Mobs! [Archive] - Wizards Community - Pages Merged by Solauren

Mobs! [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Nerax
09-10-06, 08:15 PM So now that I have encountered 3 of these things! I wanted to pose a question to the masses. What is the most effective way to destroy them?

This is how we have survived so far:

1st: Avoided by diplomacy.

2nd: Once we were attacked and saw how powerful it was, we rescued a party member that was grappled (Greater Slide) and ran for our lives using a spell and a wand of entangle (two Druids in party).

3rd: Ran, again, once we figured out what it was.

How do area of affect spells work on these creatures(Evards, Entangle, Slow, Greater Command)? Can melee even affect them?

Thanks for the advice!
ezreal2001
09-10-06, 08:23 PM So now that I have encountered 3 of these things! I wanted to pose a question to the masses. What is the most effective way to destroy them?

This is how we have survived so far:

1st: Avoided by diplomacy.

2nd: Once we were attacked and saw how powerful it was, we rescued a party member that was grappled (Greater Slide) and ran for our lives using a spell and a wand of entangle (two Druids in party).

3rd: Ran, again, once we figured out what it was.

How do area of affect spells work on these creatures(Evards, Entangle, Slow, Greater Command)? Can melee even affect them?

Thanks for the advice!

Just think of it as an intelligent swarm and take it from there.

J
Cynric
09-10-06, 09:02 PM Only time I have encountered them was as undead. Thankfully we had a cheeseweazel and another cleric going for cheeseweazel in the party. Turning was not easy, but we did it.
Nerax
09-10-06, 09:25 PM Only time I have encountered them was as undead. Thankfully we had a cheeseweazel and another cleric going for cheeseweazel in the party. Turning was not easy, but we did it.

Our party cleric tried turning also, but being he is a Dwarven Warpriest with 6 cha, he didn't really do us much good.
Shieldhart91
09-10-06, 09:52 PM Kind of a question I'd like to throw out there...I've never personally fought a mob, but can a character make a trip attack against them?
Howie23
09-11-06, 12:36 AM So now that I have encountered 3 of these things! I wanted to pose a question to the masses. What is the most effective way to destroy them?

The big difference between swarms and mobs is that individual members of mobs can be rendered ineffective and/or targetted. Spells that affect individuals can have have an effect on the individual members of the mob. Rendering an individual member of the mob ineffective is handled in the game mechanics as bestowing negative levels on the mob.

I had a PC put a sculpted grease (big) on a mob, which pretty much put it out of action for the duration. Slow should work. Mass spells should work. Sleep, color spray, and other spells that you generally aren't taking anymore at these APLs should have an impact if it can affect the base creature.

Evard's.....I ruled that that it would use the mob's grapple, but later thought I should have applied that to the individuals.

David
beyowulf
09-11-06, 07:38 PM 1)Never borrow money from the mob.
2)If you have to borrow money from the mob, pay it back soon... Otherwise they'll bust your kneecaps, or worse.

Capice?
Teiresias
09-11-06, 07:56 PM I've faced 3 recent mobs:

1. Zombies doing 3d6 + nausea: Fought and dispersed with much difficulty and vomit

2. Humans doing 5d6: Fought for a time with difficulty, eventually diplomacized our way out

3. Ghouls doing 5d6 + paralysis: Very tough mob, luckily we had 3 clerics, one of whom was a turning specialist, plus a bane undead archer. The mob was dispersed after 2 huge + 1 medium turns.

Why I hate mobs:

--My incredibly expensive AC is virtually useless in the face of their attack
--While my ranged attack is pretty good, I generally suck with splash weapons
--If the mob catches you in a narrow corridor (which it did to us), you're in big trouble trying to run away while squeezing
--I don't like to run away
Nerax
09-11-06, 11:57 PM The big difference between swarms and mobs is that individual members of mobs can be rendered ineffective and/or targetted. Spells that affect individuals can have have an effect on the individual members of the mob. Rendering an individual member of the mob ineffective is handled in the game mechanics as bestowing negative levels on the mob.

I had a PC put a sculpted grease (big) on a mob, which pretty much put it out of action for the duration. Slow should work. Mass spells should work. Sleep, color spray, and other spells that you generally aren't taking anymore at these APLs should have an impact if it can affect the base creature.

