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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Taed" data-source="post: 5697436" data-attributes="member: 89454">Our group found it clever of the DM and a challenge for us and completely in the spirit of Lair Assault.  We now have to think about how to defeat that strategy for next week (such as through initiative bonuses).We knew what the minions were (some of us encountered some of them in the first week) and we had no intention of hitting them.  Our strategy was to not get involved in any combat in the first room.  If we needed a path through the row of minions, we would have done a Charge / Bull Rush.That said, the hellhound was necessary and initiative mattered since only the hellhound and handler ended up with higher initiative than the PCs.  Without the hellhound, we would all have gone before the minions and run past the minions with a double-run, take the OAs, and make it into the final room at the end of the first round (giving us 4 more rounds in the final room for the attempt at speed run glory).Also, if we decided not to run, any decent defender (of which we had none) could have taken the attacks from the minions without getting bloodied due to the high AC (or were those reflex attacks? I forget) and high hit points.  So, it's hardly a certain loss.A good part of our problem was when the first character ran, we were left in a U-shaped pattern (as he happened to be the front row middle position), and all the minions piled into the hole.  Without that hole, only 2 or 3 PCs (not all 4) could have been hit by each minion's close blast.  Thus, we would have all survived that minion onslaught, though all would still have been bloodied.I don't know the rules for monster placement, but if the DM were allowed to place 16 of those minions in the first room in a semi-circle around the entrance so that it was largely two deep, that would be quite difficult.  Although with initiative, Thunderwave or Beguiling Strands could still make a path, so you might end up sacrificing one PC.  Or if you all had some way of doing a fly or spider walk, that's another way out.Just for clarity, this was the layout after the first PC ran away, where P=PCs, m=Minions, H=Hellhound, and .=walking path.  As you can see, the DM did leave us space to run the gauntlet, so he wasn't totally evil.  If I were doing that, I wouldn't have left those spaces, forcing a Bull Rush.m H mm . mmP.PmmP.Pm</blockquote>

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