Converting class levels to CR - Page 4 - OG Myth-Weavers

Notices


GM Workshop

A community-created and maintained place for Game Masters of all systems to bounce ideas around. It's a place for inspiration and sharing tips.


Converting class levels to CR

   
Gonna use that last post to alter my campaign right now x) This has been beneficial. As to Rejakor's post prior to that, I guess thats the thing. I make my combats all varied. I don't have 6 groups of goblins in the dungeon. There is a group of 6 goblins, a githyanki, 2 gnolls, 3 orcs, 1 Dire bear, and a level 4 Gnoll Fighter as a boss. That was my lvl 1 adventure (oh, with a sorceress encounter that went nowhere as she got SWATTED LIKE A FLY before doing any damage)

If you have a themed adventure, like, 'the Orb of Draculos was taken by the ogres to the Mirror Caverns, but it's said the Yechzui have returned to them, and the ogres haven't been heard from since!', typically you are going to want to have more than 1 Yechzui in those caverns. It's good because the PCs, after encountering one, can try to plan around their capabilities/sensory abilities etc in avoiding/fighting the rest.

The statistical difference between orcs, goblins and githyanki is minute. I don't know why a 1st level party was fighting a dire bear, but since a Dire Bear can instantly kill an entire level 1 party in 1 round, i'm guessing it was as a puzzle monster of some kind 'find your way around the dire bear' 'don't fall into the dire bear's den' etc.

If a sorceress is trying to do damage points, she has chosen the wrong class. Especially at low level. She should be casting sleep on people, or running the hell away. If she's using damage spells on people, she's a foolish fool and should probably be played as such (or at least, incredibly ditzy).

:3 well her attempt at a color spray trap failed pretty epically, and after that she just got backed into a corner before she could do much else. I think that was over in 3 or 4 rounds. :3 Yes, goblins orcs and githyanki aren't terribly different at low level. The dire bear was a chance for the druid to do something nice. I treated it as unfriendly and the druid got it down to neutral while they looted the room.

When there are six of you in a team, one of you will probably beat the Sorceress at init. At that level, there's not likely to be a lot she could do about that. It being 6-on-1, though, the Sorceress should probably be a high enough level that she can't get one-shotted just by one character on his first go, unless he's very lucky. However, it's still likely to be "I get one action, better make it count" which kinda sucks. I would rather see folk largely lasting a couple of rounds regardless of what's going on.

Even a L4 Sorcerer has only four spells known, one at L2. She's going to want at least one (Colour Spray, in this case) to attack with. Spending another on prebuffing is quite expensive and it's probably only going to be a L1 buff like Mage Armour. So she now has a flat-footed AC of 14, which means her chances of being one-shotted by a Fighter-type or Rogue are now only high-ish, rather than very high (assuming +1 BAB, +3 Str, +2 Charge, say). She could use some items, admittedly (Mage Armour from a scroll, say, then cast Shield or PfG or whatever) which would up her odds quite a bit.

She could take Charm Person, yes, but does every Sorcerer need to have that, then? Plus, who's to say those gnolls weren't already her Charmed buddies? Giving her some help in this fight is pretty much the same regardless of whether it's via Charm or just having an ally (which means this is no longer a spellcaster-vs-party fight but a spellcaster-plus-ally-vs-party-fight). I think the real point to take from this is that 6-on-1 makes for poor balance.

Delicious cake? She's a Cha-based caster, probably wants a little Int as well as a healthy Con and Dex, so her Wis is likely to be her second dump stat. That's going to give her very poor Profession (Baking) even if she does find enough skill points (she gets 2+Int, remember, and will want Concentration, Spellcraft, and probably some Knowledges) to spend on it.

Alter self something with huge hide (kobold?), set up environment to hide and spellsnipe and have getaway plan.

Have meatshields, hide behind meatshields.

Use specialist Conjurer teleport + room full of up and down areas to screw with party.

Just run away. You're a low level mage. Why are you fighting 6 murder hobos? Glitterdust them and then leave them for your pet troglodytes to eat.

You can't Glitterdust and run if you don't get to act, even if that's a surprise round. It sounds like that's pretty much what she did. Also, Sorcerer =/= Specialist Conjurer.

Although, I'm not sure where this discussion has gone. I'm not trying to say mages suck, only that fights which end in one round tend not to be so fun. A spellcaster who does last long enough to cast more than one spell (via Conjurer teleporting, or hiding-and-sniping, or Invis + summons, or whatever) is more interesting by far than one who casts a single spell at best before being beheaded.

Also, I kind of want to run an incredibly ditzy Sorceress now.

She wasn't surprised. She laid the surprise attack and tried to use her skeleton minion to melee fight the party long enough for her to get some spells off. She used a color spray trap while her skeleton was in melee range. The issue was not that I planned a poor encounter. Both players hit with the color spray passed their saves. They then immediately destroyed the skeleton after he barely got off one hit. The second spell she used (don't remember what) was also either blocked or resisted, so that did nothing as well. by that time, although she was uninjured she was backed into a corner by 4 units, so she couldn't even 5 foot step to avoid getting hit with an AoO. She died for failure to properly execute, not from having a poorly planned encounter. She also had a potion of hide alignment already downed along with a mage armor before the party even arrived .




 

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging (Lite) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
Last Database Backup 2024-03-19 08:45:18am local time
Myth-Weavers Status