We just finished book 3, and my party is bonkers. I already delayed their Mythic ranks by a bit, and they're still tearing through combats like it's nothing. I discussed this with my players, and they agreed to me adding more HP/to-hit to monsters to keep things interesting, as well as maybe some other upgrades. However, I'd like to keep things fair and not use those things too often. So, if you have any ideas how to properly challenge my players without it feeling unfair, please share.
Party composition is:
- Evangelist Cleric with Heroism subdomain. Insane buffs, and he's slowly becoming pretty good at melee combat as well, with Dex to damage and a Holy Keen scimitar.
- Old school Summoner with a grapple/swallow whole-focused Eidolon. Also big fan of creating Pits and just shutting down enemies. Eidolon is nearly impossible to hit for bosses, and mooks just don't hit, period.
- Psychodermist Occultist. Also high AC, and probably the main damage dealer of the party. Also has a boatload of tricks up his sleeve due to being an Occultist.
- Fireball-focused Sorcerer. 'Nuff said. Either combats need to be on insanely large maps, or things melt before they get a chance to do anything.
- Paladin/Swashbuckler/Devoted Muse. Weirdly enough doesn't do a lot of damage, but hyper-mobile, and has reach, which is problematic.
Sorcerer player suggested adding things with fire immunity, or Spell Immunity, so that forces him to get creative. The party has become well-known enough that the demons might start preparing against them now, so that's an option. Other than that, there isn't a main thing that's bothersome, just a confluence of other things, such as extra standard actions with mythic points, the Occultist being able to place Bane on his weapon as a standard action, and Mythic Haste. I was already debating limiting extra standard actions to their their per day, so they don't use it all the time.
I'm thinking of looking for interesting templates to slap onto them, but I don't want to do too much work rebuilding everything. Dual Initiative will already do a lot, and maybe I should look a bit more into easy Mythic templates, such as giving enemies additional standard actions as well. As for the Grapple/Swallow Whole, I'm thinking of looking for spiny creatures/templates that will hurt those tactics.
SO, I'm basically asking if people know any cool/suitable templates or tricks to use against my party without feeling like I'm countering them on purpose, without me rewriting basically everything? I'm already using the updated statblocks for a lot of things, but that doesn't cover everything.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Your party most likely is already destroying their expected numbers. They are obviously way ahead of their intended power, remember that the game is balanced around players who don't know what they are picking. If they optimize, and they have, you will have to rise to the occasion. I recommend reading https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/bench-pressing-character-crea tion-by-the-numbers/ see where your PCs are, and balance the encounter to that level. I was playing in book 5, and my PCs had numbers akin to a party level 25... fighting against CR18... of course, they obliterated everything. In our case, we agreed that they will control their optimization to not overstat themselves so much, so I can play just as written, a nice gesture of them (they know preparing every encounter can be taxing). Otherwise, I would bring my own optimization to the fight, adding templates, class levels, and mythic tiers, but as is with nuclear warfare, is better to agree not to use them, for both sides.
Mythic presents another layer of power, beyond numbers, but that power is intended by the adventure. They need to be durable, and to ignore almost every effect of non-mythic creatures. Or they would get destroyed by Unholy Blights, breath weapons, and other non-avoidable effects.
If your players don't want to scale down, prepare to scale up. And bring those Full armored Balors with Antipaladin level and Mythic Template. If that happens, no one is safe xD
I've GM-ed this AP for a while now, and we're near the end (only 2-3 sessions to go).
I've stopped giving them mythic tiers after the end of book 2. Meaning they're actually level 19/mythic tier 2. And they're litteraly reaping appart their ennemies, to the point that I've handwaved a lot of meaningless combats starting book 6 (basically, every fight who doesn't present a CR of 21 at least).
I mean, the Bloodrager and paladin usually scores 50 or more on their "to hit" score, and can do around 200 damages with a full round attack. The cleric can cast so many healing spells that they are assured to never die, and the wizard take cares of everything else.
So ... yeah. Don't hesitate to pump up your monsters with max HP, advanced template and such. Also, don't hesitate to rewrite some encounters : there's way too much boss fights in this AP where the boss is alone against the PCs, and we all know how such fights play.
You should also be very carefull with the loot. There's way too much treasures and artefact thrown at the PCs. Starting book 5, I had the financial value of the loot cut by half, and honestly, I should have started to do this earlier. (as for the last book, well, it's not really a problem : PCs are in a hurry, and they don't really have the time to go shopping, so the vast amount of gold and gems is gonna be useless to them).