Our party consists of 5 characters, with some heavy custom content use:
Healer/Face
Blaster/Caster
Tank/Melee Damage
Skillmonkey/Ranged Damage
Melee Damage/Skillmonkey
The party is very optimized, and has been given boosts by the DM (we both have 2 free levels of LA, party level equivalent 11). Now, we're all used to powerful campaigns, and perhaps this is a bit more than we're used to. Characters regularly make skill checks of 40 or more in their focused skills, and deal hundreds of damage in any given round against foes that aren't resistant against their attacks, with ACs hovering around 30-40
We are currently in a setting remienescent of Eberron; A world of steampunky, magic-driven technology. It's been nice so far, but it feels, however that our DM is trying to making his campaign somewhat 'unbeatable', and a bit linear in the process. Examples follow:
Dungeons made wholly of indestructable walls, all glowing so it's impossible to hide.
Unpickable Locks
DCs on effects over 40.
ACs unhittable but on a 17
Energy resistances that almost completely negate magical attack.
Copious amounts of Level Drain, Item Destruction, etc.
Linear bits include:
No plot hooks, excepting a central one leading us straight south, foiling non-boat forms of travel.
Undefeatable foes (Godlike figures, wizards that are surrounded by walls of force that gloat, and teleport away)
My question to you all, is this: Are we, as players, just overreacting, and expecting too much of the DM? Is there anything we can do to maybe correct the problem? It feels like every fight is a crippling, hard-fought battle. We never get away without some lasting wound, whether it be ability drain, permanent level drain, damage to our vessel, or lost items/gold. On that note, it seems like we're being starved of gold. Few, if any, of our foes drop gold or equipment.
I've posited solutions to the DM, including 'de-optimizing' our characters and the campaign, but they've been rejected. I mean, our characters are powerful, and I understand that powerful encounters and puzzles are needed to present a challenge, but it just feels a bit overboard.
First, tell him his plans suck, and that he needs to shape up.
then, Show the frustration of you characters to royally screw up his plans.
As a group, surrender.
Except for one of you who commits ritual suicide.
Then, propose that there be a new DM, either you, or one of the other players, but just not him. Maybe you would do well, try planning out a campaign or using a module or even having a sandbox game.
The DM caved, and simply decided to crank the difficulty of the encounters up, instead of run the PCs at a lower power.
Unfortunatly the DM isn't good at scaling the monsters and challenges, and so simply went with the "It is impossible" approach.
Now the players are unhappy because they were expecting to be godly in power, and are in reality only slightly above average if that.
Your best bet is to either crank down the power of your players, to normal default power, so the DM can use things from the books. Or you can switch DMs, and let someone who is ok DMing at that high power level.
Maybe after a couple of years at it your DM might become better DMing at your groups desired power level, but it will definatly take some practice.
Should I ask a different way maybe?
I ask this because an un/low experienced DM may rail road players unintentionally if they didn't prepare much or have a "cool" campaign in mind. I may say something such as, "The lock can't be opened because I was extremely lazy this past week and forgot to flesh out this week and I don't feel like fleshing it out on the fly", when I am severely under prepared. My players know now that I am railroading because of my incompetence and not because I have decided to be prick. I do not know if the lack of preparedness is the problem your DM is having.
If this is your DM's problem then your DM my not be willing to admit that they have made a mistake, is being tough, or is railroading because they would not want to be seen as being a bad DM because they did not prepare.
If the DM has a great campaign idea then the DM may be afraid that if the players have freedom then the players may steer away from the adventure plot or that they adventure may not go as planned. If this is the case then the DM needs to learn to give hooks or to at least make them noticeable and enticing.
Currently, we're on our way to defeat this giant evil cult, and it feels like everything is pointing us there. Is there a way I can talk to him, and still have tact? I don't want to be one of those players that complains about their DM, and becomes a know-it-all. I'd be up for addressing him as a group of players, but one of the players is also his girlfriend, whom I'm reasonably confident wouldn't go along with the plan (He plays a little bit of favoritism with her, but it's not alarmingly so.)
