Cikki posted a link to Grunthos Guide to Good raiding, but I went one step further and decided to copy and paste it here. This is copied and pasted from the old FotP site as posted by Grunthos.

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The Grunthos Guide to Good Raiding

Hi there! My name is Grunthos and I’m a warrior on the Quellious Server and an officer of the Fellowship of the Phoenix – the finest guild in all of Norrath. I’ve been leading raids since my character was in its high 20s I think… maybe it was low 30s – its hard to remember. In this time I have learned a thing or 2 about raiding – most of it the hard way. Oh sure I have had people tell me most of the stuff before I learned it, but the ‘ol memory – she’s not so good sometimes So I went ahead an re-learned most of it the hard way – at the expense of many many many many many many many many (you get the picture) deaths over the years. I would like to say a special thank you to Melbasset and Enigthor and all my fellow members of FotP for their wisdom, their efforts to help me, and their willingness to endure my experiments and failures.

“The first and most important step to a good raid is to cast aside all fear of death or delusions that you will gain xp. While this CAN happen it should be considered an aberration and not the norm UNLESS you are specifically going on a multi group raid for XP in a place a single group cannot survive. In general however, you have to remember that raids are about getting together and having fun with friends while getting all kinds of loot and uber shiznit that yer scrawny butt would have no chance at getting by yourself or with a single group.”

This having been said – let the schooling begin.

** Disclaimer ** Free advice is only as good as what you pay for it. These are merely my experiences I have had in about 2 years of leading raids now. I’m not saying I’m right – or even that my way is the best way – this is just what has worked for me. I strongly suspect that people who lead raids with a different style than I do may use different tactics, with varying degrees of lesser or greater success. Also my background is in a decent size guild but one that almost ALWAYS raids in conjunction with other guilds. Hopefully this will shed some light on why I do what I do and how I do it.

Section 1 – Planning a Raid.

Section 1A [Picking A Location] - The first and arguably one of the most important steps in planning a successful raid is to pick a target for the raid. If you want a large turnout the best thing to do is pick a place that has something for everyone – or at least for the classes you want to show up. For example – Hate raids are almost always super easy to get people because Clerics Enchanters Paladins Rangers Shamans and Warriors all get very nice drops up there. By that same token it is pretty hard to find anyone that wants to raid Kedge Keep because its underwater and only Bards Wizzies Rogues and one or 2 other classes get drops off of Phinny. So basically use common sense. If you are going to be doing your first raid ever I stongly suggest picking a zone that is not TOO hard, easy to CR from and most importantly that you know VERY well. This brings us to the next section.

Section 1B [Mustering the Troops] – So you have finally picked THE perfect spot for your raid. For the purposes of this post lets call it Mistmoore* <shudder>. (*Mistmoore is an excellent training ground for a young guild learning to raid as it is a VERY fickle mistress up until the high 40s / low 50s or thereabouts. ) Now that you picked you have to A) Let people know about the raid and B) get them to commit to attend. This sounds easier than it is sometimes, and you will find that you need to remind people constantly if you want them to actually show up. And no matter how much you nag there will be no shows and late shows. As far as how to know who is coming and ensure that they attend, I recommend keeping a running list on the first post on your message board for the raid. Make sure you keep it up to date with all relevant information and the list of who is coming.

As a rule the raid leader should be online half an hour before the raid and have a porter lined up to help get people there because people will not stage like you want them to. Staging refers to getting your character to where you are going to raid well ahead of time so that when the raid goes off you aren’t pulling your hair out at the last minute trying to get there. Its also important that you set a drop dead start time at least in your own mind because if you wait for every last person to show up the raid will wind up starting an hour late. If ya don’t believe me give it a try. I recently implemented a “15 minute rule” for scheduled raids for my guild. If you can’t be there within 15 minutes of start time the raid is rolling without you. There are some obvious exceptions to this, such as getting a rogue for Reavers in the City of Mist – but only in situations where the entire raid is dependant upon the skills of one class should that ever be an issue. And of course it is always best to try and make sure that this is not the case.

