I have a Paladin PC that is absolutely destroying pretty much everything thing I throw at the party. I am totally fine with this, but I want to throw the party a challenge every now and then. I recall seeing either a spell or feat or that counters or lessens the effect of smite good, but I can't find it. Does this ring a bell for anyone and if so, what book is it located in?
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I have a Paladin PC that is absolutely destroying pretty much everything thing I throw at the party. I am totally fine with this, but I want to throw the party a challenge every now and then. I recall seeing either a spell or feat or that counters or lessens the effect of smite good, but I can't find it. Does this ring a bell for anyone and if so, what book is it located in?
Corruption Resistance and Warding armor enhancement are the only things that come to mind.
An intelligent villain may try to get the paladin to burn their smite uses throughout the day on lesser threats.
You can also set up neutral enemies to detect evil through a variety of spells and effects. Once a paladin wastes a smite in this fashion, they may become far more reticent to use it without detecting evil first. In which case an evil character that detects neutral may succeed.
Realistically though, you're gonna keep running into this problem if you only have a few fights per day, and they are all against evil foes. Changing either side of the equation reduces the value of smite evil.
Angel Skin gives a "miss chance" for smite evil.
Beyond Morality might work, but it is wizard only (and neutral only, I think, which I suppose renders the issue moot).
Incorporeal enemies are immune to smite unless the paladin has a way of giving his weapon Ghost Touch, or some other way of harming incorporeal foes.
Flip side of course
Paladin's are vulnerable to Unholy smittings
Unholy Blight
Unholy Word
Unholy Aura
I'm in a group where the bulk of the party are Good and these spells are making a serious mess of us, particularly when several demons and devils have some of them at will. Getting hit with 3 or 4 of them at once is not a fun round
Not to mention throwing a big bad Anti-Paladin at your group
Don't make the bad guy evil. Make them misguided and either neutral or even good.
Not every thing the party thwarts has to be evil with a big capital E stamped on it.
It can even be a G or N who is sliding towards E (think of Arthas and his descent towards evil.. he was on the slide before it hit the E, if you are familiar with Warcraft's lore).
Someone who is misguided or flat out mistaken who the party has to stop from doing something can both challenge them on an RP level and prevent things like smite from working.
-S
First, thank you everyone for the replies. They are greatly appreciated.
Corruption Resistance and Warding armor enhancement are the only things that come to mind.
...
Realistically though, you're gonna keep running into this problem if you only have a few fights per day, and they are all against evil foes. Changing either side of the equation reduces the value of smite evil.
Thanks for pointing those two out. The problem is its the Wrath of the Righteous, pretty much all the foes are Chaotic Evil and the paladin in question as smite evil to spare. I don't mind him wiping out random encounters and some of the smaller encounter areas, but I am concerned that eventually even the larger fights will become trivial. I do have the enemy casters summoning non-evil creatures, but that often only makes a marginal difference.
Angel Skin gives a "miss chance" for smite evil.
Beyond Morality might work, but it is wizard only (and neutral only, I think, which I suppose renders the issue moot).
While Angel Skin isn't what I was thinking off, it will extremely useful for a future encounter. Many thanks for pointing that special material out. I am GMing Wrath of the Righteous, so I can add the Mythic version of Beyond Morality to NPCs, but I don't want to overuse it, plus most of the villains revel in their nature so from a story standpoint must wouldn't take it.