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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 5225873" data-attributes="member: 726">Notes on Run #37:This will be short-ish, since Piratecat has already covered the set-up, and talked about the key tactical point of the current battle(s), which is the mobility issue.As he said, the ghouls inflicted immobilized (save ends) with every hit, and hit about 70% of the time.  Additionally, we're fighting in close quarters as we move through a warren of tunnels in search of Caldwell's kidnapped kin. With some work, I can usually arrange for Cobalt (brawny rogue) to have Combat Advantage on about 80-85% of his attack rolls.  In this past game, which included two battles, Cobalt made exactly one attack with CA.  Because he and most of the party were immobilized on any given round, and because the battle was taking place partially in one-square-wide tunnels, there were no opportunities for flanking.  Those factors also resulted in party line-of-sight separation, which means I wasn't getting CA from things like the shaman's Haunting Spirits power.  I spent the entire first fight plinking away mano-a-mano with one ghoul, constantly immobilized, often dazed, and using non-sneak-attack Riposte Strikes with a dagger every round.  Bramble's Protective Roots (giving me DR 4) and Caldwell's healing kept me alive.Piratecat has not adequately conveyed the suckyness of the toddler swarm.  In fact, he has downright mislead you, poor reader, when he says:  While this was true for about five seconds, the cheering stopped as soon as we realized that damaging the swarm with blasts and bursts also damaged party members inside the swarm!.   So, you've got an enemy who:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Takes up a 3x3 square, and can occupy squares with party members.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gets a free attack on anyone who starts their turn inside its area – an attack which immobilizes</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">We can't damage it with melee and ranged attacks</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Anything we can do that does damage it also does massive damage to at least half the party, because it's trivial for the swarm to swarm over a bunch of immobile heroes at a time.</li> </ul>...all while another ghoul is trying to maneuver us into swarm, while also inflicting non-trivial damage with its attacks.  And this was in a room where a 9-square creature occupied about 1/3 of the total space, so there wasn't a great deal of wiggle room.Not that it wasn't all fun and exciting, mind you.   Frustrating, but in a good, challenging way. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />A last note about swarms:  they're strange things in 4E.   We couldn't find anything that said they couldn't be flanked – in most ways we just treated it as a single 3x3 creature.  But since it can occupy enemy squares, it leads to this kind of weirdness:-xxx-AxxxB-xxx-A and B can flank the swarm (which is actually a whole bunch of little individual creatures).-xxx-AxBx--xxx-A and B cannot flank the swarm, even though they are closer together, and clearly flanking at least one “member unit” of the swarm.  Piratecat made the fairly sensible call that someone inside the swarm cannot also flank it, though I'm curious as to whether that is established by the RaW.So, next game will feature a final fight against a ghoulish bride and her ghoulish bridesmaids, in their stinking, festering ghoulish chapel.  We'll have our encounter powers back, and most of us will have Action Points, and we have some tiny number of Dailies left.  I just wish Cobalt had more than one healing surge left!</blockquote>

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