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I am starting to wonder how much of the results is based on party composition rather than the individual classes involved. What happens if the group of 5 is missing one party role. No controller? No Defender? Heck, what about no strikers? Is this an issue where any motley crew of characters can defeat anything at level 30 or is the game balanced to the point that the inclusion of all roles acts as a force multiplier?

I have played LFR without  any given role present at almost any tier and it was doable but that is a case where players have varying levels of optimization and onre character may have carried the weight of another. What if you create your party of 5 and then roll to randomly remove one character, and then roll to randomly duplicate one of the 4 remaining. what kinds of scenarios might this create? What impact would it have if when fighting Ogremach there were 2 blackguards and no Binder? This is alot of work but may be an interesting way to look at things.

Also I am not sure if it has been done but I think that there should be a standard array of pre determined d20 rolls that are used from one fight to the next to eliminate some of the luck of dice from the mix.

Jul 7, 2011 -- 6:39PM, Veleria wrote:

I am starting to wonder how much of the results is based on party composition rather than the individual classes involved. What happens if the group of 5 is missing one party role. No controller? No Defender? Heck, what about no strikers? Is this an issue where any motley crew of characters can defeat anything at level 30 or is the game balanced to the point that the inclusion of all roles acts as a force multiplier?

I have played LFR without  any given role present at almost any tier and it was doable but that is a case where players have varying levels of optimization and onre character may have carried the weight of another. What if you create your party of 5 and then roll to randomly remove one character, and then roll to randomly duplicate one of the 4 remaining. what kinds of scenarios might this create? What impact would it have if when fighting Ogremach there were 2 blackguards and no Binder? This is alot of work but may be an interesting way to look at things.

Also I am not sure if it has been done but I think that there should be a standard array of pre determined d20 rolls that are used from one fight to the next to eliminate some of the luck of dice from the mix.

I thought Tsuyo's Scrub Brigade test was a nice, bloody opener . I know I was scared to death for my PCs when I started the Labs.

As I have approached them, the Labs have been about finding the 4e "baseline." Seven or so tests doesn't prove anything, but if they are any indication, then a party of 5 solidly built, well played characters with party synergy should beat an at-level, well played group of monsters in around 5 rounds. I call it the Rule of Five for shorthand. If further tests prove that's the baseline, then it's not too hard to push the boundary up or down to discover threshholds where parties are likely to wipe/ have ubearable grindfests, or turn those fights into trivial jokes.

Tactics and party synergy played a big part in my tests. I don't think its a reach to say that breaking the synergy would have really, really affected things. The Sentinel didn't do diddly squat in the Ogremoch fight besides heal, but if she wasn't there to heal or hand out saves, it's probably the disaster the OP is looking for. A party with two strikers and a controller finished off Ogremoch in 5 total rounds; a party with two controllers and a striker finished Borys, Dragon of Tyr off in 6 total rounds. There's all sorts of variation if you look at the tests, and then imagine or recreate the same fights while swapping in different elements. The rolls are all there; go ahead and swap in 5 Binders vs. Ogremoch and see what happens.

Concerning standardized dice rolls across all of the labs, it sounds like good science. But in the context of the actual game at the table, I don't think that will make for any significant result swings. It's not as if a 15 hits harder than an 11. Either a PC has really good luck, really bad luck, or insignificant normal luck. I'd say the luck in my tests were insignificant. It wasn't particularly good luck (e.g. over 4 tests, I can't recall a significant striker crit). Where there were spells of bad luck, the PCs either had enough accuracy resources to overcome it on the spot (targeting NADs to hit on 6s, rerolls, Heroic Effort-type boosts, etc.), or they used resources to survive the lack of damage output for a round until their luck turned (e.g., the Round 3 readied action fiasco vs. Ogremoch). It would have taken a really, really, really nasty string of bad luck across multiple characters to make for a true disaster. A string of luck like that will hurt pretty much every single party you could ever put together. At that point, you're just looking for dead bodies.

I think one of the components that's missing is the resource expenditure and slightly unlucky rolls that characterize a disaster. Optimized parties are often able to overcome poor rolls/resource expenditure. Sure, lots of parties can survive an encounter, but what happens when they've used up too many resources on previous combats and get a little unlucky?

I'd look at the following choices:
Say 1 to 2 of the characters randomly picked, roll a 1 on the 1st round of combat. I've seen parties where that could be characterized as lucky - at one 4 player table I was at, all 4 of us rolled a 1 for initiative. Yes, one in 160000 chance. Combat didn't start so well for us...

Dailies - you're allowed to use one daily because the rest have been used up. Roll a d6 - 1-2, it is your favorite daily, 3-5 are the other 3 dailies, 6, you happened to use them all up previously.