So I'm pretty sure our characters are being countered now. Not that I didn't think so before, but I'm just sure now. Also, why I am glad I didn't pick rogue.
So I need some clarification, about this explanation, but what do you do when your DM counters you.
At our current level, since this is a low magic campaign, most of our characters, with our 1 caster per group rule, made sure that most characters would probably be full base attackers. I was "encouraged" to go rogue, but every time I have gone rogue with this DM, at some point sneak attack becomes harder and harder to do, because everything will start being immune to it or start having improve uncanny dodge.
So at current, I went level 6 ranger, 19 strength "elite array", and have been power attacking my way to victory with two handed weapons. (weapon damage) + 12
and as far as our party goes, I am not the only major damage dealer, as the other ranger with his 16 strength and 4 attacks and feats was dealing a health amount of damage.
On top of that, I have the ability to trip people on certain attacks with shield slam, and daze people on other attacks, and I have an animal companion wolf who trips on attacks. A bit much yes, but this is effectively all I have been doing the entire game. Trip, flank, AoO, being a full base attack class with restrictions to super natural abilities.
Now, not only do most encounters have enemies that have hero levels, but they also have ridiculously high health, which I wouldn't have minded too much, but the kick was, HOW EVERY SINGLE CREATURE NOW HAS THE SKIL TRICKS, Back on Your Feet and Nimble Stand. Meaning they can recover from being tripped without getting AoO. At level 6, the d10 HD ranger was one rounded one the second round. Technically it would have ended in a complete party wipe, on turn 2 mind you, if the demons didn't, for some strange reasons, find our animal companions and familiars so much easier to hit. "He must realized that it was going to be a party wipe." Granted this wasn't suppose to be a fight we where suppose to win "rail road, chuchu, not that I have anything wrong with his story."
On no fault of the players did we do anything "wrong". demons started to appear in a crowd of people, so first round, shoot the hell out of the demons. After that round, we then realized we weren't doing a whole lot. second round, 1 player and 2 animal companions/familiars dead before they could go. Two weapon Rend tree, they all had it, and another one that allowed for a +15 damage on certain Twf situations.
First The demons have DR/10, they have an insanely high health regeneration, they have improve uncanny dodge so are favorite, trip flank strategy have a a reduced effect as well. Even with the DR, we managed to score well over 80 hits of damage to them, with criticals, and all, yet they did not fall. So glad I did not go rogue. Now I got into an argument on how dazed counts as a mind effect and that THEY ALL ARE IMMUNE TO MIND EFFECTS. I've been rolling high too, so because of that, the AC and CMD at level 7 have reached the 30s.
Long story short, I believe the DM is attempting to balance the encounters, but has us now playing on hard mode due to counter builds.
My best suggestion to counter the DM's tactics which still depends on your GM. Go 2 rounds into the fight and have everyone in your party swap dancing partners. So you can throw your DM off. Although your DM making counter-tactic NPC's against your whole group is a horrible tactic. If he's done it one time or there's only one counter tactic opponent in the group Vs one of your party members it's not bad, but if your DM is countering everyone in your party than you know what to expect and it might be time to start a new campaign, because your DM doesn't know how to challenge you except rehatching his PC's into NPC's to fight his PC's.
Oh, Mr.(or Miss, but i don't particularly care) 8 Red Wizards, you are my HERO. I have a...let me say poorly skilled... dm and it took my friend and i 6ish near identical encounters to figure that tactic out.
But yeah, it sounds like your dm is either new, overwhelmed, or just not that great. I have had so many dms overestimate the usefulness of certain things (WHAT, GANG UP! THEN THE ROUGE ALMOST ALWAYS GETS HIS 2D6 SNEAK ATTACK, but barbarian, rage power attack, furious focus, charge. No problem)
Best thing to do is talk with your dm about certain things, and DO NOT, i repeat DO NOT ATTEMPT AN ARMS RACE WITH THE DM!
that ends badly for you, your party, the enemies and about 50 square miles of in-game planet.
Yeah, just ask the DM "What the hell?" There may be a perfectly good reason for the demons or there may not, figure that out. If his plot railroad is not going to awesome town with stops at badass scenes then there's going to be trouble.
As for countering, it's natural and perfectly normal when gaming seems to focus on some form of optimized builds. Why should the monsters not themselves be optimized?
Yeah, just ask the DM "What the hell?" There may be a perfectly good reason for the demons or there may not, figure that out. If his plot railroad is not going to awesome town with stops at badass scenes then there's going to be trouble.
