Balancing Combat for Feature-Starved Character

[smasher0404]

If you formerly played a Tibbet Dragonfire Adept named Blackpaw, don't read this!

I'm currently in an odd situation where I might be running a one-shot featuring a character that for all intents and purposes doesn't have many actual class features. We've agreed on a general premise: the player character in question lost access to the vast majority of their class features (his powers were due to multiverse shenanigans and an ill-advised pact were being fueled by a being that has rescinded them) but does have a pile of hit dice (his 8 class levels) and the vampire template (due to the nature of his death). The one-shot is to provide the opportunity to bring the character back to the party with his free will and Dragonfire Adept powers.

The issue becomes that the game is designed around having either class features (even as lackluster as Fighter bonus feats) which he lacks. I can't throw very low-power monsters, because his chassis still provide some advantage (more HP, skill ranks, and moderate amounts of BAB), but I also can't throw level-appropriate monsters because he doesn't have the class features to address those threats. Do you guys have any advice on how to address that imbalance?

[Ashiel]

If you formerly played a Tibbet Dragonfire Adept named Blackpaw, don't read this!

I'm currently in an odd situation where I might be running a one-shot featuring a character that for all intents and purposes doesn't have many actual class features. We've agreed on a general premise: the player character in question lost access to the vast majority of their class features (his powers were due to multiverse shenanigans and an ill-advised pact were being fueled by a being that has rescinded them) but does have a pile of hit dice (his 8 class levels) and the vampire template (due to the nature of his death). The one-shot is to provide the opportunity to bring the character back to the party with his free will and Dragonfire Adept powers.

The issue becomes that the game is designed around having either class features (even as lackluster as Fighter bonus feats) which he lacks. I can't throw very low-power monsters, because his chassis still provide some advantage (more HP, skill ranks, and moderate amounts of BAB), but I also can't throw level-appropriate monsters because he doesn't have the class features to address those threats. Do you guys have any advice on how to address that imbalance?

Yeah. Treat his featureless d8s as NPC levels for the purposes of calculating CR, then add his vampire template (CR or LA, depending on Pathfinder or 3.x), then use the final value as his character level.

For example, NPC levels are worth 1/3 CR (PF) or 1/2 CR (3.x) baseline, then +1 CR / 2 levels. That means 8d8 featureless HD would be about CR 4-5. Add his CR (Pathfinder) adjustment or LA (3.x) to this to discern his final level.

Note that if you're running a solo adventure for him, reduce the XP budget of enemies that will be faced by 75% if you want to scale encounters for him being alone.

EDIT: For extra clarification, let's say you're using Pathfinder. His effective CR would be 4, then +2 from Vampire for 6th level. We decide we want to include a CR 6 encounter (2,400 XP) for him. We'd use 600 XP worth of enemies (so basically no enemies higher than CR 2). A CR 9 encounter (6,400 XP) would be composed of 1,600 XP of enemies for him after the conversion (equivalent to a normal CR 5 encounter). That said, vampires are stupidly stacked, so he'll probably roflstomp over most enemies anyway.

[smasher0404]

Yeah. Treat his featureless d8s as NPC levels for the purposes of calculating CR, then add his vampire template (CR or LA, depending on Pathfinder or 3.x), then use the final value as his character level.

For example, NPC levels are worth 1/3 CR (PF) or 1/2 CR (3.x) baseline, then +1 CR / 2 levels. That means 8d8 featureless HD would be about CR 4-5. Add his CR (Pathfinder) adjustment or LA (3.x) to this to discern his final level.

Note that if you're running a solo adventure for him, reduce the XP budget of enemies that will be faced by 75% if you want to scale encounters for him being alone.

EDIT: For extra clarification, let's say you're using Pathfinder. His effective CR would be 4, then +2 from Vampire for 6th level. We decide we want to include a CR 6 encounter (2,400 XP) for him. We'd use 600 XP worth of enemies (so basically no enemies higher than CR 2). A CR 9 encounter (6,400 XP) would be composed of 1,600 XP of enemies for him after the conversion (equivalent to a normal CR 5 encounter). That said, vampires are stupidly stacked, so he'll probably roflstomp over most enemies anyway.

Wouldn't he be weaker than an NPC of equivalent level though? NPCs would still have relevant combat feats every 3 levels, while the character in question's feats are in many cases useless (due to being taken for a Dragonfire Adept who currently can't use his breath weapon). I know I'm not going to factor in the full LA for the vampire template no matter how I run the calculations (its a 3.5 game btw), because 1) the vampire template is already probably underpowered for its LA and 2)the character in question won't get the full benefits of the template during said one-shot (minion vampires for example would take longer than the time-frame for the adventure).

[Ashiel]

Wouldn't he be weaker than an NPC of equivalent level though? NPCs would still have relevant combat feats every 3 levels, while the character in question's feats are in many cases useless (due to being taken for a Dragonfire Adept who currently can't use his breath weapon). I know I'm not going to factor in the full LA for the vampire template no matter how I run the calculations (its a 3.5 game btw), because 1) the vampire template is already probably underpowered for its LA and 2)the character in question won't get the full benefits of the template during said one-shot (minion vampires for example would take longer than the time-frame for the adventure).

Not weak enough to matter. It'd be about the same as blowing your feats on things like Alertness or Skill Focus (Diplomacy) in an adventure with a lot of mindless undead. Vampires are traditionally pretty vicious (damage reduction, fast healing, blood drain boosting your HP, energy drain means your damage doesn't even matter if you can just hit them repeatedly, high mobility, overpowered dominate, etc.). If it's a 3.5 game, that means the feats are an even lower % of the character's overall power.

