Tank Theory

[Mal Malenkirk]

Sorry no, you are completely wrong about this point. In your case it wasn't focus fire, it was incompetence on behalf of the enemy. You would have had the enemy ignore an extremely soft target, the wizard, at all times, in favor of mindlessly going after one target. Even if enemy is right next to the wizard already, even if the cleric is on the other side of a room filled with deathtraps. There is no justification for that, it is a bad tactic, and it only would have made the encounter exploitable.

Don't be silly. If the cleric is on the other side of a room filled with death trap and the wizard is next to the enemy, then everyone attacks the wizard. It's still focused fire.

I only pointed out the cleric because the poor sap needs to be 5 square away for his attack whereas the rest of the team can be farther away and was therefore a prime target for a mobbing if his partners are also ranged atackers. And the laser cleric is often a softer target than many wizards anyway.

In any case, you pick the most isolated target and hit him as hard as possible, only sending a one or two monsters toward the other PCs for interference. You gang up on him until he dies.

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So I guess we are camped on our position.

My contention is that a team with 2 melee and 1 ranged PCs will fare a lot better in the typical dungeon encounter than a team with 3 ranged PCs, especially if it's a tough level + 2 (or more) encounter.

I'm willing to prove it anytime in a PbP one shot scenario.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You say you used bottleneck... With what? If a laser cleric or a wizard can hold a bottleneck it's because I am right; the DM was cuddling you.

Bottlenecks are naturally occurring in most 4e battlefields - dungeons, in particular, have tons of them - doorways and corridors and the like. You don't need defender stickiness to hold a chokepoint, any reasonably tough melee type can handle it. If you have a controller he can narrow or seal choke-points with zones.


(BTW, it's coddling.)

 

[Cadfan]

Their DM might have been cuddling them, you don't know that!

The whole point of the discussion is that this guy's claiming that his group regularly uses bottlenecks to cut down on the enemy's ability to engage them in melee, but also that they DON'T have a reasonably strong melee type. In fact, they have no melee type at all. The closest they have to a melee character is a cleric who's spells only have a range of 5.

Many of us are skeptical that a bottleneck can hold the enemy if there's nothing to actually put in the neck of the bottle. There are a few walls and zones that might help, but fewer than you might think in this context- anything that blocks line of sight is a moot point since it really just prevents combat rather than aiding the PCs towards victory. And if the damage from the zone is only trivial, the monsters charge through. The zone does its job of dealing damage, but then you have your all ranged party engaging at close quarters. There are a few zones that work, but... just a few.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Well, there are conjurations that occupy spaces, so they can be used to plug a bottleneck ...
But apart from that, I'm likewise skeptical.

I reckon parties without a melee type can work, such as "elves + kiting," but unless DMs are willing to manage the PCs dashing through entire dungeon complex every encounter, perhaps not so well in practice.
Bottlenecks? Umm, I'll have to see it.