As for countering, it's natural and perfectly normal when gaming seems to focus on some form of optimized builds. Why should the monsters not themselves be optimized?
No problem with enemies optimizing. I have problems when they are optimized to fight exactly what the party does, or worse, they are ALL optimized to counter ONE character.
How can a 6th level ranger daze his opponents?
And what are the nimble stand and back on your feet?
I think they are 3.5 skill tricks, Leo. If the GM is not that good he should avoid 3.5 stuff. I know that shield bash that dazes is 3.5.
Minor nitpick, how are you shield bashing with a two handed weapon?
Anyway, the best thing you can do is talk to your GM and see why he feels the need to make every enemy, mostly, a carbon copy of the enemy before. As far as I remember, Demons don't have regeneration, nor do they typically have most of the abilities you listed other than DR. So he's basically got a list of things he feels every monster needs in order to counter you, and slaps them on like a template.
This is very much so the sign of a bad GM, or one that has little experience and plays NPC's as if they were PC's. There are a lot other things he could do to give you guys a good fight other than simply metagaming his mooks. Maybe have the whole group sit down and list their concerns and mention they want to keep playing, but it's no fun if every single fight feels like a final showdown with The Boss.
BTW, Feint/Improved Feint and you can still sneak attack someone with Improved Uncanny Dodge.
I think there isn't particulary anything wrong with players being countered to some extend, doing it in the same way every time is probably bad.. I am not convinced your GM is as bad as you make it sound though OP.
The sample encounter you gave doesn't tell me alot, they might be half-fiends or just look like demons to you. Tripping isn't useless even if they can get up as a free action if you gang up on them. A sign of a bad GM in my opinion would be if he exactly tells you what you are fighting without proper knowledge checks. Also if you are supposed to lose that fight there is little wrong with countering your specific abilities.
Something that usually works is to involve a GM in your characters, give it dept and 'character' that appeals to him/her, plainly optimized characters often trigger the 'counter' reaction in my experience and I am guilty of that too sometimes.
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Hiya.
[snip multiple paragraphs where I go on about the same thing...boiling it all down to...]
Not your DM's fault. From his perspective, he has no choice. Your characters are designed specifically to "win" by utilizing certain feats/skills/abilities/tactics. If the DM counters those, you loose because your characters can't really do/rely on anything else. Ergo, you see it as being "unfair".
Fix your own characters and the game will fix itself. Stop optomizing. Stop trying to find "combo's" that "win" 9/10. Start trying to work *with* your DM to create cool characters, with strengths and weaknesses, desires, dislikes, goals, a past history, etc.
Good luck!
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Optimized character should be met with intelligently constructed optimized monsters. Unfortunately, you did not supply us with enough information to make a real call here.
What point build are the characters? Are you playing published or homebrew? Do the PC's all have cannibalized stats (more than 1 stat below a 10, aka glass cannons)? What types of demons were you fighting?
What is the class makeup of the party? How have the players customized the PC's to take advantage of the party dynamic (or were they built in a vacuum with only thought given to personal optimization,instead of party optimization)? Was the fight you mentioned a boss monster encounter?
Sorry, just not enough information to really help.
Although, I suggest you look closely at the post directly above this one and take it to heart. +1 pming
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A few things the op pointed out that I will be focusing on:
#1 dr 10/-- and a high health regeneration at level 7.
#2 his tactics are trip and power attack with an animal companion and an occasional shield bash for daze.
#3 at level 7 most of the creatures they are fighting has a cmd around 30.
#4 2 round tpk.
Ok first I have some questions how many people are in your group??
Were you ever warned about these monsters and told to avoid them??
From my experience low level pcs sometimes need an overwhelming force to be present to keep them in line. Now bad ass bounty hunting demons with incredible combat abilities would do that. Now you guys attacked them just because you saw them in a crowd. Did you even try to identify them?? Or did you just say "OOOH yeah mobs" and start fighting. In dnd much like in life you must pick your fights.
Now if this was an =cr battle or a "winnable" one.
After an encounter has been fought I don’t see any reason why you can’t see the monster (unless they will be showing up again later) and see what the actual cr was for the fight. Generally at level 7 people should not be dropping like flies. Also at level 7 dr 10/-- is UNBELIEVABLE, with fast healing is horrible. Now if it was dr 10/cold iron I would understand but blanket dr that high is ridiculous.
Your tactics are not a 9/10 winner like the above mentioned. it makes perfect sense that a ranger with an animal companion would work to get flanking with his pet and use trip when it can set up for AoO.
