Alright, so here's the deal.
I have a Paladin in my group (Kingmaker Campaign, Blood for Blood currently). He is Lawful Good and plays it like a champ, even pointing out to other good characters what it means to be good (this has stopped several characters from doing D-baggish actions). Needless to say, I'm very, very thankful he's in charge as a ruler goes in the Kingmaker game. But I digress.
I hate his character. Not the rping aspect of it. I hate the fact that Smite Evil gimps every big bad boss guy that comes up to the PC's. He waits until he's fairly sure or certain they are on the last boss guy, then turns on Smite Evil and wipes the floor with him. Its getting to the point that I have to plan out every encounter with the idea of "How do I deal with Vitori (the character) and his stupid Smite Evil)? I don't mind him turning it on random Lieutenant guy and massacring him, but I would prefer that end game bosses to be difficult, the kind you get done and your hands are on your knees, you're breathing hard and thanking the gods you survived.
Its getting to the point where I just want to say that my boss guys are immune to that ability, but I don't want to become a d-bag DM.
Any suggestions guys?
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Any suggestions guys?
Don't know the AP, but my suggestions:
- Make sure you actually use the ability right. Note the errata; double damage against dragons, outsiders and undead are only on the first hit of a smite. You probably already know this, but it's important to note.- Use non-evil big baddies sometimes. There's plenty of reasons for neutral NPC's to be antagonistic towards the PC's. Remember: A&!***+ doesn't mean evil.
- Play the enemies smart, if they are. Remember, the average human has Int 10 - an int 14 adversary is bright, cunning, and will probably think about how to counter the partys strengths if he knows about it before (and will take measures to know such things). Against paladins, terrain may often be detrimental; if melee, they often have quite bad movement rate, and if ranged, cover can work wonders.
- Is he ranged or melee? Varying the battles so they benefit different kinds of characters means he's going to be at a disadvantage sometimes.
- Don't always use obvious big baddies. If they're spellcasters, they might use illusions and if not there's always mundane disguises.
- Let him shine. Sometimes he'll just kick the BBEG's but and that's fine; it's his job. Not all combats should be like that though.
- Paladins are good against single targets. Make sure there's always more than a single bad guy.
- From what I've understood it, Kingmaker has pretty short days and you can often rest. Try to limit that a bit.
One of my favorite lines-->"AP's are not one size fits all."
What that means is you may have to make adjustments for your group.
You may have to adjust them for your group. If there is one main bad guy the paladin will give him a hard time, and it does not help that the bad guy is outnumber 4 to 1 most of the time.
Say for example the bad guy is a CR 11 encounter. I would drop him to a CR 9 and use the other CR 9 that is left over as backup. Changing a bad guy to neutral may also be an option. Sometimes people just have opposing situations that are not alignment dependent, and neither side wants to cooperate.
Putting the paladin in a few tough fights to try to burn the smites out may also be an options.
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Alright, so here's the deal.
I have a Paladin in my group (Kingmaker Campaign, Blood for Blood currently). He is Lawful Good and plays it like a champ, even pointing out to other good characters what it means to be good (this has stopped several characters from doing D-baggish actions). Needless to say, I'm very, very thankful he's in charge as a ruler goes in the Kingmaker game. But I digress.
I hate his character. Not the rping aspect of it. I hate the fact that Smite Evil gimps every big bad boss guy that comes up to the PC's. He waits until he's fairly sure or certain they are on the last boss guy, then turns on Smite Evil and wipes the floor with him. Its getting to the point that I have to plan out every encounter with the idea of "How do I deal with Vitori (the character) and his stupid Smite Evil)? I don't mind him turning it on random Lieutenant guy and massacring him, but I would prefer that end game bosses to be difficult, the kind you get done and your hands are on your knees, you're breathing hard and thanking the gods you survived.
Its getting to the point where I just want to say that my boss guys are immune to that ability, but I don't want to become a d-bag DM.
Any suggestions guys?
Illusion spells (wasted that smite on who you thought was big baddie)
The smite evil damage isn't really that much higher than an optimized fighter or barbarian.
