Post/Author/DateTime	Post
SupaTalka 01-07-08, 01:25 AM	Greetings, I'm currently DMing a highly modified Red Hand of Doom campaign for 4 characters. Level 10 Half-Elf Paladin Level 10 Shifter Druid Level 10 Warforged Psion Level 9 Elf Warmage This is a continuation of another campaign that the players enjoyed. The Warmage's player did not want to continue playing his Beguiler in the continued campaign so he chose to be Warmage because he felt particularly weak in combats as Beguilers have many weaknesses in combat. I've run into several tricky situations however, because the Beguiler had helped fill in several of the party's weaknesses that have again resurfaced and are making the game tougher to make enjoyable. I'll try to break them down into the two main issue categories. 1) Difficulty Balancing Combats 2) Over-all Lack of Party Utility Makes Un-Challenging Things, Too-Challenging Combat Difficulties The fact that the party has both a Psion and a Warmage means they are never wanting for ranged damage. The problem is, with 1-2 encounters per day, the Psion is free to blow his points and single-handidly end those encounters. When the encounters get bumped up to a 3-4 per day setting, the Psion runs out at 3 and so for one and a half combats literally either aids another or simply tries to soak damage, but is otherwise very ineffective. Meanwhile, the exact opposite occurs with the Warmage. In the first 1-2 encounters, the Psion typically does so much damage with such a high save or does some form of crowd control/removal spell that there is literally nothing for him to do that is very useful. Meanwhile, during the 3-4th encounters the Warmage is happily pumping out spell after spell and can never run out. So in that case, he's almost always free to cast high level area of effect spells or such that have high-damage components to multiple targets. Meanwhile, the druid is swapping forms, debuffing enemies and grappling dangerous foes. Unfortunately, his damage does not live up to the Psion or Warmages, and since he can heal, he usually finds himself stuck to being the healer which he hates. The paladin has a ton of extra smites per day and does an incredibly good amount of damage doing charging smite attacks with full power attack. He can drop most equal CR foes in 1-2 rounds. So I hear you saying already: "So what's the problem, sounds like the party has most of their bases covered and have pretty strong characters." Several points: Lack of a true arcane caster, particularly int based, often hurts them on knowledge checks, and hurts them particularly regarding combat against magic users because of their lack of dispelling power. Dragons that have shield, mage armor, protection from good ETC suddenly have an un-hittable AC with great saves and the party feels like I am throwing them up against something much too difficult when in fact it is well within the party's capable CR. This goes hand-in-hand with the number of encounters per day. If I have even 2 encounters before the "Dragon" or other BBEG (particularly if they are a magic-user or have a few wands/scrolls/potions etc) the Psion loses a huge amount of effectiveness and so the party is suddenly hurting very badly. If I only have 1 encounter or the party enters with full-resources, the foes are a serious joke. This goes into the second main issue. A lack of a pure arcane caster means the party has even less flexibility than usual. Invisible foes become INCREDIBLY difficult. Doing anything that requires stealth is difficult. Traps are always sprung. Mass flight or mount or other transportation spells are severely lacking in number/duration/availability. The list goes on. Limited skills and spells basically limits the kinds of encounters that offer a fair challenge to them. The basic question comes down to do I make the campaign easier on them because they have chosen what they're playing, or do I continue with the campaign with all of the many situations they simply WILL NOT have an answer to? Obviously I've tried to keep it a "happy medium" but if anything the encounters have not been challenging enough because of a fear of overpowering the party. When is it right to say "Adventurers just have to DEAL with TOUGH ENCOUNTERS sometimes." even though I know that's usually not as enjoyable for the players sitting at the table.
