Dealing with powerful support characters

[quiet1mi]

Lately I have been co-gming my friends game and we noticed, despite the time he put into his encounters to make them challenging, they were not... We concluded that my level 13 beguiler was to blame.

A typical encounter went like this:
* I haste the Party, I Slow the enemy, I ready an action to activate Benign Transposition from my wand.

If there was a tough bad guy (who had really high wills save, protection from alignment) with a high ac and a large reserve of hitpoints, I would lesser shadow conjuration some ravens and have them: flank and aid another. The hasted Fighter with an +4-12 to hit kinda brought down anything with hitpoints... tough bad guys also had the habit of being isolated due to a legion of sentinels being centered right above them.

Mindless undead, no matter how many were just defeated with a silent image of a wall... Non-mindless hordes were brought down with variations of whelm and legion of sentinels.

Enemy Casters were brought down with a feeblemind, readied dispel magic or a silence.

Animals (who typically have high saves with a large amount of HD) were brought down with ray of stupidity...

All in all I was a support character, I could not finish the encounter by myself... However The rest of the party could. Unfortunately, tensions of a difficult encounter were drained when the party was hasted, the fighter has greater invisibility and silence centered on him, and the enemy was split up, their support was neutralized with silence, feeblemind, legion of sentinels. The same tricks did not work on me thanks to being undetectable and taking that reserve feat that lets you short range teleport.

The GM tried the whole detection thing but unfortunately, with the aid of magic items and darkstalker, made myself undetectable. Even Truesight could not stop me as I just hid in plain sight with improved diversion. With magic items my hide and move silently were in the +30-40 range making it nigh impossible for anything to beat my roll without being specialized in detecting people.

Both my Gm and I banged our collective heads against the wall to figure out how to handle a party with a powerful support character.

[Chilingsworth]

If it takes a detection-specialised character to counter your character, then use some. Also, blindsight should work against you just fine.

[Tyndmyr]

Volume. Add difficulty to the encounters by adding additional opponents.

Now, this doesn't solve everything, but it's one possible technique. Ray of Stupidity is awesome, but single target, and even with slow/haste, volume can make a fight more difficult.

[Greenish]

Also, blindsight should work against you just fine.

It doesn't. Darkstalker.

However, Mindsight would work. Toss in something with long-range telepathy.

[Choco]

Wouldn't Tremorsense work too, as long as everyone is on the ground anyway? You would still have concealment, but the enemy would be aware of exactly where you are. Mix that with some AoE's, and have fun.

[Greenish]

Wouldn't Tremorsense work too, as long as everyone is on the ground anyway?

No, that's what Darkstalker is for.

It's a feat from LoM that allows you to hide from blindsense, blindsight, scent, and tremorsense.

[Choco]

Well in that case, Detect Magic. Yes, the cantrip. YOU may be hidden in almost every way imaginable, but your items still light up like a Christmas tree.

[Gullintanni]

Well in that case, Detect Magic. Yes, the cantrip. YOU may be hidden in almost every way imaginable, but your items still light up like a Christmas tree.

I'm not sure Detect Magic would let you pinpoint your target...would Arcane Sight work?

[Choco]

I'm not sure Detect Magic would let you pinpoint your target...would Arcane Sight work?

I would say all those magic items clustered together are like a "HEY, I'M HERE!" beacon, though he would still have total concealment. That goes back to what I said earlier though, once you got a general idea of where he is, just nuke the whole area with various AoE's, INCLUDING Black Tentacles

[Diarmuid]

It also sounds like you're going through a large amount of your resources in each fight. Are you guys able to rest between every encounter?

I find that's the most common problem with games where people find they are mowing through encounters. If you can alpha strike and deplete all of your replenishable resources (HP, Spells, x/day abilities, etc) then yes you're going to mow through things intended to be difficult.

Forced rationing of resources tends to make for much more interesting encounters. Adding in terrain modifiers, traps, and other encounter changing effects other than simply adding more baddies can change dynamics greatly as well.

Also animals, mindless undead, etc by nature are not very tactical. Intelligent enemies should be using countering tactics rather than simply grouping up for your AE's.

[Choco]

It also sounds like you're going through a large amount of your resources in each fight. Are you guys able to rest between every encounter?