The bigger problem is the 15 minute day inherent in the AP that allows people to nova.
The bigger problem is the 15 minute day inherent in the AP that allows people to nova.
That.
After playing the entire AP (except the final battle) i have to say that Kingmaker is a very easy AP due to the 15 minute work day, even the "dungeon" like encounters aren't very lenghty and/or with enough encounters to burn enough resources.Also the lack of magical opposition for the majority of AP isn't helping either.
The bigger problem is the 15 minute day inherent in the AP that allows people to nova.That.
After playing the entire AP (except the final battle) i have to say that Kingmaker is a very easy AP due to the 15 minute work day, even the "dungeon" like encounters aren't very lenghty and/or with enough encounters to burn enough resources.
Also the lack of magical opposition for the majority of AP isn't helping either.
I agree. If I ever run it again I will have to change a few things.
I agree. If I ever run it again I will have to change a few things.
The bigger problem is the 15 minute day inherent in the AP that allows people to nova.That.
After playing the entire AP (except the final battle) i have to say that Kingmaker is a very easy AP due to the 15 minute work day, even the "dungeon" like encounters aren't very lenghty and/or with enough encounters to burn enough resources.
Also the lack of magical opposition for the majority of AP isn't helping either.
I am running the first part of the series right now with a group of 6. I scaled it to be about the same difficulty and exp value as the 4 group. Also I increased the random encounter chance by 15% initially and 5% each additional day. So initial entry to a hex was 30% chance to fight a random encounter and 45% the 1st night, 60% the second and so on. Also I didn't limit them to one random encounter a day. On top of that. I almost bumped the amount of suggested monsters up a die. So instead of 1 will-o-wisp it was 1d4 will-o-wisp. Instead of 1d4 bandits it was 1d6 bandits. There were times when the group battled a will-o-wisp and then were attacked by a werewolf as they were halfway through the night. Causing them to fail to get 8 hours of rest. Meaning the caster could not rebuild their spells, and the paladin couldn't rebuild his abilities. It causes some hard times for the PCs but nothing they can't handle with the right tactics and some good old epic dice rolls.
As for the Paladin smite evil issue, change the BBEG to a BBNG. Its been said several times already, because its the best way to fix it. No evil, no smite evil. A neutral character can do evil actions and not be evil himself. He may even be "good" using evil/neutral NPCs as a "end justifies the means". With a little thought and creativity you could do just about anything to limit the paladins smite power. Charisma drain comes to mind to reduce attack bonus and deflection bonus. Add a secondary little bad evil guy to your big bad neutral guy who can do charisma drain. Now the paladin is smiting the little guy who is draining his charisma as he fights.
The Kingmaker doesn't really allow much of the switch from evil to neutral, i can think of only one enemy that might not be evil, i am talking about Baron Hannis Drelev, everyone else is pretty much evil and CE and nothing can't be done.
After re-checking there is one non-evil boss.
The barbarian at the end of book 4 is CN and so is the ghost-like Gorum priest thingy.
Is it really that big of a deal when a paladin uses the most iconic paladin power? They're supposed to do that, aren't they? I mean, otherwise there's basically no reason to prefer a paladin to a cleric 1/fighter x, eh?
Is it really that big of a deal when a paladin uses the most iconic paladin power? They're supposed to do that, aren't they? I mean, otherwise there's basically no reason to prefer a paladin to a cleric 1/fighter x, eh?
Well, of course he should be able to use it. But the paladin is always strongest when fighting single, evil opponents and are well-rested. If this AP gives you plenty of those, the paladin might not be challenged enough, just like a ranger won't if all he encounters is his favored enemies.
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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.
Is it really that big of a deal when a paladin uses the most iconic paladin power? They're supposed to do that, aren't they? I mean, otherwise there's basically no reason to prefer a paladin to a cleric 1/fighter x, eh?Well, of course he should be able to use it. But the paladin is always strongest when fighting single, evil opponents and are well-rested. If this AP gives you plenty of those, the paladin might not be challenged enough, just like a ranger won't if all he encounters is his favored enemies.