Section 1C [Make It Painfully Clear] – As raid leader one of your duties is to make sure people know what to expect and are as prepared as possible. For instance if you run a Chardok Royals raid and then announce that the Cleric Epic Drop was defaulted only AFTER you have your cleric loot it, you are going to be up to your neck in pissed off clerics. The point is this, anything and everything you can spell out in detail beforehand greatly increases your chances of not having major misunderstandings. And at least when you do you can get all righteously indignant and refer people to the message board they were supposed to read. And when I say everything I mean everything. It is best to post at least basic ground rules for communications, raid leadership, etc. I will cover these topics in more detail later. But basically the purpose of the raid must be clear. To what extent is possible the execution and strategies must be clear. If you can trust them to show up, your various raid leaders should be clear (strategy leader, pull group, lootmaster, groups, etc). You will also need to repeat all this information in at LEAST a summarized format at the beginning of the raid. This is because, as you will come to find out, the vast majority of people don’t actually bother to read the posts even if they bother to sign up in the first place. And don’t get em started on the last minute add-ons to the raids. Anyways do as much as you can to make sure that the people who ARE paying attention can know ahead of the time what they need to do and what they can expect.

Section 1D [Be Prepared, Plan Ahead & Be flexible] – Where raids are concerned there is only one indisputable law in this universe – Murphy’s law. In case you are not familiar with this absolute truth, it basically says that anything that CAN go wrong probably WILL go wrong, as well as a couple of things you were pretty certain COUNDN’T go wrong. A bit pessimistic? You betcha – but it will help you be prepared and keep your cool when it all drops in the pot. To start with, try and make sure that you are prepared for every contingency. Things like extra Peridots, extra food, extra port stones (for the planes) – a few coffins on hand ready to go, a necro or SK friend on standby, Maps of the zone, experienced people who have already raided what you are raiding (when applicable), Mages to summon late people, tactics discussion threads, online research, wipeout recovery plans, set time limits, etc. All these things need to be considered in order for you to be ready for the raid. Additionally things like how contested a particular camp is need to be considered when scheduling a raid. Some of the more highly contested camps may require abnormally early start times and whatnot. Anytime you start before noon you can expect an abnormally high no-show rate. This can be compensated for by over-bulking your raid (making it larger than needed) so that when the time comes you have enough if not more than enough people. At any rate if you plan ahead and think things through things will usually go much better in the long run.


Section 2 – Getting Started.

Section 2A [Gathering At The Meeting Place] – If you have done your job right, when the time hits 30 minutes before the raid you will be there to start organizing, check the camp, etc. At this point you need to ask anyone and everyone not already there that you WANT to be there if they need help with transit to the raid site. At this stage it is critical to have one or more druids and/or Wizards ready to go. Remember the goal id to have everyone there and have groups done by start time, or at least 15 minutes afterwards. Nothing frustrates a raider like sitting around at the zone line twiddling their thumbs while they wait on you to make groups and get latecomers in. Anyhow do what you have to do to get the people there.

Section 2B [Get a List of Players] – At this point you need to do groups. Groups will be handled in its own section, but in order to make them you need to figure out who is in attendance, what level they are, and what class. I f you have properly organized with a sign up from the beginning, you should have most of this information. Regardless, the easiest thing to do is just ask everyone to send you a tell with their name, class and level. Make sure you stress EVERYONE because there are invariably people who feel they are so special that rules and requests don’t apply to them. Another method is to have everyone go UN-Anon and turn LFG ON. You can then use /who to create the list


