Okay so.. One of my players is playing a battle master, thats interesting and fun and i have no problem with that.. his whole character is a sword duelist, a japanese wandering ronin type with a Katana, 1D8 damage. ( or 1D10 2 handed )
Its fine, until he decided to spec into Ranger and take humans as his favoured enemy type... and hunters mark... he is rolling like 5 or 6 dice every attack and just ******* up every single enamy I put infront of him... he is doing insane damage at 6th level.. he did 75 damage to one opponent in a multiattack of 2 last session with... He dueled a CL 8 monk of the 5 spires easily killing him in the second round... a 6th level player with no help from his party killed a CL 8 monk master of the five spires...
I dont know what to do cause he I create challanges on a curve here, i need to balence the game for my whole party but since he is so powerful the challanges are getting rediculous and the players who didnt manage to break the classes are getting left behind or comletely outclassed by the challanges... The other day our monk was as effective as a toddler against a level 9 battle master and yet our party member at level 6 killed both of them at the same time.. our monk gets knocked out in every fight cause of this curve..
Iv had to just start giving every monster like 200 or 300 health just to make them able to stand more than 4 rounds with him and shit tun of Damage resist.. I dont know why i posted this here. i guess i just wanted somebody to point out he cant do that or something or just some solution.
( on a less serious note my druid keeps summoning bears and its really annoying ... I am going to have to start counter spelling or dispelling or ******* dominate animal to every enamy )
I will mention some specific CL:6 monsters. They have some special abilities that are challenging even if you are high lvl adventurer. Medusa: Petrifying Gaze, he will be stoned Invisible Stalker: It is invisible!!! Vrock/Wyvern: They are flying monsters, put a rider on them and let it him throw arrows from above
You can check and find similar monsters in the internet.
often when such things happen, there is a mechanic of the game or one of the classes involved that has been misunderstood and is causing this. Can you break down what abilities are typically used by the PC to inflict this amount of damage? WHat stats and magic items (if any) does the character have?
Are you running around 4-6 fight encounters between a long rest, or fewer? Fewer encounters makes classes with limited resource pools more powerful.
I tend to shake things up, i do a dungeon and than i do a series of mini adventures with a few hug battles or monsters in betwene.. I cant go thee whole game only doing dungeons or only fighting monsters with specific abilties.. Theres no way i can arrange this game so that he cant do this stuff cause that would basically ruin the flow of the entire game. Like recently he was having tea with a monk when the monk poisoned him and Ninja attacked from every angle.
The other party members struggled but he minced up the enamy.
Like there are ways to slow his damage especially against DR and such but its not consistant especially when fighting humanoid enamies... ( which like most of the main bad guys are ) Any time humans come at him which unfortunatelly has to happen eventually its just a joke..
Big thing is his hunters mark mixed with his favoured enamies human and his superiority dies.. his only magic weapon is a row-boat or that lets him control water.
Just breaking this down a little, you said he's 6th level and is a battle master fighter, multiclassed into ranger. He's got to be at least level 2 ranger for spells, so I guess fighter 4 / ranger 2?
Hunter's Mark - this is a good spell for Rangers, but a 2nd level ranger only gets 2 spells between long rests. This adds 1d6 damage.
Favoured enemy - this gives advantage on survival checks to track the enemy. It doesn't increase damage. If you are allowing him to use the Unearthed Arcana Revised Ranger, please be aware that like almost all UA classes, it is not balanced for multiclassing. Can you explain how the favoured enemy of humans is causing issues?
Superiority dice - depending upon the maneuver, this is an additional 1d8 that can be added to damage. The character only has four of these between rests though.
Action Surge - this is one of the signature abilities of the fighter class and is a reason many people multiclass into the fighter class. It allows much higher "burst damage" in a fight. It's only usable once between rests though.
That's 1d8 (weapon damage) + strength modifier (probably +4) + 2 (I expect dueling fighting style) + 1d6 hunter's mark + 1d8 superiority dice. That's a total of 2d8 + 1d6 + 6, which doesn't seem too bad?
As I mentioned above, the game is balanced around multiple combat encounters between long rests (between 4 and 6 fights if I recall correctly). That's not to say you should always run that many, but be aware that regularly running fewer fights does lead to some characters being more powerful.
( on a less serious note my druid keeps summoning bears and its really annoying ... I am going to have to start counter spelling or dispelling or ******* dominate animal to every enamy )
You get to control what comes out of the Conjure spells, not the player. The player gets to chose what CR and how many show up, but the DM gets to pick what that "one beast of CR 2" is. So, if you want a saber toothed tiger to show up instead of a cave bear, then the tiger shows up.
