NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 4270212" data-attributes="member: 2011">I won't bother to debate this. But, using movies to justify rules is silly because people can rationalize anything. One person can justify that a rule is bad using the same movie that another person uses to justify that the same rule is good.Rules are good or bad based on what they accomplish with respect to having fun in the game. And the same rule can be good for one game and bad for another.Since the PCs have spell casters and the enemies do not (or only have one or two), it's not hard. A simple Web spell can delay 5 or 6 or more enemies alone. One action by a PC arcane caster delays the enemies by dozens of actions. Crowd control is highly important in these types of conflicts.Note: In our games, even the combatant type PCs tend to have at least some capability to cast spells, use psionics, etc. We tend to not have straight Fighters, but Rangers or Paladins or Psychic Warriors, etc. In our current game, we have a Psychic Warrior, a Monk/Sorcerer, a Sorcerer, a Rogue/Cleric, and a Psion. Every single one of them has non-melee capabiliites (which is not always the case, but often). In this case, 3 of the 5 PCs can cure for example and the rest carry around a lot of potions.The PC melee type can easily be healed by the PC Divine caster who has spontaneous cures and Wands of Curing to back up his spells. The enemy Divine caster (if he exists) typically does not. He often has a few Cure spells, but when he runs out, he runs out.Sure, if you throw creatures with high DR and/or spell casting (especially arcane spell casting or psionics) and/or special tactics/abilities at the group, you are begging for a TPK.But, an encounter where the enemies have a lot fewer options than the PCs tends to be a slugfest where the PCs have more ways to go to the well. And, these types of encounters tend to be against humanoid type foes, not foes with "tricks" or "defenses".The reason that it is challenging is that there is the chance that things can go terribly wrong for the PCs. For example, most of the enemies could make their saves or one PC could get criticaled by multiple foes in the same round, etc.Also note that this type of thing eats up a lot of party resources, so it tends to be something that can only be handled by the PCs as the first (or possibly second) fight of the day.Oh, I agree with your assessment here. The 4E minion concept results in a lot of damage. The reason the 3E mooks did not have this same level of damage capability is because PCs did not allow it. The arcane casters cast Greater Invisibility and then did stick and move crowd control or crowd damaging tactics. The divine casters buffed up the AC of the entire team. I do not see this level of player created disparity of capability between PCs and NPCs in 4E, so the NPC minions by defintion will be more capable of chewing up the PCs in 4E.I'm convinced that I will not be able to run 42 NPCs of a few levels lower against the PCs in 4E like I once did in 3E (and remember, I did that particular combat in waves of about 15% of the NPCs per round). PCs in 4E just do not seem to have as many "go to the well charges" as 3E ones (i.e. I consider an At Will power to not be especially "going to the well" in 4E).</blockquote>

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