Unexpected TPK: Unbalanced, bad circumstances, or fluke?

[Blackbrrd]

I partially agree with Minigiant, the cleric had too few hp. Taking toughness at level 1 is actually a pretty good choice. It would get the cleric up to 29 hp and his healing surge value up to 7. You would need 17 con to get as many hp as you get by taking the toughness feat, which I don't think it is worth. Except if you are a infernal pack warlock that is.

The cleric in this example is going to get hit a lot, so he should get every ac/hp boost he can get. It is not as if the warlock is going to hang around...

In your example the cleric would instead of dropping be at 5 hp, and would be able to use second wind + inspiring word and use an action point to do a healing strike. He would be at 5+7+7+1d6+4? = 26 hp while the warlock probably would have kited like mad...

 

[jasin]

The beetle hits the 'lok for another 6 damage, taking him to -10; another 3 damage and he's dead.

Does that mean the warlock had 13 hp? He'd need to have Con 1 for that.

Did you by any chance misread "Hit Points at 1st Level: 12 + Constitution score" for "... Constitution modifier"?

 

[Incendax]

Does that mean the warlock had 13 hp? He'd need to have Con 1 for that.

Did you by any chance misread "Hit Points at 1st Level: 12 + Constitution score" for "... Constitution modifier"?

The Warlock had 26 hit points. You don't die until you are negative hit points equal to your bloodied value. In this case, -13.

To the original poster: 4th Edition is a game of Paper, Rock, and Scissors. Throwing Brutes(rock) at the party generally calls for Defenders(paper) to counter. That means significantly higher AC to balance out the strong damage potential of the brutes.

As another poster suggested, I'd limit the number of Brutes you toss at the party, but Artillery, Lurkers, and Skirmishers should be fine pickings.

 

[Oompa]

Does that mean the warlock had 13 hp? He'd need to have Con 1 for that.

Did you by any chance misread "Hit Points at 1st Level: 12 + Constitution score" for "... Constitution modifier"?

he was at -10, taking 3 is -13, -13 is his bloodied hp count, so normal hp should be 26..

 

[Oompa]

Darn Ninja's

 

[MarkB]

Darn Ninja's

Darn, ninja'd on the 'darn Ninjas' comment.

 

[Asmor]

I partially agree with Minigiant, the cleric had too few hp. Taking toughness at level 1 is actually a pretty good choice. It would get the cleric up to 29 hp and his healing surge value up to 7. You would need 17 con to get as many hp as you get by taking the toughness feat, which I don't think it is worth. Except if you are a infernal pack warlock that is.

The cleric actually has 10 con... As a dragonborn, no less.

I kind of rolled my eyes at that. Something I completely didn't think of until now, though, is the fact that this is the cleric player's first time playing D&D, so he didn't understand the full repercussions of taking a 10 for con.

In general, I try to take a hands off approach to character generation and let people play whatever they want. I'm going to send them both a link to this thread, so that hopefully it might inform their decisions a bit in the future.

Thanks for the advice everyone!

 

[Danceofmasks]

Well, if you look at it from the perspective of:
Every mob acted first, and hit every PC with each of their actions .. you'll get a similar result if things happened that way in 5v5.

 

[James McMurray]

Well, if you look at it from the perspective of:
Every mob acted first, and hit every PC with each of their actions .. you'll get a similar result if things happened that way in 5v5.

Very true. You could have a 5,000 vs. 5,000 fight and if every monster goes first, hits every PC, and totals to enough damage to drop half the good guys, there's gonna be trouble.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

But I digress, it was a combination of bad luck, poor tactics and the game being balanced around 5v5 not 2v2

/has a WoW flashback in horror
//hates Arena
///Was a Hunter
////Nothing like hour long drain games
/////Nothing else of value to add that hasn't been said