Our first 4E casualty!

[Gruns]

Hey all.
It only took 6 levels for the group I DM for to experience their first death in 4E. It happened tonight during the "boss encounter" i.e., the "PCs level +3" encounter that is recommended once every level. I think my encounter was fairly designed, and I have to blame horrible player tactics. (But as DMs, don't we all?)
The funny thing is, a seemingly innocent little magic item from Adventurer's Vault played a big part in their demise. The BBEG gave his typical "you found me, now you fools will meet your doom!" speech, and then activated his Darkskull. (As a minor action, you cause all active light sources within 10 squares of you to be suppressed until the end of the encounter. Light sources activated after you use the power function normally.) That's all it does. All of the PCs have a plethora of Sunrods. Not one of them bothered to try to relight their lights! Instead they fumbled around making perception checks to try to locate the Vampire Spawn minions and the Mad Wraith that was eating them alive. +5 to AC is a bit tough to overcome.
And speaking of the Mad Wraith, his aura was amazing. Especially when it seemed like my group did their best to make sure they were all caught in it at all times. The wraith had a personal vendetta against the Paladin in the party, and so stuck on him throughout the entire fight. Sadly, I don't know why the other PCs didn't pick up on the fact that when they were near the pally, they took aura damage. When they (usually accidently) spread apart from the pally, they were safe from the aura.
All in all, definitely not their best tactical display. Even after the paladin went down, the PCs could have attempted a Heal check to stabilize him, but alas they all more or less watched as he failed three death saving throws in a row. This would have likely been a TPK if not for a massive crit (and max damage on the crit dice!) by the rogue on a sneak attack with an Encounter power. I give the PC's performance a 3 out of 10.
Later!
Gruns

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Not knowing what's on your character sheets leads to TPKs.

Having said that, I can easily see why the players didn't think to relight the sunrods. That may have been a frustrating fight.

 

[ExploderWizard]

As far as the lights go, without metagame knowledge about how that item works the PC's might assume that the area was cloaked in magical darkness. In that case wasting time to relight a torch doesn't seem like a useful action.

When everything went dark the thing to try would be a retreat and regroup in a lighted area rather than fight on the bad guy's terms.

 

[Fifth Element]

Yes, I don't think it's fair to blame the players for not knowing exactly what a magic item from AV does. There's how many items in that book?

 

[the Jester]

Yeah, but when the lights go out and that's causing major tactical problems for you, you try to light a new one! At least, I would...

 

[Gruns]

Tactics. Lack of.

It wasn't so much their lack of knowledge of an item from AV. It was their complete lack of trying anything other than "I attack."
I gave various clues suggesting that the darkness was nothing special. When an opposing Blazing Skeleton tossed Flame Orbs at the party, I described how it briefly lit up the area as normal. I was careful to use the words "Your lights all go out" instead of "The entire area goes dark" when the Darkskull was first used. After a few turns, someone even asked me if the darkness was magical. I asked if they wanted to make an Arcana check. They declined, as they were Dazed from the Mad Wraith aura, and didn't want to "waste" their one action that way. And of course, the obvious tactic would have been to retreat to the lighted area. They didn't do that until the party was 90% dead.
The original intent of the Darkskull was to give the BBEG a turn or two to escape/hide while his minions occupied the party. The funny thing is, that plan went out the window on the first action, as the rogue ran up and hit the BBEG with Walking Wounded, knocking him prone and making his retreat to the pre-planned hiding spot quite unexpeditious.
Like I said, t wasn't just the lack of knowledge of an obscure Adventurer's Vault item. It was the entire lack of any tactics whatsoever, other than Flanking. It was quite sad, as this group is pretty experienced. One of them is even an Origins D&D tourney award winner! Huzzah. This night, however, was a case of doing just about everything wrong on a Hard encounter, which is apparantly what it takes to die in 4E.
Later!
Gruns

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

It wasn't so much their lack of knowledge of an item from AV. It was their complete lack of trying anything other than "I attack."

Seemed like there were multiple problems. Being too aggressive and not retreating to a lit area was a problem.

I still can't blame them for not lighting up though. When "all your light go out" is heard, many players think "shoot, lights are suppressed" not "someone blew out the magical and non-magical light".

In that situation, I wouldn't have tried to create a new light, even if I saw flame orbs "briefly" lighting the area up. (If the orbs set something on fire, and it remained on fire, that would have been a valuable clue.) I simply would have ran.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but one of the biggest problems with narrative (or even battlemat) combat is the lack of sensory cues. People tend to panic when blinded anyway. Darkness is a psychological attack rather than the more traditional "metagaming" attacks. Perhaps your players failed their (real-life) morale checks.

 

[Renshai]

It seems that in situations like this the first reaction is to blame the DM for making the combat too hard or setting up a no-win situation. It definitely does not sound like this was the case here.

The DM made sure he presented the party with the proper descriptive text and even dropped subtle hints about light sources working. The players are solely to blame here I'm afraid. They made bad tactical choices in a game that really relies on making sound tactical choices.

I wouldn't worry about it Gruns.

 

[malraux]

If my narrative skills don't seem to be getting across the idea that I think it should, I'll sometimes ask for an insight check to make explicit what I'm trying to convey. Especially on things like auras or other mechanical elements of the game, where its hard to get across the idea in a narrative form.

 

[ExploderWizard]

It seems that in situations like this the first reaction is to blame the DM for making the combat too hard or setting up a no-win situation. It definitely does not sound like this was the case here.

The DM made sure he presented the party with the proper descriptive text and even dropped subtle hints about light sources working. The players are solely to blame here I'm afraid. They made bad tactical choices in a game that really relies on making sound tactical choices.

I wouldn't worry about it Gruns.

It does sound like a classic case of " This encounter was meant to be fought in the dark, lets fight" thinking by the players as opposed to sane options like retreat and regroup.