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I've been DMing for a long time and this is the first time I've run into an amazingly cerebral (and great dude) who has used his first time playing Pathfinder to play a wizard. All you "build" folks have probably done right by him. It's been fun to watch him grow. The team is 10th level (I'm running Serpents Skull) and I am trying to figure out what to do with this guy.
So a couple of things
1. The wizard uses spells to great affect and has mastered which feats to take to get the most bang for his buck. He's using spells like Create Pit to make the monster's lives difficult (also entertaining) and has a few "save or die" spells like Ice Prison that really f#@! up grand plans and ALSO maxed his damage dealing.
2. The dude has taken the feats to allow himself to unleash summon monsters that can do a boatload of damage all at once (They did 155 points of damage in one round to one creature with 4 tigers and pounce)
3. He's using that swift move dimensional hop constantly to stay out of my way with combat, get out of grapples, etc.
SO....
On one level I feel like its my duty to make it hard on this guy, but where do you stop? What's your philosophy about handling a player who has the ability to end a climactic battle in one bad die roll by me (without lying and fudging dice; I don't roll behind screens and play the dice straight because I feel that's ethical) or just absolute massive damage. Entire big bosses have gone down in two rounds.
I'm tweaking monsters to have more silence, area affects, etc, to make his life hard, but is there a line where you just go "Congrats max/min'er , you've won pathfinder!" rather than blatantly metagame the hell out of taking all this dude's hard work and flushing it for the sake of drama, tension and story by neutralizing his obvious enjoyment of the game?
What's your approach?
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My opinion is that, first, you don't try to make this guy's life more difficult. Your job isn't necessarily to counter his effective build.
Your job is to present challenges, tell a story and keep people entertained and having fun. If everyone is still having fun, sail right on.
If people are feeling overshadowed by him, that's when you have two choices:
1. Ask him to tone down his optimization, or focus more on making his team mates feel useful with buffs for example.
2. Start having the world react to his power. Intelligent enemies will start taking countermeasures against him, but he's going to keep wrecking dumb ones. You can have smart bad guys prepare anti-magic tactics, focusing on him, and trying to make his life difficult from a purely roleplay justified manner.
I highly recommend the first approach, because if he brings others up to his level then you can adjust difficulty equally for everyone.
One thing, is to make sure you actually understand all of the rules. For example, by 'swift move dimensional hop' I assume you mean the Shift Power from the teleportation subschool. This power works 'as if using dimension door' which means that like dimension door, using it ends your turn. Still a great power, but more limited than it seems like you are using it. If there are other things you are missing, this could explain some of you trouble.
The truth is though, that you are getting into the areas of the game where 9-level casters really start to dominate. As others have said, this is a 'known' fact in the world and it isn't unfair to have enemies that can take advantage of that knowledge. In my games, enemies that are generally intelligent but don't know the specific caster they will be facing will have general anti-caster tactics, enemies that have a reasonable chance to have heard of this particular wizard and know some of what he likes to do (or can get the knowledge in other ways) will have specific counters (if he loves his summoned monsters, a protection from X can go a long way as a simple counter).
Finally, in my experience even a moderately optimized group will find most of the encounters in most of the published APs pretty easy. Adding the advanced simple template to most of their enemies tends to make a bit better of a challenge in my opinion.
Obviously you don't want to 'play against' the character or the party, but most groups want the game to have at least some challenge, and most don't want a single player to dominate all of the encounters, and playing the bad guys as intelligent foes can usually accomplish that.
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This doesn't sound like min/maxing to me. It sounds like a pretty basic area control specialist.
This doesn't sound like min/maxing to me. It sounds like a pretty basic area control specialist.
Harlan mentioned the wizard also dealing massive damage with summoned monsters. Classic battlefield control uses summoned creatures for control instead, because the other PCs are better at damage.
Mastering battlefield control can be tough on us GMs, because it negates several enemy scenarios in our toolbox. But for the players, the wizard manipulating the battlefield to favor his fellow party members is fun. But if this wizard is using battlefield control to favor his summoned monsters, then what does the rest of the party have to do?
The GM's duty is not to make life hard on the player characters; rather, it is to give them challenges where they earn their victories. The wizard has made a typical dungeon delve his comfort zone. Get him out of that zone. Give the party a caper or a mystery. My friends have often had fun in an outpost-building scenario, where they need to build (or rebuild) an outpost fortress to guard a mine or defend a border or make a home for refugees.
These are all fantastic comments and suggestions. Thank you, everybody.
