Power difference in groups

[Zergrusheddie]

Ok, another thread to hopefully hear some funny stories:

What is the biggest power difference you have ever seen between players? Did you have a Hulking Hurler with a group of S&B Fighters and Evokers? Have you ever had a Tier 1 group but have a Tier 4 player?

Best of luck y'all.
-Eddie

[Zincorium]

*Sigh*. Unfortunately, I ended up being that totally-out-of-bounds character. And seriously, I was not trying. Dwarven barbarian. With a shield and dwarven waraxe. That took the battlerager Prc, and eventually a level of bear warrior as my 11th level. Seriously, up to the bear warrior, I thought that would be within bounds.

Wizard 7/sorceror 3. Drow rogue 9. Gnoll (formerly gnome) ranger 1/bard 3. Totally inexperienced cleric 13 of some obscure and impotent elven god.

They asked me to roll up a new character, and I was going to play a half-drow warmage but the game ground to a halt before I had a chance to introduce it. *more sigh* and that would probably have been too good too.

[Zergrusheddie]

Wizard7/Sorcerer3? Ok....

[mikej]

Only had one of those described events, still find it pathetic even to this day. It was me the normal Half-Elf Druid ( at the time I thought that race was cool ) and two other players were a Human CW Samurai/Pyrokineticist and Werewolf Monk. In the end I still out performed them in combat and it was my first experience with that class.

[Eldariel]

Well uhh, our first 3.5 party had a Half-Dragon Frenzied Berserker (joining on level 14) to a party of Dwarven Defender (Fighter 7/->), Arcane Archer (Fighter 6/Wizard 1/->), Wizard/Archmage (who didn't really do anything except maybe lob a Fireball here, Magic Missile there; he wasn't even a blaster, he was a conservative blaster, although he did use Hold Monster once and Forcecage vs. a party member) & Cleric/Hierophant (hey, it's a printed Cleric PrC, of course you take it - also, a conservative healbot). Yeah, the objectively unimpressive Frenzied Berserker was wrecking the house. The player retired his character after one-shotting a Balor (yeah, monsters weren't run too smart and terrain was practically always "open, open").

[SoD]

My party (I'm DMing).

Comprised of;

• Human Cleric, a first time player.
• Teifling Warlock, a roleplayer.
• An elan child psion, roleplaying a child extremely well.
• A killoren ranger, focused on archery.
• A human Warblade. With iajutsu focus. Who can one-shot an ogre at level one.

*sigh*

His backup characters are worse; a power attack with x6 to whatever he subtracts, or a warforged who becomes immune to all damage.

[Cheesegear]

My party (I'm DMing).

A human Warblade. With iajutsu focus. Who can one-shot an ogre at level one.

His backup characters are worse; a power attack with x6 to whatever he subtracts, or a warforged who becomes immune to all damage.

Emphasis Mine. Shouldn't you have a handle on that sort of thing?

[Narmoth]

Well, we have such a group. Here's what happens i any encounter:

first round
1. Arcane/divine caster/spontaneous casting on both, with maximized spells an so on: cast spell on enemy
2. paladin/blackguard/trying to repent: quick cast divine sacrifice, then charge
3. cleric: cast defensive spell / scratch head about what to do / hit things
4. thief/assassin: starts to observe enemy to use death attack

second round:
1. Arcane/divine caster: cast spell
2. Paladin/blackguard: deal massive amount of dmg (7d6+7), tries to flank against cleric if cleric is in melee for sneak attack dmg
3. Cleric: hit things, possibly helps pal/bg to flank
4. Thief/assassin: observes new target, since the first one was killed

third round:
battle is over.

[leperkhaun]

Wizard and pretty much anything else.

When i first stared playing with my old group you could not play a monk because they honestly thought they were overpowered.

To fit into their games i used suboptimal characters and often they were still leaps and bounds ahead of the others.

However most of this was due to them not doing research or such. They played the game to have fun and did not worry about bieng the most powerfull as long as they could get the job done no one cared.

[Telonius]

Vow of Poverty Monk (me ) and Radiant Servant of Pelor Cleric. Yeah, BoED had just come out and we wanted to test it out. It was one of the most enjoyable characters I've ever played, as far as the social aspects went. But he was good for exactly four things in combat: disarming humanoids, flanking with the Rogue, jumping, and retrieving the bodies of his fallen comrades.