Evard's.....I ruled that that it would use the mob's grapple, but later thought I should have applied that to the individuals.

David

Thanks for the advise David!
UMiskatonic
09-20-06, 06:01 PM Now I've never seen a mob, and don't own the book, but....

Fly. Then just drop alchemist fire, rabid squirrels, used pianos until defeated.

This is true for any sort of thing which you can do and they can't. Turning invisible will work nicely, as will dimension dooring to a safe distance.

The enthrall spell can affect a LOT of people. Buy a scroll.
Lomiat
09-20-06, 06:57 PM Now I've never seen a mob, and don't own the book, but....

Fly. Then just drop alchemist fire, rabid squirrels, used pianos until defeated.

This is true for any sort of thing which you can do and they can't. Turning invisible will work nicely, as will dimension dooring to a safe distance.

This works until you fight a flying mob, such as a mob of shadows.

Seriously, the mob template is... um... not very well designed. And that's being diplomatic about my opinion.
Nerax
09-21-06, 12:06 AM This works until you fight a flying mob, such as a mob of shadows.

Seriously, the mob template is... um... not very well designed. And that's being diplomatic about my opinion.

Or the tunnels you are fighting in are only 7 and 8' high.

I have to agree with Lomiat, they are not very well designed especially the saving throw DC's. Example; at APL 6 you can encounter a mob that requires a DC 28 fort save! Our non-mut fighter who was (level 7 w/16 Con) was having to make natural 20 rolls to make it....
solbergb
09-22-06, 03:35 PM Yeah, I wish authors would just leave it alone. It doesn't add anything to the game, it's just annoying.

Parties can handle it, generally, but they're very "swingy" - either easy or TPK depending on party mix without a lot of inbetween, and also they're just stupid mechanically....they violate suspension of disbelief.

They also cause severe table variation since one judge might decide that say, an Evards is a "affect multiple individuals" spell and have it be very effective, basing how many neg levels it takes on how many individuals fail the grapple check and another might say "mobs can't be grappled" or "I'll use the grapple score here, and either the whole mob is grappled (unlikely) or none of them area (stupid).

Many other feats/spells (great cleave, whirlwind attack, whirling blade, confusion) are area spells that attack individuals and probably should inflict neg levels per those rules..but may or may not depending on how much the judge has thought about those interactions with the template. A judge running a mob "cold" is going to do it very much like a swarm, and that cuts away a good chunk of its weakness. A rogue, for example, might well choose to attack the sneakable individuals instead of the nonsneakable mob and do very well if he wins init or is under improved init or some other thing that lets him kill a bunch of individuals. Or he'll be utterly useless if he's forced to attack the mob as a group, because the DM isn't up on the options.
gomeztoo
09-30-06, 03:48 AM One problem with mobs is that thier CR is rtahe dumb.
A mub of humans and a mob of shadows are both CR 8, according to the RAW.
Pretty silly.
Madfox11
10-02-06, 04:18 AM The mob mechanism probably was designed to be used with simple monsters that as a mob would pose a threat but not as individuals. It works best with creatures with few to no special abilities, such as basic humanoids, giants and mindless undead such as skeletons and zombies (and I am not even sure it should be applied to mindless undead). The few times I have seen it in use, people found it challenging, but not overly so since in each and every instance it had a few easy to exploit weaknesses (although I admit the harpies above the zombie mob was nasty, but it was a battle interactive and nobody died). Like many templates in print it must be used with care and the CR rules should not be followed blindly.
Lupo
10-02-06, 07:14 AM The mob mechanism probably was designed to be used with simple monsters that as a mob would pose a threat but not as individuals. It works best with creatures with few to no special abilities, such as basic humanoids, giants and mindless undead such as skeletons and zombies (and I am not even sure it should be applied to mindless undead). The few times I have seen it in use, people found it challenging, but not overly so since in each and every instance it had a few easy to exploit weaknesses (although I admit the harpies above the zombie mob was nasty, but it was a battle interactive and nobody died). Like many templates in print it must be used with care and the CR rules should not be followed blindly.

