Destroying the ultimate optimized 4 man party (Your Opinion)


Advice

Liberty's Edge

There is a thread for players to give an opinion on the Ultimate 4 person party.

So how about a thread about how, within the PF rules for encounters, you as GM would TPK such parties? Make the hours the players spent trolling the books, and posting for advice on these very forums, a one encounter waste of their time. If the players have to run away like frightened Kobolds I think that is a still a win.

One rule is no countering with NPC's and only using PF rulebooks.

I haven't really chosen an example yet, so I won't start the ball rolling.

Be nice to have a few tricks up my GM sleeve I can pull out when the players are being smug CharOp'd annoyances...


Rocks fall, everybody dies.


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Kobolds, narrow tunnels, traps, and tactics.


Simply having perfectly optimized characters and parties is not enough to survive. Players have to have decent tactics. Based on player tactics alone, I've seen a 5 party group dominate in an encounter that an 8 party group got TPK'd, and neither was optimized. (This was 2 different groups being run though the same AP).

Having a perfectly optimized group won't save them from poor tactics.


rivals, obviously. mostly because you dont TPK your players unless youre completely uncreative on how to deal with them.
give them a grand enough battle/story and retire their characters to lives of greatness and heroism when if they win.


A single equal level necromancer wizard with simulacrae and golems but with time to arrange traps, raise dead and build golems and simulacrae.


Pugwampis that were hidden in walls, and powerful spells rushing through an extremely narrow hallway. Even the best saves will fail sometime, and Pugwampis are easily able to screw them over.


Well, you can always pick monsters that have abilities they're not equipped to face, which depends too much on the exact builds to say.

Smart tactics and setting up the right situation is much better. Low-level creatures with tactics and ambushes and situational use of terrain can really fox NPCs.


Well other than the idea that an optimized party (not even optimized characters but just a well balanced group mind) should be an "annoyance" to the DM...

Are you saying a Level Appropriate CR encounter with zero NPC's with class levels... so only monsters.

I would agree. Low CR creatures with corny tricks. Kobolds making traps. Monsters with Caster levels and wands. Graplers and Oozes. Constructs with magic immunities. There are a ton. But the whole point of the other thread is a party that is balanced (not OP) that can handle most if not all appropriate monster CR encounters. Also... Haunts can be murder on parties with little to no channeling.

Shadow Lodge

Greater Invisibility + Mind Blank + Lesser Globe of Invulnerability. Then just throw summoned creatures and compulsions at them till they drop.


Multiple ranks of people using save or die spells.

The "They walk into a Circle of Death and are then bombarded with everything from Flesh to Stone to Disintegrate in the first round" death machine.


Sounds like Rocks fall to me. Honestly it isn't really worth talking about since as the DM you have infinite resources.

Liberty's Edge

Dragonamedrake wrote:


Are you saying a Level Appropriate CR encounter with zero NPC's with class levels... so only monsters.

Well other than the idea that an optimized party (not even optimized characters but just a well balanced group mind) should be an "annoyance" to the DM...

Just to avoid the obvious Mirror of Opposition set-up.

It does beg the question, what does an optimised party mean exactly?

I think the word 'balanced' is more suited on reflection.

If you read the originating thread, some of those parties if played in a real game would be nothing more than annoying. The GM sets up an encounter the players wipe the floor with it, repeat. So my question was what fair methods within the rules for building encounters could be used to challenge such parties? Sure 10,000 Orc shamans all casting Magic Missiles in waves is likely to do the trick, that sort of encounter wouldn't be within the CR rules. Likewise a no save rock fall.

I guess it also depends on the level at which the optimised party is at. 1st level shouldn't be a trick, but at level 20...

S.

Liberty's Edge

gnomersy wrote:
Sounds like Rocks fall to me. Honestly it isn't really worth talking about since as the DM you have infinite resources.

But the PF core rules give guidelines on the way these infinite resources can be used for any given encounter.

Shadow Lodge

Okay, I missed the qualifying rules. So basically, the challenge is to create a single encounter that will likely defeat a well balanced and well prepared level 20 party, without using any class levels, overwhelming odds, or unbeatable traps?

Hmm. That's much more challenging, for sure. I think my best answer is probably a Solar or two, using their cleric spellcasting ability to summon some allies, then staying as hidden as possible while sniping the PCs with their Slaying Arrows. They'll fail the save eventually. Perhaps he might use a few Wall spells to help keep them at bay. Plus other defensive spells like Globe of Invulnerability and Greater Spell Immunity (protecting him from the most common [evil] spells to ensure his regeneration stays up and running). And, of course, tactics as appropriate to the party. The fact that they can cast as clerics gives them the versatility to adapt to any party makeup.


I tend to agree with others. Its highly dependent on the party involved and the people playing them.

After all, you could give a group of 4 new players the most optimized party imagined and wipe the floor with them due to poor decisions.

I still say the Haunt system has few counters other then Channelers. If you dont have a someone who can channel a few of those CR appropriate Haunts can wipe a whole party with ease. Its what makes the first book of Carrion Crown so deadly.


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Give one of them a very valuable item.
Give the other three nothing.


O_o No way to make this a contest about rules of what you can and can not do. I mean, I can a stock-list of a$%*$#! encounters, if you want. Also, what CR are we talking about?

- Animated Adamantium Spiked Chain
- Swarm of Incorporeal Monsters, prefferable not undead ones.
- Fights involving climbing, with dispel magics present.
- Most fights underwater, again with dispel magic available.
- Swarms of Swarms
- Stealthed, Invisible enemies with nondetection.


Stefan Hill wrote:
gnomersy wrote:
Sounds like Rocks fall to me. Honestly it isn't really worth talking about since as the DM you have infinite resources.
But the PF core rules give guidelines on the way these infinite resources can be used for any given encounter.

Yes and no. The PF Core rules give you guidelines on what an average party level encounter is for the purposes of balancing(which is completely pointless since you already said you just want to rub the player's faces into the dirt) and rewards which won't matter because they'll all be dead.

As a result infinite resources can be freely used so long as you aren't afraid of your players violently beating you to death with their rulebooks. Which you should be afraid of.

I don't think you'll find that the player cares that you managed to kill him with an APL -4 encounter that was carefully tailored to be impossible versus an APL +10 encounter that just rolled their faces in when the end result was creating a no win situation for the players.

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