Cloak of the Walking Wounded

[MortalPlague]

Looking at the party, it seems pretty melee-heavy. That sort of group can be tough to challenge with raw damage. I'd look at using some ranged artillery and controllers who slow or immobilize, combined with a few tough guys on the front line. Not too often, mind you, but once in a while to expose the party's weakness.

On the topic of MM3, I have it, and it's great. There are some amazing monsters in there, especially at and around the level you're hitting. Also, Greg Bilsland (one of the writers on MM3) has an excellent blog, where he talks about the adjustments to monsters. His quick fix; double the static damage a monster deals (or triple it, if it's a brute). So if a monster does 2d6+5, make it do 2d6+10 (or 2d6+15 for a brute). Also, give brutes a +2 to hit; the penalty to their accuracy isn't doing them any favors.

Finally, and you've probably heard this, but it's important to keep in mind; let the players win. If they're having fun rolling through encounters, you're doing something right. It's great to challenge them, but if you make every encounter a slog designed to leech their surges and shut them down, you risk losing what makes your game fun. I think we're all guilty of this from time to time, so it never hurts to keep the fun of the players in mind.

 

[vagabundo]

Double damage dice all the monsters you throw at them. It is no fun not having a challenge.

It is known that the MM - and to some extent the MM2 - monsters are light on damage. Time to "up" their damage.

My double dice rule of thumb is very simple: I used Evistros in my game last night and according to the MM they do 1d8+5 damage*; woefully inadequate, so I upped it to 2d8+5; yum, much better.

*I believe this damage has since been erratted to 1d12+5, better but not good enough for a carnage demon.

 

[FireLance]

Perhaps a better question is: do your players feel that they aren't being challenged?

I both play and DM, and I know for a fact that fights often look very different from each end of the DM screen. A fight which the DM thinks the players beat easily may not seem that way to the players simply because they don't know everything that the DM does.

Anyway, to address some random points that have been raised so far:

1. The cloak of the walking wounded has no effect on how many milestones the PCs can reach. If the PCs didn't spend a healing surge during the fight, they would have spent it to recover hit points after the fight, anyway. In fact, if they have a leader role PC in the party, they are usually better off spending healing surges after a fight to take advantage of the hit point recovery bonuses that he can provide.

2. Even with the expenditure of an action point, a standard action spent using second wind is a standard action spent not attacking. In other words, regardless of whether or not a non-dwarf PC spends an action point so that he can attack in the same round that he uses his second wind, the fact remains that he used his second wind when he could have attacked instead. Whether or not this is a good decision will depend on the circumstances of the fight, but if spending a standard action to use your second wind instead of attacking is a bad decision, it remains a bad decision even if you spend an action point to do it.

3. The real question is: if the PCs did not have cloaks of the walking wounded, would it have made any difference to the outcome of the fight? In order to answer this question, note which PCs have used second wind and a cloak of the walking wounded to spend two healing surges instead of one. If the characters end the fight with more than 25% of their hit points, the cloak of the walking wounded probably would not have made any difference to the outcome of the fight (and if they ended the fight still unbloodied, the cloak almost certainly did not). The presence of a leader PC might make this estimation more difficult since you need to make an assessment of whether he would have used his healing powers on another target instead, but using a similar rule of thumb, if the PCs healed by the leader end the fight with more than 25% of their hit points, the healing probably would not have made a difference to the outcome of the fight.

In my view, the effect of cloaks of the walking wounded is mostly psychological. The player feels comforted that his PC is not that close to being bloodied or dying, but most of the time, the expenditure of an extra healing surge during a fight will not make any difference to the outcome. In fact, by making it more attractive for the PCs to spend an action to use their second wind instead of attacking, it might allow monsters to survive longer, causing the party to lose more hit points in the long run.

 

[dvvega]

Thank you for the replies from MortalPlague and FireLance.

@MortalPlague: Getting the MM3 will be a priority for me, the blog link was great thank you.

@FireLance: I was just talking to the Fighter's player this evening. He does think he's character is way over powered with that cloak. He did admit that the encounter I developed using Human Pirates (and Leader) and the landlocked ship/campsite had him worried a little.

In addition I discovered he wasn't using the cloak correctly. He had bee using it as an Immediate Reaction as opposed to Interrupt. This makes a LARGE difference in the scheme of things and he could possibly have been near death in the last combat.

It still remains that 4 out of 5 of them have the cloak (the Shaman does not) but after the talk with the Fighter's player tonight the next couple of encounters may surprise them.