Section 3 – Making Groups

Section 3A [Basic Group Structure] – Basic group structure for raids is to try and create well balanced self supporting groups. An “Ideal” Group has A Healer, a Tank, Buffs, and mana regen of some kind and “filler”. In actuality there are some basic underlying principles you can use in making groups that should help. The first component you want to have in a group is a Taunting tank of some kind, Warrior, Pally or SK. In the event of aggro being misplaced or an emergency this allows the group to mange its own aggro and peel off its own casters. Rangers and rogues can also be used in this capacity but bear in mind they (as a rule) have lower AC and HP compared to the three plate classes. The next component is a Cleric. If you don’t have a cleric it is best to use either 2 druids or a druid and shaman or druid and pally combo. The main issue is that while a druid CAN heal effectively they tend to be low on mana from nukes and to run out of mana a lot faster than clerics, as they have nothing nearly as mana efficient as CH. When using focus tanking they are usually more than adequate as healers on no focus tanks, but can be iffy on focus tanks or offtanks (focus tanks and offtanks will be explained later). Shamans are a bad choice as primary healer, as their Malo, Slow and buffs spells will overall provide far greater value to a raid than their heals. But as a backup they work like a charm. Likewise higher level Paladins make excellent backup healers, and bot just due to Lay on Hands (a man-less ability which instantly heals a target for an amount of HP = to the Paladins max base HP) – Paladins have many excellent healing spells and they even get a 90% xp rez at lvl 59 – things to bear in mind if you are cleric shy and druid heavy. Once healing has been established a mana source of some kind is always a good option. Ideally each group will get one bard and one enchanter. You never have enough bards and chanters to go around though, so I tend to put them in groups together regardless. My reasoning is this – the chanters have to handle Mez, Clarity, and depending on the availability of shamans – haste. That and they can clarity anyone whether they are grouped or not. Bards, with the exception of the new highest level bard song, cannot pump mana for ungrouped people. As such I keep the chanters with the bards. I also try to make sure that certain specialty groups – like pull group and offtank, always have a bard to keep their casters mana happy. Once mana has been established you then fill in the group with a additional melee or caster classes. I try to keep casters in bard groups and melee likely to accidentally gain aggro in cleric groups. Monks and SKs are great to put under a druid if they aren’t pulling because if the druid looses mana and they gain aggro they can always feign death to loose it. Druids are also nice for evac / porting capabilities, but most higher level raids are more likely to try and camp clerics and stick out a fight than they are to evac from a place that’s hard to get to. The other thing that’s important is picking a good group leader for each group. I strongly recommend people that you know to be honest, dilligent, and responsible. They may have to make snap decisions and they will be responsible for policing loot and keeping track of the group for you, and as such have to be people you know will do the job. I personally like making sure all my group leaders are from my guild – it gives me both extra trust and security as well as a spare channel through which I can communicate to them and not the whole zone. That’s pretty much all there is to it… ** tip ** one other things to bear in mind are that if you are light on healers but heavy on casters - keep your wizards and chanters full of mana and they can chain stun the currently active mob to reduce damage to the tanks. Likewise using debuffs and slow spells on mobs makes a huge difference in their damage output.

Section 3B [Pull Group} – One fundamental principle of a raid is that if pulls are not controlled by a single person (in other words if anyone pulls anything they feel like) a raid is VERY likely to become overwhelmed and get wiped out. Raids are a funny thing. 4 mobs that a raid could absolutely dominate one at a time can wipe the entire raid out in the same amount of time if they are not single pulled or mezzed with adequate speed. This becomes especially true at higher levels when fighting un-mezzable mobs that are a big challenge one at a time never mind when extras get pulled by someone that doesn’t know whats going on with mana and whatnot. Holding these facts in mind, the logical choice becomes to appoint one single individual as puller – responsible for pulling mobs to the group. This sort of activity requires certain level of healing and buffing capacity as well as alertness in a group. To this end, my pull group is usually structured as follows: Main Tank, Puller (Monk) <sometimes main tank can be puller too, depending on situation>, Cleric, Chanter, Bard, Shaman. The Shaman slows and buffs, the cleric heals and buffs, the chanter hastes, tashes mezzes & buffs, the bard plays mana and whatever other songs are necessary (either OOC or attack songs or resist songs) Everyone being in the same group facilitates communication and keeps the group on their toes.

Section 3C [Offtank Group] – ideally offtank group would be a mirror of pull group, however the ony REAL necessity is a taunting Plate class Tank and a Cleric. If the raid has more than one bard chanter or Shaman, offtank group is the right place for them to be. The 6th melee slot need not be devoted to a mink however – most any class will do. The goal of the offtank group is to keep its Tank alive while that tank keeps a mob busy in the case of multiple pulls. The offtank should work closely with main tank and puller.

