To preface this post I am a long time DM and due to life changes have handed off DM duties to a good friend a little more than a year ago, so he is relatively new as a DM but has been running consistently.
Anyhow He bought the Pathfinder Rappan Athuk book on kickstarter and we were all excited. He wanted to see more of the newer classes in action so I decided to make a gunslinger/inquisitor. He agreed to advanced weapons and within 5 levels we agreed that gunslinger with advanced firearms was too powerful. We agreed to nerf the revolver and removed the touch attack quality and the misfire making it an exotic longbow with x4 critical. We also agreed to scale the character back so I dumped gunslinger and currently I am Inquisitor/Fighter 6/4 respectively. Here is a breakdown of my character:
Level Class BAB Feats/Abilities
1 Inq (1) 0 Inquisition: B. powder, judgement 1/day, monster lore, orisons, stern gaze,
*exotic weapon prof: firearms, *gunsmith, point blank shot, precise shot
2 Fight (1) +1 Rapid shot
3 Fight (2) +2 Deadly aim, weapon focus (firearms), bravery
4 Fight (3) +3 Armor training 1
5 Fight (4) +4 Weapon specilization (firearms), quick draw
6 Inq (2) +5 Cunning iniative, detect alignment, track
7 Inq (3) +6/+1 Solo tactics, *target of opportunity, rapid reload (revolver)
8 Inq (4) +7+2 Judgement 2/day
9 Inq (5) +7/+2 Bane, discern lies, improved critical
10 Inq (6) +8/+3 *Enfilading fire
Because the dungeon provides us with unusual amounts of wealth I currently have a +4 revolver of speed, +4 belt of dex, +4 headband of wisdom, bane bauldric, ring of evasion, endless bandoleer +5 mithril breastplate, +5 buckler and some odds and ends. Most of this was possible because we have an item creation specialist wizard in the group to tailor our gear.
This is the issue; the DM is getting very frustrated because I am doing very high damage output. Any time we have an opportunity to prepare for a fight and get the jump on them I put up my spells (divine favor, wrath, weapon of awe, flames of the faithful, my judgement and bane and I am getting something like +22/+22/+22/+17 while using rapid shot and deadly aim doing 1d8 +21 +3d6 and crits are x4. Assuming everthing works.
Last night we tracked down the adult red dragon CR 14 with our lv 9 group and smoked him round 3 when I critted for over 1/2 his HP in a single shot. He got visibly upset and as a DM I understand his frustration. He seems upset that I built a heavy DPS character and that every BIG boss just gets obliterated because I do alot of damage and crit quite a bit. I don't want to have the game end because of this... Do I dump the character or what? Help please.
well I might offer to get rid of advanced firearms. Drop back to a pistol and redo your feats perhaps? That would nerf it some, or hell if you like him and the game, just build a new character, make him another char with gun ttaining or something
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Have you pointed out to him that it happened to you too? That when you were DM, there were times when someone else critted and the fight ende
Have you pointed out that anyone with a dps build.might be doing the same thing.?
Can the two of you admit you madeake.allowing advanced firearms in the first place?
Have you pointed out your pc weaknesses?
Had he considered when a weak member easily goes down, others have to spend resources healing?
Are you doing 5 minute workdays with you doingall those buffs in a single fight beforecombat even breaks out?
You are remembering to take the feat taxes to avoid fireibg into melee ans the other feat tax to avoid firing through cover of an ally?
Maybe the two ox you need to recognize you should be playing with the wealgh by level table instead of the adventure guide thY Lilly assumesyou will miss some of the stuff.
Your group should have known better to think.you can let a crafting feat justify half price items for everyone instead of just the person who took the feaT.
I would agree to an equipment auidit. Your gear is insane. THIS is your problem!
Your gun +4 speed revolver alone is worth 105,300 gold. A character of 10th level should only have a total wealth of 62,000 gold according to the wealth by level chart. Your weapon alone is worth almost twice the appropriate treasure for your level.
That doesn't include 2 sets of +5 armor, and 2 +4 stat boosters, ring of evasion "and some odds and ends." Ballparking it, your characters wealth is about; 205,000gp. almost FOUR TIMES your appropriate wealth by level.