Tier 2 group, tier 4 player story....
Running Age of Worms, we had a player come in playing a Warforged Fighter/Barbarian at level 5 or so. He assured us he'd played D&D before. Turns out his previous adventure was World's Largest Dungeon, and had quit after a couple sessions. We didn't check back with him on his character sheet until about 12th level, when we found - and I kid you not - that he had forgotten to take any feats since character creation back at 5th.

[Tsotha-lanti]

We had a 3.0 druid who reached 21st+ level and a ECL 18 half-celestial paladin. And a straight fighter. And a monk.

The entire rest of the party, basically, was one steep incline of mechanical suck down from the druid (who, admittedly, starts to far above any "baseline" it's ridiculous).

The campaign, weirdly, was still fun, until I had to start having archmages of wildly varying political agendas and alignments or entire drow cities attack the PCs to even vaguely threaten them. Oh, and random encounters with epic monsters.

[Assassin89]

For my party, there is only a four level difference between the highest ECL and lowest ECL.

Hound Archon Monk ECL 7
Human Sorcerer ECL 3

Warforged Healer ECL 5
Magmin Wizard, Elf Gunmage, Illumian Fighter, Half-elf Cleric (me), Human Psychic Warrior were ECL 4

[Zephyros]

The first 3.5 game I played in the city I currently live featured:

-Nova trigger happy Sun Elf Evoker with Sudden Max, Emp, and Twin (some houseruling by the dm..)
-Human PsyWarrior wielding a greatsword - fairly standard...
-Drow Monk
-and Half-Elf Paragon/ Human Paragon Cleric 1 (me)


now try to guess who was useless...

[Starscream]

First 3.5 game I'd ever played, after almost ten years of absence from D&D. We're level ten.

Our party has
* A half elf ranger. Totally typical and core only. Perfectly respectable and normal.

* A gnomish bard, played by a known Loony. Preferred to play pranks on enemies rather than injure them. Still reasonably effective, if silly.

* A human monk. Me! I was new to the system, and was honestly convinced monk would be a good choice for me, as they are really strong and hard to kill, right guys? Still got the sheet. Some times I look at my feat choices and laugh. Thank goodness I had that +2 to hide and move silently, eh?!

* A guy whose actual classes I can't remember because he already had like four of them (none core). His weapon could split Cthulu in twain. His armor was probably made of the hide of Chuck Norris. He could slaughter entire level appropriate mobs in the first round of combat. You couldn't kill him with a minigun that fires Tarrasques.

So yeah, little party imbalance. Fortunately it all worked out because our DM had a habit of using his own previous characters (who were similarly overpowered) as NPCs. So he and the Player of Doom would have a battle that would rend the cosmos while the rest of us had a nice little scuffle with his kobold minions. Fun campaign, actually, if you don't mind being a supporting character.

[SoD]

Emphasis Mine. Shouldn't you have a handle on that sort of thing?

Yeah. But the other players don't mind (and I have asked), and the campaign is as much roleplay and combat orientated. His backup characters I'm going to go over very thouroughly, and am going to ban iajutsu focus after this one character of his though.

But in general, if the other players don't mind, I don't mind.

[Temp.]

The only time balance has really been a problem for me wasn't based on any printed rules or any outside homebrew, but by a class the DM wrote and neither he nor the character refused to acknowledge anything was unbalanced.

The campaign ran from level 1 to 15.

The party:

Lurk
Rogue
Ranger/Fighter/Order of the Bow Initiate (3.0)
Scout/Shugenja
...and then this other guy.

The class was apparently based on the Bard, so if anything it would be on the weak end, right? But the DM had homebrewed its entire spell list without really considering what it meant in game terms. I think the DM even wrote it out to replace the Bard and Druid, intending to nerf and slightly reflavor the classes.

The result was a level 2 character with something resembling Black Tentacles (area damage and an essentially inescapable scaling lock-down with a level 1 spell). Nobody really complained then, we just specced for Archery and decided to let this guy cover the protection thing.

Then at level 6 he got some sort of transmogrification ability that put our scouting skills to shame and at level 7, some sort of Summon Swarm-flavored Maw of Chaos effect (I think it was 1d6+1/2CL damage for Rounds/level). Combined with his lockdown thing, combat just became a matter of how much damage the rest of us took (remember, this guy's completely undetectable) before his first initiative came around. Then there were a bunch of other nifty abilities this guy started throwing around.