yea, and we were lucky that another table of the interactive got rid of one of the zombie mobs for us :)

actually only the first three rounds were hard, till we;

first: got the mobs "entangled", so even when they did break free, their movement was halved.
second: got a silence running
third: got resurgences on both our BDFs, as they - of course - failed against the harpies.

the greatest risk was for the cleric and druid, as the cleric needed a "freedom of movement" to get out of a "clash of orcus" but he would have been able to run through the mobs ungrappled, so fine with him apart for the harpies, and the druid, as he would have been able to pass his own "entangle" but the zombies would have bitten him to pieces in one round.

ciao

martin m. aka chromos ivysprout hivebearer, druid of nature, RADAU (Riding Airborne Druid Attack Unit)

ps: at least this mob was better than the last ones, as we weren't allowed to kill the mobs the last time we encountered some.
Randall Montgomery
10-02-06, 10:48 AM In the last interactive I played, which was my first experience with mobs, we were facing mobs of Rust Monsters. And every time one of the lower tables routed, we got another mob on our board. By the end, we went through something like 6 or 7 of the friggin things. Nothing like loosing everything metal on you, no save! Fortunantly, I was playing a wizard with a rod of empower and a couple of fireballs to spare, and some judicious aiming managed to nail a large number with each hit. Even still, I did end up swimming through Rust Monsters, but since I didn't have any metal on me, it was pretty much a non-issue. Still, everyone else I was playing with was just getting the he.. out of the way. We actually managed to make it through that interactive, but it was probably the most brutal 4 hours of DnD I've ever played.
Iswald
10-02-06, 11:25 AM In the last interactive I played, which was my first experience with mobs, we were facing mobs of Rust Monsters.

Sounds like an interactive I was at. The rust monster mob never reached the map at our table though. We found that there was a chaos beast mob around another corner using a summoned creature, so we didn't continue that way. The table I was at had more trouble with the second round, stupid traps.
amnuxoll
10-03-06, 01:26 PM Why won't a damage dealing area-of-effect spell like fireball destroy a mob?
Lomiat
10-03-06, 02:41 PM Area of effect damage spells actually have increased effectiveness against mobs. However, since mobs are 30 HD, it takes several area of effect spells to mess them up. In the meantime (between spellcasters dropping area of effect spells), bad things start happening: PCs caught in the path take damage, spellcasters might run out of spells, or other baddies might be in the area just to mess with the area of effect casters.
solbergb
10-03-06, 02:47 PM Well...no.

Yes, area effects do 1.5x damage. But the mob will make the save 100% of the time because it has a zillion hit dice, so in effect they do .75% damage.

Plus if they weren't "mobbed" you'd just kill everything in the mob outright, instead of doing a miniscule amount of its total hitpoints with the area attack.

Far more effective are things like confusion, greater command or (at some tables) evards, which target multiple individuals within the mob. Each incapacitated character inflicts negative levels on the mob, which not only is helpful in just killing it, but also lowers saves against that warmage with the rod of maximize. The individuals can be sneak attacked too, meaning a rogue who is unseen or has out-initiatived a mob should direct attacks at multiple individuals. It'll help a lot more than just attacking the swarm. Great cleave is like that too....target individuals, kill until you roll a "1", or until 4 dudes in every square you can reach are killed or until the mob disperses from negative levels.

The thing is though...while tactics do exist to fight mobs, they're mechanically stupid. Swarms are thousands and thousands of teeny-tiny critters. Mobs are about 50 ordinary people crammed into a 4x4 space. I don't actually understand how line of effect on things like fireballs is defeated or how they can suddenly survive a cloudkill.
Randall Montgomery
10-04-06, 11:13 AM Area of effect damage spells actually have increased effectiveness against mobs. However, since mobs are 30 HD, it takes several area of effect spells to mess them up. In the meantime (between spellcasters dropping area of effect spells), bad things start happening: PCs caught in the path take damage, spellcasters might run out of spells, or other baddies might be in the area just to mess with the area of effect casters.

Yep, those empowered fireballs were my best friends. Unfortunantly, they ran out after the first four mobs. Fortunantly individual-target spells still work on mobs, so my scorching rays and magic missles still had an effect. By the end of the interactive I think I had something like 3 1st level spells left, and I was playing a 9th level Wizard!