PS: Another example of the kind of stuff that irks me that we encountered recently. The wizard behind a wall of force. Except, it wasn't a wall of force...it was a modified wall of force. The wizard could cast through it at will, and you couldn't teleport through it.
tried feather token - tree / wall of stone / darkness ... ?
heck, tomb of magic has a template (dark) that lets you hide from the moment there is shadow ... and glowing walls make sure your allies have a shadow
seriously, a dark whispergnome rogue would love that place.> Unpickable Locks
Try bashing the door, or the lock, or teleporting.
If everything fails, look if there's a riddle.
If that fails, you're DM probably doens't want you to do that part of the dungeon yet ...
> DCs on effects over 40.
Sleep it off. (got hit by a trap? no problem . rest until everyone is fully healed)
> ACs unhittable but on a 17
Thats 20% ... can your healer buff the party? tried grappling? auto-hit effects (magic missle and others). how about wraithstrike?
> Energy resistances that almost completely negate magical attack.
then ... don't use energy attacks
. since your're apparently playing 3/3.5 there are enough splash books to do this.(or use energy penetrations: in frost burn (?) there's an ability that lets you negate ALL cold resistance and deal half damage to critters immune)
energy substitution metamagic?
> Copious amounts of Level Drain,
sleep it off.
> Item Destruction, etc.
Adamantine weaponry?
See, the problem here, is I've tried to do that, but gotten stark refusal from the DM. I redid my character as such that it was but a good, standard core character, and urged him to have the others do the same, but he said that it was fine.
Should I ask a different way maybe?
Thats sort of how I thought it would go.
The DM is set on DMing, and seems like the sort who can't ask for help.
Best option for you now is to try to help the new DM learn how to handle high powered players.
Just give advice as you can, and maybe offer to help with encounters. (I had a friend who DMed in a similar manner a year or so ago, he is playable now. Still not the best, but you can play in his games without getting upset now)
> Dungeons made wholly of indestructable walls, all glowing so it's impossible to hide.
tried feather token - tree / wall of stone / darkness ... ?
heck, tomb of magic has a template (dark) that lets you hide from the moment there is shadow ... and glowing walls make sure your allies have a shadow
Funny you mention this. I play the Skill Monkey/Ranged character I talked about, and I'm actually a Dark Whisper Gnome Rogue. He ruled HiPS didn't work because, since light was coming from all sides, nothing cast a shadow. As for magic like wall of stone, or darkness, our caster is more akin to a warlock, with a splash of druid, than a wizard or cleric.
> Unpickable Locks
Try bashing the door, or the lock, or teleporting.
If everything fails, look if there's a riddle.
If that fails, you're DM probably doens't want you to do that part of the dungeon yet ...
Indestructable doors still. There were puzzles/riddles sometimes, but mostly it was a 'keycard' type lock that had us fetching the keycard off a corpse elsewhere in the dungeon. As for teleporting, we lack a utility caster, and even though the bard can go ethereal, a wall of force is usually there to meet him.
> DCs on effects over 40.
Sleep it off. (got hit by a trap? no problem . rest until everyone is fully healed)
I agree, if you're talking about reflex saves. Not so much when you're talking about death effects and mind control. PS: Pyroclastic Dragons suck.
> ACs unhittable but on a 17
Thats 20% ... can your healer buff the party? tried grappling? auto-hit effects (magic missle and others). how about wraithstrike?
All good solutions. Our healer is actually a modified bard, but his spell list tends to be devoted to keeping us not dead. We get +2 from inspire courage. Beyond that, we don't have any other means of buffing. I've bought a bunch of scrolls of wraithstrike to UMD. Grappling is out of the question, the melee fighter/tank is actually dex-based. The best we can do is try to escape artist out of the giant stuff that tries to grab us.
