Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 chanter_hound Jan 01, 2010 4:32:55	So for new years we decided to play a level 5 dungeon delve. And man, it was extreamly tough! Impossibly tough I'd say if i wasn't playing an ubertweeked pacifist cleric. This of course was right out of the box type of dungeon delve. Now I'm not complaining that it was  a challange, but that if i had done the slightest thing wrong as the leader, Our entire party would have been dead from the start.
#2 AaronOfBarbaria Jan 01, 2010 10:38:19	Assuming that you were doing the delve "Tomb of the Tiefling Empress," (the 5th level one from Dungeon Delve) there was not one thing out of the ordinary or actually seriously challenging about the way it is written. It is very likely, in my opinion, that what made it seem so hard is a combination of a lack of proper team work - because I have yet to see or hear of a group that genuinely works together 100% as well as they could - and (I'm guessing you jumped into 5th level characters) the common symptom of never playing a character as well as you could if you haven't started at 1st and slowly moved up to the level at which you currently are. When people dive into a higher than 1st level character, it takes more time to "get it right," and people also tend to play "off," whenever they aren't going to be playing that character again.
#3 chanter_hound Jan 01, 2010 13:50:09	Actually three of us played characters who were slightly higher level than our normal LFR characters. We had to fight 3 floors of undead. Powerful skeletons, then flaming skeletonds and frost zombies (Lots of Ongoing damage there and auras.) then a big ol zombie brute, skeleton minons and a guy who kept raising the dead. There was only 4 of us, 1 ranger, a warden, an assassin, and my pasifist cleric. I'll admit though the assasssin tends to forget what he is doing sometimes, as he is trying to play like my assassin but doesn't quite grasp the whole invoking shroud thing or when he is suppose to use certian attacks. (He has leveled through the character, he is just drugged up all the time. Medical drugs for his back.) Its just geeze man. We played a team of all strikers before, and did pretty well in that adventure. But in this one.. if we tried that, we totally would have been toast.
#4 ian.thomson Jan 01, 2010 15:29:16	Seems like y'all needed a controller.  The skeleton minions wouldn't have been as much of a problem.  Some classes can kinda double up on roles, but none of those classes really can do controller stuff.
#5 Seeker95 Jan 01, 2010 20:06:29	For starters, you were playing a party of four against a planned-for-a-party-of-five encounter series. Then there is the lack of an area-attack PC in an adventure series that throws lots of baddies your way. Lastly, if you did not you roll up these characters at 1st level and play them through to 5thyou might be suffering from unfamiliarity with your characters and synergy between the PCs.
#6 AaronOfBarbaria Jan 02, 2010 8:05:18	There was only 4 of us This is a massively important piece of information, which could change every statement I made previously - unless your DM adjusted the encounters downward to be appropriate for 4 characters. If your DM did not do so, then only one thing really went wrong: Your DM stacked the odds against you.
#7 chanter_hound Jan 02, 2010 9:36:04	Well we are typically LFR players in a massive group. So we get very little chance to learn synergies between characters, rather we end up having to learn stuff on the spot. Aaron seems to make really the most sense of the situation. Its not that we didn't go and level 1-5, but that we were being out matched, with encounters built for 5 and a lack of a controller to soften them up faster. So if it was scaled more properly.. then maybe i wouldn't have had to use my highly optimized cleric.
#8 DragonsWrath Jan 02, 2010 15:33:51	Aaron seems to make really the most sense of the situation. Its not that we didn't go and level 1-5, but that we were being out matched... I'm not sure if you missed the intent behind the other comment(s) or if you don't think its the cause, but I'm going to elaborate here. You sound like a reasonably experienced player, but not all groups ever achieve perfect teamwork, so maybe you aren't aware of what a difference that can make. When playing new characters, it takes a while to learn how to work well as a team.  This may even be more important as the game progresses, because people have more powers and ways to interact together. Lots of little things all add up.  The Squishy knowing they can safely provoke an opportunity attack while standing next to the fighter, because the Fighter can Shield Bash the enemy out of the threat zone. Controlers knowing what the rest of the group is capable of handling, and mucking around with the rest of the enemies while everyone else does their job.  Slowing enemies that are already in melee is useless, but slowing the melee enemies before they get into range gives the Bow Ranger an entire turn to drop one. Healers knowing when to heal, and who has self-healing capabilities.  Overhealing is an extreme waste, and I've seen healers choose to heal the Dwarf (who was the most injured) over other characters, because they forget dwarves can SW as a minor.  That's a very important detail.  The other character got knocked unconsious because of that error. On the other hand, My crew had a chance to demonstrate how potent teamwork can be.  They tracked down an entire war-band of Orcs and engaged them in a Surprise round.  A six-man party took out over 15 enemies, none of which were minions, and three of which were elites. I warned them, straight up, that they weren't supposed to take on the entire band at once.  They persisted.  I warned them I wouldn't change the encounter in their favor if they decided to go through with it.  They persisted. They kicked serious tail. They scouted the camp, and had a general idea of who was the most threatening, the terrain, and which enemies were Melee fighters. Starting with two ranged strikers they took out the LBEG, and slowed the BBEG. Swordmage and Dwarf Fighter took point, engaging stray enemies.  Sorcerer blasted groups of enemies and Shaman blocked open areas with his companion, helping set Sorcerer up for another AOE. In one case, the swordmage yanked a fourth enemy into melee with the Fighter, the Fighter used a Burst attack and hit all four enemies, then shifted out of danger so the Sorcerer could blast the group to bits. Meanwhile, ranged PCs were Slowing the BBEG with Slow arrows, and taking out the short-range artillery to protect the other group.  None of the elites ever made it to melee range with anyone, and each artillery enemy (axe throwers) only survived a single round within range of the group before being Twin Striked and Sly Flourished to death. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I'd never have believed it.  I wasn't even rolling bad or anything.  In fact, I was running out of ways to threatten the PCs when they had so many advantages (terrain and surprise). At the end they were completly spent, out of Daily powers and item powers, but nobody went down during the entire fight. A party working as a team is truly a fearsome beast.  I think the fact that the Assassin was off doing his own thing was at least as significant as the missing party member.  Had the player been working better within the team, I think you would have had different results.
