So what went wrong?

[SCI-kick]

I was thinking about The Bloody Hand blunder and was wondering what it was that caused our strategy to fail.
We seemed to be doing quite well until the encounter came behind us.

Kalo was trying to stall them by holding the door closed , and he thought that there was also enemies at the front of the group as well. This is where it all fell apart, and I didn't see much since Kalo fell pretty quickly after.
Should he have fallen back toward the middle of the party? I think I might have started a whole chain reaction of death by staying at the door because Kalo pretty much got trapped there and mobbed.

I do remember asking Keryn to get a summon in there to try and get their ranks to break up some, which didn't work very well I guess. It was a tight spot, probably would have been better to fall back, but I really wasn't expecting that large an encounter from a room we had just cleared.

Sorry if Kalo's attempt to block the door backfired, any other suggestions or discussion is welcome.

[valn99]

I think it's the living magic oozes that really killed us.
Yeah having two flanks is always bad, but it could have been dealt with...

[Cleasor]

And we were attacked from 3 fronts. We were clearing ahead when we were attacked in the center along a hallway. At the same time, we were attacked from the rear. And the living magic ooze which no one could damage.

[Arianna]

and the LAG

dunno about the rest of you but I had some Horrible LAG to the point my screen was frozen for over a minute at which time I then crashed and logged back into the morgue

not sure we can field so many people in one area from a technical standpoint between the spells the goblins and ogre magi were throwing and the spells our own people were throwing it caused alot of strain on the area .

But ya I find it highly demoralizing IC to think we somehow missed that many creatures behind us for them to come up from behind again. And OOC I find it highly improper for them to spawn/respawn in an area we had JUST cleared

[Akivaria]

But ya I find it highly demoralizing IC to think we somehow missed that many creatures behind us for them to come up from behind again. And OOC I find it highly improper for them to spawn/respawn in an area we had JUST cleared

As I recall, that also happened in the goblin hold quest where we rescued the halfling girl. Is there any way script-wise to turn off respawning for campaign quests, because yes, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense AND it's annoying as hell.

[Rick7475]

Hopefully EE can beat back the lag.

I don't think there is any strategy that would have worked against 6 or 7 of those living magic oozes that came at you. Not only could you not hit them, they shot off magic dmg plus they had multiple attacks. I was checking them out to see if they could be damaged when I saw PC's hitting the morgue. You all were doing fine against the ogre mages and goblins and imps. So I jumped in and killed off all of the living magic things, otherwise TPK.

Now, these things happen when designing dungeons. There are lot of custom creatures sitting in the palette created by who knows, especially in WD, which has had 2 dozen builders and HDM's before Ayergo, so sometimes we don't know what the creature is supposed to do without a lot of testing. The citidel is canon for WD, and I knew Ayergo was creating some cool AI scripts, so perhaps there was a script that didn't work right.

I wouldn't be too hard on your tactics. I would RP researching some way to kill those living magic oozes and lick your wounds

[ayergo]

Anything over 10 peeps in an area causes tech problems. I will push to get EE sorted to hopefully fix that.

[oldgrayrogue]

It was the living magic oozes. We were kicking ass before they showed up. When Kalo ran to the back to fight the mobs coming up our rear, Rook stayed by the front door. When the oozes showed up he was hurting pretty quickly, unable to damage them at all. Then others came to help and couldn't damage them either. He was KO'd trying to heal majeed. If we had been attacked by creatures similar to what we had been facing all night, I think it would have been a tough two front battle but we would have won.

The only tactic improvement I can think of is that when we have such a large party and split into two forces like we did, we should all know who is in our subgroup, make it a balanced subgroup and have one of the group responsible to call the others to muster around him/her when something like that happens. This way we would have had two balanced groups fighting on each front.

[Senor T]

I like the subgroup idea a lot. That way it’s not a bunch of people all trying to judge and make a call at the same time.

I tend to agree it was the oozes, but I’m also unsure how many similar fights we could’ve tackled like that.

[Arianna]

subgroup commanders need to type in all caps or something so they don't easily fade into the scrolling of the chat box
Don't know about the rest of you but I don't tend to pay the chat box much attention in the heat of battle

[Wild Wombat]

Personally, I am of the mind that any group over 8 is going to be chaotic. Too many chat entries. I didn't even realize there was an attack on the rear until well into the battle and by the time Murgen managed to get there I think Kalo was already down and the oozes had made it through the door.

I think that the overlarge groups also have a negative impact on RP even in non-conflict. There are just too many conversations going on, making it difficult to follow any of them.

I do not have a solution, however. We need a good player population. I think we just have to do the best we can when a sh!tload of ALFAns are on at the same time. This is a good thing! We just deal with the fact that chaos is bound to increase. The only thing that would improve this is if we had a really *strict leader that ran the group and said, "If you don't follow orders, I'll leave you. If you talk out of turn, I'll note it and warn you that you need to shut up and listen." But that would also rub most of us the wrong way, both IC and OOC.

[Twilighteyes]

Fighting an unbeatable foe tends to nullify tactics and leadership.

That being said, lag kills tactics and leadership too. We should have split up and taken on two objectives. It’s very fun to hang out with everyone, but for the good of the game and server, we should split into two groups in future situations like that.

[Rick7475]

We did have high and low groups splitting a few weeks ago with 2DMs.

Also, when you have a big group and we are making encounters on the fly, the CR is quite high, making it more lethal if the big group isn't well coordinated, and that is tough to do with group chat and RP texts flying by.

I would say a tight cohesive group is around 6 or 7. So 2 groups at different places is definitely ideal.

But this is a pretty cool issue, lots of players!

[ayergo]

Foe is not quite unbeatable, just requires a little planning. Like most oozes, slashing is a bad plan.

I did add vulnerability to dispel though as I thought that was a clever idea you had. Try again!

[Senor T]

Try again!

No.






okay.......maybe.