Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James McMurray" data-source="post: 4598055" data-attributes="member: 743">Is this your first run at epic level play, and have the players spent a lot of time reading those rules. There's a lot of things epic characters can do that might be missed by someone who hasn't been reading their class for a few months or more as they gain levels.What were the PCs' classes, paragon paths, destinies, and multiclass choices? Did they use all of those abilities effectively? In a typical capaign the players will know their characters and each others very well by that point. Even the most unsynergistic group can't help but have some good combos by that point, but its likely that the players didn't know about them. Likewise if everyone showed up with characters they thought would be cool instead of thinking about filling the roles, there could be major pain in any epic level fight they're in. There are very few epic encounters that don't involve multiple status conditions.How did the fight start and what was the terrain? Did they start within range of Tiamat and did the environment help or hinder anyone? Did they know about the environment ahead of time and have a chance to prepare for it. A campaign is not going to have a sudden encounter with a deity, the PCs will have hunted her down and know where they're at well ahead of time.How much foreknowledge did they have about the fight, and were they allowed to use resources to prepare once they knew what they were up against? In a straight campaign it's unlikely five characters who had never fought together before would have a random encounter with Tiamat. They would know each other's abilities, weaknesses, and use their money to plug those holes.Basically I'm saying that it's probably the setup that was the problem, not the fight. It should definitely be a hard battle, and people should die, but epic level characters that know they are going to fight a deity could come very prepared. A single 25th level item disenchanted could buy 5 revenant ankhs, enough to make sure each party member comes back from the dead once in the fight. Most epic destinies have another way to come back from the dead. The party's defender (if he's a fighter) can have a couple more ways to come back. Clerics and Warlords can have tons of ways to give saves or flat out remove conditions.Tiamat's AC of 51 is tough, but not unreachable. +10 stat +3 proficiency +15 level +6 weapon is +34. A tactical warlord could give another +11 with Lead the Attack, and +5 more on action points. A charistmatic rogue could apply a -10 penalty to her defenses with a sustainable power.  Almost every class at that point has a way to reduce a target's defenses or give allies a bonus.An unhouse ruled orb wizard using one of the orbs from Adventurer's Vault could knock her unconscious for five minutes with Sleep. It's guaranteed is there is a Divine Trickster in the party to force the first save to be a 1 so the wizard's -18 (or more) to the future saves would be insurmountable.</blockquote>

Verification