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My personal belief is that PC hit points are approximately twice as valuable as monster hit points. i.e. if your rogue is standing in the middle of a group of creatures doing 25-30 damage per round but taking 15-20 in return you're probably getting a negative net return in terms of projected victory in that encounter. I would be interested in hearing other peoples perspective on this.
I mostly focus on "hard" encounters for analysis both because these are the most critical points in the campaign for seeing how effective pc's are and if something doesn't "work" in an easy encounter it's unlikely to adversely affect the pc survivability. PC's are sort of on a constant pass fail system with regard to encounters. It only takes one "failure" for the pc's to wind up dead so they're basically required to pass them all.
Minions make this comparison more difficult because you start having to account for them as more than 1HP. If a wizard hits a minion with magic missile for 11 dmg 10 is wasted. The minion effectively soaked up 11 damage even though it only had 1 hp. All monsters will usually soak up some extra damage on the killing blow because of the nature of the game but so do pc's this only becomes a significant problem because of the design of minions and their 1HP. I usually use 6-7 HP's when talking about minions because they'll usually take 4-10 dmg minimum when they get hit.
5 orc raiders led by an orc berserker is a 875 exp encounter. This is N+3 for a level 1 group of 5 pc's. 296 hp
8 goblin warriors and 3 goblin cutters is also 875 exp and 250 hp's if you accept minions as 6 for this kind of comparison.
5 pc's have roughly 125-130HP's at level 1
In simplistic terms, in order for the pc's to "pass" they must put out 250+ damage before they take 125
This is the basis for my question/assumption/point.
PC hit points are about 2x value of monster hit points and thus healing is about twice as powerful as damage.
I don't think it's as simple as you're making out.
I don't think there's a magic number you can apply to say this is better than that.
In general you'll be facing things that have more hit points than the pcs do, but I don't think that makes (for example) healing more important than damage because if you take out enemies faster they have less chances to heal you.
If you kill a monster in 2 rounds compared to 4 then you take half the damage from it (generally).
In terms of minions don't forget that area affects tend to wipe them out.
They have at least 25% plus HP than you calculated due to second wind. Add leaders, special powers that allow you to spend healing surge, reduce damage or gain temp hp, and you will find that the PCs are about on par with the monsters.
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In simplistic terms, in order for the pc's to "pass" they must put out 250+ damage before they take 125
I know you have acknowledged the possibility of getting healed in your OP but you can't then pretend that the PCs will have lost by the time they take 125 HP worth of damage. I don't think you will ever see a fight get to that point without the PCs using heal well before that. So in effect, they can take more than 125.
Of course, it is still a good idea to do your best to have double the damage output over your opposition... It pretty much guarantees victory.
They have at least 25% plus HP than you calculated due to second wind. Add leaders, special powers that allow you to spend healing surge, reduce damage or gain temp hp, and you will find that the PCs are about on par with the monsters.
I'm not sure I agree with on par though clearly they have the potential to have much more than I've suggested. First many a pc has hit the deck without taking a second wind. Additionally there's a the possibility the healer will be stunned, downed, killed, dazed etc. Additionally some of the healing comes from dailies or daily use items so the party won't always have that in every encounter.
There's also the possibility that a party will not have a leader. Though I feel it's a terrible choice and unless your DM designs encounters specifically to your strengths you'll eventually get killed. I participated in a thread on another site where some people projected that an optimum build for a party would be something along the lines of all elves, 3 rangers, 2 wizards, high stealth, high perception, get lots of surprise, kill before things get in range, move 7 as a party so that retreating was easier to maintain separation etc. I argued pretty hard that any party without a leader was pretty fragile and much more likely to run into a tpk situation, I was semi flamed into just giving up on the thread.
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Originally Posted by Mal Malenkirk
I know you have acknowledged the possibility of getting healed in your OP but you can't then pretend that the PCs will have lost by the time they take 125 HP worth of damage. I don't think you will ever see a fight get to that point without the PCs using heal well before that. So in effect, they can take more than 125.
Of course, it is still a good idea to do your best to have double the damage output over your opposition... It pretty much guarantees victory.
It's definitely not as simple as I've suggested and I agree the pc's won't be dead at 125 HP's because they'll act to stop that from happening. Monsters also have some healing in some cases though pc's far outshine the monsters in that regard. The orcs in the OP for example have about 70hp's worth of healing as well.
My point here being how much is healing worth in comparison to damage, I admit the PC's have more hit points than I presented in the simple example but my point is still healing is MORE powerful than damage.
It's probably over simplified to say 200% value for pc hit points as to monster hit points but I think I can make a very strong case for somewhere in the middle.
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I don't think it's as simple as you're making out.
I don't think there's a magic number you can apply to say this is better than that.
In general you'll be facing things that have more hit points than the pcs do, but I don't think that makes (for example) healing more important than damage because if you take out enemies faster they have less chances to heal you.
If you kill a monster in 2 rounds compared to 4 then you take half the damage from it (generally).
But you're assuming you'll kill the monster twice as fast. Why? Clerics can apply healing without fail (no to hit roll) as a minor. This also increases the value of healing, basically making it a "second attack" in a round for a character. Healing is flexible as well. It can be applied to the person with the most damage which makes getting pc's down much harder than getting monsters down. If every pc had 200% of hit points but there was no healing at all would parties be as tough? I don't think so.
