Forget BI's.
I've been to them, I understand the whole idea and my point is to be wary of power creep in the guise of greater challenge.
Reading elsewhere there was a report of players complaining that the BI they were in was too easy.
I say "circular file" that crap if it isn't a common observation because, grats to whoever, they built to be excessively effective and they succeeded. And that made the event less entertaining.
Seems like there's a lesson there.
Maybe they need to reconsider what Heroism is (sacrifice), and what it's not (risking nothing).

And yeah, I haven't had that many deliberately deadly GM's. But I have had plenty who went in with a "us versus them" mentality and, however sympathetic as I can be towards ingratitude-induced burnout, while near on everyone feels bad about killing a PC rarely does "feeling bad" bring back the slain.
Like the man said, "accidents happen."

Re: players.
Last campaign I shared many tables with a pair of "Dark Kin Barbarian-Fighter Warped Ones From The Hinterlands."
They weren't brothers, but for a while they were pretty much twins. I don't know where they clocked in measured against the entire coterie of PC's, but I recall them calling 250+ hp of damage in a round "average."
Now it's entirely true that they were crazy into the setting, but their method of interaction involved finding the biggest nasty burliest Bad Guy and ripping it into pieces more then it involved agonizing over moral dilemmas and carefully choosing sides.

And for this they are eternally appreciated.
It's a team effort, and the artillery is always a welcome part of a team.

But make no mistake they were both exercises in mechanical efficiency first.

In this campaign there's another pair of players who're, good folks without question, more about maximizing Smite damage and pounding arrows into tangos then being real caught up in the metaplot or in making an identity out of their character.

To each their own, sure. But for some folks it seems to me they're comfortable Doing then being Done To.

(Ah. I've got this theory: Internal and External characters.
Internal characters are about being changed themselves.
External characters are about changing their world.
There's no real pure kind either way, but I wonder if characters don't tend to gravitate towards on pole or another.
Generally speaking the "smash'em all and let the diplomats sort it out" are the External kind -and so usually are the diplomats. "We get sh*t done" is their motto.
The people on personal quests? The ones less about their immediate circumstances and more about their own reactions? They're Internally driven. They're about becoming, and in the process grow to change the lives of others. This is more common among DK's, Elorii, and Gnomes then others imo.)

I say my point remains uncontested.
A party that's imbecilic at social encounters but are also blood-drenched gods of combat will fair better then a part of silver-tongued aristocrats who can't remember which end of the dagger goes into the angry people.

Combat is naturally a dramatic narrative tool; incidentally combat is also the largest singular set of actions that require rules. I've never encountered a system that split a dinner party into dozens of variables of abilities and interactions while reducing combat down to a few hostile resolution skills called things like "Killing" and "Not Dying" -unlike Persuasion and Empathy and the like being design standard schema.
Bad RP isn't dangerous because at the minimum there aren't rules for dying of embarrassment.

Yeah, a great GM can save a bad encounter like a bad GM can damn an interesting one. Nor do I consider my experiences to be the prevailing experiences of all the players for a given encounter.
But I won't be silent about what a bad damn idea the RPG Arms Race always is and how suggesting that getting ruthless about Helpless-inducing effects in response to things like Solidify Water is appalling because a) I care way too much about this setting, and b) I'm not lucky.
When Illir decides a "Fire-From-Heaven" lesson is in order I tend to be the one who forgot his asbestos umbrella, and consequently I've come to appreciate how easily the little weeny PC's can be mulched because I had a ring-side seat to the three revisions of Lifewarden while Psi-Warriors and Warped Ones went on unchecked.

I don't mean to drag up the past to shame anyone, but I do mean to make the point that priorities are mixed up when a d4 versus d6 hit die is a conversation rager while having a 50 Strength ("I have a 30 Might and a 30 Prowess, of course it's balanced!") is almost unremarkable.

So is Solidify Water broken because it can be used to cause Helplessness?
Hell yes!
But the solution isn't to stump for eye-for-an-eye, but to debuff Helpless so that a party of Thralls on hot streak don't wipe a party.
How about they Push and dish out Strain when they hit instead? Piling on Recovery and Strain is a great way to punish without just butchering everyone.

Also, seriously. Sleep/Hold Person effects are where casters start demonstrating how broken they can be. If there's nothing like that for non-casters, it's probably a bad idea that could stand to be forgotten.
Enemy of My Enemy and Challenge both have progressive penalties, why not this other stuff?