stealth_monkey 01-07-08, 02:21 AM	A couple of general things: A level 10 psion has 88 pp minimum (he would assuredly have bonus pp on top of that). I'll assume he has a 16 int and thus has a total of 103 pp. At his level, that's enough to cast 10 fully powered powers per day. The problem you're having is that your psion player isn't playing his character smart. He's burning every point he has as soon as he can, when it's complete overkill to do so. Psions are not warlocks, they can not go hell for leather at all times and expect to be able to keep up the pace. Him being a psion has nothing to do with this, so the only way you're going to be able to break the habit is not to let up. Don't just have 3 or 4 encounters before the big boss, have something in the realm of 6 reasonably easy encounters before the boss, and try and show him that to play a successful psion, he simply has to learn to ration his powers. As to the warmage. Yes, a warmage is one of, if not the best blasters in the game. This is what they're designed to do. A psion, generally, will not be able to compete with a warmage. The warmage can do one thing and one thing alone- blow up the enemy, the psion needs to bring utility to the table if he wants a reason to be a member of the party. A couple of specific points: Meanwhile, the druid is swapping forms, debuffing enemies and grappling dangerous foes. Unfortunately, his damage does not live up to the Psion or Warmages, and since he can heal, he usually finds himself stuck to being the healer which he hates. Yep, not everyone likes being the healer. I'd suggest using wands of cure x wounds out of combat and having the druid prepare 1 or 2 spells for use in combat, or have him take spontaneous healing from the complete divine. With natural spell he should be able to top up one or two combatants and get to tanking. Lack of a true arcane caster, particularly int based, often hurts them on knowledge checks, and hurts them particularly regarding combat against magic users because of their lack of dispelling power. Assuming you're not using the psionics is different rule, the party will need to invest in a dorje of dispel psionics or a half dozen or so power stones of the same in order to overcome this weakness. Or the psion could just take the power. Dragons that have shield, mage armor, protection from good ETC suddenly have an un-hittable AC with great saves and the party feels like I am throwing them up against something much too difficult when in fact it is well within the party's capable CR. CR is a fickle mistress at best, it means very little compared to the monster's capabilities. For example- if you threw a clay golem (cr 10) at your party now, they simply wouldn't walk away, but could probably handle a fire giant (again cr 10) without a sweat. You need to determine encouter difficulty yourself knowing your players, there's no magical formula that can do it. This goes hand-in-hand with the number of encounters per day. If I have even 2 encounters before the "Dragon" or other BBEG (particularly if they are a magic-user or have a few wands/scrolls/potions etc) the Psion loses a huge amount of effectiveness and so the party is suddenly hurting very badly. If I only have 1 encounter or the party enters with full-resources, the foes are a serious joke. Again, this is straight down to the way your psion is playing his character. There is no way of fixing this without him changing, any class who has limited abilities per day must ration them or they become extremely powerful for 1 or 2 encounters but worthless the rest of the day. Invisible foes become INCREDIBLY difficult. Doing anything that requires stealth is difficult. Traps are always sprung. Mass flight or mount or other transportation spells are severely lacking in number/duration/availability. The list goes on. Limited skills and spells basically limits the kinds of encounters that offer a fair challenge to them. This is again mainly a problem the party needs to fix. Goggles of see invisibility are around 2000gp each, boots of flight are around 15k The basic question comes down to do I make the campaign easier on them because they have chosen what they're playing, or do I continue with the campaign with all of the many situations they simply WILL NOT have an answer to? As you can probably tell by the tone of my post, I think the answer is continue as you are. Human beings have the wonderful ability to learn from their mistakes, and it works in dnd too. While players should feel free to play whatever class they want, they also need to realise that certain parties are going to have weaknesses they need to adapt to, rather than the world adapting for them. For example, one of the groups I'm running a campaign for has the following makeup: Psy warrior, psion, wizard, sorceror, cleric. Little heavy on the magic right? Yesterday they went up against their first spell resistant enemy, and had to run for their lives after their standard tactics stopped working. After the encounter they sat down and discussed ways of making sure that didn't happen again, and the next time they faced the bbeg it went down in just a handfull of rounds