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In terms of minions don't forget that area affects tend to wipe them out.
sort of irrelevant. area affects would still damage non minions as well. If you're targeting an area with minions in it you're potentially not targeting another area that has more normal creatures so the overkill or blow-through is still valid. minions also all effectively have the feat evasion. if you miss and would have done half damage they're not hurt all. more wasted damage.
If you include the Second Wind then PCs and monsters are mostly even in hit points when leveling up. The real imbalance is between monster hit points and the PCs damage output. Monsters gain 8 hit points on average per level but PC damage only increase with ability score increases and better magic weapons.
This means that at level 1 it takes 3 or 4 hits to kill a monster or a PC but at level 10 it takes 8 to 10 hits to kill it. Which means combat takes more time to resolve.
Yeah, there are more factors involved. In order to do a complete battle analysis you would have to consider both the damage taking and damage dealing capabilities of each force OVER TIME. You will quickly find out there is actually no 'set' ratio of value you can put on healing vs damage dealing.
Just as a general observation: if the monsters are small in number and have lots of hit points, then healing becomes more of a premium because damage done to the monsters will have little immediate impact on their ability to do damage in return. Thus if you are say taking on a solo monster then healing is generally going to be at its maximum premium since the monster will still be dishing it out until the last round of the fight.
At the other extreme waves of low level monsters attacking the party will maximize the overall ability to do damage since each monster that is wiped out is one less monster that can hit back. Overkill DOES work against that to some extent and as you observed minions are the extreme example. What that tells me is that it is more valuable to have a lower damage and higher hit percentage attack which does more DPR on average. That attack will suffer less 'overkill penalty' and the most precious of all are those attacks which can hit multiple opponents. This is why wizards are so incredibly effective against large numbers of opponents.
Defensive strengths will obviously also factor into the equation, but defense can essentially be modeled like extra hit points, considering only basic damage and not other effects anyway. Which of course brings us to the next part of the question, which is how good are all these stuns and dazes and etc?
Obviously there is a good deal of tactical variation when it comes to effects, but in essence they are going to factor in like extra hit points for your side. If a monster cannot attack, then it cannot hit, and that will reduce its DPR. Thus it makes a certain amount of sense to trade hit points or healing for the ability to put a useful condition on a monster. Again this is subject in essence to the 'overkill tax', it is pretty much valueless to stun a minion in terms of overall enemy effectiveness.
I would also like to point out that the 'test' point is a factor. Overall it is not too important from a campaign character survival perspective to talk about individual encounters. Which is more dangerous, a monster that does a guaranteed 5 points per round to your 1st level party, or one that hits 5% of the time and does 45 points per hit? Obviously the latter monster is more of an actual threat to the party overall. It can on average kill off a PC in a single blow, even though on average it does less damage. It may well be that this high damage monster is less of a threat in a given ENCOUNTER, but a party which constantly faces this sort of brute monster will eventually run out of luck and perish, whereas the party facing mostly the low damage monster type is likely to dish out more overall than it takes and since they know exactly what they're being hit by every round they should be able to easily guage their success or failure right from the start. This is one advantage of minions and other weak damage monsters, they offer a fairly predictable battle outcome.
One can also draw various conclusions about tactics from all of this. Overall a party will have greater chances of long term success when they adopt tactics which minimize the monsters ability to dish out lots of damage in big chunks, thus making it more predictable. Bottlenecking monsters in a corridor for instance is overall smarter than rushing into rooms and taking them all on at once because in that case a lucky group of monsters could simply crush the party. One monster attacking at a time can get just as lucky overall, but the party has a lot more control of that situation (and a lot more easy access to its healing powers).
The ironic thing about leaders, especially the warlord which does a lot of 'party control' style stuff is that they are at their most effective when the party overall is at its LEAST effective. One might almost say having a warlord in the group is a band-aide for the healing bad party tactics. Thus in terms of building an 'optimum' overall party I would say that for a group with good tactics and designing their party for maximum damage and survivability potential they would be better off skipping the warlord. They might even be better off skipping ANY leaders, but that will really be pretty dependent on the nature of the encounters they are going to have.
Yeah, there are more factors involved. In order to do a complete battle analysis you would have to consider both the damage taking and damage dealing capabilities of each force OVER TIME. You will quickly find out there is actually no 'set' ratio of value you can put on healing vs damage dealing.
Just as a general observation: if the monsters are small in number and have lots of hit points, then healing becomes more of a premium because damage done to the monsters will have little immediate impact on their ability to do damage in return. Thus if you are say taking on a solo monster then healing is generally going to be at its maximum premium since the monster will still be dishing it out until the last round of the fight.
At the other extreme waves of low level monsters attacking the party will maximize the overall ability to do damage since each monster that is wiped out is one less monster that can hit back. Overkill DOES work against that to some extent and as you observed minions are the extreme example. What that tells me is that it is more valuable to have a lower damage and higher hit percentage attack which does more DPR on average. That attack will suffer less 'overkill penalty' and the most precious of all are those attacks which can hit multiple opponents. This is why wizards are so incredibly effective against large numbers of opponents.
Defensive strengths will obviously also factor into the equation, but defense can essentially be modeled like extra hit points, considering only basic damage and not other effects anyway. Which of course brings us to the next part of the question, which is how good are all these stuns and dazes and etc?
