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Jastermereel
2008-08-20, 10:31 AM
In a few months, my group (a rather oversized group) is going to be doing a monstrous evil themed Hack and Slash and Bash and you-get-the-idea mini-campaign using 3.5 rules (more or less). Having just found out that I'll be DMing instead of our usual DM, I'm struggling to put together some solid opposition and thought I'd ask around here for ideas.

Before everyone jumps in with Solars and other great good forces, I'm trying to tone down the magic in this mini-campaign. With 7-10 players, the goal will be to have a fast paced fun romp and our group's magic users are typically pretty slow (and their results can be tricky to map out and keep track of).

As a result, while everyone will be very powerful lvl20 builds using various races and templates from Savage Species and filling in the rest of the levels with classes of their choosing, I'll be asking players to A. not use primarily magic classes (Wizard bad, Cleric ok, Barbarian just fine) or primarily magic races (Djinni bad, Ogre Mage tolerable, Fire Giant just fine, B. avoid abilities that give us more significant player controlled entities to keep track of (Druid's won't get their uber-pets to play with, Treants can't summon more trees, etc.).

However, that means that it doesn't seem quite right to send them up against some foes that are primarily magical like Angels and Archons. I'll probably throw them into a Hobbiton equivalent to get used to their new stomping shoes (our normal campaign's weak wizard wants to use a Hill Giant Dire Wereboar) but after thrashing the wee folk for a while (and before they meet their end after a few long sessions), what are some non-evil mid-range and high-level challenges for a greatly over-sized group of Lvl20 Monsters?

Most books are availible (an upside to a large group), I just can't seem to find a lot of great foes for this match.

I figured if I could find the answer anywhere, it would be here, so thank you all in advance (and thank you for finding your way through that mess of parenthetical notes!).

Tsotha-lanti
2008-08-20, 11:01 AM
How is the Cleric better than the Wizard for a "toned-down magic" game? It's just as much a primary caster, only with better hit points and combat ability that, with buffs, easily surpasses the melee classes.

Use NPCs and NPCs with templates. Good dragons, too.

ghost_warlock
2008-08-20, 11:47 AM
I have a very similar experience to the one you're facing. My brother and his buddies decided to play a 'monster' game like yours, but with ECL 10 characters. Somehow, I got roped into DMing what could amount to the first session (their first game was devoted just to smashing a couple monstrous centipedes for playtesting).

After DMing the ECL 10 monster game for my brother and his band of hooligans, I'd advise you that this route might not be the way to what could be considered a "fun game" unless you seriously tone down the monsters/keep them much lower CR than the party.

I tried running the monster party through Dragondown Grotto (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=products/dndacc/953777400), which is meant for a party of four 10th-level characters. The monster party had six ECL 10 characters and they had a very hard time with the first encounter in the dungeon, even after I'd toned it down (cut the encounter down from 8 CR7 foes to 6). In the end, they only won because I was running a DMPC 'just in case' who sent three of the foes running away with fear.

Monster PCs have significantly lower HD/hp than standard characters and the lack of magic will severly limit their crowd control capabilities.

Some ideas/pointers:

Avoid opponents with save-or-lose abilities such as medusas, bodaks, a slew of creatures at high level - such as any fiend that would have/use blasphemy as a spell-like ability. Monster PCs will have much lower base saves than standard PCs.
Avoid "brute" opponents. The PCs will have few hit points than standard characters and will only be able to stand up to 3-5 hits from heavy-hitter monsters. This goes double for when these monsters happen to get lucky and crit.
Make sure they have ample healing available, whether through a wand of cure X wounds or a PC with some kind of spammable healing ability such as binders or a PC with a healing supernatural/spell-like ability.
Traps can actually be dangerous. Monster PCs don't always have access to Trapfinding, have lower Disable checks even if they do have Trapfinding, have lower saving throws, and fewer hit points. A 10d6-damage trap may actually count for a good chunk of health against a monster PC.
Playing a monster PC game is like playing 1st-3rd level PCs constantly, you have to play with the kid gloves on. Sure, monster characters may seem powerful but they tend to be very fragile.
Consider using Traits/Flaws. Characters can marginalize the drawbacks and gain a LOT of benefit from the extra feats since they'll likely have fewer HD/levels than other characters.
Consider using pseudo-gestalt (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm) characters. That is, perhaps allow the characters to gestalt a class alongside their racial Hit Dice, this should help make up for the sometimes poor hp, Saves, Skill points, and other weakness of monster Hit Dice and level adjustments. This will also give them more versatility so their tactics don't end up constantly sounding like "crap, I moved so I only get a single attack/can't make a full attack this round." Note that this will seriously up the ante of the game and the characters may very well be as viable as/actually more powerful than standard PCs. The lack of magical crowd control/healing, though, will severly limit what they can accomplish even with gestalt characters, though.

Jastermereel
2008-08-20, 02:18 PM
How is the Cleric better than the Wizard for a "toned-down magic" game? It's just as much a primary caster, only with better hit points and combat ability that, with buffs, easily surpasses the melee classes.

Use NPCs and NPCs with templates. Good dragons, too.

Fair point about the Cleric. He was a bad example to use on my part. Still, the general attitude for the mini-campaign is to be monstrously overpowered in ways that the normal campaign's magically overpowered players wouldn't otherwise get to do. Anyone trying to use a Bugbear 4 / Wizard (or cleric) 16 is doing it wrong.




