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Enfeeblement has a save in pathfinder even though its for half. Still, it's a fun spell so ima gonna try it. Plus I am going to take craft rod so I will be able to make some empower rods.
Indeed. My bad, but still up to 3-5 points of STR penalty for 1 rnd/level even on a successful save. If the DM ignores that, then there's a problem. Enervation might be a good test spell too.
I often don't roll in the open as I prefer to do it behind the screen. But I will let the dice lie as rolled if anyone wants to look over the screen. I like the screen as it stops dice from going all over. As well I do fudge from time to time. There are times when I think bad guy X should fail the save or make the save. But I wanted an element of player control here if I do fudge. Basically if I fudge the players benefit.
So what I do is I give myself 1 auto save and 1 auto fail token. If I use the auto save token I toss the token out to the players. Now the players as the group have auto save they can use. The second they use it though it goes back me to use. As the DM I control when this comes into play and generally it only comes out when luck is getting out of hand.
When it come to having a my monsters auto fail it's just good for the story but I won't do it more than once a game session, the auto fail token is used up.
The spells work sometimes, just not at the start of combat. The first couple of rounds.
This is for all threatening bad guys, not just final bosses. So any 1/2/3 creatures with a CR matching our party is about immune to me in early combat.
What's your sample size? What spells are you casting? What are the targets?
My opinion on the fudging thing is that it should not be done more than once or twice in a gaming session, and only in extreme cases.
I dont want party members to die, but if they do then so be it. I don't want the world to end, but if it does so be it.
Thing is if everyone on the table, DM included, thinks the current situation absolutely sucks balls, and he has to make the roll that will just spoil everyones day, including his, then it should be within his power to fudge it. I'm not talking just about character/party deaths, but gaming in general. I want a DM that I can trust with a fudge to help save a gaming session if it is absolutely needed.
On the other hand I also want to trust him with the BBEG's saves, and thats not what is happening now.
Well if it is a matter of trust, then it is important to talk directly to your DM. If you think your dm is constantly fudging rolls to work against you then you need to confront him. This is poor dming no matter what anyone says.
What i suggest is gather evidence. Track what happens when you cast a spell. If you show him a list of what rounds you do and dont succeed and how often your save or suck spells fail, he will have a much harder time denying that he is fudging rolls. You also may be surprised. Sometimes we remember our failures far more often then our successes. But either way keeping track over the next couple sessions will help alot when you talk to your dm, instead of just flat out accusing him.
After you have the list, ask him whats going on. Does he just have enemies with insanely high saves? Is he worried about encounters ending too quickly? This wont be resolved without a conversation with the DM, and its always a hard one, but it needs to be had if you want to play this character in his game.
I had a dm that had a tendancy to not fail saves. I then confronted him with a list, in which he had made 47 single target effect saves in a row over more then one campaign. He still denied fudging the rolls, but in the end, the trend changed. Just calling him out on it would have put him on the defensive and it wouldnt have likely worked. But showing him the direct results, i think changed his mind.
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I only read the first few posts (no time) but I have an idea that likely has not come up.
The DM is fudging lots of rolls behind the screen; that's his prerogotive and when used well is good DMing....
But in this case he's also trumping a PC's actions and taking away the legitimate (not broken) character concept -- that's bad DMing.
Not in front of the Players, take the DM aside and let him know it's not fair to arbitrarily trump all of your PC's early-rounds attack spells. Occassionally, sure -- it makes for a better gaming experience when the fights are tough and it's good DMing. But every one of the early rounds Saving Throws?
Propose a compromise.
Instead of having his BBEG make ALL of his Saves the first 3 or 4 rounds, suggest he give all of his BBEG's something "like" Mettle and Evasion. If he makes it he takes half or no damage -- if he fails he takes partial or minimum damage.
This way, instead of loosing 6 CHA from a Bestow Curse and all of his Rakshasa spells, the BBEG only looses 2 CHA and his highest level spell. Etc.
Pfft. He doesn't look that tough to me.My solution: Stab your DM in the heart.My DM looks like John Locke. I don't want to try it.
LOL!
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Depending on your DM's personality, you could also try a different approach if you think directly addressing the issue could be a problem. You could collect data on failed saves and ask his advice on how to make it more effective, as if you are using a failing approach. His answer should give you a lot of insight as to why its not working and what you might do instead. This would not put him on the defensive, and possibly shed some insight as to how he might feel about how his BBEG fights "should" go...
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I often don't roll in the open as I prefer to do it behind the screen. But I will let the dice lie as rolled if anyone wants to look over the screen. I like the screen as it stops dice from going all over. As well I do fudge from time to time. There are times when I think bad guy X should fail the save or make the save. But I wanted an element of player control here if I do fudge. Basically if I fudge the players benefit.
So what I do is I give myself 1 auto save and 1 auto fail token. If I use the auto save token I toss the token out to the players. Now the players as the group have auto save they can use. The second they use it though it goes back me to use. As the DM I control when this comes into play and generally it only comes out when luck is getting out of hand.
