My group just started book 5 of RotRL, and combats are becoming tough to the point where my character, a cleric 8 / holy vindicator 5, is having to spend more and more turns healing [the fighter in particular] just to keep him alive. The damage is just going to go up from here, and there's just no way I'll be able to keep up with it. So I have to conceive of a way for the fighter to take less damage. Ideas?
|
Tell that fighter to stop scrubbing up, get in the game, and get off his butt. If they're still having issues, consider getting Aid Another bonuses, and the Bodyguard feat. Invest in means that prevent damage, rather than heal it. There are lots of means of preventing damage, as long as you know what's coming in a fight. Plan accordingly.
Tell that fighter to stop scrubbing up, get in the game, and get off his butt. If they're still having issues, consider getting Aid Another bonuses, and the Bodyguard feat. Invest in means that prevent damage, rather than heal it. There are lots of means of preventing damage, as long as you know what's coming in a fight. Plan accordingly.
I'll try to convince the fighter to save up his money and buy a cloak of lesser displacement. What other things are our there?
Do you have anyone that could scout things out? Fight smarter and harder with a plan!
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Without knowing the AP inside and out, there a few general tactics you can do as the cleric (having been the healer myself many a time):
1. Gear up the party.
Make the guy up front a threat, but make sure he's capable of taking a hit. Armor, weapons, magic items, the works. Gear up the mage so her combat potential is on point. Staves, wands, whatever she needs to dish out the hurt. Make everyone in your party able to survive better without you so you can be a bit more of you own character.
Dinsmore was taking hits left and right while running around in leather (his justification was that he could be an HP tank). Once we got him properly armoured, I was able to spend far less time trying to keep him up and far more time slinging my own damage spells.
2.Talk prep strategy with your party.
You will ALWAYS need less healing when you go in with a plan, so try to make one ahead of time. Prepare for encounters BEFORE you're in them, if you can. Going into an ice based dungeon? Pack fire damage and cold resistance. Undead castle? Deathward and positive energy. You won't be able to properly prepare for every unknown, but you can at least try to predict unknowns by the theming of the area.
Wang Peng negated thousands of damage in our trip over the Crown of the World *just* by hitting us with Protection From Energy(Cold) right before the fights. That's not even an exaggeration. Thousands of points of damage.
3.Encourage mid-combat strategy.
Teamwork and positioning in encounters are HUGE factors. You need to play it smart from the time initiative is rolled to the time you loot the room. Get flanks, avoid being flanked, use cover, use combat maneuvers where applicable, etc. Honestly, if your fighter is rushing in and getting in over her head, you MAY just want to cut your losses and pick a more defensible position.
Versia, two weapon fighting the barbed devil with two weapons that do not overcome its DR is hurting YOU far more than hurting IT. Get out of the room so I can Holy Smite it without roasting your CN butt as well.
4.End the encounter before there's even a chance of a PC dropping.
This one is simple: outpace the enemy. Drop damage fast and hard, end encounters BEFORE the damage racks up against your part.
Samuel Truen does NOT play nicely with Evil Outsiders *sounds of devils being purged by divine light*
5.Take the damage for yourself.
Sometimes you just can't avoid damage happening, so the next best thing you can do is split it. Shield Other is a nice low level spell that will allow you to play backup battery to the fighter's HP, splitting the damage taken between you both. Then, area and group heals (such as channeled energy and Mass Cure X will be extra effective. THe downside is that this places you in a bit of a vulnerable spot if you BOTH get targeted.
Tristan waded into battle confident in his survivability because Sandra was taking half of every blow for him.
6.Accept that sometimes you just need to heal.
I will get a ton of flak for this on these forums, but every now and then you need to be the healer. While you shouldn't have to be pure healer, you need to accept that you are the party's primary source of damage mitigation and do your part. Pack the big heals (Heal, Breath of Life, Mass Cure Critical) and be ready to edit HP boxes. Your goal isn't to "keep up" with the damage and nullify every hit in combat, your goal is to "keep alive" the party members who will otherwise drop and no longer be putting out damage.
In a fight against an clay golem, against which he had no usable spells, Sabastian let the paladin Banner wail away at it while acting as a backup hitpoint battery.
Hope these tips help.
Brew potion, or craft wand - then give everyone healing potions or wands beforehand.
Healing is wonderful, yet will never keep up with the amount of damage received. Healing is something best reserved for out of combat situations, or a last ditch effort to keep from the more costly resurrection methods.
