About CR and EXP ... and everything else

[Halinn]

tower shields in the front rank, pikes in the next two ranks...

Just out of curiosity, how do people in the third row attack foes in front of the first row?  Unless they are large with reach weapons, they don't threaten in front of the first row.

Whips

[ksbsnowowl]

tower shields in the front rank, pikes in the next two ranks...

Just out of curiosity, how do people in the third row attack foes in front of the first row?  Unless they are large with reach weapons, they don't threaten in front of the first row.

Whips

Ah! Even better, whip daggers...

[Kethrian]

Rope darts (or meteor hammers), so you can still count as using a melee weapon once the enemy breaks through the ranks.

[Dwarfi]

Cool.

The next encounters will go something like this:
-Undead troup as stated before.
. Visiting a small town+ meeting a mountain man, who might guide the group.

The mountains:
If I only go after the book there would only be 2 encounters there, but I want to add some extra options.
- a troll in a hut, eating the food of the village poeple - the group might decide to help them, but then the guide might get angry for wasting time.
- A rock slide with Ref DC17 or 20 ?
If they decide to leave the road or loose the guide, they might come across a dire wolf pack or a bear. If they go totally off the ways there might be a hill giant with a troup of goblins and dire wolfs.

-Fixed encounters: A trap set by an enemy adventurers group (The guide will lead them there as he gets paid by the enemy to do so)
-Another adv. group. led by a blue dragon (y.adult) in human form.

[nijineko]

tower shields in the front rank, pikes in the next two ranks...

Just out of curiosity, how do people in the third row attack foes in front of the first row?  Unless they are large with reach weapons, they don't threaten in front of the first row.

Whips

Ah! Even better, whip daggers...

ah, sorry. real life got in my way.

even in 3.x sudden lunge (name?) will give an extra 5' reach with pikes. there are a number of other options. i like the whip dagger idea, too.

[ksbsnowowl]

tower shields in the front rank, pikes in the next two ranks...

Just out of curiosity, how do people in the third row attack foes in front of the first row?  Unless they are large with reach weapons, they don't threaten in front of the first row.

Whips

Ah! Even better, whip daggers...

ah, sorry. real life got in my way.

even in 3.x sudden lunge (name?) will give an extra 5' reach with pikes. there are a number of other options. i like the whip dagger idea, too.

Another idea is gnolls or volodni with the Long Reach feat from UE.  Doesn't extend their threatened area, but allows them to attack 5 ft further on their turn with any kind of spear.

Where is sudden lunge?

[nijineko]

hmmm, i must be misremembering the name. i'm finding a long strike feat in dr331 which does what i'm describing, and i found a lunge, deft lunge, monkey lunge, and power lunge, but the first three are pathfinder (the first does what i'm talking about), and the last is a damage stacker.

[Kremti]

Well, there's the Lunging Strike from PHB2, that works with every melee attacks, and you can do 1 attack, using full-round action, with extra 5' reach...

-K

[nijineko]

that must have been what i was remembering. thanks.

[Dwarfi]

Dont you have to really MOVE before and after the lunging strike? If you have goblins in the 3rd row of an army, there is not much space to do so.

We had our next session yesterday:
The wights: Though we have only been 3 poeple at that time, the lv10 cleric alone was enough to annihilate the hole troup with his turn undead blasts.
The Mhorgs were a little more persistant, though alone they didnt do much damage either and every Fort save passed.
To be true, the Mhorgs +11 slam and +11touch attack where the only thing that was actually able to hit anything. I dunno, maybe I have bad dice luck. ^^°

The other encounter were 3 ogre in a hut eating the savings of a farmer.
Our group could hear them from outside and were pretty much prepared.
And so the first 2 ogres where one hitted while the third had one chance to hit (which failed) before he got 1hitted too.

Actually, the most damage dealt during this session was, because of a teleport misshap of the mage. He took around 25dmg.

Question: If I use this Aoe attack of 10 creatures to shoot on 1 square together, does it simply deal 10dx damage DC20 or 25 Ref save to halfe?

[Kremti]

Dont you have to really MOVE before and after the lunging strike? If you have goblins in the 3rd row of an army, there is not much space to do so.

As far as the rule is concerned with the Lunging Strike, doesn't appear to require any movement.  I mean, if it requires movement...why wouldn't ya simply use Spring Attack...

-K

[InnaBinder]

Dont you have to really MOVE before and after the lunging strike? If you have goblins in the 3rd row of an army, there is not much space to do so.

As far as the rule is concerned with the Lunging Strike, doesn't appear to require any movement.  I mean, if it requires movement...why wouldn't ya simply use Spring Attack...

-K

Lots of reasons not to use Spring Attack.

[ksbsnowowl]

Question: If I use this Aoe attack of 10 creatures to shoot on 1 square together, does it simply deal 10dx damage DC20 or 25 Ref save to halfe?

Can you rephrase this?  I can't tell what you are asking.

