Hey everyone! I'm having a bit of trouble trying to find reasonable challenges for a level 11 party that I probably buffed a bit too much with magic items.
So here is the party line up and their equipment:
1: Human Totem Barbarian with Totem of Bear for level 3 (Show of hands, who doesn't pick this option when going totem?), and totem of Eagle for level 6. Wields a +2 Greataxe that deals an extra 1d4 of radiant damage, a homebrewed magic item that allows him to give up his resistance to all (except for Bludge, Pierce, and Slash) for 5 extra damage if he hits with a weapon, and has another homebrew item that gives him the War domain Cleric ability of attacking one extra time as a bonus action a number of times equal to his wisdom modifier.
Has Great Weapon Master.
2: Human Life domain Cleric, wearing +3 Plate (aquired from Sergei von Zarovich's tomb), a Mace of Disruption, and Winged boots
3: Red Dragonborn Paladin of Vengeance: Wielding the Sunsword, +1 Plate, and a ring of protection (+1). Has a +5 Char modifier
4. Goliath Paladin of Conquest: Wielding a +1 Greatsword that can deal an extra 1d6 Lightning or Fire damage, Demon Plate, and another Greatsword that deals extra ice damage.
Also has Great Weapon Master and a +4 char modifier.
5: Wood Elf Revised Hunter Ranger: a unique +2 Crossbow (just has various ammo types he can use), a cloak of elven kind, and a +1 ring of protection. Has Sharpshooter.
6: (My main dealing, already nerfing them down) Protector Aasimar Oath of Ancients Paladin, has armor fighting style, +1 Plate armor, a +1 ring of protection, +1 Cloak of protection, and a +2 longsword that deals +1d6 radiant or necrotic damage. (Has abysmal strength, was supplemented by a potion, but the effects have worn off, so he'll have to take away either the ring, cloak, or sword away to attune to a belt of hill giant strength.), has +5 char modifier, and shield master.
So, in total I'm dealing with a mostly melee party that has heavy bonuses to saves, and two of the six can pretty much ignore dex save abilities unless they roll abysmally, and of course, damage spells have almost no "oomph" to them anymore, and controlling spells (either mind or field) hardly seem to work thanks to the multiple auras of protection. And finally, their AC is extremely high. The one with the lowest AC is the Ranger and Second place goes to the Barbarian. No one (except the Ranger) has an AC below 20.
I am wondering how to challenge this party in this high magic campaign without needing to take away a lot of their cool stuff, but I am wondering if perhaps I need to take away a good majority of their cool stuff in order to give them a reminder that their magic stuff is valuable to more people than just them and that magic is hard to find when its not in a shop.
It's too late now to go "Oh yea, magic isn't everywhere...it's kinda special ya know", so taking their gear away to make magic special is counterproductive and will probably make them a bit on the upset side.
So, how do you make this a challenge? Give them something else to worry about: creatures don't do the trick? try the terrain, try traps, try tactics and strategy. On top of all that, you can adjust numbers to fit your challenge rating. Monsters are squishy, bump the AC up, give them max HP and toss in 3 of those Ettins instead of the suggested 1.
Now, that is not to say don't take any of their gear away! I'd be upset at losing a sword, that stupid rust monster...hey, you've got two great swords, gimme gimme. Taking a magic item or two in a believable way is probably going to be acceptable, even if upsetting. You can tone them down using the appropriate methods, heck your thieves might be the perfect way to do this....idea!
Thieves show up, magical thieves, the type that leave no trace, and don't seem to alert anyone or anything to their presence. They take one magical item, it's going to be noticed when the group wakes up from their long rest. They'll be confused, but there actually is something that was left behind, a calling card of sorts, a tiny bit of jade shaped like the classic 5 pointed star. A few nights later, it happens again, and that stupid jade star. I smell plot hook!!! This continues until you have a single item from each of the players. Then when they finally find the culprit, a Naga who conscripted Pixies and Griggs to do the work, they get their gear back but they have to do one last thing...
I agree with DMThac0-- Your best bet is to use the environment. Have your big bads know what the party is good at, and ensure that they lure the party to environments that take advantage of them. I mean, almost everyone in that party is wearing plate-- Sounds like it would be pretty terrible if they were lured to a dry basin, which was then flooded by the bad guys...
In general I think your solution is traps, and environment, and enemies who work on separating the party on the battlefield. You need to encourage the players to separate, maybe they battle in an old caldera that starts to become active, and the ground splits beneath their feet, creating islands that separate them with bubbling magma. Do they risk jumping the magma-filled gaps-- Or do they just deal with the loss of the paladin auras?