There are lots of methods to help keep the party from being damaged, yet they are all situational. Summon Monster spells can provide a brief cushion as opponents now have more choices of opponents, effectively taking the shots away from others. Silence can shut down enemy spellcasters. Protection from evil, bears endurance, and other similar methods can help, yet are situational.
Most of the really fun defensive spells are arcane - stoneskin, blur, mirror image, and so on.
An unconventional tactic is a scroll of contingency, yet this would require you to make a high use magic device check. If its not a problem, then have a contingency of "heal" on the fighter when he/she takes 100 or more hit points of damage.
Silly ideas include hiring people just to use healing wands on the group.
Control spells, cut down on what is throwing damage.
Do you have anyone that could scout things out? Fight smarter and harder with a plan!
Yes, scouting seems to be the weakness of this party; we're constantly fighting battles that are CR +2/+3 for our APL due to our lack of planning. So that's another thing I'll try to figure out how to address. You'd think with a wizard and sorcerer in the party we'd have good ways of scouting, but it just doesn't seem to work out for us (I suspect that if I took some time to analyze their spellcasting I'd find they both tend to favor sexy spells over useful spells.)
Our home group is up to Book Three. The closest we have to a 'dedicated healer' is either our Bones Revelation Oracle, or our Sorceror/Dragon Disciple with a dip into Oracle...
We've been pushing the AC hard when possible, and we have a cohort that helps our melee beat-stick not die.
Our rogue is exceptionally good at the sneak ahead and gather intel bit, and if things got really rough, the Soracle Disciple has Invisibility...
@Nigrescence
Invisibility really becomes iffy at higher levels since creatures can get a host of detection abilities up to and including detecting your lifeforce and blood. I honestly think these things are just a 'Just scry and fry the buggers' rather than trying to keep out of it's aggro range.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Let him die? Make him pay for his res costs out of his own pocket. Call it an education fee.
It isn't your job to be a backpack full of heal juice for him. If he can't keep his blood inside his body he needs to stay in the back with a bow.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Let him die? That's amazing advise. And letting him stand back with a bow is even better. Let's cripple that group slot so that the guy Cleric can play a different style than he has for 13 levels. Now that the Fighter is out of melee with his bow, taking no hits and doing no damage, someone else can now step up to fill those rolls easy. Please give real advise and not "Let him Die".
@Nigriscence - I'm going to talk to him about it, but I think as a party we're behind on WBL and are limited in what we can afford. I don't know about everyone else, but my total wealth adds up to about 80,000 gold. One thing that made things difficult tonight is that we were fighting a pair of heavy hitters (glabrezus) and he decided to take up a position right between them in order to minimize his need to move. So they tag-teamed him and knocked him unconscious in two rounds.
@nicholas storm - Yep, my AC is pretty healthy; most of the things we fight need a 20 to hit me if I've had a chance to buff up. I take the point as much as possible.
You're definitely behind on WBL for 13th level.
What the other posters have said is important though. If he hasn't done anything for his own defenses, he should do so ASAP. And in the end, even when you've got all the best gear, if you don't have a good strategy, you're still toast.
That said: cast shield other on him, and soak some of that damage, then use channel to heal you both maybe?
Overall I think there's just a bunch of sub-optimal play within the party. It's weird because when this group played Kingmaker we were a well-oiled machine - so we have the knowledge to play well - just for some reason we make mistakes we didn't make when we played Kingmaker:
- The fighter tends to get himself into dangerous situations and expects to always be bailed out.
- The sorcerer's spell list could be better; he's dragon bloodline and has too many blasting spells, IMO.
- The wizard doesn't communicate well with the other party members. It'd be easier for the rest of us to maximize the effectiveness of our actions if we knew what he was going to do during any round of combat.
- The paladin is a new player, and is still getting the hang of playing a martial character. I think the biggest thing holding her back is that she's too cautious with her smites.
- I always seem to have the wrong spells memorized. 75% of my memorized spells stay the same from day to day, but it's the other 25% that trip me up. The previous session I memorized 2 Breath of Life when I really needed True Seeing, while this session I didn't need True Seeing and could've used the extra Breath of Life.
- The cleric/ranger/shadowdancer/skyseeker is the only PC that almost always makes the right decision in combat.
Unless the fighter's DPR is really high - like high enough to one round a glazebru (186HP), then he may be better off using a shield. A fighter that level can easily get to the mid 30s AC with a shield and up to 40AC if he was specced for defense.
