So, I'm taking my players through Reign of Winter, currently just finished the Shackled Hut and about to start Maiden, Mother, Crone.
However, I've got a fairly big party. Six players (theoretically seven, but the last hasn't made a game for ages). I was going to up the number of things they were fighting from the start, but at lower levels, there was still a fair bit of threat, most of the players were new to Pathfinder, and there was a while when we were more often playing with four or five players than six, so it didn't seem so necessary.
However, the last few fights - the witch and ice golem outside the hut, the bone golem inside it, plus a few others - have felt much less challenging. With the party versus one or two enemies (and me tending to roll badly on initiative) their numbers means they do a lot of damage between each action of their opposition.
Thus, I'm wanting to nudge the difficulty up a bit. I could apply templates and similar, but I'd rather keep it simpler, and counter their numbers a bit, by increasing the number of things they're fighting. Since the book specifies everything they face, and if it's anything not straight from a book, gives the stats, it's much easier for me to just look up an Ice Troll or Phase Spider to add to a fight, than it is to adjust the stats of an Elder Earth Elemental to make him Advanced.
Given Maiden, Mother, Crone is 7th-9th level, what's a good CR level to add to an encounter to account for the larger player party? So they face a Bebilith and some smaller thing. The Bebilith is still the main attraction, but having two foes splits their firepower, makes it harder for them to flank/surround/prevent.
My long-standing suggestion when "The party is too powerful" questions come up: Add in mooks. A fair number of them.
You've hit on the real problem with boss fights in Pathfinder: Action economy. Adding a second baddie doesn't really help it much. Instead, you want to add in a large number of other bad guys who aren't a huge drain on the party's resources but do eat up action economy.
I usually look at the AP and find an appropriate mook or two and stat them out. Then I'll add about 3-5 to the encounters. So, instead of just fighting the 8th level grindylow witch queen, they're fighting the 8th level grindylow witch queen, two 3rd level grindylow fighters, and four 2nd level grindyow warriors. Now you've got six baddies to absorb attacks from your six 6th level characters and that boss fight just got serious.
For the Bebelith - Give it a brood of babies. A couple spider swarms plus maybe a couple Young Phase Spiders. You're not significantly increasing the difficulty of the fight adding two CR 4s and two CR 1s but now the action economy is incredibly different plus you have the hassle of the swarms making everyone dance around. It'll be a very memorable fight.
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I prefer adding monsters compared to enhancing because that makes it a lot more spellcaster friendly. The DC's get really hard to land just because you have extra players. I second adding more monsters rather than improving them.
Awesome, glad my approach is good.
In terms of CR calculation, can someone give me a rough guideline on what's a good level of addition for the 7th-9th level party? Or something I can work out based on the CR of each encounter (which is listed in the book).
Once I know I'm looking for three CR 3s, or four CR 1s, and two CR 4s, I can definitely find the right things to add myself, it's just that this is my first time running Pathfinder, and I've gone for an Adventure Path as I'm not good at improvising on the fly, so I could use some rough numbers to work from.
Many thanks all.
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I agree with adding monsters, but I'll add in a nice mathy way to figure out how much more you should be adding:
Take the CR of the original encounter. These adventure paths are written for 4 person parties (ideally).
Take the total XP value for the original encounter and divide it by 4. This gives the original encounter's XP per person. Then, multiply that number by the number of PCs you have, 6 in this case.
This is your "XP budget". You use this number to 'purchase' monsters for the encounter.
As an example, I'll take an encounter out of Snows of Summer (since you've probably done it, and it's the only PDF I have on the computer at the moment).
Divided by 4= 400. Times 6 = 2400.
The difference between our final XP and our original is 800XP.
2400-1600=800.
We could quite easily just add another ice nymph in this case.
In fact, any time you have 2 of the same monster as an encounter, you could just add a third considering you're a 6 person party.
When you have encounters that natively only have one foe, it's often best to add in a lower CR monster to fight along the original.
For a fun twist, you can add in a bunch of relatively weak monsters. Not so weak that they can be killed in a single attack, but enough to swarm over the PCs while the boss mob is freer to do his/her thing.
edit: Totally ninja'd by Cavernshark. That link is fantastic. I use it all the time for my 5 player party. At lower levels the 4-5 player disparity doesn't mean much, but once you get past second level, it's quite noticeable.
