combat/tactics advice - fighting a group of monks (AL avernus spoilers)

[da newt]

Last night's session ended after the first round of combat. We are a party of lvl 10 (non-optimized, most of us have never played above tier 2) 1 necromancer, 2 cleric, 2 AT rogue, 1 druid, 1 ranger SS. Our opponents are 7 identical monks who attack 3x/round and have unlimited Ki for stun, disarm, or prone (dc 13) on every hit.

We are in a small room, one of the monks was killed, our necromancer, 1 cleric and 1 rogue are all stunned (some are also prone and disarmed), our necromancer has 6 skeletons (but never got to act to tell them to attack), and the druid summoned 4 brown bear. There is a cage w/ people who need to be rescued hanging over a pool of lava in the center of the room. (AL decent into avernus, losing fai)

I think we are way behind in action economy, and the monks should be able to keep at least half of us stunned at all times - I expect a TPK is likely.

Any advice from the group? How do you keep a gang of monks from stunning and then methodically bringing us all down when we are all together in a small space?

[Man_Over_Game]

Erm, you don't.

Monks are hard-countered by big, bruiser types, but even then it only works when:


The Monks aren't able to hit the back line.
The Monks run out of the resources necessarily to maintain the barrage.



Neither of those are true, and neither seems to be something that can become true. If you could wall them off with something like Wall of Stone to reset and buy you some time to deal with the Stun condition, that's one thing, but Monks are nimble bastards that tear up anything that doesn't want to get hit (and that's the majority of your team).

I'd assume your DM wanted you guys to lose, judging by the fact that the Monks didn't have a limit on how often they're allowed to inflict the Stun condition.

So expect to be railroaded into a hostage/prison situation. I don't think railroading is necessarily bad, but that's what I'd wager your situation is right now.

I could be wrong, but the solution is still the same even if their goal is to kill you: run away.

[Eldariel]

So I have absolutely no recollection of anything of this sort in the adventure: it feels to me like this is a totally different thing. Anyways, are you somehow fighting Bhaalites, or Fiends proper? It would help to ascertain what the adversary truly is first.

But overall, most of the things that could be done would need to already have been done. Indeed, the skeletons and bears could've probably torn the Monks down but again, if you get surprised and stunned immediately, there's of course precious little that can be done; no action is no action. Obviously the best tool against Monks are opaque walls; regardless of their persuasion they are stuck on the other side. This allows you to split them up, avoid everyone getting stunlocked and then just obliterate their fragile bodies. In this case, the Druid could try to Wall of Stone you in trying to unlock the Wizard, who could then order the Skeletons to attack and potentially TP y'all a bit backwards. Druid could also follow up with a Conjure Animals V to just absolutely flood the battlefield with some CR 1/4 things like Velociraptors, Wolves, Constrictor Snakes or something to even up the numbers a bit. The Brown Bears are decent but in dire straits I do think he'd been best off just getting a ****load of stuff out instead: 16 anythings is more or less better than 4 brown bears even though 4 brown bears is pretty strong. Hell, in this case just recasting the spell switching into a horde of CR 1/4 things might be the solution; having the board flooded with Velociraptors/Wolves/Constrictor Snakes/whatever will seriously reduce their ability to move around and those things will actually do serious damage to them (even if they use the Dodge option, Pack Tactics gives the things advantage so they cancel out and it seems unlikely they'll have sufficient AC to straight-up ignore the things).

Clerics, if one is still awake, are probably best off trying to Banish one of the Monks to again even the odds a bit. They probably don't have Diamond Soul yet so they're quite likely to be extremely vulnerable to a Cha-based save-or-X. Same with Int but it's harder for your party to target. Rogues and Ranger just keep on hitting and trying to drop them; they could also try to save the hostages but ultimately if you fear a TPK, that's secondary to defeating the enemy. If someone could cast a Wall of some persuasion underneath the prisoners in an effort to drop the cage on the wall and slide it to safety or something.


All of this depends on, first and foremost, which spells you've got available. Obviously nothing wrong with just Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians as the Clerics either. Trying to race to the zero, suffering the loss of Concentration when you get stunned, is probably the one option you certainly have spells prepared for.


I could be wrong, but the solution is still the same even if their goal is to kill you: run away.

In this case, with half the party stunned and a hostage situation, that's probably straight-up not an option.

[MrCharlie]

They're martial arts adepts. I knew I had heard of those abilities somewhere; they are from volos. In this case, they get a special name for the adventure but are 100% using that stat block.

In general, this is what I'd call an example of "Don't be a bad DM", except the adventure does this ****. So don't be a bad adventure writer.

Ranting aside; their highest save is a +3. Get any disabling AOE on the field. They also lack any movement other than 40 feet ground movement, and their only ranged option is darts which do an average of 5.5 damage. Their attack rolls are also only +5. If you can get your AC above a 20, then that's going to seriously even the odds on actually getting hit to make these saves. But more generally, you need to start disabling these jagoffs. The problem is I can't guarantee your party has the ability to do that, and a straight brawl is almost literally unwinnable because of how many stun attempts this guys will spam down your throats.

If for whatever reason you have no disabling AOE (even a hypnotic pattern evens the odds, +3 save versus at least DC 13 is 50-50) then start getting them into the lava. While RAW lava is death, this **** adventure clarifies that this lava isn't 20+ D10 insta-death, but just a moderate amount of fire damage. They can't climb, so getting them in the pit is enough.