Obviously there is a good deal of tactical variation when it comes to effects, but in essence they are going to factor in like extra hit points for your side. If a monster cannot attack, then it cannot hit, and that will reduce its DPR. Thus it makes a certain amount of sense to trade hit points or healing for the ability to put a useful condition on a monster. Again this is subject in essence to the 'overkill tax', it is pretty much valueless to stun a minion in terms of overall enemy effectiveness.
I would also like to point out that the 'test' point is a factor. Overall it is not too important from a campaign character survival perspective to talk about individual encounters. Which is more dangerous, a monster that does a guaranteed 5 points per round to your 1st level party, or one that hits 5% of the time and does 45 points per hit? Obviously the latter monster is more of an actual threat to the party overall. It can on average kill off a PC in a single blow, even though on average it does less damage. It may well be that this high damage monster is less of a threat in a given ENCOUNTER, but a party which constantly faces this sort of brute monster will eventually run out of luck and perish, whereas the party facing mostly the low damage monster type is likely to dish out more overall than it takes and since they know exactly what they're being hit by every round they should be able to easily guage their success or failure right from the start. This is one advantage of minions and other weak damage monsters, they offer a fairly predictable battle outcome.
One can also draw various conclusions about tactics from all of this. Overall a party will have greater chances of long term success when they adopt tactics which minimize the monsters ability to dish out lots of damage in big chunks, thus making it more predictable. Bottlenecking monsters in a corridor for instance is overall smarter than rushing into rooms and taking them all on at once because in that case a lucky group of monsters could simply crush the party. One monster attacking at a time can get just as lucky overall, but the party has a lot more control of that situation (and a lot more easy access to its healing powers).
The ironic thing about leaders, especially the warlord which does a lot of 'party control' style stuff is that they are at their most effective when the party overall is at its LEAST effective. One might almost say having a warlord in the group is a band-aide for the healing bad party tactics. Thus in terms of building an 'optimum' overall party I would say that for a group with good tactics and designing their party for maximum damage and survivability potential they would be better off skipping the warlord. They might even be better off skipping ANY leaders, but that will really be pretty dependent on the nature of the encounters they are going to have.
really insightful stuff, I agree that wizards are extremely powerful in large encounters, usually outperforming the strikers in raw damage delivered though being hampered by the inability to deal it out in massive chunks to one creature. I also agree that tactics are critical for party success and minimizing the number of attackers via bottlenecking or any other means of controlling the number of attacks and actions the bad guys take is all tantamount to success in 4e.
I strongly disagree about not needing a leader. First the ability to heal a character (and this character changes from encounter to encounter) that is in trouble gives a kind of flexible pool of hit points to the party that is not duplicable without a cleric/warlord/insert phb version here. Warlords are good and clerics are better in my experience. Radiant damage being a plus and access to more healing as well as easier access to bonus saving throws being the two primary reasons I like clerics better. They can also put out a fair amount of damage on their own with the right powers. Nothing offsets stun/daze/immobilize so well as sacred flame. Wolf pack tactics certainly has it's appeal but lance of faith and sacred flame as a combo of at-wills are better than any other class at wills with the exception of maybe wizard. temp hit points, bonus saves, or a power bonus to attack and all the while targeting reflex instead of fort or ac which on a lot of monsters are pretty high.
Adventuring without a leader is asking to be killed. Anyone who has ever faced ghouls will attest to the massive benefits of clerics.
3 ghouls vs 4 pcs at level 2. 600 exp level 3 encounter which is n+1 so not particularly dangerous. Take a rogue, fighter, wizard and add any 4th pc and try and play this out. If that 4th pc is not a cleric the party dies more than half the time in most instances. Add a 4th ghoul (n+3 encounter) and even with the cleric it's about 50/50 TPK I'm guessing, probably a 95% TPK without a cleric. Really comes down to some dailies hitting and the wizard having sphere and NEVER becoming stunned.
A lot of it depends on how effective the characters are - I just played a session (each) with two different groups in which no combat healing was done. In one, the leader didn't show up that session and we went on to just kill everything just fine - no 'Hard' fights though (so I suggested the DM consider upping the difficulty some). In the other, we had the healing and did two encounters that were in theory hard enough, but we had two leaders, buckets of healing, and the challenge was to see if healing was even necessary... and ends up it wasn't. Sure, people took damage, but no one fell down with good tactics and focus fire.
So... healing is only useful when needed. Damage is always useful.
Yeah, that's been my experience too. Healing is pretty handy, but it is really mostly a way to make up for bad luck or bad tactics. I think overall I would vote for having a cleric in most parties just because you'll run into those situations where you misjudge things or just plain MUST retreat, at which point you're probably going to need to keep the weaker party members going if they're getting out.
Of course my original analysis didn't factor in things like 'clerics have attacks that do mass extra damage to most undead'. Those are factors that will always skew things in particular situations. Likewise if you have artillery monsters that melee characters cannot get at due to terrain then you will really need range damage strikers, etc.
Tactically though a few observations can be made. Ranged attackers are generally going to be more flexible than melee attackers. You can always take a bow shot at someone at point blank, you cannot hit some monster that stays at range with a melee attack. Again you obviously cannot take that to an extreme due to OAs, but a party with 3 ranged strikers/wizards has some amazing flexibility in terms of how they can attack. Combine them with 2 defenders and you have a pretty strong combo.
Of course none of this is telling us that such a party is the 'best' in overall terms. It is more fun to have more variety and other types of characters are obviously going to be quite handy in non-combat situations (rogues especially). Still, I think the 'you need to fill all roles' paradigm is a bit oversold, especially at higher levels.
