Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Alec1429 Feb 18, 2015 0:40:36	Hey guys. My game group is fairly large. We are 7 in number, including myself so we have a 6 man party. 5 of those 6 people are magic users, with the classes being two sorcerers, a warlock, a paladin, and a cleric. The last is the rogue. I am finding that combat has become impossible, and I can't rely on puzzles and riddles for all my encounters. As magic users they are all focused on combat save for the cleric, who is 98 percent heal/debuff. They are all level 6 or so, and I'm trying to throw enemies that are reasonably challenging, but not so damaging that the party won't last a dungeon. A recent example is tonight they had to retrieve a sword from the top of a tower. There were three mages standing in front of the pedestal and talking about how to extract the weapon. The PCs were quiet, so I let them sneak up on the mages. Instead of using logic to determine that they might glean some knowledge from the mages, they almost immediately opened fire on the mages, side stepping the entire boss fight. It was supposed to be a fight that took place amidst a horde of magic resistant zombies, while the mages pelt them with magic from above, but one PC alone cast lightning bolt, which almost took all three alone. This is not an uncommon occurrence in our group. The same person always metagames so badly the other characters rarely have their voices heard before he dominates the encounter. It isn't like he does so intentionally, but I don't think he knows how much the other players hate how often he does it. Other players have to try and break their characters so they can keep up and not get taken out by enemies I supply to challenge him. How do I run combat in a fun way for everyone without having my encounters ruined within the first few rounds?
#2 cowleymen Feb 18, 2015 4:12:22	This sounds less like a problem of having a bunch of acess to the games magic, but instead of having one player ruining every one else fun. ITs blunt to say like that, but if every one else is having fun RPing with combat being light or not very serious, and he is the only one disrupting that....then its time to talk to the Player. If you cant get through to him/her, then it is more then okay to vote them off the island.
#3 NalaufeinHasrov Feb 18, 2015 14:32:18	Ring of Counterspells is SUPER USEFUL against magic users. Create an enemy that is a moderately high level, and have him cast the most powerful or commonly used spells that your party likes to throw. The second they cast it at him the ring sucks it in and they can't cast it at him anymore. I did this to my cleric, also using a Necromancer to drain people's energy and **** like that can be useful (did it to my cleric as well, he is very arrogant and I wanted to put him in his place). Having creatures with Spell Resistence, or resist acid, fire, cold, whatever to stop cone of coldness, acid splash, etc. from doing damage is also good. It would make a fight more difficult, and when they win they will get something very cool. If they use a lot of area of affect spells put them in more encolsed spaces, or in a dungeon that has a weak structure, if they blow something up, it can collapse. Hopefully those ideas can help.
#4 BRJN Feb 18, 2015 15:45:55	Alec, Talk to your players as a group and individually about the difficulties you have run into.  The individual discussions can include subjects like 'you drown out everybody else.',  The group discussion can include 'I'm having difficulties with finding challenges to an all-magic group."   Look through the MM for monsters that have Resist(Magic) or Resist(Lightning) or are ghost-like insubstantial undead.  All of them will provide more challenge than a "big bag of HP" enemy.
#5 Archon007 Feb 18, 2015 16:36:57	You might want to check out this thread on surprisingly the exact same topic    http://community.wizards.com/forum/dungeon-master-help/threads/4187291