Hi all,
I have a party that is currently going through a game set in Ustalav, which is a mix of a Fighter, a Rogue, a Summoner and a Magus. The Fighter and Rogue aren't really a problem, but I am having problems with the summoner's eidolon. The Eidolon and Magus get enlarged in almost every combat, and the Eidolon already has extended reach and a knockback ability that essentially means that he threatens most squares in each of the combats I run. They are otherwise reasonably well optimized, though not ludicrously so.
I've been able to counter this by buffing up the strength of the NPCs they face, but really, it's getting to the point where if I don't make their AC astronomically high and give them huge quantities of hit points, it becomes an utter route. This isn't all that fun for the players either, because they are always looking for extremely high rolls to actually achieve anything.
I'm not naturally a number crunching GM - I like roleplaying, and I'm getting tired of writing NPCs with names, motivation and history only to have them plowed into the dirt the moment they are physically in the same location as the PCs.
My players aren't problem players... it's just easier for them to try and kill everything than deal with it another way. There are plot based ways around that, but it feels like railroading if I do it too often.
So, I'm after suggestions for:
Rail-roady or not, suggestions for plots that make killing some main antagonists undesirable, difficult, or at least make them think a bit before they do it.
And
Rules-based strategies for giving the players tougher fights without making the NPCs AC & HP sky high.
Unfortunately, you've hit the same kind of obstacle that every DM does when faced with a single optimizer amongst several non-optimizers. The difficulty, as you said, is that in order for combats to not be a complete and total steamroll, you have to buff up all of the enemies so high that nobody except the optimized character can hurt them- which, unfortunately, does nothing but encourage optimization and punish everyone who doesn't optimize.
It's difficult to deal with, and while I'm sure some people out there may have a solution that works for them, the best solution I can think of (which is often the best solution in most situations) is to talk it over with the players. Tell them that their tactics are making encounters more difficult to balance, and try to find a solution. That may not sound like fun, and it may not be the easiest solution, but in the long run it will be the best.
Edit: Since you are looking for specific tips for those specific situations, here's a couple tips:
1. Ranged attacks. Make some enemies that are really good at ranged attacks, and pick off the biggest target (the eidolon) from far away. As long as they have room to spread out, they shouldn't have much problem.
2. Afraid of your NPCs getting killed at the drop of a hat? Make the particular NPC of a given encounter an extremely well-known noble (such as a politician or something), and make sure that if the players DO kill him, or even physically attack him, that they are prosecuted to the full extent of the law for it. Show your players that solving every altercation with violence isn't a good idea.
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Seriously though, I wholeheartedly support UltimaGabe's second approach. Highlight the implications of certain deaths. It increases verisimilitude and challenges the players with turning-point decisions.
How many encounters a day would you say is average for your group? If they're exploiting the five-minute workday, use ambushes, disadvantageous terrain and other tricks. Straight increases to enemy stats probably won't get the effect you want. I know some people shy away from "puzzle" encounters, but pitting your players against enemies with very unusual weaknesses, resistances and tactics will refresh them every once in a while. Also, I wouldn't underestimate the power of a large, mixed group of mooks, especially when buffed by one leader (who is being healed by another hidden 'leader').
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Attacking them while sleeping is a good one. Making it rain blood is a darker option. Swarm are very hard to deal with, so a city or town filled with fiendish rat swarms are really terrifying.
As a member of a party who recently had to deal with a large swarm encounter and had scarcely more than the ranger's splash weapons between life and a TPK, I fully endorse this approach.
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Create a circumstance where the BBEG somehow learns the weaknesses of specific player characters (spies, disguises, scrying, somehow), and determines that the summoner is so dangerous. Then send assassins specifically challenging against him but not others (like an enemy group led by a ranger with fully maxed favored enemy against outsiders and an inquisitor that disrupts magic) so that suddenly their strongest player needs help. Might even make this a roleplay opportunity, since suddenly the guy everyone relied on has to rely on his allies.
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Environmental dangers could do the trick. They are obviously very well off combat wise, but how would they deal with fighting around obstacles like dead falls or fighting on a sleek surface that threatens to make them lose their balance if they try to move at their full speed? Or perhaps there is a time limit to a fight because poison gas is slowly creeping into the room. I wouldn't use environmental dangers for every encounter, but it could raise the tension in key fights.
You mentioned spirits and ghosts, so you might be able to include dangers involving how the ghost died. Like, if they were fighting the ghost of a drowned man, perhaps the room starts to mysteriously fill with water that mysteriously vanishes upon defeating or warding off the ghost.
Yeah swarms will wreck house, so use carefully.
Illusions are a good idea.
Also, use the environment! weather (particularly rain and wind) can really change the dynamics of an encounter; fog, darkness, narrow passageways, low ceilings, traps, rickety bridges, secret doors, etc. can all hinder the party and make it hard for them to just splat everything.