SupaTalka 01-07-08, 03:51 AM	A few notes: Yes the party does use Cure wands OOC. That's most of their healing as it stands, and it's not free. (Yes it's very efficient, but not free) They also buy lots of potions and scrolls for IC healing. All of these consumables eat at their gold, and once again, it's not free. That has been hurting their wealth for quite some time. Lack of reliable and free transportation magic has also hurt their cash, and they've been given DM standard wealth by level throughout the campaign. I guess another option would be to increase that but that seems to be giving into the flaw of the party. We use Psionics as magic with a few minor caveats such as the knowledge skills. Additionally, the Psion doesn't blast hobgoblins with his powers, he focuses the most dangerous threat to the party and removes it from play via control or damage of some kind. He's a very *smart* player. The fact is he will sometimes blast a high-threat target with a second full powered power when that target only has a few hp left; it's not like he has heal or another effect that tells him *that* particular cast was a waste. Yes, I understand CR is more an art than a science. But the party can handle encounters based almost solely on what the Psion has left for PP for the day to a wide margin. I never said I've had a problem with CR, I know almost *exactly* what the party can handle given the current PP of the Psion. Let me give an example and let's say the party encounters a mixed force of: (Please, there are dozens of other examples and mixes and matches of monsters possible, don't slam the example just read the logic behind it there's a reason it's laid out the way it is) 30 hobgoblins, CR1 Warriors 1 level 10 Hobgoblin Cleric 1 level 10 Hobgoblin Barbarian 5 Hobgoblin Worg Riders CR3 each These 37 combatants have 1-3 rounds of survival tops. The first thing the Psion will do is send the cleric/barb into a Timehop (I believe that's the name of the power, if not, use another similar one) so they'll be out of the combat for 10+ rounds. Then he'll blast the riders/worgs the next round into dust. Meanwhile the druid/warmage/paladin will be happily slaughtering red shirt mooks for a couple rounds. The second the Psion ID's the priority targets, that's how it goes down. Clerics that don't have holy symbols and holy vestments, and barbarians that are not better armed/armored/carrying insignias of rank are fairly unrealistic for me. As I said earlier, the example can easily be changed but that has little to do with the issue of PP per day vs CR vs 4 (or more or less) encounters per day. If I ran that EXACT same encounter 4 times in the day, the party would not survive the 3rd OR 4th encounter, meanwhile, the 1st-2nd encounter would have them taking next to no damage. If I changed the encounter to, I don't know, 1 CR 12-15 black dragon. First encounter they would destroy it easily. Second, same. Third TPK. Fourth TPK. All based on the PP of the Psion. So, see what I'm saying? If I have the harder fights first, the Psion HAS GOT TO USE PP or the party is in trouble. If I have the harder fights last, the Psion HAS GOT NO PP TO USE and the party is in trouble. It's probably how I have worded it, but the Psion does not WASTE his PP much (except for the above example I gave of overkilling a low HP mob, he has done that *occasionally* through no fault of his own). He doesn't waste; he uses, and uses appropriately at that. Almost a perfect amount of PP per the threat offered IMO. Granted, the party can get magic items to alleviate some of their weaknesses. That's a better answer, and something I can influence with loot rewards. I'm very generous regarding item availability.