Your DM should make an adventure hook where a significant amount of your gear is lost, stolen, sundered, disjoined, or otherwise irretrieveably gone, and rebalance the party with appropriate treaure.
Edit: Ninja'd by 7 professor. Exactly what I was saying =p
Believe me when I tell you that the loot is waaaay too much. Like I said he's running straight out of the Rappan Athuk book so hes not adding or removing anything. Rest of the group is equally equipped if not more heavily. In fact i'm likely the lowest man on the totem pole.
I have made a bunch of suggestions but last night after the dragon horde plus 2 other significant encounters we hauled 350k... thats in addition to what we already have. The book itself seems poorly designed to offer up loot like that. he just feels like he's in a bind. I offered up we could give him an idea what direction we wanted to go so he could pre-plan and adjust encounters but he feels like he can't do that, he doesn't want to adjust anything.
Perhaps the game coming to an end may be the best thing. Just sucks since we have invested so much time into game.
You (and the rest of your group) could always hold back, and save your big guns (so to speak) for dire circumstances.
You should also recommend that he hold back on the loot, and volunteer to downgrade your equipment a couple of plusses to compensate for it.
My guess is that he's being one of those "nice guy" DMs who let the players survive, fudge the killing die rolls, won't let the monsters kill of the PCs.
CR14 monsters against level 9 characters, even so obviously overgeared, means a good crit from a monster will kill some PCs. If you're consistently fighting battles 5 CRs above you, your ridiculous gear should make it possible to kill them, ESPECIALLY when it's one BBG (instead of multiple smaller BBGs - much harder to crit them out of the fight), but they should be doing ridiculous amounts of damage back to you guys. Sometimes that might mean crits that blast someone into the dead zone.
That's a lot of buffing you do before every fight. I suspect you're only have one or two of those fully buffed encounters every day, then camping to regain the buffs for a couple encounters tomorrow. How many fights are you having per day? Is your DM being too nice to attack you in your sleep? Too nice to send wandering monsters to harass you when you're out of spells/buffs? All he has to do is hit you with a couple CR14 battles during the day and then when you withdraw to camp, have another CR 14 battle catch you in your sleep, without your armor, without time to recover spells. TPK. If he doesn't want a TPK, he can send a weaker battle at night. Kill only one or two PCs and make you pay for resurrections, eat up a little of your loot.
More importantly, doing that will make you think about not using EVERY BUFF YOU HAVE for every fight. If you're less buffed because you're saving some for possible unplanned encounters, maybe you won't steamroll the enemy so fast in every fight.
Finally, 3 fights for 350,000 GP? If they were all CR 14, they should have totaled about 45,000 GP. That's total, not each. He is giving out nearly 8x the recommended loot? I think it's time for him to "hit the reset button", dial you guys back to normal amounts of gear. Me, I'd have a level 20ish adventuring party scry and fry you. Pop in, give you a little taste of your own "steamrolling", take your awesome loot, and pop back home. I would make sure they're not exactly evil, so they don't kill all of you, maybe they'd even be decent enough to leave a resurrection scroll or two if they accidentally killed some of you.
And then from that point on, it's time for him to start controlling the loot instead of letting the dungeon control it.
Thanks for the heads up, by the way, my players are just getting done with the Mouth of Doom part of that adventure, which didn't have too much loot in it, and moving onto the main dungeon - I'll have to watch out that I am also not giving out 8x the recommended amount of loot.
My guess is that he's being one of those "nice guy" DMs who let the players survive, fudge the killing die rolls, won't let the monsters kill of the PCs.
CR14 monsters against level 9 characters, even so obviously overgeared, means a good crit from a monster will kill some PCs. If you're consistently fighting battles 5 CRs above you, your ridiculous gear should make it possible to kill them, ESPECIALLY when it's one BBG (instead of multiple smaller BBGs - much harder to crit them out of the fight), but they should be doing ridiculous amounts of damage back to you guys. Sometimes that might mean crits that blast someone into the dead zone.
That's a lot of buffing you do before every fight. I suspect you're only have one or two of those fully buffed encounters every day, then camping to regain the buffs for a couple encounters tomorrow. How many fights are you having per day? Is your DM being too nice to attack you in your sleep? Too nice to send wandering monsters to harass you when you're out of spells/buffs? All he has to do is hit you with a couple CR14 battles during the day and then when you withdraw to camp, have another CR 14 battle catch you in your sleep, without your armor, without time to recover spells. TPK. If he doesn't want a TPK, he can send a weaker battle at night. Kill only one or two PCs and make you pay for resurrections, eat up a little of your loot.
