The Gaming Den

AlexandraErin wrote:@Psychic Robot:

Of course you can adjust encounters in 3E. You can do it in any roleplaying game. Again, human judgment is the difference between a DM and a server.

This is true.

Minions aren't dangerous? In our mid-heroic campaigns, bowman lackeys have proven to add quite a lot of danger to a combat. Four of them equal one monster. Hit for six damage. If four of them are attacking one person, that person's taking 6-12 damage every round. You compare that to the best attack of the soldiers and it's not great, but it's happening every round. It's like fire or poison effect that you can't save from. If they're all bunched up, it's Wizard time, but if they're spread out, you got to spend a turn (or two if you miss... Sure attacks for the win there) hunting them down because otherwise the damage they're dishing is going to be the difference between you being bloodied and you being dead.

Yes, minions can be dangerous when they're focusing their fire. However, you yourself advocated in your blog post that you have to play the minions as though you yourself are a minion--you have to look at the optimal target from the minion's point-of-view. That means that the minions aren't going to focus their fire, at least not according to your blog post.

You guys crunch the obvious numbers but then you ignore the other stuff.

You don't have to "ignore" the other members. Combats in 4E can be big enough that there's love for all.

But yeah, in a nutshell. Play the game as written, it works. If you don't play the game as written... well, you're on your own. You're ignoring the parts of the game you don't like, which is fine... everybody homebrews and houserules, but your changes don't work well with the system and you're blaming the system for that. Well, okay, flexibility is a virtue, but that doesn't mean the people who like the system for what it does are doing something wrong or that the designers failed in their task, when the system works when you run it as written.

The designers failed in their task because their system supports one playstyle, which is the Gauntlet style of play: charging into the middle of a group of enemies and spamming your best attacks.

EDIT: I rather wish she weren't having to respond to seven people at once. It's tiring--I know from experience--and it keeps the thread from being cohesive.

I actually never thought of it as Gauntlet before, but it makes a lot of sense. You have the attack (At-Will), turbo (Encounter, Daily), and Potion (Item) buttons, and the attack button is broken due to the mass amount of mashing.

And most fights are like the chapter bosses. Ridiculous amounts of health.

And, just like that, the whole rogue character concept falls apart, at least for that battle. Heck, I wasn't even trying, just went off the rails over a single NAD. How was I to know that all opportunity attacks are only supposed to target AC...why should they, exactly?

Interesting concept. If that's the goal, the designers didn't tell each other. I opened the book to see if all potential Attacks of Opportunity targeted AC. No. They don't. I got to page 11 and found something with a basic melee melee attack that targeted Reflex. I was still in the "As." I didn't even bother checking the rest of the Monster Manual. I figure that if the rule "breakage" happens before I hit the letter B, it's not a rule.

-Username17

@Doom314:

People might lawyer you on this, but with one reading* of the rules as written, you can veto using a single dagger for blinding barrage.

I'll run you through my reasoning and we'll see if you agree or disagree.

To make an area attack, you make attack rolls for each target. Each one is a separate attack, each ranged weapon attack (it's a blast, but the requirement is "ranged weapon") you make requires a piece of ammunition or a throwing weapon to be equipped. Yes? A magical throwing weapon returns when the attack is resolved. Yes? The attack is resolved when you roll for damage. Yes? You don't roll for damage for an area attack until all the attacks are complete.

Conclusion: If you've got one magical dagger, you're hitting one foe.

And the * is there because I had to say "one reading". I don't think this is a masterstroke of design. It isn't made very clear, and I suspect... and this is not a good practice, if it's true but I suspect the point of that ambiguity is to make it easier for people to judgment call/houserule/ignore it if they don't want their Rogues to have to track a bunch of daggers.

Of course, if you get really strict with it then it makes the Quick Draw feat a "gimme" for Rogues that are going to use these attacks (unless they've got the magic item that does the same, I don't recall off the top of my head), but I'll note that it's a prerequisite for the Flying Blade Adept. Few or no PPs have prerequisites if their powers don't require them.

