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Monsters not dishing enough damage
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<blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4955097" data-attributes="member: 40961"><p>Part of the problem is that "break a sweat" is awfully subjective.</p><p> </p><p>My experience at paragon tier is that an equal level encounter will be managed awfully effectively by our group. Its not that the encounter can't threaten us, its that we have the tools and the knowledge to take it apart in such a way that it never gets the chance. But isn't that still the encounter doing its job? How should we think about an encounter that, due to player and team skill, is easily defeated, but which would be more difficult if the players weren't as skilled? I tend to think of it as an acceptable encounter.</p><p></p><p>Level +1 encounters, in my experience, tend to put some threat on one character. Never the group as a whole, but usually a striker ends up needing rescue. This rescue usually comes in the form of our very effective cleric fixing everything with a daily ability.</p><p> </p><p>Level +2 encounters, in my experience, tend to threaten at least two characters. Usually our ranger and our wizard, but that's mostly our group dynamic. Again the players handle things pretty well once they get on top of the situation. But at least two characters usually end up at bloodied and in need of something other than routine encounter power healing.</p><p> </p><p>Level +3 encounters tend to be kind of rough, with a real chance of character death even after rare special abilities have been used. The only exception is when the players know there's a really tough encounter coming down the line- if they plan ahead, they can activate some seriously powerful daily abilities in some really optimal ways, and smash through pretty effectively. If they can't plan ahead, they don't use their abilities as effectively at the beginning of the fight, and things are harder.</p><p> </p><p>So I don't know if that means the game's working, or its not working. For my group, we're having fun, so its probably working. We tend not to have many encounters where losing feels like a major risk, but group makeup probably affects that- fighter, paladin, cleric, ranger, wizard. The two defenders lock things down, and the cleric keeps everything running. If the group had more strikers, we'd probably trash easy encounters even faster, but have a lot more risk in the hard ones.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Cadfan, post: 4955097, member: 40961"] Part of the problem is that "break a sweat" is awfully subjective. My experience at paragon tier is that an equal level encounter will be managed awfully effectively by our group. Its not that the encounter can't threaten us, its that we have the tools and the knowledge to take it apart in such a way that it never gets the chance. But isn't that still the encounter doing its job? How should we think about an encounter that, due to player and team skill, is easily defeated, but which would be more difficult if the players weren't as skilled? I tend to think of it as an acceptable encounter. Level +1 encounters, in my experience, tend to put some threat on one character. Never the group as a whole, but usually a striker ends up needing rescue. This rescue usually comes in the form of our very effective cleric fixing everything with a daily ability. Level +2 encounters, in my experience, tend to threaten at least two characters. Usually our ranger and our wizard, but that's mostly our group dynamic. Again the players handle things pretty well once they get on top of the situation. But at least two characters usually end up at bloodied and in need of something other than routine encounter power healing. Level +3 encounters tend to be kind of rough, with a real chance of character death even after rare special abilities have been used. The only exception is when the players know there's a really tough encounter coming down the line- if they plan ahead, they can activate some seriously powerful daily abilities in some really optimal ways, and smash through pretty effectively. If they can't plan ahead, they don't use their abilities as effectively at the beginning of the fight, and things are harder. So I don't know if that means the game's working, or its not working. For my group, we're having fun, so its probably working. We tend not to have many encounters where losing feels like a major risk, but group makeup probably affects that- fighter, paladin, cleric, ranger, wizard. The two defenders lock things down, and the cleric keeps everything running. If the group had more strikers, we'd probably trash easy encounters even faster, but have a lot more risk in the hard ones. [/QUOTE]
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Monsters not dishing enough damage
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