PC hit points vs Monster hit points

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

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.

I don't mean to come across as defensive and I certainly don;t feel defensive. I definitely didn't explode. I'm just very direct/blunt and rather than waste my time discussing things that don't matter, I try and lead the conversation back to the relevant situations. I actually enjoy discussing things with you specifically and others in general. We don't always have to agree and i'm fine with that. I just find it a little tiresome when people argue about something without contributing data that matters. If you've been in 7 encounters that didn't need healing, I guess we're playing a different game. I would quit a campaign that had no threat of death because tactics don't matter and build doesn't matter. 7 encounters with no healing is ridiculous. Not at all what the designers envisioned and not at all the game I want to play. Are there any hard encounters? Is rolling dice and slaying inferior foes repeatedly without any "adrenaline factor" fun? Not for me. Why chime in about the value of healing if you play in a campaign that doesn't use it?

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.

The first part of the argument is good. It provides analysis and reasons why you feel ghouls are broken. I feel soldiers are under priced exp wise so we're not far off in this regard.

The second part of your argument is the definition of a straw man argument. My original argument was that the no cleric build would likely perish vs 3 ghouls and then you turn around and talk about 5. This is an annoying tactic. Why bother responding if you can't respond to the arguments as presented? Either agree that the clerics utility is frequently massive or try and show me a build without them that can reliably handle debilitating effects like stun.

it's not just the ghoul encounter that crushes builds with no cleric, it's just one that shows the deficiency in the clearest manner.

I still would like you to clearly define an encounter of at least N+2 (preferably N+3 since that's really where the game changes from a foregone conclusion to a struggle where tactics and builds actually matter) where you're not taking damage and in need of healing. There's clearly an occasional encounter where the pc's gain a dominating position or an opportunity to move an encounter to a place of the pc's choosing and likely advantage but not all the time and not even the majority of the time. Monsters in our campaigns retreat from certain death (not undead or mindless things) but anything with a survival instinct doesn't stand in the corridor watching the pc's lob AoE's into them while one bad guy fights in the doorway.

You keep repeatedly responding on a thread but don't give even moderate details to support your position. Honestly I don't know why anyone would debate about encounters below N+2.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

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.

Hard for me to discuss the encounter very logically when every monster in it is a modified one. It's very minion heavy which by level 5 is not very threatening. Since you deployed armor of agthys and likely have a wizard in your party, all 10 minions are pretty non threatening. I can't speak intelligently about the crocotta but the huntmaster is certainly crippled after the minions are gone and they'll obviously be gone very quickly. If the party concentrates on the minions at first I would be shocked if there was more than 1-2 by round 3. A good placement by the warlock with Armor would end 3 or 4 on the first round and another 1-2 on the second. A 5th level wizard has too many ways to sweep the battle field of minions (stinking cloud, sphere, burning hands, scorching burst, fireshroud etc.) An interesting encounter but not exactly "challenging" for 5 pcs at level 5. Solo's simply aren't that tough in a lot of instances. If you get a condition on them it's like gaining a round or more. The zone is could be tough, but I assume you were able to attack from outside it with most or all pc's or else your dm rolled horribly. That's about 21 avg dmg per hit on attack that will hit a lot of pc's more than half the time. 2 hits could easily kill a 5th level non defender pc, so either it didn't get many attacks (and neither did the zombie) or else your dm rolled horribly. Something doesn't quite add up.

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.

This is hyperbole and basically unprovable. We're delving into my dad can beat your dad up stuff. You have no idea how tactically proficient my DM and I are either. Let's assume it's even. This is actually giving you the benefit of the doubt since you already said that 99% of encounters are defeated by your awesome tactics. This means your DM's either suck at tactics or actually are pushovers providing you with cakewalk encounters. It can't be both ways.

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.

I'm not convinced, nor are many others I imagine. Give examples or else stop talking about it.

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.

Three problems already. First, even optimized scouts roll poorly so even if you win the stealth perception battle 75% of the time that means 25% of the time they see you first. Second, there are no smoke bombs available in our campaign, we're currently out of sunrods even because finding magic items (even mundane ones) is not easy in our campaigns (this points towards softer DM's loading the party up with all sorts of gear). Even if a smoke bomb was available we likely wouldn't have many because we don't have lots of gold. Some creatures are not affected by concealment such as kruthiks. Also your eladrin build is substantially weaker in many aspects to other possible choices. The teleport is good but even if he teleports and then moves his range is only 11 squares, 13 if he runs. Gnolls move 7, they can charge you out to 14 range. No getting away for Eladrin rogues against gnolls. Ghouls move 8. You running can't get away from them even with std moves.

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.

And if you're in a hurry? Don't have anything to set up defensive terrain with? Block it with what? Are already being chased? How long does it take pc's to make a fortification? How much noise does it make? You're waiting in an intersection which means there's a chance you'll wind up with two encounters instead of one. Once again you're also assuming that scout who apparently moves beyond range of sight ALWAYS wins stealth. This isn't even remotely realistic. A gnoll huntmaster has an 11 perception and stealth 11, it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where he gets the jump on you. Or 5 of them sneak up on you while you're distracted creating obstacles and get a round of surprise.

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.

So you simply accept the collateral damage of not moving quickly? What if a PC has been captured? Do you pursue then? Would your band of hero's accept a commission to rescue the mayors daughter? Would you track a goblin raiding party that burnt a village and carried off hostages? Rescuing damsels in distress is pretty standard fair for heroic fantasy.

This bridge encounter you mention, that kind of thing is what we EXPECT, why would a DM waste an opportunity like that?

Well partly because that's cheating the system and very metagamey.

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.

lets stick with level 1-3 for now, tell me what your party does when they hit a bridge? My pc's are playing DnD not navy SEAL's so we're not carrying smoke grenades nor flashbnags. We can't fly yet and even if we could if it cost residuum to make it happen we wouldn't do it at every "potential ambush spot" because that would run you out of residuum. A good DM doesn't allow you to "patrol" at full vigilance and still travel at your overland movement speed. If you send the scout out repeatedly making stealth and perception checks I would cut you down to 25% movement. If every time he draws a map you start taking stealth/perception actions and using up consumables like smoke grenades and residuum he should be drawing maps with no encounter 10 times per day until you've wasted them all. That's what passive perception is about you simply can't maintain active perception checks all the time so you're going to have to accept that no matter how perceptive your party is sometimes you fail to spot the ambush.

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.

Two more problems. If the monsters use every trick why are 99% of your encounters a cakewalk? Second and MOST importantly when discussing tactics the DM has the advantage not the disadvantage. The Navy spends about $500,000 training one SEAL to work as a coordinated member of a team. They then continue to train him over the course of his career and the numbers can become very large. The average goblin war party can approach an encounter with a more coordinated attack then a SEAL platoon because with one mind running them, no one ever steps into your field of fire, two people never target the same person simultaneously while leaving another unaccounted for. The level of coordination of an elite trained group of professionals can NEVER match that of a group all being moved and coordinated by one brain. Obviously communication is key for the group but people still have their own minds and your DnD group is not as well coordinated as an HRT or SEAL team both of which fall far short of the monsters capabilities in DnD. people do unexpected things. You can train to make this as minimal as possible but monsters never do unexpected things unless the DM roleplays some "gaffs".

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.

You're telling me stuff I already know. None of it is relevant because you don't ALWAYS have the info you would like or need. You can't always get eyes on the target, intel can be wrong, people make mistakes, die rolls go against you. The very nature of DnD suggests that you'll frequently have LESS info than the bad guys. Your eladrin scout doesn't work ever in a pitch dark cave. As soon as you turn on a sunrod the bad guys know you're there and you don't know where they are.