And yes, Iswald, I think it was the same interactive. I was playing on the Highfolk side, and it sounds like you were doing Shield Lands. I heard about the Chaos Beast mobs afterwords, and suddenly our problems didn't seem quite as bad. :)
Randall Montgomery
10-04-06, 11:17 AM Well...no.

Yes, area effects do 1.5x damage. But the mob will make the save 100% of the time because it has a zillion hit dice, so in effect they do .75% damage.

Hmmm... apparently, the mob template was toned down when I played, because it did seem like my spells were working at pretty much full power. On the other hand, it's possible I just overestimated their effectiveness.... :thinks:
Lomiat
10-04-06, 12:59 PM Hmmm... apparently, the mob template was toned down when I played, because it did seem like my spells were working at pretty much full power. On the other hand, it's possible I just overestimated their effectiveness.... :thinks:

As far as mob saves go, they're based on base stats for the individual creatures' type, then advanced to 30 HD. Even advanced to 30 HD, the low saves start at a base of +10 (which for a mob of humans, for example, is all they get), and the high saves start at +17. Those are pretty decent saves at lower APLs, but at APLs 10+, they're not so hot. And even at the lower APLs, PCs dedicated to their magic (high primary casting attribute, spell focus, etc.) are going to run 50/50 to get their spells through for full effect.
solbergb
10-04-06, 02:39 PM A commoner mob is like CR4. I ran an APL6 encounter with two of them AND several NPC's.

So yeah, a +10 save base+attribute (which also gets a boost) is pretty nasty. Also...30 freakin hitdice. Direct damage takes a while to kill them that way. Too damn long.

Even the APL12 table I ran, the mephit mobs and commoner mobs made most of their saves.
Itsa_Trika
10-04-06, 07:00 PM A commoner mob is like CR4. I ran an APL6 encounter with two of them AND several NPC's.

The author was in error. A mob's CR is 8, or +2 if the base creature's CR is 7 or higher.
solbergb
10-06-06, 01:29 PM Not the author, just my memory. It was one mob+three level 5-6ish NPC's.

