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6 months ago ::
Nov 26, 2012 - 3:08AM
#101
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2010
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No deaths so far is very impressive, given the mostly double combats. The adventure is actually designed so that you're extremely likely to have a couple deaths early on.
In playtest I had to actually sacrifice my defender twice to (super)mark the board so no one got through to our healer.
Granted, you haven't done those two fights yet, but I think you're much better equipped for one than I was. And Svendj is a nicer guy than my DM 
I'm seriously concerned about my tactical abilities, although the players tell me I'm doing fine. I might still be a little too fair though.
Anyway, I got very, very close to killing someone at least three times. They managed to save themselves every single time thanks to those annoying defensive interrupts. But the healing rules being as they are, I find it's actually quite difficult to truly kill a player. You see, the monsters have to bring the players to minus bloodied, which is an awful lot of HP at epic tier. While the players get to heal from 0 hp instead of their negative value, so one Inspiring Word or Lay on Hands brings a dying player back from 6 hp above minus bloodied to not even bloodied anymore. That's over 200 hit points healed with one minor action!
So while I appreciate the effort being done to make encounters lethal, any epic party with two healers is nearly impossible to bring down in my opinion.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 26, 2012 - 8:51AM
#102
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There are actually some tactics and monsters that can help, but whether or not they are fair is another matter There is a monster with an aura that lets a character die while even failing one death saving throw, and you can always keep attacking a downed PC. Of course, smart players who actually delay for the healers limit even those risks. As for why healing works as it does, that is simply because in the previous editions it proved to be frustrating for the players that healing was ineffective (so a PC spends an action, but does get the PC conscious, effectively wasting his turn) or got the PC back up on his feet to see him drop immediately before he could act when hit by the monster before his next turn. Especially the first can happen a lot more in 4e, because now PCs can be very far in the negatives. Of course, the systems "fails" a bit when you have pacifist healers and similar somewhat rediculous powerful healers or multiple healers in the group. In that case, all you can do is get that number of healing surges down or do a somewhat unfair things like damaging environment.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 26, 2012 - 8:51AM
#103
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- Senior Volunteer Community Lead
Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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Yep, it's pretty tough. It often requires focus fire and/or crits. Or both. I'm actually usually a carebear myself, spreading damage willynilly (which makes people fear for TPK, but rarely actually kills someone), so I had to rethink my tactics for 4-2. I also play with less optimized people in general. From your previous fights, the beholders are good for killing people since they'll shoot people who are down and sometimes there's just no other good target for an ally's attack. Ex: I crit with a prismatic eye ray from the big beholder and did 138 damage to a wizard and that was that. Fzoul I double attacked the defender, critting (and maybe hitting a 2nd time) dealing over 100 damage and sliding him unconscious up next to his allies (who he would have attacked if I hadn't dropped him). Then I walked over and AP-ed to close burst 2 most of the group, which pushed the unconscious guy over the edge since he happened to be in the burst. The boneyard the target to die is basically who gets caught in the gaze of doom. Vulnerable 20, tons of minions and slide someone onto one of the spikes, with breath of death to bring it home. Szass Tam I ran someone out of surges, and they couldn't withstand the barrage of flensing and soul strikes and eventually died, though they did it in a last burst attempt to disrupt his casting - which they did, just in time, so mission accomplished  Coup de grace is less dangerous than lunattic assumed cause the minions actually only knock unconscious the triggering enemy (which is how it worked out for your table), and only Szass Tam is really good at CdGing. Granted, it sounds like your group has a _lot_ of counters, so that lets them get in some fun there For future fights... Spoiler:
Show
In your next combat, I find it very easy to kill someone on the fields of the dead cause you only need to reduce to someone to 0 hit points, rather than negative bloodied. For example, you can easily have a sequence like -
Barbarian storm of blades charges and kills a Ragewind - on the first hit, the knight free action gives the ragewind a free attack, then the ragewind is bloodied (steel whirlwind), dies (death rage _and_ explodes for 20 autodamage), swift charge and bloody a 2nd (another free action attack and whirlwind) - so on his own turn the barbarian may easily have taken 100 damage. Then the death knight moves up, does his big burst, he and the shadowclaw both charge for +10 dmg and +3d6 fire and an extra free action attack for the shadowclaw or the second ragewind, then an AP for another 2 attacks (himself and whichever ally didn't get the last one). That's a _lot_ of attacks for team PC to interrupt, so at least a few tend to get through.
Granted, your wizard probably just stuns the death knight before he goes, and they lose out on all the free action attacks and his turn. I guess that's payback for the previous few encounters where bosses stripped effects.
For Manshoon, it's all about the crits - critting for 90 damage and stopping healing he tends to be good for that, and since he's using bursts you can often fish for the crit target (I also use unravel to toss more PCs into an APed fireball), then drop that target. And if someone drops from the first burst, well, they're still there for the next burst.
For the last combat, the likely sources of death are the PCs suiciding themselves, then the Balors, then Oublivae - though on glory she may be more dangerous with flinging people into the Abyss. Less satisfying than taking someone out with a big old Balor crit though.
Keith Richmond
Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
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6 months ago ::
Nov 28, 2012 - 4:18AM
#104
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No deaths so far is very impressive, given the mostly double combats. The adventure is actually designed so that you're extremely likely to have a couple deaths early on.