It is a whole different mindset from what your average players and DMs are used to. We love it, its lots of fun.

You're presupposing that you're more tactical than everyone. Or that by saying "avg" you're above average. I doubt you're more tactical than I am but this is completely subjective and pointless. I believe the campaign I play in is far above average in a lot of ways. Partly because the DM is a game developer that has been responsible for major online RPG's and related product lines as well as online CCG's, board games, Real time strategy games etc. It's not my place to point out exactly what he does or has done since he never does but he's on this forum. We enjoy a style of play we call "gritty" in that every encounter is potentially dangerous and N+2-3 is the standard encounter with an occasional N to N+1 and more than a few N+4's. This might not be for everyone and I willingly accept that but it our group likes it and I find it more exciting, challenging and worthwhile. The point being, I don't think the encounters below N+2 really matter when discussing, powers, feats, tactics, levels, etc. Below a certain level and it's obvious the pc's are going to win no matter what. The game is about combat and really only the combats where the ending isn't 99.9% certain are worth "debating", "crunching numbers", "play testing", or "examining".

I'll happily listen to your reasons why this isn't so if you have them but saying you're going to win 99% of encounters based upon your tactics being so good and the other 1% are flawed, just doesn't fly with me.

Bottom line you keep implying your party never gets surprised. Is this the case? Your eladrin with the smoke grenade and pole is in for a rude awakening when the grell drops on him and stuns him. No actions means no free actions and thus no yelling for help. even if you do yell for help, this might attract monsters who would then be attackin the party from a new direction. Grells have stealth 17, perception 9 and blindsight. grells almost always win surprise. The rest of your party will come looking in a few rounds and find nothing as the grell flew off to enjoy his dinner.

My perception is your DM is too soft. You seem to have the we can't fail mentality and this probably means the DM is enabling you. He presents you with encounters where monsters behave as expected and you get to play tricks on them but never be tricked.

 

[keterys]

If you've been in 7 encounters that didn't need healing, I guess we're playing a different game.

DMs running modules. I told one of the DMs that he should up the difficulty (change the module) since they were, like, all EL = N and whee, but the other game was both EL=N+2 encounters.

I would quit a campaign that had no threat of death because tactics don't matter and build doesn't matter.

Of course they do - tactics and build are why we didn't need healing.

Why chime in about the value of healing if you play in a campaign that doesn't use it?

Because we do use it - I just didn't for 7 encounters in a row. So for those 7 encounters, it was literally useless. The encounter I played before that with 1 of each role, we used every bit of healing in the party (so 2 words, a healing strike type ability from the shaman, and a healing after effect from the druid's daily) on the defender and he finished with like 3 hp.

At the end of the day, I also think that many encounters the healing is clearly needed to avoid someone falling down or staying down... but that in no way was anyone going to die or was the group going to fail.

The second part of your argument is the definition of a straw man argument. My original argument was that the no cleric build would likely perish vs 3 ghouls and then you turn around and talk about 5.

5 _needlefang drake swarms_, yes. A different creature that's level 2, but within budget to throw at a level 1 party.

Either agree that the clerics utility is frequently massive or try and show me a build without them that can reliably handle debilitating effects like stun.

Every character's utility is frequently massive. Warlords are also good for handling effects like stun. A warden defender is, too.

Are you trying to show that healing is worth double the value of damage (which was implied by your original post) or that clerics are very useful, which seems anecdotal to the argument at hand?

it's not just the ghoul encounter that crushes builds with no cleric, it's just one that shows the deficiency in the clearest manner.

Bards and warlords seem to do quite well, too. I've played in or DMed a surprising number of parties with no leader at all (like a group going through Weekend in the Realms and Spellguard) and honestly things are often more exciting, but they've done fine. I've also been in or DMed plenty of parties with no defender, which is also a way to mitigate damage (even better than healing). Your argument is inherently flawed 'You need a cleric, so you need a cleric. See, look, you need a cleric' when the evidence is overwhelming that you don't need a cleric in published campaigns. One sure helps, though.

I still would like you to clearly define an encounter of at least N+2

Both encounters I gave were N + 2. We took plenty of damage. We just didn't need healing. Unless a character is going to go below 0 hp or a monster has something that triggers on bloodied, there's literally no need for healing. In fact, we gained advantage by leaving the dragonborn bloodied.

You keep repeatedly responding on a thread but don't give even moderate details to support your position. Honestly I don't know why anyone would debate about encounters below N+2.

Good thing I didn't, and both encounters I gave were N+2 (7th), for the 5th level party with two leaders.

Hard for me to discuss the encounter very logically when every monster in it is a modified one.

Hence why I didn't know what things were That said, I'd say that the minions were above par minions for their level (which is to say, not that bad - 10 damage is a real threat, and auto combat advantage when adjacent is a good minion thing). The solo brute had horrendous burst potential, but I think we just killed it too fast for it to really matter - I suspect if we'd had to go much longer we'd have healed someone just to make sure the room effect didn't get lucky and take them down.

It's very minion heavy which by level 5 is not very threatening. Since you deployed armor of agthys and likely have a wizard in your party, all 10 minions are pretty non threatening.

No armor that fight, no wizard - no autodamage at all. Dragonborn breath, otherwind stride, and divine glow, though. It's got a lot of minions, certainly, but there's plenty of other meat in the encounter too and we had no minion-clearing tricks at all. We did spread out and make things difficult for them to swarm people too badly though.

No stun or daze effect on the solo. Frigid Darkness and Inspired Belligerence and Dreadful Word made it pretty easy to kill, though, yes. We just really unloaded on it. Which is, y'know, a tactic for dealing with a dangerous situation

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hard for me to discuss the encounter very logically when every monster in it is a modified one. It's very minion heavy which by level 5 is not very threatening. Since you deployed armor of agthys and likely have a wizard in your party, all 10 minions are pretty non threatening. I can't speak intelligently about the crocotta but the huntmaster is certainly crippled after the minions are gone and they'll obviously be gone very quickly. If the party concentrates on the minions at first I would be shocked if there was more than 1-2 by round 3. A good placement by the warlock with Armor would end 3 or 4 on the first round and another 1-2 on the second. A 5th level wizard has too many ways to sweep the battle field of minions (stinking cloud, sphere, burning hands, scorching burst, fireshroud etc.) An interesting encounter but not exactly "challenging" for 5 pcs at level 5. Solo's simply aren't that tough in a lot of instances. If you get a condition on them it's like gaining a round or more. The zone is could be tough, but I assume you were able to attack from outside it with most or all pc's or else your dm rolled horribly. That's about 21 avg dmg per hit on attack that will hit a lot of pc's more than half the time. 2 hits could easily kill a 5th level non defender pc, so either it didn't get many attacks (and neither did the zombie) or else your dm rolled horribly. Something doesn't quite add up.

This is hyperbole and basically unprovable. We're delving into my dad can beat your dad up stuff. You have no idea how tactically proficient my DM and I are either. Let's assume it's even. This is actually giving you the benefit of the doubt since you already said that 99% of encounters are defeated by your awesome tactics. This means your DM's either suck at tactics or actually are pushovers providing you with cakewalk encounters. It can't be both ways.

I'm not convinced, nor are many others I imagine. Give examples or else stop talking about it.