The two mob encounter was APL8.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Nerax 09-10-06, 08:15 PM	So now that I have encountered 3 of these things! I wanted to pose a question to the masses. What is the most effective way to destroy them? This is how we have survived so far: 1st: Avoided by diplomacy. 2nd: Once we were attacked and saw how powerful it was, we rescued a party member that was grappled (Greater Slide) and ran for our lives using a spell and a wand of entangle (two Druids in party). 3rd: Ran, again, once we figured out what it was. How do area of affect spells work on these creatures(Evards, Entangle, Slow, Greater Command)? Can melee even affect them? Thanks for the advice!
ezreal2001 09-10-06, 08:23 PM	So now that I have encountered 3 of these things! I wanted to pose a question to the masses. What is the most effective way to destroy them? This is how we have survived so far: 1st: Avoided by diplomacy. 2nd: Once we were attacked and saw how powerful it was, we rescued a party member that was grappled (Greater Slide) and ran for our lives using a spell and a wand of entangle (two Druids in party). 3rd: Ran, again, once we figured out what it was. How do area of affect spells work on these creatures(Evards, Entangle, Slow, Greater Command)? Can melee even affect them? Thanks for the advice! Just think of it as an intelligent swarm and take it from there. J
Cynric 09-10-06, 09:02 PM	Only time I have encountered them was as undead. Thankfully we had a cheeseweazel and another cleric going for cheeseweazel in the party. Turning was not easy, but we did it.
Nerax 09-10-06, 09:25 PM	Only time I have encountered them was as undead. Thankfully we had a cheeseweazel and another cleric going for cheeseweazel in the party. Turning was not easy, but we did it. Our party cleric tried turning also, but being he is a Dwarven Warpriest with 6 cha, he didn't really do us much good.
Shieldhart91 09-10-06, 09:52 PM	Kind of a question I'd like to throw out there...I've never personally fought a mob, but can a character make a trip attack against them?
Howie23 09-11-06, 12:36 AM	So now that I have encountered 3 of these things! I wanted to pose a question to the masses. What is the most effective way to destroy them? The big difference between swarms and mobs is that individual members of mobs can be rendered ineffective and/or targetted. Spells that affect individuals can have have an effect on the individual members of the mob. Rendering an individual member of the mob ineffective is handled in the game mechanics as bestowing negative levels on the mob. I had a PC put a sculpted grease (big) on a mob, which pretty much put it out of action for the duration. Slow should work. Mass spells should work. Sleep, color spray, and other spells that you generally aren't taking anymore at these APLs should have an impact if it can affect the base creature. Evard's.....I ruled that that it would use the mob's grapple, but later thought I should have applied that to the individuals. David
beyowulf 09-11-06, 07:38 PM	1)Never borrow money from the mob. 2)If you have to borrow money from the mob, pay it back soon... Otherwise they'll bust your kneecaps, or worse. Capice?
Teiresias 09-11-06, 07:56 PM	I've faced 3 recent mobs: 1. Zombies doing 3d6 + nausea: Fought and dispersed with much difficulty and vomit 2. Humans doing 5d6: Fought for a time with difficulty, eventually diplomacized our way out 3. Ghouls doing 5d6 + paralysis: Very tough mob, luckily we had 3 clerics, one of whom was a turning specialist, plus a bane undead archer. The mob was dispersed after 2 huge + 1 medium turns. Why I hate mobs: --My incredibly expensive AC is virtually useless in the face of their attack --While my ranged attack is pretty good, I generally suck with splash weapons --If the mob catches you in a narrow corridor (which it did to us), you're in big trouble trying to run away while squeezing --I don't like to run away
Nerax 09-11-06, 11:57 PM	The big difference between swarms and mobs is that individual members of mobs can be rendered ineffective and/or targetted. Spells that affect individuals can have have an effect on the individual members of the mob. Rendering an individual member of the mob ineffective is handled in the game mechanics as bestowing negative levels on the mob. I had a PC put a sculpted grease (big) on a mob, which pretty much put it out of action for the duration. Slow should work. Mass spells should work. Sleep, color spray, and other spells that you generally aren't taking anymore at these APLs should have an impact if it can affect the base creature. Evard's.....I ruled that that it would use the mob's grapple, but later thought I should have applied that to the individuals. David Thanks for the advise David!
UMiskatonic 09-20-06, 06:01 PM	Now I've never seen a mob, and don't own the book, but.... Fly. Then just drop alchemist fire, rabid squirrels, used pianos until defeated. This is true for any sort of thing which you can do and they can't. Turning invisible will work nicely, as will dimension dooring to a safe distance. The enthrall spell can affect a LOT of people. Buy a scroll.
Lomiat 09-20-06, 06:57 PM	Now I've never seen a mob, and don't own the book, but.... Fly. Then just drop alchemist fire, rabid squirrels, used pianos until defeated. This is true for any sort of thing which you can do and they can't. Turning invisible will work nicely, as will dimension dooring to a safe distance. This works until you fight a flying mob, such as a mob of shadows. Seriously, the mob template is... um... not very well designed. And that's being diplomatic about my opinion.
