Remathilis said:
My friend allowed a knight into his campaign. At the time, he had five players: a wizard, a rogue, a bard, and a mystic (spont casting cleric). It was a classic, 5 person balanced team.
The group went against a vrock (~ around appropriate CR) guarding a tome.
When you say appropriate CR, do you mean CR = average party level, +1, +2, or what?
Once the various expansion rules are factored in, the CRs that a party can handle need to be bumped up by 1 or 2 to maintain the same challenge. Especially if the party are skilled at retreating and resting, and so come to each encounter 'fresh'.
In any event, 5 rounds to kill a CR-appropriate creature is about right, especially since the party are evidently using many of their resources (heals, spells, etc).
Still, about the rest of your post...
Combat went something like this.
1.) Knight used Knights challenge on Vrock; fails will save. Vrock goes to attack knight.
2.) Knight soaks vrock full attack and spores, attacks vrock back with power attack and deals average damage.
3.) Rogue gets into flank; sneak attacks abound.
4.) Wizard stays a comfortable distance and zaps the thing with orbs, magic missiles, etc.
5.) The mystic hangs behind the knight, healing each round. She uses Reach Spell to keep out of vrocks AoOs.
6.) Bard hangs back, singing and casting buffs (haste).
5 rounds. 1 dead vrock. One extremely PO'ed DM.
Sounds about right. And it sounds like the party used clever tactics, which made the fight easier than it otherwise might have been. So, good on them. Honestly, I don't see much problem, from a game mechanic point of view. Incidentally, when the wizard used those Orb spells, you did include the -4 penalty on the attack roll for firing into melee, didn't you?
What's sad is with some terminology changes, I could've described ANY fantasy MMORPG. Tank, Nuker, Healer, Buffer, Second Damage. Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, D&D Online, Warcraft. Its a common tactical method; someone pulls the monster, the tank "holds" the monster, the second damage sneak/back attacks, the mages stay back healing/nuking/buffing. The monster doesn't have much of a chance but to get lucky and crit/kill the tank, but with the healer healing every round (holding her action to heal if the tank goes too low), he's got a low chance of that working. The DM was bored to tears, and next game, the knight was a fighter, reach spell was gone, and the DM is seriously considering banning the Orb of X spells (No SR, touch attack, no save).
IIRC, the Orb of X spells DO require a ranged touch attack. In any event, they are widely regarded as overpowered (and in the 'wrong' school to boot).
And, yes, the party roles in D&D are almost exactly the same as the roles in MMORPGs, for the simple reason that those MMORPGs are rooted in the history of D&D, and D&D 3e was in some regards influenced by games like Diablo. Basically, they influence one another strongly, so it's no surprise they feel similar.
There was alot of discussion afterwards about how "MMORPG" the fight felt. The DM felt he had no real chance of influencing the fight, and despised how the Knights Challenge turned a difficult fight into a five-round annoyance. He also despised how the mages just pelted it to death, the mystic could heal without hassle, and the rogue was dumping buckets of d6s per round.
Mechanically, I don't see anything much wrong with the fight. A battle against a CR = party level opponent should use up 20% of available resources. I don't know how close the party came to that, but it sounds like they did use a lot of spells and healing, so that would be fine. The problem comes if they encounter every fight 'fresh' because they get to retreat and rest each time.
Doesn't prevent the fight from being boring, though.
However, looking at what most of WotC has been designing, and you see this seems to be what WotC would like the game to go towards. Everything from the Warlock class (infinite damage spell) to Telling Blow (free sneak attack) have reduced combat not to a war-game as most think but to an MMORPG.
I agree somewhat. I have a suspicion Wizards might be thinking of trying to move to a DM-less version of the game. Which would be interesting, but not something I would want to play. The closer they can get the mechanics to being deterministic, the easier that is (no need to determine opponent actions if PC abilities can dictate them, etc).
First off; did we screw up somewhere, or is knights challenge against a single foe instant death for the foe?
No, the party did well. The Knight's Challenge can be instant death for a lone foe, or it can just fail.
Secondly; short of banning everything the DM already banned (and probably more), is there a way to avoid the scenario above from happening all the time?
Keep the challenges many and varied. Throw creatures with energy resistance, or high Will saves, or in groups, or use traps, or puzzles, or whatever. And either don't let the party rest and retreat (to come at each encounter 'fresh'), or assume they will always be 'fresh' and increase the challenge accordingly.
Lastly; are we alone in assuming the game is drifting this way, or did we have a bad experience? Anyone else have similar experiences?
Sounds like you just had a bad experience. I've encountered the same. However, if it's only one encounter out of a full campaign (as I found) it's not something to worry about. Decide what lessons need learned from it, and then forget about it.
