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My PC's and the Stirge Scourge
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<blockquote data-quote="Guyanthalas" data-source="post: 6484281" data-attributes="member: 73919"><p>Playing Lost Mines of Phandelver last night with one of my D&D groups, and they got a random encounter of stirge. After playing this encounter, they have declared that stirges must be one of the strongest creatures in the game and are more fearful of them than any other creature to date.</p><p></p><p>For clarity, the encounter is 1d8+2 stirge, and they rolled an 8. This also happened during the night, with 2 characters on watch (one being the wizard). I have the watch schedule posted and have been ruling night encounters as a surprise round, with anyone on watch able to act in the surprise round. All players not on watch wake up on their turn (and stand up if they wish), but cannot take an action.</p><p></p><p>The first big problem I noticed is that a stirge does quite a bit of damage for a little guy. Also, providing that they hit once, don't need to hit again to do the same damage. The stirge won initiative and immediately attached themselves to the Wizard and Cleric that were awake. The stat block doesn't say how many stirges can be attached, so I ruled that 2 was plenty and didn't let the others attack a target with 2 stirges sucking blood. Even with this provision both the fighter and the wizard were unconscious in two rounds. I also had the stirges release their victims once they were unconscious rather than "dead". After everyone was awake they fought them off, but took quite a bit of damage in the process. The question came up of "do I have to pull the stirge off me before I attack it?" and we did some fuzzy ruling on that as well.</p><p></p><p>Now the running joke of the group is whether something is "stronger or weaker than a mosquito attack". A goblin does 1d6+2, and a stirge does 1d4+3. The goblin does more damage technically, but the stirge has a much higher average. The most depressing thing was that this encounter that resulted in a 40% party wipe was only worth 250xp. I think everyone at the table was glaring at me. It didn't help that this exact same encounter repeated itself 3 nights later, 10 stirges et al.</p><p></p><p>So I guess my questions to the community are: did I do something wrong? Is this just a fluke encounter which has a crazy difficulty curve under the perfect storm? Did I misinterpret some of the rules? Can a player have infinite stirges stuck to them? Any suggestions or thoughts are appreciated, even if its a "well, a smarter DM would have read this passage...." <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite7" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":p" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Guyanthalas, post: 6484281, member: 73919"] Playing Lost Mines of Phandelver last night with one of my D&D groups, and they got a random encounter of stirge. After playing this encounter, they have declared that stirges must be one of the strongest creatures in the game and are more fearful of them than any other creature to date. For clarity, the encounter is 1d8+2 stirge, and they rolled an 8. This also happened during the night, with 2 characters on watch (one being the wizard). I have the watch schedule posted and have been ruling night encounters as a surprise round, with anyone on watch able to act in the surprise round. All players not on watch wake up on their turn (and stand up if they wish), but cannot take an action. The first big problem I noticed is that a stirge does quite a bit of damage for a little guy. Also, providing that they hit once, don't need to hit again to do the same damage. The stirge won initiative and immediately attached themselves to the Wizard and Cleric that were awake. The stat block doesn't say how many stirges can be attached, so I ruled that 2 was plenty and didn't let the others attack a target with 2 stirges sucking blood. Even with this provision both the fighter and the wizard were unconscious in two rounds. I also had the stirges release their victims once they were unconscious rather than "dead". After everyone was awake they fought them off, but took quite a bit of damage in the process. The question came up of "do I have to pull the stirge off me before I attack it?" and we did some fuzzy ruling on that as well. Now the running joke of the group is whether something is "stronger or weaker than a mosquito attack". A goblin does 1d6+2, and a stirge does 1d4+3. The goblin does more damage technically, but the stirge has a much higher average. The most depressing thing was that this encounter that resulted in a 40% party wipe was only worth 250xp. I think everyone at the table was glaring at me. It didn't help that this exact same encounter repeated itself 3 nights later, 10 stirges et al. So I guess my questions to the community are: did I do something wrong? Is this just a fluke encounter which has a crazy difficulty curve under the perfect storm? Did I misinterpret some of the rules? Can a player have infinite stirges stuck to them? Any suggestions or thoughts are appreciated, even if its a "well, a smarter DM would have read this passage...." :p [/QUOTE]
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