I think there's an art to challenging him without outright defanging him. Everything here has been great.
Summoned Monsters can do damage, without knowing what he is summoning and what feats he has to back them I cannot comment further. But my battlefield control wizard can also deal significant damage with summons as necessary.
Personally, I prefer more 'negate the enemy' methods of battlefield control since that requires fewer resources.
It sounds like he may be using up significant resources on individual combats. That can be worked against him.
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just be glad he isn't dropping wales onto every enemy
That was changed from 3.5. " Creatures cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them." 500ft in the air is not a place that can support whales.
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You can break up a few big encounters into many smaller encounters. This means he has to decide when/if he uses his big spells.
You can use lower CR opponents, so if he summons 4 tigers, but it only take 1 tiger to kill an opponent, then the extra 3 tigers are "wasted."
Waves of opponents. When almost all the NPCs are dead, add more NPCs.
Use his tactics against him. A magician nemesis for the whole party that uses magical hit-and-run tactics. Summon, throw down a debuff, and teleport out. Summon, blast, and teleport out. Summon, battlefield control, teleport out.
Ready actions to disrupt his spellcasting. Arrows, magic missiles, maximized acid arrows, counterspelling, charge/pounce/grapple, just regular grapple, etc.
Use his tactics against him. Bull Rush his allies into the pits he creates. Dominate beast his summoned bears. Flying or climbing opponents, such as a bunch of low-level spellcasters. Use different classes that use similar tactics, such as druids. They have summon nature's ally spells and a bunch of battlefield control spells, like spike growth and entangle and spike stones.
An enemy nemesis druid might be key, actually. They make great counterspellers (they can use Improved Counterspell to trade out 4th level flame strikes to cancel out 3rd level fireballs and lightning bolts). They can send their animal companions into melee, and many animal companions are fast and good at grapplers. So even if the enemy druid is just sitting there, Readying an action to counterspell and twirling his mustache, his animal companion is still an active threat, as are any opening salvo summoned allies and/or battlefield control spells. Plus wildshape.
Wizards only excel whilst they have spells to burn, after that they're pretty much the weakest class around. If the player and party have gotten used to the four encounter day then he may not have budgeted for a six or seven easy encounter day (same overall CR as the standard 4 encounter day), plus 4 or 5 skill challenges and the group will not be set up for it. Equally, they may already be wary of going nova on a one or two encounter day against tough opponents.
By mixing up the types, number and difficulty of encounters you will make the party respond by trying to cover more bases and they will start to be more conservative in their resource use. This includes the wizard's spell selection (i.e. fewer useful spells for a given occasion) and spell use (shall I cast it now when it could be overkill, or save it in case I really need it later).
On top of that, as previously mentioned by others, intelligent creatures will know what wizards look like (don't wear armour and with poor weaponry) and rather than dismiss them as a non combatant will recognise them as the main offensive threat (and with weak defences) and target them first. I actually make a point of explaining to my players during session 0 that different types of creature will perceive threats differently and use intelligence to target wizards as an example.
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Remember that the simple Protection From spells make Summoned creatures useless. Take a look at the spell description. By 10th level, those spells (and Magic Circle) should be pretty common for your intelligent baddies.
Pretty much all casters are at the mercy of Line of Effect. Interrupt that and they are forced to get creative. That's the GMing sweet spot. You don't need to perfectly counter your Caster PC. You just have to make them have to think their way around hinderances.
Things that break line of effect or line of sight will do wonders. Obscuring mist, pyrotechnics, eversmoking bottles, walls, improved cover, invisibility, and other targeting hinderances will go a long way.
Have ranged enemies Ready attacks for when they see your caster start to cast a spell. It's a common ranged tactic that really works wonders and can make casters spend a round or two getting their defenses in order or taking cover before they start doing their real job. Hitting casters with things like Tanglefoot bags, Nets, and other status effects that force Concentration checks is useful as well. It doesn't always have to be about damaging them.
Thank you guys.
Huge help so far. One of my deficits I am realizing is though I've GM'd a lot I've never actually played am arcane spell caster to a level like this in an actual game so there are times I'm not thinking about how he's employing his spells because I am so busy learning what the Monster spells are plus abilities etc. So having your opinions helps.
A longer adventuring day. Once he has used up his spell slots...well...sucks to be a wizard?
It might make him manage his resources carefully, allowing for fights to last longer than they would if he went nova
Harlan, some things we would like to know:
1) What are his feats?
2) Which summon monster spell (level) is he using?
