If we're being honest, an aboleth encounter is more likely to be an encounter with a dominated sea serpent (CR 12 gargantuan magical creature with only a +7 will save-- which is child's play for an aboleth to control). No self-respecting aboleth is going to leave home without something along these lines as a bodyguard.
I alternate between being a player and a GM, and here's a dynamic I've seen occur pretty regularly: As a GM, you drop some hints about where the players stand in the overall plot of your campaign, and they don't see the significance of them. You drop a few more hints and they still don't put it all together. This can go on for a long time. The problem is that they aren't as familiar with the details of your campaign as you are, so things that seem like big clues to you are just random details to them. In order to give them enough of an idea of what's going on, you often have to give them pretty specific and obvious explanations-- stuff that feels like railroading to you, but only because you've spent several hours going over all this stuff beforehand. The players are only hearing about it for the first time. Often, the players feel like you've just let them drift without any clear idea of what they ought to be focused on, when you think you're giving them just the right amount of subtle clues to piece together the plot. I've found that if it feels to you like you're railroading the players a bit, they're probably just happy to have enough of a idea of the plot to figure out their next move.
Didn't any of you watch Zombieland? Rule #2: always remember to double tap.
A fighter as the boss is certainly possible, and it makes sense if you look at real world examples. Look how many ex-military guys end up as presidents or dictators around the world. The ability to perform well in battle and/or wars has often led to a position of power. But if this fighter ends up at the top of some vast power structure, he's not going to allow the party to just take him out with a well-chosen spell in the final battle. He's going to have been under threat from magical attacks for years before the party gets to him, and he's going to have set the parameters of the battlefield heavily in his favor. He's going to have paid for magical protection (i.e. protective spells cast on him, protective items he carries, magical assistants who are there to cover his weaknesses). He's going to have acquired the best weapons (possibly intelligent in their own right) and armor. And, he's going to want to take on any challengers in a setting that plays to his strengths. When your party shows up, he's going to want to take them out with his own sword, to show all the underlings who is the boss. So how would he set up the battlefield in order to play to his strengths? A few magical employees on the sidelines readying actions to dispel any magic aimed at him? How about trying to split the party up and take them out one by one? A martial NPC facing a party with a bunch of magical PC's is very likely to employ skirmish-based tactics to drain the party of resources. It's especially appropriate if he uses non-magical tactics as much as possible. Something as simple as having a bunch of employees wearing full plate armor that is identical to his own. Anyway, just a few thoughts on the matter. Hope that helps.
You can use meta-game knowledge against the players, too. In the campaign I'm running now, the party is freaking out because I've described a demonic creature with the lower body of a snake and a multi-armed upper body that looks like a humanoid female that is attacking the next town over. They're nowhere near powerful enough to fight a CR 17 marilith, which is what they're all assuming it is. Of course, I never SAID it was a marilth. That's just what they all assumed it was. It's actually a lamia. I re-skin monsters all the time for this very reason.
Phalanx fighter archetype gains the following ability: Phalanx Fighting (Ex) At 3rd level, when a phalanx soldier wields a shield, he can use any polearm or spear of his size as a one-handed weapon.
If you're worried about not making your concentration checks to cast defensively, the spell "Warding Weapon" works great. Toss a dagger into the air above you and it fends off attacks of opportunity when you cast. No chance of failure.
Can't it be both? Issues of alignment and codes aside, a paladin and an anti-paladin both bring quite a bit to the team. And what they bring doesn't overlap much. "He's a crusader for justice in service to Iomedae. She's a half-insane devotee of Lamashtu with a demon's baby on the way. Now, they're going to have to put aside their differences and find a way to make it work in what critics are calling 'the oddest couple since Doug and Kate in The Cutting Edge'. If the party is going to advance past second level, they'll have to break all the rules, and maybe even learn that opposites can attract."
There's a first level spell in the APG called Memory Lapse that makes the target forget everything that happened since the beginning of its previous turn. So.. First round, cast Charm Person. Second round, say something like: "hey, good buddy, let me cast this protective spell on you," then cast Memory Lapse. Target deliberately fails its save to allow the spell to function. You now have a charmed person who won't remember that you cast a spell when it wears off.
Fun things to do in your campaign involving spell components: --Tell the players what components the enemy caster is pulling out of her pouch during combat. How many players will know what's coming up when the wizard pulls out a bit of fur and a glass rod? --Allow spell casters to improve certain spells if they use better versions of the components. After killing the red dragon, let them collect some dragon guano to maximize their fireballs, or something like that. --Leave them behind as clues. What does it mean that there were a few hummingbird feathers left on the wizard's desk? Did he scry us? Cast some sort of protective spell? Really lame thing to do in your campaign involving spell components: --Make players track usage.
I once used the mending spell to jamb a lock so a door wouldn't open. Broke an arrow into a bunch of small pieces, fed them one by one into the keyhole, then cast mending on the arrow.