As for the Ranger, can I ask if you're using standard Ranger, or the UA ranger? Because there's a lot of people who take the UA ranger for a ton of advantages that are seriously over powered. I also agree that some of the math isn't adding up. Battlemaster 3, Ranger 2 is the minimum we'll need for with character level 6; I'm going to assume fighter 3, ranger 3. With a longsword, that's 1d10 sword + 1d8 superiority dice + 1d6 hunter mark + 1d8 collusus slayer + 2 favored enemy + x Strength (I'm going to assume 4 for extremes). 37 possible damage per attack, doubled 74 if we assume action surge. And that's assuming that each dice comes up with the maximum damage each roll, something I have trouble believing. There must be some kind of misreading of rules or something going on with this character.
Personally, I tend to recommend to disallow multi-classing if you want a more even game. Mutli-classing is really a min-maxer's game; its very easy to create a character that's weaker than a pure class, and those who have a high level of system mastery can jump above the expected power curve. Unless your entire group are into min-maxing, of course, in which case you can have a blast with it. Its very unbalanced, so I don't recommend it for everyone.
...with a few hug battles or monsters in betwene..
Okay, so I really just want to know how he is winning hug battles!
Alright, I'm done.
So without knowing his build we can only speculate as to how he is doing this. But if he is using Unearthed Arcana, that's issue number one. When Mystic was presented in UA, my DM allowed me to make one and regretted a good chunk of it and basically we both silently agreed that I would cut the OPness a bit. We started throwing in saving throws and stuff for the psionics that had spell equivalents to help balance them out.
If your player isn't willing to tone it down, there's always the option of 'Purple lightning damage' where you deal unaspected damage for no reason. Bwahahahaha. But no, there's a few things you can do as a DM that he can't be prepared for. Example, when you threw those ninja at him, did they have surprise attacks which count as automatic crits? (Damage rolled twice?) Did the poison he inbibe cause him to have disadvantage? What about paralytic poison instead? Homebrew some poisons. A poison of slow would bring him to a fierce halt.
If he is getting the drop on enemies, think of throwing in more intelligent enemies who wait for them to get ambushed and have a back up party come in. Enemies can identify the biggest threat very quickly and that's all it takes to have all of them rush him instead. Try traps that involve conditions such as sleep, charm, paralysis etc. Or just have high level assassin characters come after him for all the people he's killed. Someone puts a bounty on his head and now he's being stalked.
In dungeons, don't allow long rests or short rests to incur their full effects. This is very very common in my DMs campaigns. Introduce a clone of his character to fight him as part of the story. Dopplegangers are always a blast.
Casters with snare spells or anything that can knock him prone will limit his movement. Consider using spell combinations or item combinations that affect him. Fire + oil = crispy fighter sandwich.
It WILL feel like you are specifically targeting him and he WILL be upset by this but you asked him to dial it back and so now you have an entire world to throw at him.
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You only lose if you die. Any time else, there's opportunity for a come back.
Have you been making him roll concentration saves for each bit of damage he receives to keep up hunters mark? It is a concentration spell. With only 2-3 slots to use it, he shouldn't be able to have it up every fight.
Also, by multiattack, did you mean he used action surge, because that's a once per combat thing, he cant have extra attacks at level 6 if he has both ranger spell casting and battle master.
Also, as a base halfling rogue pregen I would be doing the same damage as his character(1d8 rapier + 3d6 sneak attack + dex) with no need for saves or limits per combat and I would have advantage on most attacks.
( on a less serious note my druid keeps summoning bears and its really annoying ... I am going to have to start counter spelling or dispelling or ******* dominate animal to every enamy )
You get to control what comes out of the Conjure spells, not the player. The player gets to chose what CR and how many show up, but the DM gets to pick what that "one beast of CR 2" is. So, if you want a saber toothed tiger to show up instead of a cave bear, then the tiger shows up.
As for the Ranger, can I ask if you're using standard Ranger, or the UA ranger? Because there's a lot of people who take the UA ranger for a ton of advantages that are seriously over powered. I also agree that some of the math isn't adding up. Battlemaster 3, Ranger 2 is the minimum we'll need for with character level 6; I'm going to assume fighter 3, ranger 3. With a longsword, that's 1d10 sword + 1d8 superiority dice + 1d6 hunter mark + 1d8 collusus slayer + 2 favored enemy + x Strength (I'm going to assume 4 for extremes). 37 possible damage per attack, doubled 74 if we assume action surge. And that's assuming that each dice comes up with the maximum damage each roll, something I have trouble believing. There must be some kind of misreading of rules or something going on with this character.