More importantly, doing that will make you think about not using EVERY BUFF YOU HAVE for every fight. If you're less buffed because you're saving some for possible unplanned encounters, maybe you won't steamroll the enemy so fast in every fight.
Finally, 3 fights for 350,000 GP? If they were all CR 14, they should have totaled about 45,000 GP. That's total, not each. He is giving out nearly 8x the recommended loot? I think it's time for him to "hit the reset button", dial you guys back to normal amounts of gear. Me, I'd have a level 20ish adventuring party scry and fry you. Pop in, give you a little taste of your own...
Actually he's not at all he's just running by the book. there have been multiple deaths over the levels just recently we got showered in loot. Everyone needs to realize that this is straight out of the book, he didn't write any of this... no random rolls, no fudging anything they just give you a ton of loot.
Anyhow we talked it out and were gonna sit the group down and look at reviewing equipment to be in line with reality. We have been gaming nearly 20 years so this isn't the most enjoyable for any of us. Will reset ourselves to a reasonable level and he will start holding back to be more in line with the standard treasure.
Good idea. I'm glad for you that you're all working to keep the campaign from running too far off the rails.
Yes, I did get it that he's running it out of the book, but my guess is that he should not have been. If the loot is THAT overwhelming, then it's time for the DM to step in and fix it, hopefully before it gets so far out of reach, such as a 9th level character with the equivalent of a +6 weapon, for one example.
Either that or step up the encounters.
Whichever is done, it sounds like the adventure cannot be run exactly "by the book".
For me, since I'm running it too, I will prefer to adjust the loot down because that's an easy adjustment with specific guidelines in the CRB. The alternative, leave the loot alone and adjust the encounters up is a more complex adjustment, resulting in extra XP and more work, without specific guidelines since there is no rule (or set of rules) about how much up-adjusting to do to match people with excessive gear.
Good idea. I'm glad for you that you're all working to keep the campaign from running too far off the rails.
Yes, I did get it that he's running it out of the book, but my guess is that he should not have been. If the loot is THAT overwhelming, then it's time for the DM to step in and fix it, hopefully before it gets so far out of reach, such as a 9th level character with the equivalent of a +6 weapon, for one example.
Either that or step up the encounters.
Whichever is done, it sounds like the adventure cannot be run exactly "by the book".
For me, since I'm running it too, I will prefer to adjust the loot down because that's an easy adjustment with specific guidelines in the CRB. The alternative, leave the loot alone and adjust the encounters up is a more complex adjustment, resulting in extra XP and more work, without specific guidelines since there is no rule (or set of rules) about how much up-adjusting to do to match people with excessive gear.
Solid advice and much appreciated. I think using the guide for character wealth will help balance things back to where they should be. Everyone is on board so hopefully by next game we will be adjusted and ready for adventure. Thanks again everyone for the input.
Are you sure he was not giving out gold or platinum when he was suppose to give out silver or copper?
It staggers me that you claim these people have been playing for 20 years and they did not have red flags being thrown all over by at least half the people on how absurdly overpowered the gear was.
Well the majority of the group has been, the DM has about 4 years under his belt. We were on pace fairly well till 2 games ago when at lv 8 we pulled a 100k haul. That made us somewhat uneasy but last Saturday we hit the dragons horde, some cult of Orcus and a wizard that had waaay too much loot. We ended with 350k and started the discussion that lead to this reset. (I should mention that the +7 weapon and +5 armor/shield were the night our total haul was 350k). After discussing with the DM I'm pretty sure he got stuck on running, "by the book," hadn't reviewed the upcoming loot prior to the nights games and as he was handing it out we all started to realize that there was a huge problem.
I think we all were really excited the night when we first hauled 20k per player and got a nice boost to gear (I took my revolver from +3 to +4 and bane bauldric) but we were only slightly OP per the loot rules for lv 9 party at that time. This last haul threw us off the rails and did raise the red flags as you stated.
Also your condescending tone in both of your posts is unnecessary and unhelpful.