I believe my interpretation of the rules holds up, and I'm not interested in arguing if someone believes otherwise, because... well... it makes an already "cinematic" enough power more plausible to read them this way.

There actually has been no argument in my group over this, because everybody who noticed the returning power of magical daggers read it that way. Both of the dagger-using Rogues our party has made carry one primary dagger and then a bunch of other ones. Mine has a bunch of (otherwise obsolete for her level) +1s just for that purpose.

Magically returning enchanted ammo isn't part of the game yet, and I don't see people defending the walls with daggers and throwing hammers really changing siege combat all that much. Enchanted arrows will be part of the AV2... I will be curious to see how they handle that, as consumable (would be consistent with "alchemy ammo") or returning/infinite quiver.

As for the rest: if you can pull off Sneak Attack every round, your DM is... well, I'm not going to say "going easy on you" because I don't know what else the DM does. It does seem like they're giving you too many opportunities for it.

And yes, the puffball handwave for how Charisma adds to damage is puffball handwaving, and you kind of have to assume that animated corpses retain some dim spark of intellect that's capable of at least being confused for it to work on them, but I like the flavor that "dashing swordsman" types add to the game world more than it bugs me when they break it by being dashing to a Gelatinous Cube.

I suppose my group does more roleplaying even when doing straight as written attacks in combat than many groups do, but that's part of what I like about 4E: it "works better" (speaking in terms of immersion, not mechanics) when you sustain roleplaying through combat instead of treating them as two separate games that interrupt each other. The fact that there are Charisma attacks and such suggests to me that it's meant to be played that way.

That is talking about intent and is subjective, but it's a big part of why I enjoy it so much even when we get a boss battle that grinds... and when we use a non-conventional soluton to wrap it up when the big bos is down to half of bloodied, it's not jarring because we didn't just switch gears from combat to roleplaying.

In a non-boss battle, I'd suspect the reason we're getting it wrapped up in under ten rounds might have to do with an embrace of minions as a mechanic (I get the impression a lot of people here despise or don't get them, or don't think they add anything to combat), and encounters that are varied. We always follow the encounter guidelines for level-appropriate encounters, and we vary what's being fought... some of them are mass battles with lots of little guys and some of them are a small number of higher level ones, staying within the level appropriate range.

I did a whole adventure spread out over several sessions on the fly using the Encounter Builder and the Compendium on my laptop, with each different type of monster in a different tab.

We've got players who use Intimidate on the last remaining guards, if they're intelligent humanoids with a common tongue and they've all taken damage to get bloodied (Hey, there's your "It's better to do 90% damage to everybody!" scenario. Actually, aiming for that is not a great strategy, but when it happens that the field has shifted enough that everybody who's left is wounded, if you've got a Charismatic character with training, it's worth a shot... and Intimidate in combat is a straight Rules-As-Written with no DM fiat invovled)

Boss battles definitely last longer, but I don't think that's a problem with the system... I prefer it to systems where to make a boss last at all you need to load up on kryptonite to counter the superpowers.

And on the subject of boss battles, you can fit a bunch of Chaos Hydra minions of Orcus into a "go kill Orcus" scenario without breaking the written guidelines for encounters: he's using them as guard dogs. He looks on as his puppies attack you, or you have to fight them to even get to him. Either way, separate encounter. If a PC wants to claim it's implausible that Orcus would have the hydras... there are undead templates you can slap on them from Open Grave. They're already at the low end of level appropriate for PCs who would be fighting Orcus (they're 22, I believe), so giving them a template with some extra punch would probably be a good start. You could also level them up, or just have a -lot- of them. If the point is to give the orbizard something different to think about, I'd go with quantity over level.

And no, I'm not saying that this is how you TPK an orbizard party or anything like that. You could build a challenging encounter with them, is the point. If the PCs beat it and then went in and stunlocked Orcus and killed him... congratulations, you pretty much just won D&D, to the extent it's winnable. An epic level character defeated a named-and-branded boss monster. So long as the challenge was in there somewhere, rock on.

