Quiddity's page

Quiddity wrote:

. . . or bardic music, a Skald, or both, and/or other buff effects dedicated to increasing to-hit, including aid another optimization with low-level scrubs.

A party of four level 12s is APL 12. So a CR16 enemy is already APL+4, past the "epic" fight (and in theory an even fight for the whole party). Six level 12s is APL 13, still APL+3 encounter.

In reality the fight isn't even because of action economy issues, but the enemy is individually supposed to be very dangerous.

And you're saying that that no, not only can that enemy not win (due to action economy), but he can't even present a threat to the party without giving him a bunch of people to buff him up in some manner.

I don’t know if I’ll be keeping up with the thread because of stuff and junk, but I wanted to point out that I have no idea what this person is talking about now. Like, I didn’t bring up action economy at all or suggest a specific CR range. I’ve only spoken about tactics and composition and every time save-or-dies are mentioned the OP rolls right past that. Don’t need a response, just saying that maybe there’s some talking past others goin’ on here.

And I’m not sure why anyone would, or in this thread has, defended the one-dude-versus-the-party setup. That encounter style has been problematic for decades.

It’s surprising that a high-to-hit PC thread hasn’t mentioned what I’d expect to be a more standard response: lower monster AC.

Let the PC hit at 100%.

That’s been the strategy I’ve seen employed for decades. That’s the strategy PCs employ when monster to-hit outstrips their AC. Go first and murder anything you can’t tank, then tank as needed.

Standard competent defenses skip AC: mirror image and concealment. With NPCs, you can go far further by simply flooding the field with high to-hit low-hp scrubs, encouraging either AoE or thinning tactics. Any NPC that gets initiative and has any kind of disabling effect — grappling, disarm, or spells — is a pretty overwhelming hard-counter, so much so that I find this entire conversation really weird. I mean, if the DM had ruled that Team Badguy was onto the party and always hit the most dangerous PC with heavy crowd control on turn one, would this thread be called “Save-or-Sucks Balanced at Level 12?” If I think about this long enough, it actually seems confusing. If the PC’s dpr is a threat, the NPCs will use strategies to take him out first, so. . . yeah?

Duelist-style characters are straightforward enough to counter. If the “miss” part of the d20 combat minigame is eliminated, there are still plenty of other parts. Ramping up monster AC doesn’t counter the high-to-hit PC; it justifies him.

Bizarrely enough, what counters him is actually a bigger problem since most of what counters him is answered with casters: swarms, mirror image, and concealment (though equipment allows for some of this to be matched) accentuate the value casters bring to the table.

I’m aware that the issue is effectively resolved for the players herein, but I wanted to make it clear to other new players reading the thread that in many combat roleplaying games, including D&D/d20, if someone just hits a lot, you can just let them do that.

Because this is an explicit writing failure, as opposed to the more typical ambiguity seen in PF/3x materials, the most reasonable recourse is to assign investiture to work in a manner identical to ki, save that ki cannot be expended on investiture costs. This is obviously a houserule as even supposition of the designer's intent is impossible, but as the archetype is unplayable as written, an outcome that enhances player agency and minimizes DM review seems prudent.