D&D 5E 5e: the demystification of monsters?

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I think it's pretty clear that an ogre isn't much of a threat to a 5th-level fighter by itself.

However, that same ogre could spell big trouble if he gets close to the 5th-level wizard, who, unless he has high Con or Toughness, can still get killed in one 2d8+4 hit. Even a shot or two against a rogue or cleric would be bad news, and eat into daily healing resources (HD and/or healing magic) at the very least.

By level 10, there is very little chance that the ogre will kill a PC - he'd probably go down in only a couple rounds - but a decent hit or two would still require healing.

Remember, this ain't 4e. HD are much rarer than healing surges were, and all other healing takes up daily resources.

As a side-note, Parry and Protect are clearly a bit too much. Makes me sad.

 

[Steely_Dan]

I think it's pretty clear that an ogre isn't much of a threat to a 5th-level fighter by itself.

However, that same ogre could spell big trouble if he gets close to the 5th-level wizard, who, unless he has high Con or Toughness, can still get killed in one 2d8+4 hit. Even a shot or two against a rogue or cleric would be bad news, and eat into daily healing resources (HD and/or healing magic) at the very least.

By level 10, there is very little chance that the ogre will kill a PC - he'd probably go down in only a couple rounds - but a decent hit or two would still require healing.

Remember, this ain't 4e. HD are much rarer than healing surges were, and all other healing takes up daily resources.

As a side-note, Parry and Protect are clearly a bit too much. Makes me sad.

Exactly, not sure why what's-his-name glommed onto this "lone 5th level Fighter vs. an Ogre" scenario.

 

[triqui]

The most recent one. Or are you going to compare the first playtest ogre against the first playtest fighter, too?

In the end, it doesn't matter. Adding 2 additional points to the ogre's attack makes him slightly likely to beat the pure-idiot fighter - they're within 1 round of average-time-to-kill (the ogre still losing, on average). It still leaves the ogre with ~20 rounds to kill the ALL-PARRY-ALL-THE-TIME! fighter, so there's no actual change in the results: an ogre is not a threat to a 5th-level Fighter by himself, let alone a 5th-level party and not even approaching speedbump status for a 10th-level party.

And do you care to post some math of your own? Quoting a die code doesn't actually demonstrate that you understand anything.

I see two problems with your example. The first one, is that a combat does not need with a PC dead to be "a threat" or "meaningful". indeed, the CR system implies that the PC *win* the battle, but they lose a few resources in the process. A game where the PC have 50% chance to win an encounter is not balanced, is a game with 2 encounters length on average.

The second problem with your example is taht you are using *one* ogre. Sayiing that one single ogre is not a threat to a lvl 5 party has the same flawed logic that saying one single goblin is not a threat for a lvl 1 party. It's not, but it's not supposed to be encountered like that. You face groups of goblins, and, at lvl 5, you face groups of ogres. A second ogre hitting the all-parry fighter pose a much bigger threat. At level 10, 3vs1 ogres can also pose a threat. And remember: posing a threat does not mean the NPC have 50% chance to win and kill the party. The purpose of encounters is not to roll new characters every second combat. If the ogres die, and drain a meaningful part of the party resources, then they are properly designed.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Exactly, not sure why what's-his-name glommed onto this "lone 5th level Fighter vs. an Ogre" scenario.

1: A fifth level character is obviously less powerful than an entire 10th level party
2: A fighter is the easiest class to run simulations with.
3: Fifth level is the highest level we have in the latest playtest packet.

If an ogre isn't a serious threat to a fifth level PC, it's certainly not a threat to an entire tenth level party. Sure, a team of a dozen might be. But so might a team of a thousand kobolds. That doesn't mean that one kobold is a threat. It means that quantity has a quality all of its own.

And the playtest packet produced on 17/08 had ogres with 32hp, AC15 +4 to hit and 2d8+4 damage. +6 came from the first playtest packet.

And my "agenda" is to make sure that things said are actually true. And that we get a good game out of 5e. This doesn't mean it needs to be like 4e.
[MENTION=57948]triqui[/MENTION], the reason we're using one ogre is because Steely_Dan claimed that a single ogre would be a threat to the 10th level party in the second post in this thread. That was the statement made and the statement Steely_Dan is trying to defend throughout this thread.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I see two problems with your example. The first one, is that a combat does not need with a PC dead to be "a threat" or "meaningful". indeed, the CR system implies that the PC *win* the battle, but they lose a few resources in the process. A game where the PC have 50% chance to win an encounter is not balanced, is a game with 2 encounters length on average.

