Hardest encounters

[ricardo440]

I've just played the end of Horned Hold (spoilers ahead if you are playing it)

My party was level 6 at this stage, but they completed the entirety of horned hold without resting (for a day), and that included me running the last two encounters together. And there are only 4 of them in the party.

For hardness the Soldiers kick the Brutes completely.

Compare the Duergar Guard (soldier 4) with the Duergar shock trooper (brute 6)
The guard has 1 more AC and other defences.
2 better to attack.
A power that does 4 extra damage every so often.

The shock trooper does just 1 point more damage (1d10 +4 instead of 1d10+3)
an ability that makes him get bigger when he is bloodied and some more HP from the fact he is higher level.

The BRUTE loses. In the entire fight the two brutes did 14 damage in total as I criticaled once.
The soldiers on the other hand were much better off with the extra to hit.

The thing about the brutes is they don't hit very often at all (that is fine) but the damage when they do hit is mediocre at best. 2 levels higher and a brute of a soldier for just +1 damage.
I think a brute hould rarely hit, but when it does its damage should be obscene.

Then there is the Level 8 brute (ogre) in the room next door. That has the same attack bonus as the level 4 soldier and 1d10+5 damage instead of 1d10+3
Seemed pretty lame to me. Give me the 2 level 4 soldiers any day.

 

[Rashak Mani]

Monsters that have condition abilities are the worse.

We faced a group of Yuan-Tis... and most of the group got hit with various penalties. The group's leader managed to miss 3-4 saves in a row. The fighter was dominated.

A few bad luck save rolls and the group was a total mess.

 

[Victim]

I've just played the end of Horned Hold (spoilers ahead if you are playing it)

My party was level 6 at this stage, but they completed the entirety of horned hold without resting (for a day), and that included me running the last two encounters together. And there are only 4 of them in the party.

For hardness the Soldiers kick the Brutes completely.

Compare the Duergar Guard (soldier 4) with the Duergar shock trooper (brute 6)
The guard has 1 more AC and other defences.
2 better to attack.
A power that does 4 extra damage every so often.

The shock trooper does just 1 point more damage (1d10 +4 instead of 1d10+3)
an ability that makes him get bigger when he is bloodied and some more HP from the fact he is higher level.

The BRUTE loses. In the entire fight the two brutes did 14 damage in total as I criticaled once.
The soldiers on the other hand were much better off with the extra to hit.

The thing about the brutes is they don't hit very often at all (that is fine) but the damage when they do hit is mediocre at best. 2 levels higher and a brute of a soldier for just +1 damage.
I think a brute hould rarely hit, but when it does its damage should be obscene.

Then there is the Level 8 brute (ogre) in the room next door. That has the same attack bonus as the level 4 soldier and 1d10+5 damage instead of 1d10+3
Seemed pretty lame to me. Give me the 2 level 4 soldiers any day.

Note that the errata changes the damage on a number of brute type monsters like ogres.

 

[Shroomy]

Bleeping wraiths! Oh, how I hate thee.

 

[mflayermonk]

Seems like creatures with good abilities they can use as minors are the hardest. It could be that the minor action was undervalued in the game design stage. Pretty much anything with a minor action option is good.

 

[Gort]

I've found artillery mixed with soldiers with maybe a single controller to be the optimal mix. Brutes, lurkers and skirmishers just don't really seem to compare in a lot of situations. Brutes miss all the time and are really easy to hit (and thus affect with powers), while lurkers and skirmishers have some extremely poorly designed monsters, some of which are almost incapable of using their powers. (Deathwing zombie, I'm looking at you)

 

[Turtlejay]

This thread and the How to Kill a Blue Dragon thread seem to be heading in the same place. Party composition makes up a lot of whether an encounter is survivable or not. I had what I thought was a challenging encounter against an Elite NPC with zombies to keep the PC's off of him, but the session came and we ended up with 2 clerics. Buh bye zombies, hello exposed controller with useless abilities...

I tend to think that NPC's built with the DMG are pretty capable, and if you want to bump them to Elite with a Template, you can pile on the pain.

Or not, your choice.

Jay

 

[Wik]

Needlefang drake swarms. 5 of those will wipe most equal level parties, and will probably take out parties a few levels higher.

Seconded. I ran an encounter against four 2nd level PCs - two drake swarms, one spitting drake, and one gravehound zombie. I figured it'd be an easy fight for the PCs, since they had a mage. Nope. Those drakes are AWFUL if you don't have someone in the group who can move them.

I ran the exact same fight against a different group (different players) who lacked a mage, but had more "move your allies or enemies" abilities, and they had much less of a problem taking out the swarms.

***

Other problem nasties include a blackscale bruiser lizardfolk with the swordmage class, a ghoul with paladin levels (oh so fun!), and really every other monster with an NPC class tacked on. I had a 3rd level group get chewed to pieces when they figured they were tough enough to take on a much higher level dungeon, and were nearly killed by the first fight - two harpies and two spiked demons. But that's to be expected (and yes, I gave them warnings before they headed that way).

 

[malraux]

Swarms of all types seem to be nasty.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Forced movement as a minor action.
Y'know ... like a green dragon.
*shudder*