Balor Down!

[Sanzuo]

Our DM was actually more annoyed at the Warlock's killing 30 minions in a round as 15 free actions that he was about Certain Justice...

Damn right. Anyone who doesn't think that's completely stupid is probably someone who plays a fey warlock.

 

[Mark]

(. . .) my Stormwarden missed us to victory (. . .)

Stunning!

 

[blargney the second]

Damn right. Anyone who doesn't think that's completely stupid is probably someone who plays a fey warlock.

I think it's great! Minions are meant to die. Ideally as gruesomely and embarrassingly as possible.

 

[Elric]

The Pally did do True Nemesis. We were doing his counter-attack incorrectly since it is an implement and not weapon attack. So, he should have done 20-30 or so less damage over the course of the fight (so, the Balor might have lasted another round).

Actually, the Paladin would have done more damage, as True Nemesis does half damage on a miss, which he would get instead of Hammer Rhythm.

My Ranger has 24 Dex (+7 mod) and was doing Twin Strike, plus 7 more at the end of my turn...

So: Twin Strike 14 damage + 7 for Stormwarden = 21 on my turn. At the start if its turn 1d8+13 = 14 minimum damage. And technically, it should have been 15 minimum damage since I have Gauntlets of Destruction. So, 36 to 42 damage a round from my Stormwarden even when I missed(which ended up being 95% of the time)...

As for the other characters, they didn't all have exactly +22 to hit, but all had CA and the Warlock and Rogue were targetting Ref. Our Warlock, for example, had +21 to hit with Eldritch Blast(Base +18, +2 for CA, +1 for Prime Shot)...

The Pally had a total of +22 to hit and my Ranger had +22 to hit with his main hand, +21 off-hand. I rolled three crits during the fight, all with my main hand (one on a daily).

It seems like your characters have rather higher stats than what 22 point buy would give. So that's another reason the fight would have been a bit easier than one might expect.

What Jack99 said. Even though, as it was, there was pretty much no way it was going to win until it burned through all 15 of our Paladin's healing surges(of which he only used 4 during the fight btw), we knew we were beating something that should have been way out of our league. Taking on a level+12 elite after dispatching 60 level 14 minions made us feel pretty badass.

For what it's worth, it seems unlikely you could access 15 healing surges in a fight for a single character in a party with one leader. Say, 4 from the Cleric, 1 from Second Wind, 1 from Cloak of the Walking Wounded, 6 from the Paladin's Lay on Hands (22 Wisdom)= 12. Having a lot of ways to access healing surges can be a game balance issue in general if you expect only one fight in a day.

Damn right. Anyone who doesn't think that's completely stupid is probably someone who plays a fey warlock.

It's not clear to me how the Warlock would curse enough targets to get this many free actions. It seems like it's hard to get more than 2 curses in a round. I'm not that familiar with Warlock builds, so maybe there is a way to do this.

That said, auto-damage killing minions with no roll required is another problem with the game's design. I have a potential house rule for this one too:

Minions and auto-damage When PC’s deal “auto-damage” (damage that does not require an attack roll) against a minion, the player has to make a d20 roll, and get a result of 10 or higher, to reduce the minion to 0 HP. Minions still do not take “miss damage”, as usual.

There is one exception to this rule: the rule does not apply to any damage PC’s deal using 1st level at-wills (e.g. Cleave, Cloud of Daggers, Greenflame Blade).

Reasoning: The at-will exception is a little clunky, but one of the biggest problems with minions at high levels is the sheer number of auto-damage abilities that render them trivial to defeat. This helps to fix that problem in a way that’s easy to run. I think having the players roll to kill the minions is going to be more fun than having the minions save to avoid death.

 

[Jack99]

It's not clear to me how the Warlock would curse enough targets to get this many free actions. It seems like it's hard to get more than 2 curses in a round. I'm not that familiar with Warlock builds, so maybe there is a way to do this.

There are several.

 

[CapnZapp]

This last bit is the reason why I'm asking these questions though. If there was truly "pretty much no way it was going to win" I'd consider that horribly broken. Granted it's a brute not a solo, and it's a level 27 monster, not a level 27 encounter but it's still a level 22 encounter (25 if the minions were included). I would expect it the other way around. A battle with any creature 1/3 of the way through the maximum possible levels should result in a TPK unless there are extraordinary circumstances.

To me this entire battle indicates a serious breakdown in the system at those levels. I'd like to see how this feat was accomplished because ultimately it factors in to my decision on whether or not to continue with 4E.

You're both forgetting the action economy.

I haven't played at Paragon (or Epic) tier yet, but already at Heroic tier it's apparent that 4E does not work in the same way as 3E does. (In my case, the eyeopener was when the level 1 party simply steamrolled a level 8 Lurker).