I find that's the most common problem with games where people find they are mowing through encounters. If you can alpha strike and deplete all of your replenishable resources (HP, Spells, x/day abilities, etc) then yes you're going to mow through things intended to be difficult.

Forced rationing of resources tends to make for much more interesting encounters. Adding in terrain modifiers, traps, and other encounter changing effects other than simply adding more baddies can change dynamics greatly as well.

+1 to that too. If the enemies can keep you guys from sleeping for 3 days straight and attack you every 5 hours, eventually the "problem spells" will either be depleted, or be rationed for emergencies only.

[Gullintanni]

+1 to that too. If the enemies can keep you guys from sleeping for 3 days straight and attack you every 5 hours, eventually the "problem spells" will either be depleted, or be rationed for emergencies only.

This is where I would go. Keep pressure up, strike with constructs, undead etc. and be tactical with your spellcasters. Controlling action economy is the real threat in combat. If the beguiler has to ready counterspells every round, then he won't be buffing/debuffing, so keep the spell-caster threat ever present.

Give casters swift/quick/immediate action spells. Readied counterspells or not, you can't counter two spells per round.

[Diarmuid]

Exactly, if you've got rounds to throw around haste/slow/wall/summons, what the heck is the enemy doing that whole time?

[gbprime]

About the easiest thing the DM can do is to break out the dispel magics at that point. Even if they don't hit you the support caster, they can certainly wreak havoc with the party members they can detect by knocking down buffs and shutting off magic items for the duration of the fight.

A mid level warlock or two works fine for this, using things like See the Unseen and Voracious Dispelling.

For higher level shutdowns, there's things like forcecage, damaging cloud spells, and just plain old shunting the bad guys ethereal for a while to let your buffs run down.

[Callista]

Well, in a world with powerful magic, it's not realistic if the enemy doesn't have powerful magic of their own. So any enemy who knows about you is going to have a couple of Haste spells prepared specifically to counterspell your Haste and Slow (or just go for the Dispel method). Or else they'll be Silencing you and forcing you to use up higher-level spell slots, attempting to grapple, stealing your spell components, etc.

Does the other DM post around here? Picking up some anti-spellcaster strategies is vital when you're fighting a spellcaster; and since your party has a spellcaster, any enemy your DM is playing smart (or even semi-smart) will know enough to plan to counter spellcasters. Minor encounters with random bandits or wild animals, no; but smart opponents--definitely. And you're high-level enough that you should be attracting powerful enemies by now.

(Re. skeletons and a Silent Image wall: They are smart enough to attempt to go around it, but if the wall is impassable and they have been ordered to attack, they will attempt to bash through it or climb it, breaking the illusion.)

Talk to the beguiler as well. If the character is really powerful compared to the rest of the party, maybe something can be done to offset the oversight in planning that led to the imbalance. For example, adding a template would give him a LA and put his spellcasting behind the party level; or he could start crafting some items and handing them out to the party. But look at the other characters, too: Can something be done to give them a higher power level? If so, then you can let the beguiler stay at this power level and just bring the others up to match him. Don't do anything to nerf the PC unless the player agrees, though. Find a compromise. You don't want to ruin his fun just because the party didn't plan their characters together.

[mucat]

Of course, your DM will want more than one ace in the hole; it would be boring to make the encounters challenging by making them all identically engineered to counter your beguiler.

So the idea of ramping up the numbers is a good one for some encounters. Dispel and its more powerful cousins (up to and including anti-magic zones) will help with others. Simply making the enemies flat-out more powerful, so your characters will need every edge the beguiler can give, is a third one.

You mentioned that your beguiler can usually shut down enemy spellcasters in a round or two. So another possibility is for the DM to include a "sacrificial" spellcaster or two, who he knows will end up feebleminded, silenced, etc...but while the beguiler is busy doing that, the other enemies are fighting your party without interference. The DM should make these spellcasters powerful enough that the beguiler can't afford not to shut them down, but assume that he will succeed, and plan the encounter around what the rest of the enemies will be doing while the casters keep the beguiler busy.