A lot of it depends on how effective the characters are - I just played a session (each) with two different groups in which no combat healing was done. In one, the leader didn't show up that session and we went on to just kill everything just fine - no 'Hard' fights though (so I suggested the DM consider upping the difficulty some). In the other, we had the healing and did two encounters that were in theory hard enough, but we had two leaders, buckets of healing, and the challenge was to see if healing was even necessary... and ends up it wasn't. Sure, people took damage, but no one fell down with good tactics and focus fire.
So... healing is only useful when needed. Damage is always useful.
I need examples of the encounters to speak rationally about them. More importantly if you're trying to make a point that healing isn't that important, you'll definitely have to back that up with credible examples. Your examples are also kind of poor from the stand point that an encounter where no pc is in danger of being dropped is really not an encounter worth measuring. This kind of encounter is only good for "giving away exp" i.e. the game is more a narrative than a game since your pc's are in no danger. The other use for a minimal encounter is in tying plot hooks in to the story. Beyond that it's sort of an exercise in rolling.
Focus fire is a very viable tactic in 4e. Almost required. That said I'm unsure if you're offering this as a counterpoint to my point about clerics. I can prove mathematically that focus fire alone won't save you in the ghoul example. It won't save you in many examples. Focus fire also works both ways. If you don't kill the ghouls before they attack and the ghouls pair up two each on two pc's the odds of at least one pc being stunned is above 50%. The other is ~75% likely to be immobilized. Put three ghouls on one pc and that pc might be dead. Put all 4 ghouls on one pc with less than 22 AC and he likely is down.
I play in a campaign where we (the dm and players) enjoy the danger level to be high. As such our standard encounter is n+2 and our tough encounters are n+3 or 4 usually. Last week we had an n+2 that was pretty brutal. Hindering terrain, 4 level 5 pc's vs 2 gricks and a grell. grell is a soldier with stun and flying which was tough to handle with the pc's in difficult terrain. The grell can easily hit most pc's as it has an attack +12 vs fort and can immediately follow this up with a powerful minor that both stuns and does damage.
Saying damage is always useful and healing is only useful when it's needed is kind of ridiculous when based upon bland anecdotal evidence of encounters that have no real impact on the game. Even then the healing words would have saved a couple surges after the battle before the short rest. i.e. a 3rd level rogue with 17 dmg will probably be close to 100% with a couple surges or a single surge and healing word.
So... healing is only useful when needed. Damage is always useful.
This pretty much sums it up.
Healing is a safety net of the PCs.
The first safety net is Encounter powers. The second safety net is hit points. The third safety net is healing powers and the last safety net is Daily powers.
The reason I order them this way is that for average encounters, Players prefer to use an Encounter power to getting hit, prefer getting hit to using up a heal, prefer using up a heal to using up a Daily. As a general rule, just due to resource management. This order changes for extremely threatening encounters where using a Daily becomes the preference in order to save other resources.
But if the heal safety net is not there, it just means that the final safety net (Daily powers) becomes more important in an earlier encounter and the group gets fewer encounters per day (due to using up more healing surges during rests and due to using Daily powers earlier). It's just (typically) a shorter adventuring day.
__________________ The first sign of a broken rule is when someone suggests that the way to stop it is by readying an action.
Yeah, that's been my experience too. Healing is pretty handy, but it is really mostly a way to make up for bad luck or bad tactics. I think overall I would vote for having a cleric in most parties just because you'll run into those situations where you misjudge things or just plain MUST retreat, at which point you're probably going to need to keep the weaker party members going if they're getting out.
The less dangerous a campaign the less healing matters. That's pretty obvious. The more encounters you have of N or N-1 variety the less you'll feel the need for healing. There's two problems with this. In N-2 to N+1 encounters, it hardly ever matters if you make tactical errors or have bad luck. You're going to win those encounters 99% of the time. It's my experience that if you're not in need of healing you're facing weak encounters. I'm extremely tactical. I've been at the top of leader boards in many multi-player war games, CCG's and strategy games. I don't think many pc's are operating in a much more tactically proficient manner than I normally do, so I can't easily accept "tactics" as a silver bullet fix. Lets not forget the monsters have tactics too.
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
Of course my original analysis didn't factor in things like 'clerics have attacks that do mass extra damage to most undead'. Those are factors that will always skew things in particular situations. Likewise if you have artillery monsters that melee characters cannot get at due to terrain then you will really need range damage strikers, etc.
I agree. I think you need to be able to handle the wide gamut of potential encounter types. In magic the gathering there were tight decks that could win a high number of games in under 5 turns but in order to win a tournament it might serve the player better to make a looser deck with more provisions for handling other expected decks. You might win fewer games in 5 turns sliding to 7 or 8 but not lose a game here or there. The same analogy can be drawn of the "tight" striker/controller party. In some encounters they will pound their foes to dust in just a few rounds, but at the expense of being vulnerable in other types of encounters. Since DnD is pass fail and the pc's need to repeatedly pass it's much better to get 2 90's 6 80's and 2 70's than to get 8 90's a 70 and a 10. Both have a B average but one leaves the pc's dead.
