Dead Rising Encounter too tough

[Kzach]

With two still standing and a couple of fudged dice-rolls later the party avoided the TPK.

Oh I could never do that.

In fact, the biggest reason why I left it as is instead of reducing the difficulty of the encounter was that I wanted the PLAYERS to know that I won't fudge encounters to suit them.

It's up to THEM to know they're in over their heads and up to THEM to get out of sticky situations.

The only thing I might've changed, in retrospect (apart from readjusting damage to the correct dice), would've been the space of the encounter, allowing for more cover opportunities to facilitate a quick escape should the need arise.

And even then, players should know better than to run head-long into an encounter they know nothing about. Positioning themselves in a manner that prevents escape is mostly their own damn fault

 

[EugeneZ]

It's up to THEM to know they're in over their heads and up to THEM to get out of sticky situations.

Well, pretty harsh, in my view. It's your responsibility as a DM to balance the encounters appropriately. If, indeed, you felt this encounter should be incredibly hard or even unbeatable, that's fine -- but it seems more of a case of you not realizing the monsters are overpowered. At that point, in my view, you are risking the character's lives because of your mistake, rather than a planned encounter.

The difference might seem negligible, and depending on your style, it might be, but I think players deserve a fair warning (even a cryptic one) about the odds they're walking into -- or in this case, that are walking in on them. There are times when an encounter places players in a situation where they are unable to rescue one or more PCs, and they are killed -- fair, when warnings were not heeded, or caution not taken. But when it's your mistake that cost the PC their life, I feel fudging is warranted.

 

[Chimera]

Early on in this campaign, about 3 years ago, we invented a term for the encounters you find in WotBS.

Ryan Nock Level Appropriate Encounter

 

[RangerWickett]

Early on in this campaign, about 3 years ago, we invented a term for the encounters you find in WotBS.

Ryan Nock Level Appropriate Encounter

How many TPKs did you have?

In my defense, it was 3e, when the math behind balancing encounters was a little less refined than it is now in 4e.

 

[Matey]

With our defender dead-dead and two others making death saves, the DM plucked one of the two remaining boneshards off the mat and made the other fail to explode. Humiliating.

The out-of-turn exploding damage (42-126 total, burst 3) meant that our warlock was declining to apply her curse damage because the prospect of bloodying or killing a boneshard posed too high a danger of wiping out a couple of down or almost-down PCs. I don't see how any low level melee PC can be expected to make it through that fight regardless of the amount of healing available.

On the bright side, because we were defending a church, we got a cut-rate deal on the defender's ressurection.

 

[Blackbrrd]

If the players had a little more room they could maybe try some remote detonation? For this to work the area would have to be expanded by the DM in advance. In addition, a lot of visual cues would probably help a lot. Something like: "You can see the virulent energies leaking out from cracks in the bones, you don't think they can be held in much longer". Just having the boneshards explode without warning isn't exactly nice...

A working tactic would probably be for the melee people to step/move back from one boneshard at the time, while the ranged attackers try to kill it while it's out of burst range. I think I will add a small skill-challenge to this encounter if the players don't pick up my hints. I do like the idea of an encounter that is something else than tank'n'spank having played a lot of fun raid encounters in Age of Conan lately. I will try to avoid a 4 hour wipe feast though.

 

[ppaladin123]

Ugg...I just ran this encounter and I wish I had read this beforehand.

It was almost a TPK. One character died and another would have had he not taken a background that allowed him to fail four death saves before dying.

The three bone-shard skeletons were all bunched up. The party sorcerer hit them all with Blazing Starfall and bloodied two. I rolled really well and everyone including skeleton #3 ate a lot of necrotic damage. Even with the necrotic resistance this barrage bloodied the third skeleton and thus there was a third explosion. Our poor assassin never had a chance.

Half the party was down at that point and those that remained retreated as our walking time bomb friends pursued them. If I hadn't had Buron rush in and administer some healing words, they would have had no hope.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I changed the damage to 1d6+4 and to a close burst 1. In addition I changed the layout so that there was a lot more room and gave plenty of visual hints about impending explosions. In addition I made them completely mindless, attacking the closest target no matter what.

The result was an fun encounter and by the end of it they had gotten the hang of it. Two of the characters had push/slide 1 at-will powers which really helped when they understood what was happening.