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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 5113941" data-attributes="member: 463">Advice to the OP on killing PCs:The time I killed 4/6 PCs, it was with a tribe of orcs, the party attacked their lair and the orcs responded vigorously.  The orcs were level-appropriate, but there were lots of them - 34 drudges, 4 raiders, 1 berserker for the chief and 1 half-orc death mage shaman (halved hp).  It was a level+7 encounter, PCs were Striker heavy (3) with 1 Bard, 1 Invoker and a Fighter who charged into the thick of the orcs.  The party Invoker killed huge numbers of drudges but they weren't ready when the death mage & berserker came in after a few rounds, his fly-swarm attack really chewed them up. My advice then for killing PCs - use *lots* of monsters, a good mix of minions and standards, plus 1 or more controllers.  Lots of monsters are generally more deadly than higher-level monsters - this is different from prior editions, where offense went up faster than defense.  In 4e, if the party are missing on a '15' they're likely to retreat.  If they're ploughing through swathes of enemies they're much less likely to flee, but large numbers of same-level enemies can inflict lots of damage on them.  Secondly, use waves of monsters within the same encounter - the party will be out of position dealing with the first lot, when the second wave comes in.  A few more minions don't make much difference, but the death mage controller in the second wave was really bad because it further disrupted the PCs.The gnoll/grell fight in DD4 works the same - the PCs pile in thinking the gnoll demonic scourge is the BBEG, so they're unprepared when the real threat emerges.  My group then spent several rounds trying and failing to take down the grell while the gnoll huntmasters poured arrows into them.</blockquote>

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