In two weeks, my Runelords group is going to continue the Stone Giants assault on Sandpoint, and face their first dragon - the juvenile Red Dragon, Longtooth.
Instead of inspiring fear when he appeared, as soon as the wizard saw him (10th level), he rushed to meet him, absolutey intoxicated with the thought of magic jarring him and possessing a dragon.
Now - this is kinda going to kill the encounter, because from what I understand, if the dragon doesn't make the 18 will save - which he does have better than a 50/50 chance by rolling an 8 or higher - but it's still too damned close to just totally killing the encounter. One spell, one dragon possessed, then it flies down to let the barbarian chop its head off.
Is it me - or does magic jar seem - well, a bit overpowered, or am I missing something?
In 3.5 there were a lot of SoD(save or die) spells. PF nerfed most of them while keeping the SoS(Save of Suck) spells. Give the dragon iron will or improved iron will in place of another feat(s). I will also add that sometimes players will end a boss fight quickly. As a GM I let them have it and move on since I know the other boss fights won't go down that way, barring some sort of miracle.
PS:That is also why I don't like single creature boss fights.
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Magic Jar is one of the best spells in the game. But remember that's not indefeasible.
Remember the range rules. Those are important to Magic Jar. Also, remember that he can't differentiate between lifeforces unless there is a 4 HD difference (Not sure that will help vs a dragon...but it's still important to know).
Remember that attempting to possess a creature is a full round action, a whole round in which his body is completely helpless.
Remember that protection from good will block magic jar. Is your wizard good? Can your dragon cast? Dragons are smart creatures and will buff before facing the party.
Does the dragon have minions? Can the party protect your wizard from the minions while he attempts to magic jar?
And while I don't recommend doing this often, remember that you're a GM. If you think it would be un-fun for the wizard to just Magic Jar the boss, you always have the option of fudging the roll.
I've never run the encounter so I don't know the dragon's resources, but if it has access to Protection vs ______, that spell completely blocks the possession aspect of Magic Jar, and if the dragon has a legitimate reason to believe the party would be using this tactic against him, he might be inclined to acquire this protection.
That being said, the dragon is a CR 11 encounter vs what sounds like a 10th level party, which isn't exactly BBEG territory. Statistically this encounter should only use up roughly a little more than 25% of the party's resources to overcome.
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And while I don't recommend doing this often, remember that you're a GM. If you think it would be un-fun for the wizard to just Magic Jar the boss, you always have the option of fudging the roll.
Let me recommend instead that, you are the GM. If you think it would be un-fun for the wizard to just Magic Jar the boss, you're probably wrong because you are the GM and not the players that are obviously excited to do it.
Here's the thing not enough GMs seem to learn--players like winning. They especially like it when their awesome plans work and they win cleverly and with ease. Players don't need enemies to actually challenge them to feel like they were in danger (thus validating the experience, as no danger really would be boring), they only need to recognize the enemy as something dangerous.
In this case, the PCs obviously know the dragon is dangerous. If the Wizard Magic Jars it, they won't think, "Oh man, dragons are push overs! This game is lame." They are instead going to think, "Oh man, I'm so glad that Magic Jar spell worked! Dragons are scary to fight--that would have been a disaster!"
Seriously, trust me, if the PCs win easily thanks to having just the right ability or because of a cool plan, they will have more fun than if you arbitrarily (especially via fudging) decide their plan fails specifically so that everything is more difficult.
My rule of thumb...
A party member pulls out a plan or tactic that completely wipes out a BBEG easily... Good on them. They where creative and did something awsome.
Said party member tries to use it every fight against every BBEG after that... then I pull the player aside and we come to an agreement about said ability. That agreement might be anything from a gentlemanly decision to shelve it or not to use it on the BIG BAD, or it might involve us toning it down to reasonable levels.
Point is. Let it slide the first time and just communicate with your player that you don't want it to become a defacto tactic.
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And while I don't recommend doing this often, remember that you're a GM. If you think it would be un-fun for the wizard to just Magic Jar the boss, you always have the option of fudging the roll.Let me recommend instead that, you are the GM. If you think it would be un-fun for the wizard to just Magic Jar the boss, you're probably wrong because you are the GM and not the players that are obviously excited to do it.
Here's the thing not enough GMs seem to learn--players like winning. They especially like it when their awesome plans work and they win cleverly and with ease. Players don't need enemies to actually challenge them to feel like they were in danger (thus validating the experience, as no danger really would be boring), they only need to recognize the enemy as something dangerous.
In this case, the PCs obviously know the dragon is dangerous. If the Wizard Magic Jars it, they won't think, "Oh man, dragons are push overs! This game is lame." They are instead going to think, "Oh man, I'm so glad that Magic Jar spell worked! Dragons are scary to fight--that would have been a disaster!"
Seriously, trust me, if the PCs win easily thanks to having just the right ability or because of a cool plan, they will have more fun than if you arbitrarily (especially via fudging) decide their plan fails specifically so that everything is more difficult.
Your problem there is that everything you said uses Plural words. PCs, Party, Players, ect. But we're not talking about the party, we're talking about the Wizard.
It's one thing for the PARTY to win the fight. It's another thing for the Wizard to win the fight. Constantly. PLAYERS love to win fights, they don't tend to like having fights won for them.
If you're not careful, the game can easily devolve into "The Spellcaster and his band of minions who aren't nearly as cool or as powerful as the Spellcaster."
I disagree. I have only seen casters rule the game in debates. There is no class that can't have problems. Now if a player is better at the system than the GM that will cause issues, but many times that will cause issues no matter what class the player takes.
PS:I think the player also has to bypass SR.
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Spellcasters tend to be a cut above the rest in terms of problems. God casters break fights easily in ways that classes like fighters just can't. While that's part of the game, to some degree a GM might need to step in and ask the caster to tone it down a bit. While casters are important, have the caster constantly win the day can get a little boring for martial characters.
God caster generally don't win the fight. They enable others to do so. SoD casters win fights, but that is mostly against single opponents. If I ran an AP I would not allow magic mart since the SoD caster will try to pump his save DC's, and his caster levels to bypass SR. The problem with an SoD caster is that the smart move is to then focus fire on that PC which may kill him. As the GM you don't want to kill the player, well most of us don't anyway. Using multiple opponents can help to make sure a bad die roll does not end the combat.
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Well, win the fight/enable others to win the fight, six and one half-dozen of the other I say. Is there much difference between the SoD caster who magic jars the BBEG and the God who stinking clouds the entire enemy forces or lifts the enemies into the air with Reverse Gravity?
I say not really.
But I do agree that multiple opponents is definitely the way to go, although I think the encounter in question is built to be a single enemy fight.
I have never seen anyone who got upset because the caster used haste or a debuffing spell to make the enemy easier to defeat.
If I do ever see it I will probably be speechless.
Again, this is a single CR 11 creature vs a 10th level party. Unless the party is overlevel, this was never intended to be a dramatic encounter, just a resource draining one. Using Magic Jar to defeat the dragon is a gamble, and as a 5th level spell, he's using up 1 of 3 (or maybe 4 if you're generous with his possible Int at this level) of his most powerful spells to deal with one encounter. It seems about right tbh.