Snakes!'s page

Hey guys, dropping in to show gratitude to everyone who has given me of your time and opinion. I have gotten a lot out of this thread in terms of inspiration and ideas on how to move forward, both specific ideas and general tips. I have not adressed the last few replies, but have read them and found some valuable points.

I will continue to check in for a bit to see if something more drops in but will probably not post any more for now.

Thanks everyone for a constructive discussion!

Be creative with the opposition fources.

Use misdirection

Wizard have undead cannon fodder/bound fources at their side.

gravity works both ways.

Did you have fun? Did they have fun? You going to remember this combat when you are slogging away at your job, and smile at what your friends came up with?

You just got a good memory, treasure it.

Oh, I am. This thread has deviated a bit from my original purpose of asking advice to discussing the specifics of a few examples I provided to illustrate the situation.

Since you appear open to the notion of supernatural fallout for the nuke, might I suggest you unleash a Kaiju? One could easily have lain in torpor beneath Pitax long enough to be buried by the surrounding hills and been roused by the seismic shock of the impact. Once roused to ire, they have a preternatural tendency to hone in on the source of their anger, and if it advances directly upon the PC's city, they won't have any choice but to respond. Your particular pair might well defeat it, a mythic beast whose weaknesses are lost to myth and legend should very much be in the wheelhouse of your Oracle... but not without a substantial expenditure of resources and the close and lasting attention of neighboring kingdoms. I would be very curious if the Wizard could manage that situation without revealing his true character.

Very interesting, the last part especially. I will consider this. Thank you!

Regardless of the other stuff - allowing Delayed Blast Fireball beads to be Teleported via Teleport Object is not a good precedent to set.

[...]

Ask your players how much they want to be on the receiving end of this Scry and Fry tactic. If you let it stand, let them have this instance of a freebie, but after that, word gets out and THEIR enemies might do the same to them, or their followers, or their structures/buildings, etc. They have a Kingdom, and that means loads of vulnerable targets that can be DBF'd and bombed out of existence just as easily.

When the players get cute with the rules, I always ask them - do you want my NPC's to use the same tactics on you? Because my NPC's will. Don't expect to get a free pass on logical repercussions of what you've just done. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

This is one of the things I am considering - especially since due to their prominent status as rulers, many actions they take will be monitored by enemies known and unknown, who will plan accordingly.

I am not looking to punish them, however, but rather to challenge them and keep them engaged and stimulated by events.

I think a lot of this needs a retcon, as mentioned earlier.

1. Teleporting into thin air, wrong.
2. Teleporting a bunch (8 !!) of Delayed Blast Fireball beads? Only if he went with them. Note - Teleport Object clearly stats you can't teleport magical forces - which is exactly what a DBF bead is. So, total fail on the rules there.
3. Originally mentioned 8 DBF's cast? How, with Time Stop? Max delay is 5 rounds. By the time Mr.Wizard is casting #6, the first one should be going off, right? Another fail on rules, it looks like to me. At least as described by the OP.
4. The major creation stuff - are you serious? Lets say 10 castings at max 20th level. You get 20 cubic feet per casting. That's 200 cubic feet of gold. Or, in practical terms, a 10x10 foot slab of gold only 2 feet high. Gold is 1204 lbs/cubic foot - so, you have a bomb of about 120 tons. Not bad. But, terminal velocity is far, FAR from the impact speeds of a meteor - which tend to begin at 11 km/s. That's PER SECOND. Terminal velocity is about 56 m/s, sayeth Wikipedia. I suggest you see the following website: http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/ I dropped a 3m Iron Bomb at orbital velocity of 11 km/s (your gold bomb is exponentially much, much slower) and put my distance from impact as 1 km. Guess what? Little seismic, air pressure nothing more than loud traffic, etc. Allowing this to nuke a city is ridiculous. You've now got a real world physics fails compounding the RAW fail.

I'll give your guys 10/10 for creativity, but 0/10 for actually satisfying RAW (we won't even talk about RAI). I don't think the "real world" calculations for your bomb are even remotely close to reality either.

However, I'd say that Gold Bomb would do major destructive damage to a castle - that would be entirely fair. I wouldn't want to be too close to it when it hit, either. Probably lots of flying stone shrapnel, etc. You could still pull that one off with some tweaks - for example, create those 200 cubic foot of gold on a Treasure...