An AC40 fighter with a moderate DPR can kill probably 20 glazebru while a AC25 fighter with a high DPR can probably kill 1 glazebru.
Heh, he's a two-weapon warrior, so him using a shield is a non-starter.
As far as the rest of us:
cleric of abadar 8 / holy vindicator 5 dwarf (me)
two-weapon warrior fighter 13 human
red dragon bloodline sorcerer 13 gnome
divine hunter paladin 13 halfling
conjurer wizard 13 half-orc
cleric of cayden calien 3 / ranger 2 / shadowdancer 2 / sky seeker 6 dwarf
Get the fighter to obtain a pair. It will deal with a large proportion of post combat healing.
- I always seem to have the wrong spells memorized. 75% of my memorized spells stay the same from day to day, but it's the other 25% that trip me up. The previous session I memorized 2 Breath of Life when I really needed True Seeing, while this session I didn't need True Seeing and could've used the extra Breath of Life.
Do you leave spell slots open? It can help with that problem. Not always, as sometimes you need that spell right now, but it can help.
Also stock up on scrolls, potions and maybe a staff or wand if you anticipate using a particular spell a lot. As any kind of spell caster consumables are your very best friend.
When preparing spells for the day, a cleric can leave some of her spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the preparation process as often as she likes. During these extra sessions of preparation, she can fill these unused spell slots. She cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because she has cast a spell in the meantime. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if she prepares more than one-quarter of his spells.
Unless the fighter's DPR is really high - like high enough to one round a glazebru (186HP), then he may be better off using a shield. A fighter that level can easily get to the mid 30s AC with a shield and up to 40AC if he was specced for defense.
An AC40 fighter with a moderate DPR can kill probably 20 glazebru while a AC25 fighter with a high DPR can probably kill 1 glazebru.
Heh, he's a two-weapon warrior, so him using a shield is a non-starter.
As far as the rest of us:
cleric of abadar 8 / holy vindicator 5 dwarf (me)
two-weapon warrior fighter 13 human
red dragon bloodline sorcerer 13 gnome
divine hunter paladin 13 halfling
conjurer wizard 13 half-orc
cleric of cayden calien 3 / ranger 2 / shadowdancer 2 / sky seeker 6 dwarf
If he took the Two weapon warrior archetype, his AC gets a buff each round he makes a full attack. Adding magic armor, a high dex, an amulet of natural armor and either ring of protection or your shield of faith, he should have pretty high AC.
I'm guessing he should have between 30 and 35 AC, without a shield (a two weapon warrior with a shield as its second weapon will be around 35 to 40 AC, without optimization).
Do you leave spell slots open? It can help with that problem. Not always, as sometimes you need that spell right now, but it can help.
Also stock up on scrolls, potions and maybe a staff or wand if you anticipate using a particular spell a lot. As any kind of spell caster consumables are your very best friend.
I tried leaving slots open, but that never seemed to work. The scroll bit is a good idea; I'll have to think about some useful scrolls to get.
If he took the Two weapon warrior archetype, his AC gets a buff each round he makes a full attack. Adding magic armor, a high dex, an amulet of natural armor and either ring of protection or your shield of faith, he should have pretty high AC.
I'm guessing he should have between 30 and 35 AC, without a shield (a two weapon warrior with a shield as its second weapon will be around 35 to 40 AC, without optimization).
I'll have to see what AC gear he has, but I know that yesterday his AC was 28 with haste and his Defensive Flurry bonus. I think his dexterity is either 17 or 18 and I know he's wearing magical mithril breastplate with the light fortitude ability. He's also got a Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier.
Eh, as much as that would help with the HPs, for fighters cloak of resistance are mandatory.
Lol, that's a whole 'nother issue all together.
For the tl;dr crowd --
1) Players should not intentionally expose a weakness to capable enemies.
2) Players should adapt to the needs of the party to help gather intel, develop procedures to cope with emerging situations, and increase the potential for rapid conclusions of combats.
3) GMs should adjust encounters to the capabilities of the party, or the party's equipment to properly deal with encounters.
Go teachbot mode instead. There are a handful of things that need to be picked up by the party and incorporated into your combat methodologies. Using any or all of these will help; the best part is, it's all the advice that's been presented earlier in the thread.
1) Good allies don't willingly get flanked by evil beaters. If he were a melee paladin, even, that glabrezu encounter wouldn't have gone well.