I should probably say that all of it was very stylish, very flavorful and very fitting for the character and the setting. It just didn't work with the kind of game the DM was initially running.

Fortunately, the DM picked up on the glazed eyes and wandering attention that happened every time a session turned into D&D. We eventually started to shift into a sort of freeform political intrigue game with a few inconsequencial "I think you guys should level up"-s thrown in at the end of every couple sessions. So it eventually worked out in an odd sort of way.

[Draz74]

Hound Archon Monk ECL 7

Um, Hound Archon all by itself is already ECL 11. Adding any Monk levels to it would make it at least ECL 12.

Monk sucks, but you know, it's not actually worth negative LA.

Were you using a homebrewed Hound Archon that was vastly weaker, losing most of its Racial Hit Dice and a few of its more powerful special abilities? Or could your Hound Archon have killed the rest of the party off in its sleep? Must have been one of the two.

[krossbow]

Monk sucks, but you know, it's not actually worth negative LA.

Thats SO becoming my new signature.

[Assassin89]

Um, Hound Archon all by itself is already ECL 11. Adding any Monk levels to it would make it at least ECL 12.

Monk sucks, but you know, it's not actually worth negative LA.

Were you using a homebrewed Hound Archon that was vastly weaker, losing most of its Racial Hit Dice and a few of its more powerful special abilities? Or could your Hound Archon have killed the rest of the party off in its sleep? Must have been one of the two.

I have no idea, but I guess the player did not take any levels in outsider or he took a Level Adjust Buyoff. Second, why would a Hound Archon want to kill a mostly good aligned group? Would he kill the LE sorcerer? Maybe, but the sorcerer is dead due to a fire trap. Would he kill the magmin? I doubt it.

[Yukitsu]

From weakest to strongest:
Wizard blaster built by a guy that hasn't read the PHB, and as such, doesn't know how to use magic. Think of Dan from "another gaming comic", but less effective.
Dwarf fighter: A new player, who would have been fine had he not decided on dropping his speed to 10. Useful in hallways, and that's about it.
Double specialized necromancer focusing on undead: Just isn't his level yet. He has to hit level 5 before he jumps up to the top 3.
Half dragon monk: Is a monk. Is a front liner. Has 11 hit points at level 3. Yeah.
Double specialist necromancer focusing on life energy: Isn't his level until he gets SoDs, but currently has some very good negative energy effects and false life is always useful.
Druid/barbarian: Currently our most balanced melee character. Dishes out good damage, and has some useful support and healing spells. Less defense than I like to see on a frontliner, but at 8 players, that isn't so much a problem.
Double specialized necromancer focusing on curses, fear effects and diseases: This is my character. Level 3, and thus level 2 spells gives me a very nice set of spells in my field, all based around disabling and debuffing enemies, making fights really easy for the party.
Wierd homebrew angel thingy: DM basically handed the player a "win" button (Full clerical casting, full paladin class features, full BAB, stat increases, no level adjustment thus far, at will spell like abilities). Technically, I can kill this guy in a one on one, but I put this character above mine because this character has a lot more stamina and defense than mine.

To illustrate the disparity between the top tier and bottom tiers of this grouping, I soloed a CR 8 encounter with insane forethought and preperation (To quote an actual line from the table: Player 1 "You're overprepared when you see a butterfly cross your path and have a written plan of action for that event" Me "It wasn't a butterfly, it was a Robin". To contrast, the bottom 5 characters combined failed to defeat a CR 4 encounter. It was a small, advanced lemure with karmic retribution.

[wadledo]

To contrast, the bottom 5 characters combined failed to defeat a CR 4 encounter. It was a small, advanced lemure with karmic retribution.

Best idea ever.

[horseboy]

It was 4th level.
There was a cleric of Pelor going into Radiant
A wizard with glittercheese.
A bard
My druid
and a fighter.

My druid had tracking, craft wondrous and natural bond for feats. My AC was a constrictor. Wasn't even trying, heck was going more for Steve Irwin than Toho.
The fighter had troll blooded, monkey grip and weapon focus: Greataxe. Before we started hard that night the DM made him spend most of his WBL on a magic weapon. I think the cleric even floated him some. I was coming into a campaign in progress but he'd done this from lvl 1
The only thing he hit all night was the iron wall. Several times I offered to let him run "Bindi" instead, as she was rather good at grappling.