Three problems already. First, even optimized scouts roll poorly so even if you win the stealth perception battle 75% of the time that means 25% of the time they see you first. Second, there are no smoke bombs available in our campaign, we're currently out of sunrods even because finding magic items (even mundane ones) is not easy in our campaigns (this points towards softer DM's loading the party up with all sorts of gear). Even if a smoke bomb was available we likely wouldn't have many because we don't have lots of gold. Some creatures are not affected by concealment such as kruthiks. Also your eladrin build is substantially weaker in many aspects to other possible choices. The teleport is good but even if he teleports and then moves his range is only 11 squares, 13 if he runs. Gnolls move 7, they can charge you out to 14 range. No getting away for Eladrin rogues against gnolls. Ghouls move 8. You running can't get away from them even with std moves.

And if you're in a hurry? Don't have anything to set up defensive terrain with? Block it with what? Are already being chased? How long does it take pc's to make a fortification? How much noise does it make? You're waiting in an intersection which means there's a chance you'll wind up with two encounters instead of one. Once again you're also assuming that scout who apparently moves beyond range of sight ALWAYS wins stealth. This isn't even remotely realistic. A gnoll huntmaster has an 11 perception and stealth 11, it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where he gets the jump on you. Or 5 of them sneak up on you while you're distracted creating obstacles and get a round of surprise.

So you simply accept the collateral damage of not moving quickly? What if a PC has been captured? Do you pursue then? Would your band of hero's accept a commission to rescue the mayors daughter? Would you track a goblin raiding party that burnt a village and carried off hostages? Rescuing damsels in distress is pretty standard fair for heroic fantasy.

Well partly because that's cheating the system and very metagamey.

lets stick with level 1-3 for now, tell me what your party does when they hit a bridge? My pc's are playing DnD not navy SEAL's so we're not carrying smoke grenades nor flashbnags. We can't fly yet and even if we could if it cost residuum to make it happen we wouldn't do it at every "potential ambush spot" because that would run you out of residuum. A good DM doesn't allow you to "patrol" at full vigilance and still travel at your overland movement speed. If you send the scout out repeatedly making stealth and perception checks I would cut you down to 25% movement. If every time he draws a map you start taking stealth/perception actions and using up consumables like smoke grenades and residuum he should be drawing maps with no encounter 10 times per day until you've wasted them all. That's what passive perception is about you simply can't maintain active perception checks all the time so you're going to have to accept that no matter how perceptive your party is sometimes you fail to spot the ambush.

Two more problems. If the monsters use every trick why are 99% of your encounters a cakewalk? Second and MOST importantly when discussing tactics the DM has the advantage not the disadvantage. The Navy spends about $500,000 training one SEAL to work as a coordinated member of a team. They then continue to train him over the course of his career and the numbers can become very large. The average goblin war party can approach an encounter with a more coordinated attack then a SEAL platoon because with one mind running them, no one ever steps into your field of fire, two people never target the same person simultaneously while leaving another unaccounted for. The level of coordination of an elite trained group of professionals can NEVER match that of a group all being moved and coordinated by one brain. Obviously communication is key for the group but people still have their own minds and your DnD group is not as well coordinated as an HRT or SEAL team both of which fall far short of the monsters capabilities in DnD. people do unexpected things. You can train to make this as minimal as possible but monsters never do unexpected things unless the DM roleplays some "gaffs".

You're telling me stuff I already know. None of it is relevant because you don't ALWAYS have the info you would like or need. You can't always get eyes on the target, intel can be wrong, people make mistakes, die rolls go against you. The very nature of DnD suggests that you'll frequently have LESS info than the bad guys. Your eladrin scout doesn't work ever in a pitch dark cave. As soon as you turn on a sunrod the bad guys know you're there and you don't know where they are.

You're presupposing that you're more tactical than everyone. Or that by saying "avg" you're above average. I doubt you're more tactical than I am but this is completely subjective and pointless. I believe the campaign I play in is far above average in a lot of ways. Partly because the DM is a game developer that has been responsible for major online RPG's and related product lines as well as online CCG's, board games, Real time strategy games etc. It's not my place to point out exactly what he does or has done since he never does but he's on this forum. We enjoy a style of play we call "gritty" in that every encounter is potentially dangerous and N+2-3 is the standard encounter with an occasional N to N+1 and more than a few N+4's. This might not be for everyone and I willingly accept that but it our group likes it and I find it more exciting, challenging and worthwhile. The point being, I don't think the encounters below N+2 really matter when discussing, powers, feats, tactics, levels, etc. Below a certain level and it's obvious the pc's are going to win no matter what. The game is about combat and really only the combats where the ending isn't 99.9% certain are worth "debating", "crunching numbers", "play testing", or "examining".

I'll happily listen to your reasons why this isn't so if you have them but saying you're going to win 99% of encounters based upon your tactics being so good and the other 1% are flawed, just doesn't fly with me.

Bottom line you keep implying your party never gets surprised. Is this the case? Your eladrin with the smoke grenade and pole is in for a rude awakening when the grell drops on him and stuns him. No actions means no free actions and thus no yelling for help. even if you do yell for help, this might attract monsters who would then be attackin the party from a new direction. Grells have stealth 17, perception 9 and blindsight. grells almost always win surprise. The rest of your party will come looking in a few rounds and find nothing as the grell flew off to enjoy his dinner.

My perception is your DM is too soft. You seem to have the we can't fail mentality and this probably means the DM is enabling you. He presents you with encounters where monsters behave as expected and you get to play tricks on them but never be tricked.

Yes, of course, I bow to your obviously utterly superior knowledge and tactics. Our DM(s) are all just pushovers, etc. Whatever...

I could endlessly extend this debate ad-infinitum and yeah, I've got answers for all of your various scenarios. Will everything the party does work out perfectly? No, but being well equipped, having good backup plans, and using a lot more sophisticated tactics than those normally envisaged DO give you a huge advantage.

Let me take this gnoll ambush thing as an example. Yes, actually the rogue will almost certainly escape. He can run and double move, plus fey step is an option. So actually his movement potential is 16 squares. He can key his initial movement to the enemy as well, so unless you can manage to kill him off in the surprise round he's very unlikely to fail to get at least 80' back in the direction of help, and I would consider it unwise to scout 100's of feet ahead. If there are 7 gnolls down the hall then he IS certainly going to detect some of them, he's got a 75% chance to detect EACH ONE that is in his line of sight.

I could go on as to the type of equipment we typically carry as well. In a dungeon type of setting it includes things like a nice 6' long log with a number of holes carved into it and a set of sharpened stakes that can be inserted into the holes. That can be used to block off a hallway, used as a battering ram, or as an impromptu bridge over a pit, etc. Very useful. We also habitually carry a couple of large wooden barriers which can be set up as cover, dropped on top of inconvenient things we don't want to step on or neutralize at least some examples of difficult terrain.

Smoke is perfectly simple to create. Certainly it isn't going to be like a CS grenade your HRT seal team can carry, but some pitch, straw, etc will work reasonably well. That sort of stuff IS going to give you a significant edge in that kind of environment.

Now I know that you as the DM can simply hand wave away any possible advantage a party can create for itself, but if you object to what we do and call it all 'meta-gaming' then I certainly submit to you that the same argument goes for the DM in the other direction. I mean come on.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

DMs running modules. I told one of the DMs that he should up the difficulty (change the module) since they were, like, all EL = N and whee, but the other game was both EL=N+2 encounters.

Both kind of weak. N+2 is the minimum value for analyzing anything important with regard to combat in 4e.

Of course they do - tactics and build are why we didn't need healing.

No, they really don't. Even with crappy tactics and a different build nothing would have happened of significance(maybe a few more surges cost). How did you escape the zone effect of the floor? How many characters in your party?

Because we do use it - I just didn't for 7 encounters in a row. So for those 7 encounters, it was literally useless.

