Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Abulafia 08-31-05, 05:10 PM	This (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=494109) was posted on the DM advice board today. I thought y'all might enjoy seeing how the other half lives. Please, I need some ideas... My players are overpower using some oficial suplements. For example, the Healer (miniatures handbook) has the feat Augment Healing and Magic of the Land, he cures, at level 10, 2d8 + 40 of each cheracter of the party... The barbarian has power attack, leap attack, and some others feats... The enconters are too easy... What can I do to balance the game... Put monster more powerful is very dificult.. Thanks... Ale
PhaedrusXY 08-31-05, 05:36 PM	The DM controls what books are allowed in his game. He can always tell them to remake their characters with a greatly restricted set of books... Or he can come here and ask us for help making up his encounters. This board isn't just for players, you know. :P
Welcome 08-31-05, 06:03 PM	I post on a couple other forums, and it's always refreshing to see how many people are still under the impression that a Fighter with Whirlwind Attack is overpowered. "Can a rogue really get multiple sneak-attacks a round ? Whoa, that's so broken, I'm house-ruling that out in my game" is another one that always gets a few chuckles out of me.
EvilDuck 08-31-05, 06:26 PM	That guy's a total noob. I'm sorry, but he feels threatened by a healer. Out of all the stupid things from the MiniHB, he's threatened by the suckiest thing ever. I just wanna die...
jameswilliamogle 08-31-05, 06:57 PM	most games i play in start around 1st (actually, all started at 1st) and go to about 7-10 or so, so it doesn't surprise me that optimised characters are ruling his game... it seems like the players planned better than the DM. in one recent campaign, sudden metamagic feats were deamed broken by the DM. in the more recent one they've been nerfed so that you can't use them unless you could've cast the "normal" metamagic version (which is better in the long run anyways); this makes sudden metamagic feats practically worthless. the last campaign's dm is a cleric in this one, and he thinks scatterspray is broken (is it my fault that we are playing in an all underdark campaign, and there's rocks everywhere?). and grease too (again, tunnel-style fights + limited mobility = power). i'm sure he'll think battering ram will be broken once i level up next session... but i'm just picking stuff that i know will work, and not what a "classical" magic user will learn (everybody laughed when i said i wasn't going to memorize magic missile until 5th level at the earliest... they aren't laughing now).
catharz 08-31-05, 07:34 PM	I think the best thing for a DM to do once things have already gotten out of hand is to ask the players for some optimization advice.
Surreal 08-31-05, 07:46 PM	I'm not sure I even understand the original post... how is it too difficult to throw more powerful monsters at them? Are the players breezing through a CR 7? Ok then, flip through the book and find yourself a CR 9 and have at it.
aod318 08-31-05, 11:52 PM	If the Healer is an issue, throw some vile damage at them. A big barbarian, many little enemies, his rage can last only so long, or force effects or enchantments or a grappling monk, etc…
SmiloDan 09-01-05, 12:02 AM	The Frenzied Berserker's Deathless Frenzy can REALLY mess up a party. So what if the Hasted, dual-wielding rogue gets 5 sneak attacks in...the BBEG is immune to DYING!!! Sure, disintegration will work, but that's hard to come by at level 10. Just take a couple builds off these boards, dress them up like baddies, and have at it. If you're threatened by a healer, put them on the positive energy plane or some other pos energy place that grants loads of extra hitpoints, but threatens them with exploding. I really don't have a problem with my PCs healing up...it lets me take the kid gloves off.
SmiloDan 09-01-05, 12:23 AM	The Frenzied Berserker's Deathless Frenzy can REALLY mess up a party. So what if the Hasted, dual-wielding rogue gets 5 sneak attacks in...the BBEG is immune to DYING!!! Sure, disintegration will work, but that's hard to come by at level 10. Just take a couple builds off these boards, dress them up like baddies, and have at it. If you're threatened by a healer, put them on the positive energy plane or some other pos energy place that grants loads of extra hitpoints, but threatens them with exploding. I really don't have a problem with my PCs healing up...it lets me take the kid gloves off.
Thalis 09-01-05, 12:54 AM	where is magic of the land from? and what does it do, more or less?
NateNate 09-01-05, 02:43 AM	where is magic of the land from? and what does it do, more or less? Races of the Wild. Whenever you cast a spell, you can attempt a Kn: Nature check to have it also heal 2x spell level HP to all the targets. A Haste will heal 6 hp to each target, for example. If you fail the Kn check the spell fails, but it works on Arcane spells too. My advice to this DM would be to let someone else DM for a while. That way he can be a player for a while and figure out that this isn't 2e, characters and monsters both have options. When someone neglects or refuses to adapt they'll be left in the dust, and thats exactly what happened to this guy. I don't sympathize with him, I don't even pity him, but I will mockingly laugh at the situation he's put himself in. hehe!
deusxmachina 09-01-05, 02:46 AM	This (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=494109) was posted on the DM advice board today. I thought y'all might enjoy seeing how the other half lives. Complete Warrior and the Miniatures Handbook finally made fighter-types interesting. Most of the other books, even as a player, I can do without. One of my guys is a druid, and I wouldn't touch half the stuff in the supplemental books even if I could. It's just too overpowered unless the DM is powergaming along with you.
