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Message: <blockquote data-quote="breschau" data-source="post: 4097582" data-attributes="member: 52376">A Ranger on the Hunt.The ranger pregen is stalking his prey. He's hiding in a tree waiting to strike. A Gnoll Claw Fighter comes in sight and the ranger strikes.Round 0: the ranger is in position using Stealth. Assuming the Take 10/20 rules are still in place, he gets 29 on his Stealth check. Even with Perception +6, there's no way the gnoll will detect him. The ranger marks his quarry.Initiative: ranger 19; gnoll 19! Assuming higher Dex is still the tie breaker, the ranger wins.Round 0: Surprise! The ranger uses Careful Attack. He lets fly and rolls 17 (+10 from Careful = 27). Damage is 17 (+1d8 from quarry). Gnoll is down to 53.Round 1: ranger Careful Attacks again, hits with 21 causing 18 damage (the gnoll is down to 35 and bloodied). The gnoll runs to the base of the tree (granting combat advantage). He sacks his standard action for a move to climb the tree. Not knowing the skill rules for that, I just assume that something with giant claws could make the roll and get up that tree. They are adjacent now.Round 2: the ranger jumps out of the tree (move). He fires again, hits, causing 13 damage (the gnoll is down to 22 without even touching the ranger). The gnoll jumps out of the tree (move) and uses Clawing Charge on the ranger. It hits with both claws for 21 (bringing the ranger down to 2 hp, just in case you didn't know, he's bloodied too).Round 3: the ranger Fey Steps back into the tree (move) and fires again, causing 17 damage (the gnoll is down to 5hp). The ranger uses his action point to fire again. A miss! The gnoll moves to the base of the tree and climbs again. Because of the Fey Step the ranger is farther up the tree than the gnoll can reach in a round.Round 4: the ranger uses his Second Wind to go up to 7hp, he then climbs farther up the tree. The gnoll thinks better of this particular chase, drops, and runs, using the nearby trees as cover the gnoll avoids an arrow in the back. Right here the ranger could have dropped him, but decided to Second Wind.I used half normal move for climbing. That's an assumption, but it seems to be a good one.Considering the ranger's Fey Step power, I think this is near perfect tactics on his part. The gnoll did the best he could with what he had. Note though that in a single hit the gnoll nearly killed the ranger, and if I'd rolled better or crit, I would have. Four rounds, the gnoll looked like a pin cushion and the ranger nearly died from one attack. But, he was only hit once in the encounter. One more hit, even with a bad damage roll would have dropped the gnoll. Also note that if the fight were on the ground the gnoll would have slaughtered the ranger with back to back charges in two rounds. No contest.As with the first solo post, I'm not sure a character should be able to all but take down a monster 2.5 times more powerful than he is. Irrelevant of levels, that's a bit odd to me. I'm a tactical player, and I know that tactics can account for a lot in combat, but that seems to be a bit too much of the 300 syndrome.In 2-3 hits the gnoll would kill the ranger. It would take 6 solid hits from the ranger to kill the gnoll. Without near perfect tactics, it's no contest. Which I like. That's how it should be. But, this is a skirmisher against a striker. Any other monster role (do they use a different term than role for monsters?) and it's no contest. That's good. It should be that hard. I'm just surprised that even with near perfect tactics the ranger could last that long.</blockquote>

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