Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I have a pretty min / maxed (race aside) player at my table with a group of 3 others who haven't been anywhere as optimal as he's been.
Everyone is having fun and doing great and there's been no complaints or anything like that. My group are long time friends who have wonderful cohesion together. My problem is this PallyLock is ruining any challenge or sense of urgency or threat that any of the encounters I am throwing at them could possibly pose. I am running published modules and the only thing I have tried scaling is the number of creatures, their HP, and very occasionally their other stats.
The problem with doing an epic set of published adventure in the style that I've done it is that all the enemies and creatures in an adventuring day are already thrown in there and ready to go. Thematic to the adventure. In this case Part 2 of Tyranny of Dragons: Rise of Tiamat. And all the magic items they've collected leading up to this point. Items like the Dragon Guard Plate mail or gauntlets of Ogre power from Lost Mine. Items from Icespire Peak. A flametongue style pole arm.
A certain sentient blade from a particular Half-Black Dragon who thought she was untouchable on a Sky Castle...
I could go over their stats, but it isn't their 20 - 22 AC (my Bladesinger player with the Staff of Defense and Shield reaction has more AC than that sometimes), or their [flametongue damage dice pool here] or ability to 2nd level smite a few times on a short rest once they've run out of Paladin slots.
It's mostly that I dont have the knowhow to understand what I need to do with a set of encounters to make them challenging to the entire party without punishing the other 3 just because this one player character exists. If I make things challenging for him? They are deadly to everyone else. If I make an encounter only challenging to everyone else? They're a cake walk when he's added to the equation.
I understand how to combat him. Target his saving throws because his armor is too high even at 9th level bonded accuracy play and plenty of multi attacks coming at him. It's just nothing survives long enough to make much if a deterrent and my enemies are starting to become damage sponges just so they can survive a enough turns to be taken seriously.
I don't know how to provide my table with engaging combats as they go into the next chapter of Rise of Tiamat and give them an adventuring day where they're hurting at the end of it and have earned that long rest, loot, and their next Milestone level up.
Quantity could be its own quality. If a group of minions swarms him and pins him down, does that help? Being able to do a lot of damage in one hit doesn't help so much against a lot of small enemies. What about ranged attacks on him? What about blindness or grappling or other restraints (like web) to give him disadvantage on attacks or impact his mobility? If he's in plate, he's especially noisy, maybe, and attracts certain kinds of attacks.
Have his patron come down on him in some way. Maybe he dominates combat, but the powers that give him this noticeable edge come for him outside of it. begins sending him on side quests. They start out irrelevant, but they start to add up. Then more foes appear. Add more encounters or add to current encounters, when it makes sense, of minions of the patron. With Hexblade, probably some sort of specters, ghosts and wraiths and that sort.
You can always add some more minions to bog down the optimized player. Let the other monsters then battle the other three. The optimized player feels relevant defeating a group of foes and the other players can be engaged as well. Then you can swap the roles. Minions form a wall against the three, and the optimized player can break through against the big guy. It can be more about how you present the encounter than the actual difficulty. The tactics can matter.
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
"When are we gonna take a snack break?"
The first question to ask is whether the other players see an issue (do they feel that the one PC is outshining them?). If they do... it may be time to have a talk with the player. If they don't... that PC may not be the real problem.
The reality is, tier 2 PCs are glass cannons; anything durable enough to last a couple rounds also has so much damage output it's going to be oneshotting PCs. Fortunately for DMs... tier 2 PCs should have reasonable healing capabilities, so go right ahead and figure that it's not a proper fight if you haven't dropped a PC to zero HP in the first round. And if they don't have a proper healer... hey, that gives the paladin/lock a reason to do something other than whaling on the enemies, because paladins certainly have healing.
The other players certainty haven't complained and they all get along and have wonderful cohesion. There's been no issues that I'm sensing as a DM with high empathy and knowing my players well.
It's definitely a problem for their enjoyment or anything. No one feels left out or outshined. They strictly just dont feel challenged. Unfortunately it's this particular character that's making it hard for me to do that without risking TPKs.