Nerax 09-21-06, 12:06 AM	This works until you fight a flying mob, such as a mob of shadows. Seriously, the mob template is... um... not very well designed. And that's being diplomatic about my opinion. Or the tunnels you are fighting in are only 7 and 8' high. I have to agree with Lomiat, they are not very well designed especially the saving throw DC's. Example; at APL 6 you can encounter a mob that requires a DC 28 fort save! Our non-mut fighter who was (level 7 w/16 Con) was having to make natural 20 rolls to make it....
solbergb 09-22-06, 03:35 PM	Yeah, I wish authors would just leave it alone. It doesn't add anything to the game, it's just annoying. Parties can handle it, generally, but they're very "swingy" - either easy or TPK depending on party mix without a lot of inbetween, and also they're just stupid mechanically....they violate suspension of disbelief. They also cause severe table variation since one judge might decide that say, an Evards is a "affect multiple individuals" spell and have it be very effective, basing how many neg levels it takes on how many individuals fail the grapple check and another might say "mobs can't be grappled" or "I'll use the grapple score here, and either the whole mob is grappled (unlikely) or none of them area (stupid). Many other feats/spells (great cleave, whirlwind attack, whirling blade, confusion) are area spells that attack individuals and probably should inflict neg levels per those rules..but may or may not depending on how much the judge has thought about those interactions with the template. A judge running a mob "cold" is going to do it very much like a swarm, and that cuts away a good chunk of its weakness. A rogue, for example, might well choose to attack the sneakable individuals instead of the nonsneakable mob and do very well if he wins init or is under improved init or some other thing that lets him kill a bunch of individuals. Or he'll be utterly useless if he's forced to attack the mob as a group, because the DM isn't up on the options.
gomeztoo 09-30-06, 03:48 AM	One problem with mobs is that thier CR is rtahe dumb. A mub of humans and a mob of shadows are both CR 8, according to the RAW. Pretty silly.
Madfox11 10-02-06, 04:18 AM	The mob mechanism probably was designed to be used with simple monsters that as a mob would pose a threat but not as individuals. It works best with creatures with few to no special abilities, such as basic humanoids, giants and mindless undead such as skeletons and zombies (and I am not even sure it should be applied to mindless undead). The few times I have seen it in use, people found it challenging, but not overly so since in each and every instance it had a few easy to exploit weaknesses (although I admit the harpies above the zombie mob was nasty, but it was a battle interactive and nobody died). Like many templates in print it must be used with care and the CR rules should not be followed blindly.
Lupo 10-02-06, 07:14 AM	The mob mechanism probably was designed to be used with simple monsters that as a mob would pose a threat but not as individuals. It works best with creatures with few to no special abilities, such as basic humanoids, giants and mindless undead such as skeletons and zombies (and I am not even sure it should be applied to mindless undead). The few times I have seen it in use, people found it challenging, but not overly so since in each and every instance it had a few easy to exploit weaknesses (although I admit the harpies above the zombie mob was nasty, but it was a battle interactive and nobody died). Like many templates in print it must be used with care and the CR rules should not be followed blindly. yea, and we were lucky that another table of the interactive got rid of one of the zombie mobs for us :) actually only the first three rounds were hard, till we; first: got the mobs "entangled", so even when they did break free, their movement was halved. second: got a silence running third: got resurgences on both our BDFs, as they - of course - failed against the harpies. the greatest risk was for the cleric and druid, as the cleric needed a "freedom of movement" to get out of a "clash of orcus" but he would have been able to run through the mobs ungrappled, so fine with him apart for the harpies, and the druid, as he would have been able to pass his own "entangle" but the zombies would have bitten him to pieces in one round. ciao martin m. aka chromos ivysprout hivebearer, druid of nature, RADAU (Riding Airborne Druid Attack Unit) ps: at least this mob was better than the last ones, as we weren't allowed to kill the mobs the last time we encountered some.
Randall Montgomery 10-02-06, 10:48 AM	In the last interactive I played, which was my first experience with mobs, we were facing mobs of Rust Monsters. And every time one of the lower tables routed, we got another mob on our board. By the end, we went through something like 6 or 7 of the friggin things. Nothing like loosing everything metal on you, no save! Fortunantly, I was playing a wizard with a rod of empower and a couple of fireballs to spare, and some judicious aiming managed to nail a large number with each hit. Even still, I did end up swimming through Rust Monsters, but since I didn't have any metal on me, it was pretty much a non-issue. Still, everyone else I was playing with was just getting the he.. out of the way. We actually managed to make it through that interactive, but it was probably the most brutal 4 hours of DnD I've ever played.