In general looks like the party is bad at range, too. Your ranger has a crossbow, but otherwise the party looks like it succeeds mainly in melee. So why would enemies attack them in melee? A smart enemy is going to keep a lot of distance between themselves and the party. They might come up with ways to prevent flight (even just trapping them in a way that can be undone through the use of an action by the flying party member is going to waste one of their turns) and have artillery shooting from a distance that the melee characters can't do anything about. Sure, they've got all these bonuses-- But if they've got 10 attacks coming in, at least 1 of them has a good chance of hitting. And if the melee characters can't throw anything back at them, that's a few turns of at least 1 attack hitting until the distance can be closed.
Also consider spells that don't deal with saves, but that can still alter things-- Like giving them disadvantage. A Darkness spell is pretty handy for that, and isn't a high level investment.
So, here is my idea, one of the main villains for the campaign is a resurrected Strahd, who has had spies keep note of everything the party can do. I'll have him hire an elite band of Thieves known as The Opal Mask to take down the group slowly but surely. They'll utilize a combo of invisibility spells, elven boots, and dust of disappearance to get in to their lodgings or camp for the evening and take one magic item like DMThac0 suggested and leave a calling card. They'll repeat this for several evenings, spacing out the robberies so the party doesn't get an idea for when they'll strike. They'll do this until they reach the point DMThac0 suggested and then leave a note telling them where to come in order to arrange for the items to get back. They'll be led to a gorge like MellieDM suggested with a large dam blocking a huge amount of water. The villains will standing atop the side with multiple longbows at the ready and will utilize a messenger hawk to deliver a sending stone to act like a phone for negotiation. Obviously a sudden but inevitable betrayal will occur and cause a fight to break out. One of the mages for The Opal Mask will then fly by on a broom of flying and cast Earthquake on the dam, causing it to rush in and flood the valley extremely quickly. Once the party swims up, the archers will let loose, stepping away to keep just within range of the party. Once they get out, they'll find not only the archers, but four domes of leomunds tiny hut set up on top with mages and archers set up inside to fire away at the party.
The ground will also be littered with caltrops, a few areas with a cordon of arrows set up, and some druids will set up some sharp plant growth.
In total, i'm thinking 20 or 30 non-sheltered archers, 16 sheltered archers (4 to a hut), 10 bandits or thugs,6 Rangers, 6 druids, 10 mages, 1 high mage (the earthquake caster), and the lieutenant that leads the group (he'll used a buffed bandit captain stat block. This will give a massive combat of 70 vs 6 with a large disadvantage for the party and open the thread of finding the leader of The Opal Mask. (I'll most likely also have it so that Strahd paid the leader to deflect the blame of who hired the group to one of Strahd's allies).
I like the idea as a final showdown, it's epic enough and it's going to be harrowing. You've literally tossed everything at them that we suggested, now I want to advocate on the side of the players:
Give them some wiggle room too, that's a lot of incoming with pretty much everything tossed in to make them lose. Make sure they have a way to get to the ranged attackers before they're turned into the last vestiges of 300. I'd start off with half the suggested armada, and have new ones trickle in to keep the tension up rather than drop the hammer immediately. Give them the 20 non-sheltered archers, when they start to get peppered well, have them retreat to the shelters. Put the bandits on reserve until the group gets within melee, no sense in showing your hand right away. The Rangers can be in the archer group, making them adversaries when the party closes ranks. The druids/mages can be mixed together, 12 total, and the high mage. Doing it this way you can pace the combat so that the party has a chance of winning but it won't be easy.
Sounds like a plan. Until this big and epic fight, i'll grow their confidence through some relatively easy encounters due to having some tough fights with an Ancient Red Shadow Dragon and a Pit Fiend that was being controlled by a Sorcerer's soul via Magic Jar. That will help get them nice and confident that they can handle whatever isn't one of the bosses i've created.
*Evil DM chuckling intensifies* This'll be good. I need to come here more often for encounter ideas.
Scenario 1 use kobolds, hoards of kobolds, in an underground lair. possibly a jubilex worshiping kobold cult, so lots of slimes oozes, puddings and gelatinous cubes, molds, spores and other lovelies, use elevation, so the kobolds can drop nets on them, rocks on them, slimes oozes and puddings on them. pots of mold spores that make you hallucinate and fire arrows down at them. fire rust monsters at them from catapults. or just simply have them walk over a rope bridge and drop them into a humungous green slime filled moat 20 feet deep, the only way out being to climb, then fire arrows and everything else at em. once they're out at the far side you can then let them walk back to town naked as just about everything they own will be melted by the slime, you may want to have the kobold catcall and moon them when they finally manage to climb out the other side.
scenario 2 use lots of illusions, pit traps. spikes collapsing ceilings, arrow traps slippery floors, oil. falling rocks, plus oozes slimes rust monsters and suchlike, to melt their gear, in a really ridiculously winding corridor, at the end have a single kobold sat on a dining chair and reading a book and swinging his legs. as they turn a corner have him run off screaming into a small side tunnel, too small for them to get down. beside the tunnel is 2 bottles one red with a skull and crossbones on it and one white with a red cross on it.