As were the encounters as anecdotal proof. The encounters were clearly not a challenge to the party and thus they neither test nor prove anything. I bet a lot of people here can get 100% on 8th grade math tests. repeatedly getting 100% on 8th grade math tests is not significant evidence that you're capable of getting an 800 on the math SAT.

The encounter I played before that with 1 of each role, we used every bit of healing in the party (so 2 words, a healing strike type ability from the shaman, and a healing after effect from the druid's daily) on the defender and he finished with like 3 hp.

This seems like a much more challenging encounter. What EL was it?

At the end of the day, I also think that many encounters the healing is clearly needed to avoid someone falling down or staying down... but that in no way was anyone going to die or was the group going to fail.

how many pc's in your party? In a small group, being put down can definitely lead to death before another pc can help you.

5 _needlefang drake swarms_, yes. A different creature that's level 2, but within budget to throw at a level 1 party.

A very brutal encounter. The minor attack action seems massively broken when coupled with the free attack and bonus damage. Is there a point here? I think I can make a lot better argument that NDS are broken than anyone can about ghouls. The party absolutely needs to put one down on round one or they're in huge trouble. You're as good as TPK'd if you have no leader here as well just from the massive amount of damage these creatures put out. Thunderwave to push them back before other players have to take the automatic damage and warlord powers that let other pc's shift are all I can think of to really save pc's here. I would highly recommend the pc's all burn their actions points and unload on these critters right away.

Every character's utility is frequently massive. Warlords are also good for handling effects like stun. A warden defender is, too.

not a member of DDI so I don't know much about the warden. I've been in two parties with warlords, and 5 with clerics including playing a cleric. I grew to like warlords over time but I think they under perform compared to clerics in most situations. the definitely have their strengths but they certainly don't compare at all to cleric with regard to saves and radiant damage is a very nice plus.

Are you trying to show that healing is worth double the value of damage (which was implied by your original post) or that clerics are very useful, which seems anecdotal to the argument at hand?

I do indeed believe healing is about double the value of damage. Especially targeted healing like healing/inspiring word. when both groups are applying focus fire (arguably one of the most important tactics in 4e) it is healing that keeps all the pc's up while the monsters start to drop and thereby lose offensive power.

Bards and warlords seem to do quite well, too. I've played in or DMed a surprising number of parties with no leader at all (like a group going through Weekend in the Realms and Spellguard) and honestly things are often more exciting, but they've done fine. I've also been in or DMed plenty of parties with no defender, which is also a way to mitigate damage (even better than healing).

hardly. the defender is frequently the person most in need of healing. It also depends on the other party members and what defenses they have. In my experience a party with no defenders has both problems and advantages. The squishies are going to get dinged up more but this can spread the surge loss more evenly in the party.

Your argument is inherently flawed 'You need a cleric, so you need a cleric. See, look, you need a cleric' when the evidence is overwhelming that you don't need a cleric in published campaigns. One sure helps, though.

Totally misrepresenting my position. You don't have to have any class. My argument isn't that you can't have a party with no leader, my argument is if you have a party with no leader you will have a much higher probability of losing pc's or getting TPK'd. I play in a particularly dangerous campaign, I can guarantee you that we would not survive without a healer. I would argue that the leader sort of needs to be a cleric because of small party size (4) and debilitating effects (stun) so we need the ready access to bonus saves. One debilitated character in a 4 pc party is 25% of offensive capability. One stun in a party of 6 is 16.7%. This is a major difference.

Both encounters I gave were N + 2. We took plenty of damage. We just didn't need healing. Unless a character is going to go below 0 hp or a monster has something that triggers on bloodied, there's literally no need for healing. In fact, we gained advantage by leaving the dragonborn bloodied.

you keep using an example without really defining what happened. How big is the party? did anyone stay in the zone? Does your dm use focus fire? the minion encounter is a pretty poor example no matter how you slice it. warlock with armor, dragon born, wizard... that's a massive amount of minion removal. the huntmaster needs allies to be effective.

Good thing I didn't, and both encounters I gave were N+2 (7th), for the 5th level party with two leaders.

both really weak examples. a solo and a zone and a minion heavy encounter vs a party almost optimized for minion removal. what are the pc's in your party?

Hence why I didn't know what things were That said, I'd say that the minions were above par minions for their level (which is to say, not that bad - 10 damage is a real threat, and auto combat advantage when adjacent is a good minion thing). The solo brute had horrendous burst potential, but I think we just killed it too fast for it to really matter - I suspect if we'd had to go much longer we'd have healed someone just to make sure the room effect didn't get lucky and take them down.

Minions are almost zero threat (10 dmg is good though) when you consider armor of ag, dragon born and a wizard. How many minions even survived the first round?

How many people entered the zone in the solo encounter?

No armor that fight, no wizard - no autodamage at all. Dragonborn breath, otherwind stride, and divine glow, though. It's got a lot of minions, certainly, but there's plenty of other meat in the encounter too and we had no minion-clearing tricks at all. We did spread out and make things difficult for them to swarm people too badly though.

wait... you're telling me it's all about tactics yet you deploy armor on the solo and not on the minions? That's horrible tactics. Horrendous. 5th level pc's have 35 to 55 hp. If you let 12 minions get off multiple ten damage attacks how is it that no one got bloodied? Something simply doesn't add up with your example.

12 minions doing 10 damage each. The crocotta has a close burst 3 that does 17 average damage and hits an avg 5th level pc on a 3 or a 4. It's also got a minor that it can use and recharge that grants CA in blast 3 to set up the burst (49 squares of pain that hits on a 2 or a 4 depending on CA). Even the crocs normal attack is a +14 vs AC and does about 11 or 15 avg depending on whether it shifted. 94Hp's means it won't be dead quick. It's also got resist 5 variable which increases survival duration. Everything in this battle hits at least 50% of the time. The croc hits about 80% and the party has 200 hit points. The minions not only are going to get at least 18-25 attacks given your previous statements they increase the damage from the huntmaster (even before we factor his template and AoE attack).

This means the minions eat up half your hit points even with me being generous and taking favorable assumptions for you, like not upping the minions hits based upon an near guarantee of flanking. The crocotta can't help but do 50 dmg. I would say it's got a great chance to do 100 supported by the minions and huntmaster. The huntmaster has ranged 20 and avg dmg of 15 on anything near the minions. Clearly your DM is not practicing any kind of focus fire because even 5 minions and the huntmaster on one character would mean avg dmg of about 35, way into bloodied and definitely in need of healing. The gnolls have superior numbers, superior mobility, superior offense, pretty solid defense, and a very solid damage delivery system in the crocotta. When you "spread out" as you suggested that means the marauders and dogs can mall the squishy warlock or shaman.

Tell you what, buy a copy of "fantasy grounds 2" and I'll dm this encounter for you. If you play it as you suggest (no armor, no wizard), I think I'll possibly tpk you. With out any minion hosing tricks you're going to pay a steep price. Lets see if you don't need some healing.

No stun or daze effect on the solo. Frigid Darkness and Inspired Belligerence and Dreadful Word made it pretty easy to kill, though, yes. We just really unloaded on it. Which is, y'know, a tactic for dealing with a dangerous situation

Totally agree. But you said it had massive hit points. Can't have died that quick. How many guys in the zone during those 3 rounds?

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Yes, of course, I bow to your obviously utterly superior knowledge and tactics. Our DM(s) are all just pushovers, etc. Whatever...

You tried name dropping Von Clauswitz and Sun Tzu, trying to apply a logical fallacy by assuming expertise. Everything you've said up to this point is either totally subjective or pretty much wrong.