Thank you for the latest list of health.

D

 

[Mengu]

I don't know what you have in your campaign, but I reskin monsters with visual and a few mechanical tweaks all the time. For a surge eating monster you can take a wight, reskin it as a dark fey, or as an assassin poisoner (change everything necrotic to poison), or a blood mage, or a sith lord, or whatever you do have in your campaign. You could also use fast acting diseases.

The group seems pretty solid. Controllers and artillery will be your answer to slow them and shoot them to pieces.

And as FireLance also said, if the PC doesn't end the fight at less than a quarter hit points (and the leader has used an encounter heal on the PC), then the cloak did nothing. And if the PC ends the fight with less than a quarter, then the PC will have spent 5 surges to recover (6 with the encounter heal), which will run all but the Fighter out of surges in 2 encounters.

As for the action point second wind, I don't think I've ever done this with any of my characters. But I guess that too is a matter of philosophy, as I have players who like to do it. I use action points to setup combos or hurt stuff, and traditionally use it first or second round. I find that if the whole party observes this tradition, a difficult encounter can be reduced to manageable size fairly effectively.

 

[Zaran]

Don't give them the cloaks. If they are spending that much money on making the cloaks then let them have the items. They would be lower level or equal to their level so that makes them not as good as
Something from the gm.

 

[LordBill]

Double damage dice all the monsters you throw at them. It is no fun not having a challenge.

This is great advice. If your players have good tactics, good builds, and good magic items, the baseline encounters are trivial.

Monsters need to do MUCH more damage than they do. How much more, depends on a great many variables. But your players probably fall into the 'awesomely effective butt kicker' catagory.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I do not really understand your concept of finite surges since there is no way that the Fighter is going to run out of them over the day and since the healer doesn't have to worry about everyone else in general the Fighter will be at or close to 100% hit points for most of the day.

D

This right here is your main problem. You are not challenging the party with tough enough encounters or (more likely) enough encounters numerically in a day. I have had PCs go through 8-10 encounters between extended rests simply because I don't let up! They want to retreat? That'll mean at least 2 more encounters battling their way out of whereever the heck they gotten themselves. It is the rare time I have not had the PCs at single digit surges (that's total left in the whole party and I have 7 players!) with multiple people at 0 (especially the defenders - I pound those guys unmercifully). Some of them have had CotWW but more often they go for things that give them resistances (Amulet of Health I think is the most popular one) or things like Cloaks of Distortion (-5 to hit from more than 5 squares away or something like that).

That little bonus of hps is nice an all but it is a small drop in the bucket to what a 'normal' adventuring day it like for my players

 

[Solvarn]

Up the Ante

As mentioned previously, you have a group of pretty durable characters. Two defenders, and I bet the druid and barbarian have Con as a second stat.

My advice: use terrain advantageous for enemies, ranged attackers, and ranged attackers. Controllers are anathema of melee.

Also, I've seen it suggested that at paragon and epic, double the static bonus on damage, triple it on brutes. So 2d8 + 5 becomes 2d8 + 10 on standard monsters, 2d8 + 15 on brutes. Also up the AC on brutes by like 2 points.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

Thank you for the replies from MortalPlague and FireLance.

@MortalPlague: Getting the MM3 will be a priority for me, the blog link was great thank you.

@FireLance: I was just talking to the Fighter's player this evening. He does think he's character is way over powered with that cloak. He did admit that the encounter I developed using Human Pirates (and Leader) and the landlocked ship/campsite had him worried a little.

In addition I discovered he wasn't using the cloak correctly. He had bee using it as an Immediate Reaction as opposed to Interrupt. This makes a LARGE difference in the scheme of things and he could possibly have been near death in the last combat.

It still remains that 4 out of 5 of them have the cloak (the Shaman does not) but after the talk with the Fighter's player tonight the next couple of encounters may surprise them.

Thank you for the latest list of health.

D

So the fighter admits his char is OP w/ the cloak... honestly CotWW cannot be OP, it can be good. If the second surge value would be granted w/o spending the surge I would agree.

Maybe he admits it b/c neither you nor the fighter know how that cloak works. It is neither an II nor an IR to use it - it's a static property that applies if you use your SW while bloodied. So it takes the action you have to spend to use your SW. If the fighter has to spend a Standard Action all his marks will go away that are applied by his normal attacks.

So he gets 1/encounter 2x surge value HP for 2 surges as Standard Action and loses all marks. Where does that look like OP?