The other issue that's making it hard is this isn't a homebrew campaign. This is a narrative weaving of about 4-5 published adventures to create a single campaign epic that culminated in Rise of Tiamat. They're current level 9 and one more session away from the level 10 power spike (though nothing quite like the level 11 spike lol) and beginning of Tier 3 play. I'm trying to figure out how to tune the remaining combat encounters so that they feel at least moderately challenged without having to scrap them all entirely just so I can build my own in spite of (I use that term loosely) a single player character.
I just dont have enough experience building my own combats to know where to begin other than light tweaks. Additionally enemies of the types already there. More HP. So on and so forth. Any input would be appreciated though!
As for healing, they have the Paladin of course, and a Druid, and a somewhat healthy collection of potions.
If you don’t mind me asking, what is this build that is so broken? I want to run a Pally1/WarlockX build, but if its’ too broken… I mean, I doubt I’d do it to its’ potential, but still…
Anyway, I think this was eluded to already, but the game is ultimately about having fun. If you and your players are enjoying themselves and have had no complaints you may have nothing to worry about. If you still aren’t sure, you can talk to them one on one and see if thry have any problems or suggestions. I wouldn’t bring up anything specific yourself though; let them say if there is a problem. If there is, the ideas listed above should help.
Can you ask the player to rebuild their character to be less effective? Something like "If I adjust the encounters to challenge you, they're going to smear the other characters all over the landscape" might prevail. Or not.
Why? I'm not sure what it would be about that character that causes problems. It is generally hard to challenge mid level parties without risking a TPK, but remember that you don't have to injure everyone to have an encounter feel like a threat, you just have to make the players worried about losing. Two PCs making death saves while a third PC is entirely untouched is plenty to be a scare.
Is the issue particilarily combat encounters or all? Maybe throw them an encounter that changes the "rules" a bit. Their objective doesn't need to be "kill all enemies". Have them make a questionable choice or give the paladin a trolley problem that challenges their oath. Even though it's ready module you're running, you can still throw a bunch of homebrew encounters and monsters at them.
I'll lead with the obvious: if your players are having fun, then maybe you need to adjust your expectations a bit. Sounds like they don't care if combat is dangerous, and they're enjoying each others' company, and the game in general. Sounds like you have a successful game!
If, knowing that, you still want to increase challenge, then your best bet is to add more resource drain to the campaign. Warlocks bur through mojo FAST when compared to other classes. Throw in some random encounters, and create some excuse to limit the number and frequency of their rests. If the rest of the party is "per long rest" classes like wizards, clerics, etc., they'll start to shine more as the day goes on, and the PalLock will have to start spreading out their resources a bit.
General rule of thumb at my table is that you usually only have time for one Short Rest between Long Rests, and Long Rests need to happen someplace safe or there's risk involved. If you're not giving them two to three encounters between rests, your player's are never going to feel the squeeze of resource drain, and high-level players will cruise through your game.
But, again, you're describing a problem that doesn't exist. Your players are having fun. That is why you're doing this in the first place. I say just let them have fun and don't sweat the small stuff.
Oh gosh I am so sorry. I meant NOT a problem for their enjoyment
More rolplay less combat, or they become hunted down
Paladins are generally good at tanking hits with heavy armour & healing, and hitting back with smites. It sounds like they have made something which does this well, and that's not an issue, really.
What sort of encounters are you engaging them with? One of the best things I ever did for my combats was to have the creatures do other things than just attack, attack, move, attack... the paladin stands front and centre and the enemies run up one at a time and fail to hit them, and then get hit. If this sounds familiar, you may want to consider your options for combat:
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What sort of encounters are you engaging them with?
As I may have mentioned in the OP - They are working their way through a collection of published first party adventures. They started woth Lost Mine of Phandelver several years ago, then Dragon of Icespire Peak which were all folded into the 2-part Tyranny of Dragons set to create a complete campaign. They are currently in part 2 of Tyranny called Rise of Tiamat.
So what sort of encounters am I engaging them with? The ones the adventure tells me to, with minor tweaks to bring certain HP levels up to standard or to add additional enemies or traps where they'd make sense.
