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Getting Combat Challenge More Involved
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<blockquote data-quote="jbear" data-source="post: 5357698" data-attributes="member: 75065"><p>As a DM I tend to violate marks at least a couple of times in a combat. Apart from letting the defender enjoy making use of their abilities to punish said violation, there are three other main reasons I do this:</p><p></p><p>-To smash the party's tactical formation to pieces. Once you get past the wall of melee PCs and crunch into the ranged fragile PCs, a fun, dynamic, exciting and dangerous element is added. You have to spread the hurt around!</p><p></p><p>-Because narratively it is more fun to play monsters like monsters not chess pieces. Heck ... I'm the DM! I never LOSE... becuase what is WINNING? SO if I can't lose or win, well then it must all come down to excitement and fun. The sorceror just dropped a critical ray of Smackdown on the Torturer's pet Scarybeast ... you can bet he's strolling through those opportunity attacks, ignoring marks left right and center, because all he cares about now is tearing that witch limb from limb!</p><p></p><p>-Also because that way 100hp creatures die faster, battle moves more quickly, people are involved out of turn. With the increase in damage monsters are brutal enough now that you can drop a PC from Heathy to dying in a round without breaking a sweat. So, leaping between the fighter and the ranger, skirting past the cleric and pouncing on the wizard drinking tea in the back is well worth it!</p><p></p><p>As a player, my experience differs.</p><p></p><p>I play two different online games. I play a fighter/runepriest and a fighter respectively. In the first of the two the DM was new to 4e when we began, and so he provoked Combat Challenge a lot, but more by mistake than for any narrative reason. When he caught on to how punishing a fighter can be when you make that mistake to often, the frequency that I have been using it has dwindled to nothing. So I accepted that I was doing what I was meant to by becoming the primary target and and focused on building on my defense. As a hammer fighter there are loads of stuff that work with OAs and combat challenge but I won't bother picking up those feats because they'll never come into play.</p><p></p><p>In the second game, the DM plays his creatures differently. He seems to prefer playing them along the lines of what he imagines they would do as opposed to playing them tactically 100%. So in the last fight he would have triggered Combat Challenge at least 3 maybe four times. Then again it's a dark sun campaign, and every fight is really touch and go whether we survive or not, so it is a luxury the deadly monsters provide for him. In the other campaign the DM has been largely using MM1 monsters, 1 encounter/day scenarios and boy can you feel the difference. So I guess that may be why he is more protective of his creatures because he feels like he is struggling to challenge us sufficiently.</p><p></p><p>So perhaps the level of challenge the encounters are posing upon the PCs is relative to how often a DM feels willing enough to deliberately blunder for the greater glory of the adventure.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="jbear, post: 5357698, member: 75065"] As a DM I tend to violate marks at least a couple of times in a combat. Apart from letting the defender enjoy making use of their abilities to punish said violation, there are three other main reasons I do this: -To smash the party's tactical formation to pieces. Once you get past the wall of melee PCs and crunch into the ranged fragile PCs, a fun, dynamic, exciting and dangerous element is added. You have to spread the hurt around! -Because narratively it is more fun to play monsters like monsters not chess pieces. Heck ... I'm the DM! I never LOSE... becuase what is WINNING? SO if I can't lose or win, well then it must all come down to excitement and fun. The sorceror just dropped a critical ray of Smackdown on the Torturer's pet Scarybeast ... you can bet he's strolling through those opportunity attacks, ignoring marks left right and center, because all he cares about now is tearing that witch limb from limb! -Also because that way 100hp creatures die faster, battle moves more quickly, people are involved out of turn. With the increase in damage monsters are brutal enough now that you can drop a PC from Heathy to dying in a round without breaking a sweat. So, leaping between the fighter and the ranger, skirting past the cleric and pouncing on the wizard drinking tea in the back is well worth it! As a player, my experience differs. I play two different online games. I play a fighter/runepriest and a fighter respectively. In the first of the two the DM was new to 4e when we began, and so he provoked Combat Challenge a lot, but more by mistake than for any narrative reason. When he caught on to how punishing a fighter can be when you make that mistake to often, the frequency that I have been using it has dwindled to nothing. So I accepted that I was doing what I was meant to by becoming the primary target and and focused on building on my defense. As a hammer fighter there are loads of stuff that work with OAs and combat challenge but I won't bother picking up those feats because they'll never come into play. In the second game, the DM plays his creatures differently. He seems to prefer playing them along the lines of what he imagines they would do as opposed to playing them tactically 100%. So in the last fight he would have triggered Combat Challenge at least 3 maybe four times. Then again it's a dark sun campaign, and every fight is really touch and go whether we survive or not, so it is a luxury the deadly monsters provide for him. In the other campaign the DM has been largely using MM1 monsters, 1 encounter/day scenarios and boy can you feel the difference. So I guess that may be why he is more protective of his creatures because he feels like he is struggling to challenge us sufficiently. So perhaps the level of challenge the encounters are posing upon the PCs is relative to how often a DM feels willing enough to deliberately blunder for the greater glory of the adventure. [/QUOTE]
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