Another possibility is to give the enemies powerful support casters of their own. Here the idea isn't just for the casters to keep the beguiler busy, but to match him trick for trick. The bad guys get buffed as strongly as the party, engage in battlefield control, throw their own Silence, Feeblemind, and illusion spells. Here, if one side manages to ambush the other, a huge advantage goes to the side who knew the fight was coming (and thus had their short-term buffs already in place, and a chance to preemptively strike the enemy spellcasters.) So a lot of the challenge will be in endeavoring to be the side that gets the jump on the others.

[Merellis]

Make an enemy Beguiler and watch the hilarity as the party sees just how horrifying it is to be on the other side.

[nedz]

Another idea:

Kobalds

Lots of lowish level sorcerors.
Keep them theamatic though - with identical spell lists - or it will be a nightmare to run.

Add in some battle field traps to.

Give them all debuffs and dispel perhaps ?

Did I mention traps ?

Give them all magic missile instead ?

I had a great time recently with lots of Half Dragon/Mink/Sorceror/Enlighted Fist mooks, backed up with just one high level Sorceror and a Favoured Soul.

The party took two attempts, and each combat lasted ~30 rounds
Mind you the single sorceror had done for them a few times, in previous encounters, all by himself, an unintended recurring villian.

[quiet1mi]

Detect Magic does not work thanks to the level 1 spell "Magic Aura". It removes the magical auras on my items.

We already tried another “beguiler” that was more powerful as an opponent. Instead of a beguiler it was a "gnomekiller" Shadowcraft mage, he had more tricks than me, and he was a higher level. We managed to fight him to a draw thanks to him believing that the druid in the group was my orange tabby cat familiar. To avoid the legion of sentinels he was blinking from place to place while I was dimensional jaunting. Both of our spell slots were being taken up by dispelling those sentinels or illusions of them. The fight was really cool, even for everyone else because the fight mirrored the Sasuke and Itachi fight. Only when it looked like all hope was lost, my "familiar" casted hypothermia for terrible terrible damage. Throught the entire fight, things were tense.

Here is my character sheet if that helps:

Spoiler

Show

Anon Amos
Beguiler
Grey Elf
Beguiler 13

Hp: 48
Initiative:
Speed: 30 feet (Dark: 40 feet)

06 Strength
18 Dexterity
10 Constitution
23 Intelligence
10 Wisdom
08 Charisma

+6/+1 Base Attack Bonus
+4 Fortitude Save
+8 Reflex Save
+8 Will Save

Feats:
Improved Diversion
Armored Mage
Spell Focus (Enchantment)
Silent Spell
Greater Spell Focus (Enchantment)
Dark Stalker
Still Spell
Dimensional Jaunt

Skill Points: 192
Bluff,Concentration, Decipher Script, Diplomacy, Disable Device, Disguise, Forgery, Gather Information, Hide, Jump, Knowledge (arcane), Listen, Move Silently, Search, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Spell Craft, Spot, Tumble, Use Magic Device.

Stealth: (Dark Anon)
46 Hide
42 Move Silently
Perception:
02 Spot
18 LIsten
05 Sense Motive

Senses:
Superior Low Light Vision
Dark Vision 60 feet
Blind Sight 30 feet

Full Skills:
15 Bluff
22 Disable Device
38 Hide
18 Listen
36 Move Silently
22 Search
15 Use Magic Device (+4 Scroll)

Half-Skills:
13 Concentration
11 Diplomacy
07 Gather Information
15 Forgery
14 Spell Craft
15 Sleight of Hand*

Synergy Skills:
11 Decipher Script
11 Knowledge (Arcane)
05 Sense Motive
10 Tumble*

Class Features:
Armored Mage
Trapfinding
Cloaked Casting (+1DC, +2 v. SR)
Surprise Casting (Move Action)
Advance Learning (1st) Mystic Aura
Advance Learning (3rd) Ray of Stupidity
Advance Learning (5th) Shadow Conjuration, Lesser

Skill Tricks:
2nd: False Theurgy
4th: Social Recovery
6th: Group Fake-Out
8th: Timely Misdirection
10th: Swift Concentration

