V. Gorilla's page

Playing AoA with my group of 6 players (but mostly 4 come to each session) and though the first book was pretty tough - once they have discovered all their options in fight it became much better.

The monsters somebody talked about - this +20 to hit vs 24-26 AC was our encounter 2 days ago - my party just rocked it with clever tactics and fighter's 44 dmg from his critical Power Attack (33+ to crit and he has +17 to hit).

We have 2 casters and no clerics among them - our wizard is a great helper in both encounters and in exploration. His Dispel Magic, Magic Missile, color spray, hypnotic patters, Acid Splash and paralyze are all great spells which actually saved the party for couple of times (paralyze owned the Bargheis, even though it is incapacitation effect).

Our druid with his Animal Companion is on par with our fighter - the bear slams everything and the druid throws elecric arcs and buffs/heals the party. If it was not for him the fighter would've died for 3 times already.

Maybe it is our character choices and our GM's luck. He tends to roll 10+ on all his rolls (open rolling). I, our party wizard, am the only one with intimidate, but his intimidate is trained with a +0 CHA. Grease has failed to influence any encounter other than making a few squares of random terrain difficult. We tend to roll abysmally, I have Wil Wheaton rolling ability. Our party's two animal companions tend to just go down in combat. The provide flank a couple of rounds and get smashed. Other than flanking, our party doesn't have a wide array of incurring penalties upon the mobs. What other things can we do?

We are currently playing AoA with 5 players and is very easy.

We are having a good mix, and all characters are doing fine ( obviously the fighter with power attack is ahead in terms of damage, but he needs support or he is an easy kill ).

Going down can happen if a critical hit occours or if monsters manage to pass your first line and go for the casters.

I wonder if without a champion it would have been way too harder.

My group (Gnome Fighter, Goblin Ranger, Goblin Alchemist, Half-Orc Druid, Human Wizard) has had the other experience with this. We have found almost every fight to be a challenging encounter. We are in book two, and every encounter is like a game of baccarat. AC does not seem to matter. Our average to hit bonus is +15, and we need 10+ rolls to hit (as expected). Our fighter with an AC of 26 got caught on a 6+ (in our most recent encounter). My wizard (AC 21) would get hit no matter the roll. The mobs had a +20 to their attacks. The first strikes did an average of 30+ damage because they were almost always crits. The only survivors of the encounter (still standing) were my Wizard and the Fighter, and he was at single-digit HPs. The Druid and the Alchemist were killed, not just downed. We are level 7. Per the GM, the encounter was scaled for a level 6 party.