first drink drink from the white one first take 10D10 poison damage con save for half, drink from the red one first nothing happens. second drink drink from the red one a second time after first drink from red take 10D10 poison damage save for half damage, second drink from white after first from red you're shrunk to half your size and can fit down the smaller tunnel. second drink from white after first from white also, polymorphed into a green slime and immediately attack your party companions. second drink red after first drink white take 10 D10 Acid damage save for half
once they work out how to get down the tunnel have the kobold flee again, this time through a magical portal tat requires a key stone to activate. so they are faced with 2 rooms, one holding the portal, the other with lots of loot to replace what they lost going in but not as rediculously overpowered as you've given them previously. what they won't know yet is that beyond the portal lives a lich, they're going to need to go and visit him later but don't tell em yet
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All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
While I enjoy the enthusiasm you put into your scheme, building a Rube Goldberg styled series of encounters with the specific purpose of divesting the characters of their magical gear is nothing short of inviting a coup from the players. Even worse is that you reward them, for surviving the convoluted series of unfortunate events, by making them less powerful than when they started.
To put it in another light: I have 30 + years of DMing and playing, I've survived some of the horrific modules that were the Gygaxian death machines and I've learned a lot from it. In my current Curse of Strahd adventure, which I'm lucky enough to play in, I almost derailed the entire thing due to a mistake in how a trap was handled. My character, who is very careful about his actions and decisions, took damage that almost killed him in one shot. I promptly turned around and walked away from the location, vowing to never come back because it was too dangerous to venture any further. It just so happened that one of the very important plot mcguffins was in that location. Had the DM not realized the mistake and found a way to rectify the situation, we would have hit a dead end in the game and stalled out.
If you don't give the players a chance to keep the gear, or retrieve it later because of their actions, then they will most likely feel cheated and become resentful in the future.
i started DMing in september 1983, i was suggesting methods of undoing the mess he'd created by over powering them, with 2 largely tongue incheek suggestions, both of which were designed to possibly fire up a bit of inspiration for something he could do. i've had players throw dice at me in fury, you can even train them to throw sweets. eventually
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
Don't take away their magic items and don't build encounters that directly counter all your party's usual tactics. Both of these approaches are going to make your players hate you.
First and foremost, make sure you're pitting the party against encounters of the appropriate CR and either having 6-8 encounters per adventuring day or a larger number of deadly/more than deadly encounters.
Just mentioned this in the other similar thread, but try these revised XP tables for building encounters. I've found the table for "standard" characters, which uses higher XP thresholds than normal, does a better job of calibrating the challenge for high power PCs. Alternatively/additionally, you could consider the PCs to be a higher effective level than they actually are (say Level 12) when calculating XP and CR.
In addition to this, I'd recommend making your encounters more tactically diverse. Use mixed groups of foes with both melee and ranged capabilities. Use terrain to create choke points and other interesting features on the battlefield. The goal is not to counter all your party's tactics but to make them consider some other approaches. To help yourself think along these lines, I highly recommend the Angry GM's three-part series on building better encounters. You can find the first part here.
Hey everyone! I'm having a bit of trouble trying to find reasonable challenges for a level 11 party that I probably buffed a bit too much with magic items.
So here is the party line up and their equipment:
1: Human Totem Barbarian with Totem of Bear for level 3 (Show of hands, who doesn't pick this option when going totem?), and totem of Eagle for level 6. Wields a +2 Greataxe that deals an extra 1d4 of radiant damage, a homebrewed magic item that allows him to give up his resistance to all (except for Bludge, Pierce, and Slash) for 5 extra damage if he hits with a weapon, and has another homebrew item that gives him the War domain Cleric ability of attacking one extra time as a bonus action a number of times equal to his wisdom modifier.
Has Great Weapon Master.
2: Human Life domain Cleric, wearing +3 Plate (aquired from Sergei von Zarovich's tomb), a Mace of Disruption, and Winged boots
3: Red Dragonborn Paladin of Vengeance: Wielding the Sunsword, +1 Plate, and a ring of protection (+1). Has a +5 Char modifier
4. Goliath Paladin of Conquest: Wielding a +1 Greatsword that can deal an extra 1d6 Lightning or Fire damage, Demon Plate, and another Greatsword that deals extra ice damage.
Also has Great Weapon Master and a +4 char modifier.
5: Wood Elf Revised Hunter Ranger: a unique +2 Crossbow (just has various ammo types he can use), a cloak of elven kind, and a +1 ring of protection. Has Sharpshooter.
6: (My main dealing, already nerfing them down) Protector Aasimar Oath of Ancients Paladin, has armor fighting style, +1 Plate armor, a +1 ring of protection, +1 Cloak of protection, and a +2 longsword that deals +1d6 radiant or necrotic damage. (Has abysmal strength, was supplemented by a potion, but the effects have worn off, so he'll have to take away either the ring, cloak, or sword away to attune to a belt of hill giant strength.), has +5 char modifier, and shield master.
