Tamarask -- or why I started worrying and stopped loving the

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 1:32 pm

Just drop Solid Fogs; then ranged attack it to death?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:51 pm

Our DM banned the solid fog line. And I'm curious as to how walls will help when I'm fairly certain half of our party is going to be going in melee with him.

Man, trying to outguess the DM for abilities is annoying.

Force Cage/Wall of Xxx: Can be foiled by either immense size or free action teleportation abilities, and combining dimensional anchor is iffy simply because I don't know its SR.
Irresistable Dance: Is it vulnerable to mind-affecting?
Summons: DM(s) asked us to only have one minion apiece to save on time, because with 10 players, having one or two whip out five different creatures to attack will bog that round down even more. Also, plot-wise, technically us 10 are the only ones (barring gods) allowed a save to survive being near them; and they're 'letting' us extend our protection to one assistant.

I'm aware that we can likely kill it without too much difficulty, but I like to plan so we don't have any difficulty.

I'm tempted to get and use a mirror of opposition, but I don't know if they would allow that; trying to rule something along the lines of it being too big to walk out of the mirror, or it not working on ultra-unique god-like beings. I have enough money to be fine with the loss, so I might as well try.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:41 pm

I would change Force effects such as Wall of Force into a Solid Fog effect regarding impenetrability.
Solid Fog may be wicked but it's not THAT good. Reducing area helps if there are problems.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:52 pm

Oh, I agree that it's not that good, but it doesn't change my DMs' opinion on solid/acid fog. They don't have a problem with the wall of force spell though, so *shrug*.

SphereOfFeetMan · Post by **SphereOfFeetMan** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 10:49 am

virgileso wrote:Force Cage/Wall of Xxx: Can be foiled by either immense size or free action teleportation abilities, and combining dimensional anchor is iffy simply because I don't know its SR.

Wow. Free action teleportation abilities are impressive. In that case, since you outnumber him, just use the ready action with wall spells when he makes an attack. So it would look like the following:

Your melee party members: Melee attacks.
Wall Caster: Ready action Wall spell when monster makes an attack.
Monster: Free teleport, and melee attack*
*Attack triggers ready action and you put up a wall that gives your team cover.
-Monster has used an attack, and his offensive action is done for the round.
repeat.

The above will work unless your Dm rules that he can use his free action teleport abilities inside of a full attack action (If so, see below**). In any case, it is still a valid tactic versus standard action special attacks.

**Have your minions pop off half a dozen tree feather tokens to block his colossal ass from reaching you. Then use the ready action for wall spells to block his attacks after your melee guys have run out of your forest to pound on him. He won't be able to reach them at all because of the Wall spell and forest. If he starts destroying the trees (you want him to waste his actions doing so btw), then just pop off more.

I recommend pulling out all the stops in attempting to pin a Dimensional Anchor spell on him first thing if you can. Do whatever you can do to restrict his movement.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:06 am

I checked beforehand (mostly) on the mirror of opposition and was told that it was a not allowed (setting made it too unique to be copied). I was also informed as I was casting it, that irresistable dance was banned (was allowed to retcon the spell choice/memorization).

Well, we fought the other monster; and that thing turned out easier than I thought.

It had an AC 55 (all natural & armor), was vulnerable to mind-affecting, gargantuan size, couldn't teleport, had a 50 cold damage aura (auto-hit, 5' radius around it), perfect fly speed of 400', about 800hp, once per round it can give up its movement and automatically move out of an AoE, has attacks in the +35 range w/average of 60 damage per attack (looked like two or three a round), SR 27, DR 20/magic & silver, made casters unable to cast defensively within melee reach, blindsense 60', and a DC 15 aura that would fatigue you each round.

We killed it in two rounds and nobody was killed. Oh, I got an evil eye for using Extraordinary Spell Aim on force cage on one of the melee fighters and polymorph any object to make a high damage touch attack trap with an auto-reset (CR 10).

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 8:13 pm

Good old Tactics and Strategy.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 8:46 pm

Scry and Die is Tactics & Strategy?

SphereOfFeetMan · Post by **SphereOfFeetMan** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 9:22 pm

It can be. Particularly with multiple competing Scry and Die groups. Tactics and strategy can emerge. Illusions of weakness, disinformation, lambs, Divinations, forcing choices, time-critical situations, baiting, brinkmanship, etc, can all make Scry and Die games interesting.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 9:48 pm

I meant high level D&D where you spend more time planning than actually figthing.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:04 am

With the rag-tag bunch of players I'm with, it's not so much planning, as it is making sure everyone's aware of what buffs were given before they pour out the portal and zerg the target. Actually getting them to follow a plan more precise than 'attack' is an exercise in futility.

I thought of another plan that would work stupidly well, and is certain to get very angry looks from the DM (especially the bad one).
* Fully buff (including Superior Invisibility & Shapechange @ CL 17)
* Anti-magic Field with Extraordinary Spell Aim
* Charge in
* Rest of party pours out of their portal on the opposite side so they're unaffected by the AMF

Calibron · Post by **Calibron** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:23 am

What're you going to Shapechange into? Remember that any form larger than medium will still get caught in the AMF.

