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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 4714729" data-attributes="member: 2011">It isn't easy in the sense that it uses up few resources. It is easy in the sense that there is no threat. No real challenge. Nothing to scare the PCs cause they always have something in their bag of tricks to handle most anything.Even an Elite 5 levels higher than the PCs.You are forgetting two things: The Cleric and Wizard were staying out of range because they had seen this attack 3 times before. So, the greatest number of hits would be 3, not the average number of hits.Also, if he does not use that attack, he would mostly likely use the staff. That hits for 23 points on average (13 on the hit, 10 ongoing for at least one round). 23 plus 30 to 40 = 53 to 63. Like I said, probably only an additional 30 to 40 more than if he had used the staff.You are second guessing my tactics when you were not there. The Wizard was bloodied. The Rogue was fine. It's an action economy problem. Take out the Wizard, then take out a different PC. Focus on one at a time until it is dead, then switch. Earlier in the fight, it was concentrating a lot on the Fighter because the Fighter was heavily injured and had it marked at the time. The Fighter got healed, the Wizard was injured, it switched targets.As it turned out, if he had NOT attacked the Wizard repeatedly, the Wizard would not have gone unconscious. How exactly are your tactics better than ones that knock a PC out?Not once the Paladin marks it. The Paladin's mark does radiant damage. It had to occassionally stay in range of the melee guys because the chances of the melee guys hitting were small, the chances of it taking Radiant damage from the Paladin by teleporting away and attacking anyone else was 100%. It only let this happen a few times because that was extra damage it could not afford.Plus, the teleport only recharges half of the time. It was forced to either stay put when it could not teleport, or move away from a pillar and allow 4 PCs to flank it instead of 2 PCs.But, I'm not going to go down a long path here. I've been DMing for over 30 years. I do not always use the best tactics, but they don't suck either. The party had different effects on Doresian which quasi-forced his hand with regard to tactics. Your armchair quarterbacking not withstanding, he did use reasonable tactics based on the situation including the spells and the mark they had on him.How many encounters occur in areas greater than 120x120 in most people's games? If using miniatures, that's a huge area. It takes up a large portion of the table. The largest we can do at our table is 150x200 (to the very edge of our Tactiles) and that almost never happens.I seriously doubt that you have many encounters with table space larger than this on any sort of regular basis.I consider a 120x120 area with pillars to use as cover favorable to the NPCs. Most encounters are in dinky 30x40 rooms or smaller, at least in the adventure modules.You are grasping at straws here. What exactly are you trying to illustrate here?I'll take 5 players who know the PCs inside and out, and have experience playing them with each other any day over a single player who has never seen the PCs and has zero experience playing them.The team will do better every time.That guideline is really bad. Any PCs played up through the levels and using the normal guidelines would have three times as many magic items as that guideline, an item each of levels 23 to about 15 and one in most slots.So, you think I should have gimped the PCs even more here?One small problem with this. The NPCs can only teleport to where there is another fire NPC. Anywhere they go, there could be PCs near their destination NPC. Unlike normal teleport, they couldn't just teleport away. They always have to teleport to where another NPC is located.As pointed out, Doresian's attack recharged twice in the entire encounter.You are telling us that as a DM, you would have the non-BBEG NPCs flitter about for dozens of rounds, staying away from the PCs, rarely attacking and waiting for Doresian's attack to recharge, an attack that only does an extra 30 to 40 damage total if the PCs are spread out over his normal attack?Talk about grind. You cannot have it both ways. Either the NPC henchmen stay away in which case the PCs have fewer attacks against them and have more resources and time to deal with Doresian and the combat takes a lot more rounds, or the NPC henchmen attack every chance they get (like what happened in the combat) and the PCs get an opportunity to take them out first.But, there is no golden tactical solution here. The monsters were not disadvantaged.I will gladly create real PCs and you can come over to my house and DM and my PCs will kick their butts. Course, all rolls have to be out in the open. I don't trust you to not change the scenario when it is not going your way. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Your hit and run tactics will result in a lot more rounds, but meh. It will still just be a grind without a threat.How much MORE do you want to gimp the PCs?Wasn't random items, powers, feats, restricting it to the PHB, and having an inexperienced Epic player who knows nothing about the PCs enough?This is becoming laughable. You created the scenario. Now, you want to make it even tougher? It wasn't tough enough because the outcome was a big old grind without a threat?How many more suggestions are you going to make to change it and gimp the PCs some more?</blockquote>

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