As to story reasons:
political connections. legal connections. money. powerful friends. access to powerful magic. lots of henchmen. has something the players need (information, mostly). is likable. party doesn't realize they're an antagonist (villains in disguise!). And so on.
Basically, make it MORE inconvenient or dangerous to kill the person than to let them live. Likely, the party will do what seems the simplest or best for their characters in the moment; you want that decision to fall on the side of "let them live" more than "kill 'em all." This means you might have to do some more legwork leading up to the encounter, so the party KNOWS what kind of sh**-storm they're conjuring if they go of half-cocked and kill everyone.
Magic can be your friend here; even if the party kills everything living there are still ways for the masterminds to know it was the PCs.
Example: low-level druid in the mook squad casts animal messenger in the back while the party is killing everything, sending a bird or whatever off to inform the big boss.
party finishes their work only to notice a scrying sensor ... but how long has it been there? answer: long enough ;)
invisible creature/person watching what's going on (say an invisible stalker contracted to shadow someone), reports in. Party might get it, but they might not ...
Speak with Animals/Plants might be a way for someone to start tracking down the party.
Something more mundane: guards write down who enters/exits the compound in a ledger. badguy leaves a message scrawled in blood in a language the PCs can't read (they may clean it up, but still). bloodhounds pick up the PCs scent. beggar or nearby shopkeeper saw the PCs meet with X, and so on.
As for escaping, magic and the environment are good ways to set that up. running for a secret door, popping invisibility, dimension door, teleport, expeditious retreat, fly, disguise self, polymorph, alter self, wild shape, and so on. open/close cast by a mook, even. something as simple as a shut door can buy the villain enough time to escape. flying mounts, regular mounts, teleportation circles, planar portals, and on and on. Even just running far enough to get behind a huge new group of guards or minions might make the players think twice (or give the villain more time to book it while the party hacks through the new mooks).
But you have to be careful here, because it can be SUPER FRUSTRATING to have no way of dealing with a recurring villain; you don't want your players to get fed up or make them miserable because they feel powerless all the time.
tl;dr: fight dirty. If the party keeps pasting everything in a stand up fight, have some enemies refuse to engage them in a stand up fight! come at them where they are weak. And let them paste stuff every so often; it's hard to do (at least for me) but it can be very rewarding as a player.
Most of the seggestions that I have seen posted are very good ones.
and the Eidolon already has extended reach and a knockback ability that essentially means that he threatens most squares in each of the combats I run
How about use a Summoner as one of the opponets, and build an Eidolon with simmiler abilities and use it to attack the party?
Remember that the "bad guys" are not all dumb they will have spies that will report rumors/ things heard in taverns/ other news in their area of operations. They are likely to try and accurie items/ troops of some sort to equlize or remove such threats before they are a "real" problem to their plans.
Many of the "mooks" may be dumb but not all will be and even a dumb mook might be very good at tactics.
Use the mind of your lead bad guys to plan what to do if.....
Concerning combat encounters, put some spell casters into the fights. Dispell magic and silence will even things out amoung the PJ, then the fighter and rogue will have to work.
You can make them regret to be obvious targets as well, debuffing the first one who gets big (2 rays of exhaustion).
Forcing the summoner and magus to be more support than front liners by making them action starved (dispell ennemy buff/ally debuff, make front liners get to the ennemy on top of a cliff, protect the group from arrows) and then having to rely on the other 2.
A fight is not a courtesy duel, where both parties greet each other before fighting. Players have to fight uphill battles, survive ambushes, face their own tactics used against them, see through ennemies tactics etc.
And like it has been said above, the more famous they become, the more their opponent should be prepared, buff them, equip them. A BBEG should have lots of resources to carry out his plans, it includes giving apropriate gear to his subordinates who have to remove threats to said plans.
Anyway, to deal with these kind of groups, first you have to make them fight as a team, and not as 4 individuals hitting a common threat. Then you will find that making challenging encounters is easier.
Conclusion : be prepared, fight smart, fight dirty, then you will see them sweating and shaking before a dice roll :)
Separating the PC's almost always creates a sense of danger. A caster that creates a bunch of separating walls, pit/chute/teleport traps that move one or some of them around.
The absolute best that I ever saw was the ILLUSION OF SEPARATION. This was back in 2nd ed. We were fighting some sort of half-dragon/demonic caster thing that only communicated telepathically. All the way up to it each of us had been getting mind messages that said things like "You will do realize you will have to face me alone don't you? You have no chance by yourself."
When we finally faced it, it cast mass improved invisibility ON THE PARTY followed by a quickened/heightened silence. It could see invisibility. Mind voice says, "As I said, you are now all alone. i wonder, what you are going to do now? Besides die of course." We each thought the other had been teleported away. The GM immediately separated the players and asked what we were going to do. All three of us said we were running away to look for the others then come back. What is even better, we each ran for different parts of the citadel thinking we knew where they others had been teleported to. So we were tricked into actually separated ourselves for the BBEG. The GM laughed about that one for years.
