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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 4717812" data-attributes="member: 2011">If I had changed it to a Fire Lord, yes the Ash Disciples could have teleported near it. It wouldn't have changed much. The Ghoul King often hit on a 4. It really doesn't need an Ash Disciple to teleport in and give it flank. The Ash Disciples already teleported to flank positions anytime they wanted to use Flaming Fist or to a central position when they wanted to do an area effect. In the early rounds when the fire creatures were still alive, the GK with a move of 8 and its own teleport could pretty much be in the thick of it and get all the flank it wanted.On the other hand, the Rogue would have been safer in such a situation. His cloak would have stopped the Ghoul King Fire Lord's ongoing damage and would have seriously minimized the Fire Lord's attack damage. And the Paladin and Cleric would have had to healed him less often, which would have resulted in more healing for the rest of the group.The only disadvantage to the party is the 50 less points of bonus radiant damage due to its vulnerability (I went back and added it up) that they would not have done to the Fire Lord. They hit it 5 times for radiant damage total including the Paladin's mark. Not doing that would have extended the combat. No doubt.But compared to the amount I gimped the PCs, this is extremely minor.So quite frankly, I think that your contention that I gimped the encounter in favor of the monsters is totally nonsensical. The encounter would have in reality been about the same for the monsters using a Fire Lord since the Rogue would have been much harder to take down and would have used fewer party resources, but the party had fewer cold attacks than they had radiant attacks.You might have some fantasy "teleporting creatures" model in your head about how such an encounter would be thrilling to the players, but the grindiness of a long encounter (that you would have made longer based on the two run away tactics that you talked about) does not support that contention either.Go ahead and take these exact same PCs and run the encounter your way with your players. I seriously doubt that it will be a short combat and I also seriously doubt that the players will feel threatened.I've already done the hard work and put together the PCs. See what happens. Put some effort in to support your POV instead of being an armchair quarterback.Ever? I freely admited that your tactic for the Ravager is better than what I used.Yup, I'm wrong a lot. It just happens that I am not wrong about this. Your encounter was not thrilling, not threatening, not a challenge. It was grindy, nothing more. It was fun for the player until the second half, but it was just a grind fest after that.Changing it to a Fire Lord would have still resulted in a grindy encounter after the other four bit the dust.The moral of this story is to NOT throw much higher level Elite foes at PCs because it just grinds the encounter to a halt. It's much better to have many slightly more powerful foes than one BBEG that is too overwhelming with to hit and defenses, especially at higher levels (due to the math problem).And this POV is supported by page 57 of the DMG which states that even if a creature is within the XP budget of the PCs, it shouldn't be used if it is too hard to hit and/or hits the PCs too easily. You ignored this suggestion when you used the other DMG guidelines to put together your encounter.</blockquote>

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