Harliquinn wrote:
Proposed Way: Characters arrive on the seen. The cultists send the demons after the characters. The cultists proceed with the sacrifice by surrounding themselves with wards and chanting while the girl is shackled to the table. Now, the 'fighters' can deal with the demons, the 'rogue types' can unlock the girl's manacles, and the 'casters' can unravel the thread on the cultists castings. Perhaps at least 3 of the cultists need to be unraveled and the girl needs 2 of her bindings unlocked in order for her not to die in say 12 ticks....now you have a very dynamic combat that's challenging but hasn't added to the 'grind' feel of just hacking through a group of demons and cultists.
I like as long as the judge is flexible for unbalanced parties. What if there are no casters to unravel the thread. I even remember a mod where we needed to unravel the thread and I was the only caster and because I was Expert I couldn't do it. Thank goodness the judge was flexible and we completed the encounter successfully. It was not pretty though.
Edit: I also hate long drawn-out encounters. I like it when monster is powerful enough create a fear of death early on in the encounter but goes down fairly easy. In other words I HATE Tier 1 creatures with sickly high defenses but hit like little girls. I have probably played dozen of combats that way.