If they are of level to become famous (it sounds like they are). Intelligent BBEG should be planning specifically for them and their most often used tactics. Things like dispel summons, control summons enclosed areas (reach and size a problem), wide open areas (easy to surround or hit from a distance, spells/terrain/abilities to wreck visibility, etc... should be becoming more common.
Assassins in the night.
Tasks that don't directly involve pounding everything in sight.
1) Help my nephew Lars through his trial of manhood. Don't do things for him, just keep him alive and give him advice.
2) Convince our ally Baron Rhimeoak to make peace with the Corsens.
Hard to see why you can't challenge them they have no divine magic or negative status removers at all (aside from consumables).
Long drawn out fights and back to back encounters can easily challenge them. What do they do when the buffs expire and their hp slowly go down, run away?
Depending on their level, try a fight with undead, lots and lots of undead. Start with a few weak ones which they destroy. Then ever increasing waves of skeletons and zombies. Your summoner's eidolon does great when it can use an AOO or standard action to neutralise one from a powerful single enemy. Far, far weaker than a simple channel or AOE against a horde. Work out the point at which they start to get worried about being overwhelmed and then flank them with fast moving undead with debuffs (ghouls or shadows if they are low level maybe wraiths or vampire spawn if their higher). If your especially evil have the mummy or vampire lord wait til the very end until they're nearly out of spells, drained and completely exhausted. Perhaps have it taunt them for their impotence as it allows them to flee.
Easy scare plus you provide a strong motivation to get their revenge.
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If the summoner is unconscious, asleep, or killed, the eidolon is banished.
Intelligent bad guys will do research on their foes. Once they realize they're facing a summoner, they'll know the prime target is the summoner. Kill him and the eidolon is a non-issue.
Use magic like create pit to take the eidolon out of the fight while you hammer the summoner. Hit hem from multiple sides -- the eidolon can't be everywhere at once. Used ranged attacks to target the summoner while high-armor melee types keep the eidolon engaged.
Attack them in their sleep. These are bad guys we're talking about. They'll hit the party while they think they're safe, or if the party is too tough a nut to crack, hit the things they care about. Their homes, friends, family, favorite bars -- these are all fair game to the bad guys, and the players can't possibly protect all of them at the same time. Take hostages and use them to distract the party from their main objective. If they don't take the bait, kill the hostages.
At higher levels, remember that the eidolon is a summoned creature. Dismissal and banishment work wonders, as well as antimagic field. If you're feeling particularly nasty, control summoned creature could be fun.
Create a circumstance where the BBEG somehow learns the weaknesses of specific player characters (spies, disguises, scrying, somehow), and determines that the summoner is so dangerous. Then send assassins specifically challenging against him but not others (like an enemy group led by a ranger with fully maxed favored enemy against outsiders and an inquisitor that disrupts magic) so that suddenly their strongest player needs help. Might even make this a roleplay opportunity, since suddenly the guy everyone relied on has to rely on his allies.
This is a really good idea.
Thanks guys, there are some really good ideas here. I might start our summoner on a steady diet of nerf spells, and then implement some of the plot ideas to see if it brings them into line.
I'd throw another summoning-esque character at them: summoner, druid, wiz/sorc, or my favorite the alchemist (bottled ooze), etc. There are some great templates that can be added to oozes that add nothing or very little to the CR, and plenty of oozes that split up into multiples when hit. Pile on the debuffs, especially fear if you can to separate the party and build tension. Persistent damaging/debilitating zone effects that you encase someone in, be it by wall or by grappling disposable minion are a great way to make a PC feel like they're in some trouble, even if the effect is just a time waster.
Use home court advantage. There are a number of things, mundane things that could be done that really ruin a party's day. Dropping hot oil from the room above. Collapsing tunnels, deadfalls, ranged attacks from cover (through arrow slits in the walls). Essentially add traps to encounters triggered by defenders.
Nothing makes for sense of danger like dominating one of the party heavies. That fighter that hits for high twenties on occaision is let loose on the party.
Cursed items. There is nothing like running into combat with cursed gear.
a lot of what i can suggest was already mentioned
but here are a few more ideas.
you could target it's size. especially if the eidolon is large or huge. unstable rope bridges suspended between high cliffs, pressure plates triggered by weight, low cielings, tight hallways, confined spaces, dense jungles/forests, and difficult terrain.
you can also use int/cha drain to leave the eidolon comatose for a bit.
you can use high powered blasting spells to soften up the party, especially the eidolon. if it's a minmaxed biped, it likely has a bad reflex save and a bad touch armor class. especially since it shares item slots with it's master. it's will save isn't likely to good either.
eidolons don't really have a lot of hit points either. they don't have many feats, not much in hit dice, and no favored class bonus. evolution points aren't too plentiful either. and thier constitution scores aren't too high either.