2) Good allies adapt to demonstrated party needs. The lack of scouting/scrying options you've mentioned is a serious problem. I can understand a sorcerer not being well able to support that need (though a list full of nothing but energy damage spells is still a bit incomprehensible), but between a wizard and a cleric (and a shadowdancer??!! why isn't *that* PC scouting?) you should be able to map out a pattern for successful "espionage".
3) Good game operations directors (g.o.d.) take the responsibility of properly supplying the players with *opportunities* to get things they want/need for game progression. If your gear package peaks at about 80k gp, you're operating at 57% of projected wealth by level; how universal is this? Has the group been effective and thorough in its efforts to track down items of value? If you've been a sacrificial player in the name of the common good and yielded powerful items to other characters, I understand -- I've always thought the "religious" types (but not the paladin "zealot" types) usually get shoehorned into the poverty of welfare . . . . Nevertheless, it seems to me that your group needs to run into a dragon that's been blinded, crippled, and left at 1 hp just so y'all can get back up to par on the gear.
4) Good playgroups build a team, rather than a group of individuals. I separate this from #2 because gathering information is a critical thing, almost tactical in its nature, and I'm pointing toward the strategic aspect now . . . . I see the six character builds you've posted, and it looks to me like 4 of the 6 are built to be hammers (which begins to account for the frustration you have with being pushed to healbot). I'm not sure what the sky seeker is (still too enamored of the classes to worry with PrCs), but the conjurer really ought to be the anvil, and maybe the sky seeker is an arm . . . .
I'm in no way suggesting that anyone should dictate another character's build just to accommodate the party; I *do* think, however, that parties should naturally gravitate toward doing that very thing simply to help the whole group. If everyone is convinced that he/she is responsible for maintaining DPR solely through the medium of damage dealt, y'all will have a hard time even if your WBL gets corrected (yes, "corrected" is the proper term here). I believe a collective adjustment in how each character is operated in a combat will be a great help -- Primary role is capitalized, secondary is not:
1) vindicator -- Support/damage
2) TWF type -- Damage/ -- ?
3) dragon sorc -- Damage/support
4) hunter pally -- Damage/support
5) conjurer -- Control/support
6) sky seeker -- Support/ -- ?
Check out the hammer/arm/anvil threads here, and equate damage = hammer, support = arm, control = anvil. As heavily as your party is weighted toward DPR potential, though, once the equipment issue is resolved, y'all should be roflstomping everything.
An AC40 fighter with a moderate DPR can kill probably 20 glazebru while a AC25 fighter with a high DPR can probably kill 1 glazebru.Heh, he's a two-weapon warrior, so him using a shield is a non-starter.
Improved Shield Bash should allow him to have his AC and TWF at the same time. Get an enchanted quick-draw shield with spikes and he probably will do nearly the same damage while having a much improved AC. As a fighter, he should have plenty of feats for this.
You might want to ask the DM where the treasure is and whether you'll be allowed to go shopping at some point. This might be an easier request if somebody knows or learns Teleport. If you're actually allowed to coem up to WBL some of you could stress to the Fighter that he has a problem with defense and he should invest heavily to address that problem rather than just going nuts with offensive boosts so he can have the fun of dealing more damage with his 6-7 attacks while you're stuck saving him all the time.
You could also consider whether the DM is amping the encounters up a little. You mentioned that a lot of the stuff you fight needs a 20 to hit you, and that's the sort of thing that often drives DMs to go a little crazy with raising the CR. I wonder if that 2 Glabrezu encounter was really supposed to be a 1 Glabrezu encounter. If so that sort of stuff can make a big difference in how PCs perform.
If you want to give people lots of potions you could see if you're able to buy the Blackwick Cauldron, which will let you brew potions much faster. If a frontliner with weapons in both hands stops to drink a potion that's a big action economy loss.
If the sorcerer and especially the conjurer care about helping BMX Bandit (the Fighter in this case) they could summon some angels, or even better some azatas. Bralani Azata are reasonably useful combat helpers, and they can do Cure Serious Wounds twice a day. The Lillend Azata can do a little additional healing, and she's a flying Bard. If there are improved familiars in the party you could also give them some wands of Cure Moderate Wounds.
Being bad at healing and good at other things is probably a good start.