hovnarr 01-07-08, 04:24 AM	The psion could easily fill all the "arcanist" roles you bring up. He just has to stop overextending each battle and go for cheaper support spells. Ask him to use Grease and Entangling Ectoplasm - 1 pp powers that are still VERY useful at this level. Only in difficult battles should he throw in an Astral Construct, augmented Dominate or some such. He'd use maybe 10 pp on average/battle. Plenty to go around for all the utility the party is obviously lacking: often hurts them on knowledge checks, Psion is Int based. Psychic Reformation allows redistribution of skill ranks. 1 rank at least/knowledge skill to unlock each knowledge skill, 5 ranks in Know:psionics for synergy. Take the level 1 Call to Mind power: reroll checks knowledge checks and +4 to the reroll. With decent Int, that means the psion will pass DC 20 checks most of the time. lack of dispelling power Seriously, dispel psionics. Psis (and sorcerors) are the best dispellers because they can cast it again and never need to memo it in advance, free to blow pp on other stuff and still have it ready when it matters. Invisible foes become INCREDIBLY difficult. Touchsight. Not only against invisibility, also against NPCs that are simply hiding, against fog, darkness. It's level 3 and more powerful than True Seeing. Doing anything that requires stealth is difficult. Stealth comes in many flavors. Charm/dominate an enemy and have HIM scout is stealth. Sitting in the tavern chair while using Clairvoyant Sense or having your psicrystal scout is steath. Again, I turn to psionic means just to show you what the psion could do if he learned some bladder control. Traps are always sprung. This is always a problem, and you don't get immune to it for having a rogue. Sometimes it will still happen. Result? You need to expend resources to handle the effects. This becomes inefficient. Lots can be done with always assuming certain things to be trapped. Get a Hand of the Mage item for 900 gp and open doors/chests from a distance. If they are looked, consider using Time Hop to remove the door (and its trap) from your time frame momentarily, without leaving a sign of your passage. Unfortunately, his damage does not live up to the Psion or Warmages, and since he can heal, he usually finds himself stuck to being the healer which he hates. Warforged psion you say? Then I assume Shaper and Psionic Repair Damage. Then the psion can heal himself much more efficiently than the druid could. The paladin should be able to handle himself for healing. That leaves the warmage and the druid that the druid has to heal. That shouldn't be very burdening. Mass flight or mount or other transportation spells are severely lacking in number/duration/availability. Dimension Door and Plane Shift (one of the few worth while level 5 powers to take) are available to the psion. When do you really need mass flight? Ranged attacks typically work well. Are mounts needed? Getting to a safe place to rest is what's needed. Especially with the trigger happy psion. He's a shaper? Use Psionic Device, which should be like use magic device if you use transparency (which you really should). Wand of Extended Rope Trick with a few charges for when you can't rest safely. It really is as simple as that. The list goes on. Limited skills and spells basically limits the kinds of encounters that offer a fair challenge to them. But it's not limited! A psion can do everything a wizard can except perhaps Necromancy. And he has better skills. The problem is the psion thinks he can play a blaster in this party, which he can't, because there already is one (the warmage). He needs to play God instead, that is to say - solve every problem conceivable within the party's CR up to 4 times per day. And he CAN do that. If he likes to flaunt his might, consider how powerful it will seem when he manifests Touchsight followed by Dispel Psionics negating your opponent's buffs and invisibility so that the usefulness of ALL other party members comes into play again. That is power. Blasting mooks to smithereens is trivial. The basic question comes down to do I make the campaign easier on them because they have chosen what they're playing, or do I continue with the campaign with all of the many situations they simply WILL NOT have an answer to? I think you need to train your players explicitly. Normally, if a player overextends once or twice, he'd take the hint and save some pp incase there's a 3rd or 4th encounter this day (keep 'em guessing). Obviously, that's not happening here. The psion player needs to understand, if he's wasteful with pp, party members will die! That's not your fault if you're playing a serious game. The players should have a strat meeting - take 30 mins before your next session. How can the party flaws be overcome (Psychic Reformation => revamped psion)? Who does what and when? When is it right to say "Adventurers just have to DEAL with TOUGH ENCOUNTERS sometimes." It's always right, if the players know that you're playing a hard core came without kids gloves. Your problem is that they do not learn from the pain. So you need to help them along a bit and show them what an easy and smoothe time they could all be having if the co-operated a bit more. They have everything they need in house.