#9 garner_adam Jan 07, 2010 23:06:35	I got to say almost all the fights in Dungeon Delve are difficult if not handled properly. Reading through that book really made me rethink what an encounter is meant to be. Some of my players just said "That book is bull****!" :P
#10 Cybit Jan 08, 2010 16:38:07	DD is the difference between a random level 5 encounter, and a level 5 encounter of stuff that's meant to work together.  :D I love it, it's great for on the fly gaming.  But taking a 5th level DD tuned for 5 people on with 4 characters, one who is new-ish to an assassin, tells me that your guys characters are pretty disgustingly powerful. :-p  The line between winning and losing in 4th is really, really, thick compared to other editions.  My players (and myself as a player sometimes) are always stupified at the amount of stuff they can handle when they put their minds to it rather then freaking out about how much stuff there is.
#11 Chimerasame Jan 09, 2010 0:12:31	I played this delve with a group I've done a few other delves before with. (the l2, 3, and 4 ones.) We breezed through the L2-4 ones but the L5 one gave us trouble. I think it was because we didn't have enough striker-y damage output on the L5 one... we couldn't take things down fast enough. It doesn't help that the zombie hulk sheds all its status effects when it regenerates!
#12 chanter_hound Jan 19, 2010 16:27:08	DD is the difference between a random level 5 encounter, and a level 5 encounter of stuff that's meant to work together.  :D I love it, it's great for on the fly gaming.  But taking a 5th level DD tuned for 5 people on with 4 characters, one who is new-ish to an assassin, tells me that your guys characters are pretty disgustingly powerful. :-p  The line between winning and losing in 4th is really, really, thick compared to other editions.  My players (and myself as a player sometimes) are always stupified at the amount of stuff they can handle when they put their minds to it rather then freaking out about how much stuff there is.  Actually, it was probally just me who was disgustingly powerful. When i make characters I design them from bottom to top and back down again. And well, my cleric was by far the most powerful design for a healer i could possibly come up with. Its because of that, We were able to get through in the first place. It just suprises me that if i didn't play a broken build, we would have been wiped so fast. Course I notice that even in 3.5 games, I'm almost always mr. utility man when it comes to challenges. Currently I have a character who is a skill **** in 3.5 that tends to be able to do everything. And when i say everything.. I mean everything. The character knows just about every major language, and is now teaching other players languages. He is capable of running 200 feet in a single round. (The DM fudges this a little bit, allowing me to 'run' for miles sometimes, mostly because of the speed of plot. I've got to tell him next time that i can only run a single round.) I can do traps, locks, theft, and just about everything else. And its just going to get worse as i progress in levels. The side effect though is that the rest of the party expects my character to do everything.. Which he doesn't enjoy.
#13 Cybit Jan 27, 2010 13:04:34	As a DM, I routinely buff / debuff monsters based on the party composition.  In my current game, in the last session, 5 of my players two rounded an even level solo at 12.  So yeah, I can safely say they do a schmuckton of damage.  (They didn't have any tanks or healers, to boot).  So my monsters have higher HP, and do more damage.  My players have been made aware many times that I will buff monsters to their characters, so build what you want to play, and play it.  If you don't want to be relied on as much, don't build such ridiculous characters. :-)  My players do that with my roommate, who builds ridiculously powerful characters.  Well, monsters generally are more worried about the guy who is tearing apart their squad then the rest of the party.  The monsters pick on whoever is the biggest threat, and tear him apart.  After I KO'd his character in one fight, and had the lieutenant of the BBEG not coup-de-grace him, but instead taunt him and teleport out (rest of the party was still alive, and the lieutenant would have been in trouble), they started relying on him less.  Also, because my roommate used knockout and nearly killed the lieutenant with a coup, the lieutenant has developed a very personal grudge against that character, and is learning powers specifically to deal with the "insolent whelp" the next time they run into each other. See?  If players can come up with RP-reasons to metagame the hell out of a character with the best possible feats/powers/etc, so can the DM. :D