I am playing in RotRL as well as a Cleric. I make it very clear to the party I don't do mid-fight healing period, unless it's actually an emergency. I will let players drop before I heal them. Why? Because healing them takes ME out of the fight, so unless they can do 2 players worth of damage in 1 round, its a waste of time for me to heal, rather than fight the bad guy, bring him down, and revive people at the end of the fight.
Because my party KNOWS I am not a healbot. And KNOWS most of my spells are cast as self buffs. They do not try to take advantage of my healing to act recklessly (mostly).
We're playing RotRL in 5E, so our experience might be different. We're starting part 6 tomorrow at 11th level.
But counterspelling has been or would have been really useful in Part 5. It's a little different in 5E, since casting counterspell is a reaction in 5E, so you won't "waste" your action readying to counterspell like you can in PF. But countering a fireball or disintegrate can really save a lot of cure spells.
And in chapter 5, some of the monsters can cause A LOT of damage in one round. Enough to drop a slightly wounded non-tank.
Something else you might want to consider. Use a high level summon monster spell to summon something that can battlefield heal for you.
Summoning usually isn't conductive to gameplay since it bogs parties down when fighting, but other players love free heals that cost you nothing.
In Age of Worms the Dwarven Cleric Were bear made everyone Bracers of Armor +8 that also cured mod once a day. That made a lot of difference in the final battles.
So, I've had a discussion with the other players. The fighter is seriously considering a cloak of lesser displacement, which would be very nice. He'll have to give up his cloak of resistance +1, but we're thinking that could be a worthwhile trade-off.
We also had a discussion on strategy, but the conjurer's player wasn't at the game tonight so we'll have to talk to him later.
Right now my current dilemma is figuring out what I want to spend my money on. I have 30,500 gold to spend, and here are my current magic items:
+1 full plate of light fortification
+2 heavy shield
Belt of Giant Strength +4
Headband of Inspired Wisdom +4
Sihedron Medallion
Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier
Pearl of Power (2nd level spell)
Since Barkskin (domain spell) lasts 10 mins/level, I pretty much always have it up for fights. I always have Greater Magic Weapon on my adamantine waraxe, which is why I haven't spent money on a magic weapon. I'm able to also have shield of faith and magic vestments up, which is why I haven't bothered with a ring of protecting or upping my armor. My current considerations are as follows:
1. Lvl 5 pearl of power - would let me recall a 5th level spell, such as teleport or breath of life.
2. Increase my shield up to +5 - would make my AC even higher, but I think it's high enough as is. Most stuff we fight already needs a 20 to hit me if I have my buffs up.
3. Buy my weapon up to +3 - would eliminate the need for me to cast GMW, and would also bypass a lot of DR.
4. Cloak of Lesser Displacement - 20% miss chance to go along with my high AC.
There's good advice in this thread, that's already been said, so I'll just answer the thread's title:
Play a fighter. Nobody ever asks them to be the healbot.
There's good advice in this thread, that's already been said, so I'll just answer the thread's title:
Play a fighter. Nobody ever asks them to be the healbot.
After RotRL the GM's going to run Carrion Crown. I've already informed everyone I'll be playing a bloodrager.
You could also consider whether the DM is amping the encounters up a little. You mentioned that a lot of the stuff you fight needs a 20 to hit you, and that's the sort of thing that often drives DMs to go a little crazy with raising the CR. I wonder if that 2 Glabrezu encounter was really supposed to be a 1 Glabrezu encounter. If so that sort of stuff can make a big difference in how PCs perform.
Yes, but this party has SIX PCs, not four. They're 13th level and the glabrezu is CR13. By RAW, the GM should be treating this group as either an APL 14 or even an APL 15 group. Considering that they seem to be behind the WBL curve, I would go with APL 14.
An APL 14 group should eat a single glabrezu for breakfast without even breaking a sweat. A double glabrezu encounter is only EPL+1, challenging but not hard, and they should be able to handles this probably 3 times per day.
Frankly, I would have used two glabrezu too, for this party. Unless I was planning 6 or 7 encounters before letting them rest, then I would have kept it at one, or given it a weaker demon ally.
The fighter's tactic was stupid. With a second tank (paladin) in the group, the fighter didn't even NEED to stop two of them. And yes, the fighter needs better defenses as well as better tactics.
After RotRL the GM's going to run Carrion Crown. I've already informed everyone I'll be playing a bloodrager.There's good advice in this thread, that's already been said, so I'll just answer the thread's title:
Play a fighter. Nobody ever asks them to be the healbot.
See? You figured it out without my help!
;)