After DMing the ECL 10 monster game for my brother and his band of hooligans, I'd advise you that this route might not be the way to what could be considered a "fun game" unless you seriously tone down the monsters/keep them much lower CR than the party.

It'll have a slow build, but I figure 7-10 level 20 players should be able to take on most major threats (though perhaps not all at the same time).


Avoid opponents with save-or-lose abilities such as medusas, bodaks, a slew of creatures at high level - such as any fiend that would have/use blasphemy as a spell-like ability. Monster PCs will have much lower base saves than standard PCs.

We may have some of those in the player's ranks, but ideally none in the opposition. In my last experiment with DMing, no foe I had took cleave as idealy, none were supposed to simply carve through the players (partially since it took place several weeks prior to the rest of the ongoing campaign, darn time-space continuity). While these characters will die in this mini-campaign, it should be a fun death, not as a sad SoD.


Avoid "brute" opponents. The PCs will have few hit points than standard characters and will only be able to stand up to 3-5 hits from heavy-hitter monsters. This goes double for when these monsters happen to get lucky and crit.

I'm already planning on avoiding heavy magic foes. I don't think I can avoid "brute" opponents too.


Playing a monster PC game is like playing 1st-3rd level PCs constantly, you have to play with the kid gloves on. Sure, monster characters may seem powerful but they tend to be very fragile.

Most of the test builds I was toying with (before the excel file corrupted itself) had between 200-300 HP and respectable (though not impossible) AC. Also, the players will start off in a kid-gloves land, a field of low-level foes who should be near instant-kills, so as to get used to their forms before the difficulty cranks up over time. It'll hopefully be fun and but also provide some challenges (which is where I'm getting stuck at the moment). Also, as it'll be over multiple sessions and possibly (thanks to our resident Leroy Jenkins wannabe) a resurrection in there.


Consider using Traits/Flaws. Characters can marginalize the drawbacks and gain a LOT of benefit from the extra feats since they'll likely have fewer HD/levels than other characters.

If players are too feat-thin, I'd probably be willing to just give them an extra feat rather than have them spend an extra Vecna-knows how many minutes figuring out how the Trait/Flaw/Feat deal works.


Consider using pseudo-gestalt (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm) characters.

Back when it was our normal DM running this future mini-campaign, we decided that Gestalt, while attractive in that way, might result in creations that exceeded our definition of overpowered. I'm ok with a Half-Red-Dragon Treant with 5 class levels, but one with 20 levels of barbarian filling in all those missing HD, BAB, and Skills just seemed wrong.

I appreciate the advice on balance, and have a lot of it rumbling in my head already, but my biggest problem at the moment is just populating the opposition, the forces of good.

bosssmiley
2008-08-21, 04:21 AM
<trim>

...what are some non-evil mid-range and high-level challenges for a greatly over-sized group of Lvl20 Monsters?

Most books are available (an upside to a large group), I just can't seem to find a lot of great foes for this match.

20th level? Ugh! You masochist. :smallamused:

PC-race Good and Neutral characters. Heck! Use some of the player's old PCs if they'll let you.
Non-evil giants (Stone, Cloud, Storm, etc.), either with class levels, or as horde monsters
Non-evil dragons
Classed and templated versions of creatures (Axiomatic, Celestial, Half-Celestial, etc.)
Awakened legendary animals with class levels (IIRC Dungeon did an awakened Cachelot Druid in one adventure)
Eladrins, Guardinals, Archons, etc.
Any evil race you fancy (Evil is known for turning on itself after all)

Dr Bwaa
2008-08-21, 07:39 AM
I agree with mr. smiley, especially on his last point and what that means. The nice thing about playing an evil campaign is that you can throw everything in any book at the players. The good guys want to destroy evil, the neutral guys, well, they don't want to be stomped, at any rate, and the evil guys want to take over the world themselves, not let someone else do it!

Prometheus
2008-08-21, 01:44 PM
If you've got room for humor in the campaign, I suggest common peasants can rapidly gain PC levels when they become "heroes", "adventurers", or when "God chooses someone noble to lead". Maybe the simple act of standing in the big, bad, monsters way can be enough to elevate their status. Make it as scathing a parody of the "everyday hero" or the typical D&D adventurer as possible. If you make it sudden enough, you will make your evil party vigilante destroyers of anything good, and maybe even afraid of random acts of kindness and the like, just as the lowliest zombie can deliver a surprise in a horror campaign.

dspeyer
2008-08-22, 09:14 AM
One of the great strengths of goodness is the ability of very large groups of good people to work together toward a common cause without backstabbing eachother (or constantly worrying about backstabbing). With that in mind, a good antagonist might be a paladin order. Don't limit it to the paladin class, though, fill it with rangers and clerics and rogues, with artificers and experts back home running support and wandering bards providing intelligence. Make them trusted enough that any commoner who sights an evil monter runs to the nearest order member to call for help. Remember that while LE and CE tend to fight eachother, LG and CG tend to grumble a lot but work together anyway.

Another strength of goodness is that it allows apolitical scholars and craftsmen to work together in peace. Consider giving one of your civilizations (probably dwarves, maybe in conjunction with gnomes) steam engines and gunpowder. Keep going up the steampunk (and a little magitech) tree until the power levels balance.