[DF] Challenging high DR parties

[Michael Lewis]

I'm running a group that has a cleric with the armor spell. He ends up giving the 1/2 ogre 3 or 4 points of DR and stands back and watches the mayhem. The 1/2 ogre usually ends up with over 8 points of DR.

Any suggestions.

[Dinadon]

Well, firstly read the combat advice in DF:2, but to save you the trouble for your specific case: Armor Divisors. Knocking the DR down by a half or a third without increasing base damage keeps the non-meat-shields away from binary encounters.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Grapples, magical darkness, corrosive attacks which will eat through and eventually destroy the underlying armor, attacks that impair senses rather than do damage (frex, nageteppos, the Flash spell, etc.), attacks which bypass armor or have an armor divisor, and the very occasional no mana zone are all good at dealing with this kind of thing.

[LemmingLord]

Mind control ogre; turn him on party. Have mind controller watch as the mayhem ensues and the cleric loses control of his biological functions.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Rotting fungi that infect and sicken; plagues; blob monsters - the possibilities are endless and backed by tradition. Who doesn't love a Gelatinous Cube attack?

[mlangsdorf]

Siege beasts and stone golems are designed for fighting people with heavy armor. You have DR8? This guy does an average of 14 damage per hit!

Let everyone else run away from the big monster or get crushed, and then the ogre can fight something that he needs armor to defend against.

[Nymdok]

The trick here isnt to penalize the 1/2 ogre for having high DR, the trick is getting him to use that DR to help the party.

Set the Damage fo the opponents appropriate to the Average DR of the party (including the armor spell) and their AD.

His DR 8 will pull the parties average up a bit which should put the rest of the party at a slight combat disadvantage. THis should encourage him to get out and take as much of the melee as possible and even defend the weaker players (which I assume is what he was designed for). If he doesnt, he'll soon be facing large number of opponents alone which isnt really good for anyone in gurps :)

Bodkin Tipped Arrows for Missle, Opponents with High enough skill to attack unarmored areas or chinks, and grappling multiple opponents are all ways to allow the ogre to feel that he's getting full mileage for his DR, but also that DR alone is not the answer.

Your player built a combat wombat for a reason. Let him fill that role. You'll know that your getting it right not when the player says "That DR didnt help at all!" but when he says "Whew! Im Glad I ahd that DR!" and the party agrees :)

Nymdok

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

I'm running a group that has a cleric with the armor spell. He ends up giving the 1/2 ogre 3 or 4 points of DR and stands back and watches the mayhem. The 1/2 ogre usually ends up with over 8 points of DR.

Any suggestions.

Well, 8 points of DR is hardly invulnerable, larger monsters won't have any trouble just blowing through it with raw damage, but for groups of smaller stuff, just have some keep him busy while the rest swarm the less protected people, such as the cleric.

[Bruno]

Yeah, the key is a variety of encounter types - if every encounter starts with mind-controlling the ogre or a cloud of poison gas, then the points he had to spend on natural DR, and the points the priest invested in spellcasting and defensive spells are wasted. That's not fun for anyone, and that's just not fair.

Running only physical-combat encounters that can NEVER penetrate DR 8 mean that the ogre is invulnerable and smart foes will try to evade him while only attacking everyone else in the party - that's almost an inversion of what I suspect your players were expecting, and it's also not very fun.

Mixing it up, so that people with good Will and HT can resist non-physical attacks (poison or disease or goo), swarms of littler fighters that can't hurt the ogre but can menace everyone else and with enough mobility to get around him to bother the rest of the party, AND fights with big goons for the ogre to go mano-a-mano with.

Heck, you can put all three in the same encounter - the opposing group will look suspiciously like a player character group, with a big tanker or two, some melee skirmishers (at least by comparison), and a spell caster or two ;)

[TJA]

Fine reply, Nymdok!

I had my group stumble upon a SM +4, 7 metric tons Dragon with ST 40 (only), who did basic 4d+1 impaling damage with the bonus for being combat-trained: 4d+9 = 6d+2

Bite (Fangs): 6d+1 (impaling)
Claw (Sharp Claws): 6d+1 (cutting)
Kick (Sharp Claws): 6d+2 (cutting)

They managed it, but the fighter who was "grappled to bite" was nearly dead too.

So, just take dragons :P