Let's just go through them one by one.

1. I adressed this above. I think it is a fair interpretation that you can teleport into air as long as you can fly. And enterprising players can in any case circumvent this, though it will probably take long, in case of flying for example.

2. They are physical objects as far as I can tell - they can be picked up and thrown, for example.

3. Like stated in the OP, the oracle helped out using Use magic device. However, after reading DBFB again, maybe I should have given each bead a 25% chance of exploding when handled in the final round.

4. I did the math again - 10 scrolls on caster level 14. 140 cubic feet, giving a radius of 3,22 ft. Gold has a density of 19 300 kg/m3. Terminal velocity for a sphere with a radius of 3,22 ft with 19 300 kg/m3 is a little lower than 1 km/s, unless I made a mistake somewhere. The effects were as follows: http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=1&distanceUnits=1&am p;diam=6&diameterUnits=3&pdens=19320&pdens_select=0&vel=1&a mp;velocityUnits=1&theta=90&wdepth=15&wdepthUnits=1&tdens=2 500

Less than what I calculated, to be sure, so I obviously made a mistake last time, but more than enough for the purpose.

But in any case, I am more interested in discussing how to handle creative players rather than the specifics of the examples.

More interesting replies, thank you everyone!

While casters are very powerful they often tend to miss mundane solutions to things. It might be worth having a spy in their court with very high bluff and stealth - I'd be moderately surprised if either character had through-the-roof Perception or Sense Motive. The Master Spy Prestige Class alse adds in a number of built-in mechanisms to fool or avoid magical detection and control as well.

It might be fun if their next OTT creative plan is slightly spoiled by this (their target is in another city, and their Scrying has been fooled) and you can trigger a mole hunt.

This is a good idea - although the characters are both paranoid and cautious, this could probably be interesting for them.

No matter how powerful these guys are, they have to share their plans with someone, or they're going to upset the local power structure. If these two are just throwing mananukes all over the place without informing the local helpful ruler, then they're going to find themselves surrounded by enemies -- enemies with Dispel Magic to get rid of all those secrecy spells -- and no sanctuary to run to.

So start by finding those someones, and getting them on your side. How? Bribery works well. So does blackmail. So does mind control.

Have the opposition start using social engineering to get details about the party's security. When the support structure doesn't even know it's been leaking information to the enemy, that's even better than using overt methods.

Spy networks. Use a druid or ranger -- and after that little stunt with the mananuke, there's going to be plenty of nature-lovers and balance guardians just aghast at what the wizard did (and the oracle approved). It doesn't take a high level druid to start using spells to see through the local songbirds eyes and hear through their ears. Or just using Awakened critters as spies...

This is the first time they have truly done something on this scale, and there will certainly be consequences along these lines. Just a side note, in this instance the PCs ARE the local rulers... Good idea with the druids/rangers, thanks.

You can't do that. You need to be on a solid, or at least stable place when you land. You can't appear in mid air.

Well, if you can cast fly I would argue (and my players certainly would) that it is permissible. Regardless, there are ways around this, wheter by flying or otherwise.

Problem with teleport spell is that you have to go with the object being teleported. So, the caster died too when the delayed fireballs exploded.

I agree with the general sentiment that you are allowing players to run roughshod over the rules and not enforcing them properly. As pointed out, you need to retcon the "nuke". It was not within the rules by anty degree. It should have done far less damage if such a thing could be produced (look at falling object damage table) and teleportation does not allow you to teleport into the air. You must teleport onto a location which can support. Explain these things to your players, and tell them that due to the severe nature of these events you would like to retcon what happened.

He used Teleport Object to do that, not Teleport. You don't have to go yourself. As for the second part, simply because something is not in the rules does not mean it is not possible to do - designers can hardly be expected to come up with rules for every imaginable situation. And as I indicated, I am not looking to punish or curb their creativity, merely to ensure that actions have proper consequences and keeping the suspense in the game. As for the rules of damage from falling objects, I really can't bring myself to argue that they were meant to handle things such as meteorites. I don't think that Azlant would have sunk from 20d6 damage.

You are correct, that if the creature is capable of flight the creature could teleport up into the air.

But he could not have used Mage's Magnificent Mansion up there, and created the "Golden Rod of Doom". Which then should have only done a maximum of 20d6 damage. Not wiped out a city.