Certainly, I agree with all of that. However, I'm not sure that your objection is particularly meaningful in this instance, because the odds are good that, in one-on-one combat, a single 5th-level Fighter will come out nigh-unscathed against a single ogre.

I mean, you see [MENTION=6694877]slobo777[/MENTION]'s post where he sends 3 1st-level Fighters against 3 ogres, and they win more often than not? Now, add 4 more levels (with the attendant improvement in to-hit bonuses, hit points, combat superiority dice, and gear) and make it a diversified party (so that you have things like magical slows, walls, sleep spells, blessings, etc.), and I think you'll agree that even 3 ogres at once isn't going to be particularly challenging.

And if it is not particularly challenging at 5th-level, there's no way those ogres are holding up as a meaningful threat at 10th-level. Not yet, anyway.

The second problem with your example is taht you are using *one* ogre.

That was the example given, and the claim was that "an ogre" would be a threat to a 10th-level party.

I think that's been pretty conclusively disproven.

Would 12 ogres be a threat to a 10th-level party? In large part, I think that will be determined by how exactly bounded the accuracy system is, but given the way D&D has shaken out before (e.g., a proliferation of area effects in the hands of the spellcasters) combined with what we've seen so far (e.g., fighter superiority dice progression and rogue sneak attack progression), I'm no so sure.

A second ogre hitting the all-parry fighter pose a much bigger threat. At level 10, 3vs1 ogres can also pose a threat.

Sure - but the chances that both ogres hitting the fighter in the same round is only ~1 in 10 or 1 in 8. Against a solo 5th-level fighter, you'd expect one of the ogres to be dead before that happens.

And remember: posing a threat does not mean the NPC have 50% chance to win and kill the party.

Certainly not - but "50% chance to win if I play absolutely braindead" is not a meaningful threat, either.

If the ogres die, and drain a meaningful part of the party resources, then they are properly designed.

My supposition is that, so far, it doesn't look like they'll be draining a meaningful amount of the party's resources - at 5th-level, let alone 10th.

If the fighter's by himself against an ogre (and parries all the time), he's taken about 9 points of damage, on average.

And while it's likely that there will be more ogres fighting the 5th-level party, the fighter's not going to be by himself, and he's also probably going to have better gear or attack bonuses or defenses than I've assumed in my rough-justice numbers - and, afterwards, he's got the level 5 healer to patch him up (and maximize his hit die rolls).

Do "I cost the enemy a single Hit Die" or "I cost the cleric a single healing spell" represent a "meaningful" threat? Not in my book.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I know that we are still early in the development of the game and probably this issue, will change later.

In the playtest the heroes, from the 1st level are able to face a variety of foes and monsters. They can beat an ogre, drow elves, wights and many more. These monsters are made in porpuse to be beaten from the 1st level.

Don't get me wrong, i like the variety in battles and the pluralism of the enemies, the thing that i don't like is the demystification of many iconic monsters. I remember back in 2e you have to be 6 or 7 lvl to see the face of a dark elf. In 3rd or 4th edition an ogre could swipe a low level party. Only from 4th-5th level could a party beat it. If the players are able to cope from the 1st level with wights and ogres what will face at 10th level?

At 5e, this magical feeling, this terror in the eyes of the players when they hear the name of iconic monster is being lost, at least for me and my gaming group.

I think that it is kind of a non-problem.

My first consideration is that this game is largely fantasy fulfillment. There is something to be said for gradual empowerment of characters, but as long as the characters improve noticably as they increase in level, that won't be missing from the game. One thing I never liked about MMO games is that you spend the lowest levels of the game hunting and killing giant rats like some kind of glorified exerminator.

The monsters you mention have an established reputation as being hazards. Seeing Drow at a lower level helps immersion with respect to why Drow have not simply conquered the entire world.

As for the rarity of various monsters, the players only fight what the DM puts in front of them. If you need something to be rare, you just do not use it until you think the time is right.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[LostSoul]

I think that once they fix the monster "to-hit" modifiers most monsters will be viable threats over a large level range. You'll be able to use ogres at 1st and 10th level. The numbers and situations may vary (a couple of ogres arguing over meat vs. a dozen of them throwing rocks down at your from a tower) but you can still use them.

