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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AngryPurpleCyclops" data-source="post: 4706361" data-attributes="member: 82732">This is hard to fathom.  I've also been playing these games for 30'ish years and that's not at all what my experience or the data suggests.  If  you assume the other side is sticking to sound military tactics too then they must feel that the encounters are 1% trivial and 99% unwinable by your math.  Give me a build and I'll present you with 3 common encounter scenarios that seriously test that build.  If you're experiencing 99% cake walks and 1% unfair why would you bother playing this game?  I would say if this is your experience you're playing with awful DM's.I have read the Art of War and Von Clausewitz.  None of that applies to DnD.  If you always have the terrain advantage and always "know your enemy" you're playing a different game than me.  And 95% of the rest of the DnD word.  Turns out in more than half of the encounters in DnD the pc's are moving into an area already controlled and defended by the bad guys.  The bad guys might have terrain advantages and traps on their side, pretty much guaranteeing the pc's are at a disadvantage not an advantage.  We always try to ascertain what we're facing to the best of our ability but sometimes in DnD you're placed in a situation without any warning and no method of retreat.  In your 25 years of playing have your pc's ever entered an alley or cave for any reason?  Been on a boat?  Fallen in a pit?  No party ever tries to close with the ghouls but the ghouls do try to close with you.  Is this difficult to understand?  You're in a crypt (wait let me ask have your pc's ever entered a crypt?) a large room 80' wide and 150' long with an altar at the end of the room... columns flank the walls at 10' intervals.  As your party gets close to the altar suddenly the sound of shifting stones can be heard as 4 secret doors open and ghouls rush into the room from both sides.  Sun Tzu never had to deal with ghouls or surprise rounds...  Once again if this encounter seems "outside the bounds" of normal DnD to you, we're probably not really discussing the same game and I would say you're playing the narrative story version.  Ghouls can be silently waiting in the shadows.  Ghouls can be behind things.  Ghouls can be in the bottom of the pit.  Ghouls can board your ship at night from the ghost ship.  The assertion that you can always control the encounter in DnD is ridiculous and speaks to me of a game that's no fun at all to play.  If your dm just rolls over and lets you dominate every encounter why would you bother?This is laughable.  Many monsters out pace pc's so planning on a "safe distance" and "disengaging" really means that sometimes your scout faces 1-2 rounds of attacks all by himself.  Be sure you wave good bye before he goes down the alley alone.  When your sneaky elven ranger pads down the hallway but is facing high perception ambush creatures he's effectively isolated himself which in DnD is bad.  What happens to him when the large stone block falls behind him cutting him off from the party?  If you "always" do that, I would suggest that the DM is very weak in your campaigns or the scout player is frequently rolling up a new character.   If the sum total of your dnd experience is opening doors and finding the monsters directly in front of you I think perhaps it's you that needs to think outside the box.  How much firewood are your pc's carrying for these fires?  smoke works both ways.  you can't always retreat in DnD. Everyone tries to prepare for combat including the monsters in a well run campaign.  It appears to me that you are playing against "dumb" monsters blindly waiting like zombies for pc's to spring the trap on them.  Your campaigns must be brutally slow as the pc's endlessly build a smoky fire in every room prior to opening any doors.  Does the smoke ever attract the monsters in another room who wind up cutting off your retreat and putting you in a "double encounter"?In heroic fantasy there are an infinite number of reasons why you might feel compelled to go forth into unknown terrain.  "the screams of a young girl being tortured waft down the dark corridor".  You can't always control the battle field.  In real life you can control it less than half the time.   How come we're not able to smoke out insurgents?  Sometimes you have to go house to house.  I've had a lot of training in house to house and room to room combat.  I understand the principles and tactics that can be employed, no matter what you "think" it reality the tactics are designed to level the the playing field as much as possible but the defenders still have some advantages.  you can't always mitigate them.  To suggest that the pc's control the encounter in even 50% of the situations is kind of montyhaul'ish.The published encounters have lots of trivial n to n-2 encounters.  I disagree strongly that you'll not take more than trivial damage in the n+2 or greater encounters.  Once again give me a build and I'll point you to a bad situation.  your DM appears to be awful.  Every tactic you've recommended can be employed by the monsters.  Your pc's can be trapped in a dead end or surrounded and if you try and block the doors the gnolls can roll barrels of burning oil into them filling your room with smoke and giving you endurance checks to avoid penalties.  This is sort of anecdotal and straw man.  i.e. a lot of groups play badly and don't maneuver.  How do you prevent gnoll huntmasters who ambush a party as it crosses a bridge from applying focus fire?  If you believe Abdul, you already knew that the gnolls were there and you deployed smoke grenades to cover your crossing. Perhaps you traveled 100 miles further to go around the gorge and avoid the ambush and let the escaping bandits get away with <insert import item or person here>.You're using anecdotal evidence from one moderate encounter (which you're still not defining clearly.) as the basis of a flawed argument.  Describe the party and the encounter, other wise it sounds a lot like you made this up.  I repeatedly say "gnolls", "ghouls", "orcs", "gricks", "grells" in my examples.  I'm using examples that are similar to encounters I've actually fought in so I know how they played out.  Ghouls are scary monsters.  All soldiers are kind of scary and all monsters with stun are kind of scary, but I've faced these encounters and won so I don't think that you can say "broken".  I think all soldiers are undervalued exp wise but when I use the ghoul encounter example I'm not using an N+4 to account for this.  I give you a real world example that a normal build party can and has defeated and you call it broken  because it destroys your healing/build theory.  Try and offer support for why you think ghouls are broken.  you're making random statements and asking us to take them as fact.Actually your mistaken, after the one round of turn undead which gives the party a huge chance to take control of the battle and release the pressure of constantly suffering from effects, the big bonus of clerics are bonus saves.  If I could only have one power from the three in a ghoul battle I would choose bonus saves over turn undead.  radiant damage is a nice bonus too but it's the saves that keep the other members of the party standing.  Healing is also pretty critical.  Bottom line though, without bonus saves ghouls (and many many other creatures with stunning abilities) will eat you for lunch nearly every time.   Stunning creatures and powerful undead creatures are not rare in DnD.  The massive advantage clerics get in these kinds of situations is what makes them superior to warlords.   solo's are really bad examples.  what percentage of encounters are solo's?  Are solo encounter usually threatening?  A level 6 solo is an N+1 encounter for level 5 pc's.  The only solo I can find for level 6 is a young blue dragon which is threatening to level 2 pc's but sort of a joke for level 5 pc's.  The best he can muster is 3 attacks per round while he's facing 5 attacks from the party.  His attacks are pitifully weak +9 ATT d4+5 x 2???  Level 3 Orcs are more threatening.  His breath weapon is even weak, three targets, average damage 12 per hit... This is a challenging encounter in your campaign?  We're not playing the same game.   Switch your 1250 encounter for two gricks and a grell.  The monsters can now gain flanking, they have more attacks per round and all the attacks have better modifiers and better damage (the grell gets a second free attack if it hits with it's +12 vs fort attack) they can deploy a stun condition EVERY round not once in the entire encounter, they get two attacks per round that give ongoing damage, they have more hitpoints than the dragon and we only have 4 pc's not 5.  Of course no one was in danger, the encounter is a joke from a danger perspective.  You're not really even making a point here.</blockquote>

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