So, in total I'm dealing with a mostly melee party that has heavy bonuses to saves, and two of the six can pretty much ignore dex save abilities unless they roll abysmally, and of course, damage spells have almost no "oomph" to them anymore, and controlling spells (either mind or field) hardly seem to work thanks to the multiple auras of protection. And finally, their AC is extremely high. The one with the lowest AC is the Ranger and Second place goes to the Barbarian. No one (except the Ranger) has an AC below 20.
I am wondering how to challenge this party in this high magic campaign without needing to take away a lot of their cool stuff, but I am wondering if perhaps I need to take away a good majority of their cool stuff in order to give them a reminder that their magic stuff is valuable to more people than just them and that magic is hard to find when its not in a shop.
Thoughts?
Use the Oblex. Elder Oblex (Does that work?). Its a great creature to throw against paladin heavy parties. Have a simulacrum appear to be in trouble and then drain the paladin. Or have the oblex manifest as a town and then ambush them at night (when they don't have their armor on - are you making them follow don/doff rules?).
Alternatively you could use something that my party threatened to hurt me over - Greater invisibility flying spellcaster with nondetection. Raining fireballs will rarely win you friends; however, it'll kill that party dead.
It seems like flight in general will throw a wrench into that party's plans. As would something like a beholder (flight + antimagic cone centered on the cleric + something present to keep the ranger busy - otyugh ). Traps also seem like a good thing to throw at them (as do puzzles honestly). If you want to give them an extremely difficult but fair fight you could start moving them towards an illithid colony? Really all i'm trying to say is that that combination should be extremely deadly towards fiends/undead that are on the ground so an easy way to deal with that is to throw monsters that are designed to fight high-magic players or to move the battlefield.
Also some things to keep in mind: Paladin auras do not stack for saves. As such your average paladin around level 11 should have like a 4-6 int save (if point buy.) as well as a 4-6 (maybe a smidge higher) dex save. The Barbarian (int department) and the cleric (both) are likely in the same camp. I'm not necessarily saying that you should only attack their weaknesses, I'm just saying that if you're going to stick to things that are CR appropriate then you'll need to rethink how you're addressing this. Alternatively you can throw CR recommendations out the window and act like theyre 2-4 levels higher than they really are (with that gear they might as well be).
They'll be led to a gorge like MellieDM suggested with a large dam blocking a huge amount of water.
1 high mage (the earthquake caster)
Why not the top of the gorge. Skip the dam and have the mage be illusion spec'd with major illusion and the school of illusion abilities. Have a "real" bridge that they have to cross while under attack. And trying not to fall
Don't take away their magic items and don't build encounters that directly counter all your party's usual tactics. Both of these approaches are going to make your players hate you.
I would argue that there's a tipping point with this tactic, if used properly it can be effective and enjoyable, if done poorly it will most certainly make your players upset.
Appropriate challenges, based on XP/CR, are all well and good for the majority of a game, however they're bland in a manner. If every combat scales with your ability, your gear, and your level, then you are essentially giving them the same fight just painting new faces on the targets. At first levels you see goblins and kobolds, they're an appropriate challenge based on those factors. You get higher in level, you now swap out to gnolls and bugbears, upward and onward to giants and chimeras, so forth and so on. I view it much the same as finding the right place in an MMO to go farm so you can get the right gear and proper level to go to the next island and repeat. It's linear and predictable, it doesn't feel creative and doesn't have a strong incentive to the players or make their characters' rewards seem special.
Now, you play the game and some little urchin manages to beat your passive, swipes your +1 dagger. You just created an intrinsic value to an item that normally would have been nothing but a mark on your character sheet. It creates the psychological effect of "gimme my thing back", driving the point of ownership home. Now, if you were to make it so that there was no possible way of recovering said +1 dagger, your player has every right to be furious, that is unfair because it doesn't allow agency on your player's part. If you make it a bit of a side quest, find the child, do a small job, get the dagger back, the player will be frustrated, but it makes sense and has purpose, maintaining the intrinsic value of the item. If you make it a skill challenge, where they have to beat specific rolls to catch up to the kid, you're actually leaning more toward the unfair side since it's all about chance on getting the dagger back, rather than the player's actions. So, yea, simply taking the items away will surely make the players mad, and rightly so.
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The same holds true for the tactics and strategy of the enemies as well. If I throw a cult at the players while they're on the plains in knee high grass and they rush in and fight to the death, the players won't think too much of it. Then they meet the same cult in a series of caves, they rush in and fight to the death, the players aren't going to be bothered. Then they find another group of the same cult in an abandoned fortress, they rush in and fight to the death. I've just taught the players that this cult will only rush in and fight to the death, simple tactic to combat, and that's how they'll approach every single cult encounter ever.
