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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6593932" data-attributes="member: 6787650">The umber hulks did burrow... and then the archers started shooting at the neogis, who ordered the umber hulks back to the surface.Traps were laid all over the place, but the primary impact was just at the very beginning of the fight, when the two neogi (including the leader/wizard) who had gone down to check on the younglings triggered a rolling stone trap that cost them some HP and kicked off the fight. No umber hulks were affected by bear traps or caltrops, as far as I recall.The PC archers were fighting on rooftops. Umber hulks could have eventually collapsed the building, but by that time the PCs were winning.I get the impression that you like to metagame. No doubt you wouldn't have enjoyed the neogi encounter, because I deliberately did not play the neogi like a well-oiled, telepathic machine making optimal countermoves to every PC move, whether or not they had any way to know the PC moves. I played them as what they are: intelligent but also selfish beasts, interested in money and slaves and status among their peers but ultimately also most interested in personal survival (hence: morale failure at a certain point) and not in "winning" the encounter with the PCs at any price. Also, they were taken by surprise in a town they thought was deserted; all the umber hulks were still on the ship when the football dropped, and the leader/wizard was in the basement checking on the babies. As I say, it almost went down quite differently with an enemy Fireball, but it didn't.Yeah, but in this case it didn't backfire. Being on rooftops instead of solid ground was important (got them at least one extra round of archer fire IIRC), for example.It was more like, "Fwoosh! Roll saving throws for ten of your archers! Oh look, they're all down. Wait. Argh. I said there's no window there, right? I guess he spends his turn running out the front door instead, looking for position." [I don't remember the real reason it was illegal. It wasn't a window, it may have been something to do with the initiative rolls I think.]RE: "I prefer real challenges..." You've made it sufficiently clear what kind of combats you like. Combat As Sport, monsters played like chess pieces but with the force advantage in favor of the PCs per DMG guidelines, all PCs equally powerful. Sounds horribly unrealistic and a bit dull to me (I don't RPG for the die-rolling) but obviously you like it, so more power to you.</blockquote>

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