The Fear of God: Fierce, Fair, Fpowergaming and its Fplace in your Ftoolbox

Nirrum's most powerful attack involves recursive time

 

My most powerful attack on the other hand,  

So! Your group of localized adventuring forces has hit upon a positive feedback loop or a Powerful combo, and have become a bit much to deal with if you're being fair. But you have an edge that even they don't get access to. Unimaginably well trained harmonies in other things they're going to face. As a designer, a true mark of integrity and fairness is using only the tools that your audience can interact with as well to build encounters and tension against them. You of course, get to cheat in being so fair that they'll probably not even notice how fair you're being. So fair.

The secret is being a god.

The jist of this post is that, as is expected of most designers, you're going to throw more than one challenge at your players. This is taken so much for granted that they won't notice that the reason your ever-so-fair lethal challenges against them are so well-constructed is that you have so gods damned many opportunities. In most cases, their build and team is static, in some cases, less so, but it is still dependent on the co-ordination of multiple people. As a designer, your "party" on the other side of the encounter gets to cycle out literally every encounter.  Your narrow "loss" is arguably the ideal tension for an encounter (depending on your plots).

What this means is that you have the opportunity to come up with and exploit every character combination, that the system you're using would allow them to do as well.

Teamwork makes the Dream work

I don't like saying no to my groups. My driving question is "why not?" and the answer is never "the story would suffer." As touched on in my post on balance, they can't really do anything that I can't fix, and if they do something I like, I can take it. I can specifically make a team that functions on the mechanic that I like, especially because they are disposable. I believe it's the mark of a good actor that they find a way to boost the mechanics of their teammates, and concordantly, I believe that this is an idea that a designer should use when building challenges against their intended.

Consider the following, in 5e, One of my players managed to pull a staggering 999 damage in a single turn, with three turns prep.  Explosive, single-target ANNIHILATION. Rules as written, he could kill a warship with a pin. His bane? Two shootyboyes on horses. Battlemaster fighters in 5e  can grant eachother advantage to hit, and sharpshooter longbowmen do a lot of damage from very far away. Any feature, regardless of source, that applies to other party members for the benefit of the party should  be considered, provided action economy can be preserved. There's nothing quite as aggravating to a wargamer as using an action to make someone's attack better, when you could have just attacked and done more damage than you boosted, but if you can dole out your buffs, grant superior positioning and shield your team  all while achieving your objective directly? You're doing a good job. I like Battlemaster fighters the most for this, especially when fighting against parties of players. Enemies that move together and remove their opponent's control are enemies that are worth planning against.

Bards Stack

Anyone who ever went to a party knows that one guy who always brings a guitar. Where I live, just about everyone plays an instrument or two, so one time when we were camping, we ended up with two guitars, an improvised set of drums, a melodica, an ocarina, and just about everyone with a free mouth was singing or drinking. It was fantastic. Bards, it turns out, stack. One of the biggest pitfalls in planning battles and wargaming is underestimating the efficacy of redundancy. if something was good once, ask yourself, what would it be like if it was twice as powerful, if you had twice as many chances, or twice as much effect. That's the effect of having two of those things. The idea of building up synergy isn't excluded to the players, but they sacrifice versatility, a sacrifice that you don't need to make. As a designer, whether you're working with premade tools or making your own, always consider the option of five of any one thing in a row. Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Thief, Ranger? Weaksauce Party. Five Different Paladins? Unstoppable sauce. Who cares about springing traps when most of the time they don't even hit you and when they do, they do inconsequential amounts of damage in comparison to your ensemble of divine healing powers?  What  force of politics could hope to stop five bards who have a political agenda? Five barbarians walk into a bar. Who is walking out?

One of the examples I've used is this Team from the Danzuishanese military

The Eight-Spears General Loka Mastani(ENFP)(Two Hundred Hearts)(Fighter 13 Battlemaster)

A Punchy Green General Who's Never Alone

Age: 50
Hieght: 6'9
Weight:300

Loka is an effective fighter. There's no denying she is already a threat. What Makes Loka terrifying are the Seven other Dragonborn she will always have with her. She has hand-chosen these warfriends and they work with seamless teamwork, Using their battlemaster tactics to reposition and reallocate their resources. The eight spears of Danzuishan have always had a place in the military, and indeed were the first example of the ideology of The Echoing Immortality, but it has remained more of a badge. This particular batch of fighters isn't as effective as the others individually, but their teamwork is unrivalled. The crew all use dwarven plate and have spears that function as swords of wounding. The designs on their armor are striking Blue streaks over polished steel, with Loka's armor having gold trim. She finds people fantastic so long as they don't impede her, and has had more than one fight with the other spears because of this, but their brawling has served to strengthen their bonds.

• Temuza Lituja (Red, Fighter 11 battlemaster, Two Hundred Hearts)
• Manbalu Maheer (Brass, Fighter 11 battlemaster, Two Hundred Hearts)
• Cor Meum (Gold, Fighter 11 battlemaster, Two Hundred Hearts)
• Munani Oramakandra (Silver, Fighter 11 battlemaster, Two Hundred Hearts)
• Tempi Oramakandra (Silver, Fighter 11 battlemaster, Two Hundred Hearts)
• Katkame "Chief" Pamchar (Copper, Fighter 11 battlemaster, Two Hundred Hearts)
• Heze Morveni (White, Fighter 11 battlemaster, Two Hundred Hearts)

These guys use one of the Battlemaster feats to move each other around so they can maintain formation and harry their targets, working their way through them like mercury through aluminium. Who needs healing when your enemy is dead?

The blood of the Covenant is thicker than the water of the womb

Your position as the master of ceremonies to the game means that, as mentioned in previous posts, no person stands a chance against you. Though Damage hoses, supertanks, and those pesky talky-types might throw a wrench in your plans. Building teams to specifically target that player makes it easy to allow other, less-broken players to have fun in saving their problem solver from your devious trap. No matter what they do, you can have better synergies by tailoring those synergies to the situation.

Mishlia Pinralysraha Ra'u
-Nirrum