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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 5748580" data-attributes="member: 54846">I'm going to break down running for small groups. Rule #1 is that it's all about the role, then class, arrangement. Look at what your PCs can do well, look at where they are weak, and play to their strengths while flirting with their weaknesses. Your current group:BladesingerDragon SorcererPsion.  (Did you not add a companion to provide heals?)Strengths: Ranged attacks vs. multiple opponents. Your bladesinger needs to to hit in melee, but then he can hit another target in ranged. Your sorcerer likely has either several close blast/burst powers, or ranged powers. Your Psion is going to be primarily ranged and able to hit multiple targets.Weaknesses: Squishy. Not very mobile. Unable to physically pin targets down/be 'sticky' (unless they are dropping status effects via encounter/dailies). No healing.  What does this imply for preferred enemies? Low hit points, low damage. What works for that? Controllers, Soldiers, Minions, possibly artillery. Your bread and butter encounters would likely be controllers at ranged. Perched in high positions, staked out 10-20 squares apart, or running around behind cover, so you can get a "Wild West Shootout" feel for it. However, since your bladesinger needs to stab people, and your sorcerer might, then you should think about up-close-and-personal controllers (ones with close blasts/bursts or melee powers). Add minions, or a soldier. Soldiers require some finesse. They have low damage output and moderate HP, but their defenses are usually rather high. Your guys likely won't be hitting AC, but still. So this can either become grindy, or it can be fairly well. Soldiers have the nice benefit of getting up in your PCs' faces and pinning them down without killing them, which is scary but not lethal for your crew. Artillery offers some interesting options. Often artillery are very weak, and operate at ranged (both good), but they pack a mean damage punch (potentially bad). I say putting two artillery monsters and some minions would make a good fight, but avoid putting a soldier in there that could tie players down and keep them from beating the crap out of the artilelry. Lurkers are a mixed bag. They are physically weak, but pack a serious  punch. Their best use is to hang out until a good point and shiv someone  int he back, doing buckets of damage. This is bad for your crew.  Without a healer, I'd avoid them. The ankheg isn't bad in this regard,  the real sucker is that ongoing 5 acid damage. Skirmishers may be tempting. However they can move around a lot and potentially do a lot of damage, which you might not want to happen. (Although they may need combat advantage to do it and that might get hard to dish out). They have high Ref saves and I bet your guys target Ref a lot. Use sparingly.Avoid Brutes. They have lots of hit points, and do a lot of damage. What you might do is consider creating a faux-minion. Instead of going down at one hit, they go down at two. Consider them twice the XP of minions but still pose the same general threat.On using lower or higher level monsters - The thing to keep in mind is 1) their defenses (Can the PCs hit them?), 2) the monster's attack bonus (can the monster hit the PCs?) and 3) the damage output (is it too much to kill outright, is it not doing enough damage to begin with?). Rule #2: Healing. Like it was pointed out before, with smaller groups, they can die fast. Because people can focus fire, and as soon as one pc goes down, the others are in serious trouble. Give your guys some healing potions so they're not absolutely out of luck. Giving them a companion would be the best way to go.</blockquote>

Verification