Kobold Vermin Handler a bit too tough?

[hailstop]

So my party went through the Kobold Lair encounters last night from KotS.

With the cool news Kobolds from the Dragon article, I decided to replace some monsters in the two encounters. In the first one, I added a Kobold Slyblade (LOVE him!), and a Kobold Vermin Handler.

On the first round, the Vermin Handler through the cage at the Wizard, and hit. The Wizard then took the poison damage then attacked some creatures with his Acid Arrow. He failed his save.

A Minion hit the Wizard and then the Vermin Handler did a huge amount of damage (I think around 13 or so), which dropped the Wizard. Then he died (barely) when he took the 5 points poison damage.

Admittedly, the party was without a defender (the Paladin) but I'm not sure that would have really helped the Wizard in this situation.

Here's my question. The vermin cage is okay, but is a +10 vs AC, 2d6+3 damage attack a bit much? That seems really accurate, yet very damaging.

Or, as I mentioned in the game, he could have taken a Second Wind (although the Wizard player then responded that by the time he took that action, he hadn't taken that much damage).

 

[Dracollich]

the +10/2d6+3 damage does seem high at first, but the kobold is an artillery weapon. His weak defenses are off set by the high damage.

One thing I have noticed in 4E is a misconception by wizards, with their new found HPs, that they can be less cautious of taking damage. Even though they have more then 4 HP, then can easily be taken down if not hiding behind the front line troops.

Just want to make sure about one point.. was the wizard brought down to his bloodied value or -10 HP? I almost made that mistake running a game recently... dang 3.5 thinking still floating around in my head.

 

[hailstop]

He was down to -ve bloodied, although apparently he may have miscalculated according to the player in a convo today. I guess what I was wondering about was how accurate and how damaging the sling was, but as you say, he is Artillery.

 

[rushlight]

I believe that the Vermin Handler is just fine. Personally, I put one in an encounter, along with 4 Kobold Skirmishers and 8 Minions for a challenge against my party of 6 1st level players. At first I was concerned about the level 3 Handler, but in the end it was the Skirmishers who did the heavy lifting. Once the players got in close, the Handler did his encounter attack, but the PC saved, so it accomplished little. Afterward, they closed in and his ranged attack wasn't worth all that much.

Personally, I believe the problem your party had was in tactics. The wizard shouldn't be that close to the fray. If he's going to wander up into close range, he's should expect to be kissing ground often. In my group, the Fighter, a Warlord, and a Rogue all stayed between the Handler and the squishy Wizard and Warlock - with the Cleric playing between the two groups. However, the Warlord *did* drop - he found himself between two Skirmishers dealing extra damage from CA plus a crit. They weren't fond of the Kobold 'Shifty' ability...

You should keep in mind your party's lack of front-line support. The Handler is scary at range - but once they close the distance, he's a chump. If however most or all of your party tends to fight from range, an Artillery monster is going to be far more dangerous than average. They just won't have the melee chops to do it right - even when they close, it will be hard. Having that Paladin may have made a difference, although a Fighter might have been better. Standing next to the Handler, it's going to have a hard time getting off ranged attacks, and with the Fighter's ability and meatiness, the Handler will have a hard time picking on softer targets.

 

[generalhenry]

back in 2E you where lucky if your low level wizard survived one hit. In 3E if you considered your self lucky since while you still would go down in one hit, you didn't have to reroll since you didn't die until -10. In 4E wizards can finally take a hit! But that doesn't mean they have any buisness taking multiple hits.

Move action to retreat around a corner followed by second wind.

 

[hailstop]

They were missing the Paladin who usually was there, and didn't have another defender which definitely didn't help. The defender issue was a bit bigger in the inside Lair encounter though. That said, the PCs probably did have an opportunity to save the Wizard, but didn't know about the various uses of the Heal skill (ie the Wizard hadn't used his Second Wind yet, and one of the party members could have double moved then used an Action Point to get a Heal off).