When it come to having a my monsters auto fail it's just good for the story but I won't do it more than once a game session, the auto fail token is used up.
Awesome idea, from what looks like an awesome DM. I will be stealing this!
Talk to him about it.
He has to be aware of the situation.
Ask him "Should I do something to pump my DCs even further?"
If his dice are REALLY lucky, he would say so, but if he IS actually fudging them, then he probably won't have a problem being honest about that and he would tell you that pumping your DCs further would be irrelevant.
You might ask him that even if he doesn't want to reveal specific dice rolls (this could be a fear players will meta-game based on the results), that he could give better descriptions, i.e. if the BBEGs BARELY made their save, or passed it easily, etc.
If the GM *IS* intent that the BBEG's aren't taken out by Save-or-Suck in the first round of battle, you actually have 2 other options:
A game like an RPG is fundamentally based around an agreement between all the players, including the GM. If the GM is having to 'fudge' these type of things to this degree to keep the game within the parameters that are acceptable (actually having the material he prepared play-out it's course the majority of the time is a reasonable expectation for his work in preparing the encounters), then he's probably open to acknowledging that fact... But 'fudging' is really the least effective way to go about maintaining that 'agreement' to keep everybody happy, and talking about it and clarifying that agreement so everybody's happy, i.e. so he won't feel the need to 'fudge' in the first place, will make it so EVERYBODY can get what they want out of the game.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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Enervation
Just about the best boss killer in the game. No save sucka. You make the attack roll, you make the SR check, so you know whether or not it "should have worked."
I had this same problem in 3.5 when I had the charm monster invocation on my warlock. I had a cracked out DC for it and used it every single encounter, mostly against monsters I as a player knew had sucky Will saves, and never once did it stick over the course of 3 levels.
So what I'd do in your boss fight situations is round 1 lay down your battlefield control to lock down/inconvenience the mooks, then spam enervation at the boss until it either dies from negative levels or is devastatingly crippled by the mountain of stacking penalties you are heaping on each round.
To the OP...
Did you discuss your character concept (all SoS! all of the time!) with your DM prior to creating the character? If so and they were fine with it, then I would talk to them about how it is not fun to play at present and see what they say.
The DM in me would recoil every combat when I know that you are going to cast one of a few SoS spells at my BBEG. Nothing says "letdown" to the group like the BBEG getting whacked before they can even get in a round of actions. I will fudge die rolls in order to make a combat more memorable. However, there was one time when I didn't, and it was one of the most memorable encounters we've ever had. So there are pros and cons to both approaches.
Finally, the truly great thing about wizards is their versatility. By limiting yourself to one role in combat you are placing an unnecessary restriction on your character's potential actions. Listen to the advice of the others in this thread. Wizards have tremendous resources, and can really control the flow of combat with their spells.
I do something similar to the auto save/auto fail chit. I roll 3d6 for luck for all players and major bad guys. Each +1 mod from LUC allows the character (player or NPC) to auto-negate a crit, auto-confirm a crit, or reroll a failed roll of any kind. Every -1 mod from LUC allows an enemy to auto-confirma crit against you, auto-negate one of your crits, or force you to reroll a successful check. You can use the ability once per game per point of mod (A LUC of 14 would be +2 and useable twice per game session).
If the bad guy has -LUC MOD then I use it against him. If he has +, I fudge the rolls in his favor up to his luc mod.
Granted, most BBEGs have a higher than average luck (2d6+6), but then, they are BBEGs. The players tend to average out to about a +1.
As a DM, I've given up fudging dice. Ultimately, there seems little point to it. Since my players use a ruleset that has them roll almost all the dice, there's also little opportunity to fudge the dice rolls.
If a d20 roll comes out in a way a player doesn't like, we also have an Action Point system. I use special rules for elite and solo monsters that gives them Action Dice that they can use to modify attacks and spells used against them. Once an elite or solo is out of Action Dice, no more dice manipulation for them.
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Its amazing how difficult folks are making this issue to resolve.
Fact - This dm is fudging the rolls ALOT.
If players are ok with this, then you need to demand more from your GM or boot him, or get another gaming group together. Its amazing how many people are saying this is good DMing.
Fact - The dm is blowing past this wizard's turn, auto failing the saves on every main baddy.
I dont know about you, but if I saw a 2,3,4, or 5 being rolled behind the game screen, and my DC was 22, I might have to call him out, especially if it was a 2. No main baddies have a +20 on a save before 11th level on any of the AP's.
This should have been taken care of well before 12th level, and the other players should have stepped up on this players behalf. The fact that neither has happened shows that the group is not as cohesive as previously hinted at, as there is one player that is left standing out of every battle. This could be taken care of by simply rolling in front of everyone. But no, this GM wont do it. (and the reason is not so he can be a good gm). Its like there is a preconcieved notion that DM's must dictate the outcome of several D20 rolls just to extend the battle a few more rounds. This is crap.