Yes, but can't the AP be adapted to use minions, summons, traps, etc? I haven't played the AP, but barring a themed dungeon crawl there should be at least some opportunity for all these.
Mind you, don't go too far. I definitely think paladins need to have an opportunity to shine, though, and the DM should make sure they can use their iconic ability to good effect every now and then. After a hard day of doing good and upholding the law, making sure you do your alignment right and keep the paladin code, you deserve a few good evil-whackings. If the paladin player has to put up with a code 95% of the players don't care about, and also manages to do it with some style, I think s/he deserves some self-gratification in having their character kick some major ass every now and then.
The only problem that i can think with in this AP and the paladin code is that the players won't have two allied forces when they go to all out war, keep in mind that by the time the mass combats start the players should have enourmous resources and be able to built gigantic armies.
Although in my group we didn't play the mass combats (we stopped playing the building the kingdom part just before the mass combats) becuase when we saw that the armies we could built (even if the DM doubled the costs as the AP suggests) would be a match for Karzoug's army of rune giants we decided that the thing has gone far enough and we decided to hand-waive the mass combats and said that we defeated them all.
I was hoping dispel magic would negate smith but it doesn't work on Su abilities.
But an anti-magic field DOES suppress smite.
Random guard dressed up like the BBEG, BBEG dressed up like random guard.
Haven't played King Maker before, but I am running a mega dungeon that doesn't really have any methods in place to stop PCs from doing only two or three encounters a day. Just add some extra encounters in, like bandits that jump them on the way to the badguy, or throw your own traps in to the mix. They don't have to be hard, just taxing. If the party is level 8, put a 5th level wizard behind a few trees and wreak some havoc with illusions and debuff spells. Don't be ruthless, just be annoying.
Don't completely gimp him of his smiting. Otherwise what is the point/ fun in his character? Reign it in, but keep it fun.
Another solution is to only give the extra damage on the first attack (double damage on undead, drag, etc per normal), and then all he gets after that is the other bonuses.
Double HP.
Mirror Image, Displacement, and similar spells and effects will go a long way to reducing the effectiveness of Smite.
Crane or Snake Style can be used to great effect (or Duelist PrC) for a melee boss. The ability to outright negate one attack goes a long way if the boss keeps moving and Mr. Smitey doesn't have something like Pounce.
Or just change the final encounter from a BBEG to a BBNG. Neutral with the right motivations can be just as underhanded as Evil.
I have skipped many of the other posts in this thread as I'm currently a player in a Kingmaker game and don't want to run across any spoilers. That said, I wanted to post since I think the idea of a DM being confounded by Smite Evil in this specific campaign seems a little odd.
My Paladin4/Bard4 (soon to be Bard5) is pretty focused on Smite Evil (silver smite bracelet, oath of vengeance). Maybe we're just not far enough into the campaign yet, but it seems like only about 1/2 or less of the enemies are evil. There have been a lot of plants and animals (along with a few owlbears) laughing at my PC's 1d8+5 damage while I wait for those glorious moments when an evil foe has the audacity to confront Duke Romanovych in melee.
I think that converting Evil foes to Neutral to rob the Paladin of his Smite seems like a step on the path to "becoming a d-bag DM" (to use your term). Maybe your bad guys should try to avoid standing next to the Paladin. They could also try killing him or neutralizing him somehow. Does he use a greatsword or other two-handed weapon? If so then he can't use it while he's grappled. There's also the fact that PCs who stand out (say by using Smite Evil) might be targeted by the bad guys. If I'm an Evil Boss and a Paladin shows up to Smite me I might order all of my mooks to come kill him while I run off to attack the squishy party members he left unprotected when he charges up to lay the Smite down on me.
Another option, if the BBEG is a proper BBEG and knows a little bit about the PCs, is to have him be properly prepared. If he knows a paladin is coming his way, he likely went out and bought armor with the Warding enchant (added in UE). I would definitely recommend against doing this too often, but for the final boss of a campaign who has some knowledge of the PCs, it would both make sense and add to the difficulty of the encounter.