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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5266453" data-attributes="member: 78116">Actually that's incorrect. I made two basic arguments:1) In the case of the ambush with the chronically low on resources party, I demonstrated with a simple switch of solo monster that the purple worm was still horrible. With a deck utterly stacked against the party it was actually unable to kill them - yet the equal level Brown dragon, whom I picked because it can also fulfill the same role (Burrows, found in desert environments) the result is a one sided clear massacre. That again proves what I've been saying about the power disparity between MM and things that came later (and even between many solos). Also, I don't particularly agree with the scenario actually proving any point due to the fact it relied on considerable luck and the DM basically dumping a creature onto a depleted party. Neither I think make a reliable and strong argument the creature isn't broken.2) In the other case, he raised a theoretical party and so I pointed out powers I think are fairly common. Having run 6 games myself, I've seen a wizard in just about every game. I think since Winged Horde was published, I've seen only one player not take it - that's because he's a blaster wizard. I can give you lots of other powers that will do the same thing - there are loads of good powers in 4E across all classes. He never actually specified what powers I did or didn't have, so I made suggestions as to what I would have if I was playing the various characters. You do know there are a lot of ways of accomplishing the same thing in 4E when it comes to making a party right? I don't rely on a limited set of options to prove my point - there are hordes of good PPs, powers and similar I could bring up. Some are just expressly very good like the Paladin Hospitaler paragon path and winged horde. It's not like without these it suddenly means these PCs are going to be suddenly challenged by the purple worm - when there are plenty of other temp HP, healing, attack, immobilize, daze and similar powers I could also use.If the point is that a poorly written solo can challenge a party of people who have immensely depleted resources or that build characters that have a dearth of good combat options, I don't really view that as a valid argument really. If they do poorly against a purple worm, an actually well written solo is going to butcher them. Hence my "mathcraft" using a brown dragon. You can simply compare what the Purple Worm managed to do by getting obscenely lucky, with what a Brown dragon reliably does to the entire party in the same situation. That makes my point for me easily.Edit: For the record, I went and pulled out my "DM notes" from my old IRL game where I also ran a purple worm. My party was Warden/Rogue/Warlord/Fighter/Wizard. It came out of a cavern that was pretty narrow (but it could burrow through the walls and similar). Getting a surprise round, it missed the Wizard and then lost initiative (Warlord lol). Warden marked it and activated displacer armour (roll two d20 and take lowest for the rest of the encounter on melee and ranged attacks - this was sadly pre-errata). It got immobilized by the wizard so it couldn't go anywhere in a hurry. The party then utterly dismantled it in 3 rounds with lead the attack on - pushing it with forced movement every time it would get a turn so it couldn't attack anyone except the warden. That was their 4th encounter that day IIRC. Of course it did do a great service - it baited out lead the attack so that wasn't available for something more important. My PCs were a mixture of different builds, some optimized and others not so optimized - but they didn't have any problems killing it trivially. 90% of the time it was dazed, stunned or immobilized. Of course, in fairness to it an already poor creature had to suffer through an immensely broken item (Displacer Armour) and the old "pre-nerf" bloodmage (who has ridiculous DPR).Of course, I could have threw it at my party after the actual antagonist was through with them. I think even the purple worm would have no trouble beating a party that had two members with 1 HP (no healing surges remaining), one with 15 hp (1 surge remaining), one with 60 hp (2 surge remaining), one with 3 hp (no surges remaining) and the last was on around 96 HP (3 surges - the Warden predictably. Could never kill him) with no dailies or action points between them. It would have wiped the floor with that party, does that make it a good solo? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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