When fighting you should do everything you can to limit your opponent’s actions in combat, apply penalties to your opponent, put yourself in favorable positioning, and deal damage. Trip helps you do all of this.
Every combatant has his "techniques" that he uses and by focusing on those you can become amazing at them but especially as a ranger you do not have to forsake the rest of combat to do that. And I do not feel that is the case here.
My dm is HORRIBLE at doing all of the above. He thinks barbarians should do damage not anyone else so power attack is left alone and everything else gets f***** over.
My advice, ask him to dm a module that what we have come to as my dm just can’t seem to figure it out but he loves to dm.
My dm is HORRIBLE at doing all of the above. He thinks...
I feel a strong kinship to you
I believe he meant "win 9/10" figuratively.
I understand the DM's frustration with having a whole team of optimized characters, but he is dealing with it in the wrong way. The whole group needs to talk about the "arms race" going on, then take everything down a couple of notches. Less stress and just as much fun.
The DM might also be in love with his monsters and npcs, by which I mean he can't let it die until it has had its chance to shine in some way.
To be honest, being the dungeon master in your campaign sounds frustrating. The Dungeon Master is there to challenge you and entertain you, but he should be having a good time too. If every fight you're in turns into a banana peel sketch of comically inept villains constantly falling over, I can see why he would want to tweak his combats to pose more of a challenge. It sounds like he's not quite sure how to do that and/or already had his adventure drawn up and hadn't planned for this, so he has to do some quick'n'dirty quickfixing (skill tricks). A more experienced or flexible dungeon master might have solved this by mixing in flying villains, multilegged monsters and the like. The key here is balance: Having some fights be resolved through the use of a specific tactic is valid, but if it's the same approach every damn time then the DM needs to alter things to keep the game interesting.
As an analogue, think of the old-school World of Warcraft stunlock rogue. This was an MMO character who could through combinations of several different talents attack you, completely remove all control you had over your character (by rotating different attacks that stunned your character), and kill you quite literally without you being able to do anything. It was incredibly frustrating to play against these rogues because it didn't make people feel like they lost out to a better player or someone who had played smart, but someone who was doing something cheesy.
I'm guessing DM'ing a campaign where your character constantly triplock monsters and AoO them back to the ground whenever they try to get up has a very similar feeling.
Don't think of it as the dungeon master "countering you" or "trying to beat you" - his job is specifically to make battle feel challenging and exciting. Banana peel combat is usually neither.
My suggestion? It sounds like your character has very good melee abilities already (shield daze with a two-hander? How did that happen?), try to focus on other aspects of combat (grapple? Sunder?) instead of doing the same trick over and over again.
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I feel like I have to step in here. I am an optimizer, and my friends are too. but not to where we will take fourteen one level dips in PrCs or anything like that, but we like our characters to be effective. We REQUIRE as a group, for every player to submit a written back story for the character, and to explain any major choices such as PrCs or races. We require well played, well thought out characters. Our DMs do the same, and challenge our players by using tactics, combinations, and smart monster tactics just like we do. A group that does things well, can also do things in a fun, characterful way. Now, we do take sub-optimal choices for character reasons, so we dont sacrifice everything for power. The thing is, certain people have certain speeds. Some people want low power, some high. Some DMs want to feel like they get to 'win' against the party from time to time. They want the party to run, or to kill PCs. I dont understand it myself, but it sounds like your DM is starting to get to the point where he feels he's losing control of the campaign. Even if it's not true, it seems that's how he feels, and perhaps you should talk to him about it seriously. Do not accuse, do not get angry, ask him why he's doing these things, and if he feels like he cant challenge you without flat DR and regeneration at level seven.
So more supplementary information.
The DR/10 is cold iron, but remember this campaign is "low magic" aka, everything is rare and hard to find. I did not mentioned our magical items because gold ended up being a meta concept for us, yes, tricked yet again that I could actually buy stuff with my gold.
random roll, one person rolled horrible ish, with 10-12s on all stats except an 18 on int for them. They are the caster, and the DM loves under powered casters.
I rolled awful and took the elite array, 18, 16,14,12,10,8, which was hands down better then what I rolled. I don't know how the other two players rolled, but they did not decide to take the elite array.
No magical items except what the DM gives us. He gives up rather nice legacy items, but we have no control over the items until just last session. The legacy items, so he could monitor our equipment levels I would assume. One was a pair of rings that summoned 2, +1 scimitars that counted as light weapons to the wielder and granted proficiency even if you where not with them. This item was also "soul bounded" meaning the next person who summoned them would be the only person who could use them, and you needed both rings on to use them. "Ironic the person who finally did wear them ended up dieing that same campaign." For the most part, since they did not go with any ones build, they where consider too awesome to use, and no one would use them unless absolutely needed.