Profession boating IS useful. Craft haberdashery is very unlikely to come in handy. Maybe on Sunder attempts against bad James Bond villains. In our games, the profession skills are used a lot because they can cover a lot of territory. To use your example-- I would allow a PC to make a craft (haberdashery) check to determine what region someone is from, what social rank they hold, etc. This could either be a roll by itself, or a bonus added to knowledge (local), knowledge (nobility), etc. In a pinch, a player might be able to convince me to use a craft (haberdashery) roll to repair damaged leather armor. Certainly, the skill could give a bonus to diplomacy when dealing with primitive cultures and/or creatures. How about using the skill to make a disguise? I like the craft and profession skills because they are so open-ended and can really encourage some creativity on the part of the players. In a current game, we have a rogue with a high profession (herbalist) skill who has helped create antivenoms, preserved a freshly-killed boar so the party could use it as trail rations, and made pouches for the party to wear that kept a creature with the scent ability from tracking them. To the OP: if you make it clear that these skills can be used to good effect during your games, the players are more likely to use them.
So here's another question that this brings up... If a first level character casts vanish on two consecutive rounds, does she remain invisible seamlessly or does she reappear in the second round while she's casting vanish again?
I've found that an easy way to speed things up during combat is to call out as each player's initiative comes up: "okay, it's Andy's turn. Bill, get ready because you're up next." I do this as a GM pretty much every combat. Some of our players are pretty focused, and hardly need the reminder, but there's always one or two who seem to have drifted into the kitchen, and I need to make eye contact with them as I warn them their turn is coming up.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm going to make a list of them and give them to the player. As for the existence of bad dice luck... Objectively, I know that we all get the same chances, but I have watched this player roll poorly way more often than statistics would suggest. Anyway, even if bad dice luck doesn't exist, this is still an interesting topic. Some people don't like to be at the mercy of the dice.
Veal?
When you set up a fight with some bad guys, you don't always have to simply add more monsters to make it more challenging. Make the fight occur on a swaying rope bridge. The paladin is probably wearing heavy armor and hasn't put a lot of ranks in acrobatics, etc. Put a couple of innocents in harm's way in the encounter. Maybe they're stuck in a burning building. Of all the characters, the paladin is going to be the one who sees the need to rescue them, even at the expense of letting the bad guys get away this time. The bad guy has been hard to track down, but the PCs get information that he'll be at a masquerade ball. They can't wear all their heavy arms and armor. They'll need to use social skills to get into the ball, figure out which people at the ball are bad guys, etc. Then how do they convince the others at the ball that he's the bad guy? Lots of sense motive checks, where the paladin will still probably shine, but in an entirely different way. My gaming group had a battle not too long ago that culminated with a rogue running through the treetops above an evil monster that the paladin couldn't reach, then the wizard casting benign transposition on the rogue and the paladin, so the paladin could drop onto the creature's head from above. This was awesome because the GM wasn't trying to thwart the paladin's smite ability, but instead made it a group exercise to maneuver the paladin into striking range. Anyway, just a few suggestions.
There probably should be more low level baddies that are vulnerable to piercing, like some sort of balloon monster . . . I am glad I read this thread simply for coming across this idea. My next campaign is going to feature evil balloon monsters prominently.
I'm currently playing an NPC bard (I'm the GM), who whistles a little tune to himself while he's fighting. It's the sort of totally unconcerned kind of whistle you might do while you're doing some mundane task like polishing your armor or cleaning the kitchen. The idea is that he sees fighting the current foe as being hardly worth the effort-- "Oh, I suppose I'll help clear out this rabble, even though the rest of you could handle it without my help, but I'm not really busy with anything else at the moment." Seeing how nonchalant he is about the enemy boosts the confidence of everyone around him-- "Jeez, what was I thinking? For a minute there, I actually thought these guys might beat us!" It still works thematically if they're up against something that's really scary-- he's still going to be whistling his tune even when he's down to 1 HP because he's never going to let his enemies (or his allies) see him sweat. And his allies, seeing this, assume he has a plan and are heartened by his confidence.
The wording in the core rule book says that if you are allowed to act during the surprise round, you may take a standard or a move action (plus free actions). How do swift actions work? Can you only take one instead of your standard or move action, or in addition to it? Thanks
I'm kind of arriving late to this discussion, but I had a little different take on the prohibition against poison. A paladin is supposed to serve as an example to the rest of society. She is literally supposed to show the rest of us what humanity looks like at its best. I think that setting the good example is ultimately far more important to a paladin than winning any particular fight, so the way the paladin conducts the fight is more important than the outcome. Fighting honorably is a win/win for the paladin. If she is victorious, she shows that LG means can triumph. If she is not, she shows that LG means are worth holding onto, even in the face of defeat. I'm not advocating that paladins should run around looking for chances to martyr themselves, but that they should look at every battle as a potential opportunity to teach a lesson. If faced with a too-powerful foe, perhaps she should gather allies ahead of time to show the value of teamwork, etc. instead of using poison to show the value of using sneaky or underhanded methods to win at all costs. The only exception to the no-poison rule that this discussion has made me consider would be a sleep poison used so that a wrong-doer could be safely transported to a court of law, and even then, it wouldn't be used sneakily. Sort of a "If you do not come quietly, we will shoot you with these sleep-inducing arrows so that we may bring you to justice" kind of thing. Using the same poison just to gain a tactical advantage in a fight would still be out-of-bounds. As always, I enjoy reading others' responses-- there's some very well-thought-out reasoning here. |