Roy wrote:Fuck you, and suck a barrel of cocks. No joking smiley. She's ignoring me because I tore her apart the fastest.

Roy, you are embarrassing in the Fred Phelps kind of way. The kind of way that makes people wonder WTF people are doing doing when people just don't muzzle him but then people have to lamely explain that the freedom of speech is more important than common sense and decency.

And before the defense is completed you have to open your damn fool mouth about lolcats or epic fail or whatever old meme you absorbed from YTMND a year ago.

No smilieface.

Lol, more ninjas.

To the bot: Yes they do. The bow does the same or more damage, except now the MOBs have ranged. So they all get bows because any of them can. Then you lose because 4.Fail is incapable of being anything other than an MMO style stat contest, and the MOBs have bigger numbers. May the meaningless gods help you if they have wings.

AlexandraErin wrote:This strategy would fall apart if at the start of combat the DM said, "Look, I know your strategy and fuck you. Everybody dogpiles on the dagger girl until she's dead." And in fact, every once in a while... when fighting recurring foes, for instance... our tactics are being countered by the monsters.

You guys honed your concentrated fire tactic on 3E. 4E is different. How? More HP, harder to get someone a big enemy down in a single round, no instant death or all or nothing save-or-die effects. If you can bring the big guy down FAST, focus fire.

So in essence your chosen tactics do not work when the DM decides to have the enemies focus fire on a single PC until the PC goes down. In other words, the tactic of focusing fire on a single target is more effective than the tactic that you're using.

Let's say there are two completely equal parties of four completely equal combatants who all take X hits to go down. One of these parties will choose to spread out all attacks evenly among the enemies. The other will direct all attacks toward one enemy before moving onto the next. To skew this against the second party, we'll force them to declare actions and targets at the beginning of each round, so that if a target goes down after one hit, all the rest of the hits for that round are directed at a corpse. Further, we'll assume that all damage occurs simultaneously.

We'll call the first party the Scatter Shots (SS) and the second the Focused Fires (FF). So how does this play out?

While all four of each side are up, each member of FF takes one hit and one member of SS takes four hits. So it takes CEILING(X/4) rounds to bring down the first member of SS, during which time each member of Team FF takes CEILING(X/4) hits.

If X < 4, then FF are wiped out without taking down any SS. If X = 4, then FF are wiped out and take one SS with them. If X > 4, then FF take out one SS without losing one of their own.

Let's assume X > 4. Then each member of FF takes X-CEILING(X/4) hits to go down, while each remaining SS member still takes X hits to go down. Further, the SS team is only able to damage three FFs each round. If they each stick to a single, different target, then they can potentially bring down three FFs within X-CEILING(X/4) rounds.

If X-CEILING(X/4) > CEILING(X/4), then another member of SS dies without taking out any members of FF, and each member of FF is still standing.

As this is getting tedious, I'll just stop now and hope that you can see that as X increases, so too does the efficacy of the FF team vs. the SS team. Which is perfectly in line with this:

You can have four people pile on a regular monster, or you can attack four minions. Attacking four minions will result in an instant change in the battle situation... there will be less damage afflicting the PCs.

In other words, for those enemies with a low X, spread out the attacks before moving onto those with a high X.

I'll be darned...although the opinion was based on the monsters seen so far in the game, and haven't quite played at level 28.

Still, it's interesting that feat bonuses against Opportunity Attacks only work against AC, though. Go check that one, now.

As far as daggers go, I'd have to move with it being the same dagger. Consider that if a power lets you multi-attack with a crossbow, that crossbow also gets multi-fast-reload to support the power, even if, otherwise, the crossbow would require a minor to load (p217, PHB). Since crossbows do it, daggers should to.

Granted, by a similar reasoning, if daggers and spears and whatnot are automatically enchanted to auto-return, why not arrows?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Roy wrote:Fuck you, and suck a barrel of cocks. No joking smiley. She's ignoring me because I tore her apart the fastest.