Even if it's a 3.5 game, you can still use the Pathfinder encounter building system, which makes the adventure scaling easy. Just decide what encounter level you want relative to the level of your PC(s) (such as APL-1, APL, APL+1, etc.) and find the CR that matches that (so if his effective level is 6th, and you were making an APL+1 encounter, you'd look at the CR-XP CHART (http://legacy.aonprd.com/coreRulebook/gamemastering.html) here. That tells you both the XP budget for a encounter as well as how much enemies of each CR are worth (just like in 3.x, 2 enemies of the same CR equal their CR+2, and so on).

Since he's solo, we'd reduce the XP budget for any encounters by 75%. I will now demonstrate that you can still use 3.5 monsters and award 3.5 XP awards as follows (however if you want to see a more elaborate explanation of Pathfinder XP vs 3.5 XP and why PF experience handling is just straight up better, see this post here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25567578&postcount=82) and here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25568146&postcount=84)).

So let's assume we're treating him as 6th level. We'll go ahead and figure out our XP budgets for APL-1, APL+0, APL+1, APL+2, and APL+3 (major boss fight).
CR 5 = 1,600 x 0.25 = 400 XP (CR 1)
CR 6 = 2,400 x 0.25 = 600 XP (CR 2)
CR 7 = 3,200 x 0.25 = 800 XP (CR 3)
CR 8 = 4,800 x 0.25 = 1,200 XP (CR 4)
CR 9 = 6,400 x 0.25 = 1,600 XP (CR 5)

We could use a regular CR 1 encounter for easy, a CR 2 encounter for average, a CR 3 encounter for challenging, a CR 4 encounter for difficult, and CR 5 encounter for epic.

[Eurus]

I feel like the fact that he's solo is probably a bigger hit to his power than the fact that he's lost a bunch of class features. Action economy cuts both ways, and CR tends to be kinda iffy at accounting for that. He's a lot more likely to be outnumbered, even with the XP budget cut down.

[Ashiel]

I feel like the fact that he's solo is probably a bigger hit to his power than the fact that he's lost a bunch of class features. Action economy cuts both ways, and CR tends to be kinda iffy at accounting for that. He's a lot more likely to be outnumbered, even with the XP budget cut down.

If the guidelines are followed, being outnumbered will be of little consequence. It very well would be a great way of making the fights more entertaining but not likely to be overpowering.

If you're outnumbered but the total CR of the encounter is only that of even a CR 5 encounter (the hardest suggested), the more foes that you face the weaker those foes would be. For example, instead of a single CR 5, you'd have a pair of CR 3s, or a trio of CR 2s, or four CR 1s, or 6 CR 1/2s, and so forth. It's very likely that such encounters could be very wonderful for delivering an interesting and cinematic bit of fun, but against an 8HD vampire, even relatively geared against fighting it (such as being a group of paladins or clerics or all armed with splash weapons like alchemist fire or holy water) it's unlikely that he'd be in great danger.

The 3.x/PF vampire templates are no joke. It's easily one of the most grossly overpowered monsters in the game. It has an overpowered (read: un-dispellable) dominate which lasts for days at a time. It has fast healing. It has massive stat buffs and armor. Significant racials to skills. It has damage reduction. It can feed upon living creatures to gain temporary hit points (you can literally just blood drain a rat before a fight to boost yourself up). It has natural attacks and inflicts 2 negative levels on a hit (inflicting huge penalties and outright killing enemies who have as many negative levels as HD) that also grant 5 temporary Hp per negative level inflicted. They can also just casually summon a bunch of fodder and turn into mist that's hard to hurt (and simply fast heal up). It also gains resistances, constant spider climb and a bunch of bonus feats (Alertness, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Improved Initiative, and Lightning Reflexes, which all stack with the racial modifiers to skills and stat bonuses they get). Truly, the vampire template alone easily provides bonuses that are probably just straight up better than 8 levels of PC class.

For example, how many classes do you know of that over 8 levels give...

Attacks that inflict an extra +10 damage (each negative level gives -5 hp), applies a stacking -2 penalty to all d20 checks, kills damn near anything regardless of it's hp after a few hits, while also giving you a 10 temporary Hp buffer each time you slap 'em.
Resistace 10 to 2 elements.
Immunity to critical hits.
DR 10/silver and magic
Gaseous form at will.
Spider climb constantly.
Inflicting 1d4 Con damage on any grapple and gain temporary Hp (temp. hp from different sources stack, so if you succeed at a grapple, you can blood drain for 1d4, 5 tmp.hp, and automatically hit with a slam for 2 negative levels and 10 tmp.hp).
Fast healing 5 (roughly equivalent to having cure light wounds auto-cast on you each round).
Alternate form between several animal forms that grant super mobility (all their natural attacks also inflict the same negative levels and such).
An overpowered dominate person at will that lasts for 1 day / HD and cannot be dispelled.
Can summon a bunch of fodder and minions, two options of which are a ton of swarms.
Str +6, Dex +4, Int +2, Wis +2, Cha +4
+6 natural armor
+8 Bluff, Hide, Listen, Move Silently, Search, Sense Motive, and Spot checks
Alertness, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Improved Initiative, and Lightning Reflexes (which makes the Listen and Spot a net +11, a net +10 Hide and Move Silently, a net +10 Bluff, a net +9 Search, a net +9 Sense Motive, a net AC bonus +9 counting the natural armor, Dex mod, and dodge, a net+2 opportunity attacks, a net +6 initiative total, and an net +4 to Reflex saves, and a net +3 to hit and damage in melee, and a net +2 to hit with ranged weapons.)

This isn't even counting spawn stuff. Now put this 8HD monstrosity up against enemies CR 5 and lower? Yeah, I really, really don't think that there's a great reason to be fearful that they will not be able to handle themselves.