Personally, I tend to recommend to disallow multi-classing if you want a more even game. Mutli-classing is really a min-maxer's game; its very easy to create a character that's weaker than a pure class, and those who have a high level of system mastery can jump above the expected power curve. Unless your entire group are into min-maxing, of course, in which case you can have a blast with it. Its very unbalanced, so I don't recommend it for everyone.
I can find no information on the spell that says DM chooses what you summon.
You determine your available spell slots by adding together all your levels in the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, and wizard classes, and half your levels (rounded down) in the paladin and ranger classes. Use this total to determine your spell slots by consulting the Multiclass Spellcaster table.
This means that the character needs two levels in ranger before they get any spellcasting.
Choose one of the following options for what appears:
One beast of challenge rating 2 or lower
Two beasts of challenge rating 1 or lower
Four beasts of challenge rating 1/2 or lower
Eight beasts of challenge rating 1/4 or lower
That's the end of what the player is able to choose about the spell. If the player was able to select the specific creature, then the spell description would say that specifically.
At least your player wasn't going for the, "I summon a load of pixies with polymorph other" :)
Choose one of the following options for what appears:
One beast of challenge rating 2 or lower
Two beasts of challenge rating 1 or lower
Four beasts of challenge rating 1/2 or lower
Eight beasts of challenge rating 1/4 or lower
That's the end of what the player is able to choose about the spell. If the player was able to select the specific creature, then the spell description would say that specifically.
At least your player wasn't going for the, "I summon a load of pixies with polymorph other" :)
It says you choose one of the following, so it seems to indicate that it is the players decision. However the same privilage is not extended to demons or fey.
Then he definitely should not be getting any benefit from Hunters Mark at this point in time. You need two levels in ranger for magic. That means that, at most, the player should be dealing 1d10+1d8+stat with four swings at an action surge. More if your'e using the way overpowered UA ranger.
The idea where the DM chooses what is summoned is under the "DM has stat blocks" part of the spell. Not the clearest way of writing the spell, but that's the intent.
Multiple creatures at the party's level should also help. It would get him to exhaust his superiority dice; extra damage doesn't roll to the next creature. Also, orcs and elves and half-elves, etc. are not humans.
Okay so.. One of my players is playing a battle master, thats interesting and fun and i have no problem with that.. his whole character is a sword duelist, a japanese wandering ronin type with a Katana, 1D8 damage. ( or 1D10 2 handed )
Its fine, until he decided to spec into Ranger and take humans as his favoured enemy type... and hunters mark... he is rolling like 5 or 6 dice every attack and just ******* up every single enamy I put infront of him... he is doing insane damage at 6th level.. he did 75 damage to one opponent in a multiattack of 2 last session with... He dueled a CL 8 monk of the 5 spires easily killing him in the second round... a 6th level player with no help from his party killed a CL 8 monk master of the five spires...
I dont know what to do cause he I create challanges on a curve here, i need to balence the game for my whole party but since he is so powerful the challanges are getting rediculous and the players who didnt manage to break the classes are getting left behind or comletely outclassed by the challanges...
The other day our monk was as effective as a toddler against a level 9 battle master and yet our party member at level 6 killed both of them at the same time.. our monk gets knocked out in every fight cause of this curve..
Iv had to just start giving every monster like 200 or 300 health just to make them able to stand more than 4 rounds with him and shit tun of Damage resist.. I dont know why i posted this here. i guess i just wanted somebody to point out he cant do that or something or just some solution.
( on a less serious note my druid keeps summoning bears and its really annoying ... I am going to have to start counter spelling or dispelling or ******* dominate animal to every enamy )
I will mention some specific CL:6 monsters. They have some special abilities that are challenging even if you are high lvl adventurer.
Medusa: Petrifying Gaze, he will be stoned
Invisible Stalker: It is invisible!!!
Vrock/Wyvern: They are flying monsters, put a rider on them and let it him throw arrows from above
You can check and find similar monsters in the internet.
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D&D Beyond FoundersHey there TheDanimal,
often when such things happen, there is a mechanic of the game or one of the classes involved that has been misunderstood and is causing this. Can you break down what abilities are typically used by the PC to inflict this amount of damage? WHat stats and magic items (if any) does the character have?
Are you running around 4-6 fight encounters between a long rest, or fewer? Fewer encounters makes classes with limited resource pools more powerful.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Are you playing a premade adventure or are you setting together adventures by yourself?
Its tough to change things in a premade, but if you string together some random adventures you can find those that dont include any/much humans.
Let them fight giants, devils, ogre-mage or other monsters.
Its very easy to find cheap modules on Drivethrough, for example.