The average party of five characters will simply win against a single (non-solo) opponent, even one many many levels higher than that party.

It's simply not possible to take a single monster, look at its XP, and arrive at a representative encounter level. 4E simply demands more actions for a fight to become remotely even.

That is, more monsters (either more individuals or monsters Solofied, preferably according to recent - MM2 - guidelines, as MM1 Solos were given too few actions on average).

So in 3E terms, yes, 4E is "horribly broken".

However, in 4E terms, this fight is simply not one the game supports. Add one or two more Balors, and you'd quickly look at a TPK.

The reason is that everybody is incredibly resilient in 4E, with player characters having very strong replenishment options. Combine this with (compared to 3E) very low damage output (on the part of even Epic monsters), and you should quickly realize that any single monster will simply fall unless he can burn through the party's hit points faster than he can heal up.

And that simply does not happen unless the monsters have approximately the same number of actions (attacks) as the party (i.e. about 5).

Having only two (judging from the thread now, haven't looked up the Balor) simply does not cut it against the healing capabilities of a party even a whole tier lower on the awesomeness scale.

Like any other 4E monster, the Balor needs allies to present a challenge. On the other hand, even one level-appropriate ally should make a huge difference in a fight this skewed. (However, I wouldn't completely rule out victory for a well-prepared Paragon party even against 2 Balors. Monsters simply does not do scary high damage with any attack at all).

Incidentally, my proposed houserule (adding 1d6 per level of difference to any single monster as "striker-ish" bonus damage) would have worked wonderfully in this instance. Say the level difference was 11 - that would give the Balor an additional 11d6 each round to apply to those of his attacks that connect. "wonderful" and "wonderful" - it would ensure a TPK, making the game look and feel more like 3E. Of course, it goes against everything 4E stands for. However, not everyone likes how the solution to every 4E problem is "more monsters".

For the purposes of this thread, however, I'm bringing it up as an example to the drastic measures needed to make 4E work the way a 3E DM would expect.

4E damage output simply is geared towards the party winning. Even against absurdly high-level foes. (Unless these are given Solo-like properties, or to be direct: unless they are given enough actions to match the heroes)

It's all about the economy, really.

 

[Iron Sky]

It seems like your characters have rather higher stats than what 22 point buy would give. So that's another reason the fight would have been a bit easier than one might expect.

You're really sharp. My ranger's rolled stats are 21pts over point buy, the pally is a couple more, warlock even more, and the daggermaster is over as well(though maybe "only" 10 pts or so). All of us started with at least 1 18, most of us 2. Our Fighter (who seems to have stopped playing) rolled the ridiculous array of 18, 18, 18, 18, 16, 14 - best stats I've ever seen rolled in 15 years of D&D/d20 gaming.

If we could go back in time, we would have done point buy, but this is our first 4e campaign, so now we know.

For what it's worth, it seems unlikely you could access 15 healing surges in a fight for a single character in a party with one leader. Say, 4 from the Cleric, 1 from Second Wind, 1 from Cloak of the Walking Wounded, 6 from the Paladin's Lay on Hands (22 Wisdom)= 12. Having a lot of ways to access healing surges can be a game balance issue in general if you expect only one fight in a day.

Well, our pally also has Quick Draw and a bandoleer with a couple Potions of Vitality and about 10 Potions of Healing. If it came down to it, he could use those, even if they only heal 25 and 10 respectively, compared to his 30-something surge value.

It's not clear to me how the Warlock would curse enough targets to get this many free actions. It seems like it's hard to get more than 2 curses in a round. I'm not that familiar with Warlock builds, so maybe there is a way to do this.

Dual-curse feat(curse 2 every round) + scourge rod (curse everything in burst 5 instead of getting Warlock Boon) does it pretty good. On the third wave, 30 grimlocks showed up. The warlock cursed two, killed one of them, and used its death to curse the other 13 on that side of the map and moved next to a few of them.

Another character killed another one, triggering a Slashing-wake teleport for the warlock(3 damage to all adjacent enemies and teleport 5), killing 3 minions and granting 3 more teleports which, strategically placed, allowed the warlock to teleport around enough times(14 total off of that 1 dead minion) to kill all but 2 of the rest of the minions, which were quickly dispatched.

I'm adding a second flavor of minions: Tough minions. They have 2 hp and reduce any damage taken from a single source to 1 damage. On a crit, they die instantly. So, most of the time they take 2 hits to kill, reducing their "instakill" factor considerably. They cost what minions cost now and normal minions cost 1/2 as much.

 

[guivre]

You're both forgetting the action economy.

I haven't played at Paragon (or Epic) tier yet, but already at Heroic tier it's apparent that 4E does not work in the same way as 3E does. (In my case, the eyeopener was when the level 1 party simply steamrolled a level 8 Lurker).