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
Tactically though a few observations can be made. Ranged attackers are generally going to be more flexible than melee attackers. You can always take a bow shot at someone at point blank, you cannot hit some monster that stays at range with a melee attack. Again you obviously cannot take that to an extreme due to OAs, but a party with 3 ranged strikers/wizards has some amazing flexibility in terms of how they can attack. Combine them with 2 defenders and you have a pretty strong combo.
This is all true. Amazing damage output, lots of flexibility, will steam roll some encounters other groups struggle with. Then wind up just as dead in an encounter with disadvantageous terrain and the wrong creatures. the ghoul encounter is the perfect example. Your mobility is ended as soon as 2 pc's are immobilized which against rangers is round 1. Are you going to write them off and retreat with the three remaining?
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
Of course none of this is telling us that such a party is the 'best' in overall terms. It is more fun to have more variety and other types of characters are obviously going to be quite handy in non-combat situations (rogues especially). Still, I think the 'you need to fill all roles' paradigm is a bit oversold, especially at higher levels.
I don't think you need to fill all roles. I do think it's optimal. Each role has encounter types where their presence is critically important. The fighters mark saved us from the grell. The flaming sphere has saved us numerous times. The rogues damage output is sometimes critical in keeping us alive and yet the whole group feels the cleric is the most important character. Take away a role and I'll give you examples of when we would have been in big trouble. I can't really decide what's the optimum party but I can poke a ton of holes in the elf ranger/wizard party.
Nah, you're thinking WAY WAY WAY too much inside the box. We've been playing these sorts of games here for 25 years, at least. If you stick to really seriously sound military tactics 99% of encounters are trivial and the other 1% are simply unwinnable scenarios where you're party is so overmatched that no tactic would suffice.
The ghoul encounter example for instance. Any party that EVER closed with the ghouls would deserve to lose that encounter. Pure and simple. Go back and read your Art of War or your Clausewitz. First of all you never take on an enemy without completely understanding what that enemy is and what the terrain is. It is simply not the way to win.
In terms of the ghoul encounter, I don't know what the terrain was for that encounter, but lets suppose it is the typical sort of dungeon crawl situation where you open the door and the bad guys are right there in your face. You've already failed because you should have found out what was on the other side before you committed yourselves to the battle. There would be a variety of ways to do that. One would be to simply have a character with sufficient mobility to immediately disengage open the door while the rest of the party remains at a significant distance. We always do that. Another useful tactic is to create some blocking terrain between the party and the door before opening it. Trip ropes, caltrops, portable traps, and portable forms of difficult terrain are all quite feasible, as are fires, etc. All easily arranged by a sufficiently prepared team.
It also helps a lot to have various other preparations in mind, like some way to generate a significant amount of concealment to cover any needed retreat. Smoke is pretty easy to do that with. That can also degrade or deny an artillery monster its effectiveness while your ranged attacks take out the front line of the monsters.
You should also NEVER fight on the terrain chosen by the enemy. Always force them to come to you and control the parameters of the battlefield in your favor. Got a problem with an orc lair? Smoke them out. Another good tactic is to simply use attrition against the enemy. Sooner or later some of those orcs have to come out to find something to eat or do whatever it is they do. Suppose they all come boiling out looking for a fight? Superior mobility (say being mounted) will allow you to engage selected parts of the enemy force at range and deny them the ability to force you to a battle on their terms.
Now, can a DM create encounter situations that are impossible? Of course. But I promise you that if you give me any standard style published type of adventure and myself and the people I normally play with, we won't even normally take more than trivial damage anywhere along the way Sure as heck won't absolutely require healing in 80% of these situations.
About the best a DM can do is throw a really tough single solo fast flying monster at you, like a dragon. Those can be tough, but they are by far the exception and can still be dealt with if you know exactly what you're up against.
Nah, you're thinking WAY WAY WAY too much inside the box. We've been playing these sorts of games here for 25 years, at least. If you stick to really seriously sound military tactics 99% of encounters are trivial and the other 1% are simply unwinnable scenarios where you're party is so overmatched that no tactic would suffice.
This statement seems absurdly out of touch with reality. The spectrum of encounters doesn't touch anything between trivial and overmatched?
Then you go on to presume that all parties should figure out what's behind every door, will never get ambushed, etc.?
There's thinking outside the box and then there's dreaming outside the box.
A lot of it depends on how well you could spread damage in the group (a lot of groups overdefend or make it too easy for monsters to themselves focus fire) and what ways you have to mitigate damage. For example, Armor of Agathys provides a nice buffer of temporary hp and I did use that on one combat and our defender does get 8 temp hp per combat... that said, no one would have dropped even without those temp hp. But basically having another striker instead of a leader often gives enough damage output to actually kill things.
The ghoul example is a little rude, because ghouls are frankly broken (even more so than a normal level 5 soldier, much like needlefang drake swarms), but if you can funnel the ghouls into a doorway or corridor, use the flaming sphere to clog the way, that at least buys you some time and makes it manageable.
To be honest the real strength of the cleric in your example isn't necessarily the healing, but ready radiant damage and turn undead.
Okie, the group with two leaders... 5th level group, the encounters were EL 7. So both +2 - first was an elite 7, normal 9, some minions that provided status effects, and some terrain-ish effects (hostages and a fire), and the second was a level 6 solo with a level 6 hazardous terrain effect.
No one was in any great danger of dropping, though some people were certainly injured and some bloodying happened. Bastion of Health was used in one of the fights, cause it does 3W damage, but I don't believe anyone fell to 9 hp or lower (ie, that the temp hp mattered that much).