EvilDuck 09-01-05, 08:26 AM	Complete Warrior and the Miniatures Handbook finally made fighter-types interesting. Most of the other books, even as a player, I can do without. One of my guys is a druid, and I wouldn't touch half the stuff in the supplemental books even if I could. It's just too overpowered unless the DM is powergaming along with you. Oddly enough, druids benefit less from the Completes and other player-oriented books than other characters since they have little reason to PrC. On the other hand, druids benefit greatly from new monster manuals, and if the DM is eating those right up, so is the druid.
Abulafia 09-01-05, 10:57 AM	I got busy yesterday and didn't have a chance to follow this up. It's great to see it attracted some discussion! I was blown away when I saw this post. "Help me! My players are overpowered! One of them is a HEALER! He can, like, totally heal a lot! And the barbarian -- he took Power Attack! I never saw that coming!" The really amazing thing is not the original post, but the subsequent posts wherein everyone gave this guy advice on how to lower the power level in his game. I DM, and I've had to adjust my game to player power levels on occasion, but I can't quite squeeze my brain into the mindset that a build using feats and classes I'm not totally familiar with is automatically overpowered. What sort of play experiences have y'all had? Are your DM's more likely to nerf your character, or raise the challenges?
reytheist 09-01-05, 11:21 AM	He should try running a Gestalt campaign! :banghead: I'm kidding. I've gotten very familiar with the "Advancing Monsters" section of the MM (or is that DMG? I'm blanking) as well as the section on adding class levels. People get in a mindset that the only way to make encounters more difficult is to put in different, stronger monsters. But the same monsters, advanced to create a better challenge, tends to work out just fine.
Chalhub 09-01-05, 11:52 AM	Raising the challenges would be funnier for both the players and the GM, because everyone would need to think and plan harder. Kind of off topic here, but I think this guy's problem is that here in Brazil the splatbooks aren't available to everyone, most of them were not translated yet and few players can afford to buy imported books, or even understand english. You know, the latest book we had translated to portuguese around here was the Epic Level Handbook, so you see, either you have money and time to buy imported books and learn english or you'll be stuck with masters of the wild, sword and fist, etc for quite a long time here. my 2 cp
Abulafia 09-01-05, 12:05 PM	Kind of off topic here, but I think this guy's problem is that here in Brazil the splatbooks aren't available to everyone, most of them were not translated yet and few players can afford to buy imported books, or even understand english. You know, the latest book we had translated to portuguese around here was the Epic Level Handbook, so you see, either you have money and time to buy imported books and learn english or you'll be stuck with masters of the wild, sword and fist, etc for quite a long time here. my 2 cp Your english is excellent, Chalhub. You should go into business translating!
Chalhub 09-01-05, 02:57 PM	Thanks ^^ I actually work with it, but my passion is deustch... Running far away from the topic here :P I think that GMs should read the DM's Guide more closely... the section about weather hazards can destroy even the most prepared adventurer's day. That is why I love the druid so much... And the rule covering mobs mechanics on DM's Guide II is so good that I almost kicked my dog's balls.
Abulafia 09-01-05, 03:01 PM	And the rule covering mobs mechanics on DM's Guide II is so good that I almost kicked my dog's balls. :confused: something lost in translation here -- perhaps your english isn't so good after all. ;)
PhaedrusXY 09-01-05, 03:03 PM	:confused: something lost in translation here -- perhaps your english isn't so good after all. ;)Nope, he fits in on the CO board just perfectly, lol. Someone has a sig around here somewhere with some hilarious quotes from CO board members. Something about "That was so cool, I almost kicked my Mom in the face."
Chalhub 09-01-05, 03:07 PM	And there was also something about baking a cobra wasn't it? :P
NateNate 09-01-05, 03:14 PM	Getting back on topic... There's one guy I play with who's an old 2e holdout. He thinks a character's class (not classes, class) defines who they are. The guy never plays anything but a single-classed Fighter, and never picks feats with synergy apart form the Greater Spec tree. He thinks optimization and wanting to make a character who's good at something betrays the spirit of the game, and one game he even demanded that we use 3d6 for stats just to try to force everyone else to play a character as weak as his. He has since given up on DnD, because all the options (like grapple, trip, disarm, AoOs) confuse him.
PhaedrusXY 09-01-05, 03:28 PM	There are still people who play 2nd ed. He should find some of them. I can appreciate the nostalgic longing for simpler days myself, sometimes. :P (Well... if you ignore all the stuff that came out in the Skills and Powers books and other supplements... If you throw that in, it was even more confusing than 3.5 with all the splatbooks.)
g23armani 09-01-05, 08:41 PM	I think one thing that some DM's fail to realize is that the game needs to be a challenge. Not only to the player's character, but to the player's themselves. There's something very satisfying and fun as a player to browse the books and come up with combinations of spells, abilities and feats that work well together. Sure, it may make your character more powerful, but it's not very fun to make a character that doesn't have work put into them. It's kind of like playing a sport with someone and being told to not try very hard...you can't really get into the competitive nature of the sport unless you are being challenged.