Thanks to the group of 6 for making this another fun run. Also, some really good sliders helped combat a lot.
**spoilers**
Rather than start a new thread for comments on the dungeon or the con, just add them to these threads.
We played normal.
The first room, someone got hit for 8 twice, someone with 19hp. Echoing someone else's comments about this fight being too harsh, it didn't seem like it was that hard to take out the enemy but the damage output just seemed far too high for a room one, being more like something in a room 5-7.
Then, while the rakshasa fight was won, it came across to me like certain classes were being focused on, classes that weren't the greatest threat.
Let me speak more broadly. I almost never get targeted in combat. Sometimes I understand why and it makes sense to me. Sometimes it may be small sample size randomness. Sometimes I think there's metagaming going on that doesn't make sense (see comments about paladin guarding in old thread). Metagaming isn't just "never attack paladin or who is being guarded" but also not bothering to attack overgeared classes on normal runs or whatever.
In this normal run, I was doing an eight-token minibuild for fighter because I'd rather run a small number of URs than a large number of lower rarity tokens to keep things at least somewhat challenging. I think one attack went my way in all of the combats combined.
Now, did I seem threatening? No, I had an AC of 13 for one thing. But, this strikes me as a core problem with trying to be fair to unbalanced parties. You can't tell from the party card that I have 23 more HP than the rogue who kept getting targeted for reasons I didn't understand as I'm sure my attack bonuses and damage bonuses were clearly higher.
The fact that I have an AC of 13 means I should be getting hit, especially when there are three attacks a round. But, I wonder if it's an "advantage" to seem vulnerable to the extent that redirecting damage to those who truly are more vulnerable can be considered "advantageous". OTOH, if I'm playing normal with a 41 AC, I would expect to get ignored by attacks that require rolls because it's unproductive for the monster(s), which gets into my guarding argument about how a player isn't really advantaged by what are perceived to be better things.
RPGs often suffer from how GMs should run combats. With L5R 4e, the least deadly edition, I could effortlessly kill parties all of the time as a GM if I focused fire and used full attack. I'm just not clear what TD combats are supposed to do given that monsters often have few attacks and lots of targets. If anything, lower damage AOE attacks strike me as more balanced from a damage standpoint but, then, suffer from how they bypass defenses PCs want to use.
I guess a lot of fights I've had have worked as intended - healers had to take actions to prop up PCs rather than add more damage - push damage was a meaningful incentive to win the fight. So, concerns about targeting may be overblown. I still find it odd how rarely I get targeted by attacks, but this may be small sample size related mixed in with sensible targeting decisions.
