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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4975327" data-attributes="member: 82106">I guess I'm not sure what the question is overall. PCs lose several points in to-hit going up to level 30 vs monsters. Then on top of that a level 35 monster is overleveled by 5 levels, so its another 2 points. Its a solo, which is another 2 points. So by RAW you should be hitting on something around about a 16. IF you had a leader that character could probably pull you all up several points per round, but I'd expect even then you're going to be hitting maybe 50/50. This is all entirely to be expected and pretty much the way the game is designed. When you go against epic solo baddies you do pretty much need to have a leader in the group or a couple PCs that minor in leader.Overall though I guess I'm not really seeing what was the problem with this encounter. The party, short one character by standard encounter design, took on THE single baddest creature in the game that has a stat block (maybe Demogorgon is tougher, hard to say, but Tiamat is the highest level stat block there is at level 35). The party won this, by the book impossible, encounter and not one character died. I'd call it a rousing success.Now, if the encounter was boring or over long I'd have to blame that on encounter design, not the monster itself. Tiamat should have some VERY interesting terrain, at least a few minions, maybe some traps, etc. As she's designed to be a capstone level 30 encounter you can be sure there should be dynamic terrain, lots of outrageous stunting opportunities, etc. Probably also subgoals and whatnot built into the encounter to make it more interesting than a straight monster beat-down.As for snipers it simply all depends on terrain. If the party can engineer a fight in featureless plain and dish out lethal damage at 55 squares then good for them. Most epic level top boss monsters have godlike intelligence and wisdom, so good luck getting them to oblige you. Overall archery is pretty potent in 4e but to get to that level with it you've got to sacrifice pretty much all meaningful melee combat ability, so a super optimized sniper better hope he can always keep the range. Its a smart move to have a character like that in a party, but they sure won't be able to deal with most encounters on their own. Also note that there ARE monsters that can deal with you, like the aformentioned Demogorgon who can close to 50 squares on his turn and teleport you right in front of him, where said sniper will be in sheep dip.</blockquote>

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