Roy, you are embarrassing in the Fred Phelps kind of way. The kind of way that makes people wonder WTF people are doing doing when people just don't muzzle him but then people have to lamely explain that the freedom of speech is more important than common sense and decency.

And before the defense is completed you have to open your damn fool mouth about lolcats or epic fail or whatever old meme you absorbed from YTMND a year ago.

No smilieface.

Yeah? Last I checked, Epic Fail is a completely valid response to someone who just ran in circles, and blatantly fucking contradicted herself. So you can fuck right off with your whining. The absolute worst that can be said for it is a picture is worth a thousand words. Which means 1k words aren't wasted.

@Psychic Robot:

You are true about that. I don't focus my minions' fire like a laser on a single target. As I said in my blog, if I have bowminions, they're going to start by dividing their attacks between the two big guys who led the charge. That's pretty close to what everyone else here would do, I think, except it seems like they'd be relying on their meta-knowledge of which of those big guys is the big guy that's going to kill their guys and which one is the one who's there to stand there. I don't give my minions meta-knowledge on the first round.

They're also not going to attack the little guy who is secretly the big guy that's going to kill their guys, on the first round.

Second round, if the Warlock or Rogue or an Archery Ranger (melee Ranger is one of the big guys who led the charge) has shown their hands, they start drawing fire.

If it's one of my encounters with bowminions, it's probably going to be a big outdoor one, and I generally use the "hard" end of the appropriate encounter algorithm for those to get more monsters in play, because otherwise it's like shouting in an empty auditorium. So, I generally have two equal-level mooks to trade for eight minions. Splitting their fire between two people gives the four attacks per round that I was talking about. If you've got a regular sized encounter with a single mook-minion equivalency in play, and you're playing laser-pointer with them, then it's still four either way.

Generally, by the second or third round of combat, the guys on the field know what's what, and then I've got four of them going after the Striker and the others are directing their attention where it's needed. If the Striker is proving particularly troublesome, she might draw more hate (I say "she" because this usually means the Barbarian, who has recuperating strike and the phoenix rage, and when she doesn't need health charges with howling strike every chance she can, even if it means giving up an Attack of Opportunity. Falchion damage plus strength plus 1d6, plus another d6 from her Horned Helmet, plus 2 from the charging feat... there's another case where it can make sense to not attack the same target every turn: when you have an incentive to pinball between two of them.)

My bowminions don't spread thinner than two to a target, unless there's only one left. Two minions against a single target have a nontrivial chance of inflicting their damage every turn... it's Double Strike in action. The net result is, again, comparable to the PCs having ongoing damage they can't save against, except by killing the bowminions, who are usually positioned wherever it's hardest to reach, often up on a ledge.

Edit to add:

And yes, the minions could just focus their fire from the outset. The net result is the same either way: they can't afford to ignore 6 damage per round apiece any more than they can afford to ignore a party member in the crossfire, so they have to deal with the minions. It just seems more realistic to me that they'd spread their fire, unless they're "Grudge Enemies" who know the Barbarian's going to fuck their guys up. Of course, then they also have the choice of whether or not to deal with the Barbarian who's a danger to their allies or the Wizard, who's a danger to them.

Orbizard parties kill hydras by using powers that don't stun or daze. Necrotic Web works, for example. They're still overpowered.

AlexandraErin wrote:with one reading* of the rules as written, you can veto using a single dagger for blinding barrage.

Not according to WotC:
http://wizards.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wiz ... faqid=1396
(question 14)

AlexandraErin wrote:@Psychic Robot:

You are true about that. I don't focus my minions' fire like a laser on a single target. As I said in my blog, if I have bowminions, they're going to start by dividing their attacks between the two big guys who led the charge. That's pretty close to what everyone else here would do, I think, except it seems like they'd be relying on their meta-knowledge of which of those big guys is the big guy that's going to kill their guys and which one is the one who's there to stand there. I don't give my minions meta-knowledge on the first round.