My standard rule for this sort of thing is to double the monsters/enemies in any encounter I want to be important. Not just adding in mooks, but duplicating or complementing every important enemy as well. I don't think just adding in mooks until you hit the xp goal is necessarily wise. With a large party you want more then one enemy in each important encounter to represent a significant threat to the party. So maybe the big bad cant be duplicated, but you can add in a powerful lieutenant with a similar CR rating, or a monstrous body guard or what have you.
Conveniently roughly doubling the encounter raises the CR by 2, which is pretty good for a party that is usually 6 people, sometimes 7.
I feel obligated to point out two issues with just adding a few mooks into otherwise unchallenging fights:
- If their individual CR is too low, they do not meaningfully change the fight. Their attacks can't hit the party's AC or their abilities are too easily saved. Plus any AoE damage dealers can usually catch them in the same spell as the more important foes.
- Each additional foe you add causes combat to slow down even more. Combats are already going to be slow to resolve with 6 players and you adding 6 more kobolds who each have their own turn will make each round take a few minutes longer.
If an enemy is APL-3 individually, it generally (with some exceptions) won't increase the difficulty of the encounter as much as the CR system would have you believe. My preference is to add a limited number of either mid level foes (maybe just 1 more), give the enemies a tactical advantage they don't normally have (cover, high ground, precast non-numerical buff), or to add impactful but quick to resolve anti-group abilities to the "boss" NPC.
For bosses I like to see: Conal attacks, Auras, On-demand obstacles, Swift/move action trap triggers, etc. Basically things that allow bosses to interact with multiple targets at once without full-attacking or getting multiple standard actions.
As other people have already pointed out, just increasing the boss' numbers is generally a bad idea (I'd also avoid providing save or die effects).
I won't speak to your specific scenario rather I'll give you the steps I take since I routinely have 6 PC parties. I use which ever action(s) seem appropriate.
A) Increase HP to max, keeps your baddies in the fights longer uses more resources.
B) Add extra baddies, increase HD, add levels, add hazzards
C) My favorite however, is to make the battlefield asymmetrical. PC's cant fly, bad guys can; in the forest bad guys with climb have a lot more freedom of movement, amphibious enemies in the swamp, etc. Then attack from multiple sides spreads those six out.
D) I never add extra treasure, and with six person parties, I don't allow the reselling of non-masterwork/special material items. I've also gone 100% to the slow advancement track and always give XP off the six player column. (we do AP's).
E) I've also started trying to find ways to reduce the "Perception Dependency". My PC's just stack skill points in perception and it's ridiculous. So I've started using other skills to replace this reliance. Especially knowledge, craft, and profession skills.
F) Another balancing act for large parties is to limit them to Core only. One of the problems with the gluttony of classes available is over lapping skills and abilities. I'm running serpent skull at the moment and have a Hunter, Ranger and Shaman for the most part none of them feel special because they all have such similar skills, abilities and spells.
All that said, getting the Action economy balanced can be very difficult, some go to easy and others very difficult.
I agree with the excellent advice given so far, but I will say that if you do feel the need to boost a single baddy, when you look at templates, go mythic. Mythic templates are amazing and grant things like double initiative counts, doubling your BBEG's actions.
Generally agree that adding mooks of some sort (but who present some threat to the players) is the best bet. Try and have some bodyguards that are a challenge to the PCs (e.g., a grappler that goes after wizards in the back, or someone big and huge that just stands in the way between the good guys and their target; lots of options.)
Consider changes to the environment -- some traps, some condition in one or more areas that makes the PCs' lives a bit more difficult (e.g., rain and wind against archers, lots of mud against a charger, occasional wardspells of various sorts against wizards, etc.) Obviously this isn't always possible (fog is unlikely in the desert at noon, or rain underground), but you can tilt the battle a bit this way.
If it makes sense, let the enemies pre-buff. (This rewards the PCs if they can use stealthy tactics to surprise the enemy, too.) Even an extra potion or two can help. If the enemies know about the PCs and their favorite tactics, assume they've done some prep work (e.g., resist energy against a magus who bestows shocking grasp literally).
Don't totally destroy the PCs' usual routine (unless you have a very smart enemy who wants to show off) -- remember they showed up to have fun, not to have their entire shtick destroyed by enemies armed with GM Fiat Foreknowledge. But competent bad guys (multiple bad guys!) with good tactics can make fights surprisingly interesting.