To this date, no one has actually used them, not even the person who decided he would, since that character died.
another item legacy, that I assume is a neck piece, thats how I have been treating it. It currently grants protection from evil on going to the wearer, and 5 energy resistance. I, the level 6 ranger AC shield tank who just happened to be also good at tripping and one or two others CMB attacks, took that. Originally the other characters had that, but only good characters are allowed to wield it, and after some dickery with previously mentioned demons, I remain the only good character.
A Legacy heavy mithral shield, that takes the bracer slot. As a free actions forms into a mithral shield heavy shield or back to a normal bracer. It gives protection from arrows. You would think that was useful except after getting it, WE HAVE NOT FACED A SINGLE RANGED ENEMY. With the exception of a boss encounter that a construct threw a large object at me as sort of a bonus.
Are party was, "before death" 2 rangers, a witch, and a monk. The monk never shows up and is "3 levels behind" next time he does show up. We are currently level 3.
My character was never made to focus on tripping, he was just good at it, or rather, was, he was suppose to be a mixed range, tank, with some CMB tricks like bullrush to keep people off our ONLY CASTER AND HEALER. She even went heal patron because of this. Most of her time is spent healing the part in combat instead of doing any useful spells.
The caster had been taking craft feats because we already knew the DM was not going to allow us to actually buy equipment, but between level 1 to 7, only about a month has passed in campaign time, so we haven't even been able to craft anything ether. He has been rushing us to no end.
Only recently have we been able to craft items, and after the DM saw this, I can't imagine he is very happy. me, having a +5 AC Cold iron spike heavy shield with shield master, and an item that gives +2 dex, and +2 strength. with my 18 strength, and favorite enemy evil outsider, and shield master for being a level 6 ranger.
+7+4+4+5= +20 to hit to demons, I can bet I am going to see ac in the 40s because of this....
Another thing I would like to mention, when my character starts gather a large stock pile of weapons and item. ALL NON MAGICAL, because I wanted to sell it when the DM wasn't rushing us from one rail road plot line to another, my base gets trashed. My first hide out got raided so I lost my 2-5 cold iron ignot that would have been so handy to have melted into weapon for these demons now, which I called the moment we left. To another "safe place" with several npcs hiding from the law "they where witches, and the law is the church" I totally called again that they where going to get attacked and raided the moment we left. Which they did. keep in mind that this has happened to my character in a span of two days, not a whole lot of prep time. So if I can't actually have it on my person, which since bag of holdings require us to make it, makes it pretty hard, easy come easy go....
The witch has gone through 2 familiars at this point. Other player has died twice, and gone through one character. "Plot reasons"
The with is effectively is level 6, due to using evil, which transformed her from human to a tiefling and another player from a human to undead zombie, he stayed level 7, but he died that same day ironically "Everyone can only start as human". The witch now has to constantly hide her "demon" tiefling appearance, due to obvious reasons, that it currently matters since demons, invasion, ect.
So for the bulk of the game there has only been 3 players. One person comes in and out.
Instead of making life even more difficult for your GM like this guy above me wants, try actually talking to the guy about your issues with the game. Better if you all do it so he realizes that it's more than just you being bothered by the game.
Somewhere, on another message board much like this one, there's a DM who complained about his players. The advice he received on this far away message board is remarkably similar to the complaints in the first post of this thread.
Removed a post. Please post civilly thanks!
@Lockgo
You still haven't told us how your 6th-7th level ranger dazes, also are you using the 3.5 skill tricks or not?
@Lockgo
You still haven't told us how your 6th-7th level ranger dazes, also are you using the 3.5 skill tricks or not?
This.
Also, I don't understand what kind of setting you're in where certain things can transform PCs into random zombies and tieflings... there was a lot I did NOT understand of this game, and I think (from what I've heard) that both GM and players are being unreasonable here.
Try talking together about what you'd like to do. :)
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Option B: Die, re-roll, new build - Charisma Rogue: Take Chill Touch Major Magic, Weapon Focus, Dazzling Display, Shatter Defense... Use a Intimidate to catch them flat footed and do sneak attacks every round (if you roll high enough they will be flat footed for ROUNDS).
Oh, and of course these are just a simple 5 feat combo you can run... (so basically this is possible at 4th level if human, 5th if not).