I could endlessly extend this debate ad-infinitum and yeah, I've got answers for all of your various scenarios. Will everything the party does work out perfectly? No, but being well equipped, having good backup plans, and using a lot more sophisticated tactics than those normally envisaged DO give you a huge advantage.

More fluff. Normally envisaged by who?

Let me take this gnoll ambush thing as an example. Yes, actually the rogue will almost certainly escape. He can run and double move, plus fey step is an option. So actually his movement potential is 16 squares.

No he actually won't escape at all. The gnolls are ranged 20 bowmen and they move 16 without running (running grants CA incidently) so your now hit on about a 4. 5 gnolls, 4 hits, buhbye rogue.

He can key his initial movement to the enemy as well, so unless you can manage to kill him off in the surprise round he's very unlikely to fail to get at least 80' back in the direction of help, and I would consider it unwise to scout 100's of feet ahead.

80' is about 60' too little. The gnolls can move 40' and shoot 100'

If there are 7 gnolls down the hall then he IS certainly going to detect some of them, he's got a 75% chance to detect EACH ONE that is in his line of sight.

You're mistaken. First the dmg says take the lowest stealth and roll with that mod pg 36. Also it's an ambush, lets assume they're hiding. Since they're hiding we'll apply -2 or -4 to your roll. Even without that he's actually got about a 40% chance to spot anything. He's an eladrin rogue with maybe an 8 perception. If your feat is skill focus perception then he's 50/50 since they have 11 stealth. You only need to fail once, and that's a mathematical certainty.

I could go on as to the type of equipment we typically carry as well. In a dungeon type of setting it includes things like a nice 6' long log with a number of holes carved into it and a set of sharpened stakes that can be inserted into the holes.

Try googling "old misery" I know a lot more about carrying a 6' log around than I care to remember. It's no fun. Which one of your pc's is taking -1 to moves?

That can be used to block off a hallway, used as a battering ram, or as an impromptu bridge over a pit, etc. Very useful. We also habitually carry a couple of large wooden barriers which can be set up as cover, dropped on top of inconvenient things we don't want to step on or neutralize at least some examples of difficult terrain.

are you guys rolling with donkeys? cause your overland speed just dropped to 2 miles a day and you're making endurance checks every 200' or lose a surge.

Smoke is perfectly simple to create. Certainly it isn't going to be like a CS grenade your HRT seal team can carry, but some pitch, straw, etc will work reasonably well. That sort of stuff IS going to give you a significant edge in that kind of environment.

We're in a dungeon, you don't have a wagon, so you're carrying all this? If you're carrying pitch and you get hit by a fire based attack I would say there's a chances you start taking an additional ongoing 3. Smoke doesn't just block line of sight it attracts things, and can cause fits of coughing. Everything you can do the monsters can do and since they're at home their supply is larger and preparation greater.

Now I know that you as the DM can simply hand wave away any possible advantage a party can create for itself, but if you object to what we do and call it all 'meta-gaming' then I certainly submit to you that the same argument goes for the DM in the other direction. I mean come on.

we reward creative thinking, we just don't limit the creativity to one side. Arguing that the pc's always have the advantage in DnD is a very steep hill to climb. read any published module, the pc's are VERY often expected to enter adverse situations. I'm not saying tactics never work and never favor the pc's I'm saying that they frequently favor the monsters.

The gricks are destroying the pyramid and killing the oracle we need answers from when we arrive. There's really not much time to look over the entire ceiling of the cavern trying to find the possible grell who has stealth 17 in any event. This is DnD. It's the very nature of the game to confront pc's with adverse situations In the old days you sometimes fell in a pit and died outright. Pick up the skull and lose your soul (death with no save) in tomb of horrors I think.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I have to agree that tactics only take you so far in D&D. Most of the scenarios that were described would end in the party being trapped in melee with the monsters in any game I've played in.

The average scenario with the Rogue would go something like this:
20 Dex Eladrin Rogue with +10 as his stealth check at 1st level. He can't move ahead without the party since he can't see without a light source. If he brings a light source with him, he can't make hide checks since he no longer has cover or concealment. Enemies have Darkvision and can see the light source coming from as far away as they have line of sight. So, he decides to bring a light source of some sort with him. He reaches a door. He opens it. The surprise round starts since the enemies are in complete darkness and no perception check can detect them. They are standing still so there is no perception check to hear them.

They all heard the Rogue coming, because they got 8 rolls against the Rogue's Stealth check and one of them rolled high. Plus, they heard the screams of their dying friends from down the hall when the PCs killed them in the previous encounter and got ready, plus they saw the light source coming from under the door, and so on.

After a round of the enemies firing at the Rogue, he runs 2 times. This lets him move 16. They move 6, which lets some of them move into the hallway. Then they fire again. Of course, that assumes the Rogue rolled higher than them in Init. If he didn't, then they surround him so he has to use teleportation to get away and get another free attack on him.

It's the kind of situation no one wants to be in, so our Rogues never walk ahead, because they tend to get knocked below 0 before they can take an action if they do.

 

[keterys]

Both kind of weak. N+2 is the minimum value for analyzing anything important with regard to combat in 4e.

Eh, that's highly group dependent. There are some players or campaigns or monsters that's just not true.

How did you escape the zone effect of the floor?

Ranged people stayed out of range, melee people didn't - though my warlord's reach let me not be in it for at least one round til the critter shifted back.

How many characters in your party?

I believe five in both cases - talking about two different parties. One had no leaders and one had 2 leaders. The one with the N+2 encounters was the one with 2 leaders.

This seems like a much more challenging encounter. What EL was it?

N+1 - Hexer + sharpshooters in bad terrain for the party (like, athletics DC 20 to get up to them after fighting through some other stuff kinda thing)

how many pc's in your party? In a small group, being put down can definitely lead to death before another pc can help you.

I DM for 3 to 6, highly varying, and play 4 to 6 highly varying. I play in about four different groups on different schedules... so the 5 ~N encounters in spellguard was 1 group with no leader, the N+1 encounter was a different group of 4 (1 of each role), the two N+2 encounters was a group of 5 (paladin, cleric, warlord, warlock, rogue)

A very brutal encounter. The minor attack action seems massively broken when coupled with the free attack and bonus damage. Is there a point here?

There are encounters that are particularly deadly to certain party makeups and certain monsters that are out of balance with their XP level. For example, NDS and Ghouls. I actually think ghouls would be better if their defenses were slightly lower (ie, more like Lvl+12 avg) and their basic attack slowed with Failed Save: Immobilze so they can't single round frontload stun, but there's an actual tactical consideration.

I think I can make a lot better argument that NDS are broken than anyone can about ghouls.

NDS are broken in terms of raw damage output and ability to do anything about them, especially at their level... ghouls are broken particular in terms of fun factor. Stun save ends is far too easy for them to pull off in multiples, creating a multiplicative XP effect. A ghoul without immob predone is a lot less threatening.

not a member of DDI so I don't know much about the warden.

Warden gets a free save at start of every action. It's sorta their shtick.

hardly. the defender is frequently the person most in need of healing.

A lot of defenders _over-defend_ ... optimally you spread damage around some. That's one of the reasons I like having paladin multiclass on my inspiring warlord, since it tends to help spread things out better (especially since I can stay at reach)

It also depends on the other party members and what defenses they have. In my experience a party with no defenders has both problems and advantages. The squishies are going to get dinged up more but this can spread the surge loss more evenly in the party.

Yep.

you keep using an example without really defining what happened.