In playtest I had to actually sacrifice my defender twice to (super)mark the board so no one got through to our healer.
Granted, you haven't done those two fights yet, but I think you're much better equipped for one than I was. And Svendj is a nicer guy than my DM
I'm seriously concerned about my tactical abilities, although the players tell me I'm doing fine. I might still be a little too fair though.
Anyway, I got very, very close to killing someone at least three times. They managed to save themselves every single time thanks to those annoying defensive interrupts. But the healing rules being as they are, I find it's actually quite difficult to truly kill a player. You see, the monsters have to bring the players to minus bloodied, which is an awful lot of HP at epic tier. While the players get to heal from 0 hp instead of their negative value, so one Inspiring Word or Lay on Hands brings a dying player back from 6 hp above minus bloodied to not even bloodied anymore. That's over 200 hit points healed with one minor action!
So while I appreciate the effort being done to make encounters lethal, any epic party with two healers is nearly impossible to bring down in my opinion.
Well, you'll get to see a 1 healer party next time since the paladin is OOR (out of resources)
And like we discussed previously, I don't think you made any tactical errors. It's more that this group is really, really high on defenses and defensive powers. Even even with that, i'm mor or less convinced that it was still only luck that prevented the deaths; I was missed twice by an attack which would have hit on a 3 when I was still barely conscious.
What I am wondering about though is if there is something stopping Szass tam from just walking adjacent to a PC, and then letting the prismatic sphere auto-kill that character when it would start it's turn. Since if there there isn't, that's fairly unfair due to him also being invulnerable and thus immune to foced movements or interrupts.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 28, 2012 - 6:05AM
#105
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2010
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What I am wondering about though is if there is something stopping Szass tam from just walking adjacent to a PC, and then letting the prismatic sphere auto-kill that character when it would start it's turn. Since if there there isn't, that's fairly unfair due to him also being invulnerable and thus immune to foced movements or interrupts.
Problem is, unless he immediately moves that character out of the sphere again, he's gonna be adjacent to them which puts them in a position to hit him and thus break his concentration. I felt that's just not something he would do, so I didn't use that tactic.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 28, 2012 - 1:46PM
#106
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The sphere is stationary. (This isn't explicitly stated, but probably should have been.)
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 6:19PM
#107
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This may be a question for charOp, or even normal rules, but I need to check with the rest of you. I have an avenger, and as most avenger feats and powers, most of their abilities and damage stem from their Oath.
The Oath of enmity is an encounter power that refreshes when the Oathed creature dies. My issue lies in the bosses/mini bosses/irritants that say "remove one harmful effect". Is an Oath a "harmful effect"? Most of the bosses in this epic had this power and this would essentially remove my damaging ability for the entire encounter. Our DM may have interpreted that wrong, as he was also removing marks, etc.
If our DM was playing that correct, would it be possible to reword these bosses to not shrug of certain effects, or at least change the way avengers Oath works to a "This power refreshes when no creature in encounter is Oathed"
My avenger is doing ok damagewise as a striker/tank, but really, most of his abilites stems from something that seems to be deleted too easily.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 7:00PM
#108
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- Senior Volunteer Community Lead
Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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I would suggest that Oath of Enmity not be something an enemy can/should remove; it's not "The enemy becomes more vulnerable to your attacks", but more of a self-buff (you get mad at that target and do better against it), but it's a valid complaint, cause it's a tricky area, true.
Even if it was just restricted to conditions, marked could still be removed. It's a tricky case. I do find that it's often possible to just stack up multiple things on a target so that it always removes a higher priority penalty (stun, dominate, cannot attack, vulnerable 30, etc).
Anyhow, it's a good thing for us to look into for the future.
Keith Richmond
Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
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6 months ago ::
Nov 30, 2012 - 2:30AM
#109
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2010
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I agree there's too much room for interpretation in the "remove a harmful effect" wording. I once removed the paladin's mark with this ability, and he got pretty upset about that. Now I don't remove class features anymore. Everything else, from defined conditions to attack penalties and stuff like "grants combat advantage until the end of next turn/the encounter" still gets removed.
In your case, I'd plead it with your exact wording with the DM. If he doesn't budge, at least ask him if you can get your OoE power back then when it's removed this way, because otherwise you might as well go home in fights like this.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 30, 2012 - 5:23AM
#110
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Date Joined:
Aug 10, 2007
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As Keith points out, it's a tricky area. Rules certainly get quirky when they interact with each other in unanticipated ways, especially when one tries to rely on exact wording.
The DM is there to make these kinds of interpretations, and you should definitely (as svendj suggests) talk it over with your DM. The intent of monster abilities such as "remove harmful effect" is to prevent a few monsters (especially solos and elites) for getting completely locked down for a combat.
We certainly don't want to spend the time listing every exception in a monster stat block, but I think that either the "avenger's oath cannot be removed" or "if removed, the avenger's oath recharges" are appropriate ways for the DM to handle condition removal. It is not intended that "removing the oath is a way for the monster to get around the 'reduced to 0' rule and prevent the avenger from using their oath for the combat."
Dan Anderson
@EpicUthrac
Living Forgotten Realms Calimshan Writing Director
Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
Meet me at TotalConfusion:
http://www.totalcon.com/RolePlaying.html
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