In terms of CR calculation, can someone give me a rough guideline on what's a good level of addition for the 7th-9th level party? Or something I can work out based on the CR of each encounter (which is listed in the book).
Per the link I just posted:
Aye, you posted it as I was writing ;-)
Many thanks, that's just the sort of thing I'm after.
I agree with adding monsters, but I'll add in a nice mathy way to figure out how much more you should be adding:
Take the CR of the original encounter. These adventure paths are written for 4 person parties (ideally).
Take the total XP value for the original encounter and divide it by 4. This gives the original encounter's XP per person. Then, multiply that number by the number of PCs you have, 6 in this case.
This is your "XP budget". You use this number to 'purchase' monsters for the encounter.
As an example, I'll take an encounter out of Snows of Summer (since you've probably done it, and it's the only PDF I have on the computer at the moment).** spoiler omitted **
In fact, any time you have 2 of the same monster as an encounter, you could just add a third considering you're a 6 person party.When you have encounters that natively only have one foe, it's often best to add in a lower CR monster to fight along the original.
For a fun twist, you can add in a bunch of relatively weak monsters. Not so weak that they can be killed in a single attack, but enough to swarm over the PCs while the boss mob is freer to do his/her thing.
edit: Totally ninja'd by Cavernshark. That link is fantastic. I use it all the time for my 5 player party. At lower levels the 4-5 player disparity doesn't mean much, but once you get past second level, it's quite noticeable.
Ninjaed, and his link is great, but your explanation really helped me understand it, thanks.
I feel obligated to point out two issues with just adding a few mooks into otherwise unchallenging fights:
- If their individual CR is too low, they do not meaningfully change the fight. Their attacks can't hit the party's AC or their abilities are too easily saved. Plus any AoE damage dealers can usually catch them in the same spell as the more important foes.
- Each additional foe you add causes combat to slow down even more. Combats are already going to be slow to resolve with 6 players and you adding 6 more kobolds who each have their own turn will make each round take a few minutes longer.
I'll try it both ways;likely mostly stick to fewer, higher CR flunkies, but occasionally go for larger numbers of mooks.
When the battle is taking place on enemies' home turf, you can also add low-CR traps (or make use of features that can be improvised into traps). Scattered caltrops with a rug hastily thrown over them (call it Perception 15 or so, standard caltrop rules), patches of glazed ice (in some encounters for that campaign, a bucket of water's all that you need to improvise some grease-like patches): little things like that. If there's a cleric among the opposition, glyph of warding can be used to beef things up - set to do cold damage if you're soft-balling (since most PCs in this adventure path will strive to acquire cold resistance), or set to do something nastier (blindness/deafness is a nasty spell to link) if the caster was going for serious protection.
My preference is to add a limited number of either mid level foes (maybe just 1 more), give the enemies a tactical advantage they don't normally have (cover, high ground, precast non-numerical buff), or to add impactful but quick to resolve anti-group abilities to the "boss" NPC.
For bosses I like to see: Conal attacks, Auras, On-demand obstacles, Swift/move action trap triggers, etc. Basically things that allow bosses to interact with multiple targets at once without full-attacking or getting multiple standard actions.
As other people have already pointed out, just increasing the boss' numbers is generally a bad idea (I'd also avoid providing save or die effects).
I won't speak to your specific scenario rather I'll give you the steps I take since I routinely have 6 PC parties. I use which ever action(s) seem appropriate.
A) Increase HP to max, keeps your baddies in the fights longer uses more resources.
B) Add extra baddies, increase HD, add levels, add hazzards
C) My favorite however, is to make the battlefield asymmetrical. PC's cant fly, bad guys can; in the forest bad guys with climb have a lot more freedom of movement, amphibious enemies in the swamp, etc. Then attack from multiple sides spreads those six out.
I agree with the excellent advice given so far, but I will say that if you do feel the need to boost a single baddy, when you look at templates, go mythic. Mythic templates are amazing and grant things like double initiative counts, doubling your BBEG's actions.
Generally agree that adding mooks of some sort (but who present some threat to the players) is the best bet. Try and have some bodyguards that are a challenge to the PCs (e.g., a grappler that goes after wizards in the back, or someone big and huge that just stands in the way between the good guys and their target; lots of options.)
