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#1 Zardnaar Mar 12, 2015 4:18:28

With the Elemental Evil book out I let the Sorcerer retroactively appply her 1/level swap out spell ability form last session to todays session. She swapped counterspell for melfs miniute meteors. She is level 6 and knows the following spells.   Cantrips   Firebolt Ray of Frost Shocking Grasp Eldritch Blast (via spell sniper feat)   Lvl 1 Shield Burning Hands   Level 2 Scorching Ray Enhance Ability   Level 3 Fireball Melfs Minute Meteors Haste   More or less standard fire sorcerer stuff. Buff and blast. For stuff immune to fire she uses cantrips or casts a twinned haste. The haste targets are   Oath of the Ancients Paladin lvl 6 avg damage 2d6+4 Ftr1/Warlock 5 avg dmg 3d6+4   The situation where she used Melfs was she was fighting 4 tigers and a wearboar in a large room. In theory she gets 12d6+30 damage vs 8d6+5 compared to fireball. She has a 20 cha (18+magic item granting +2 cha).Not bad in theory, everything died in 2 rounds though so she dealt 8d6+20 damage in total the 1st 2 meteors hit 2 tigers.    I had an NPC Druid use absorb elements. Well it was an weretiger with Druid abilites from the Quests of Doom Dyrgalas adventure for level 6-8 PCs. Lots of elementals and lycanthropes in this adventure.   Highlights included.   Medusa+basilisk tag team combo, cleric got stoned even with Paladin buffing saves. 2 Weretigers+weretiger Druid hurts as a combat. Fire Elemental wrecked them FIghting 2 water elementals in 5' of with the cleric being stoned was a bad idea. Frost spells+retreat for the survive.    Manged to totally run them out of spells, 3 short rests used, Running them out of bless is great, kind of shows how borked bless is though.    Definately figuring out some tricks via the QoD book in terms of encounter design. Medusa+Basilisk is a very nasty DM combo without the Paladin being there that probably would have been a TPK in the making.    Magic items (read weapons) are not a bad idea to restrict. They picked up a Robe of Eyes as the 4th magic item tonight, the other 3 are a +1 dagger, Gauntlets of Ogre Power and a mask that grants +2 cha and grants the use of the fey pact warlock ability 1/long rest. Magical great weapons and ranged weapons are problems best avoided. I'm just using adventures as printed so I do not customise the loot to the PCs. No magic great weapons in the next 2 adventures, Paladin resorted to casting magic weapon spell, blade pact warlock is fine.     The Oath of the Ancients is kind of subtle for a Paladin. Not as in your face as the Avenger Paladin but it may actually be better espically once its level 7 ability comes online. The avenging and ancient Paladins are the best ones, one is more defensive and has better spells IMHO, the other one deals more damage. Moonbeam is a great AoE spell even better vs Lycanthropes as it kind of wrecks them. Paldins in general kind of break bounded accuracy in respect to saving throws.     The ftr/bladelock build is better than a single classed blade lock. Its a lot better IMHO. Heavy armor+proficiency in con saves + combat style is very effective. With temporary hit points she has the sentinel feat, the Paladin has Great Weapon Master barely uses the -5/+10 part of the feat. Hell the bladelock might be better than a single classed fighter, it tanks better and deals more damage and is better at range due to eldritch blast. If you want to be a bladelock take a fighter level 1st then MC into warlock. Or roll stats and play a mountain dwarf bladelock.     With rolled stats and higher ability scores I am also finding it relieves pressure on dump stats and they are testing out feats they would normally avoid as they do not really need to buff stats. Humans and Half Elves are popular in this party I think they are all human and half elf.   Do not under rate profincey on con saves for spell casters either. Twinned spells are amazing. Keeping hex up all the time is also nice. A hex trick to do at the start of the day is cast it using a hiigher level slot and short rest straight away as it lasts 8 hours. Not sure about putting my foot down on this as for the last 3 sessions the bladelock has only had 1 short rest, tonights session was the 1st one where she got multiple short rests. Armor of Agathys got used along with fireball.    Temporary hit points can be great damage mitigation. See Armor of Agathys and the fiend warlock.