Now, they fight this cult in the plains, the group wins, the cult used different weapons and spells as could be expected. One of the cult members manages to escape, because death is not an inviting idea. They run into the cult again in some caves, they have very little information on the adventuring party, but they have information none-the-less. They change their strategy a bit to try to bottle neck the players. The fight is more difficult and disadvantages some of the play style that the players have chosen for their characters. They win, but some of the cult members have escaped again.
They are headed to the final showdown with the cult, the cult has information on the party, sent spies and so forth. They realize that the party is in possession of certain things, so they find ways to steal these items, like a greatsword of flame, a cloak of elvenkind, and other magical items that they can easily abscond with. The party will be very mad, as one would expect, however you leave clues that the cult is responsible. This will galvanize the party, making them want to destroy this cult even more. They show up to the abandoned fortress and find it well fortified. The cult has set up defenses knowing that the party is coming. This puts the party at serious disadvantage, is set up to make it so the cult will win, unless the players are smart and use tactics and strategy of their own. When they take down the cult, they find their gear, maybe as they're taking down the cult, and a couple more trinkets along the way because they won.
Now, on the other hand, if the players walk into the fortress and they're immediately hit by an anti-magic zone, a platoon of archers above them on platforms 80ft in the air, and mages casting walls of force to cordon off the party members, then they should rightly get up and leave.
Hey everyone! I'm having a bit of trouble trying to find reasonable challenges for a level 11 party that I probably buffed a bit too much with magic items.
So here is the party line up and their equipment:
1: Human Totem Barbarian with Totem of Bear for level 3 (Show of hands, who doesn't pick this option when going totem?), and totem of Eagle for level 6. Wields a +2 Greataxe that deals an extra 1d4 of radiant damage, a homebrewed magic item that allows him to give up his resistance to all (except for Bludge, Pierce, and Slash) for 5 extra damage if he hits with a weapon, and has another homebrew item that gives him the War domain Cleric ability of attacking one extra time as a bonus action a number of times equal to his wisdom modifier.
Has Great Weapon Master.
2: Human Life domain Cleric, wearing +3 Plate (aquired from Sergei von Zarovich's tomb), a Mace of Disruption, and Winged boots
3: Red Dragonborn Paladin of Vengeance: Wielding the Sunsword, +1 Plate, and a ring of protection (+1). Has a +5 Char modifier
4. Goliath Paladin of Conquest: Wielding a +1 Greatsword that can deal an extra 1d6 Lightning or Fire damage, Demon Plate, and another Greatsword that deals extra ice damage.
Also has Great Weapon Master and a +4 char modifier.
5: Wood Elf Revised Hunter Ranger: a unique +2 Crossbow (just has various ammo types he can use), a cloak of elven kind, and a +1 ring of protection. Has Sharpshooter.
6: (My main dealing, already nerfing them down) Protector Aasimar Oath of Ancients Paladin, has armor fighting style, +1 Plate armor, a +1 ring of protection, +1 Cloak of protection, and a +2 longsword that deals +1d6 radiant or necrotic damage. (Has abysmal strength, was supplemented by a potion, but the effects have worn off, so he'll have to take away either the ring, cloak, or sword away to attune to a belt of hill giant strength.), has +5 char modifier, and shield master.
So, in total I'm dealing with a mostly melee party that has heavy bonuses to saves, and two of the six can pretty much ignore dex save abilities unless they roll abysmally, and of course, damage spells have almost no "oomph" to them anymore, and controlling spells (either mind or field) hardly seem to work thanks to the multiple auras of protection. And finally, their AC is extremely high. The one with the lowest AC is the Ranger and Second place goes to the Barbarian. No one (except the Ranger) has an AC below 20.
I am wondering how to challenge this party in this high magic campaign without needing to take away a lot of their cool stuff, but I am wondering if perhaps I need to take away a good majority of their cool stuff in order to give them a reminder that their magic stuff is valuable to more people than just them and that magic is hard to find when its not in a shop.
Thoughts?
It's too late now to go "Oh yea, magic isn't everywhere...it's kinda special ya know", so taking their gear away to make magic special is counterproductive and will probably make them a bit on the upset side.
So, how do you make this a challenge? Give them something else to worry about: creatures don't do the trick? try the terrain, try traps, try tactics and strategy. On top of all that, you can adjust numbers to fit your challenge rating. Monsters are squishy, bump the AC up, give them max HP and toss in 3 of those Ettins instead of the suggested 1.
Now, that is not to say don't take any of their gear away! I'd be upset at losing a sword, that stupid rust monster...hey, you've got two great swords, gimme gimme. Taking a magic item or two in a believable way is probably going to be acceptable, even if upsetting. You can tone them down using the appropriate methods, heck your thieves might be the perfect way to do this....idea!