I hope.

 

[Rhenny]

IMO default to always Parry is optimal in a lot of cases. Exception is only when you can near-guarantee a kill by adding Deadly Strike.

This will need fixing, either by increasing monster damage (unlikely) or reducing power of Parry (more likely - I expect it will drop a die type, or similar).

A quick Monte-Carlo, three Level 1 Guardian Fighter Dwarves (Survivor Specialty) versus 3 Ogres, with preference to Protect and Parry when Ogres hit:

  TPK:                  49%           {49384/100000}

  Completed adventure:  51%
       two dwarves died      0%   {160 events}
         one dwarf died      4%   
          badly injured      0%   {353 events}
      moderate injuries     22%   
         light injuries     24%   
          not a scratch      1%   {270 events}

Same again, with preference to Deadly Strike:

  TPK:                  60%       {60412/100000}

  Completed adventure:  40%
       two dwarves died      1%   {534 events}
         one dwarf died      6%   
          badly injured      0%   {371 events}
      moderate injuries     17%   
         light injuries     15%   
          not a scratch      1%   {371 events}

. . . so damage reduction by Parry and Protect seems to be pretty good versus Ogres.

Also, level 1 fighters can handle an equal number of ogres, but it's well beyond usual challenge level.

Edit: Ran 100,000 just to be sure. Although in practice 1000 gets within +-1% most of the time.

First, let me say that everytime Slobo throws up one of these examples I want to throw XPs at him. I love that program you use, Slobo.

2nd, I think that when WoTC finally gets to work on the monsters, they should give the DM the choice to use mooks, standard, elite or solo monsters of each type. They just need to make a formula we can apply (more or less) for each upgrade or downgrade. This is important because DMs should be able to vary the difficulty/ type of encounter even using the same kind of monsters.

For example, in one encounter I might just want the PCs to face a small group of 4 orcs standard orcs. This probably would not be too difficult. In another encounter I might want to have them face 2 orcs, but if I want it to challenge them and drain their resources, I would probably make them elite orcs. In another encounter I could throw 10 orc mooks and 1 elite (maybe even one that casts spells). If I describe the monsters differently, and they act differently, and they use different weapons (and later some acquire new abiliites like spellcasting, etc.) then I can really add depth to my game...even if I reuse the same monster type in multiple encounters.

 

[pemerton]

Against a level 10 party, you will probably see something like 2-3 hill giants and 6-12 ogres. In 5e it looks like the addition of the 6-12 ogres will change the encounter dramatically. In earlier editions (3e, 4e) they would most likely be just cannon fodder unable to hit except on maybe 19 or 20 on a d20, and hittable on a 2 on a d20.

Well, in 4e you would do this as 2-3 hill giants and 6-12 ogre minions. And the ogres would be cannon-fodder - that's the point! If at least some of the monsters aren't cannon-fodder, the PCs won't survive meeting two or three times their own numbers in opponents!

 

[slobo777]

Well, in 4e you would do this as 2-3 hill giants and 6-12 ogre minions. And the ogres would be cannon-fodder - that's the point! If at least some of the monsters aren't cannon-fodder, the PCs won't survive meeting two or three times their own numbers in opponents!

The difference in 4E mainly being the ogres would hit more, but for less damage than the at-level version. It's probably a similar damage per round and survivability to what would happen in 3E with the AC/to-hit mismatch, but smoothed out by 4E's expected hit rates.

 

[triqui]

That was the example given, and the claim was that "an ogre" would be a threat to a 10th-level party.

I think that's been pretty conclusively disproven.

Well, that does not even *need* to be disproven, because it is *obvious*. My point was that ogres can still be a reasonable threat at higher levels, but obviously not at the same numbers that they are a threat at level 1.

Sure - but the chances that both ogres hitting the fighter in the same round is only ~1 in 10 or 1 in 8. Against a solo 5th-level fighter, you'd expect one of the ogres to be dead before that happens.

It also means that in a given encounter, where you have 4 PC and 8 ogres, the ogres make two hits against one of the PC in the first combat round. That makes for a meaningful damage, specially if they are hitting the Wizard or Rogue.

