Son of ... frazzin ... razzin ...


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


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So, I plan a what I think will be a pretty decent encounter. Something involving a young adult dragon, lots of atmosphere and a battle that will hopefully challenge my players. Then Mister Barbarian and Miss Rogue develop hot a case of hot dice. One critical great axe and one critical sneak attacking scimitar later ....

Barbarian had hot dice the whole session. Next time, I'm making him roll to hit with a d12. And he can crit only on a natural 20.

Silver Crusade

I feel your pain. All of my baddies have had their health taken up quite high because our rogue can output about 500 damage A ROUND! That's without the bard getting his say (helping) in.

Dark Archive

i wanna see that rogue

Dark Archive

That person must be an optimization savant if they can get that kind of DPR out of a rogue. Imagine what they could do with a real class!

Dark Archive

Also, as a rule bosses are a bad bet. PC action economy will always beat out CR unless the odds are so stacked against the PCs that they are getting one-shotted. Go with a horde of almost as good bad guys.


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Do you know that Sneak Attack dice don't get multiplied on a Crit in Pathfinder without mythic abilities? That probably explains why the Rogue was causing you problems.

Silver Crusade

I know that feeling. I've gone from buffing encounter HP by a decent amount (150-250% at times) To just letting them take damage until it feels appropriate that they died.

Sometimes it's a result of the players doing really well on the damage, sometimes it's the defensive/stalling abilities of the encounter falling flat.

The former is most certainly my fault though, I let them gestalt. Two of the players took that as an invitation to be a bit silly and laid back, the other two took that as a challenge.


If I want a single charecter boss?

I mess with his HP and saves a bunch, and leave his offense untouched.

Make him hard to kill, but without giving him a ton of attack.

Liberty's Edge

My advice take a look at your players character sheets. See what they can do. Take whatever CR approriate monster your going to throw at them and expect to modify it. Sometimes alot imo. The CR system assumes a group of beginnners who don't optimize. Before I kicked out the Gunslinger from Rise of the runelords game. I had to triple and later multiply by four the hit points off Giants. As he never missed and the player was somewhat of a optimizer.


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icehawk333 wrote:

If I want a single charecter boss?

I mess with his HP and saves a bunch, and leave his offense untouched.

Make him hard to kill, but without giving him a ton of attack.

Ah, the old "Final Fantasy" treatment.

Seifer's in your party - like 300HP...fight Seifer, holy crap, like 4200HP!


mplindustries wrote:
Do you know that Sneak Attack dice don't get multiplied on a Crit in Pathfinder without mythic abilities? That probably explains why the Rogue was causing you problems.

I am very aware of that. Her damage output was actually pretty normal, considering her scimitar + sneak attack + the dice for her bane weapon.

Dark Archive

pennywit wrote:
mplindustries wrote:
Do you know that Sneak Attack dice don't get multiplied on a Crit in Pathfinder without mythic abilities? That probably explains why the Rogue was causing you problems.
I am very aware of that. Her damage output was actually pretty normal, considering her scimitar + sneak attack + the dice for her bane weapon.

I don't know about everybody else but I was talking about that 500 DPR rogue.

Dark Archive

icehawk333 wrote:

If I want a single charecter boss?

I mess with his HP and saves a bunch, and leave his offense untouched.

Make him hard to kill, but without giving him a ton of attack.

My players would catch on to that pretty quick and get annoyed. Honestly, having minions adds two benefits: first, it discourages dog piling; second, it gives you more actions (you haven't seen a look of horror on your players faces until you've had a dedicated healer cleric in the backfield nova two channels because it had Quick Channel).


What are they fighting? Also how on earth can a rouge even at level 20 do 500 damage per round?

lets assume two weapon fighting and max damage every hit, and haste and every attack hits and +15 strength, and every attack hits and +5 weapons, also dual wielding greatswords for s~*@s and giggles.

per hit: 60 from sneak 15 from strength 5 from weapon 8 from power attack 12 from greatsword attack dice. 100 per hit, 7 hits per round, exactly 700 damage.

Well golly gee mister I guess you were right it is possible to do that much damage in a round. I take back my earlier comment. That player is clearly not cheating at all. Like in no way. For realz.

Silver Crusade

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BlackOuroboros wrote:
That person must be an optimization savant if they can get that kind of DPR out of a rogue. Imagine what they could do with a real class!

Well... it IS a high level mythic game (currently ... and they're dual weilding wakisashis with flaming burst, have the mythic path ablity that doubles damage on a crit, have a 3x crit range and threat on a 15+ and their weapons are brilliant energy. Oh and she can go invisible with mythic points spent. as in greater invisiblity, so she can attack from invisibiliness

And the character isn't really even optimized. This is this person's first real Pathfinder character that's gotten past level 1. (they built two others.

Our Bard doesn't put out much damage. But he can make other people do damage for him.

Our Warpriest can grapple anything that doesn't have freedom of movement. (opening things up to the whirling cyclone of doom that is our rogue)

And our Mindchemist Alchemist has such insane knowledge checks that she can instantly know everything about a foe (including their weaknesses) and is SMARTER than any of the statted out demon lords.

Sooo... yeah.

But I feel your pain.

Dark Archive

Mystic_Snowfang wrote:
BlackOuroboros wrote:
That person must be an optimization savant if they can get that kind of DPR out of a rogue. Imagine what they could do with a real class!

Well... it IS a high level mythic game (currently ... and they're dual weilding wakisashis with flaming burst, have the mythic path ablity that doubles damage on a crit, have a 3x crit range and threat on a 15+ and their weapons are brilliant energy. Oh and she can go invisible with mythic points spent. as in greater invisiblity, so she can attack from invisibiliness

And the character isn't really even optimized. This is this person's first real Pathfinder character that's gotten past level 1. (they built two others.