Iswald 10-02-06, 11:25 AM	In the last interactive I played, which was my first experience with mobs, we were facing mobs of Rust Monsters. Sounds like an interactive I was at. The rust monster mob never reached the map at our table though. We found that there was a chaos beast mob around another corner using a summoned creature, so we didn't continue that way. The table I was at had more trouble with the second round, stupid traps.
amnuxoll 10-03-06, 01:26 PM	Why won't a damage dealing area-of-effect spell like fireball destroy a mob?
Lomiat 10-03-06, 02:41 PM	Area of effect damage spells actually have increased effectiveness against mobs. However, since mobs are 30 HD, it takes several area of effect spells to mess them up. In the meantime (between spellcasters dropping area of effect spells), bad things start happening: PCs caught in the path take damage, spellcasters might run out of spells, or other baddies might be in the area just to mess with the area of effect casters.
solbergb 10-03-06, 02:47 PM	Well...no. Yes, area effects do 1.5x damage. But the mob will make the save 100% of the time because it has a zillion hit dice, so in effect they do .75% damage. Plus if they weren't "mobbed" you'd just kill everything in the mob outright, instead of doing a miniscule amount of its total hitpoints with the area attack. Far more effective are things like confusion, greater command or (at some tables) evards, which target multiple individuals within the mob. Each incapacitated character inflicts negative levels on the mob, which not only is helpful in just killing it, but also lowers saves against that warmage with the rod of maximize. The individuals can be sneak attacked too, meaning a rogue who is unseen or has out-initiatived a mob should direct attacks at multiple individuals. It'll help a lot more than just attacking the swarm. Great cleave is like that too....target individuals, kill until you roll a "1", or until 4 dudes in every square you can reach are killed or until the mob disperses from negative levels. The thing is though...while tactics do exist to fight mobs, they're mechanically stupid. Swarms are thousands and thousands of teeny-tiny critters. Mobs are about 50 ordinary people crammed into a 4x4 space. I don't actually understand how line of effect on things like fireballs is defeated or how they can suddenly survive a cloudkill.
Randall Montgomery 10-04-06, 11:13 AM	Area of effect damage spells actually have increased effectiveness against mobs. However, since mobs are 30 HD, it takes several area of effect spells to mess them up. In the meantime (between spellcasters dropping area of effect spells), bad things start happening: PCs caught in the path take damage, spellcasters might run out of spells, or other baddies might be in the area just to mess with the area of effect casters. Yep, those empowered fireballs were my best friends. Unfortunantly, they ran out after the first four mobs. Fortunantly individual-target spells still work on mobs, so my scorching rays and magic missles still had an effect. By the end of the interactive I think I had something like 3 1st level spells left, and I was playing a 9th level Wizard! And yes, Iswald, I think it was the same interactive. I was playing on the Highfolk side, and it sounds like you were doing Shield Lands. I heard about the Chaos Beast mobs afterwords, and suddenly our problems didn't seem quite as bad. :)
Randall Montgomery 10-04-06, 11:17 AM	Well...no. Yes, area effects do 1.5x damage. But the mob will make the save 100% of the time because it has a zillion hit dice, so in effect they do .75% damage. Hmmm... apparently, the mob template was toned down when I played, because it did seem like my spells were working at pretty much full power. On the other hand, it's possible I just overestimated their effectiveness.... :thinks:
Lomiat 10-04-06, 12:59 PM	Hmmm... apparently, the mob template was toned down when I played, because it did seem like my spells were working at pretty much full power. On the other hand, it's possible I just overestimated their effectiveness.... :thinks: As far as mob saves go, they're based on base stats for the individual creatures' type, then advanced to 30 HD. Even advanced to 30 HD, the low saves start at a base of +10 (which for a mob of humans, for example, is all they get), and the high saves start at +17. Those are pretty decent saves at lower APLs, but at APLs 10+, they're not so hot. And even at the lower APLs, PCs dedicated to their magic (high primary casting attribute, spell focus, etc.) are going to run 50/50 to get their spells through for full effect.
solbergb 10-04-06, 02:39 PM	A commoner mob is like CR4. I ran an APL6 encounter with two of them AND several NPC's. So yeah, a +10 save base+attribute (which also gets a boost) is pretty nasty. Also...30 freakin hitdice. Direct damage takes a while to kill them that way. Too damn long. Even the APL12 table I ran, the mephit mobs and commoner mobs made most of their saves.
Itsa_Trika 10-04-06, 07:00 PM	A commoner mob is like CR4. I ran an APL6 encounter with two of them AND several NPC's. The author was in error. A mob's CR is 8, or +2 if the base creature's CR is 7 or higher.
solbergb 10-06-06, 01:29 PM	Not the author, just my memory. It was one mob+three level 5-6ish NPC's. The two mob encounter was APL8.