Applejack: Mah turn! First order o’ business: Mark the manticore as mah quarry. Second order o’ business: Bull rush! <roll> That’s gonna be 20 on AC.
DM: That’s a hit!
Applejack: <roll> 16 damage, all told, includin’ the extra quarry die.
Rarity: If Applejack’s done, I’d like to take my delayed turn now. I’ll use Escape Artist’s Trick to shift into a flanking position and… <roll> Oh, that’s most definitely a hit.
DM: And with combat advantage…
Rarity: I’ll get my extra 2d6. <roll> 15 damage in total.
DM: At this point, the Manticore is officially bloodied.
Fluttershy: Oh no! …What does that mean?
Twilight Sparkle: That means the Manticore’s at half health!
Fluttershy: Is that normal?
Twilight Sparkle: I don’t know… That’s pretty low for a solo monster, I think…
NMM: "Seriously? Those insufferable heros have nearly beaten my monster already? But the summoning clearly stated that Conservation of Ninjistu would be in effect! And I'm sure as Dream Valley not going to send wave after wave of minions, that never works..."
Obviously, Nightmare Moon has never DM'd. Minions can usually screw the players over, while great big Solo Elites tend to go down via the fact that they'e the ONLY monster on the field, and the players just focus fire on them. Ideally, you should use a balance of both.
Well of course it is going down fast! You have three strikers in a six-pony team fighting one solo monster, which is statistically built to be mildly challenging to a group of five. Hmm...no defender though...
It just occurred to me that this party simply does not have enough Psion for my tastes. Namely, there are party members that are not Psions.
Also, this manticore has at most 62 health, probably a little less. Twilight's right, that thing has nowhere NEAR the HP a solo should have!
...Hey, wait a second. Isn't her character a first-time player? Granted, she's read the rules, but did she go through the DMG or a Monster Manual, too? She must either be a bit of a munchkin, or really dedicated to absorbing D&D knowledge in general. Probably the latter.
Yeah, if there were more combat scenes in general in FIM I would definitely agree you're being a bit TOO detailed on the mechanics here. Not that detail about mechanics is necessarily bad in and of itself, but too much can drag things down. Fortunately, I believe you've hit just the right amount here.
Eh, it's a fallacy of 4th edition. It's so combat focused that dictating combat can't be so streamlined like Darths and Droids was. Big Monsters take several hits, of course, but even some of the smaller ones don't die to a well placed sword.
(Obvious prediction: Fluttershy crits a Nature Check come her turn)
Bull Rush doesn't do any damage in 4e. Bull Rush is used if you want to cause forced movement without a relevant power. I think Applejack means a basic Charge Attack.
Also Bull Rush targets Fortitude.
At-Will
Standard Action Melee 1
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. Fortitude
Hit: You push the target 1 square and then shift 1 square into the space it left.
You should've seen my one of my player's faces when I told them you could technically Bull Rush *without* charging. They forced me to go look up the relevant details right in front of them because they'd never heard of this heresy. Thankfully, the handy-dandy DM screen doesn't lie. Much. Errata has been taped over previous information in most relevant places by the previous owner.
I always have a hard time hard time wrapping my mind around the 'not needing to charge to bull rush' thing... I see nothing WRONG with it, it just... seems WEIRD, in a way. Maybe it's all my previous experience with it being charge-only.
DM screens are handy. I've got two 'cheat sheets'/cliff notes for the rules that I keep open in a PDF during every game. Between them, they cover about 98% of every rule I have to use as a DM. =P
What's not to get? Bull Rush is a glorified shove. It makes sense that you could use it as part of a Charge, but there's nothing to say "I want to give him a hard shove."
Though that's not to say I didn't think the same at one point as well - that you could only Bull Rush while charging.
If you make a Charge Attack, you can choose to do a Basic Melee Attack or a Bull Rush and get a +1 bonus to the attack roll. So Charge + Bull Rush may be +1 more effective than not charging.
Also, apparently Rarity is an Essentials Rogue: Thief. As such she gets two tricks, and has chosen Escape Artist Trick as her first one. If I may ask: What was her second choice?
Also besides the initial "shift 2 squares," Escape Artist Trick allows her to shift 2 more squares, once, as a free action at the end of her turn. I wonder if she used it?
I like the way you're handling combat here, putting the available screenshots together in a way that makes the combat flow well and give the characters the chance to beat stuff up. I sometimes feel bad for Rainbow Dash in the cartoon, because she's a physically agressive and effective character in a show where you're not meant to teach kids to solve their problems with violence. I can't wait to see what kind of move she pulls on the manticore.
I'm still waiting on Lesson Zero. My bet is still that Twilight gets angry over some minor thing the DM does, and starts trying to derail the campaign.
Yeah but Thief is just a name for a type of Rogue. (The Essentials build, specifically.) It's in the Rogue section of the relevant books, it qualifies for things that require one to be a Rogue like feats, etc.
Also, the trick that gives you combat advantage automatically is just stupidly broken. Someone actually thought that it was balanced to have the class that gets +2d6(/2d8 w/ a feat) damage when they have combat advantage a level 1 move where they can just get it whenever they want. It's an At-Will. It's silly.
None of the tricks grant combat advantage "automatically." One gives you CA against isolated enemies (a situation which Rarity just specifically avoided) and one gives you CA in not-quite-flanking position (one that Rarity could have potentially used at this point as well, except that the Trick is rather selfish in use). The balance comes in deciding which Tricks you're going to take. If you take both of those, then your mobility in large groups is reduced. Alternatively, you could pick one of those and some of the Tricks that give you more Controller aspects (such as one that gives you an opportunity attack when a flanked enemy shifts and one that lets you inflict extra damage to a different adjacent target on a hit). Rarity, here, has opted for a Trick that grants her mobility in favor of utilizing traditional, "safe" Rogue tactics.
Besides, it's the Rogue's play style. The Rogue is straight damage with little defense - it's a tactical Barbarian basically.
The main difference is that instead of multiple different attacks, they have different Movement powers that have bonus effects towards Melee Basic Attacks (which automatically use Dexterity for Thieves). They're a more mobile version of Rogues, essentially.
They don't have quite as high burst damage, either, just a really high bar normally. Again, a good choice for rarity, since burst damage is pretty selfish.
Then I realize that this is MLP:FiM, and these combat scenes are few and far between.