Thieves show up, magical thieves, the type that leave no trace, and don't seem to alert anyone or anything to their presence. They take one magical item, it's going to be noticed when the group wakes up from their long rest. They'll be confused, but there actually is something that was left behind, a calling card of sorts, a tiny bit of jade shaped like the classic 5 pointed star. A few nights later, it happens again, and that stupid jade star. I smell plot hook!!! This continues until you have a single item from each of the players. Then when they finally find the culprit, a Naga who conscripted Pixies and Griggs to do the work, they get their gear back but they have to do one last thing...
So many Paladins in one party, wowza.
I agree with DMThac0-- Your best bet is to use the environment. Have your big bads know what the party is good at, and ensure that they lure the party to environments that take advantage of them. I mean, almost everyone in that party is wearing plate-- Sounds like it would be pretty terrible if they were lured to a dry basin, which was then flooded by the bad guys...
In general I think your solution is traps, and environment, and enemies who work on separating the party on the battlefield. You need to encourage the players to separate, maybe they battle in an old caldera that starts to become active, and the ground splits beneath their feet, creating islands that separate them with bubbling magma. Do they risk jumping the magma-filled gaps-- Or do they just deal with the loss of the paladin auras?
In general looks like the party is bad at range, too. Your ranger has a crossbow, but otherwise the party looks like it succeeds mainly in melee. So why would enemies attack them in melee? A smart enemy is going to keep a lot of distance between themselves and the party. They might come up with ways to prevent flight (even just trapping them in a way that can be undone through the use of an action by the flying party member is going to waste one of their turns) and have artillery shooting from a distance that the melee characters can't do anything about. Sure, they've got all these bonuses-- But if they've got 10 attacks coming in, at least 1 of them has a good chance of hitting. And if the melee characters can't throw anything back at them, that's a few turns of at least 1 attack hitting until the distance can be closed.
Also consider spells that don't deal with saves, but that can still alter things-- Like giving them disadvantage. A Darkness spell is pretty handy for that, and isn't a high level investment.
They sound pretty epic. Throw harder monsters at them and let them *be* epic.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
You guys have definitely helped with your ideas.
So, here is my idea, one of the main villains for the campaign is a resurrected Strahd, who has had spies keep note of everything the party can do. I'll have him hire an elite band of Thieves known as The Opal Mask to take down the group slowly but surely. They'll utilize a combo of invisibility spells, elven boots, and dust of disappearance to get in to their lodgings or camp for the evening and take one magic item like DMThac0 suggested and leave a calling card. They'll repeat this for several evenings, spacing out the robberies so the party doesn't get an idea for when they'll strike. They'll do this until they reach the point DMThac0 suggested and then leave a note telling them where to come in order to arrange for the items to get back. They'll be led to a gorge like MellieDM suggested with a large dam blocking a huge amount of water. The villains will standing atop the side with multiple longbows at the ready and will utilize a messenger hawk to deliver a sending stone to act like a phone for negotiation. Obviously a sudden but inevitable betrayal will occur and cause a fight to break out. One of the mages for The Opal Mask will then fly by on a broom of flying and cast Earthquake on the dam, causing it to rush in and flood the valley extremely quickly. Once the party swims up, the archers will let loose, stepping away to keep just within range of the party. Once they get out, they'll find not only the archers, but four domes of leomunds tiny hut set up on top with mages and archers set up inside to fire away at the party.
The ground will also be littered with caltrops, a few areas with a cordon of arrows set up, and some druids will set up some sharp plant growth.
In total, i'm thinking 20 or 30 non-sheltered archers, 16 sheltered archers (4 to a hut), 10 bandits or thugs,6 Rangers, 6 druids, 10 mages, 1 high mage (the earthquake caster), and the lieutenant that leads the group (he'll used a buffed bandit captain stat block. This will give a massive combat of 70 vs 6 with a large disadvantage for the party and open the thread of finding the leader of The Opal Mask. (I'll most likely also have it so that Strahd paid the leader to deflect the blame of who hired the group to one of Strahd's allies).
Thoughts?
I like the idea as a final showdown, it's epic enough and it's going to be harrowing. You've literally tossed everything at them that we suggested, now I want to advocate on the side of the players:
Give them some wiggle room too, that's a lot of incoming with pretty much everything tossed in to make them lose. Make sure they have a way to get to the ranged attackers before they're turned into the last vestiges of 300. I'd start off with half the suggested armada, and have new ones trickle in to keep the tension up rather than drop the hammer immediately. Give them the 20 non-sheltered archers, when they start to get peppered well, have them retreat to the shelters. Put the bandits on reserve until the group gets within melee, no sense in showing your hand right away. The Rangers can be in the archer group, making them adversaries when the party closes ranks. The druids/mages can be mixed together, 12 total, and the high mage. Doing it this way you can pace the combat so that the party has a chance of winning but it won't be easy.