They're also not going to attack the little guy who is secretly the big guy that's going to kill their guys, on the first round.

Second round, if the Warlock or Rogue or an Archery Ranger (melee Ranger is one of the big guys who led the charge) has shown their hands, they start drawing fire.

If it's one of my encounters with bowminions, it's probably going to be a big outdoor one, and I generally use the "hard" end of the appropriate encounter algorithm for those to get more monsters in play, because otherwise it's like shouting in an empty auditorium. So, I generally have two equal-level mooks to trade for eight minions. Splitting their fire between two people gives the four attacks per round that I was talking about. If you've got a regular sized encounter with a single mook-minion equivalency in play, and you're playing laser-pointer with them, then it's still four either way.

Generally, by the second or third round of combat, the guys on the field know what's what, and then I've got four of them going after the Striker and the others are directing their attention where it's needed. If the Striker is proving particularly troublesome, she might draw more hate (I say "she" because this usually means the Barbarian, who has recuperating strike and the phoenix rage, and when she doesn't need health charges with howling strike every chance she can, even if it means giving up an Attack of Opportunity. Falchion damage plus strength plus 1d6, plus another d6 from her Horned Helmet, plus 2 from the charging feat... there's another case where it can make sense to not attack the same target every turn: when you have an incentive to pinball between two of them.)

My bowminions don't spread thinner than two to a target, unless there's only one left. Two minions against a single target have a nontrivial chance of inflicting their damage every turn... it's Double Strike in action. The net result is, again, comparable to the PCs having ongoing damage they can't save against, except by killing the bowminions, who are usually positioned wherever it's hardest to reach, often up on a ledge.

Edit to add:

And yes, the minions could just focus their fire from the outset. The net result is the same either way: they can't afford to ignore 6 damage per round apiece any more than they can afford to ignore a party member in the crossfire, so they have to deal with the minions. It just seems more realistic to me that they'd spread their fire, unless they're "Grudge Enemies" who know the Barbarian's going to fuck their guys up. Of course, then they also have the choice of whether or not to deal with the Barbarian who's a danger to their allies or the Wizard, who's a danger to them.

No offense, but your posts are seriously TL;DR. You could have simplified your post to, "I usually divide my bow minions up two to a target at the minimum. That usually results in about 6 damage per round apiece, and the PCs can't ignore that."

To which I respond: like hell they can't. Healing in 4e is easymode. Swift action healing + 1d6 + any other bonuses = what 6 damage? Perhaps your players can't afford to ignore six damage per round, but perhaps they're also not well-optimized.

I'd also like to see you address the following:

Psychic Robot wrote:The designers failed in their task because their system supports one playstyle, which is the Gauntlet style of play: charging into the middle of a group of enemies and spamming your best attacks.

Your wonderful 1d4 + 7 damage from Sly Flourish isn't going to make the monster care any more about you.

You are characterizing us criticizing 4e as requiring Magical Tea Party as not roleplaying, which is an ad hominem, false dilemma (lol roleplayers vs. rollplayers), and a strawman (given that Magical Tea Party does not mean what you think it means).

The 3e rules allow for DM fiat. The 4e rules require it. And your argument boils down to, "B-b-but 3e d-did this!" As I've noted in the official thread, that's not an argument.

So you're going from "eight rounds" to "quite a bit longer"? You've just admitted that Padded Sumo exists.

Epic-level creatures are there to facilitate four encounters per day. (Which the game depends on, by the way.) Your argument is literally "yeah the system sucks but HANDWAVE HANDWAVE HANDWAVE OBERONI LOL."

Then you've drastically increased the difficulty of the encounter. Congratulations! I can also increase the CR of an encounter by 10 when the wizard is stomping everything in 3e.

You ignored all the rest of my previous post. I would like you to share your views on these issues that I raise.

Roy wrote:Yeah? Last I checked, Epic Fail is a completely valid response to someone who just ran in circles, and blatantly fucking contradicted herself.