Section 3D [Rez Group] – in the event of a wipeout – quick and decisive action can make all the difference. To maximize the speed of recovery make sure to rez your clerics bards and at least 1 high level chanter 1st. Then have the clerics and bards group for mana. Obviously this is not necessary if you have a cleric with their epic. Similar groups can be made to feed Necros in the event of a corpse summon being necessary. Also MOD Rods are available from mages to help gain additional mana.

Section 3E [Group Making Tips] – When making groups at the beginning of the raid be sure to write them down and leave plenty of room to make later additions and subtractions. The ability to quickly reorganize your forces in response to early arrivals and late departures will not only help make you look good, it will keep the raid from sitting around bored while you perform a simple task.


Section 4 – Communications

Section 4A [Picking a Channel] In many cases a raid will have people from various guilds in it. This means that when you communicate to the raid you need to have a way to do it that everyone can hear. This basically leaves you with OOC, Shout, and Auction. If you have a zone to yourself, great – go buck wild with the channels, but if (as is often the case) you have to share with another raid, it is best to negotiate with the other raid and pick a single channel for communications. Shout is nice because the colors stand out more and are easier to read. Once you have picked a channel make sure everyone sticks with it. And apologize if you slip up and use the other raids channel. Its in everyone’s best interests to get this issue sorted out right up front and to stay amiable about it. As a rule of thumb the raid that was there first gets to pick the channel.

Section 4B [Laying Down the Law] Communications are essential to a raid – as is a clear understanding of what people should be doing at all times. If people are joking around in the raid channel and the raid misses an incoming message or something because of chat spam then the raid can be wiped out. As such it is important to clearly define who can use what communications channels and when. As a rule the “main channel” should be reserved for Pull group, offtanks, heal messages, pull and assist messages, Loot master messages, Emergency communications such as clerics camp commands, and comments form the raid leader. Once these rules have been established enforce them - if you have to you can threaten to and then kick people off the raid who violate the rules. For the most part this is never a problem and some leeway should be allowed. The last thing a raid leader wants is to come off like an uptight dictator.

Section 4C [Use your Group Leaders] – earlier I stressed the importance of picking a good group leader for each group. Now is where this comes into play. Use your group leaders to monitor their groups, for things like mana, AFK / LD status, what gets looted, is the group ready to move, is the group all arrived at new location, who needs a rez, etc. The group leader will be allowed to use the raid communications channel so they must be someone who will do so responsibly. Also if you choose group leaders in your own guild you will have the option of communicating to them through guildchat if need be. The best group leaders are going to do things like make sure everyone stays with the group, report AFKs and LDs, etc. For this reason its best to pick someone that’s responsible and has a good head on their shoulders. They will often also set the tone and mood for their group – so try to avoid control freaks and people that are overly uptight.

Section 4D [Keep People “In the Know”] – one of the worst experiences you can have as a player is to be on a raid where you never know what is going on. It leads to bickering, complaining, and a negative pessimistic atmosphere. As such, always try to keep the raid appraised of details as much as possible, and warn them in advance as to what will be expected of them. Little things like “we’re waiting on the rogue to get back from LD” or “We’re moving up after this next pull – be ready” can make a huge difference both to them and to how well the raid runs. A good rule of thumb is that if people are going to have to sit around doing nothing for too much more than a minute they should know why. Even if its just “/shout Mana break – take 2 or /shout 5 minute break – smoke em if ya got em” it will allow people to expect the delay and they will not feel resentful about it. Its also important to make sure that things like primary assist, offtank, secondary assist, who is doing what buffs, how loot will be handled and who will handle it, etc. should be communicated clearly and repeated at least once. On thinks like focus tanking it will be necessary to remind people periodically, and it is also important to communicate to any late comers and make sure that they are up to speed on everything. Its especially important to make sure people are clear on how loot will work, and what will default if anything.