I play about 3 times per week and prep for about three different games I DM on different schedules - I don't keep notes on what happened or care all that much.

How big is the party? did anyone stay in the zone? Does your dm use focus fire?

5, 3 of 5, Yes but paladin mark and my multiclass paladin mark really made that difficult.

the minion encounter is a pretty poor example no matter how you slice it. warlock with armor, dragon born, wizard...

No warlock with armor, no wizard. My warlock with armor is in a different game. Not really sure what her warlock had.

both really weak examples. a solo and a zone and a minion heavy encounter vs a party almost optimized for minion removal. what are the pc's in your party?

I believe it was
paladin 5 (not well played or optimized)
inspiring warlord 5
laser cleric/ranger 6
rogue 5
warlock 4 (no reaving used)

Minions are almost zero threat (10 dmg is good though) when you consider armor of ag, dragon born and a wizard. How many minions even survived the first round?

Hmm, I believe I killed 3 of them with a breath and someone else killed 1 of them. After several swarmed one person (doing like 30 damage), the cleric divine glow-ed 4 of them in the 2nd round.

How many people entered the zone in the solo encounter?

3.

wait... you're telling me it's all about tactics yet you deploy armor on the solo and not on the minions? That's horrible tactics. Horrendous. 5th level pc's have 35 to 55 hp. If you let 12 minions get off multiple ten damage attacks how is it that no one got bloodied? Something simply doesn't add up with your example.

People got bloodied - I cheerfully enjoyed the +1 to attack from it, for instance. Never felt in any danger of people falling down and we had buckets of healing so decided to wait until we planted healing standards after the battle.

The crocotta has a close burst 3 that does 17 average damage and hits an avg 5th level pc on a 3 or a 4.

Yeah, I want to say it hit either 3 or 4 people with it (then died).

I'm a big fan of killing things quickly. Inspired Belligerence and Warlord's Strike, for example, make for fast takedowns and synergy well with AP spending.

in this battle hits at least 50% of the time. The croc hits about 80% and the party has 200 hit points. The minions not only are going to get at least 18-25 attacks given your previous statements they increase the damage from the huntmaster (even before we factor his template and AoE attack).

I think the fight was 5 rounds and the minions were all dead during round 3, then the Crocotta in 4, then the huntmaster. I believe the Croc didn't get to attack anything in round 1 due to positioning/range (nor did the paladin)

This means the minions eat up half your hit points even with me being generous and taking favorable assumptions for you, like not upping the minions hits based upon an near guarantee of flanking.

I believe the minions did 40 to 50 damage, total.

The crocotta can't help but do 50 dmg.

That sounds about right. It hit 3 or 4 people with its area, I think missed with its bite due to how we marked it... so maybe 60-70?

The huntmaster has ranged 20 and avg dmg of 15 on anything near the minions.

The huntmaster did like 10 damage to 2 people with his AoE attack and I want to say only hit once otherwise.

They attempted to focus fire as they could, but we split them basically in two - the rogue and warlock both got turn up pretty well, then the 2 marks screwed and some disengaging (concealment + ethereal stride made several attacks outright miss the warlock, the rogue did something... moved to the other side of the fire where he was in smoke and couldn't be seen I think), I held off the Croc + HM for a round alone until the paladin came up next round and marked someone else... we dazed and pulled the HM into melee range I think (or maybe just all got around him, dunno) and did nasty things to it after we finished the Croc. I was indeed bloodied, the cleric and paladin were fine...

way into bloodied and definitely in need of healing.

Difference between someone at 15 hp and someone at 55 hp? Not much. Only below 0 would a heal _really_ be needed.

Tell you what, buy a copy of "fantasy grounds 2" and I'll dm this encounter for you.

I took a look at FG2 in the past, but I didn't really like it that much. Probably just limited exposure, but eh

Totally agree. But you said it had massive hit points. Can't have died that quick. How many guys in the zone during those 3 rounds?

It had around 444 hp I guess. We all burned AP and I'm not sure anyone missed with much (especially not with everyone having combat advantage and it having -2 AC and -3 Will) and I gave +9 damage per attack to my allies and the cleric uses WotG on someone. The trap I think got 1 attack in round 1, 2 in round 2, 3 in round 3. There was some major crit in there with some power or other for like 50, but only one that I recall.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Ranged people stayed out of range, melee people didn't - though my warlord's reach let me not be in it for at least one round til the critter shifted back.

If three people are in the zone this but some shifted out for a round or two (really it would likely be at the very least 4 rounds to do 450 dmg with 5 pc's even with exceptional luck) so some melee types would have had to face the zone attack 4 times. This means that you're either getting amazingly lucky on both offense or defense or some of your 5th level pc's have taken 6d6+8 and 5 ongoing twice(44 dmg avg). Yet they felt no danger of going down even completely ignoring the fact that their standing in front of a solo with multiple attacks and still standing in the zone? 44 dmg puts most level 5 pc's down. it certainly puts ALL level 5 pc's into a dangerous place. We're not even looking at the damage from the zombie. I've never fought an L+1 solo that didn't do some damage to the party.

Truthfully this scenario as presented sounds nearly mathematically absurd. If you're in an encounter and the DM rolls below a 10 on 80% of his die rolls I think you would notice that and probably ought to toss the encounter out as proof of anything. If the party simultaneously is rolling above average we're getting to a place that isn't statistically supportable. If the die rolls are normal in the encounter you're presenting it's impossible for at least two of the people int he zone to not be knocked to 0. The zombie had 2-3 attacks per round (plus action points) and more hit points than is reasonably possible for a 5th level party to do in 4 rounds of combat. You're talking about avg dpr for the entire party of more than 20 per pc every round. 5 rounds at 20 dmg every round x 5 pc's = 500 dmg. that's massively above expected even with 100% hits. I've never seen a party hit 20 times in 4-5 rounds. Your tactics are also horrible once again as it unless you're burning through every daily the damage simply can't be this high and it would have made a lot more sense for the party to use some healing rather than expend dailies.

Honestly, I simply don't believe this scenario is possible. That sort of disappoints me because I actually like a lot of your posts but this seems like you're making things up to support your argument.

Hmm, I believe I killed 3 of them with a breath and someone else killed 1 of them. After several swarmed one person (doing like 30 damage), the cleric divine glow-ed 4 of them in the 2nd round.

This implies that you got 6 of them in your blast and the cleric got 8 in a blast 3. I've never seen anyone get more than 4-5 targets in a blast 3 and I don't think I've ever seen a PC hit 100% with a blast 3 above 3 targets. It's obviously possible for either to happen but if you got 8 targets the DM is playing the monsters terribly or if you got 80-100% hits with a power on 4 for 4 or 4 for 5 then the example is a little tainted by the fact that your party rolled amazingly well. Killing the 12 minions in 3 rounds is REALLY unlikely unless you're devoting nearly all of your attacks to this or getting exceptionally lucky. killing the crocotta with focus fire in one round is nearly impossible unless the entire party rolled off the charts. you need about a 14-15 to hit it. the CA from inspired belligerence can certainly help but all your pc's must be in range as well. If the crocotta hit 3 pc's with the burst that's more than 50 damage right there and it should have gotten multiple other attacks in the combat at a really high chance to hit. The crocotta getting no attack round one is really weird since it can charge from anywhere inside 17 squares. While your description of the combat is possible it's either a very significant mathematical anomaly or it's an example of the monsters being dumb brutes waiting to be killed.