Besides that we're going in circles; let's PM this out if you want. I'd rather not because, hey, circles.

I may have missed this in an earlier post but never underestimate the power of teamwork in defeating enemies. When faced with the Fire King (think that was his name) in the Tultipet BI my major contribution to that fight was to keep hitting him with the Awe spell to keep his clock pushed. Might be the baddest fighter on the board, but if he can't act he's a lot more likely to go down. Nobody complained about my lack of combat power in that fight. If you are resourceful you can usually find a way to contribute. I recall one fight in the old campaign where the actions of a 1st level bard enabled the high level players to capture the escaping bad guy. I would have never thought to use mage hand to trip a trap, but he did, and thus we bagged the bad guy.

Zac you aren't soliciting a critique of your posts, but I'm offering you one anyway. Your posts are too long and rambling. We talk about this stuff here in Portland; but online I can barely follow you. Please strive for a higher signal to noise ratio. Brevity and/or shorter sentences would help. Generally, 3-5 paragraphs is enough for one post.


This is a valid point. OTOH with leveling up there is a natural power creep in absolute power. That's fine. I'd like my Tier 5 character to be more powerful than my Tier 1 character. What we don't want is for the relative differences in power between PCs and NPCs to increase as we get to higher tiers. Or for the relative power between PCs to grow so great that some players feel like their (non combat optimized) PC doesn't contribute. That's pretty much what this thread is about.

I think every player has had that experience. Probably more than once. At the same time how many times has this happened to you in the last 4-5 years of the Crusade or Blessed Lands Arcs? I'm guessing that most of these experiences took place in another campaign.
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In some mods this is true. In others it isn't. The ratio varies by campaign. Overall I strongly disagree in Arcanis. Not least because getting to a happy-ish ending in To Die Alone (aka the module I wrote) depends more on thoughtfulness on the part of the PCs than on killing everyone who disagrees with you in Maren's court.

. And yet this returns to what I think is the rant I skipped past about high level warped ones. From the last campaign. Which is many years in the past and used an entirely different rules set. It might be all right to use the stories of Warped Ones as a cautionary tale about disparities in PC builds. But what numbers they pumped out back when does not (IMO) have much bearing to the analysis we're doing here.

This thread originally started as a spin-off of another one that was talking far more about the philosophy of BIs etc. The link to it is on page 1 of this thread. It might be more appropriate to move the philosophy discussion there or start a new thread.

As to the purpose of this thread, I'm still curious as to how much damage people typically do and how. Especially if dealing large amounts of damage frequently, how dedicated of a build is it i.e. what talents, techniques, runes, spells, etc. are required to pull it off and how much of those are self-provided?

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Let's see, my fighter Ursula swings a Tralian Hammer, she has a d10 might so that's d10 (which can explode) plus a d12 for damage, +1 for the hammer being exceptional. Say an average of 12-13 points of damage on a basic attack every 6 ticks. She has mighty swing and sweeping strike but ususally doesn't use them since they slow down the speed of the weapon (which is slow enough already ) I do have a Fire Rune on the hammer for an additional point of fire damage. I've got a wish list of things to boost her damage output but they have to wait until I hit Tier 2. At 1.6 that's a ways off.

As for Haakon my priest he uses an exceptional fervidite quarterstaff which does d6+1 as I recall with a d8 Might die. So say an average of 8-9 points every three ticks, assuming he's not casting. Plus additional damage against higher armored opponents. Certainly nothing to bring down the house but I try to carry my weight in a fight. I'd like to trick him out a bit with the staff, but alas I need other things more as a priest to make me more effective on that end.

While Sweeping Strike slows down the attack by 1 and adds recovery 2, you cut the total # of ticks / attack in half to a third. At Speed 7 Recovery 2 you get 2 or 3 attacks depending on the # of ranks you have. With 2 attacks it's 3.5 ticks per attack, at 3 attacks it's 2.33 ticks per attack. Likewise mighty swing while only adding damage to the first target is typically worth it when you consider overall damage. Your choice of course, but they are effective.



Nothing wrong with the damage, and as you mentioned the role Haakon plays isn't as a primary combatant or at least as primary damage dealer.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

I will definitely use Sweeping Strike and the rest of the toolbox if the opportunity presents itself, especially when trying to clear the board of minions. The things I am waiting for are Passing Strike and Vital Strike (as I remember the names since I don't have the books with me at work).