10, it was months ago, I don't remember how much HP I had but more than 50 for sure)

I know that shadowdancer is meh, I'm not actually suggesting shadowdancers, but that you perhabs can theme them on around something that's a reasonable explanation on how they get to poke around people at their level without full caster support in their merry band of reptilians.

It was a published adventure, please don't namecall my GM :(

[danielxcutter]

we were in a location that was fire aligned, so I had prepared accordingly and my lonely 3rd level slot at the time was used for mass fire resistance, the only casualty was the kidnapped NPC we were there to rescue, ironically. (Also our table goes with first five level are maximized HD, I think I had 59 or so HP as druid with 14 CON and two half orc substitution level for d10, it was months ago, I don't remember how much HP I had but more than 50 for sure)

Okay, but that still kinda sucks. And like as Quertus said, that really should have burned the Web anyways.


I know that shadowdancer is meh, I'm not actually suggesting shadowdancers, but that you perhabs can theme them on around something that's a reasonable explanation on how they get to poke around people at their level without full caster support in their merry band of reptilians.

I actually plan for them to be raiders who were hired to raid and harass places a bit under their weight group, so they're more than a bit cocky and the PCs are a considerably bigger challenge than they've usually faced. Plus they could brute-force a good number of the casters they did face; the setting is essentially only about 10 years after an epic Elder Evil campaign.


It was a published adventure, please don't namecall my GM :(

Which one was it?

[ciopo]

Okay, but that still kinda sucks. And like as Quertus said, that really should have burned the Web anyways.



I actually plan for them to be raiders who were hired to raid and harass places a bit under their weight group, so they're more than a bit cocky and the PCs are a considerably bigger challenge than they've usually faced. Plus they could brute-force a good number of the casters they did face; the setting is essentially only about 10 years after an epic Elder Evil campaign.



Which one was it?

The campaign is War of the burning sky, I don't know the module name but we were doing stuff in a steamy enviroment below a city called Seaquen, it was memorable to me that we were webbed in a tunnel, I may misremember the damage we took, could have been ice storm followed by fireball now that I think about it some more, I am sure there has been at least one fireball but it could have been what cleared the web now that I think some more, I have a short attention span and bad memory in general

[danielxcutter]

Yeah, that makes more sense.

[Quertus]

First things first,


It was a published adventure, please don't namecall my GM :(

I didn't. Oh, I doubtless have a reputation for not mincing my words, but I wasn't attacking your GM, just trying to understand your story.


we were in a location that was fire aligned, so I had prepared accordingly and my lonely 3rd level slot at the time was used for mass fire resistance, the only casualty was the kidnapped NPC we were there to rescue, ironically. (Also our table goes with first five level are maximized HD, I think I had 59 or so HP as druid with 14 CON and two half orc substitution level for d10, it was months ago, I don't remember how much HP I had but more than 50 for sure).


The campaign is War of the burning sky, I don't know the module name but we were doing stuff in a steamy enviroment below a city called Seaquen, it was memorable to me that we were webbed in a tunnel, I may misremember the damage we took, could have been ice storm followed by fireball now that I think about it some more, I am sure there has been at least one fireball but it could have been what cleared the web now that I think some more, I have a short attention span and bad memory in general

Max HP for 5 levels, defended against fire, bad memory and some of that might have been cold? That answers my questions.

You know, I would really love to have an archive of all the house rules that people have posted on the Playground - I think that it would be a good tool for groups to use to keep things fresh.