There are certainly ways around this as well, such as casting a wall of force and then MMM or something.

Thanks guys, I went to sleep and lots of good advice came in! I appreciate all of it. Let me adress a few points that have been made.

How did you manage to fool them with the Rushlight Treachery? They seem paranoid and resourceful enough they would've been able to see through it.

They certainly are paranoid - the wizard in particular. He uses private sanctum and nondetection constantly, minimizes sleep with a ring of sustenance and keeps an erratic schedule. I could go on.

The reason the Rushlight Treachery worked was probably that it played right into the wizards taste for political intrigue, and that the oracle was currently very distracted by thoughts of his impending death to care much about politics at the moment. Also, they (the characters, not the players) are pretty arrogant.

My other observation is that they seem to burn through a lot of one-use resources whenever they pull one of their stunts. They also seem to be practicing a scorched earth policy, as they must've destroyed most of Pitax's wealth with that explosion. That makes me wonder, what could you do to hit them in the pocketbook?

It is mostly the wizards use of scrolls, which he crafts himself. The wizard and oracle are the core of the group and rarely misses a session, so they get much treasure. Due to our current shortage of players, the party is rarely larger than three people, meaning that they are fairly rich. They also have no fighter type, so all gear catering towards martial pursuits quickly turn into gold. But like you say... maybe an errant dragon has heard of their great wealth and is plotting to relieve them of it.

Finally, since they've invented and dropped the first bomb, perhaps it's time for some escalation (perhaps the area goes all out into nuclear war?). If anybody else is able to discover the technique independently, or if they have any spies who can learn of how they did it, you might do the same to them. Any neutral/fence-riding parties will ally for or against them, as they've just effectively uped the ante literally overnight.

Very good point - I think it will be very hard to reverse engineer from one use, especially since the wizard has told no one how he did it (well aware of the danger, no doubt). But if they continue to use it, I will probably have someone figure it out.

Finally, if you really wanted drastic change to come from it, I can see such a massive death have dread supernatural repercussions. Mass hauntings (or a single massive mass of ectoplasmic malevolence) might come out of it; the psychic resonance could also cause rifts to open, etc.

Very interesting! Just like a nuke creates radiation, so should a magical superweapon cause supernatural "fallout". I just might go with something along these lines.

Just be careful to work to challenge more than punish them.

Absolutely, in the end I love the way they plot and plan. I just need to keep up.

This is where you've messed up. You're letting your players bring REAL life into this game.

I think your problem is that you are letting your players run roughshod over the rules and doing things that aren't actually RAW or RAI. Tell your Oracle to put the calculator away, because there's no way his character can do these equations!

I understand what you are saying but can't make myself agree - gravity exists in Golarion as well, and while I think there is an argument in that the wizard would not be able to calculate the exact damage of the spell(s), I can't make myself argue against the general effects. Amrel made this point a bit further down, along with that the wizard probably can make the calculations, seeing how he has genius level intellect and extremely high knowledge skills. However, perhaps magical fluctuations or some other circumstance might make accuracy hard, so maybe it would be a good idea to have some sort of spread on where the spell lands like you suggested.

You also need to drastically cut down on whatever info these guys are getting from Divination spells - they are not suppose to be IWIN buttons that tell you everything you want to know, in fact, they should be vague as all hell. "You see Armagg...he's in a room, you don't know where this room is..."

This was possible for lower level divination spells. Alas, commune is very powerful in the hands of a competent character... I quote Amrel here:

If scrying says you get to observe your target, you observe them (scry specifically says you get full visual acuity and can hear within 10 ft of the target). If commune says you get a yes or no answer to questions then you get one. If a player is playing an intelligent character and being creative then they are playing the game correctly!

I also feel it would be cruel to deprive the oracle of his divinations, as his entire character concept is based on them.

This is a fantastic question to ask, and a very important one. You have creative and innovative players and THAT IS A GOOD THING! The smarter your players are the better they're going to do regardless of what you throw at them and that shouldn't be a bad thing.

[...]

What you should NOT do is nerf the game UNLESS your players are making it difficult for everyone else to have fun (and you cant convince everyone else to step up their game).