People got bloodied - I cheerfully enjoyed the +1 to attack from it, for instance. Never felt in any danger of people falling down and we had buckets of healing so decided to wait until we planted healing standards after the battle.

once again this isn't a statistically valid argument. The crocotta does 3d6+4 if it shifts and the huntmaster can focus fire with him pretty much anywhere on the battle field. Any level 5 bloodied pc has to feel immense danger with so many 10 dmg creatures in play and two BBEG's. Any reasonably skilled DM should have been able to bloody 2-3 pc's on round 1 with this encounter. This assumes that monsters spread out and didn't put 5 or more attacks on 2 creatures. Anyone hit by the crocotta burst and even 1 minion is bloodied. 2 minions and the huntmaster and all but a defender are below 10 hp left. how can you feel confident that you're not going to get hit once or twice in a round with so many potential attacks?

I have to conclude we're not playing the same game. Your encounters must be full of monsters who ignore the fact that a pc is bloodied, never use focus fire, attack in uncoordinated ways, never achieve flanking, and roll a d16 to hit while letting the pc's use a d24.

Yeah, I want to say it hit either 3 or 4 people with it (then died).

This really doesn't make sense. We occasionally drop a 80 or so on a monster in one round(this usually means the rogue hit for a big dmg sneak and the fighter landed a 3w daily plus a solid hit from the cleric or wizard) but that happens rarely as it requires 3 hits on the same target, the rogue to have CA, good rolls and a significant expenditure of power in terms of dailies/encounter powers. Your party apparently drops a 100 every round on some target or another. This isn't anywhere near the expected outcome of 5th level pc's. For every round we hang 80 dmg we have a round where we hang 25-30 or less.

I'm a big fan of killing things quickly. Inspired Belligerence and Warlord's Strike, for example, make for fast takedowns and synergy well with AP spending.

These powers don't come anywhere near explaining the staggering math required to create your encounters. Everyone likes putting creatures down rapidly. Warlord's strike should miss half the time, and belligerence is worth about +10-20 dmg for a single round plus getting CA for the rogue assuming he doesn't already have it. AP's can double this. It's a horrible tactic to burn AP's instead of using encounter power healing. If you're in control of an encounter (and not needing any healing is dominating an encounter) why would you burn a daily or an AP? You would pay for such horrible misuse of resources in our campaign with a tpk.

I think the fight was 5 rounds and the minions were all dead during round 3, then the Crocotta in 4, then the huntmaster. I believe the Croc didn't get to attack anything in round 1 due to positioning/range (nor did the paladin)

The math to make this happen is staggering. The huntmaster is a ranged 20 attacker who can back pedal at speed 8 a warlock or zap cleric can pretty much never catch him and the paladin needs to move + move, move+charge. If the paladin does move+move, the huntmaster can keep moving back until it's got a 19 square gap and then fire with impunity. A huntmaster is a terribly dangerous foe in the same way the huns were. This is the same situation experienced by Iraqi armor vs American armor. If one side has both a speed advantage and a range advantage and an accuracy advantage, the other side is pretty much dead without any hope. Massive mobility and massive range spells big problems for a party. This is another reason for the fast runner feat. A party doesn't have a lot of options for ranged 20 combat. The zap cleric/ranger might have a long bow. A wizard might have MM. A huntmaster can make a lot of classes completely combat ineffective. speed 5 guys are nothing but a pin cushion.

I believe the minions did 40 to 50 damage, total.

pretty horrible math for them. expected round 1 dmg was 40-50 even if you kill 2-4 before they attack. After that the dice roll scenario rapidly moves to statistically unsupportable.

That sounds about right. It hit 3 or 4 people with its area, I think missed with its bite due to how we marked it... so maybe 60-70?

missed with it's bite all 3-4 rounds? it's +14 vs AC and it can take resist radiant with it's flexible resistance and completely hose the paladin mark. our level 5 party has ac's in the 17 to 21 range. this creature shouldn't be missing every attack and it definitely shouldn't be dieing in 1 round of focus fire. It also should be getting CA for many of it's attacks since it has 12 minions scurrying about and a rechargeable CA power.

The huntmaster did like 10 damage to 2 people with his AoE attack and I want to say only hit once otherwise.

Once again either horribly unlucky or horribly misused. even so this is 35 dmg and the crocotta should have done 50-70 with just the burst and another 40-50 from minions and we're talking about about 145 dmg (with the worst luck imaginable for the bad guys) and this was spread so evenly through the party that no one was down to 10 hps? No one was worried that another 15dmg arrow from the huntmaster was going to put it down?

They attempted to focus fire as they could, but we split them basically in two - the rogue and warlock both got turn up pretty well, then the 2 marks screwed and some disengaging (concealment + ethereal stride made several attacks outright miss the warlock, the rogue did something... moved to the other side of the fire where he was in smoke and couldn't be seen I think), I held off the Croc + HM for a round alone until the paladin came up next round and marked someone else... we dazed and pulled the HM into melee range I think (or maybe just all got around him, dunno) and did nasty things to it after we finished the Croc. I was indeed bloodied, the cleric and paladin were fine...

and while your party was employing all these tactics what tactics did the monsters employ?

I'm not trying to beat up on you here but you are presenting giant statistical anomalies as evidence. One person wins the lottery but this doesn't mean it's a good investment.

Difference between someone at 15 hp and someone at 55 hp? Not much. Only below 0 would a heal _really_ be needed.

ahh we're getting somewhere now. being killed in 4e means you drop prone and lose at least 1-3 actions. We try to keep all the pc's on their feat because you lose massive efficiency if a pc is down and you make it possible for combats to spiral out of control. If you save healing until a pc is down there is a chance that a healer will go down and then your other healer will suffer a debilitating effect like stun. If the defender goes down the attackers run right past him and he loses his marks and stickiness. He's also prone when he gets healed and sometimes he gets pounded with CA before he can get up. I can see a couple valid point for waiting until someone is down but I can make a lot of point why that's a bad idea. Just losing a round of actions can hurt a party massively (you're effectively offering the bad guys an extra round of stun).

I took a look at FG2 in the past, but I didn't really like it that much. Probably just limited exposure, but eh

I'm from RI, I live in AZ, I play in a campaign with guys who I played face to face with 25 yrs ago and we now live in ma, ri, ny, az, co, coupled with voice chat like ventrillo it absolutely rocks. It's got some bad design elements but overall it's a very sweet system and it keeps track of a lot of the bookkeeping for you.

It had around 444 hp I guess. We all burned AP and I'm not sure anyone missed with much (especially not with everyone having combat advantage and it having -2 AC and -3 Will) and I gave +9 damage per attack to my allies and the cleric uses WotG on someone. The trap I think got 1 attack in round 1, 2 in round 2, 3 in round 3. There was some major crit in there with some power or other for like 50, but only one that I recall.

Burning AP's and dailies rather than healing? sounds like a recipe to get you killed.

I'm not trying to beat you up here but you're presenting major statistical anomalies as evidence. One person wins big in the lottery but that doesn't mean it's a good investment.

 

[keterys]

I've never fought an L+1 solo that didn't do some damage to the party.

It certainly did damage - two people were worried, so I was starting to think the cleric and I would have to give up on our personal challenge not to heal. We probably did have both Bastion of Health (9 temp) and Righteous Smite (7 temp) up that fight, but I'm not sure that more than 2 people got the benefit of Righteous since he did it right after I bastioned (so, I got the benefit at least)

The zombie had 2-3 attacks per round (plus action points)

It moved twice, so that pretty much nullifies the two AP.

and more hit points than is reasonably possible for a 5th level party to do in 4 rounds of combat. You're talking about avg dpr for the entire party of more than 20 per pc every round.

