Ya. I have had a hard time reconciling "we need these extra +s" with "our 21st level party just wiped the floor with Orcus". What gives?
Orcus is a terribly designed solo, one of the worst in 4E and suffers numerous chronic flaws that make him the high level "slapper" of 4E.
1) He's a brute designed under the old maths. He has poor attacks and equally poor defenses. With attack penalties and bonuses, he's trivial to hit and will actually have a hard time attacking many well built defenders.
2) His powers suck. Yes he can drop
a PC to zero HP. Big deal, this is epic tier when people aren't staying dead for very long anyway. In general though, he has no resistance against daze or stun, does not have anywhere near the actions a solo needs and he does miserable damage for his level.
3) Essentially, he boils down to a massive bag of easy to hit HP that is barely threatening.
While PCs are far harder to challenge with MM1/MM2 creatures because they haven't kept up in damage. They scratch PCs barely with each attack. It is telling that once you fix the damage expressions of even some of the worst MM1 creatures, they become significantly more threatening and actually contribute meaningfully to "team monster" in epic tier. When you consider the far better designed powers of MM3 creatures - and MM2 creatures as in many ways outside of damage there is nothing *wrong* with them at all - the effect is that combat is
far more challenging.
Now if you remove the expertise feats and similar, making it harder for PCs to hit you suddenly swing things back the other way. In my experience, level 25 PCs losing that +3 to hit makes a massive difference in combats. Remember that monsters aren't plinking away at PCs for absolutely no damage anymore. Every hit can take a substantial amount of HP and dropping PCs is pretty common in an EL + 2 or EL + 3 encounter after level 25 or so. When you miss with an important power, you pay for it far more dearly in epic than you did previously. In some ways, the expertise feats I don't feel were required before and now they
are.
When you're looking at a brute whose turn is right after yours and you miss him with that daze/stun power, your wizard is eating dirt next turn. That brute monster won't flail at you pathetically for 15ish damage now (I'm not even kidding, some epic MM1/MM2 brutes do *that* pathetic damage). He's going to thump the crap out of you for 40+ points of damage,
if you're lucky. Combined with aura damage stacking, better powers and similar, that brute can annihilate you now where before it wasn't worth considering as a meaningful threat. Relying on PCs needing combat advantages and bonuses from leaders just to hit, would make epic tier swing well back towards being too hard.
Right now I think it's almost perfectly balanced. PCs can hit monsters, monsters can hit PCs and both sides are dealing
good damage to one another. EL, EL +1 and EL +2 encounters are relevant, challenging and work far better than they ever did before at high paragon/epic. I think if we start doing things like throwing away expertise, we'll make it so that PCs are actually going to struggle at epic with many monsters. I give expertise out for free at level 5 and since MM3, I've been mauling my epic party in EL0 and EL+1 encounters. Sapping -3 to hit off their powers doesn't seem constructive at this point.
Personally, I think DnD is a more fun game when both sides are hitting one another and dealing damage. Instead of PCs flailing ineffectually at monsters and monsters scratching PCs for barely any damage for eight to ten rounds.