Nah, you're thinking WAY WAY WAY too much inside the box. We've been playing these sorts of games here for 25 years, at least. If you stick to really seriously sound military tactics 99% of encounters are trivial and the other 1% are simply unwinnable scenarios where you're party is so overmatched that no tactic would suffice.
This is hard to fathom. I've also been playing these games for 30'ish years and that's not at all what my experience or the data suggests. If you assume the other side is sticking to sound military tactics too then they must feel that the encounters are 1% trivial and 99% unwinable by your math. Give me a build and I'll present you with 3 common encounter scenarios that seriously test that build. If you're experiencing 99% cake walks and 1% unfair why would you bother playing this game? I would say if this is your experience you're playing with awful DM's.
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
The ghoul encounter example for instance. Any party that EVER closed with the ghouls would deserve to lose that encounter. Pure and simple. Go back and read your Art of War or your Clausewitz. First of all you never take on an enemy without completely understanding what that enemy is and what the terrain is. It is simply not the way to win.
I have read the Art of War and Von Clausewitz. None of that applies to DnD. If you always have the terrain advantage and always "know your enemy" you're playing a different game than me. And 95% of the rest of the DnD word. Turns out in more than half of the encounters in DnD the pc's are moving into an area already controlled and defended by the bad guys. The bad guys might have terrain advantages and traps on their side, pretty much guaranteeing the pc's are at a disadvantage not an advantage.
We always try to ascertain what we're facing to the best of our ability but sometimes in DnD you're placed in a situation without any warning and no method of retreat. In your 25 years of playing have your pc's ever entered an alley or cave for any reason? Been on a boat? Fallen in a pit? No party ever tries to close with the ghouls but the ghouls do try to close with you. Is this difficult to understand? You're in a crypt (wait let me ask have your pc's ever entered a crypt?) a large room 80' wide and 150' long with an altar at the end of the room... columns flank the walls at 10' intervals. As your party gets close to the altar suddenly the sound of shifting stones can be heard as 4 secret doors open and ghouls rush into the room from both sides. Sun Tzu never had to deal with ghouls or surprise rounds...
Once again if this encounter seems "outside the bounds" of normal DnD to you, we're probably not really discussing the same game and I would say you're playing the narrative story version.
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
In terms of the ghoul encounter, I don't know what the terrain was for that encounter, but lets suppose it is the typical sort of dungeon crawl situation where you open the door and the bad guys are right there in your face. You've already failed because you should have found out what was on the other side before you committed yourselves to the battle.
Ghouls can be silently waiting in the shadows. Ghouls can be behind things. Ghouls can be in the bottom of the pit. Ghouls can board your ship at night from the ghost ship. The assertion that you can always control the encounter in DnD is ridiculous and speaks to me of a game that's no fun at all to play. If your dm just rolls over and lets you dominate every encounter why would you bother?
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
There would be a variety of ways to do that. One would be to simply have a character with sufficient mobility to immediately disengage open the door while the rest of the party remains at a significant distance.
This is laughable. Many monsters out pace pc's so planning on a "safe distance" and "disengaging" really means that sometimes your scout faces 1-2 rounds of attacks all by himself. Be sure you wave good bye before he goes down the alley alone. When your sneaky elven ranger pads down the hallway but is facing high perception ambush creatures he's effectively isolated himself which in DnD is bad. What happens to him when the large stone block falls behind him cutting him off from the party?
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
We always do that. Another useful tactic is to create some blocking terrain between the party and the door before opening it. Trip ropes, caltrops, portable traps, and portable forms of difficult terrain are all quite feasible, as are fires, etc. All easily arranged by a sufficiently prepared team.
If you "always" do that, I would suggest that the DM is very weak in your campaigns or the scout player is frequently rolling up a new character. If the sum total of your dnd experience is opening doors and finding the monsters directly in front of you I think perhaps it's you that needs to think outside the box. How much firewood are your pc's carrying for these fires?
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
It also helps a lot to have various other preparations in mind, like some way to generate a significant amount of concealment to cover any needed retreat. Smoke is pretty easy to do that with. That can also degrade or deny an artillery monster its effectiveness while your ranged attacks take out the front line of the monsters.
smoke works both ways. you can't always retreat in DnD. Everyone tries to prepare for combat including the monsters in a well run campaign. It appears to me that you are playing against "dumb" monsters blindly waiting like zombies for pc's to spring the trap on them. Your campaigns must be brutally slow as the pc's endlessly build a smoky fire in every room prior to opening any doors. Does the smoke ever attract the monsters in another room who wind up cutting off your retreat and putting you in a "double encounter"?
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
You should also NEVER fight on the terrain chosen by the enemy. Always force them to come to you and control the parameters of the battlefield in your favor. Got a problem with an orc lair? Smoke them out. Another good tactic is to simply use attrition against the enemy. Sooner or later some of those orcs have to come out to find something to eat or do whatever it is they do. Suppose they all come boiling out looking for a fight? Superior mobility (say being mounted) will allow you to engage selected parts of the enemy force at range and deny them the ability to force you to a battle on their terms.
