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I disagree heavily with sandal. Punish people building for rocket tag by throwing things at them they can't rocket tag.
It's amazing how much damage an enemy built around survival can do to a team that isn't.
Is high level play lopsided? Only if you follow things to the letter. Build your own monsters. Make your own builds for enemy NPCs with class levels.
You can make enemy NPCs that are 3-4 levels higher than the party post level 11 survive countless rounds.
Please don't buy into rocket tag. You don't need to have enemies that do ridiculous damage to balance an encounter or pose a challenge.
The solution is to realize that high-level PCs are comically powerful and the last glimpse you'd ever have of "challenge" or "balance" disappeared about seven levels ago.*looks at his game that has had PCs at 20th for a couple years with plenty of challenge for them*
Uh-huh.
Better to say that asymmetrical system mastery and optimization can unbalance the game if the GM us less proficient than players and said players don't rein themselves in.
I am the GM that is less proficient than the players... but I was blessed with a table of awesome people that didn't take advantage of me.
I am trying to find a balance of time invested in making enemies, and considering the encounter's place in the overall picture. My generic enemies and go-to strategies can prove adequately challenging, if not deadly, up to about mid-level. Once the players hit double digits, I have to start tweeking things.
Sadly, I never caught up with my adjustments... I think I was scaling enemy difficultly on a linear scale, and the players were advancing on an exponential bell curve. I think the trick is literally just more... more enemies, so you can absolutely overwhelm the party's action economy every round.
After the players are level 16, double everything... if you think it will be a fair fight, if you think you have it matched in a balanced manner... double that. Once you think it's "fair", double it. Now it MIGHT slow them down, one of the party members MIGHT bleed their own blood this day.
Don't worry about what gear you have to give enemies to make them relevant, or how much loot the party is getting from these huge fights... it's endgame, anyways... they are near-godlike, have political influence, prestige, probably own tracks of land or even own their own castles and villages, they are probably guild leaders with loyal followers... loot matters less unless it's unique or flavorful.
I have seen mid-high level players release Rust Monsters rather than loot an armory just to save time, so yeah, loot and money only influences so much.
Thanks for all the feedback - I'm reading everything and taking notes. There are probably only 3 major combats left in the campaign (2 after this one), and some smaller encounter as they work their way into and through the castle. I keep forgetting this and then realize I shouldn't be holding anything back.
Will we ever know how this turned out and what happened?
Never!
late to the party:
so don't AoO her? come and get me only activates when someone actually takes the AoO you provoke which would make her reach shenanigans worthless, since she's gotta physically pass through their threatened range anyway, far as i know.
and if she's noodle-arming from range that'd make people even less likely to try and AoO her, sicne they can't actually reach her.
moreso after seeing any hapless allies get mulched fro trying to use the AoO.
of course this can all be sidestepped by an appropriately slippery caster i'd think, who isn't attacking her to trigger her effects, and may have defensive (invisibility or displacement, strong movement options like dimension door, etc) options to negate her more threatening attacks, would give her quite the challenge.
a melee option could be her own medicine turned against her--say, an invulnerable rager barbarian with CaGM/beast totem line, guarded life line, flesh wound, and so on to just whittle her outgoing damage down to nothing before slapping ehr back themselves?
late to the party:
so don't AoO her? come and get me only activates when someone actually takes the AoO you provoke which would make her reach shenanigans worthless, since she's gotta physically pass through their threatened range anyway, far as i know.
You've slightly misread CaGM:
While raging, as a free action the barbarian may leave herself open to attack while preparing devastating counterattacks. Enemies gain a +4 bonus on attack and damage rolls against the barbarian until the beginning of her next turn, but every attack against the barbarian provokes an attack of opportunity from her, which is resolved prior to resolving each enemy attack. A barbarian must be at least 12th level to select this rage power
So any attack against the Barbarian provokes an AoO from her, including melee attacks/ranged attacks/spells/etc - If there's an attack roll it provokes. It lasts until her next turn, so it's not just AoOs against her that trigger this ability. Of course she has to be able to take those AoOs, but with 15 foot reach and Combat Reflexes this means she's getting high damage attacks at her highest BAB on the enemies' turns, whether they try to move past her or engage her .
It's an extremely powerful set of abilities.
So you just don’t attack the bloodrager, same as a swashbuckler with parry/riposte.
Right, so you ignore the giant super-high-damage character who's running for your backline casters. That's still a giant win tor the Bloodrager.
Or are you saying they just run past the Bloodrager and attack their backline? Because that's easier said than done when their reach is a 40 foot diameter circle.
I'm not saying this is an unbeatable character build, but "just don't attack them" isn't really a solution.
Of course this thread kinda finished about 20 days ago, so if the OP has what they need then we don't really need to reopen it.
Of course this thread kinda finished about 20 days ago, so if the OP has what they need then we don't really need to reopen it.Yeah, I don't care about the rules question or mechanics at this point, I just never get to find out the play-by-play or outcome of the actual encounter or boss fight or how it went.
Tell you what, I'll tell you how my combat goes tonight. I don't have CaGM, but I'm playing an Aberrant Bloodrager, and at the end of last session the GM said "Roll for initiative" while we're standing in a 5×5 room with 10 enemies and 4 PCs.
If you give me any advice I'll forward it to my GM, he's got about 45 minutes to integrate your advice, so you better make it succinct.
EDIT: Party consists of 1 reach Bloodrager, 1 Gunslinger, 1 buff-centric Bard and 1 Teleportation specialist wizard. We're 13th level. The only enemy I know anything about is a Bard of some sort who just pulled out a MONOWHIP.
Yeah, 5×5 room -- party and enemies get stuck in an elevator or something? (Although I can see how this might be conducive to negotiations breaking down . . . .)
Heh, I was being half serious. And I meant 5 squares, so 25' × 25'.
What ended up happening is that half the enemies attacked the other half. One enemy attacked our wizard, so I disarmed and grappled her and she struggled for a bit before smashing a concentration check and teleporting out ... but mostly we just watched a bunch of enemies wail on each other.
It was a bit anticlimactic really.
Tell you what though, that elevator fight sounds pretty fun.
This is why god invented Blood Crow Strike... slap him around from across the screen like Dhalsim in Street Fighter.