stealth_monkey 01-07-08, 04:01 PM	Ok, I think I see the problem with how your party is handling things. Although I understand that the sample encounter you've provided is just an illustration, would you say that it's fairly close to the tactics they use in most encounters? If so, your psion is trying to do too much, and your druid and paladin are selling themselves short. Druids/pallies are great tanks, and are wasted trying to smash down mooks, that's the warmage's job. Both the druid and pally should each be able to handle one of the level 10 creatures on their own. If I might suggest a tactic against this specific situation to illustrate where I think the party is generally going wrong. Druid stands in front of the psion and warmage to protect and aoo any creature moving to attack them. Psion Timehops the barbarian, paladin moves to attack cleric, and readies an action to sunder the cleric's holy symbol, warmage deals with the mooks over 3-4 rounds (a single cloudkill spell should absolutely demolish the opposition, but he'll need to use some lower level spells to mop up) After the mooks are mostly dead, the druid helps the pally. The psion only uses a second power if the barbarian comes out of timehop early. With this tactic, the psion takes a more relaxed approach, and as a consequence, there'll be a little more damage taken, and the combat will go for a lot more than 3 rounds. However, with a couple of spell slots on the druid devoted to healing, even though he doesn't really like it, and a dorje of psionic dispel in case something nasty happens from the cleric, the party should be able to handle the encounter until the druid can't heal anymore or the warmage runs out of spells. If the party used that tactic on the same encounter, I would estimate they could easily survive 4, perhaps up to 6 If I changed the encounter to, I don't know, 1 CR 12-15 black dragon. First encounter they would destroy it easily. Second, same. Third TPK. Fourth TPK. All based on the PP of the Psion. In all honesty, I don't see how it would be possible for them to defeat a cr 12-15 black dragon even once, let alone twice with their current weaknesses (primarily no utility caster) So, see what I'm saying? If I have the harder fights first, the Psion HAS GOT TO USE PP or the party is in trouble. If I have the harder fights last, the Psion HAS GOT NO PP TO USE and the party is in trouble. He's got to use pp, I agree, but he doesn't have to use all his power points. In my opinion, your psion needs to smooth out his use of his powers. In my personal opinion, I think the party have seen what the psion can do and are selling themselves a little short. They will still survive with the psion not killing most of the encounter by himself. I think the basic point I'm trying to get across is that if the entire survival of the party rests on how many pp the psion has at one time, something is wrong. Psions are not strong enough for that to happen normally. I don't know your players, and providing a hundred examples won't let me know them to a fraction of what you do, but I suggest next time you play look at how your party is functioning at a basic level. If, as I suspect, your party is basically going into an encounter and saying "well, jeff's psion can pretty much handle this on his own, we'll just stand back and lend a hand" you have a problem in that 2 characters just as powerful as the psion are selling themselves short. Well played, the example encounter could probably be won if the psion wasn't in the party at all, just the three of them vs 40 odd hobgoblins, I believe that your psion is possibly overshadowing the party where the fate of the party rests on his shoulders, where such power simply doesn't exist
SupaTalka 01-07-08, 09:09 PM	Psions are not strong enough for that to happen normally. I don't know your players, and providing a hundred examples won't let me know them to a fraction of what you do, but I suggest next time you play look at how your party is functioning at a basic level. If, as I suspect, your party is basically going into an encounter and saying "well, jeff's psion can pretty much handle this on his own, we'll just stand back and lend a hand" you have a problem in that 2 characters just as powerful as the psion are selling themselves short. Well played, the example encounter could probably be won if the psion wasn't in the party at all, just the three of them vs 40 odd hobgoblins, I believe that your psion is possibly overshadowing the party where the fate of the party rests on his shoulders, where such power simply doesn't exist The thing is, he can and does basically do that for those first 1-2 encounters. It's beyond me to say "Hey, play your character a different way and save some PP" But I've had other DM's with an attitude near that and I couldn't stand to have one of my player's feel that way about me. About the dragon, trust me. I wish I had the Psion's character sheet next to me, he can *virtually* solo one in that first encounter. It's tough to beat magnesium strip man in a "shoot off". Put it to you another way. When the warmage says "make a reflex save" I'm looking at something like DC 25 (Note: yes he's one level lower but has equivalent wealth) The Psion? DC 32. Yeah the Psion does overshadow the rest of the party, that's part of why I've posted here. The party does not mind this at all, and neither do I because they are enjoying the game. I do know, however, that if I made the encounters (both combat and otherwise) just a bit more challenging the players would be having even more fun. The reason the party loves the Psion blowing all his PP is that there's another factor: lack of strong in-combat healing. Yes the Psion can repair himself. Yes the druid always has some cure spells mem'd. Yes the Paladin can Lay on Hands himself for a good amount of HP. After 1-2 encounters the IN-combat healing options are drastically reduced or eliminated. When the baddies get blown up or removed, it makes the chance of the party taking a big hit greatly reduced. More encounters makes the Psion become a non-element and the rest of the party facing a good challenge worth of enemies/obstacles would suddenly be screwed. Bigger, non-simultaneous encounters might be the way to go, that's something I've been having decent success with. Appreciate all the feedback so far.