People can step up if they feel like it.
I'll step up. I think this shouldn't be the focus of the thread, so hopefully it isn't dwelled on. I've seen most people lure, including the majority of the DM and development staff. But there is a line in the sand that I think everyone can inherently feel.
So, stepping up - this is my line, and regardless of what anyone says, I'm sticking with it. It's the way the server was built, and it's mechanically fair in my mind.
- Use terrain features, but once you notice you've dumbfounded AI, stop and try a more fair approach. Maybe not in that exact instance (since you shouldn't be required to die because you've cornered yourself with the decision of shoddy AI vs. unnecessary death), but the next time don't repeat it. Sure, archers should find cliffs to shoot from. Casters too. But if the creature AI has fizzed out so it's standing still, or doing the frenetic pacing back and forth... try something different next time because you've broken the game.
- Ambushes are great. Send a guy in and lure creatures back to an ambush.
- Bottlenecks are great. Ambush them into a bottleneck. It's their darn fault for not being smart enough to craft bows to fire back at you, and it's not AI stopping them, it's their overly wide cousin that's taking up all the room in the bottleneck.
- Picking off stragglers is fair game. If a straggler comes to you alone, you shouldn't feel inclined to fire an arrow at the mob past the trees just because you're worried about luring rules.
- Taking chunks at a time is fair game to me. Technically (in fantasy reality) - if you engaged a trolloc screecher in that 500 foot stretch of forest glade, all 24 that have spawned would hear you. The game wasn't designed for this - I personally didn't design areas for this. If you try to say this isn't fair, then prepare to go in and redesign about 500 spawns. Where the idea of 'chunks' gets sticky is when you toe the visual line. Here's a perfect example of the wrong, and it's me doing it. I'm at the goblin boss spawn in the redlights. I am inching backwards to pull the boss, and only the boss, but not the elite and shaman standing two inches behind him. They are literally two
in game inches apart. After that battle, I felt dirty about it. And you know that you've crossed that line... so you think about it, you say 'shucks, not cool', and you don't repeat the practice. On the other side of that line though, is standing in the woods east of corax, looking at 12 giants, than your party of two who happen to be the only folks online, and letting 3 or 4 giants come at you at a time. This doesn't feel dirty to me. You're handling the CR range at twice the number of creatures as there are members in your party - the spawns aren't protecting CNR or beneficial passage, and it is a design issue that does not account for low player numbers, and their ability to play the game as intended.
What I think a lot of people don't realize is the basis for spawn and creature development. They were calculated to challenge a fair group of same CR. Well... but... this is not static. When was it calculated? What was the estimated fair group size and composition? This isn't just a dynamic between EST and GMT group sizes, it's server size and composition evaluations that are in many cases a half decade apart. And you don't blame the player group that is on average only half as large and strong as 5 years ago. You look at it objectively, and do the math on the disparate composition basis. Without doing so, you could, to the extreme, effectively make your game unplayable. For luring and such - I think it comes down to what the fair fight feels like it should be. I don't think it's 16 giants versus 3 PC's of the same CR. Perhaps you find the instance where you have 6 PC's. And yes, the dynamic should change in your head. But I don't think anyone should ever bark at you for initiating a fair challenge versus the available playerbase. And everyone can feel that line pretty well in my opinion.
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