SphereOfFeetMan · Post by **SphereOfFeetMan** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:53 am

Maybe just go with one of the classic choices, the Choker. It's only CR 2. Your Dm might not take offense.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:46 pm

I did some pre-checking with the DM(s), and he ruled that only the part of the monster that's in an AMF is actually effected by it (except for spellcasting).

Also, I asked on the summoning a wall in front of someone as a readied action against an attack. The DM ruled that the monster gets to change its mind on who he attacks because of such.

*sigh* I'm just not used to high-level gaming, and the tactics associated with such. The DM has had time to prepare this next monster, so I have no clue what kind of immunities he threw up, and I don't think this fight will last more than three rounds. I feel like a spell-jock just throwing shrunken vats of acid with telekinesis.

SphereOfFeetMan · Post by **SphereOfFeetMan** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:50 pm

virgileso wrote:Also, I asked on the summoning a wall in front of someone as a readied action against an attack. The DM ruled that the monster gets to change its mind on who he attacks because of such.

Uh...does your Dm realize that he just removed a basic combat action (the readied action) from the game? From that ruling I can only imagine that his monsters never use ready actions. Well, at least now your spellcasting can never be interrupted by ready actions, since you now "...gets to change its mind on who he attacks..." (read: readied actions no longer interrupt actions).

Tell us how the combat goes. I am unable to think of more suggestions at the moment.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:22 am

Next fight, it turned out my suspicions were correct, thus entry from 170' away while invisible worked great.

Round 1...
* Monster: Attacked rogue, who teleported in first, because true seeing trumps invisibility. DM also ruled that blindsense overcomes his HiPS and thus had no miss chance.
* Rogue: Bled out, already dead
* Me: Exceedingly large acid flasks with telekinesis & shrink item, half miss due to blur, but I still do ~150 damage (6d6 for colossal flasks, +11 to weapon damage from buffed inspire courage)
* A_Cynic: Dispel Magic of buffs on monster (done by minions nearby)
** A_Cynic's Cleric Archer Cohort: Does ~300 damage
* Paladin: Poses, literally
* Barbarian: Full attacks, discovers its 61 AC, and only hits once for ~50 damage
* Bard: Move action away, then fires bow once, nobody cares
* Sorcerer: Fails save against mind control aura, casts chain lightning on the barbarian for ~50
* Cleric: Casts magic circle against evil and stands next to sorcerer
* Druid: Casts transmute metal to wood on monster's armor & sword, fails to penetrate SR
* Weretiger Fighter: Too low +attack (+24, buffed to +39), fails to roll a natural 20

Round 2
* Monster: Kills barbarian in full attack, gets rebuffed by minions
* A_Cynic: Dispels buffs, my readied action goes off
* Me: 286 acid damage...it dies

The paladin threw a fvcking fit because he never got to go. The DM considers the use of telekinesis to throw weapons an exploit, as well as using shapechange into a choker for an extra action (feels that fits under dumpster diving).

SphereOfFeetMan · Post by **SphereOfFeetMan** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 10:41 am

Is this the first time you used Telekinesis + Acid with this Dm?

That is an intense fight. There are less than 2 rounds worth of information to go on, but your Dm's thought processes seem to be the following (correct me if I'm wrong):

1. I want to make this a challenging fight, so I'll bump his numbers (Ac, damage, SR, ?) so high he is nearly off the RNG.
2. I have now challenged the party's abilities (read: nearly negated many Pc's altogether)
3. A new tactic is used, Telekinesis + Acid, which removes the challenge of the monster. (read: Party's standard Damage dealers are rendered impotent for the most part, so a new tactic is needed and therefore devised.)
4. I now dislike Telekinesis because it bypassed the challenge, and am considering banning or nerfing it.

It's also very interesting that nobody had a problem with the Cleric Archer Cohort character doing the most damage in a round.

virgileso wrote:as well as using shapechange into a choker for an extra action (feels that fits under dumpster diving).

Hah. Tell him if you were dumpster diving, you wouldn't have used an iconic core monster. You would have used a Chronotyryn (FF, Dual actions + a lot of other stuff.)
____________________

All that said, it looks like your Dm might be making a critical mistake in his playstyle. I've seen and played with such Dm's. It seems to go like this:

1. Challenge party by negating their abilities.
2. Party is desperate and uses new tactics. This is doubly relevant if the new tactics utilize new rules that the group hasn't used before.
3. The new tactics and rules used are effective. Therefore the Dm feels that the new rules are broken because they allowed the party to win faster than they would have with their standard tactics.
4. The Dm bans the tactic or new rules immediately afterwards (or sometimes spot-nerfs it).
5. The group can now go back to their normal routine and the 'right' way to play.