In heroic fantasy there are an infinite number of reasons why you might feel compelled to go forth into unknown terrain. "the screams of a young girl being tortured waft down the dark corridor". You can't always control the battle field. In real life you can control it less than half the time. How come we're not able to smoke out insurgents? Sometimes you have to go house to house. I've had a lot of training in house to house and room to room combat. I understand the principles and tactics that can be employed, no matter what you "think" it reality the tactics are designed to level the the playing field as much as possible but the defenders still have some advantages. you can't always mitigate them. To suggest that the pc's control the encounter in even 50% of the situations is kind of montyhaul'ish.
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
Now, can a DM create encounter situations that are impossible? Of course. But I promise you that if you give me any standard style published type of adventure and myself and the people I normally play with, we won't even normally take more than trivial damage anywhere along the way Sure as heck won't absolutely require healing in 80% of these situations.
The published encounters have lots of trivial n to n-2 encounters. I disagree strongly that you'll not take more than trivial damage in the n+2 or greater encounters. Once again give me a build and I'll point you to a bad situation.
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Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
About the best a DM can do is throw a really tough single solo fast flying monster at you, like a dragon. Those can be tough, but they are by far the exception and can still be dealt with if you know exactly what you're up against.
your DM appears to be awful. Every tactic you've recommended can be employed by the monsters. Your pc's can be trapped in a dead end or surrounded and if you try and block the doors the gnolls can roll barrels of burning oil into them filling your room with smoke and giving you endurance checks to avoid penalties.
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Originally Posted by keterys
A lot of it depends on how well you could spread damage in the group (a lot of groups overdefend or make it too easy for monsters to themselves focus fire) and what ways you have to mitigate damage.
This is sort of anecdotal and straw man. i.e. a lot of groups play badly and don't maneuver. How do you prevent gnoll huntmasters who ambush a party as it crosses a bridge from applying focus fire? If you believe Abdul, you already knew that the gnolls were there and you deployed smoke grenades to cover your crossing. Perhaps you traveled 100 miles further to go around the gorge and avoid the ambush and let the escaping bandits get away with <insert import item or person here>.
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Originally Posted by keterys
For example, Armor of Agathys provides a nice buffer of temporary hp and I did use that on one combat and our defender does get 8 temp hp per combat... that said, no one would have dropped even without those temp hp. But basically having another striker instead of a leader often gives enough damage output to actually kill things.
You're using anecdotal evidence from one moderate encounter (which you're still not defining clearly.) as the basis of a flawed argument. Describe the party and the encounter, other wise it sounds a lot like you made this up. I repeatedly say "gnolls", "ghouls", "orcs", "gricks", "grells" in my examples. I'm using examples that are similar to encounters I've actually fought in so I know how they played out.
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Originally Posted by keterys
The ghoul example is a little rude, because ghouls are frankly broken (even more so than a normal level 5 soldier, much like needlefang drake swarms), but if you can funnel the ghouls into a doorway or corridor, use the flaming sphere to clog the way, that at least buys you some time and makes it manageable.
Ghouls are scary monsters. All soldiers are kind of scary and all monsters with stun are kind of scary, but I've faced these encounters and won so I don't think that you can say "broken". I think all soldiers are undervalued exp wise but when I use the ghoul encounter example I'm not using an N+4 to account for this. I give you a real world example that a normal build party can and has defeated and you call it broken because it destroys your healing/build theory. Try and offer support for why you think ghouls are broken. you're making random statements and asking us to take them as fact.
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Originally Posted by keterys
To be honest the real strength of the cleric in your example isn't necessarily the healing, but ready radiant damage and turn undead.
Actually your mistaken, after the one round of turn undead which gives the party a huge chance to take control of the battle and release the pressure of constantly suffering from effects, the big bonus of clerics are bonus saves. If I could only have one power from the three in a ghoul battle I would choose bonus saves over turn undead. radiant damage is a nice bonus too but it's the saves that keep the other members of the party standing. Healing is also pretty critical. Bottom line though, without bonus saves ghouls (and many many other creatures with stunning abilities) will eat you for lunch nearly every time. Stunning creatures and powerful undead creatures are not rare in DnD. The massive advantage clerics get in these kinds of situations is what makes them superior to warlords.
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Originally Posted by keterys
Okie, the group with two leaders... 5th level group, the encounters were EL 7. So both +2 - first was an elite 7, normal 9, some minions that provided status effects, and some terrain-ish effects (hostages and a fire), and the second was a level 6 solo with a level 6 hazardous terrain effect.
solo's are really bad examples. what percentage of encounters are solo's? Are solo encounter usually threatening? A level 6 solo is an N+1 encounter for level 5 pc's. The only solo I can find for level 6 is a young blue dragon which is threatening to level 2 pc's but sort of a joke for level 5 pc's. The best he can muster is 3 attacks per round while he's facing 5 attacks from the party. His attacks are pitifully weak +9 ATT d4+5 x 2??? Level 3 Orcs are more threatening. His breath weapon is even weak, three targets, average damage 12 per hit... This is a challenging encounter in your campaign? We're not playing the same game. Switch your 1250 encounter for two gricks and a grell. The monsters can now gain flanking, they have more attacks per round and all the attacks have better modifiers and better damage (the grell gets a second free attack if it hits with it's +12 vs fort attack) they can deploy a stun condition EVERY round not once in the entire encounter, they get two attacks per round that give ongoing damage, they have more hitpoints than the dragon and we only have 4 pc's not 5.
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Originally Posted by keterys
No one was in any great danger of dropping, though some people were certainly injured and some bloodying happened. Bastion of Health was used in one of the fights, cause it does 3W damage, but I don't believe anyone fell to 9 hp or lower (ie, that the temp hp mattered that much).