Sounds like a plan. Until this big and epic fight, i'll grow their confidence through some relatively easy encounters due to having some tough fights with an Ancient Red Shadow Dragon and a Pit Fiend that was being controlled by a Sorcerer's soul via Magic Jar. That will help get them nice and confident that they can handle whatever isn't one of the bosses i've created.
*Evil DM chuckling intensifies* This'll be good. I need to come here more often for encounter ideas.
Scenario 1
use kobolds, hoards of kobolds, in an underground lair.
possibly a jubilex worshiping kobold cult, so lots of slimes oozes, puddings and gelatinous cubes, molds, spores and other lovelies, use elevation, so the kobolds can drop nets on them, rocks on them, slimes oozes and puddings on them. pots of mold spores that make you hallucinate and fire arrows down at them. fire rust monsters at them from catapults. or just simply have them walk over a rope bridge and drop them into a humungous green slime filled moat 20 feet deep, the only way out being to climb, then fire arrows and everything else at em.
once they're out at the far side you can then let them walk back to town naked as just about everything they own will be melted by the slime, you may want to have the kobold catcall and moon them when they finally manage to climb out the other side.
scenario 2
use lots of illusions, pit traps. spikes collapsing ceilings, arrow traps slippery floors, oil. falling rocks, plus oozes slimes rust monsters and suchlike, to melt their gear, in a really ridiculously winding corridor, at the end have a single kobold sat on a dining chair and reading a book and swinging his legs. as they turn a corner have him run off screaming into a small side tunnel, too small for them to get down. beside the tunnel is 2 bottles one red with a skull and crossbones on it and one white with a red cross on it.
first drink
drink from the white one first take 10D10 poison damage con save for half,
drink from the red one first nothing happens.
second drink
drink from the red one a second time after first drink from red take 10D10 poison damage save for half damage,
second drink from white after first from red you're shrunk to half your size and can fit down the smaller tunnel.
second drink from white after first from white also, polymorphed into a green slime and immediately attack your party companions.
second drink red after first drink white take 10 D10 Acid damage save for half
once they work out how to get down the tunnel have the kobold flee again, this time through a magical portal tat requires a key stone to activate.
so they are faced with 2 rooms, one holding the portal, the other with lots of loot to replace what they lost going in but not as rediculously overpowered as you've given them previously.
what they won't know yet is that beyond the portal lives a lich, they're going to need to go and visit him later but don't tell em yet
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
While I enjoy the enthusiasm you put into your scheme, building a Rube Goldberg styled series of encounters with the specific purpose of divesting the characters of their magical gear is nothing short of inviting a coup from the players. Even worse is that you reward them, for surviving the convoluted series of unfortunate events, by making them less powerful than when they started.
To put it in another light: I have 30 + years of DMing and playing, I've survived some of the horrific modules that were the Gygaxian death machines and I've learned a lot from it. In my current Curse of Strahd adventure, which I'm lucky enough to play in, I almost derailed the entire thing due to a mistake in how a trap was handled. My character, who is very careful about his actions and decisions, took damage that almost killed him in one shot. I promptly turned around and walked away from the location, vowing to never come back because it was too dangerous to venture any further. It just so happened that one of the very important plot mcguffins was in that location. Had the DM not realized the mistake and found a way to rectify the situation, we would have hit a dead end in the game and stalled out.
If you don't give the players a chance to keep the gear, or retrieve it later because of their actions, then they will most likely feel cheated and become resentful in the future.
i started DMing in september 1983, i was suggesting methods of undoing the mess he'd created by over powering them, with 2 largely tongue incheek suggestions, both of which were designed to possibly fire up a bit of inspiration for something he could do.
i've had players throw dice at me in fury, you can even train them to throw sweets. eventually
All plans turn into, run into the room waving a sword and see what happens from there, once the first die gets rolled
Don't take away their magic items and don't build encounters that directly counter all your party's usual tactics. Both of these approaches are going to make your players hate you.
First and foremost, make sure you're pitting the party against encounters of the appropriate CR and either having 6-8 encounters per adventuring day or a larger number of deadly/more than deadly encounters.
Just mentioned this in the other similar thread, but try these revised XP tables for building encounters. I've found the table for "standard" characters, which uses higher XP thresholds than normal, does a better job of calibrating the challenge for high power PCs. Alternatively/additionally, you could consider the PCs to be a higher effective level than they actually are (say Level 12) when calculating XP and CR.
In addition to this, I'd recommend making your encounters more tactically diverse. Use mixed groups of foes with both melee and ranged capabilities. Use terrain to create choke points and other interesting features on the battlefield. The goal is not to counter all your party's tactics but to make them consider some other approaches. To help yourself think along these lines, I highly recommend the Angry GM's three-part series on building better encounters. You can find the first part here.
Use the Oblex. Elder Oblex (Does that work?). Its a great creature to throw against paladin heavy parties. Have a simulacrum appear to be in trouble and then drain the paladin. Or have the oblex manifest as a town and then ambush them at night (when they don't have their armor on - are you making them follow don/doff rules?).
