Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8620785" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Question:   "How does 4e handle mass combat with droves of enemy units?"Answer:  "Swarms (which are vulnerable to AoE...like hordes or formations of enemies) w/ auras + Swarms breaking into Minions upon being Bloodied + Artillery (Minions or Standards) protected via terrain and positioning and cover + Terrain features that can be used against the Swarms/Minions and the Swarms/Minions can use against you.  Players have to figure out what/when/how to prioritize; find a way to assault the Artillery position as they rain hell down upon you and put you in undesirable spots (eg via Forced Movement riders + terrain interactions) or deal with the "kill-box dynamics" as you try to break the horde that is covered by the position-protected Artillery...or manage both somehow."Question:  "How does 4e handle the trope of a giant monster with multiple tentacles?"Answer:  "Solo/Elite Creature w/ Minions expressing the 6-8 (or whatever) tentacles where players have to decide whether to attack/destroy the dangerous tentacle (Minions) or destroy the body.  This works particularly well with a battlefield array that the giant tentacle monster (or whatever) can take advantage of which the players have to carefully navigate (like water + sea monster + boat w/ cover and stuff to stunt with like masts and rigging et al + tentacle Forced Movement and Grappling attacks to toss PCs into the water and drown them).Question:  "How does 4e handle the trope of escorting/protecting vulnerable NPCs?"Answer:  "The NPC is a Minion w/ an Encounter power that lets them outright avoid an attack (so basically a "double hit Minion" + a Trait that gives them a Defense bonus if they're adjacent to an ally (eg hiding behind the ally in fear/terror) + an At-Will that doesn't do damage but lets them move w/o OA and gives them + Defense.  That + an NPC Soldier with a suite of abilities to protect/sacrifice themselves (eg like a parent and their child) + PC Defender abilities/Control abilities/immediate interrupts to take attacks in the stead of an ally."[HR][/HR]Just deftly using those 3 above in varying configurations opens up an enormous amount of trope-space in 4e that simultaneously feels genre appropriate and urgent + rewarding tactically (in that you're assuming a pretty intricate and demanding OODA Loop to ensure things go well).4e's trope-capability is massive in both the fiction it allows for and how tactically and thematically rewarding it is to engage with trying to resolve that fiction using your suite of tactical and thematic resources (Fighters wading into hordes while Wizards and Rangers and Rogues work their way to deal with protected Artillery...Paladins protecting the helpless/vulnerable with their valor/prowess and divine-patronage while Rangers defly avoiding tentacles, firing off cover fire, and dispatching the tentacles with a barrage of arrows while everyone tries not to get thrown into the water and drowned...etc etc).</blockquote>

Verification