I mean, you see @slobo777 's post where he sends 3 1st-level Fighters against 3 ogres, and they win more often than not? Now, add 4 more levels (with the attendant improvement in to-hit bonuses, hit points, combat superiority dice, and gear) and make it a diversified party (so that you have things like magical slows, walls, sleep spells, blessings, etc.), and I think you'll agree that even 3 ogres at once isn't going to be particularly challenging.

Plus:

And while it's likely that there will be more ogres fighting the 5th-level party, the fighter's not going to be by himself, and he's also probably going to have better gear or attack bonuses or defenses than I've assumed in my rough-justice numbers - and, afterwards, he's got the level 5 healer to patch him up (and maximize his hit die rolls).

The ogres do not have to fight by themselves alone either. At lvl 1, you fight one single ogre. At level 5th, you might fight 4 ogres with a pair of tripping dire wolves and one evil orc shaman, which also have spells to back up them. At level 10, you'll be fighting a pair of fire giants, with have half a dozen hell hounds and half a dozen ogres.

 

[Steely_Dan]

1) the reason we're using one ogre is because Steely_Dan claimed that a single ogre would be a threat to the 10th level party in the second post in this thread.

2) That was the statement made and the statement Steely_Dan is trying to defend throughout this thread.

1) No, I didn't, I said "an ogre", no mention of exactly how many, you guys just ran with it, and a 10th level party could be three 10th level wizards all with ACs' under 14.

2) Not defending, just reiterating the facts.

 

[gweinel]

I think that it is kind of a non-problem.

My first consideration is that this game is largely fantasy fulfillment. There is something to be said for gradual empowerment of characters, but as long as the characters improve noticably as they increase in level, that won't be missing from the game. One thing I never liked about MMO games is that you spend the lowest levels of the game hunting and killing giant rats like some kind of glorified exerminator.

While I don't disagree in general to most of the things you say in your post i have to add that as the players they have not fun in fighting only rats/wolves at low levels also, for me at least, is not fun to fight iconic strong monsters as dragons, demons etc. In my fantasy world i consider the players at 1st lvl a little better than the commoner and not a hero. A lvl 1 fighter that beats a ogre as the previous post proved is a grant hero for me. I understand also that for me an ogre is a big opponent while for you is probably a nuinsance.
While i don't have problems the players to be heroes and fight at first lvl dragons i have to say that this is not my game style. If 5e wants to embrace many game styles they have to take into account my opinion too since the refluffing of the half monster manual in order to fit my game is not a solution.

Also you said that as i dm and i have the right to choose the threat that i want. You are right. Of course i do this in my campaign. But this was a playtest and i criticized the playtest adventure.

Well, in 4e you would do this as 2-3 hill giants and 6-12 ogre minions. And the ogres would be cannon-fodder - that's the point! If at least some of the monsters aren't cannon-fodder, the PCs won't survive meeting two or three times their own numbers in opponents!

Why this should be the only playstyle? And why should the pcs should survive two or three times their numbers?

The ogres do not have to fight by themselves alone either. At lvl 1, you fight one single ogre. At level 5th, you might fight 4 ogres with a pair of tripping dire wolves and one evil orc shaman, which also have spells to back up them.

How the semantics rule this thread: I agree in general to the things you say with one change: If you replace the word ogre with the word orc.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Well, that does not even *need* to be disproven, because it is *obvious*.

You know, you'd think that, and yet, here we are. Not you, obviousely, but some people are still claiming that an ogre is a threat to a 10th-level party.

An actual threat? No. Something you'll need to seriously consider prioritizing as a target? I'm not so sure.

4E minions are a threat because, while they may not do a lot of damage, they hit just as often as other on-level monsters, meaning you can never safely trust to your high AC / Ref / whatever to render them largely ineffective.

Similarly, in an armor as DR system as usually proposed, a guy in platemail can pretty much ignore a guy with a knife - yes, the knife wielder might do some damage on a crit, but on a round-to-round decision-making basis, you ignore him and go after the guy with the battleaxe. Applying the analogy, yes, the ogres might get lucky and do a bunch of damage in one round - but, statistically, on average, they won't (if bounded accuracy isn't tweaked correctly) so you can ignore and focus on the bigger threats.

My point was that ogres can still be a reasonable threat at higher levels, but obviously not at the same numbers that they are a threat at level 1.