I also play my enemies smart. They aren't just their stat block and the attack action. If a Player Character can do it, so can an enemy. So they also grapple. Push. Hide. Ambush. Use magic when they actually give me a spellcaster enemy TO use. Go after the weaker characters with lower armor. Sometimes they go after wizard until she displays she's a Bladesinger with AC nearly as high as the Paladin with a patron. So on and so forth
I know how to make the enemies feel alive and fight like a unit, as apposed to just throwing themselves at the front line player. This has never been the issue. The issue is I don't know how to take the encounters as published and then add *more* or add *enough* more so that they really feel like they overcame an adventuring day that presented them with any kind of challenge at all. The DMG even has rules for how much XP or CR worth of enemies they should reasonably be able to handle if I wanted to do the math and retune all these encounters but, that math just falls completely apart against this party.
Maybe you could ask him to respec to be an actual character, not a minmaxed abomination that makes no sense. How is a Paladin also a Warlock, narratively speaking? Even if you do Celestial Warlock, then it still doesn't really make sense.
A paladin has sworn an oath. A warlock cut a deal with a powerful entity. There's nothing inherently contradictory between the two. Even if the oath is opposed to the patron, "warlock rebelling against patron" is a classic story direction.
Oh there's a wonderful in fiction story reason behind that.
He is a Yuan-Ti player race character from one of the first party sources that have added additional PC racial options. That Yuan-Ti came into being because of the rituals they like to do in order to convert other races into Yuan-Ti , but it didn't take fully as it was interrupt before it could. Leaving them with the Yuan-Ti PC stat block but mostly humanoid with serpentine-like features. Mostly in the eyes, patches of snake-like skin, poison resistance and abilities, and things of that sort.
They swore an Oath of Vengeance against the Yuan-Ti abominations that created him, dedicated to wiping them out where they show up. Since a Paladin doesn't require a deity, only a driving powerful emotional force for their oath.
Fast forward to this campaign and, they have stumbled upon a sentient weapon that serves as the power granting Pact that gives a Hexblade Warlock their powers, promising to give him the power needed to smite the Yuan-Ti off the face of the Forgotten Realms. And since a Vengeance Paladin's oath binds them to "any means necessary to destroy their hated enemy", they either had to say yes...or break their oath and lose their Paladin powers.
Zariel, the fallen Aasimar commander of the first layer of the 9 hells called Avernus (and a job that was coincidentally taken from the now imprisoned Tiamat and a huge plot point of the published campaign Descent into Avernus), was counting on this. As, unbeknownst to the player, the sentient weapon is an extension of Zariel's will who wants Tiamat fully removed from the 9 hells and hopefully killed outright so that she has no more contention for the spot of Archdevil of Avernus. It's a whole thing...
At some point, he's going to either realize what's going on as "Wyrmrender" continues to lightly influence his behavior(s), or he's going to reach the end and have a decision to make as it comes full circle and his own party members have to stop him from helping Tiamat come fully into the world so that he can follow his compulsions to slay the goddess of evil dragons.
This was never a problem and we cooperated quite a bit to make this make sense in fiction. A Paladin also being a Warlock was never a problem, as these two things dont oppose one another like...say...a Cleric bound to a deity multiclassed with a Warlock bound to a patron might. So I don't need or want him to change or adjust his class choices. Neither do any of the other players. I just, strictly, want the combats to continue being fun - engaging - and challenging like they had always been prior to them gaining this widely accepted to be THE strongest combination of classes in the game.
Sorry, quick correction because that's the type of person I am...
Zariel is a fallen angel, not aasimar. She was a solar of Mount Celestia who wanted to destroy the demonic scourge of the universe, ridding it of chaos, and the other angels and gods could not be spurred to action. She went down to Avernus and fought devils and demons with an army of Hellriders until the Hellriders betrayed her and closed her portal to escape, leaving her stranded. She was captured and taken to Asmodeus, who saw her value and made her the Archdevil of Avernus, displacing Bel, the former Archdevil.
Then again, this is your world, so if that's what you've decided, I can respect that.
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
"When are we gonna take a snack break?"