Stacking penalties, solos, and . . . *sigh* sadness. :(

[RangerWickett]

Last night the party fought a dragon.

The bard has vicious mockery and psychic lock.

The bard also had powers (some multiclass) that:

a) healed for 6 hp each PC who hit the dragon.

b) granted each ally a +6 damage on damage rolls against the dragon.

c) let him and one ally roll twice for every attack.


The dragon had a -4 penalty to attacks every round (except for the rounds when the warden/giant slayer climbed on top of the dragon, and the illusionist used some power that incurred a -5 penalty) and kicked the total penalty to -7, or -9 to attacks against anyone other than the warden.

The ability to stack so many penalties, especially against a solo, feels radically overpowered and crippling. Are these penalties supposed to actually stack like this? Are there things I'm missing?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think by RAW, yes, it is supposed to work that way. Unless these powers have a descriptor...

Seems a similar problem as the stacking save penalties. Time for a house rule perhaps? (I doubt that errata could reign this in satisfyingly.)

 

[Gort]

House rule, perhaps?

Solo can't have more than a -5 to hit, maybe?

 

[Piratecat]

That's the point when the dragon flies away for five minutes to clear its head and gather some allies...

 

[Stalker0]

That's the point when the dragon flies away for five minutes to clear its head and gather some allies...

Often a solid option, probably should be considered much more often then we do.

I have seen that bard healing power in action so I feel your pain on that one.

 

[RangerWickett]

Defenders make running hard, but I pulled it off, and next week we've got the rematch. Good times.

I'll post a more detailed thread of the encounter later. It actually was pretty fun.

 

[Alrethe]

I found that many of the solo battles just didn't live up to my expectations and I had to mod them on the fly.

Stuff like adding a wave of minions to distract debuffers.

Or upping the recharge rate of interupts.

Unlimited hp until i felt the players had enought. Don't knock this. If done right it can add soo much to a boss fight.

And the chessy jRPG classic. Ok you did 9999 damage and technecly he's dead. BUT no just before you do your last point of damage an interupt teleport spell fires "Fight me again when you're stronger". And the players go WTF?

 

[Lauberfen]

Why were the players hitting so much?

Most debuffs require a hit to do anything, and vicious mockery for one only last one round- the bard shouldn't be hitting more than half the time.

I wonder what the relative levels were?

 

[RangerWickett]

Well, level 12 vs. a level 12 solo (with allies to make the encounter as a whole level 15). The bard got to roll twice per round since he is, I believe, a twiceborn leader, which is a warlord paragon path. The dragon's Will was 28, but with +6 level, +6 Cha, +3 item, +1 implement mastery (house ruled in as a freebie, but there anyway), he had a pretty good shot of hitting each round.

If you want to see the dragon's stats, I had a rough draft in this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/257250-wazir-ghul-khota-leper-dragon.html

 

[Flipguarder]

solos aint supposed to be alone.

But I agree that there should be a limit to how much a penalty you can stack on one attribute (ac, to hit, fortitude, etc.)