The trouble is, you spew memes constantly (way less than when you joined though). Once is funny. Once gets your point across. Twice is fine. Thrice is tedious. 500 times is retarded. Why is anyone supposed to even read what you write when fully half of it is an repeat of the same stuff you always write?

@MartinHarper:

Well, I'll be darned. Guess I've got a houserule, then. Commence cries of "The game is broken if you have to fix it!", but I prefer the interpretation that views the whole thing as unfolding all at once instead of enemies who politely wait while you make multiple throws. Mechanically, the difference is almost nil. Though I suppose it will increase when we get Rogues up past early paragon and their level-appropriate gear only goes for the first attack. I'll see how that plays in practice... it might bug me less by then, too. I don't have a fundamental problem with the idea that an epic level piece of magical killing tool can be used for a single fistful-o-dagger attack.

And if you have an "orbizard party", you're asking for it. I've read the "same synergizes with same" theory here before, and I don't buy it. If you've got a party of 5 30 level orbizards, what's your move when you fight a loooot of little stuff? You can kill them with anything, but every turn they're alive they're going to be hitting you. And for my chaos hydras... well, I'd call the fight to get to kill Orcus with your one-shot big move "hard" encounter. A hard but level-appropriate encounter for a party of 5 30th level characters? Say hello to my friend, ten Chaos Hydras. That's boring but legal. If I were actually doing this, it would probably be "say hello to my friend, five Chaos Hydras plus a lot of smaller things." All the demons and undead to pick from? Yeah, it would not be a boring encounter. Actually, it probably wouldn't even be five Chaos Hydras. I'd keep them in there so there would some big guys you couldn't stun and some you could.

And it wouldn't be a cakewalk or a TPK for the party, either. That's the point. They'd win or lose based on their actions.

I'd kind of like to see this fight in action, actually. I wouldn't try to run it myself right now... haven't played epic yet. But I'm going to keep it in mind for a one-shot sometime, if nothing else.

I'm sure someone will say that this "stretching the game to the breaking point to patch a bad mechanic", or something, but it's really not. The game as written recognizes that not everyone's going to have the roles represented and it advises you to balance encounters differently for different party configurations. We can argue until the cows come home about whether such "soft mechanics" are "rules" as not, but it is how the game is written.

For in-game verisimilitude: there's a party of five wizards who have spent [30 levels worth of time] perfecting a magical technique that makes single large foes and they can slay an archdevil or demon lord or discorporate a deity with it very easily. All The Powers That Be adjust their personal security precautions to include things that are resistant to the most totally debilitating magics and to include large numbers of fierce creatures that can fly over zones and/or teleport and do loads of damage.

@Roy:

"Yes they do. The bow does the same or more damage, except now the MOBs have ranged. So they all get bows because any of them can. Then you lose because 4.Fail is incapable of being anything other than an MMO style stat contest, and the MOBs have bigger numbers. May the meaningless gods help you if they have wings."

First, I don't play with Mobile Objects in my game. I play with Non Player Characters. The key word is characters. They all have an internal logic and a life that exists beyond the encounter (at least stretching out into the past).

If one of them has a bow and can hit with it and do damage with it, it is because he or she or it is an archer. The game has no mechanic for monsters that says "this one can hit shit with a bow and that one can't", but if you're not after a video gamey experience, you shouldn't ignore matters of "in-game reality" like that. The dude who can cut shit up with a sword or halberd isn't trading for a bow, and the local evil overlord doesn't have unlimited skilled archers.

And if he did have loads of skilled archers, he'd still be smart to put some close fighters to put between them and the people they're putting arrows into.

Nothing stops me as DM from saying that everything down to level one minions can fly and has a bow and arrow that they can use in flight. The game mechanics will allow me to do this thing. But "things the DM can do" aren't game breakers. Rocks Fall; Everyone Dies. The DMG and the MM at the very least have encounter guidelines and examples of monsters and typical encounters that make for a fair challenge.