Race/Template:
Hide in Plain Sight
Cold Resistance 10

Items:
04000 +2 Headband of Intelligence
35050 Elven Chain: Shadow, Improved. Silent Improved, Death ward
00900 Hand of the Mage
02500 Tunic of Steady Casting
00800 Armband of elusive action
05000 Belt of Hidden Pouches
10800 Continuous, Collar of Umbral Metamorph
02200 Ring of feather fall
04000 Ring of Counter spells
02000 Handy Haversack
02500 Bag of Holding I
07250 Bottle of Air
06000 Gwaeron's Boots
09000 Blindfold of True Darkness
03300 Adamantine Dagger
02150 Mitherail Shield, Deathward
Help Tools:
00820 Eternal Wand (Benign Transposition)
00750 Wand of lesser Vigor
00750 Wand of lesser Vigor

Basic Items: 2000 Left
000 Bedroll
000 Flint and Steel
000 Hempen Rope (50ft)
000 Sunrods (2)
000 Trail Rations (10 Days)
000 Waterskin

Life Sense, Mind Sight, Joy Sight, and a really high spot and listen check are the only ways I know that I could be detected. There are only so many opponents that we can face with access to those.

More enemy mages with access to dispel magic, or hasted sword swingers to catch up sounds good. I thought about it some more and came up for why we win fights. The Action economy! If there were 3 enemy mages assigned to the beguiler, the enemy would have one mage to buff, one mage to debuff, and one mage to dispel my buffs. If I silence one (and only one because they are far away from each other) then another one dispel magics it. The only thing to take into account is feeblmind. It is a fairly high level spell that can't be spammed unnecessarily. Would 3 level 8 Sorcerers or level 7 Wizards do it?

[Merellis]

6 strength...

Use Strength Poison?

[faceroll]

Sudden metmagic feats, evocations, potions of buffing, non-associated caster levels and cramped hallways are very optimal for NPCs. A giant evoker with potions sounds like a joke for a PC, but for an NPC, it can murderrape a party, especially with minions.

In a cramped hallway, 3 level 5 blasters with sudden maximized fireballs (or acid or whatever) will do 45 points of damage to everyone in the party if they make all their saves.

Legion of sentinels shouldn't be that great, as all your NPCs (and characters for that matter) should have max ranks in tumble and/or a ToB type to allow them to get through threatened areas (white raven tactics comes to mind).

I think a big issue is your "co-DMing". The Beguiler is basically canned Batman, and Batman is only powerful if you know your enemies' tricks. You're kind of cheating.

The only spell you've got that can affect intelligent undead, I believe, other than legion of sentinels, will be slow, and undead have great will saves. Vampire caster giants should clean house, and for a low CR, too.

[Runestar]

Congratulations - you have just discovered the wonders of battlefield control and how they make wizards "GOD".

[Kurald Galain]

How about mindless undead accompanied by a necromancer that orders them to walk through that illusory wall?

Also, dispel. Lots of it.

[LordBlades]

In general, there are 2 ways of dealing with Battlefield control:

-being immune to it (at will teleport vs forcecage, true sight vs. illusions, immunity to poison vs cloudkill, etc)

-employ some battlefield control of your own. Depending on what the rest of the party is playing, this might force the beguiler to go on the defensive in order to get his companions out of the tight spot, netting several rounds in which he's not casting offensive spells.

[JeminiZero]

Life Sense, Mind Sight, Joy Sight, and a really high spot and listen check are the only ways I know that I could be detected. There are only so many opponents that we can face with access to those.

There's also Touchsight, which at level 3, is handily available to everyone who is willing to burn a litle gold on Psionic Tattoos.

[quiet1mi]

My co-Gming is just limited to keeping the machine going by helping keep track of initiative, looking up spell effects, stuff like that. I am actually not privy to any information that my character does not find out on his own. I attribute my ability to predict things to countless hours surfing Tv Tropes.

It would have to be multiple necromancers as a single one could be knocked out of the fight too easily... spellcasters also have a tough time getting ranks in tumble.

Being immune helps but is not the complete answer. You still have to deal with legion of sentinels, slow and shadow conjuration: summon monster III aiding another.

My character has a habit of being 20 to 30 feet away from the party for that exact reason. I suppose it would make an interesting encounter to be constantly bombarded by fireballs to keep the beguiler away from the encounter and deny him short range spells. I will mention it to my the GM. As for strength poison, the delivery would be difficult...