3) What monster(s) is he summoning?
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The player can learn to hold back a little for most encounters. Typically when I play casters and I see the encounter is under control I dial it back so the martials (and the GM) can have some fun too.
Just a few comments:
1 - Summon Monster takes a full round to cast. That is to say, he begins casting on round one and finishes casting on round two. That's a lot of time to interrupt a spell.
2 - A lot of his damage probably comes from the Celestial Lion's Smite ability (I'm pretty sure he's summoning Lions instead of Tigers, unless he's got some odd ability). At 5 HD and 5 attacks, that's 25 extra damage per round (30 against certain creatures). At a max of 4 Lions (1d3+1, assuming the Superior Summoning feat), that's an extra 100 damage (120 against certain creatures). Evil doers (especially Outsiders, Dragons, and Undead) beware.
3 - Their weakness is their to-hit. It starts at +9 (assuming he has the Augment Summoning feat). More than likely, they rely on situational modifiers to hit at all (charging, bard song, flanking, etc).
4 - 4 Lions is the luck of the draw. He could summon 2 instead. Just depends on the dice.
5 - If all 4 Lions hit all attacks against an [Evil] outsider, minimum damage is 280 ((5*(1 +7str+5smite)+5)*4. Just sayin'
Now, I'm not saying that you should counteract his efforts by designing encounters against him. But you should keep in mind that certain encounters could be trivialized by his build.
One thing I do, is I read the guides for the classes my players are playing, it gives me a heads up for what to expect, and if the guide is written well it also will go into the limits of the ability so I can learn what they can and cannot do. This has helped with catching players that don't fully understand the mechanics of what they are playing.
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Remember that designing adventures to require the abilities of the rest of the party over the wizard's assets is good GMing. Every encounter being against the wizard is a bit too much. Now encounters designed to require the wizard to work WITH the rest of party is always to the good. Talk to him to let him know what you are changing and why. If he chooses to try and beat the GM all on his own, that is hubristic narcicism, and you should stomp him down.
I realise I am late to the conversation but here goes anyway.
The first step for me is to check whether everyone around the table is having fun. If they are, don't change a thing. If it turns out that for example that the wizard is hogging the limelight and others are not having fun then you could try coming up with challenges that involve everyone. Nerfing the wizard would definitely be a last resort.
This is a much more fun problem to have than players who are horrible at the game. They forget to add up their bonuses, forget items you gave them, don't know how to use their feats or spells. A challenge to them can be TPK.
Personally, I love to challenge players, so how cool would it be to have such a great, skilled player eating up my challenges and allowing me to make them more and more epic!
Pathfinder World Problems. Always something to frustrate, but that's the game. As long as you and your players are enjoying it, game on.
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Obviously, challenging the wizard is good, nerfing the wizard is bad.
A really challenging boss monster for the party mentioned in the opening post could be a Wendigo.
Maybe they have to (unknowingly) cross Wendigo territory. The monster follows them through the wilderness inflicting nightmares while they sleep making it hard to rest and regain spells and making what should be easy encounters with wandering monsters much more challenging.
If your wizard uses familiars often, Try using some Mundanity Grease on it. Its a splash weapon with a range increment of 10', lasts for 1d4 minutes or until washed off.
In effect it negates his familiar & all the abilities his familiar has returning it to just a normal animal of its type (thus no access to the masters skill ranks, it grants no bonus to the master such as the +4 initiative of the Rabbit, cant share or deliver spells, etc.)
won't gut him, but might make him blink a bit and for some low end mook to use it while the big boys are fighting it might have a few amusing effects.
Grapple him. He's level 10? Assuming he's at 22 base Int and a Headband of Vast Intellect +4 pushing it to 26 Int, his concentration check bonus should be at least +18. Adding Focused Mind trait (+2 concentration) and Combat Casting (+4 when defensively casting/grappled) puts that to +24 on concentration checks.
A grappled/pinned caster has to beat a concentration DC equal to 10 + grappler's CMB + spell level. Example: A frost giant is CR 9, has +20 CMB, and that means if the wizards wants to cast Summon Monster III (3rd level spell), he has to beat a DC33. With a +24 to the check, it's totally possible for him to succeed because he only needs a 9 or higher on the die (45% chance of success).
The reason why grappling is good, in my opinion, is that it has the potential to create two scenarios: 1) The wizard fails and it creates tension for the party by making the fight more dangerous and 2) The wizard succeeds and the player feels a sense of accomplishment for coming through in a tough situation.