Of course no one was in danger, the encounter is a joke from a danger perspective. You're not really even making a point here.
Last edited by AngryPurpleCyclops; 12th March 2009 at 12:43 AM..
You're being a bit overly defensive on this issue APC. I'm not particular sure why, so I'm mostly not going to bother. The last 7 encounters I played in, I didn't need any healing in any of the encounters. Simple statement of fact. I asked what the ELs were of the 2 with the leaders since those were the only that seemed relevant. You exploded. Eh. If you care, it was a lot of gnoll and hyena stuff (and a crocotta), and the solo was some sorta undead snake thing in a room that was basically constant snake swarms on anyone in the room.
Now, I will respond on the ghoul assertion. I feel that ghouls are broken because their attack, defense, damage matrix is far above their level and they inflict persistent debilitative conditions. I frankly feel that the only reasonable way to inflict stunned (save ends) in heroic is in the style of the carrion crawler and that their method is far too nice when multiple ghouls are used. They're extremely unlikely to miss so in pairs can quickly stun enemies, but also have level +16 AC and level +15 Reflex making it difficult to retaliate.
Much like you can throw 5 needlefang swarm drakes at a level 1 party _and kill them before they get to take any actual actions_ but it isn't necessarily good for proving all that much.
Since you seem to care, apparently the encounters were:
a level 7 Gnoll Huntmaster with the Demonic Acolyte template (DMG) and an extra fire-based area attack
a level 9 Crocotta (from Dragon 364 apparetly)
8 level 6 Gnoll Marauders with 1 hp that did 10 damage per attack (8 per quick bite, but no one was bloodied around them)
4 level 4 Hyenas with 1 hp that did 10 damage per attack (but still gave combat advantage to all adjacent to them)
The terrain stuff was several hostages to avoid and rescue, and the enemies were spreading fires in front of them that did 5 damage and gave them concealment. I'd say we lost only about 4 total turns to the terrain (ie, 2 turns from 1 person, and 1 turn from 2 others), though (getting folks to safety while others held off, and putting out fires)
A level 6 zombie abomination solo brute who had about 50% more hp than usual for a solo of its level and had minor action grab and crush attacks, but was not very accurate (looks like 2 attacks at +10 for 1d12+6 and 2 for +8 vs Fort for 2d8+5 per turn) and the zone over the room was serpents underfoot that made an attack on anyone in the room at +7 vs. Reflex for 3d6+3 poison and ongoing 5 poison.
Yeah, right, our DM is a pushover... Man, you have no idea how evil and cunning any of us is as a DM. Sorry, but the type of simple party tactics envisaged by your average DM or your average commercial module would be seriously simplistic by comparison to most of the stuff we've had thrown at us over the years. The reason we've all become so very tactically adept is quite simply that you HAVE to be if you want to survive for long.
The sort of standard party you envisage and the type of character builds and equipment you imagine we would be using are nothing like the sort of tactics and equipment we go with.
That rogue scout is Eladrin for sure, fey step gives him a wonderful 'get out of there fast' capability. He's not some kind of optimized killing machine like most people would build because his job is NOT monster killing. His job is to find out the lay of the land. At 1st level his feat was improved initiative and his whole stat build was optimized for perception and stealth, not fighting. He was set up with a smoke bomb ready to go in one hand and a pole for poking around for traps in the other, and he's definitely operating out ahead of the party at all times as point man.
If we come to a junction and have to pick a direction, then we're going to DEFINITELY hold at the junction, set up defensive terrain blocking the unexplored direction and have the rogue scout the other way far enough to determine what might try to cut us off, then we'll block up that branch and explore the other one. It always goes like that.
Do DM's try to time pressure us? Of course they do, its part of their job to try to put you on the spot, but a dead party is no help to anyone. Why would I assume that some scream I hear coming from ahead is a prisoner we have to go rush up there and save and get ourselves ambushed in the process? We would certainly ASSUME it is a trap. Maybe it isn't, but maybe it IS. I know for sure if Mike is running the adventure, rushing in is practical suicide.
This bridge encounter you mention, that kind of thing is what we EXPECT, why would a DM waste an opportunity like that? We're going to have the scout check out those hiding places and yes we would cover our advance with smoke or magic or some other such tactic, or fly over, or whatever depending on the circumstances.
Will monsters use every trick in the book to defeat us? Yup they will! They darn well better or they're dead meat. Are they going to be tough? They darn well better be. But lets be realistic, there are 5 of us and one DM. However cunning and creative he is we've got 5 heads to his one to come up with a counter tactic that is just that much more cunning and creative than his. And if we don't like the odds or the terrain, we are NOT going to just live with that, we're going to do something about it.
The basic concepts of tactics ARE timeless and universal. Firepower, mobility, superior information, concentration of force, economy, etc. The presupposed sort of tactics that 4e imagines are tricks and whatnot. There's nothing wrong with exploiting the mechanics of the game and getting CA by flanking or whatever, but those are not at all the heart of real serious tactics. Real serious tactics is, we can hit them and they can't hit us. We know where they are and how many of them there are and the terrain we're fighting them on, and they're in the dark about us. We're coming at them from some place they never expected to be attacked from in a million years, etc.
It is a whole different mindset from what your average players and DMs are used to. We love it, its lots of fun.
Sure as heck won't absolutely require healing in 80% of these situations.
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