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orcdoubleax
Sergeant
694 Posts
    
 | | 07/27/2006 1:59 PM |
| There has been some talk in another tread of a high damage paladin. I was was going to post this there, but it is more of a general statment so I started a new tread.
This is my problen with characters that do too much damage.
If a character can inflict obscene damage when compared to other characters of his level I find it makes it nearly impossible as a DM to create interesting and varied encounters.
Monsters that are an approprate challenge for the party die too quickly and make for uninteresting encounters. Causing Boredom.
Creatures that can stand up to a couple swings from the twicked character are far too deadly for the party. Add it the fact that the munchkin character general as a normal amount of hit points they can be kinda glass cannons. Combat quickly becomes a all or nothing affair with the first swing being very important.
You can get around this be custom crafting the monster to work with what ever weekness the munchin character has, but this means using simlar ablities and combat style over and over. Again causing boredom.
The CR system is not perfect, but when a character has disportionate offensive capacity it is totally useless.
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kestrel.ca
Underboss
1687 Posts
| | 07/27/2006 2:26 PM |
| I'm not sure I entirely agree. Granted, I haven't been following the "other post," and don't try to make obscenely munchkinesque builds, but...
It's been my experience with very high damage characters (Goliath Barbarian for example) that there's generally a trade-off involved somewhere. Generally it's low attack bonuses, low AC, or both. Sure, some builds can bypass that, but either it's very clever play through specific situations, or DM inattention in controlling the game.
It's very gratifying as a player when all the situations come together just right for that powerful blow, and a DM needs to allow that once in a while (or else why would the player build it), but a good DM should be able to avoid situations where the one player is able to set up conditions for the super attack. | |
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gss_000
Commander
3204 Posts
Baltimore, MD
| | 07/27/2006 3:09 PM |
| I have a more generous opinion. The boredom your talking about may be the boredom of the DM, not the characters. As a DM, I find that sometimes what I think was a boring combat turned out to be a fun one from the PCs point of view.
If you're looking to spice things up, also try modifying the battlefield. If the person is a charge monster, limit charge space with difficult terrain, weather, etc. If there is a recurring villain, have them be smart and prepare to take out player's tactics. Furthermore, no character is best against every creature. For instance, constructs and neutral elementals can be a hard fight at a party's CR if they are based around sneak attack, crits, or other precision damage.
However, this can be taken to an extreme. I've actualy been in this situation where the combats were always modified so people couldn't charge, use favorite spells, fly, etc and it just bred resentment. When characters take feats and abilities, it's usually with the hope they can be used on a regular basis. Too much modification and the DM becomes the adversary. This sentiment ruined a lot of 1st ed games in my mind as it was very typical among DMs at the time and one I'd rather not go back to. | |
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zenthrus
Warlord
5132 Posts
SLC, UT
| | 07/27/2006 4:53 PM |
| It's a balancing act when your players tend to be munchkinefficient in building their characters.
On the one hand, you want encounters to be challenging. On the other hand, you don't want to deny your players their cheese.
Some great examples of how to severely tax players are in the Red Hand of Doom, particularly the Ruins of Rhest and Skull Gorge. The environment favors the bad guys a lot.
When it comes to stagnation, try a different approach to couteracting the cheese. Using a glass-cannon charging melee beatstick as our example: flying spellcasters, Trip specialists, high AC monsters, difficult terrain, close-quarters encounters, ranged attackers with high ground/towers, caltrops, druids (web, entangle, etc), summoned monsters/minions (to soak up the big hit, then the real villain moves in), traps (classic to see the party tank charge right into a pit trap [}:)]...each of these provides a different feel to the battle, largely negates the dangers of the glass cannon, yet doesn't feel like you're specifically nerfing that one character.
Other nasty DM tricks are unhallow spell + silence (vs spellcasters), walls of force/fire/stone/etc. (seperating PCs from each other-heck, just have a door as a choke point with an unseen servant closing it every round), readying spells like entangle/briar web to cast when someone charges, mid-level monks (immune to poison) burning inhaled poisons (burnt othur fumes and insanity dust are particularly unpleasant) in censers/braziers, darkness spells, blindness/deafness spells, illusory terrain (sorry, you didn't notice that the floor you're charging over is actually a 100 foot drop onto sharp spikes), as the players descend a rope down a cliff face, they're attacked by harpies...the list goes on and on.
Try and think not only outside the box, but around the box. Pick up the box and see what's underneath. Generally, players seem to get bored easily with their one-trick ponies. | |
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