Consider changes to the environment -- some traps, some condition in one or more areas that makes the PCs' lives a bit more difficult (e.g., rain and wind against archers, lots of mud against a charger, occasional wardspells of various sorts against wizards, etc.) Obviously this isn't always possible (fog is unlikely in the desert at noon, or rain underground), but you can tilt the battle a bit this way.
If it makes sense, let the enemies pre-buff. (This rewards the PCs if they can use stealthy tactics to surprise the enemy, too.) Even an extra potion or two can help. If the enemies know about the PCs and their favorite tactics, assume they've done some prep work (e.g., resist energy against a magus who bestows shocking grasp literally).
Don't totally destroy the PCs' usual routine (unless you have a very smart enemy who wants to show off) -- remember they showed up to have fun, not to have their entire shtick destroyed by enemies armed with GM Fiat Foreknowledge. But competent bad guys (multiple bad guys!) with good tactics can make fights surprisingly interesting.
Extra monsters are simple and easy to add to a preprinted adventure. Extra hazards or traps, extra class levels or templates (particularly Mythic), or changing the battlefield of this preprinted adventure is exactly what I don't want, that'd make it much more complicated for me.
Might look at maxing important bosses HP though. Prebuffing I've done if the boss knows the players are coming.
are you using xp to level up your players or adjusting treasure for the number of players you have? This is every important, because if you are actually using xp and not updating the treasure you will start to see challenge increase greatly come around level 9 or 10, on your own and even more so around around level 13. as all the character will end up being under geared at that point and under leveled. as the gear and xp are divided to many ways.
but if you are just leveling them up at set points in time. is what i recommend, and ignoring xp. I would do what other say just add a few mooks here in there it will help increase the treasure a little, but not too much, and balance the loss in gear well with the action economy problem.
I'm leveling them up when the book says to, as it's pretty clear on that
Treasure-wise, I've been adjusting up their treasure from the start, as it needed to work with a then seven player party who needed okay equipment even if not all of them made any given session.I have 5 players with a decent amount of experience. I tend to max HP on enemies and keep the party a level behind the advancement track.
Keeping them a level behind is interesting. Might go that way, but I'd rather keep them at the right level and just up the stuff they're facing.
Using 5th Edition's Legendary Actions and Lair Actions can also help with action economy.
Adding extra creatures works too.
Adding extra creatures that get killed with 1 hit REALLY makes bookkeeping a lot easier. You can make mooks with appropriate attack bonuses, damage rolls, ACs and Saves, but keep the hit points really low and just flood the battlefield with an appropriate number of mooks.
Add more little bad guys or one more bigger bad guy.
An encounter like witch/bodyguard gets more fun when it's witch/druid/bodyguard.
Aye. The main thing I was after was getting an idea what CR the stuff to add in should be, but I can use the tables in the guide that was linked to work that out.
Also, mid- to high-level spellcasters can make their own mooks. For example, animate dead, summon monster/nature's ally, and animate object can make mooks that challenge but not overwhelm the PCs. They basically act as an action economy force multiplier. They can interfere with PCs' actions or movement, draw attention and focus from the BBEG, and even reduce some of the PCs' resources, like spells and magic item charges.
Just don't be afraid to boost the mooks' attack rolls and Save DCs and CMB so they're not totally inconsequential.
Heck, you can "cheat" and just decide they hit if they roll a 15 or 18 or 19 on the d20, depending on how much math you want to do. Especially if all the PCs have roughly the same AC. If your PCs' ACs are 35, 22, 16, and 28, then you're probably better off rolling. If they're 25, 26, 26, and 27, then you can "wing" it.
Also, mid- to high-level spellcasters can make their own mooks. For example, animate dead, summon monster/nature's ally, and animate object can make mooks that challenge but not overwhelm the PCs. They basically act as an action economy force multiplier. They can interfere with PCs' actions or movement, draw attention and focus from the BBEG, and even reduce some of the PCs' resources, like spells and magic item charges.
Just don't be afraid to boost the mooks' attack rolls and Save DCs and CMB so they're not totally inconsequential.
Heck, you can "cheat" and just decide they hit if they roll a 15 or 18 or 19 on the d20, depending on how much math you want to do. Especially if all the PCs have roughly the same AC. If your PCs' ACs are 35, 22, 16, and 28, then you're probably better off rolling. If they're 25, 26, 26, and 27, then you can "wing" it.
