So, Saturday’s game was… quite a windfall for the PCs- they were able to slay a hydra and a pair of Purple Worms!
However, the fight prompted the players to use tactics that felt very rules-based rather than narrative-based, and while I’m not averse to houserules, I’m not wholly clear on how best to resolve them. A brief recap:
The hydra was about 40 feet away. The party cast Summon Hero so that there was a hero midway between them and it. The hero, being 4th level, made his save against Paralysis fairly easily and was able to prevent the hydra from overrunning the party.
(Actually this brings up a heap of questions about Overrun itself! RULES QUESTION: How is Overrun’s “Free” attack handled if someone successfully blocks overrun when it gets to deal damage “as if it had struck in melee.” Would that be one hydra-bite or the full attack routine of twelve heads? Further, does that count as the creature’s attack for the round, or was overrun its movement phase and it can now attack normally, even if its movement was foiled by a successful save or a missed attack throw at the start?)
The party’s horsemen then charged the beast with lances, piling on more than a dozen double-damage attacks and slaying it before regeneration could matter.
Then, against the purple worms, they attempted the exact same thing, but it passed its Overrun and managed to take out the super-tanky Paladin with poison. (Query: Does a “kill” from Poison allow for Cleave?). It did Cleave a little, enough that they were wary. Again, the lance-pile reigned supreme.
Against the second purple worm, then, they ordered everyone to spread out, so that nobody was within 5 feet of each other, ensuring that when the beast charged it would only slay one man before the rest lancepiled it.
All in all, a very anticlimactic day. I’m not sure how I would have liked the system to handle it, it just felt wrong.