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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5802537" data-attributes="member: 2011">No, I'm just making more sense with my arguments than you are. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Sure, the players can change their powers. Course, that doesn't help at the point in time where the squishies are actually getting attacked. It only helps if the PC squishies survive the attacks in order to go off and change their abilities.Most shielding swordmages decrease the damage, but they don't stop effects from affecting the squishies, nor are most shielding marks affecting more than one NPC at a time. So, have multiple NPCs attack the high AC swordmage at full damage and low chance to hit and put on an effect, or attack the low AC squishy, potentially do less damage to one of them, but increase the chance of doing damage and adding an effect with more of the NPC attacks.No brainer really.Most brawling Fighters can only grab one foe at at time, at least at low level. I'm not seeing where your examples here are proving your point. Switching Defender type doesn't really improve your argument much.Bottom line, Defenders are only truly sticky if the DM allows them to be. Otherwise, they just get some minor benefit or damage, and NPCs are pretty much free to attack whomever they want and increase the NPC overall damage and chance to apply effects.Sorry, but you are just plain mistaken on this point. Defenders are not very sticky and can rarely force NPCs to attack them.Yes, all of these things can (and often are) done. They don't change the fact that the Wizard is pretty much a lame class with limited versatility and power in 4E.We weren't talking about that. We were merely talking about playing intelligent monsters intelligently. If a DM gets into the arms race, he can easily wipe out any party. I'm just talking about a DM taking an encounter and playing the NPCs smart enough to challenge his PCs. It's not that hard to do.Agreed on the second count, but the first one is dependent on how tactically capable the DM is in both creating encounters and running them. The DM has typically seen all of the PC powers, tricks, and tactics, but every encounter should have something a little bit new or unique that the players haven't yet seen. Advantage DM, at least for tactically capable DMs.Actually, the main problem I have with Wizards is the feat tax. The difference between AC 14 and AC 20 of a Paladin at level one is huge. In earlier editions, Wizards had many other ways (e.g. a small percentage of their spells, scrolls, and more permanent magic items) to handle this issue. 3E Wizards didn't have to use a feat, just to not be wiped out in two rounds except at the very lowest of levels.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/living-eberron/289663-adventure-murder-most-foul-part-2-judge-evolutionkb-16.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/living-eberron/289663-adventure-murder-most-foul-part-2-judge-evolutionkb-16.html</a>That was easy. And this was before the damage increase by WotC in the January 2011 errata.Encounter 3: 1150 XP400 1 Genasi Stormmaster (level 9)400 2 Eladrin Arcane Archers (level 5)350 Hazard, Extremely Long Dark Room (level 5)5 Level 6 PCs. N+0 is 1250 XP.Two PCs are over 75% damaged in round 2.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5370764-post267.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/5370764-post267.html</a>Three PCs are bloodied, one at 1 hit point and prone in round 3.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5375381-post279.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/5375381-post279.html</a>One PC unconscious, one bloodied in round 6.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5389889-post322.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/5389889-post322.html</a>A different PC unconscious in round 12.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5423179-post371.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/5423179-post371.html</a>Granted, the players didn't realize that a simple sunrod would have negated a lot of this grief until much later in the encounter, but players sometimes make mistakes. This wasn't even an n+0 encounter, it was before the increased damage system, there were only 3 actual foes against the PCs (2 of them lower level), the PCs are tricked out quite a bit (you see this a lot in Living Eberron, especially since the players pick most of the PC magic items and have access to nearly all feats and powers), and two PCs still went unconscious.Course, your definition of a typical encounter might be different than mine. For me, a typical encounter at my table is an encounter with cool unusual elements to challenge players, not one that they've seen a bunch of times. In your parlance, that's boring.</blockquote>

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