I agree - what I am looking for is absolutely not punishment or whipping them into line, but rather how I should keep the game interesting for the players. It should be mentioned that they are also in circumstances that forces them to be creative - no fightertypes and few players.

Oh, and no problem on the last part, everyone is enjoying it as such.

I think one solution to your problem is give your players less time to think and give them more situations where they have to react on their toes. Anyone with a high intelligence is going to be able to come up with a great solution given long enough, just don't give them that time when you can help it.

This is pretty much what happened during the Rushlight Treachery, I am sure they would have used alternative means of fighting the Pitax army given time, but I pressed the point that the enemy army is in your base, killing all your dudes. This made them react swiftly and with the means at hand (their army) after only a short, spiteful, punative expedition into the palace of Pitax (magic jar is a horrifying spell).

Also as a side note, google is your friend! The terminal velocity of an object is usually far less than an impacting extraterrestrial object (its why they're on fire when they enter the atmosphere and a skydiver, when falling at terminal velocity, is not).

I did investigate this, but the players calculations checked out. They assumed a speed based on the terminal velocity of an object of the dimensions and mass that he created(gold has high density, which was why it was chosen). He did not assume that it had an impact speed higher than what was possible to achieve considering the time the object had for acceleration and its mass, density and shape. Regardless, the result was a 173 meter (567 feet) diameter crater, plus damage from shaking and airblast to the rest of Pitax.

I am currently running Kingmaker right now as well, and am about half way through Blood for blood.

I've expanded the campaign greatly from what is written, and taken several of the option ideas that they scatter through it and expanded on those as well (like a Civil War breaking out in Brevoy with the PC's nation getting caught in the middle of the politics).
I've taken the areas where they mentioned Brevoy politics and expanded on those alot, making it largely the focus of the campaign now.
Pitax is hardly a worthy fight on it's own for the PCs...but the PCs are caught up into a Game of Thrones style war with a huge nearby kingdom on top of it all the stakes become all the much more higher.
If you want to compare notes shoot me a private message.

This is something I have been introducing as well, seeing how the players are interested in politics. While civil war has yet to break out, things are tense. The players have an annual festival in their capital, and last time they had a royal visitor. I wont go into detail here, but suffice to say, complications occured. I have this thing simmering in the background to use when I feel the time is right. I might take you up on your offer when I have gathered my thoughts a bit.

On to your PCs...alot of GMs seem to forget that the NPCs can be just as crafty as the characters can.

I do try to consider this - they actually couldn't find Irovetti due to his use of private sanctums and not asking quite the right questions from their daily commune. Alas, that lead to mass destruction rather than a surgical strike.

One problem however, is that as the PCs progressively become more powerful magicians, it seems to me like they have less problems with this as there are simply not that many casters that match or exceed them in power in any given nation.

it sounds like they are a Lawful Evil nation, and they could create alot of enemies by acting out that sort of behavior.

From some of Brevoy's Houses as well as the Elves of Kyonin which are really close to Pitax.
If you are a powerful elf nation and you see someone drop a huge bomb on a kingdom right next door...I think you'd look into it...

The kingdom is actually LN - the wizard actually almost plays as a good character most of the time as he thinks this is good for public relations. Even his goals and cause don't seem particularily evil, even good in many aspects - but he is willing to go to any length to achieve them, which explains the alignment. The oracle is more selfishly evil, willing to do anything to achieve immortality.

But like you say, this latest thing will of course garner very much attention, especially from the river kingdoms and the houses of Brevoy. Good point about the elves, I will consider it.

From my experience in Kingmaker, when the pc's have a nuke the npc's can also have a nuke. A scroll of meteor swarm popped up in the magic mart so the party bought the scroll because you never knew when that might come in handy. We used it during the first time your country gets invaded and soon after every time we had a large scale battle we were met with messengers first. You don't use high level scrolls WE won't use high level scrolls. Basically we had to hash out the terms of war, and while it is supposed to be dirty and gritty, and mean we decided to play by our enemies rules and still stomped them into the dirt.

This may also be a good idea - it would probably be in everyones interest to keep war as "clean" as possible. Not that my players would not disregard this when convenient for them.

Thank you for your help, everyone, I really appreciate it and there has been several pieces of good advice here I will take to heart. If you have any more, I would love to hear it.

I think that player basically just won D&D

I will admit it was both a very amusing moment and a very frustrating one. Like I said, I love creativity... but I also want my players to feel challenged.