Hmm, well the 'good round' would have been something like 10 attacks total from party, 8 of them at +9 damage, and about five of them radiant (2 from cleric, 2 from whoever he WotG-ed... rogue?, 1 from paladin). The crit for around 50 was probably me with Bastion (37+2d12), and I also landed my warlord's strike (2d10+7), so I did about 68. The rogue has whatever feat lets you sneak attack on an AP, so he hit twice for about 2d4+2d8+1d6+5+10+9 (each), so that's about another 83 points. The paladin would have been about 1d10+6+3+5+9 for holy strike and 2d10+6+9 for righteous smite for another 54.5, the warlock did... I want to say Frigid Darkness and Radiant Star, so 2d8+1d6+6+9 and 3d8+6+5+9 or another 61 damage, and the cleric I think just lance of faithed twice (I think he used his divine glow in a previous round and he didn't use his daily 1 that mod, so he probably had beacon of hope) so 1d8 + 6 + 5 + 9 (each), so that's another 49. Which is a total of... 68+83+54.5+61+49 = 315.5 damage. That was 1 of the 3 rounds, and I did power jewel and warlord's strike again in the next round. I'd not be surprised if I'm forgetting a miss or two there, but either way it should show you how it was possible. I also know that I forced it to trigger my mark for 12 radiant (7 + vuln) at one point cause I marked, attacked, shifted.

would have made a lot more sense for the party to use some healing rather than expend dailies.

We knew it was the last fight before we rested and we'd made our wager of seeing if we could get through without healing. So... no, it made perfect sense. It was a personal challenge and we had _buckets_ of healing. We had a paladin with lay on hands, 4 healing words, stand the fallen, beacon of hope, second winds...

Honestly, I simply don't believe this scenario is possible. That sort of disappoints me because I actually like a lot of your posts but this seems like you're making things up to support your argument.

*shrug* It happened. The critter missed a lot too, but I already said it was inaccurate. I do believe the cleric shield of faithed before we entered the temple, also which I didn't notice til I went looking to see what powers he had (I'd never grouped with him before)

This implies that you got 6 of them in your blast and the cleric got 8 in a blast 3.

The cleric hit 4 of 4 in his divine glow - I remember that cause there were actually 5 within a 5x5 area at the time and I'd told him I could deal with it by pulling out my +1 lightning javelin and using its ability to kill them all if I hit, but he wanted to give us the +2 attack anyways so tried divine glow and it killed them all. Honestly, I think there were just 3 for my breath to hit and I hit all 3... I'm +7 attack and they're Ref 15 so that's not actually horrible chance.

I've never seen anyone get more than 4-5 targets in a blast 3 and I don't think I've ever seen a PC hit 100% with a blast 3 above 3 targets.

He definitely got all 4. There were 2 hyena and 2 packrunners attacking and they'd just done ~30 damage.

I suppose he might have elf precision-ed to make that stick, but I don't remember him doing so. He's, what, +6 or +7 to hit too, so he was lucky to hit 4 of 4.

killing the crocotta with focus fire in one round is nearly impossible

I think you're underestimating the fire power of a couple of the characters in question - I was giving at least +4 damage to others and possibly +9. The rogue almost must have used his blinding barrage on the huntmaster and Croc, cause I can't really see where else he'd have used it. I know I spent an AP that round and I think 1 other person did (but I'm not sure).

unless the entire party rolled off the charts. you need about a 14-15 to hit it.

Hmm, I had +11 attack at the time (+10 base, +1 bloodied) plus CA, so I'd need a 10 on Warlord's Strike or a 8 for Hammer and Anvil.

If the crocotta hit 3 pc's with the burst that's more than 50 damage right there and it should have gotten multiple other attacks in the combat at a really high chance to hit.

It got 3 or 4 people in the burst, definitely. I believe it missed with its bite and lost a round when no was in range of it.

The crocotta getting no attack round one is really weird since it can charge from anywhere inside 17 squares. While your description of the combat is possible it's either a very significant mathematical anomaly or it's an example of the monsters being dumb brutes waiting to be killed.

It was on the far side of the camp on fire with halflings and minions - it did not engage in round 1. I'd not be surprised if the encounter was scripted as such or if it ate a halfling or something in its first action.

The crocotta does 3d6+4 if it shifts

Eh, I marked it and used a reach weapon on it from across difficult terrain, so it couldn't shift easily. It was likely blind for its 2nd chance to attack. I'm almost positive it didn't get a bite off, but if it did it only got off 1.

Anyone hit by the crocotta burst and even 1 minion is bloodied.

I believe 3 of the party were bloodied (myself, rogue, warlock) and the paladin and cleric were not particularly threatened.

It's a horrible tactic to burn AP's instead of using encounter power healing.

We set ourselves a tactical challenge - for that matter, we knew we had the APs available, why wouldn't we use them? It's almost always worth burning APs on a round with belligerence + warlord's strike... especially in a game that's half skill challenges and half combats, since you can spend an AP most combats that way.

If you're in control of an encounter (and not needing any healing is dominating an encounter) why would you burn a daily or an AP?

That's silly - if we didn't spend dailies or APs, we'd need healing. But what possible reason would we have not to spend dailies or APs? We know we have them, we know when we get them, etc.

missed with it's bite all 3-4 rounds? it's +14 vs AC and it can take resist radiant with it's flexible resistance and completely hose the paladin mark.

It actually can't, that's not an available resistance for variable resistance (that surpised me too, but check the MM)

it definitely shouldn't be dieing in 1 round of focus fire.

And yet, that's what happened. It definitely got off its burst, it definitely missed with its bite once... it likely was blinded at one point so maybe that's why it missed.

Once again either horribly unlucky or horribly misused. even so this is 35 dmg and the crocotta should have done 50-70 with just the burst and another 40-50 from minions and we're talking about about 145 dmg (with the worst luck imaginable for the bad guys) and this was spread so evenly through the party that no one was down to 10 hps? No one was worried that another 15dmg arrow from the huntmaster was going to put it down?

Heh, the warlock was worried, but that didn't mean we needed healing. Again, people falling down is not the end of the world. Not that anyone did, but hey. The paladin secured one group of minions (not killed, but blockaded), I killed another, the rogue and I got beat on by the rest, the cleric cleared out a big section and I let the others mop up the rest so I stopped paying attention to how they did it.

Fwiw, people _did_ actually heal some during this... 6 whenever they spent an AP, cause I'm an inspiring warlord. Dunno how much that mattered... maybe 36 hp total for the two fights, at most, since it doesn't apply to me and some undamaged people spent AP.

ahh we're getting somewhere now. being killed in 4e means you drop prone and lose at least 1-3 actions. We try to keep all the pc's on their feat because you lose massive efficiency if a pc is down and you make it possible for combats to spiral out of control. If you save healing until a pc is down there is a chance that a healer will go down and then your other healer will suffer a debilitating effect like stun.

Sure, but with 3 sources of healing plus second wind, it was fun to take the risk. The fight against the solo I had actually said we'd have to heal next round, but then we did a ton of damage to it. It was improbable that we'd all hit, and like I said I might have forgotten we missed, but we did only need like 5s to hit it at that point (+2 from CA, +2 from Divine Glow last round, -3 AC and Will from the warlock at different times)

I can see a couple valid point for waiting until someone is down but I can make a lot of point why that's a bad idea. Just losing a round of actions can hurt a party massively (you're effectively offering the bad guys an extra round of stun).

Yeah, I wouldn't advise it as a normal course of action. We were just seeing if we could get away with it.

Burning AP's and dailies rather than healing? sounds like a recipe to get you killed.

Psh, just need to be really cocky.