Our Bard doesn't put out much damage. But he can make other people do damage for him.

Our Warpriest can grapple anything that doesn't have freedom of movement. (opening things up to the whirling cyclone of doom that is our rogue)

And our Mindchemist Alchemist has such insane knowledge checks that she can instantly know everything about a foe (including their weaknesses) and is SMARTER than any of the statted out demon lords.

Sooo... yeah.

But I feel your pain.

Oh, Mythic explains everything. I've heard of 1200 DPR vital strike builds with mythic rules. I have an upcoming game and I've been waffling back and forth on using the Mythic rules. What's your opinion of them?

Silver Crusade

BlackOuroboros wrote:
Mystic_Snowfang wrote:
BlackOuroboros wrote:
That person must be an optimization savant if they can get that kind of DPR out of a rogue. Imagine what they could do with a real class!

Well... it IS a high level mythic game (currently ... and they're dual weilding wakisashis with flaming burst, have the mythic path ablity that doubles damage on a crit, have a 3x crit range and threat on a 15+ and their weapons are brilliant energy. Oh and she can go invisible with mythic points spent. as in greater invisiblity, so she can attack from invisibiliness

And the character isn't really even optimized. This is this person's first real Pathfinder character that's gotten past level 1. (they built two others.

Our Bard doesn't put out much damage. But he can make other people do damage for him.

Our Warpriest can grapple anything that doesn't have freedom of movement. (opening things up to the whirling cyclone of doom that is our rogue)

And our Mindchemist Alchemist has such insane knowledge checks that she can instantly know everything about a foe (including their weaknesses) and is SMARTER than any of the statted out demon lords.

Sooo... yeah.

But I feel your pain.

Oh, Mythic explains everything. I've heard of 1200 DPR vital strike builds with mythic rules. I have an upcoming game and I've been waffling back and forth on using the Mythic rules. What's your opinion of them?

Pretty fun. I prefer running high power off the charts insane games though.

This is the Rogue's attack routine.

Main Hand- 36 + 6 (energy) + 12 (vs evil) + 30 = 72 (84 vs evil)
crit 216 + 16 (energy) + 12 (vs evil) + 60 = 293 (204 vs evil)
Off Hand- 26 + 6 (energy) + 12 (vs evil) + 30 = 62 (74 vs evil)
crit 78 + 16 (energy) +12 (vs evil) = 154 (166 vs evil)

An alternage to worrying about monsters dying so quickly is focus a lot more on stories. Not all foes can be dealt with by hitting them in the facebits.

As for our alch her lowest skill is her climb (+15)... and she can fly because level 16

But whatever you do, if you don't want great wyrm dragons being dropped like flies. Don't let anyone play a Kasatha Gunslinger with revolvers.


I feel your pain, OP. It has already been said but having more monsters rather then fewer is preferable. If you do not want to have that, and just want one really big monster there are a few things you can do. You can give the monster more actions be round. The dragon could get three initiative roles and not one and thus can act multiple times per round. You could throw in terrain actions, like the terrain gets a turn that works against the players. Perhaps this dragon is near a volcano, every round the volcano gets to try and hurt them with lava, or poison gas or whatnot. You could cap the amount of damage the monster can receive from any one attack, you offset this by giving a bonus to any player who reaches the cap (hammer game). You could have the monster have various stages like they unlock a new ability, their stats go, etc when their hit points drop. This means that the same tactics cant work past a certain point. Go god of war or shadow of colossus and make normal attacks meaningless. The players need to climb up or jump on the dragon and make called shots at various places or the dragon is immune until he does some kind of attack, thus buying the dragon a few more turns as the players get into position.
These are just a few things I do when I want to have one really big tough monster. I do not always use all of them all at once, but a few of these abilities thrown onto the boss monster can really make a difference.


Them dice, them dice.

Sometimes they will turn what should be a cakewalk into a TPK. Sometimes they turn what should have been an epic, gruelling encounter (perhaps even a nigh-certain TPK) into a disappointing affair over in less than 1 minute real time.


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Heh.

Or setting up a big battle with multiple opponents, and then rolling a 6 or less for initiative for every single enemy. (Such as a fight I ran against my own mythic party involving an advanced wizard starspawn, an advanced anti-paladin starspawn, four hezrou (utter cannon fodder), two mythic nuckelavees, and two nuckelavee troops. My highest monster initiative after modifiers was like a 15 I think.)

[I tend to do the "Final Fantasy" boss treatment (mostly as a buffer against rocket tag shenanigans) AND give said "boss" minions, so that a fight usually begins with the party having to split effort and address multiple problems before they can finally turn to the star attraction, who's gotten a few rounds to show off by that point.]

But sometimes the dice are just out to trivialize your encounters. "Well, you SHOULD have been horribly mauled, but my highest roll in 6 attacks was a natural 4."

Liberty's Edge

The dice are a big factor. As well as what opponent they are fighting. My game on Saturday I hit a party of four with a Prismatic Ray. Two players one a pc another a cohort were petrified. Another badly damaged. I admit to adding more hit points and abilites to make a encounter interesting and last longer. As well the standard one monster a room should be changed as needed. I was running a AP. It called for a wizard BBEG then in another room a CR 14 Demon. I had them both team up and altered the encounter accordingly. The Demon betrayed the wizard and it was still a decent fight. Two CR 14 creatures against a weakened group would have been a TPK.


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(On the other hand, in the following session, my players fought the adventure's "boss," a faerie queen sorceress with mythic tiers. The combat lasted 13 friggin' rounds. The party triumphed, but their alchemist came within a hairs breadth of dying, and the wizard was about three feet tall and looked like a humanoid parakeet. But they won.

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