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Burning Ki points that quickly, he probably won't have enough for more than 1 or 2 encounters. Let him shine, then move on and see how he feels having nova'd his resources.
Also, creatures with scent, tremorsense, blindsense, etc. can still locate him, as well as creatures not affected by illusions or that can see invisibility.
Enemies with see invisibility.
For the hidden master ability things like glitterdust and fairie fire should work. They don't really stop something from being invisible. They just outline it.
Things like invisibility purge, see invisibility, and true seeing are called out as not working, but they allow you to see the person as if they were not invisible at all.
Hidden Master takes 3 ki points to use. That's not something a ninja can keep up with forever. At that level, most threats have some means of seeing invisible creatures.
And there's always creatures that are immune to sneak attacks (good luck against Jubilex) or those with very high flat-footed AC. I'm told that rogue-types have trouble landing most of their sneak attacks at higher levels, though I've never actually seen this phenomenon.
Barring that, you don't need to see the ninja to defeat it. Try wish. : D
Ninjas are most definitely not busted.
Flour beats the 20th level ability.
Don't have just one encounter a day. Throw a big important boss at him... Then 3 more later in the day.
For Vanishing Trick: readied actions work just fine. Ready an action for when the ninja becomes visible.
For Hidden Master: readied action to attack the space that the ninja is coming from. While you will have a 50% miss chance still at least you should know what square the attack is coming from.
- Gauss
Blahpers: I know he's going for the high-crit chance weapons. Not that he'll confirm a lot but he'll definitly get the sneak attacks in. However, the wish spell at higher levels: That's a really good idea! Thank you.
No problem. : D By the way, remember that high-crit chance weapons do not improve the attacker's chance to hit. Only a natural 20 is an auto-success, even with a katana. If you already accounted for that and I misunderstood, well, <giantalienrobot>IGNORE ME!</giantalienrobot>
As a DM I've gathered a reputation among my players as encounters never being what they appear to be, my advice to you is exactly that, this character to me sounds assured that his technique is flawless, time to bring out the trickery.
Give him monsters, traps and encounters that are not as they appear.
How about some beasts from the Under Dark, non of these creatures hunt by eye-sight thus why the Drow specialize in masking their scent.
Creatures that are immune to critical hits is one thing, but hows his reflex? Classic Horrors Revisited gives us a nice template, Exploding Skeletons, for every 2 HD the critter has it explodes dealing 1D6 Points of Damage, he wont be expecting that. Combined with the 3.5 feat from Libris Mortis, Destructive Retribution, these skeletons will also release a burst of Negative energy, healing other Skeletons and making this cocky ninja think twice about a melee attack.
Environmental Conditions, Stealthy guy are we, well the entire floor is covered in knee deep water, go ahead, make your stealth check, whats that a ranged attack? Sneak attack has a ranged of 30ft, Bad guy gloating 40ft away, Nope.
Then theirs my favorite sort of thinking, over the years players have come to memorize every description of every monster in every manual, so lets change the description slightly and the delivery of the monster, as an example I refer you to a Pathfinder Module, Crown of the Kobold King, presented is an encounter from the module.
"An evil hiss rises from the darkness ahead. A
floating dwarven form shrouded in full plate
rounds the corner. The air about this dwarven
specter shimmers eerily, and the walls and floor
sizzle and smoke where it passes. The thing’s
boots scorn the earth, gliding a full foot above
the masonry floor. It drags a cruel bloodletter
axe in the air behind it.
Now when the Ninja spys his target his first instinct is going invisible, followed by attacking the spectral image, low-light, poor perception check, WHAM! your now inside a
Try to come up with some other example yourself of deceptive monsters and encounters. Hope this Helps.
if you worry about lvl 20 means he's already high lvl, a lot of monsters got see invisibility (mainly because they fear the flying invisible wizard). Also mirror images and minions all around the boss can help a lot, for ranged attacks there are some spells that help (if you allowed him a double barreled pistol, you're doomed).
at lvl 20, if you got any full caster there are other things to worry about, really, challenges get so out of hand that a melee class needs this awesome buff. Have a ring of fire around the boss with several illusions and summons with blindsense or sight, traps on the floor and a bunch of dogs with scent. Also by Raw, gods can't see a lvl 20 ninja; the master spy max lvl ability has "This ability is not proof against the actions of deities or similarly powerful beings", the ninja ability has not.
so let the ninja have some advantages like killing some underlings with ease, the boss could notice his tactic and either counter it or escape, then in a later adventure return with a good counter/prepared room. Don't do this for every boss of course, but if you got 1 boss against 4-6 PC's he's gonna get slaughtered.
A little tip for the future, beware sap master, underhanded and double barreled pistols, those will finish encounters before they start.
Davor:
Yes, he does burn them quickly, but I usually like implementing encounters that fit the story as opposed to just throwing random one in there. But I may have to grind those ki down like you say.
Tiny Golem/Wraithstrike: As I mentioned above, I prefer to keep encounters story based. Encounter after encounter with creatures who can see invisibility might make my buddy think I'm just trying to neutralize him :)
Blahpers: I know he's going for the high-crit chance weapons. Not that he'll confirm a lot but he'll definitly get the sneak attacks in. However, the wish spell at higher levels: That's a really good idea! Thank you.
Cheapy: Flour works great but you still need the general square to throw it at/in. He likes to hit once and move. I'm certain he's going to be taking spring attack eventually.
Gauss: Of course! I totally forgot about readied attacks. That is a really good point thank you!
Thank you all for the feed back!
I was not suggesting you do it for every encounter, but in my games bad guys do run away and report what they know to their bosses. That way it makes sense for the boss to know what the party can do.
Not to mention: at that level, any casty boss and any boss with a casty cohort is going to scry any meddling party it finds out about.
Not to mention: at that level, any casty boss and any boss with a casty cohort is going to scry any meddling party it finds out about.
And would have gotten away with it to, if not for those meddling wizards.
For Vanishing Trick: readied actions work just fine. Ready an action for when the ninja becomes visible.
For Hidden Master: readied action to attack the space that the ninja is coming from. While you will have a 50% miss chance still at least you should know what square the attack is coming from.
- Gauss
+1 to readied actions. In a recent encounter we fought off a Phase Spider, those things aren't even on the same plane as you when not attacking. When we realised what we were fighting, we all readied actions. One blast of channeled energy from me, and a shot from the party gunslinger was all it took to persuade the monster to find it's dinner elsewhere!
Yes, he does burn them quickly, but I usually like implementing encounters that fit the story as opposed to just throwing random one in there. But I may have to grind those ki down like you say.
So don't create random encounters that don't fit the story. Build the nightly session to include 4+ encounters in a logical story fashion. Every session of mine includes at least 4+ encounters, always, and they are never random. Half the encounters in my sessions are designed simply to divorce PCs from their resources - using up spells, ki, arcane points, etc.
Light steps also happens to be a full round action, so most of the time they will be taking the penalty to stealth for that round if they want to do anything else, like use vanishing trick or attack.