If I choose to ignore that and the game breaks, it's not a fault against the developers.

@PsychicRobot:


"The designers failed in their task because their system supports one playstyle, which is the Gauntlet style of play: charging into the middle of a group of enemies and spamming your best attacks. "

That's not how I play it. That seems to me to be how you guys play it. The game comes off broken to you, it works just fine to me. We can say it's not a terribly flexible system if it works the way I play it and doesn't work the way you play it, but I can't really reconcile your statement that it only works when you play it like Gauntlet.

...

Really, I keep hearing different things... and I'm hearing them from different people, which might be part of it, but: there's no reason to not be orbizards, there's no reason to be anything but archery rangers, there's no reason to not be (one of the ubermelee builds)... Mongols break the game because they're unbeatable, Mongols with jetpacks break the game because they're unbeatable, the whole party should be melee, the whole party should be missile...

The only thing I can really take away from this is "Man, there are a lot of ways to play the game, and that makes it hard to come up with a strategy that wins in every situation."

AlexandraErin wrote:I prefer the interpretation that views the whole thing as unfolding all at once instead of enemies who politely wait while you make multiple throws.

I prefer the Xena Warrior Princess model.

AlexandraErin wrote:If you've got a party of 5 30 level orbizards, what's your move when you fight a loooot of little stuff?

Legion's Hold, for example.

AlexandraErin wrote:Say hello to my friend, five Chaos Hydras plus a lot of smaller things.

I don't have the stats for Chaos Hydras, but the wizards could easily use any (save ends) power that doesn't stun or daze. Necrotic Web, for example.

So that's twice now you've ignored my previous writing. I am going to assume that you cannot respond.

@MartinHalper:

Re: Xena Model. That works, too. It certainly makes more sense than the idea that you wait for the weapon to return and then throw it again.

I suppose at the end of the day, the weapon is magic and what's happening is flavor. If somebody wants to have a knife that's a Xenarang, or that multiplies, or whatever, as the special effect, it works out the same.



And yes, my friend five Chaos Hydras plus lots of little stuff is in response to the existence of Necrotic Web. Ten Chaos Hydras works there, too. One Necrotic Web immobilizes one Hydra... even if you're lucky enough to catch two in the same one, you can only lock the immobilization on one of them per orbizard. So then you're left with the lots of little (but still epic) stuff while the Hydras slowly die. If you get controller'd into one of them, the hydras are still a factor even as they die.

It might be worth the party's while in this case to look at what the other specific monsters are before they decide the hydras are the ones who they're going to lockdown are, of course.

Legion's Hold is a good move for "lots of little stuff", but... and maybe I'm missing something here, but each stun it inflicts is a separate "effect that a save can end", so you can only orbitize one of them. Still, if you've got five people who can cast it one after another as most of the stuns have worn off, it's going to have impressive results (except against hydras).

Again, my point here is not to posit a battle that will wipe out the orbizard party. It's to show that you can build a balanced battle against them. I'll agree that when you hyperfocus a party, it narrows the options of what is and isn't a balanced encounter, but... a hyperfocused party all has the same strengths and weaknesses. A mixed party has mixed ones. It seems axiomatic to me that if there actually is any difference between the builds, that what's challenging to one build is not challenging to another. A mixed party has the advantage of averaging out over a wider range of circumstances, which is why more encounters will balance for them.

I straight up tell my players that they can play anything they want, as long as I have the sheets in advance, and I'll come up with encounters that challenge them. Considering the number of times they almost die and then don't, I think they're challenging. The fact that I'm not TPKing them might seem like I'm "going easy", but the way we play, they win or lose based on what they do, not the boxes they ticked on the census.

@PsychicRobot: There's a lot here for me to respond to, and I'm working on responding to all of it. Well, I was working on responding to yours. I'm not any more.

Except I will point out that I responded to your Gauntlet crack.

Yes, you did, which was only a fraction of what I wrote. If you're going to half-debate, then there's no point in having this discussion.