I'm not stupid. I'm just unlucky when I'm thinking.
I tend to shake things up, i do a dungeon and than i do a series of mini adventures with a few hug battles or monsters in betwene..
I cant go thee whole game only doing dungeons or only fighting monsters with specific abilties.. Theres no way i can arrange this game so that he cant do this stuff cause that would basically ruin the flow of the entire game.
Like recently he was having tea with a monk when the monk poisoned him and Ninja attacked from every angle.
The other party members struggled but he minced up the enamy.
Like there are ways to slow his damage especially against DR and such but its not consistant especially when fighting humanoid enamies... ( which like most of the main bad guys are )
Any time humans come at him which unfortunatelly has to happen eventually its just a joke..
Big thing is his hunters mark mixed with his favoured enamies human and his superiority dies.. his only magic weapon is a row-boat or that lets him control water.
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D&D Beyond FoundersJust breaking this down a little, you said he's 6th level and is a battle master fighter, multiclassed into ranger. He's got to be at least level 2 ranger for spells, so I guess fighter 4 / ranger 2?
That's 1d8 (weapon damage) + strength modifier (probably +4) + 2 (I expect dueling fighting style) + 1d6 hunter's mark + 1d8 superiority dice. That's a total of 2d8 + 1d6 + 6, which doesn't seem too bad?
As I mentioned above, the game is balanced around multiple combat encounters between long rests (between 4 and 6 fights if I recall correctly). That's not to say you should always run that many, but be aware that regularly running fewer fights does lead to some characters being more powerful.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
If all else fails, throw in a monster with Charm. It will definitely put things in perspective for him and the rest of the party.
Okay, so I really just want to know how he is winning hug battles!
Alright, I'm done.
So without knowing his build we can only speculate as to how he is doing this. But if he is using Unearthed Arcana, that's issue number one. When Mystic was presented in UA, my DM allowed me to make one and regretted a good chunk of it and basically we both silently agreed that I would cut the OPness a bit. We started throwing in saving throws and stuff for the psionics that had spell equivalents to help balance them out.
If your player isn't willing to tone it down, there's always the option of 'Purple lightning damage' where you deal unaspected damage for no reason. Bwahahahaha. But no, there's a few things you can do as a DM that he can't be prepared for. Example, when you threw those ninja at him, did they have surprise attacks which count as automatic crits? (Damage rolled twice?) Did the poison he inbibe cause him to have disadvantage? What about paralytic poison instead? Homebrew some poisons. A poison of slow would bring him to a fierce halt.
If he is getting the drop on enemies, think of throwing in more intelligent enemies who wait for them to get ambushed and have a back up party come in. Enemies can identify the biggest threat very quickly and that's all it takes to have all of them rush him instead. Try traps that involve conditions such as sleep, charm, paralysis etc. Or just have high level assassin characters come after him for all the people he's killed. Someone puts a bounty on his head and now he's being stalked.
In dungeons, don't allow long rests or short rests to incur their full effects. This is very very common in my DMs campaigns. Introduce a clone of his character to fight him as part of the story. Dopplegangers are always a blast.
Casters with snare spells or anything that can knock him prone will limit his movement. Consider using spell combinations or item combinations that affect him. Fire + oil = crispy fighter sandwich.
It WILL feel like you are specifically targeting him and he WILL be upset by this but you asked him to dial it back and so now you have an entire world to throw at him.
You only lose if you die. Any time else, there's opportunity for a come back.
the ore is actually 2D6 so he was doing 2D6 + Hunters mark + 1D8 superiority die + his strength so yeah... it was a rediculous amount of damage.
Have you been making him roll concentration saves for each bit of damage he receives to keep up hunters mark? It is a concentration spell. With only 2-3 slots to use it, he shouldn't be able to have it up every fight.
Also, by multiattack, did you mean he used action surge, because that's a once per combat thing, he cant have extra attacks at level 6 if he has both ranger spell casting and battle master.
Also, as a base halfling rogue pregen I would be doing the same damage as his character(1d8 rapier + 3d6 sneak attack + dex) with no need for saves or limits per combat and I would have advantage on most attacks.
he has 5 levels in warrior and 1 in ranger.
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D&D Beyond FoundersPun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
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D&D Beyond FoundersPun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
It says you choose one of the following, so it seems to indicate that it is the players decision.
However the same privilage is not extended to demons or fey.
Multiple creatures at the party's level should also help. It would get him to exhaust his superiority dice; extra damage doesn't roll to the next creature. Also, orcs and elves and half-elves, etc. are not humans.
It's quite simple, throw enemies at him that attack at range, that can cause the poisoned condition or that can use spells like Hold Person.