And how many baddies in the AP's actually accomplish something in the storyline be extending out the combat to round 5 instead of round 2 or 3? Let me answer this... NOT EVERY ONE OF THEM. As a matter of fact, I have read through all but CotCR, and not one instance stands out in my memory. So fudging for story line purposes is crap as well.
I hope this helps and cuts through the insane reasoning I am hearing for the defense of this GM.
I support the view that you must talk with your GM/DM. I played an illusionist (very subjective class) that rarely ever worked, no matter how hard I tried to roleplay or set up an environment to support the spells that were used. Later I found out, the DM wasn't very good at supporting that type of play style. It would have been ten times easier at the beginning of the campaign when I first noticed it to bring up the issue.
Obviously you can leave for another group, but I have found a good GM/DM is hard to find, especially one that matches your style of play as a character.
Since I hate save or fail spells in general (it is let down even in a open roll environment), I have always opted for the other suggestions of buffing the party, or controlling the battle field, etc.
I've tried to think of an instance when I would do that to a player. Do you think that it's possible that he thinks that you are cheating somehow?
A conversation about how little fun you're having seems to be in order, regardless.
As a GM, I can whole-heartedly say I feel for this GM fudging the rules, but I have to agree that he could have gone about it a better way. Rather than obviously cheat, he should have brought up to you outside the game that your character is ridiculously strong, and that it's not very fun for him if you kill off his monsters in one round. It really, really sucks to spend an hour building a high-level monster only to have it blown away in two minutes, and I think any reasonable player should at least respect this. The primary focus of my games is how metal it is, and how totally sick the battle is, and if that means giving the monsters 100 extra hp in the middle of battle, so be it. Try and understand, if you were watching a movie, and at the end, the good guys killed the boss in six seconds, that wouldn't be very badical, right? I feel like maybe the GM is playing by that principle, and if you have a problem with it, you should speak to him outside the game about it (obviously).
if none of these worth while suggestions work for you go evoker step one wads of newspaper, step two dip in wax, step three light and cast fireball on face
As a DM I find it ridiculous when somebody claims I am ignoring their bard. I hate sta.....[whispers]he isn't the bard? I thought you told me bard....ok, ok...[/whispers] I hate it when they say I ignore their clerics. I....WHAT!!![whisper] NOT the cleric either? What the heck is this guy playing anyway??? WIZARD? WIZARD? GAWD!! Well crap, I have been ignoring him. What do I say now?[/whispers] Uhhh, no comment.
If Save or sucks don't work, try evocation. it doesn't suck as bad as optimizers like Treantmonk pass it off to be. a truly climatic battle shouldn't be ended by merely a failed saving throw. but it shouldn't be hard enough to require a Deus Ex Machina Either. i don't like boss fights that end in one round either. i also dislike the term boss, but it is as old as RPGs themselves. i also don't like the idea of a character buffing themselves like mad then ubercharging the big bad evil overlord for millions of damage either. it has the same issues as death by a single failed saving throw. the big bad boss fails independently and needs minions to keep everyone off of him. the challenge rating system isn't perfect either. and evocation is really good at finishing off softened mooks.
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How sure are you that he's fudging?
Something you should consider is whether the BBEG's are buffed specifically to mitigate save or suck spells. Plenty of spell options out their to prevent mind effects (protection from alignment for one), there's deathward, freedom of movement etc etc. If the spells aren't available, there's still gear in the form of potions or magic gear.
Perhaps you should try a spellcraft to identify any spells on the guy before hand. Many of them have tells, and when they overlap their aura's get stronger and easily visible.
You could also drop a debuff first (which range from dispels through to any number of ray spells that don't have saves and drop stats so the saves do get affected). If you spend the first round dropping the bbeg's saves, the second round you can drop the save or suck spell.
What I'm suggesting is the GM may not be cheating by fudging rolls. He/she may be specifically building baddies that are prepared for your party, including the Wizard that is known for casting the save or suck spells every battle. Paizo's AP's are filled with baddies who organise fights using their minions, just so they can watch the party tactics and prepare properly when the big fight comes. Your DM may be trying this.
When you talk to him/her (which you should definetly do), ask if this is what's occuring. If it is, you need to change tactics occasionally to throw the baddies off. If you keep using the same tactic, people are going to hear about it and prepare.
If he's fudging rolls, ask him to stop. Then point him to this thread so he can work out ways to prevent your spells without fudging hehe.
Cheers
As my Archon father who served The Empyreal lords has said. try a different strategy. it'll make you feel useful, i take a few evocations, not for the power, but as a recreational thing. i start with haste, then if i don't do anything, it harms the party, and i get bored too. my party does complain about every scorchmark they recieve, however they know they would be in bigger trouble from still breathing monsters. and a 3rd of the party is pretty much immune, the cleric of gorum, and the monk. the tanks take really minor damage in comparison to thier hit points. and the casters stay the hell away.