NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6240244" data-attributes="member: 1165">Were you talking about particular levels? IME PCs were challenged by at-level encounters until level 7, afterward they steamrolled such encounters, and could handle level +4 encounters. I guess being able to use an encounter power every round put them over the top.I don't mind damage auras, you just have to use moderation. I wouldn't use more than 5 damage per tier. I haven't seen a monster that does more than 20 damage per turn (and this was a high epic dragon). I don't know where you're getting 15 heroic/50 epic figures from.I only use auras for solos, and it's a way of countering "lockdown" (they will always do damage regardless of being locked down, unless there's a way to shut off the aura). The beholder actually has a similar rule; it automatically attacks anyone starting their turn near it (and in MM1, this was literally an aura) as long as it is conscious. A stunned beholder can still use that "aura".I like Sly Flourish's "donut aura" as there's an element of strategy to it. The aura is very large and prevents PCs from seeing through it (the one I used was psionic so it was messing with PC vision) but the aura does not exist within 5-10 squares of the boss. It prevented range ganking and also ensured that PCs were always moving (the boss was).The downside? When PCs fell unconscious and healing was running out, that type of aura could too easily kill them. I need to find a way around that.Another thing you can do is make the aura part of a trap. PCs could do an in-combat skill challenge to disable the aura. I think that's supposed to take 4-6 successes. Of course, that's time not killing the boss.(In the encounter I described, I didn't do that. Instead I created four psionic artillery monsters that each healed the boss 5 hp at the start of their turn. 20 hp interactive regen. Needless to say, the PCs had to travel around the map to crush, kill and destroy the slow-moving psionic monsters rather than focus on the boss... a good thing because once they turned to her, they were doing over 200 damage to her each turn, and there was no way she could keep up.)</blockquote>

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