You can add a massive strength and the intimidating prowress feat and somewhere pick up a magic item that adds 3 or so to all CHA rolls (hint, its a cheap headband). You can eventually take 10 on all intimidate rolls too. And there is probably another feat and a trait I am missing... but anyway, at this point you might have +4 cha, +3 str, +3 class skill, +10 ranks, +3 magic item = 23 intimidate + 10 TT = 33 DC. So unless your GM starts putting in 20 HD mobs with +4 Wisdom stats you got him licked... all the time. LOL. Eat it EVIL GM!
(You basically get a continual shaken status, if you get initiative on a suprise round you Intimidate as your action, Next round you hit them once (because you beat their intiative they are still flat footed), and then from there all the rest of your atttacks are as if they are flat footed til they are dead...)
ps. I suggest you add the STR drain rogue ability to drop it to zero strength... since you are using Chill touch you'd get 2-3 str per touch attack/sneak attack (since in this build they will all be sneak attacks).
Hiya.
[snip multiple paragraphs where I go on about the same thing...boiling it all down to...]
Not your DM's fault. From his perspective, he has no choice. Your characters are designed specifically to "win" by utilizing certain feats/skills/abilities/tactics. If the DM counters those, you loose because your characters can't really do/rely on anything else. Ergo, you see it as being "unfair".
Fix your own characters and the game will fix itself. Stop optomizing. Stop trying to find "combo's" that "win" 9/10. Start trying to work *with* your DM to create cool characters, with strengths and weaknesses, desires, dislikes, goals, a past history, etc.
Good luck!
^_^
Paul L. Ming
He could just challenge him occasionally with monsters with multiple legs and not build specific encounters to make his utility completely useless as well. However I do understand that you're under the impression that it's his fault for trying to "win", and accusing him of not roleplaying. Which I think it quite rude of you to do so. Regardless, I feel that if your character is a lot stronger then others in the party there isn't much reason he/she would want to be splitting gold with them. Build characters that work well and play well from both a roleplaying perspective and statistical perspective. However , don't make a character just to win. This is what I feel is the best approach is and you don't have to follow it what so ever.
I personally think it's everyone's fault that they're having a power disparity issue considering a couple of facts. His DM isn't taking the time to talk to him to help balance the party and seems to make counter builds often to fight his characters. Some of his party members are also probably a little weak when it comes to building characters and/or aren't focusing on damage. It's also partially his fault as well for making such a strong character among a counter DM and not communicating with his other party members.
I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with counter building one party member's "signature" move in a single encounter. However, it shouldn't be every encounter or even most encounters. I also think there is nothing wrong with having someone in the party being unable to do their "signature" move almost every encounter. But, it needs to rotate and be equally distributed between the party members. I even agree with forcing the entire party to use "attack plan B or C" every once in a blue moon - It keeps them challenged and makes things interesting. But it isn't everyone all the time or even one person all the time.
If the GM is counter-building more than one player in most encounters or is picking on one player more than the others, you have a problem. Either the GM is overwhelmed and/or inexperienced and doesn't know how to challenge the party without directly countering their abilities or the GM is the kind of passive-aggressive jerk who wants to "win", but doesn't have the stones to throw CR 25 monsters at a first level party.
To the OP: You know your GM as a person. If he/she is a passive-aggressive jerk, why are gaming with someone like that? If not, talk to your GM - Even better, have your entire group talk to your GM. All of you want the same thing: PCs that do heroic awesome stuff while being challenged.
One easy way for a GM to handle some of the more powerful PC tactics is to simply add more monsters, increasing the total CR for the encounter without making the individual monsters more powerful. This way the PCs can "do their thing" and still feel challenged.
This is good advice as well.
@Lockgo
You still haven't told us how your 6th-7th level ranger dazes, also are you using the 3.5 skill tricks or not?
[Fighter Bonus Feat, General]
SHIELD SLAM [GENERAL] You can use your shield to daze your opponent.
Prerequisite
Improved Shield Bash (PH) , Shield Charge (CW) , base attack bonus +6,
Benefit
As a full-round action or as a charge action, you may make an attack with your shield against an opponent. If you hit, you force the target damaged by this attack to make a Fortitude saving throw (DC 10 + 1/2 your character level+your Str modifier) in addition to dealing damage normally. A defender who fails this saving throw is dazed for 1 round (until just before your next action). Constructs, oozes, plants, undead, incorporeal creatures, and creatures immune to critical hits cannot be dazed.
Special
A fighter may select Shield Slam as one of his fighter bonus feats.
From complete warrior which he allowed. Everyone is allowed to use 3.5 skill tricks, since the DM loves them a lot more then we do.