Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Ran again last night with an all-martial group: a ranger, fighter, barbarian and rogue. VERY different experience. The first encounter went more slowly, partially due to the ranger's fog cloud completely confounding combat and driving the giants away from the central combat area. The warg-riding ice dwarves got cut down quickly and brutally, though.
The second combat, against a ceiling-based roper and a frost giant, was kind of wonderful. The giant got to play pinata with a dangling rogue, the fighter and barbarian made mince-meat of the dragon, and the grabbed and strength-drained ranger used dex-based weapons to carve the heck out of the roper. By the time that fight was finished, quite a few Hit Dice were expended.
The third fight was against an ice devil. Whereas the spellcasting group really struggled with this fight, the martial PCs had it dead in literally a round and a half. Brutal.
We ran short on time during the final fight against the frost giant lord (I was using cloud giant stats), his undead mastodon, and the helpless slaves who were feeding him life energy. They got him down to about half hit points before he surrendered and they made a truce. Since he was a load-bearing boss, this was a pretty good solution.
Conclusions: there was a lot of persuasive arguments for whether someone should have advantage or not. It's tougher for rogues to gain backstab. The barbarian is a one-trick pony, but it's a really good trick. The ranger was better in combat than I'd expected, and fog cloud is broken for a 1st lvl spell! Finally, this fighter build was less satisfying than we'd expected; he may need a little sexing up to give all the tactical options you'd expect.
The second combat, against a ceiling-based roper and a frost giant, was kind of wonderful. The giant got to play pinata with a dangling rogue, the fighter and barbarian made mince-meat of the dragon, and the grabbed and strength-drained ranger used dex-based weapons to carve the heck out of the roper. By the time that fight was finished, quite a few Hit Dice were expended.
The third fight was against an ice devil. Whereas the spellcasting group really struggled with this fight, the martial PCs had it dead in literally a round and a half. Brutal.
We ran short on time during the final fight against the frost giant lord (I was using cloud giant stats), his undead mastodon, and the helpless slaves who were feeding him life energy. They got him down to about half hit points before he surrendered and they made a truce. Since he was a load-bearing boss, this was a pretty good solution.
Conclusions: there was a lot of persuasive arguments for whether someone should have advantage or not. It's tougher for rogues to gain backstab. The barbarian is a one-trick pony, but it's a really good trick. The ranger was better in combat than I'd expected, and fog cloud is broken for a 1st lvl spell! Finally, this fighter build was less satisfying than we'd expected; he may need a little sexing up to give all the tactical options you'd expect.