If the group had no problem with the Cleric Archer's damage, they should have no problem with yours. He is a cohort, using unlimited ranged attacks to do 300 damage in a round. You are a caster using one (or two?) spells (finite resources) and doing at most 286 damage a round.

Something is not right here.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 11:51 am

SphereOfFeetMan wrote: -SNIP-
Something is not right here.

I'll agree. I've tried to vocalize the idea that the Virgileso's character isn't completely to "blame" in this scenario as my cohort has apparently been doing a serious amount of damage.

THe TK effect has been used before but with just buffed swords rather than acid. he did get permission (as far as I know) to use that trick in the week between games so that the dm should have known about it.

I also suspect the DM doesn't realize that while there is a significant amount rules that come into play due to non-core books, most of the havoc-inducers are often core.

My cohort is completely core except for zen archery and a few items here and there.

For the next fight, I'm going to have the Cohort sit it out or just bust in when necessary.

Both Virgileso and I had assumed that the damage output of the other characters was close to our output just because of the numbers that they had thrown around in the sessionbefore last. Numbers around ~200-300 were thrown around for damage by the primary melee fighters. Apparently this involved some pretty huge crits.

THere also seems to be some assumptions that as I had the cleric archer buffed up before battle (read: div favor/div power/righteous might/haste...) and since this was causing the cleric to outdamage the fighter in damage, I was dumpster diving for numbers.

If this post is slightly ranty, I apologize. It's early, haven't gotten much sleep and the pills make me cranky these days.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:53 pm

The only reason they seemed to have noticed me over the cohort doing it was because I was the one that landed the killing blow, especially because my method was an intricate series of ropes of pulleys.

I got permission for the alchemist's fire doing, individually, 6d6 apop when upgraded in size. The DM who ran this fight didn't consider it a problem, likely because he knew his monster was immune to fire. I didn't bring up the use of telekinesis, mainly figuring they should've remembered that I can do that.

I discovered after the fight that alot of the melee's damage last fight was because of crits. Granted, they might've done their share had the AC not been upped by seven more points; but nobody is even thinking about that part.

I haven't seen the DM whine about non-core stuff recently, though when he did I tried to mention that my character's actual power was almost wholly core; to which he said I wasn't because I took the Geometer PrC & used animated objects instead of undead (same HD control pool, and no bigger than level in HD for single units rather than double). Though this was before I started using antimagic field with Extraordinary Spell Aim (originally planned to use it with acid fog).

As for the party being desperate and using new tactics, that's only half true. Barring A_Cynic, I am the only one who uses new tactics, which vexes the DM greatly because I've been whipping out a new tactic every other session practically (mainly out of experimentation). I hadn't used the readied action with wall tactic yet, but that was banned before the fight because I mentioned it; though I was using wall of stone as the example, I was intending to use prismatic wall.

The depressing part? I won't be surprised if DM makes the SR/AC even higher for the next fight, with universal energy resistance of 20 or 30.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 2:12 pm

Seriously, unless you're actually enjoying this battle of wits, DTMFA and get out. You and this DM are on different pages, and talking to him isn't working.

Calibron · Post by **Calibron** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:07 pm

Have you asked your DM what he's trying to accomplish? Is he just trying to kill the party, because without you and A_Cynic they would have been mulched by that monster.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:08 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Seriously, unless you're actually enjoying this battle of wits, DTMFA and get out. You and this DM are on different pages, and talking to him isn't working.

Yeah, I'm out in two sessions.
It's effin enough.

edit 1: taking out irrelevant details:

edit 2: clarifications on two sessions as the game will literally end in two sessions.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:17 pm

This really sounds like the DM I made a thread to complain about when I first joined these boards--the spot-nerfing and buffing, and the tendency to throw a hissy when the players out-maneuvered him.

Asking them what they want to accomplish with these fights is a bit confrontational, but could make the DMs start thinking. Do they want a fight to be challenging, or do they want them to be impossible? Should the players have any chance at all of winning? If they keep tilting the field against the players, they might as well just go, "Oh, bloody hell, the next monster kills all of you, because nothing you do works."

SunTzuWarmaster · Post by **SunTzuWarmaster** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:40 pm

"...to which he said I wasn't because I took the Geometer PrC..."

Really, that one is to blame? Huh.

Seriously, using animated constructs instead of undead is a character concept, which should never be discouraged (nerfed maybe, but never discouraged).

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 9:24 pm

I did argue for nerfings. Undead can be animated at HD equal to double caster level, total control limited to four times caster level. I requested for my constructs to be animated with a cap equal to just my caster level, and to use the same control pool as undead (so I couldn't double up on minions).

The other DM approved of it. The crap DM grumbled about it being overpowered because it should cost a feat (like golems), and he's hated my huge iron statue from the day I got it back at 9th level.

Addendum: I just rechecked my math. If I truly feel like it, even with fire & acid resist 20, the next monster WILL die in one apparent full-round action to the telekinesis with shrunken colossal acid flasks or alchemist's fires technique; and in fact needs both at 30+ to not get 'one-shot'.