How to deal with an Invincible Player Character. (Way of the Wicked)


Advice

101 to 107 of 107 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>

Gilarius wrote:

I'm a player in a different Way of the Wicked game and our GM has completely rewritten most encounters. We have 2 vampires, one soon-to-be death knight, one greater weretiger, and one devil-bound pc.

I am gm'ing that campaign and I agree the key is to try to keep the characters roughly balanced , that way one PC is not more powerful than the others which does cause problems.

If you allow vampires etc , your party will rapidly become too powerful for the campaign. Hence I rebuild almost every encounter which I enjoy fortunatly!
You can find many of my amended encounters in the product threads for books 1-4, I am in book 5 know and will be posting some of those encounters once my pc's have progressed past them. If the OP would find any specific encounter rebuilds useful PM me and I'll see if I can track them down.


We had a vampire in our party who acted as our scout and trap finder. In books four and five they were difficult to challenge but by book six the conjuration wizard became the most powerful character by a significant margin. In early books we struggled but by book three we started to steamroll encounters, I still had fun even though my character wasn't the most powerful or very well optimised. My character was a cleric but I multiclassed for flavour so was less powerful than a standard vanilla evil cleric. I suppose my point is that if your players are having fun then there really is no problem to solve.

What we struggled against most were the good outsiders, especially when they kept spamming the holy smites which hurt everyone, not just the vampire. If I was GM I would use lots of angels, archons and azatas as random encounters to soften up the PCs particularly before boss fights. Clerics have some good spells that specifically target undead like: smite abomination and pillar of life, but the vampire character may feel unfairly targeted if you try that tactic too often.

Alternatively, just let them become as crazy powerful as they want to and then make your next campaign about the Mitran heroes restoring Talingarde to its former glory.


It's a little weird to me that you're having so much trouble dealing with a melee undead PC, because the system has so many powerful anti-undead tools.

Did you know that there are spells that are hard counters to melee undead? Undeath Ward is one of them. Cast by a 12th level wizard or cleric or inquisitor, it is an impenetrable shield to your vampire PC. If you want to make a custom encounter to challenge him, you could send in an inquisitor with a repeating crossbow filled with heartstake bolts and protected with Undeath Ward. Otherwise you can just have every prepared caster of 12th level and up ready this spell once word of the PC gets out. Beyond that, Death Ward is a solid, long-lasting defense against level drain; Life Ward causes damage that no amount of AC or saves will mitigate.

For your prepared casters' offense, Disintegrate could work well. It targets touch AC and fort save and affects objects, so it works on undead.

Drawing the PC into a fight during mid-day, high in the air, then dispelling or sundering his daylight shield cloak is an excellent option that others have mentioned.

Spice up your existing encounters by adding, say, eighteen lantern archons, one of which is a 7th level bard with Good Hope and Haste, and one of which is a 7th level cavalier with Target of Opportunity. That's a CR 12 encounter, so add it to an existing CR 12 encounter and you have something that is more than a speedbump for your characters. Or add in four 8th level inquisitors with the Repose domain: They can emit Death Ward to protect the other members of the encounter, and take turns casting True Strike and using Gentle Rest touch attacks to stagger your vampire PC (or, with two touches, put your living PCs to sleep!). Again, CR 12.

Prepared casters can use Planar Ally to call up Shoki psychopomps. Combined with spells and effects that debuff will saves and/or buff the Shokis' wisdom to increase its DC, its Soul Lock is an extremely nasty save-or-die vs. undead. Well, save-or-worse-that-die, because after a Shoki gets your PC's soul in its staff, it can plane shift away, and short of a Wish or Miracle or True Resurrection, your PC can't come back. This works better as a looming threat than as a surprise...it feels like a dirty trick to have your PC suddenly eliminated by a single bad die roll. But let them get word that Shokis have been deployed, and the PCs will have to plan and spend resources to counter them--or, if they don't, the elimination is fully justified.

Good luck giving them a fun challenge!


Don't forget tanglefoot bags or items, that have an effect even when saves are made. -4 dex is a nice start.

The Repose Inquisition allows inquisitors to make their weapons Disruptive against undead and the DC SCALES with the inquisitor level.

Many summoned monsters/animals gain the celestial template and a smite evil ability if summoned by good casters. Remember that Smite ignores all DR, that should include smites from Summoned Good creatures.

Check out the cleric spells list, a ton of their spells have bonus effects or increased damage against undead.

If you like 3.5 spells then add 'Bolt of Glory' to your good opponents. A ranged touch attack for 1d12 a level against undead is very nasty.

Feeblemind and Touch of Idiocy would crush his Charisma and feeblemind has a nasty save mod if he has any arcane spell or SLA ability. Normally undead are immune to mental effects but there are feats that allow it for some magics.

Sun Domain clerics can be nasty when channel damaging undead since they add their level to damage and ignore channel resistance.

Also remember that Paladin smites to evil undead add double paladin level to damage on the first hit. A ring of spell storing or some spell storing temp effect could get them a True Strike to use in conjunction.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I like the idea of adding another narrative.
That said (spell perfected) intensified (or dazing or persistent) Burst of Radiance tends to make life interesting for evil / undead.

Even the vanilla version is good if you want to have swarms of low level mooks. Auto hit, auto damage, damage on a save.

Liberty's Edge

I found that using Mythic when appropriate to the story and using the improvements on it provided in Legendary Games products is awesome for making the players worried again

Also the old trick of improved Evil Twin (or Good in this case) could be interesting : a mighty redeemed vampire, or maybe even the progenitor of all vampires is actually not Evil and wishes to rid the world of too powerful descendants. Or he is Evil but does not allow potential challengers to his power to exist


There is an ultra strong vampire dude in book 3 who might conceivably get pissed at them at some point.

101 to 107 of 107 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / How to deal with an Invincible Player Character. (Way of the Wicked) All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.