When Encounter Levels go wrong...

[Ashrem Bayle]

Just thought I'd post a bit of wisdom gained from this weekend's game session.

Our group was as follows:

Raniel - Wizard 8 / War Wizard of Cormyr 1
Astriathe - Wizard 5 / Incantatrix 3 / Privateer Mage 1
Blarth - Fighter 9
Aryan - Rogue 4 / Shadowdancer 1 / Claric of Mask 4
Azrael - Psion (Savant) 5 / Metamind 4 (Bruce's Revised)
Biggs - Fighter 3 (Cohort)
Wedge - Fighter 3 (Cohort)
Kerythar - Cleric of Sheverash (Cohort)

They where ambushed by a goblinoid party of:

Goblin Rogue 1 x 4
Hobgoblin Fighter 1 x 3
Hobgoblin Druid 3 x 1
Bugbear Barbarian 3 x 3
Ogre Barbarian 3 x 2

Now, according to the books, this should have been a pretty tough encounter.

WRONG!

These guys (the PCs) cut through this group like a hot knife through butter.

Needless to say, I learned something that in retrospect, should have been obvious:

"Hitting the PCs with large numbers of wimps will not hurt them. It just takes a little longer to resolve the Cleaves and Ball Lightnings."

Your thoughts and experiences?

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

in my experiance, large numbers of whimps can put a hurting on higher level groups in the right situation.

Having them charge enmass doesn't really work, but ambushes, traps and things of that nature coupled with some good tactical movement make a lot of differance.

Also it's fun when they expect something whimpy and they get tooled, my friends still talk about my use of gaint skunks and the time two of the mid level PC's got tor apart by a regular staag.

 

[Psion]

If your combatants started at a significant range, I am not surprised. Usually big magic will cut down small foes -- especially melee oriented foes -- fairly rapidly. (Incidentally, that is why there is a situational modifier to ELs in the DMG.)

If they got close before getting vaporized, I am quite surprised. Usually, adding barbarian levels to ogres in the formula for a slaughter IME.

 

[Vaxalon]

Let me get this straight.

You put an oversized 9th-level party up against 13 critters of 1-3rd level, and you're complaining that it was too easy? Is that what you're saying?

The CR's of those critters are as follows:

Goblin Rogue 1 x 4...................1
Hobgoblin Fighter 1 x 3............1
Hobgoblin Druid 3 x 1...............3
Bugbear Barbarian 3 x 3..........5
Ogre Barbarian 3 x 2................5

So you have 7 first-level critters, which can be effectively ignored because 9th level characters can slaughter them. The one 3rd level critter doesn't really add anything to the 5th level guys so you can ignore it too.

So that leaves 5 5th level critters. That would add up to a slightly beefy 9th level encounter.

Tell me, did the PC's use up 20% of their resources? If so, then the encounter worked out the way it was supposed to.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Tell me, did the PC's use up 20% of their resources? If so, then the encounter worked out the way it was supposed to.

Nope. A few charcters got hit for something like 8 damage and the spellcaster and psion lost one good spell/power each.

A Ball Lightning, Cone of Sound and Fireball was pretty much the begining and end.


I didn't expect them to be able to actually take the party down or anything, but dang, I was hoping for a bit more resistance than that.

Oh well. You learn something new every session.

And yes, it was an ambush. Unfortunatly everyone did real well on their spot checks and so only two characters where actually surpised.

 

[Sigma]

Try sending a hoarde of weaklings in waves. It won't make that big of a difference, but you might get the wizards to cast more spells.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The other thing you did not consider is the tactical effect of the cohorts.

Presumably the players chose Leadership for their PCs to buy the spellcasters some breathing room and innoculate the party against swarm attacks. Not surprisingly their strategy worked perfectly.

This party is very well tuned to annihilate any swarm of lesser creatures. You could have thrown 3 times as many critters at them and it would not have mattered much.

All those spellcasters gives the party an immense amount of fast offense. Weak critters better have SR if they want to survive to see the 2nd round.

 

[Rackhir]

One good rule of thumb that just occured to me. When facing spell casters beyond low level, you can effectively ignore monsters with HP of up to the 1/2 the average damage from the spell caster's area effect spells.

IE. say for a 10th lv mage (10d6 - 35 pts on average, 17 points of damage assuming save). So Monsters of up to say 3-4 HD are effectively going to be irrelavant unless hitting the party in sufficent numbers as to absolutely swamp the party.

 

[kengar]

They where ambushed by a goblinoid party of:

Goblin Rogue 1 x 4
Hobgoblin Fighter 1 x 3
Hobgoblin Druid 3 x 1
Bugbear Barbarian 3 x 3
Ogre Barbarian 3 x 2

Well, I wasn't there and the party certainly sounds powerful enough to survive, but here are a few tactical thoughts.

First off, a goblinoid gang like this should be attacking at night and from ambush. Hobgoblins are militaristic and excellent tacticians. The Druid casts Entangle on the party, ideally catching several folks in their bedrolls. Also, this requires Concentration checks from spellcasters while entangled, a full round v DC20 to break free and DEX penalties.

Next, the Goblin Rogues -having already crept into range- Sneak Attack with bows anyone they can. Ideally, they concentrate on the obvious spellcasters. The goblins continue to pepper with arrows, taking full advantage of the lower DEX and lower AC's. With any luck, the fighter types with heavier armor were sleeping and aren't wearing their plate mail or whatever. Not to mention the mage-types might not have their protective spells cast yet due to concentration checks for any damage taken in addition to the Entanglement.

The Fighters helps shoot at the entangled folks and the Barbarians bat cleanup on anyone who gets free of the vines. The fighters and the rogues can come to help if enough folks get loose. The goblins, of course, trying to flank people for the bonuses and extra Sneak Attack damage.

The druid (with at least WIS 14) can still cast Summon Nature's Ally II and Flaming Sphere and still save a couple 1st level slots for Cure spells. Throw in the Ogre raging with a reach weapon (Huge Greataxe) and you can do some damage.

Always remember, too, that monters can try to escape if the fight isn't going their way and maybe come back later with more friends.

Anyway, you get the idea.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Kengar, you are pretty spot on as to what happened. The only difference was that the part was walking down a path instead of asleep.

The druid cast entangle in the first round, but all but 2 made the save. All the spellcasters saved. He never got another chance as he was victim to the first round of ball lightning.

Raniel is a bit paranoid and wasn't going to give a spellcaster another shot.

The rogues with their javelins did what they could, but had a hard time penetrating their ACs. A few hit, but not many.

It was kinda sad. Next session I'm going for quality instead of quantity. We'll see how they handle a hand full of more powerfull opponents.