The problem is that sheer number of stunning attacks and 60 HP means attrition will not work. Disable them, or push them. Thunderwave, Web, Hypnotic pattern, nuclear options, get something off. Anything you do have about a 50% success rate if you are even mediocre at it; at level 10, the success rate is probably closer to 75%. And flight, exotic movement, walls of any type, or even moderately fast movement speeds all kite these guys (leave the damn room, make the DM earn his stripes describing the surrounding area). If the Druid has good spell choices, he has tons of options; entangle, Hold Person, thunderwave, Grasping Vine, Watery Sphere, anything that removes movement or actions from an enemy. If you have nothing, start spamming any AOE you have, no matter how awful, and beg that the overload of martials can start killing these enemies.

Also, a moment of silence for the SS ranger, who is officially useless. Everything has 1d10+3 deflect missiles. Yes, he still hits, but my god is he facing an uphill battle. Remind him enemies can only use a reaction once a turn.

The problem, of course, is that you might never get a turn. Hence, why the adventure writer is...not good. Don't worry about securing the objectives. Your only goal now is to get the party out of this adventure immediately without having to pay revive costs. Hell, kill these enemies and walk out the door. It's not worth this encounter design.

(If you can't tell, I am disgusted by this encounter design, both for the laziness and...this).

And to clarify; this is an AL adventure. Not the descent book.

Oh, and you're expected to win.

There are between two and four more in the next room, and they have a big dumb boss monster who can also attack five times and paralyze you. This adventure is bad.

[animewatcha]

What is this adventure?

[Eldariel]

And to clarify; this is an AL adventure. Not the descent book.

Oh, and you're expected to win.

There are between two and four more in the next room, and they have a big dumb boss monster who can also attack five times and paralyze you. This adventure is bad.

Ah, right, thanks. This sounds like one of those "have a high Initiative mage to CC things or suffer"-encounters...like so many of the classics (first encounter of LMoP, oh boy).


What is this adventure?

Avernus Rising: Adventurer's League 09-11 - Losing Fai

[da newt]

Thanks.

I had a feeling the writers and QA folks were asleep at the wheel when the room was described as a 40' diameter round room with a 20' diameter cage suspended from above which contains 300+ people (yes that's right, more than 300 people in a 20' diameter cage - must be packed like a rush hour subway in Tokyo back in the day) hanging over a triangular lava pit (15-15-20') which the cage is being lowered into (yup, a 20' diameter cage is hanging over a hole in the floor that is much too small for the cage to fit in). There is a hand crank on the wall that one bad guy was turning to lower the cage (yup one guy moving the 20' diameter cage that holds over 300 people in it - let's guess they are all small guys and weigh 100 lbs each, and there are 300 of them - that's 30,000 lbs of people plus the weight of the cage that's sturdy enough to hold 300 people - there must be some serious gear ratio to that crank or maybe a huge counter weight).

I guess I'll start by cutting the cage free - maybe it will break open when it hits the floor since it can't fit in the lave pit and the 300+ will help us out ...

The AL version of this whole campaign has been like this - plot holes you could drive the Titanic through and encounters that make zero sense. I feel bad for any DM trying to work with this mess.

[Bel-Torac]

I just recently played this module. I don't own it, but I'm pretty sure we fought martial arts adepts, who attack 3 times and can stunning strike at a DC of 13 on every hit should they choose to. Your dm pretty much tried to kill you guys. You guys had a non melee oriented party so you were weak against them. Don't remember the details of my party, but they were melee oriented and did well. I had a strength based v.human horizon walker ranger with a cloak of displacement and resilient con so I didn't have any problems. I misty stepped and grabbed the cage lever at the start of combat.

Only way to prep against martial arts adepts would to have warcaster/resilient con or some kind of crowd control spell like hypnotic pattern.

[Keravath]

You have a very caster heavy party so dealing with these monks may well depend on your spells available.

Does the necromancer have wall of force? Do any of the others have a wall spell you can use to split the room up and deal with the monks more easily? Wall of force could also be used to prevent the cage from falling in the lava.

You have two clerics, if both are level 10 then a couple of upcast hold person spells might be able to lock down the entire flock of monks if you are lucky.

If any of the clerics has the Aura of Purity spell you could get advantage on all the stun checks (30' radius).

A couple of spirit guardians from the clerics would slow down the monks and do some damage. Spiritual weapon will allow for some more attacks.

If you try to melee these monks you will likely lose ... your characters will need to burn spell resources (if they have them left) to save the prisoners and survive.

P.S.

If you are all level 10 and there are 7 of you then you are a very strong party for this encounter. Individually the monster is rated as a CR3 but three attacks with the possibility of stun on each even with a DC 13 con save means that folks will fail them (especially if they don't have proficiency in con saves). On the other hand, they only have a +5 to hit so at level 10, most of the clerics should have an AC near 20 or more and the necromancer should have the shield spell so the number of hits should be manageable unless there was some bad luck on the die rolls.

On the other hand, you mentioned "unoptimized" characters which can have a very wide range in meaning.

One of the clerics could also drop an upcast bless on the entire party significantly increasing the chance for folks to make their saves.