The average party of five characters will simply win against a single (non-solo) opponent, even one many many levels higher than that party.

It's simply not possible to take a single monster, look at its XP, and arrive at a representative encounter level. 4E simply demands more actions for a fight to become remotely even.

That is, more monsters (either more individuals or monsters Solofied, preferably according to recent - MM2 - guidelines, as MM1 Solos were given too few actions on average).

So in 3E terms, yes, 4E is "horribly broken".

However, in 4E terms, this fight is simply not one the game supports. Add one or two more Balors, and you'd quickly look at a TPK.

The reason is that everybody is incredibly resilient in 4E, with player characters having very strong replenishment options. Combine this with (compared to 3E) very low damage output (on the part of even Epic monsters), and you should quickly realize that any single monster will simply fall unless he can burn through the party's hit points faster than he can heal up.

And that simply does not happen unless the monsters have approximately the same number of actions (attacks) as the party (i.e. about 5).

Having only two (judging from the thread now, haven't looked up the Balor) simply does not cut it against the healing capabilities of a party even a whole tier lower on the awesomeness scale.

Like any other 4E monster, the Balor needs allies to present a challenge. On the other hand, even one level-appropriate ally should make a huge difference in a fight this skewed. (However, I wouldn't completely rule out victory for a well-prepared Paragon party even against 2 Balors. Monsters simply does not do scary high damage with any attack at all).

Incidentally, my proposed houserule (adding 1d6 per level of difference to any single monster as "striker-ish" bonus damage) would have worked wonderfully in this instance. Say the level difference was 11 - that would give the Balor an additional 11d6 each round to apply to those of his attacks that connect. "wonderful" and "wonderful" - it would ensure a TPK, making the game look and feel more like 3E. Of course, it goes against everything 4E stands for. However, not everyone likes how the solution to every 4E problem is "more monsters".

For the purposes of this thread, however, I'm bringing it up as an example to the drastic measures needed to make 4E work the way a 3E DM would expect.

4E damage output simply is geared towards the party winning. Even against absurdly high-level foes. (Unless these are given Solo-like properties, or to be direct: unless they are given enough actions to match the heroes)

It's all about the economy, really.

FTR I don't evaluate 4E in terms of 3E. The number of actions available to a mob on it's own is a good point and this certainly wasn't a complete encounter but I still consider there to be some broken pieces. Consecrated Ground is clearly overpowered IMO.

Though that's not the only part that's iffy about the mechanics at that level. Even with the one action per round due to weakened:

The Balor, and attacking characters of that level, puts out a minimum of 35 (bump that to 45 when bloodied so half it's turns) damage on every round it hits (which is going to be just about every round). 15 points of that damage is un-affected by weakened (25 of it when bloodied). That's assuming all 1s on damage rolls, 5 separate dice. So you get an effective minimum of 25 (35 bloodied) damage per turn that it hits.

The flip side, the maximum, is 74 (84 bloodied), with weakened it's 44 (54 bloodied). I'm hand waving misses a bit, but also crits. Crits are more likely than misses given the encounter re-roll the Balor gets. So that's an average of 34 (44 bloodied) damage per round. Erase 18 of that a round due to the cleric's aura and you have an average of 16 (24 bloodied) a round.

Granted, based on what the players are saying there was a perfect storm of advantages in the party's favor, but I'd still expect that much damage, (while low) to erode the resources of a party fairly quickly.


I've started to lean the other way writing this though (I still think there is broken-ness here). Granted that this wasn't a balanced encounter but the tactics of the mob itself need to be taken into account.

This Balor was stupid enough to stand toe to toe and just attack with something that has got it weakened and dazed. Particularly when it has the ability to fly 12 (and if need be blow an AP to move another 12, I can never remember if you can blow an AP when you are dazed). It should have been able to shake the paladin's mark, come back, and rape the party. The majority of the damage it was taking was due to starting it's turn next to the ranger... demons aren't stupid, it should move.

So while it's a true statement that the game doesn't support an encounter like this, I still would expect that the outcome isn't a foregone conclusion. For now I'm just going to house rule Consecrated Ground and see what happens later in our game :/

 

[wedgeski]

It's all about the economy, really.

Isn't everything these days? ;P

Seems like a combination of luck, a couple of broken powers, and several reasons along the lines of CapnZapp's excellent post. Good thread.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I'm adding a second flavor of minions: Tough minions. They have 2 hp and reduce any damage taken from a single source to 1 damage. On a crit, they die instantly. So, most of the time they take 2 hits to kill, reducing their "instakill" factor considerably. They cost what minions cost now and normal minions cost 1/2 as much.

I really like this as an idea. I'm running a one-shot game in the near future and I think I might use this...