I think a good next step would be to see, for level 5 characters (because that's as much as we've got in the playtest), exactly how many ogres it takes to be a meaningful threat.

But, past a certain point, I think you'll get into an issue where, academically, a given amount of ogres represents a threat, but, in practice, such an amount will never be playable (e.g., 400 standards kobolds are certainly a threat to even a really high-level 3E Fighter, just because of the natural 20s, but you'll never actually run a 400-on-1 combat).

I'd like to see a bit more math on that break point; maybe we can talk [MENTION=6694877]slobo777[/MENTION] into running some numbers for us.

We've already seen someone (again, not you) balking at 10 monsters as the absolute upper limit on what he's willing to run.

It also means that in a given encounter, where you have 4 PC and 8 ogres, the ogres make two hits against one of the PC in the first combat round.

Yeah, you need about 5 attackers before you hit the 50/50 tipping point for "at least two hits."

Plus or minus a bit for varying ACs across PC types, of course.

That makes for a meaningful damage, specially if they are hitting the Wizard or Rogue.

This gets into things that are harder to model, like are those hits on the same PC? Is that PC in range of a Fighter who can Defend? Do those PCs actually have defensive reactions of their own (e.g., a spell or high-level rogue ability)?

Ferinstance, the 1st-level Wizard spell Cause Fear requires a Wisdom save (at -2 for the ogres, against DC ... 14?), which requires those who fail to run away from the wizard for 1 minute. With 8 ogres in the room, you've got a 10% chance for them *all* to fail their save. The effect ends on damage, certainly, but that's why your group would then focus fire individual ogres down. At 5 ogres, it's a ~24% chance for all of them to fail. That's a 1st-level spell, and one I just sorta picked quickly from the list.

We don't know yet what more powerful abilities those 10th-level Wizards and Rogues are going to have, but a single low-level one is already making a large number of ogres much less threatening than they might otherwise be.

The ogres do not have to fight by themselves alone either. At lvl 1, you fight one single ogre. At level 5th, you might fight 4 ogres with a pair of tripping dire wolves and one evil orc shaman, which also have spells to back up them. At level 10, you'll be fighting a pair of fire giants, with have half a dozen hell hounds and half a dozen ogres.

And I don't dispute that - but the question is, in that 10th-level combat, are the ogres actually a threat by themselves, or are they only a threat because the party is distracted by / focused on the fire giants and hell hounds?

And, given where 10th-level defenses and offenses might be (because we don't know, yet), I'm not sure that "I fireball* the ogres" isn't going to be a good move to take out a lot of them, and I don't know that the ogres' attack bonuses and damage amounts are going to be enough for the party to take them seriously, rather than as an annoyance. Is "I take 1 action away from the Wizard to eliminate most of them" or "I take a single hit from a Fighter / Rogue" a meaningful part of the combat? Maybe!

Bounded accuracy promises that the party will need to take them seriously; I just haven't seen enough to be convinced that it's working yet.

(And, as an aside, maybe 10th-level is past the point at which even bounded accuracy wants to make ogres still relevant, in which case them being largely inconsequential in the 10th-level fight is just fiine from a design perspective.)

Anyway, good conversation. Thanks!

* More likely to be ice storm or chain lightning or something, at that point, but I hope get my point.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Double-post.

 

[Steely_Dan]

1) but some people are still claiming that an ogre is a threat to a 10th-level party.


2) 4E minions are a threat because, while they may not do a lot of damage, they hit just as often as other on-level monsters

1) It's true, if the 10th level wizard is looking down the ogre's greatclub swinging towards him, that's a threat, with potentially serious damage.


2) Ah, but to hit does not scale for monsters by level in 5th Ed.

 

[triqui]

This gets into things that are harder to model, like are those hits on the same PC? Is that PC in range of a Fighter who can Defend? Do those PCs actually have defensive reactions of their own (e.g., a spell or high-level rogue ability)?

