It comes down to story telling, one story and mechanic is a lot more compelling than another, can you guess which are which?
how is the plane only enter-able by being called? What magic do you have in place to stop travel to it?
Personally I'd call that out for being what it is. GM fiat. The enemy STILL did nothing special to get there powers. So the GM is just arbitrarily giving them powers. Having a dumb stupid and shallow "explanation" doesn't satisfy the feeling of unfair.
@gustavo iglesias
Sorry, didn't know that fengar infused was race and region based. But just prior to that you showed exactly the situation that is allowed. If the fighter pledges loyalty and soul he'd get the perk. It'd be a prior discussion if he'd get to keep his PC and had to follow a strict code, or if he became an NPC.
But stuff that has a good justifiable reason. Like if ALL lashunta, in that particular Habitat Pod, and be raised as a fighter of Unity's cult to get the stuff had that power. So even having it be a 1-off experiment gone bad power can be okay.
To me it's the power given to arbitrary people that all happen to be "bosses" for the players. Because it's going to come up a lot, and it's something the players COULDN'T achieve in world had an option been legal.
This is only an issue if the players feel it's unfair, and most GM's should be able to tell if the power they are giving would feel fair to the PCs. If the players aren't feeling it's unfair, like most examples given so far would be viewed as, then it's not a problem. Saying all enemies have magic to give them the stats and gear they need but then have them have no actual gear to sell, that's probably going to have PCs feeling it's unfair if they need to use real gear.
|
First of all I have not read through the entire thread. But here is my advice.
Take a piece of 5e. That is legendary actions. They allow bosses to make a number of saves and to take extra (very specific) action at the end of the players turns.
For example I've fought a dragon that could make a melee attack at the end of three peoples turns and could during a battle auto make up to three saves.
The lich has has completed millennia of dark magical research spending countless gold and time perfecting the ultimate chronomancy spell.
This great and mighty dragon has slayed thousands upon thousands of wizards. While at first their potent enchantments stung, over time he has become resilient to the effects of many spells and casters find they cannot affect him easily.
Knowing that his vulnerability the warlord sought out an ancient dark power and struck a deal; partial immunity to magic for the souls of every newborn in his new empire.
All fall well within fantasy, are theoretically something the pcs could do going forward, and are basically a form of DM fiat. Consider that you are allowed to shape the entirety of the universe the PC's are in including letting them fight entities well above appropriate CR, applying templates(most of which bear no explanation or ability for PCs to acquire), and that equivalent abilities already exist. How I ask is applying a custom template to help solve a problem wrong?
If the GM is fudging in favor of his bosses, then I would expect an equal amount of fudging in favor of the players when a TPK threatens.
The lich has has completed millennia of dark magical research spending countless gold and time perfecting the ultimate chronomancy spell.
This great and mighty dragon has slayed thousands upon thousands of wizards. While at first their potent enchantments stung, over time he has become resilient to the effects of many spells and casters find they cannot affect him easily.
Knowing that his vulnerability the warlord sought out an ancient dark power and struck a deal; partial immunity to magic for the souls of every newborn in his new empire.
All fall well within fantasy, are theoretically something the pcs could do going forward, and are basically a form of DM fiat. Consider that you are allowed to shape the entirety of the universe the PC's are in including letting them fight entities well above appropriate CR, applying templates(most of which bear no explanation or ability for PCs to acquire), and that equivalent abilities already exist. How I ask is applying a custom template to help solve a problem wrong?
If this was explained that all bosses had this power granted from some source before the campaign so that I knew they had it is one thing. It's basically like any house rule or campaign limiter. Having it but not telling the players I know that many people would feel cheated. Also I'd be upfront if an enemy had the power or not. Springing this as a gotcha on a player is what I disagree with. Though I would vote against such modifications. I have more fun when the players do their thing and the world isn't made just to counter something they can do.
If this was explained that all bosses had this power granted from some source before the campaign so that I knew they had it is one thing. It's basically like any house rule or campaign limiter. Having it but not telling the players I know that many people would feel cheated. Also I'd be upfront if an enemy had the power or not. Springing this as a gotcha on a player is what I disagree with. Though I would vote against such modifications. I have more fun when the players do their thing and the world isn't made just to counter something they can do.
Agreed
I do think that "giving bosses hero points for rerolls" is going to distort the game somewhat, since if players know that the bosses are sitting on a reroll or two, they're probably not going to rely on "save and nothing happens, fail and you die" effects, and indeed may not bother with them. Alternatively, they may hold back the big guns for when they estimate the boss is out of "villain points."Which is precisely the combat-extending effect I'm looking for.Where did this idea come from that a longer combat is desirable?
It's not fun to watch in movies (see: Star Wars prequels lightsaber duels).
It's not fun to play in games (yay, round 15, we've been fighting this guy for over an hour, wheeeeeeee...).
