3 PCs (Party Level 6) "breeze" through EL 9 encounter

[dreaded_beast]

I DM a FR game consisting of the following:

6 Paladin Human
6 Swashbuckler Human
6 Fighter Half-Orc

For the most part, they have magical equipment standard for their level. We started at 5th and I allowed them to buy magical equipment using the treasure for PCs table in the DMG.

The "big battle" for last session was when the PCs found the lair of the Fire Knive Assassins that had been hounding for the past couple of days. The lair consisted of 3 2nd Level Rogues and 2 Assassins (1 Ftr/6 Rog/2 Asn). Arcady's EL Calculator gave this encounter an EL of 9.7.

Anyway, other than 2 of the characters having to make a Fortitude save to survive the death attack from the assassins, the encounter was pretty much a cakewalk. Once the assassins did their death attacks, they just couldn't stand toe-to-toe with the PCs, who hacked the assassins to bits. The assassins weren't going to run and were going to fight to the death since they failed to assassniate the PCs the first time around. They just seemed a bit too easy, considering this was a party of

Did I play the encounter incorrectly, are assassins meant to be "one-hit-wonders", or are the PCs just good at melee considering they are mainly fighter types?

Thoughts?

 

[molonel]

A group of lightly armored rogues and assassins can't stand toe-to-toe with a bunch of melee fighters? What is this world coming to?!?!?

But seriously: yes, once an assassin has done a death attack, unless he can escape to attempt to ambush, he's blown his load. The best they could have done was tumble and try to flank one of the fighter-ish characters to try and sneak-attack him to death. Maybe the assassins could have used poison, but once you determined they were going to stand there in the open and fight to the death, the encounter was a wash.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Out of curiosity, what was the strategy of the assassins? Did they break up, so that 2 were fighting 1 PC, 2 were fighting a second, and 1 fought the third?

It's been my experience that in your scenario, the means of getting the EL you were looking for would be to have the baddies follow "PC Procedure"...meaning concentrate on a single guy at a time. If all five baddies concentrated on a single PC, between all the sneak attacks flying, they could probably have taken down 1 PC each round...

 

[argo]

Did I play the encounter incorrectly, are assassins meant to be "one-hit-wonders", or are the PCs just good at melee considering they are mainly fighter types?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Without meat shields of their own, or at least some magic to control the battlefield and hamper the PC's (wall spells, darkness, something) the sneak attackers are going to go down hard. Even if they outnumber the PC's and flank them they are still going down hard. The best tactic they could have used would have been hit and fade, hide somewhere and try to re-activate the death attack.

In your favor though an encounter of this sort can be really hard to judge. All that needs to happen is for one PC to blow his For save or for one of the assasins to roll really well on a full round of sneak attacks and things could've gone completly the other way. That is the nature of sneak attack type characters: huge potential damage output, zero staying power.

 

[poilbrun]

I believe it's got to do with the fact that Rogues shouldn't go toe to toe with fighters... But even rogues can be deadly, if they use good strategy. This week end, my group of 6 players (lvl 6 rogue, lvl 6 dual-wielding fighter, lvl 3/3 Cleric/Wizard, lvl 4/2 Fighter/Sorcerer) was nearly killed by ONE lvl10 rogue. They were unprepared, but knew they were going to a fight, and it was their first encounter of the day. All of them went down except the cleric (which is why they won, but she's got too high an AC - which is why she sucks at wizard BTW ), and I should have killed the rogue (a sneak attack brought her to 1 hp, and I "forgot" to roll sneak attack damage on the next attack...).

Tactics used? Dust of disappearance (since you loose your dex against an invisible attacker) + Tumble (so that the players wouldn't know where to strike).

 

[Numion]

It is usually most effective to gang on a single character with multiple baddies, especially with rogues / assassins because of the sneak attack. Gang up, arrange for flanking and try to kill them one at a time. It might get a bit stupid though ..

"Rogue 1 moves to flank you with rogue 2 and sneak attacks .. rogue 2 sneak attacks, takes 5ft step to give flanking to assassin 1, he sneak attacks"

 

[kolikeos]

some good luck on the rogues part, or some bad luck on the pcs part, could have changed everything.
just the other day my party of (a bit underequiped) four 6th level fighters and two (very underequiped) 12th level fighters attacked a (fully equiped) 12th level wizard, and won only because one of them got a 19 with his stunning fist and i got a 2 on the wizards save.

 

[Feathercircle]

The thing about the CR system is that it's VERY strongly built around the assumption that you've got the classic 4: a wizard, a rogue, a cleric, and a fighter. The more you deviate from this assumption, the more "off" the system will be. An all-melee party like yours is going to breeze through encounters which require Fort saves, involve one BIG opponent with lots of HP, or which, like this, involve rogue-types going head to head with them. On the other hand, your characters are going to find encounters with lots of littler opponents (especially until someone gets Great Cleave), and magic-heavy monsters, particularly those that require Will saves, considerably HARDER than the CR may lead you to believe.

This is from personal experience- I'm in the exact OPPOSITE boat in my campaign. I've got a group of five characters which is essentially all casters, and before I got the hang of eyeballing the CRs for them myself, I'd manage to botch an encounter or two. I've had what the encounter calculator described as a "Challenging" battle (effective party level 3.9, encounter level 4) against a pair of ice trolls come within inches of a TPK. I've also had a supposedly difficult encounter or two wind up being too easy.

The same encounter is not going to be of equal difficulty to all parties. Once you realize that your group is atypical, you can figure out their strengths and weaknesses and plan acordingly.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

The thing about the CR system is that it's VERY strongly built around the assumption that you've got the classic 4: a wizard, a rogue, a cleric, and a fighter. The more you deviate from this assumption, the more "off" the system will be. An all-melee party like yours is going to breeze through encounters which require Fort saves, involve one BIG opponent with lots of HP, or which, like this, involve rogue-types going head to head with them. On the other hand, your characters are going to find encounters with lots of littler opponents (especially until someone gets Great Cleave), and magic-heavy monsters, particularly those that require Will saves, considerably HARDER than the CR may lead you to believe.

Good advice for the most part but I think you've got it backwards on the one big opponent vs. lots of littler opponents. Or at least, you may have it backwards.

If the fighters are AC tank or reach+combat reflexes or cleave types, the lots of little opponents will go down like cordwood. (In fact, that's what happenend in this encounter. They were outnumbered but half of the guys who outnumbered them had a mere +1 BAB and the other two were only +6 BAB despite being 9th level). A fighter or paladin with a 22-24 AC and 40-50 hit points can take a lot of attacks from foes who attack at +4 (did I roll a 20? then I miss) and do a maximum of 2d6 points of damage per hit. Grapple, trip, disarm, aid other, etc can make a difference but they only go so far. Pretty much the only way a lot of little guys will threaten a group of fighters is if they A. aren't really that little (a group of 2nd level orc barbarians with 18 strength, masterwork greataxes, and weapon focus (rage atk: +10 for 1d12+9 for instance) or B. the fighters have a poor AC.

On the other hand, a single big opponent can often injure fighters quickly enough that they have to back off if they hope to live and the fighters can't stay in its face for long without the healing provided by a level-appropriate cleric. This is particularly true of monsters like dire bears, trolls, and giants at CR=party level +2 or +3. It's doubly true if they reached that CR through advancement by HD.

 

[LostSoul]

The Assassins should have had some wands of invisibility and filled the area with mist before getting into combat. Then they could have used missile weapons and surprise and snuck away before the PCs could kill them.

Those three Rog2s were just dead meat any way you want to look at it.