@Caimbuel

Thank you for your suggestions - I will definitely use the one about not having scrying work through lead, that will be very handy.

I also had Irovetti using private sanctum, which annoyed Arodus... but ultimately it mattered little.

And there will certainly be political effects from this little stunt, but I suspect this is exactly what Pataxmos intended, being more interested in that part of the campaign. And since he was evil to begin with...

The intention was to run the campaign as printed, but you know what they say, no campaign survives first contact with the players.

WARNING, SPOILERS CONCERNING THE KINGMAKER CAMPAIGN BELOW

Hello folks, I am finding myself in need of some advice in how to manage player creativity without stiffling it. While I generally love it when the players come up with clever plans and amusing solutions, things have been getting a bit overboard in my group. Let me add some useful context which will be enlightening, and probably amusing and/or disturbing, depending on your point of view. Beware, wall of text incoming.

I have been running a Kingmaker campaign with my group for some time, and we have recently reached War of the River Kings. My woes comes primarily from two players and their escapades - a short bio of each follows:

Arodus Stormcrow, LE chelaxian Oracle (time), Seer archetype - Very close to dying of old age and knows it. Primary goals are avoiding dying and making his prophecies (or, sometimes, "prophecies) come true. Acts as magister of the kingdom.

The player likes playing niche characters with both strengths and weaknesses. Very good at coming up with clever plans. Uses divination spells (commune and scry in particular) to gather information for the party. In combat, uses heightened sanctuary for defence and a wand of spectral hands to deliver touch spells such as curse and plane shift. Has ridiculous DC due to old age.

Pataxmos Atma, LE chelaxian wizard (conjurer) - Secretive and plotting wizard, acting as spymaster. His main goal appears to be seeing the kingdom become as powerful as possible as quickly as possible, but the reason is so far unclear. Prefering to manipulate Lord Tilmar (the ruler) instead of ruling directly, with very good success so far. He is the cardinal Richelieu of our campaign.

The player is the type that knows the rules, what feats to take, what spells are good and so on. Also exceptionally creative when it comes to combining spells, and using spells in unexpected ways. In combat, uses a variety of spells to devastating effect.

There were few problems on earlier levels, but as the party gained in power and became a bit pressured by a few players leaving, they started to emerge. I won't go into details about most of their pursuits, but they used combinations of scrying, commune and teleport to almost completely bypass most of the content of Blood for Blood. The crowning glory there was when Arodus,using his commune, found out where Armag was waiting for the party. Pataxmos, aided by Arodus using Use magical device, first cast 8 scrolls of Delayed blast fireball and then used teleport object to teleport the beads into the chamber where Armag waited. Goodnight and goodbye.

But last time, the proverbial feces really hit the fan. The players fought a desperate pitched battle against the army sent by Pitax during the Rushlight Treachery. I sent a lot more of Pitax forces than the adventure suggested, as I was sure that this was the only real challenge the party would face due to wizard/oracle shenanigans. Rarely have I been proven more correct. Pataxmos, greatly angered by the considerable losses taken by the kingdoms armies in the battle, proclaimed that he would bring Tilmars judgment down on king Irovetti. After a quick visit to Pitax, where Arodus prophecied doom to the king in front of a large crowd with his +30 or so perform (oratory), Pataxmos went to work. After a few days crafting scrolls, and making skill checks for mathematical calculations, he was ready.

Teleporting high into the atmosphere, he cast Magnificent mansion. Inside, he used his 10 scrolls of Major creation in conjunction with Fabricate to fuse his creation together. The result was an enormous, bomb made from solid gold. He finished with a casting of permanent image. After this, he dispelled his mansion, ejecting his glittering harbringer of death.

Shortly after, the people of Pitax had a brief glimpse of a golden light in the guise of an enormous lord Tilmar, clad in shining armor and wielding a mighty spear, striking from the sky right at the palace. Pataxmos player had calculated the terminal velocity, the time needed to approach it, and the effect of the blast based on a scientific paper on meteorite impacts.

The palace and a considerable part of Pitax is now a crater, and that is where we stand. Pataxmos invented a dratting nuke.

So, at long last, my question to you... how to handle player creativity without stiffling it? I should add that Pataxmos player still claims to be pulling his punches...