I don't want a 15-round fight any more than I want a half-round one-shot. Three, four or even five rounds would be great most of the time.
I never want to see combats go past 10 rounds (I mean, who wants minute-long buffs to expire), but somewhere around 5 rounds seems to be the sweet spot in terms of balancing tedium with "getting to do things."
Witch should be banned because the entire point of the class is save or suck.Not sure if I'd go so far as to ban the Witch, but the Slumber hex has made short work out of quite a few encounters.
True story:
Last Saturday my Hell's Rebels group fought the major end-of-book encounter for book 4. Things happened and a not-to-be-named-because-spoilers BBEG waded into the fight.
My DM literally said "please, please, please don't slumber him to death."
So my shaman used a save-or-die spell I'd been sitting on that targeted a different save than slumber. Ooops. BBEG failed his save.
It was awesome, and the DM didn't mind. Because us players always keep evolving new tactics and combinations of abilities. We dominate the heck out of (most) encounters, and we always keep something new under our sleeves. Sure, slumber gets used a lot still, but usually for mooks, where there's not expected to be tension.
We don't want long, drawn-out combats that nearly kill us. The goal is to efficiently wipe evil off the face of Golarion. If we win before the bad guys get to go, that's an epic win, because we know we avoided getting our butts handed to us.
If this was explained that all bosses had this power granted from some source before the campaign so that I knew they had it is one thing. It's basically like any house rule or campaign limiter. Having it but not telling the players I know that many people would feel cheated. Also I'd be upfront if an enemy had the power or not. Springing this as a gotcha on a player is what I disagree with. Though I would vote against such modifications. I have more fun when the players do their thing and the world isn't made just to counter something they can do.
I disagree. All of the humanoids I've thrown my PCs so far in our current game had legit builds of equal or lower power the PCs could get at their level, but if I were to give them some kind of special power, I would certainly not feel compelled to share every exact details.
If the players have a reason to know something, I'll tell them. If they've just met a guy for the first time, odds are they probably wouldn't know about his secret ritual he's enacted that gives him X boon or that artifact he uses every morning to power himself up. Sometimes, a knowledge skill might be handy to get clues. Sometimes, they might just have to find out the hard way. If ever at all. Sometimes, people simply bring their secrets to their grave... Sometimes, those secrets are never unearthed. Sometimes, you get enough clues to piece it together, but only much, much later.
It's only cheating if it's ad hoc, specifically to negate player actions and abilities. And even then, the acceptance of GM cheating varies per table.
If your "boss fight" is a 1v5, you're doing it wrong.Perhaps, if you judge simply by the rules of the game. If you're going by the stories the game is based on, solo bosses are iconic, perhaps the most iconic of all fantasy battles.
Which stories are that? I can't think of any fantasy novel or movie or show that had plenty of "iconic" fights with a bad guy soloing a group of heroes. It was certainly rare in Tolkien novels.
I'd blame MMORPGs and JRPGs, but even the MMORPG of my childhood seldom had solo boss monsters. Most classic CRPGs had you duel a bad guy or had climatic battles between your party and a group of monsters. So the party vs solo boss battle trope largely comes from one or two specific video game genres.
You think it's bad when a boss fails a save and gets stomped? Imagine getting bull-rushed through a Wall of Suppression into a few Delayed Blast Fireballs. Or building a story around a villain who gets challenged to a duel two levels early and dies by a random crit on Clashing Rocks. It's not the saves that mess things up, it's the stuff with no save.
Bit constructive advice? Don't use single enemies, don't use bosses which draw attention (and thus focus fire), force the caster to choose between his SoD and some other vital task such as keeping his party safe, use immunities to prevent the nastiest conditions from auto-winning a fight, and always set up a contingency plan in case everything goes wrong and you lose a vital encounter to an unlucky roll.
|
If the GM is fudging in favor of his bosses, then I would expect an equal amount of fudging in favor of the players when a TPK threatens.
This is a good idea that could actually be codified into a game mechanic. It would be like the penny jar at the gas station.
If the GM wants to save a major villain from a save-or-die spell or lucky massive critical hit, they have to put a penny in the jar. At any point thereafter, a player can use one of those pennies to prevent their character from dying against one of those same effects.
Maybe that kills two birds with one stone, eh?
If the GM is fudging in favor of his bosses, then I would expect an equal amount of fudging in favor of the players when a TPK threatens.This is a good idea that could actually be codified into a game mechanic. It would be like the penny jar at the gas station.
If the GM wants to save a major villain from a save-or-die spell or lucky massive critical hit, they have to put a penny in the jar. At any point thereafter, a player can use one of those pennies to prevent their character from dying against one of those same effects.
Maybe that kills two birds with one stone, eh?
Mutants and Masterminds has the 'Hero Point' system, where heroes get 'points' for when the villain escapes, etc...