[veekie]

Multiple creatures using AoEs on a given square would normally be entitled to individual saves for each effect. So if you have 10 creatures each lobbing a DC 15 1d6 fire burst, each of the attacks has an individual save for half damage at DC 15 at their normal DC. This means fire resistance would immediately castrate the spell's offense, and any rogue worth his share of the loot is also effectively immune.

Its not unknown for DMs to treat such combined attacks as a single roll though, because nobody wants to roll a potential 40 ref saves when the whole party gets caught in the burst.
The way I personally do it is to take the average CL of the group and add 1 to it for each attacker beyond the first(e.g. 10 guys throwing 5d6s at once, which gets you 14d6 in the combined attack), and add 1 to the save DC for every two attackers(e.g. 10 DC 12 ref saves combine to become a single DC 17 save). Similar shenanigans can be pulled with grouped melee or archers.
It's strictly a houserule however.

[Dwarfi]

Spring attack... yea thats what I had in mind. Lunging strike seems to be perfect for that situation.

About the mass shooting. Thats kind of what I had in mind.
I thought somewhere on page one, a method was mentioned to let 10 people shoot arrows on one square and make it an aoe effect.
maybe that was a houserule too, but I will definately use it.

With 10 Lv1 Goblin archers shooting bows on one square like just described. A Ref DC of maybe 15 ?

I now noted most of my groups stats and I came to 2 results:
1- Their spot and listen checks are rather bad, maybe except the clerics.
2- I will use sunder and disarm more - maybe killing the flaming maul of the barb and the +2 shield of the cleric. ^^° Or disarm against his holy symbol.
Though making a sunder or disarm against the barb will be a hard one to pull off.

[veekie]

For physical attacks I'd just double(D&D doubling) the average damage for every 2 points it beats the target's AC by, and add +1 to hit for every attacker beyond the first, as converting attack vs AC to Ref save half can be messy, and also tends to leave the guy who should be taking physical damage quite unable to resist.

So 10 archers at +5 to hit and 1d8+2 each would be attacking for  +14(+5 with 9 supporting) to hit. So if they roll a 10+14 against an AC of 20, they'd hit for (1d8+2)*3=3d8+6 damage.

EDIT: I probably should put something up in Houserules for this.

[Dwarfi]

@Veekie: Nice I like that one. It found its place in my DM notebook. ^^

Some other points:
Familiars to transport touch attacks: i have no clue about fams., but there is a wiz, with a weasel to transport stuff as ghoul touch. Would be good to hit the mage with that ^^
Does the weasel have to return to its master to gain another touch spell ? Does the master have to cast it as normal, but on the weasel ?
What other familiars are there that are good (or better than a weasel) for touch attacks? what spells are good? the wiz can use spell lv3 and has a +1 focus on evocation spells.
(Ghoul touch, shocking grasp, grease on a weapon maybe...)

An evil/ chaos domain cleric has a+1CL for evil/chaos spells. Does that affect a monster summon with that alignment? I guess not, but I wanted to ask. ^^

EDIT:
Another thing that came to my mind: Stacking effects. What do you allow to stack and what doesnt ? Like Ring of prot + mage armor + haste + some cleric buff

[ksbsnowowl]

About the mass shooting. Thats kind of what I had in mind.
I thought somewhere on page one, a method was mentioned to let 10 people shoot arrows on one square and make it an aoe effect.

Heroes of Battle, page 69, Concentrated Volley.
Up to ten contiguous archers each make a full attack.  Their leader makes and attack roll (BAB + Int mod + range penalties for the most distant archer) vs AC 20.  If it hits, all creatures in the target square take damage equal to 1/5 the total arrows in the volley. (If the arrows deal different amounts of damage, use the most common arrow damage numbers in the volley).  If the attack roll misses, the volley hits an adjacent square (determine as an off-target splash weapon, PHB 158. perhaps further away per range increment.) The target can attempt a DC 15 reflex save to take half damage.

Get ten CR 1 hobgoblins with Rapid shot and MW arrows* fired from Longbows, and a CR 7 or 8 commander (maybe a tripping fighter, so he has good BAB and okay Int; or a Wizard-based Gish).  The commander makes an attack at around +9 or +10 vs AC 20.  Even if he misses, he might hit another person on the board.  If he hits someone, that person makes a DC 16 Reflex save to take half damage from 4d8 arrow damage.

*The Ref save DC for half is adjusted up by enhancement bonuses to hit, and down by range increment penalties, and if half the archers don't have line of sight to the target area.

[nijineko]

try to add the splitting enhancement to the bows, even if only via a spell so it is not permanent.

[oslecamo]

If you're looking for homebrew mass combat rules, may I sugest my mob/unit rules?

Another thing that came to my mind: Stacking effects. What do you allow to stack and what doesnt ? Like Ring of prot + mage armor + haste + some cleric buff

Deflection+armor stacks. It would then depend on the cleric's buff. Bonus of the same type don't stack.