It's harder to model as a theory, but it might not too hard to playtest. You just need a bunch of people playtesting the thing. I think DDN has +80.000 playtesters, WotC only needs to make an adventure for lvl 5, with 8 ogres in an encounter. Then they can get feedback, from real gameplay. Some groups will have cause fear wizards, some others will have a lot of melee bruisers, others will have an archer fighter, and so on. But a real playtest will help here much more than a mathematical model. Not that I have anything against maths, being a math guy myself, but sometimes, you can't really model things in theorycrafting. That's why humans build wind tunnels, instead of using only fluid dynamics math models

And I don't dispute that - but the question is, in that 10th-level combat, are the ogres actually a threat by themselves, or are they only a threat because the party is distracted by / focused on the fire giants and hell hounds?

My point is that, just as the 10th level party can combine powers, spells and traits, to get an effect that is bigger than the sum of it's parts, so can do the monsters. At lvl 10, is quite possible that the party can fly (depending on the editiion, and we don't know about 5e yet, but you get my point, I think). So, using only ogres, no matter how much of them, isn't going to pose a threat for a group of flying characters with bows. Unless you have more ogres than they have arrows, it's not even a combat. But at that same level, a Fire Giant Cleric that can dispel the fly effect, or some other effects, might balance the fight. The Ogres are going to play the same role as 4e minions. They are not there to make the 10th level players shudder, but to force them to spend a few extra resources (like a chain lightning), to make the combat against the fire giants more interesting, and (this is crucial) to give *verosimilitude* to the game world. Ussually, in all editions of D&D up to now, low level threats *dissapear* from the world. Once you get to high level, there are no longer orcs and ogres in the world. They are replaced fully by giants or devils. While it's cool to have new monsters to fight (and that's a BIG part of what D&D is, and the reason to have levels at all), it could be fine if you could use orcs and ogres for longer. Of course, this depends on how well balanced the bounded accuracy systems finally is. We are in the first stages of *alpha* design (not even beta). So there's a lot of work to be done. I think Mealrs already said that monsters were a bit low in the to-hit. Let's see how well or bad it finish.

Bounded accuracy promises that the party will need to take them seriously; I just haven't seen enough to be convinced that it's working yet.

That's why we are in the playtest, so you can give your concerns to WotC. Let's see if they manage to fix it

 

[DogBackward]

...but I have my doubts about whether it will be able to do so in a particularly meaningful fashion.

Again... "it" probably won't. "They", on the other hand, almost certainly will, when the Fighter is facing more than one. Which, by 5th level, he very well should be.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Ogres as an auto-one-hit (minion) is daft to me.

29th level creatures with 1 HP really stretches my suspension of disbelief, well, not stretched, more like ripped in twain and both pieces thrown across the room.

 

[DogBackward]

I mean, you see [MENTION=6694877]slobo777[/MENTION]'s post where he sends 3 1st-level Fighters against 3 ogres, and they win more often than not? Now, add 4 more levels (with the attendant improvement in to-hit bonuses, hit points, combat superiority dice, and gear) and make it a diversified party (so that you have things like magical slows, walls, sleep spells, blessings, etc.), and I think you'll agree that even 3 ogres at once isn't going to be particularly challenging.

People still seem to be stuck in the newish, 4e style mindset of "One equal-level monster per PC". That's not how classic gaming works, and it's not how most epic adventure fantasy works. D&D has drifted further and further into expectations of 50/50 fights and building set-piece encounters, which I think is a problem.

You won't be fighting one ogre at tenth level. You won't be fighting 3 ogres at tenth level. It's possible you won't even be fighting ten ogres at tenth level. One of my absolute favorite things about bounded accuracy and the way 5e's basic math is shaping up is the concept of scale.

At tenth level, you're fighting a bloody army of ogres. Ten-thousand ogres besieging the castle? Great, send the five 10th level PC's to hold the eastern wall. Or send them as a strike force into the heart of the ogre army, to take out the ogre-mage general and his two-dozen bodyguards.

I love that this sort of thing can happen again. That you can use tons of low-level enemies (not two or three, tons) against a high level group, and still have a chance of the group having some trouble. And the simplicity of "mook" monsters means you can even do it with a minimum of fuss.

We're finally getting back to the days where we can tell amazing, epic stories of the small band of brave warriors who stood strong against an army. And not a half-assed, "Despite the thousands of monsters around you, only five of them (all equal to your level) have engaged you specifically." army, a real army that doesn't have to engage you in one-on-one, Hollywood-ninja-style mini-fights. When the PC's take the field, all eyes turn to them, and everyone knows that these five valorous souls alone will turn the tide of battle.

And I love that.