Those mooks can be useful but the action taken to summon them means they have their own cost. I'm happy to leave summons as they are, and use them where appropriate, with the proper bumping up coming from the stuff I've specifically added.
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Maybe combine summoning with a Quickened (via feat or rod) spell? Or a mook with a scroll?
Just don't do the 50 kobolds with wands of magic missile with just 1 charge trick. That's just dirty.
Just wanted to chime in to support the more monsters crowd. Make it an endurance contest. More bodyguards, waves of attackers, give the enemy healers to increase longevity, etc.
Is there a non-more monsters crowd? :-D
I like the waves of monsters idea, too. It's more "modular" so you can send in 1 or 2 or 5 or 10 waves in, depending on how your PCs are doing. If it's too easy, you can even send in multiple waves at once. If it's too hard, you can delay or eliminate some or all of the waves.
EDIT:
Also, with waves of mooks, you can run some of them "un-optimally" and allow PCs to use AoOs and Cleave and Great Cleave and Whirlwind Attack and other special abilities and combat actions they might not normally get to use. Maybe use some of their fun, lower level spells, like color spray or murderous command.
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My quick and lazy way of upping the difficulty for bigger parties is simply to merge combats whenever it makes sense to do so. Eg. Instead of a "CR 4" Orc encounter in A7 and a "CR 3" Orc encounter in A9, put all the Orcs in either A7 or A9. I use quotes for CR here as a CR 4 encounter for 4 players certainly isn't CR 4 for 6 players.
For boss fights, take the mooks from a nearby fight and have them guarding the boss instead.
This way you don't need to do any significant extra work as a GM. Plus fewer fights (with more monsters per fight) usually tends to make the game go faster in my experience. With large parties things can get bogged down easily, so anything to speed things up helps imo.
For large parties, maybe pre-rolling initiative for a few battles can quicken things. Or maybe just go around the table.
But combining combats makes a lot of sense too. Especially if done in a dynamic and logical way. Like, you start the fight in one area, and bad guys from another area hear it and join in!
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But combining combats makes a lot of sense too. Especially if done in a dynamic and logical way. Like, you start the fight in one area, and bad guys from another area hear it and join in!
Ya, the ideal for merging encounters goes along these lines. It even makes the rear-guard in the party's marching order suddenly relevant in some cases (depends on the map).
Just don't do the 50 kobolds with wands of magic missile with just 1 charge trick. That's just dirty.
Definitely. Much more elegant to make them Kobold sorcerers with magic missile as one of their spells known.
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Just don't do the 50 kobolds with wands of magic missile with just 1 charge trick. That's just dirty.Definitely. Much more elegant to make them Kobold sorcerers with magic missile as one of their spells known.
Or 50 kobold sorcerer 1s with wands of enervation, lightning bolt, fireball, cone of cold, stinking cloud, black tentacles, and glitterdust with 1 charge each. :-P
Or adepts for even less XP!
Why am I posting jerk GM ideas???????
:-O
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Or 50 kobold sorcerer 1s with wands of enervation, lightning bolt, fireball, cone of cold, stinking cloud, black tentacles, and glitterdust with 1 charge each. :-P
Or adepts for even less XP!
Except that of the listed spells only lightning bolt is on the adept spell list, so those level 1 kobold adepts need DC 20 UMD checks for most of those wands.
250d6 electricity damage, 50 DC 14 Reflex saving throws to reduce damage by 2.5d6 each....
Awkward!!!
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250d6 electricity damage, 50 DC 14 Reflex saving throws to reduce damage by 2.5d6 each....
Awkward!!!
Sounds like a victory for the players, even in death. Here's why:
Q. What group of kobolds has 50 wands of Lightning Bolt?
A. One who wants to win a war and has spent considerable resources to do so. They probably aren't too numerous or they'd just use conventional armies.
Q. What does it mean when all 50 wands are down to 1 charge each?
A. They won and used up 49*50 = 2450 charges, but their grasp on power is near an end.
Q. Can't they just buy more?
A. No. Not only does 50 wands of lightning bolt at min CL cost 50*11,250 gp = 562,500 gp ~141 build points, but the use of so many wands in war is going to be well known. No one is going to sell wands to kobolds known for using wands to conquer. Clearly the 50 level 1 adepts can't make the wands themselves. If the leader makes them it's going to take him/her 12*50 = 600 days to replace them. Their little empire isn't going to be able put out the 141 build points of magic items since they aren't numerous (see above). However they got the money the first time is likely a once only occurence.
