Elder Earth Elementals are BRUTAL!!!

[Elder-Basilisk]

Speaking of earth elementals being dumb. A character warded with protection from evil could also wander around in its threatened zone provoking AoOs for a minute or so. It'll probably try taking some of them only to find that it can't touch the character. Now, after having tried that several times, is it smart enough to figure out that the character is no longer protected once he attacks the elemental?

(They say you can keep an elephant in place by chaining it to a tiny stake in the ground because it learned that it couldn't pull up the stake as a young elephant and when it's full grown it knows not to try (even though it could). If the principle applies to Earth Elementals. . . .

Yup. The way to beat a spring attack is with readied actions - and the elemental's too dumb for that.

 

[coyote6]

Second, we do not know what type of terrain the battle occured in. If it is at all enclosed, the fly approach does not work beucause the flier simply cant escape that reach.

Even if the fight's in a room small enough that nowhere in it is out of the elemental's reach, flying is still a pretty good idea -- it negates the earth elemental's earth mastery ability. The elemental goes from having +1 to attack and damage to a -4 to attacks and damage. That five point difference might not be a lot, but every little bit helps.

 

[Roland Delacroix]

Nobody has Spring Attack anyway. The party is just going to have to learn that you can't just charge everything. It had the drop on them actually as they were ambushed but they had plenty of chances to escape.

Thats where they screwed up first. If you get ambushed and you can, run. Don't try to fight it out, even if it's only 2 Kobolds, just run. In as safe a withdrawl as possible, but a withdrawl nonetheless. An ambush begins with you re-acting to an opponents initiative, the definition of when you've lost the battle.

But I, too, find 'thick' party's amusing