Forked Thread: Can defenders do too good of a job? ...from Healing Potions seem odd

[Oompa]

That's not a reasonable point of view. It's entirely possible for the defender to use up all his healing surges whilst the rest of the party are doing extremely good damage and using what would seem to be good tactics. The defender needs to be not over-zealous, and the DM, even, needs to ensure he's not mindlessly attacking the Defender like this was WoW

Well the defender does need to do his job, alot, so it is his duty (if you really wanna roleplay the defender that way) to defend his party members..

But you are right, even dumb creatures wont go all to one person..

Normally if you have 4 to 5 enemies, 2 or 3 should stick to the defender and the other 2 should be handled by strikers/leaders.. or even an second defender..

And off course.. the defender should look at who needs to be stickied to..

 

[ac_noj]

The Defender certainly should not be tanking everything. For a start they should be tanking the monsters that attack Armor Class and Fort and ignoring the ones that attack Reflex and Will.

 

[Regicide]

The Defender certainly should not be tanking everything.

In the case of paladins, with LoH, even if they aren't tanking, they're burning all their surges anyway.

 

[Stalker0]

In the case of paladins, with LoH, even if they aren't tanking, they're burning all their surges anyway.

Granted the paladin in my group has a heavy shield, but even when he's tanking a lot I find my wizard still runs out of surges faster than he does. Defenders get crazy numbers of surges....which is great, but our group has never had to wait on the paladin to regain surges, its usually one of the rest of us.

 

[Runestar]

So is there any way to address this apparent illiquidity of healing surges? Apparently, there is only magic item in the PHB which lets you transfer surges, but it is far from efficient, at a 2-for-1 cost. Something like having a party of 5 paladins, who can use LOH to distribute their surges amongst one another as they deem fit (so it makes little difference if the enemy spreads the damage out evenly, or concentrates on a single PC).

The OP does have a point. It is not uncommon for the defender to burn through 3-4 surges/encounter, meaning that he can run dry by the 2nd or 3rd fight. Is it reasonable to expect the wizard or rogue to step in as the party tank, when they are totally unsuitable to do so? Both will have weaker AC, lower hp (and by extension, their surges heal less damage compared to a defender with higher AC), and they lack the ability to discourage enemies from targetting other players (no markers such as combat challenge, so there is really nothing they can do to dissuade or prevent the enemy from simply bypassing them and attacking the flagging fighter at the back - part of the reason why a 3e fighter stank as a defender).

So again - bug or feature?

 

[Leatherhead]

My parties minotaur fighter ran out of healing surges during a combat. It was during a particularly nasty random encounter in the Thunderspine Labyrinth (Spoilered for your protection)

Spoiler

The Gnoll Marauders

with the characters at level 6.

They had already fought one combat that day, but they finished it off with little effort, and he was down about two or three surges from that. He drained the rest of them due to a combination of him foolishly charging headlong into the fight, allowing the monsters to set up an easy flank and surround him, and the other players hiding well behind him attacking with ranged attacks. They had managed to kill half of the monsters before he ran out however. And the warlord/cleric (yes warlord/cleric for the extra healing) used all of the powers he had at his disposal to keep him alive. It was actually a rather intense fight.

 

[Nail]

Competent monsters (i.e. "not dumb") should try their best to ignore the defenders and go after the strikers. It is the strikers, after all, that do the most damage.

In games I've played in, unless the defenders are very good, the strikers are the first to go down, and the ones with the fewest healing surges at the end. What kinda games do you guys play in?

 

[Anthony Jackson]

If you have a situation where all the monsters are beating on one character, even if the character is a defender, the party is using poor tactics. It's much better if you can get the monsters to split their attacks between two or three characters -- preferably, the second character is also one who can take hits fairly well, such as a melee striker or another defender.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Well the defender does need to do his job, alot, so it is his duty (if you really wanna roleplay the defender that way) to defend his party members..

But you are right, even dumb creatures wont go all to one person..

Normally if you have 4 to 5 enemies, 2 or 3 should stick to the defender and the other 2 should be handled by strikers/leaders.. or even an second defender..

And off course.. the defender should look at who needs to be stickied to..

Hey, this sounds familliar. Where have I heard this before...............

[2.Trade] [Deadfighter] Man those giants suck! I tried to keep 3 of them on me and they pounded the crap outta me.
[2Trade] [Randomfiller] WTB Ace of Portals pst
[2.Trade] [Roflnerd] Thats awesome, did your heals suck?
[2.Trade] [Deadfighter] Not really. They just ran out of mana bc it took so long.
[2.Trade] [Totalnoob] Craptastic Raiders is now recruiting!! We are looking for geared 70s doing T5- some T6 content. pst with spec and gear.
[2.Trade] [Randomfiller] WTB Ace of Portals pst
[2.Trade] [Oompa] LOL!! lrn2 DPS!!
[2.Trade] [Flubber] LOL!
[2.Trade] [Pwnermage] LOL!!

...oh yeah, thats where I heard it. I thought it sounded familliar.

 

[ac_noj]

Well look at it this way:
A 16 Con Dragonborn Fighter has 31 HP, 12 Surges and 10 HP per Surge = 151 HP per day.
A 12 Con Elf Ranger has 24 HP, 7 Surges and 6 HP per Surge = 66 HP per day.
Logically the Fighter should be taking 2.3 times more damage than the Ranger.

Also, the Fighter has an AC of 19 with the Ranger has an AC of 16. Against an average +6 to hit the Fighter is going to take 73% of the damage the Ranger would take under the same circumstances.
Therefore the Fighter can withstand, in total, 3.1 times more attacks than the Ranger (assuming equal average damage).

We must conclude that if all the un-tanked enemies attack a single target, then the Fighter should be trying to tank 3/4 of them. Preferably (in this example) he'll be tanking things that have attacks vs. AC and Fort and leaving the Dex and Will attackers to be someone elses problem.