Q. How is this a victory for the players?
A. The threat of the wand wielding kobold army is over (no charges left).
Didn't read through whole thread, but some things I like to do:
1) More mooks, just to get in the way and stop players from getting to the real threats behind them. You want the total number of combatants roughly equal to party size, if not larger.
2) Mook rule - It takes 2 successful hits to render them unconscious, they don't have actual hp.
3) Maximize hp on important NPC combatants. Double it, if that's not enough.
4) Apply the advanced simple template to everything.
Paizo AP\adventure scale rules:
AP's are built on a 4 person party with:
1 melee
1 full arcane
2 utility
What counts as a melee?
Anything who's primary mode of damage is hitting, with multiple attacks at higher levels. This includes caster classes that focus on this such as (but not limited to) druids, alchemists, even sorcerers or wizards (although less likely to be a wizard).
What counts as full arcane?
Anything who has 9 levels of arcane spells and doesn't use those spells to enhance their own ability for melee.
What counts as utility?
Anything that isn't the above. Seriously - in general these guys have class features that focus on buffing/debuffing or altering the odds in the players favor in some manner - this includes clerics (9 spell levels and if you really pay attention you note that most of them are add numbers to party or subtract them from enemy).
Look at your party - put each character in a category based on the above criteria. Fill in the slots for what the adventure assumes (1 melee, 1 arcane, 2 utility) - now look at what you have left.
- For each melee left Add 50% Hit points to every monster
- For each full arcane left Add monster(s) to every encounter equal to the party CR - use best judgement here if the CR of an encounter is already equal or less than the party and meant to be easy then adjust down - never adjust higher than CR = party - use multiple lower level foes when possible rather than one large one
- For each utility left Increase all saves, and special ability DC's by 1 per utility character
When do I use these guidelines?
Start after level 2 - the first 2 levels are difficult for players and it is this GM's personal opinion that changing things during these levels requires a much more delicate and careful brush than general guidelines can give you - otherwise your game may be very deadly early on.
250d6 electricity damage, 50 DC 14 Reflex saving throws to reduce damage by 2.5d6 each....
Awkward!!!
Sounds like a victory for the players, even in death. Here's why:
Q. What group of kobolds has 50 wands of Lightning Bolt?
A. One who wants to win a war and has spent considerable resources to do so. They probably aren't too numerous or they'd just use conventional armies.
Q. What does it mean when all 50 wands are down to 1 charge each?
A. They won and used up 49*50 = 2450 charges, but their grasp on power is near an end.
Q. Can't they just buy more?
A. No. Not only does 50 wands of lightning bolt at min CL cost 50*11,250 gp = 562,500 gp ~141 build points, but the use of so many wands in war is going to be well known. No one is going to sell wands to kobolds known for using wands to conquer. Clearly the 50 level 1 adepts can't make the wands themselves. If the leader makes them it's going to take him/her 12*50 = 600 days to replace them. Their little empire isn't going to be able put out the 141 build points of magic items since they aren't numerous (see above). However they got the money the first time is likely a once only occurence.
Q. How is this a victory for the players?
A. The threat of the wand wielding kobold army is over (no charges left).
My friends had an evil DM who did this back in 1st or 2nd Edition. It's kind of a running joke at our table. Basically, it's the example of a really bad GM. One who abuses the rules and authority granted to a GM.
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As a quick rule of thumb for adding extra mooks with proper CR, you can use the following:
* If there are 2+ enemies already, add 50% extra of the same.
* If there's a big boss, give him a buddy with CR 2 lower.
The rationale behind the second point is that encounters can be built with an "XP budget" which you divide over monsters, and that the XP "cost" of monsters doubles every 2 CR. So a monster 2 CR lower has 50% of the XP value. If you were scaling up an encounter for 6 players, that's exactly what you need.
2 CR below the boss shouldn't "dilute" his companion to the point where the minion becomes unable to really affect the PCs. It presents the players with a good choice: do we focus on killing the weaker enemy first and thereby give the boss more time to do his thing, or do we try to withstand a dual assault and focus on the boss first?