Touch sight sounds like a reasonable substitute for short range detection. I could see psionic tattoos being used by some of the bad guys.

[Ernir]

40-something HP at ECL 13? Con 10? +4 Fort?

How on earth do you not get splatted by AoE effects? Being undetectable and untargetable is one thing, but never ending up in a spell area?

[peacenlove]

Beguiler 13

Hp: 48

+4 Fortitude Save
+8 Reflex Save

Psion/wilder with touch sight and some decent AoE blasting powers, or a shadowcaster with greater life fades / greater flesh fails [Strength damage is an autokill for your character] (and undispellable buffs to boot) will hurt you a lot.
Also far sight mystery to pinpoint you with a quickened line of shadows [insert fort or reflex save medium/long range mystery] will challenge you somewhat.
Wizard / Mindbender with Mindsight and glitterdust will help the enemy creatures to pinpoint you much easier (-40 to hide).
Heck any AoE direct damage spell/mystery/power is a serious threat to your character.
In fact i would advise you to get a +6 constitution item as soon as possible. While your character is well built offensively his low hit points are dangerous to those who can really challenge you.

[quiet1mi]

40-something HP at ECL 13? Con 10? +4 Fort?

How on earth do you not get splatted by AoE effects? Being undetectable and untargetable is one thing, but never ending up in a spell area?

Being [far] away from the party while being nigh-undetectable, typically on the other side of the map. Dimensional Jaunt is a surprisingly huge boon as it allows me to teleport, Spider climb keeps allows me to be anywhere on a battlefield. Swift Ethereal also helps with avoiding things. Otherwise I use a combination of displacement, and greater mirror image. (1 in 8 to hit the right target, 1 in 2 to hit the target)

The ~40 hp keeps me on edge and on alert to everything someone with more Hp would miss. But +6 amulet of constitution sounds like a good thing to pick up in the future as it will double my HP.

Touchsight, Mindsight can pinpoint me, Life sense can “find” me… is there anything that I am missing? Glitterdust, IIRC does not actually negate invisibility just provides a hide penalty equal to the bonus you would get for standing still while invisible. I still have the +31 to hide to deal with if I remain stationary, and +11 if I move. Granted a +11 is much more manageable then a +71 or +51 to hide.

I can definitely see an encounter with the above as the BBEG(Gm) with reports of powerful search and destroy teams being killed off and “impenetrable” fortress getting blown up may include a mercenary to observe, report and finally confront the beguiler.

So to re-cap things, we have a trio of mages to buff, debuff and dispel and a mindsight wizard, touch sight individual, or a shadowcaster specifically looking for the beguiler.

[Skorj]

It sounds like you're using stealth and choosing your range to gain a big advantage, which is completely legitimate, and counterable by normal, real-world tactics. Also note that a party with a good support caster should blow through mooks without a risk of defeat - the mook encounters are only there to deplete resources.

Your opponents know that you're there, because someone unaccounted for is casting spells. There are many tricks for hiding in a high-magic world, from your approach to the many polymorph-related ones. Level-appropriate intelligent enemies should have a plan for that. If the party is the only side with tactics and magic use, of course it will be easy, but there are plenty of options.

• If the enemy chooses the location of the fight, he should be able to hit everywhere you might be hiding with AE effects (not limited to cast spells).
• If you are in any way detectable when casting a spell (are you silent? hidden from psionics? detect magic running while you're casting?), then a scattering of well-spread low level mooks acting as detectors will reveal your square, or close to it (and this would be a common tactic in any high-magic world).
• When is the last time you were ambushed by an opponent with good divinition?
• Are your pure-melee opponents appropriate for fighting a party with good buffs (lots of HP, tactically interesting abailities, buffs of their own)? Or are you going by the CR system?
• Do you have challenges that last a long time? That are larger than your party in scale? Defended a town againt waves of invaders yet?
• And of course there are always magic-immune (or nearly so) opponents, though using those frequently gets stale.

As long as your enemies also live in a high-magic world, and you're not getting away with one encounter per day, it shouldn't be that hard to present a challenge.