@PsychicRobot: And no, actually, just because I already started typing this up, I am going to respond to one of your more bizarre claims: that an extra six damage a round is nothing.

First, context matters: the minions I'm describing are mid heroic tier. Their damage is an approximation based on an average-ish nothing special basic attack hit for mid-heroic tier. If I've got two minions attacking one person, they're getting the equivalent of an extra hit every round. Yes, healing is easy to come by in 4E, but adding an extra hit every round changes the dynamic of the battle.

Ongoing damage is typically 5 damage per round in heroic tier. These minions' depradations is the equivalent of the entire party being on fire for the entire combat, if they don't get taken out. The party can't ignore that. It would take ten turns for the archers to kill any one person that way, but they're not the only ones doing damage.

Though two minions isn't a threat to the party's Barbarian, with recuperating strike, but I don't leave her with just two for long. If everybody in the party was a Barbarian with recuperating strike, or could otherwise re-invigorate themselves every turn, I wouldn't use this tactic. That different tactics work differently with different parties doesn't mean the system is broken. It means that characters have differing abilities.

If I took those minions out, I'm down four minions and I've got one mook. The mook will hit for slightly more damage (dice god allowing) who won't hit every round. The minions are increasing the damage potential on the monsters' side. Even if the heroes can heal, the damage per round they're taking is eating up healing that could be used for something else.

@PsychicRobot:

I used all the space it takes to rebutt your Gauntlet crack. I don't play it that way. It works for me. You seem to play it that way. It doesn't work for you. How does this add up to "The game only works if you play it like Gauntlet?"

AlexandraErin wrote:Words.

But I'm saying that the minions themselves are not enough of a threat to warrant taking out until after you kill the real monsters. It's a swift action to chug a potion and a standard action to heal yourself for 1/4 of your HP. The leader can heal as a minor action twice per encounter, and he probably has some encounter or daily powers that can bail everyone out of trouble.

Perhaps I am incorrect, but I honestly don't see minions being worth the time and effort it would take to kill them. Now, from an in-character perspective, it all depends. When the archers first start attacking, then I suppose it would be acceptable for the party to attack them. However, when the party starts realizing that they are taking six damage per hit...well, I don't see why they wouldn't focus their attention on the monsters that matter.

AE:

Orbizards are more than the Orb power. You seriously get -8 or more to saves before adding in item dailies or Orb power. The Orb power is just to perma lock solos. You can render everyone perma stunned or locked from a single AoE save ends at high levels.

@PsychicRobot:

Again, it's situational. There was one fight that began with eight bowminions and ended with six as the last ones standing, and one where it became crucial to wipe them out so the party did.

Downing a potion is a minor action. So is getting it out. If your battles don't give you any incentive to move, that's nothing, but if you've got something you need to sustain or some reason to move, two minors is a non-trivial investment.

Healing potions aren't terribly expensive but they're not trivially cheap, either. If the party is taking damage it can avoid, it's using healing potions it doesn't need to use... and second winds and * words before it has to.

I don't know, maybe you'll look at that and go, "If you're sustaining powers then clearly you're not optimized because no power that needs sustaining is worth taking.", but the bottom line is, even if your "optimized" build can win the fight ignoring the archers, the builds in question also win the fight. It's a case of different tactics serving different builds better. That wouldn't really be remarkable, except this forum is full of people talking about how bad 4E is designed because only these optimized builds work. If a party around one build beats the encounter one way and a party built another way beats it another way, I'm having a hard time seeing the problem with the system that this is supposed to reveal.

Perhaps we could redirect the the discussion to the original topic, hm? That being that a +1 that you always have is better than a +2 that you sometimes have. I mean, I don't recall seeing our guest submit to the math and wave the white flag.

How about we use each thread as a separate topic? That would almost make sense!


Just so you know, AE, I came onto this board solely for the purpose of defending the Crusader, which most around here decried as retardedly weak (as in worse that a Fighter). It's amazing how addictive discussion can be when you don't have to (fucking) sugar coat your words.