> Energy resistances that almost completely negate magical attack.
then ... don't use energy attacks
(or use energy penetrations: in frost burn (?) there's an ability that lets you negate ALL cold resistance and deal half damage to critters immune)
energy substitution metamagic?
Agreed.
> Copious amounts of Level Drain,
sleep it off.
It is of the 'wait 24 hours and it becomes permanent with another fort save' variety. DCs usually hover around mid-high twenties.
> Item Destruction, etc.
Adamantine weaponry?
Starved for gold. And not that kind of item destruction anyway. Don't think sunder, think disintegate.
-I think maybe I'll just go over encounter creation with him, and stress that not every encounter needs to strain the party to it's max. Even normal-balance games have encounters that the party sweeps.
It usually comes up because of one of the following:
1) They're afraid that if they deviate from their story through improvisation, the story will suck.
2) They want to pretend they've considered everything because they're "such a clever GM".
3) They don't want to waste whatever challenge they've come up, and so refuse to allow your solutions to the problem that they didn't consider.
From the sound of things, you're clearly not permitted to deviate from the GM's game plan, no matter how smart your idea.
The best tactic I've come up with for this kind of problem is to stand against whatever route the GM is forcing you down. You can usually avoid upsetting the GM if you pretend to misinterpret what the GM is doing.
That sounds a little too complex, so I'll take your example of his foiling non boat forms of travel to travel south (let's say you're headed to destination X).
The rejection method goes like this:
"Okay, we're trying to get to X. We can't fly or teleport, or . The only valid alternative I can see is to hire a boat. But I think that's a stupid idea because it'll cost too much money and probably be too dangerous . So I suggest we try to look for work in this town instead of going to X."
The misinterpretation method goes like this:
"Uh, right, so we can't teleport to X. Hmmm, maybe we need some kind of key to enable teleportation? Otherwise I don't see how we can get there."
Or (in the case of your unpickable doors):
"Aw, man, another one of those doors? Okay, I think it's fairly obvious that we're not a high enough level for this place. The doors are unpickable and we need some kind of high level dispel spell to get around the walls of force. The keycards could work, but there are too many to keep fighting. I propose we come back to this place when we're a higher level."
As a GM, there's nothing I find more agonising than a story that won't move along, and if your GM is forcing you down a particular route, he'll get the hint that you're bored and cut out the boring parts to prevent you giving up.
Other than that, not much I can suggest. I think he's just an inexperienced GM who needs to learn to open up his game a little.
It seems like dms have to go through an evolution and most dms seem to end up making the same mistakes others have gone through before. Its been my experience that dms have to go through the phases where they make the more classical mistakes and there is little that can be done in the short term.
Experience is really the only tempering factor. Both the dms own hands on experience as well as witnessing how others dm.
As for your problem. What can you do? Likely all you can do is do what you've done. Offer what helpful advice you can. When things get too untenable or there is lapse in the game suggest changing to a new campaign, new dm. You might be able to artfully mention a cool book you read and you were interested in dming .....a desert campaign, arctic, seagoing. If he expresses frustration at dming you can be sympathetic and suggest that someone else dm if he finds it too onerous.
Other than that you can just drop the game if you aren't friends and not likely to socialize.
...our caster is more akin to a warlock, with a splash of druid, ... Our healer is actually a modified bard ... the melee fighter/tank is actually dex-based....
Wait, weren't you guys optimized? I was expecting world-altering wizards, CoDZilla clerics and half orge frenzied bezerkers.
Wait, weren't you guys optimized? I was expecting world-altering wizards, CoDZilla clerics and half orge frenzied bezerkers.
Well, there's alot of custom content. Our blaster does 2d6 single target/level at will, and has access to a bunch of druidic stuff (no-buffs/healing) at will.
The bard healer has an aura that heals his cha mod every round to the people around him, and he gets the Healer's healing hands. His CHA is something like 30. Oh, and he's some sort of ghost offshoot...so, yeah, incorporeal.
Even the weak-seeming builds are optimized.