Alternatively you could use something that my party threatened to hurt me over - Greater invisibility flying spellcaster with nondetection. Raining fireballs will rarely win you friends; however, it'll kill that party dead.
It seems like flight in general will throw a wrench into that party's plans. As would something like a beholder (flight + antimagic cone centered on the cleric + something present to keep the ranger busy - otyugh ). Traps also seem like a good thing to throw at them (as do puzzles honestly). If you want to give them an extremely difficult but fair fight you could start moving them towards an illithid colony? Really all i'm trying to say is that that combination should be extremely deadly towards fiends/undead that are on the ground so an easy way to deal with that is to throw monsters that are designed to fight high-magic players or to move the battlefield.
Also some things to keep in mind: Paladin auras do not stack for saves. As such your average paladin around level 11 should have like a 4-6 int save (if point buy.) as well as a 4-6 (maybe a smidge higher) dex save. The Barbarian (int department) and the cleric (both) are likely in the same camp. I'm not necessarily saying that you should only attack their weaknesses, I'm just saying that if you're going to stick to things that are CR appropriate then you'll need to rethink how you're addressing this. Alternatively you can throw CR recommendations out the window and act like theyre 2-4 levels higher than they really are (with that gear they might as well be).
Why not the top of the gorge. Skip the dam and have the mage be illusion spec'd with major illusion and the school of illusion abilities. Have a "real" bridge that they have to cross while under attack. And trying not to fall
I would argue that there's a tipping point with this tactic, if used properly it can be effective and enjoyable, if done poorly it will most certainly make your players upset.
Appropriate challenges, based on XP/CR, are all well and good for the majority of a game, however they're bland in a manner. If every combat scales with your ability, your gear, and your level, then you are essentially giving them the same fight just painting new faces on the targets. At first levels you see goblins and kobolds, they're an appropriate challenge based on those factors. You get higher in level, you now swap out to gnolls and bugbears, upward and onward to giants and chimeras, so forth and so on. I view it much the same as finding the right place in an MMO to go farm so you can get the right gear and proper level to go to the next island and repeat. It's linear and predictable, it doesn't feel creative and doesn't have a strong incentive to the players or make their characters' rewards seem special.
Now, you play the game and some little urchin manages to beat your passive, swipes your +1 dagger. You just created an intrinsic value to an item that normally would have been nothing but a mark on your character sheet. It creates the psychological effect of "gimme my thing back", driving the point of ownership home. Now, if you were to make it so that there was no possible way of recovering said +1 dagger, your player has every right to be furious, that is unfair because it doesn't allow agency on your player's part. If you make it a bit of a side quest, find the child, do a small job, get the dagger back, the player will be frustrated, but it makes sense and has purpose, maintaining the intrinsic value of the item. If you make it a skill challenge, where they have to beat specific rolls to catch up to the kid, you're actually leaning more toward the unfair side since it's all about chance on getting the dagger back, rather than the player's actions. So, yea, simply taking the items away will surely make the players mad, and rightly so.
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The same holds true for the tactics and strategy of the enemies as well. If I throw a cult at the players while they're on the plains in knee high grass and they rush in and fight to the death, the players won't think too much of it. Then they meet the same cult in a series of caves, they rush in and fight to the death, the players aren't going to be bothered. Then they find another group of the same cult in an abandoned fortress, they rush in and fight to the death. I've just taught the players that this cult will only rush in and fight to the death, simple tactic to combat, and that's how they'll approach every single cult encounter ever.
Now, they fight this cult in the plains, the group wins, the cult used different weapons and spells as could be expected. One of the cult members manages to escape, because death is not an inviting idea. They run into the cult again in some caves, they have very little information on the adventuring party, but they have information none-the-less. They change their strategy a bit to try to bottle neck the players. The fight is more difficult and disadvantages some of the play style that the players have chosen for their characters. They win, but some of the cult members have escaped again.
They are headed to the final showdown with the cult, the cult has information on the party, sent spies and so forth. They realize that the party is in possession of certain things, so they find ways to steal these items, like a greatsword of flame, a cloak of elvenkind, and other magical items that they can easily abscond with. The party will be very mad, as one would expect, however you leave clues that the cult is responsible. This will galvanize the party, making them want to destroy this cult even more. They show up to the abandoned fortress and find it well fortified. The cult has set up defenses knowing that the party is coming. This puts the party at serious disadvantage, is set up to make it so the cult will win, unless the players are smart and use tactics and strategy of their own. When they take down the cult, they find their gear, maybe as they're taking down the cult, and a couple more trinkets along the way because they won.
Now, on the other hand, if the players walk into the fortress and they're immediately hit by an anti-magic zone, a platoon of archers above them on platforms 80ft in the air, and mages casting walls of force to cordon off the party members, then they should rightly get up and leave.