Section 5 - Spoils of War – aka Phat Lewtz

Section 5A [Lootmaster] – before you ever start your raid you need to appoint a Lootmaster. This person will be responsible for keeping track of what drops, who has it, coordinating who eventually gets it etc. In zones with a lot of no drop stuff they really need to be on the ball. It may be yourself or another but rest assured that it’s a thankless job and also the one most likely to be exposed to conflicts and harsh feelings. The person running this MUST be fair, mature, responsible and attentive. Bear in mind loot is what raids are all about. Handle it professionally and people will love you or at least respect you. Screw it up and you are quite possibly gonna have people resent you, or even make some enemies. Honest mistakes are ok – but don’t try to cover them up. Apologize immediately and sincerely – and correct the mistake as quickly as possible and everything should be OK. The lootmaster should also ensure that either the group leader for each group or a trusted member of the group selected by the group leader is responsible for looting all kills made by that corpse, keeping track of all coinage and reporting all items.

Section 5B [Loot Systems] – Another thing to have in place before the raid starts is what loot system you want to use. It is very important that you have this plan in place so that you aren’t trying to figure things out while some piece of armor rots on a corpse.
&#61607; The most basic loot system out there is just FFA loot – Free For All you loot what you find. This system requires no input from the raid leader but I strongly advise against it. It inevitably causes hard feelings.
&#61607; One rule used very widely is NBG aka Need Before Greed. This policy simply states that loot should be rolled on by and go to people who CAN and WILL use something. Raids don’t exist to get people cool equipment to sell, they exist to get neat stuff for people to wear. This system is nice in that it generally doesn’t offend anyone except for die hard loot mongers. When there is more than one person that can use something you simply have the people roll off.
&#61607; Another good rule is one item per person until everyone that can use whatever just dropped has already received something. This is only fair.
&#61607; One more advanced loot concept regularly employed in higher level repeating raids (where the same raid is help weekly or bi-weekly) the use of a points based system is applied. Basically attending the raid gains you “points” , over the course of many raids the points build up and depending on the system a person trades these point in to either default items to themselves or to give an advantage in roling. These systems exist so that people who keep going back to a regular raid again and again have something to show for their efforts. For example: I recently threw together a purely attendance based loot system for a weekly open enrollment Kael Arena Raid that I run. The way the system works is that each person is awarded one point for each raid attended. Each raid in which someone wins an armor piece generates a second number – lets call it their Looted number. The Looted number is then subtracted from the attendance number to give the Loot score. This score is used to determine who gets to roll when armor of a certain class drops. If a person has a higher score than another they get first dibs. The upside of this whole thing is that eventually everyone gets everything they need regardless of how crappy their luck is. The downside is that it takes a bit of maintenance after raid to maintain the list. I also recommend keeping the list in a publicly viewable thread and encouraging everyone to be responsible for double checking your work. That way if you make a mistake and forget to carry the 2 you will have at least SOME recourse with the person who got screwed.

Section 5C [General Loot Info] – There are 2 important divisions of loot on a raid – Drop-able and No Drop. The no drop loot MUST be handled as fast as possible because the winner must be the person to loot it. Drop-able loot should be looted by the group leader or designated group looter and held for disbursement at the end of the raid. This is a GREAT way to ensure that people stay for the whole raid instead of ducking out early. Another things that’s a good idea is to have a list of what drops where you will be raiding beforehand, including what classes can use it and what the stats are. This will help a lot in communicating to the raid who can and should roll on any given piece. Another important aspect of loot is the cash that is looted. Many people default this cash to pay for spell components and arrows used, or conversely the cash and cash items go to the sponsoring guild which provides the spell components and arrows itself. What you want to avoid is cleric and pullers out anywhere up to a couple hundred plat in gems or items at the end af a raid. It’s a bigger deal for high level clerics who are dumping around 10 to 12 plat each on the peridots they are using for high level symbol buffs. Enchanters also use these gems for their rune spells.

Section 6 – *Advanced Combat Techniques and Strategies.
* By advanced I mean something besides dogpile on the mobs every man for himself.

Section 6A [Main Assist] – One thing that is always a problem when you have more than one person trying to kill things is getting everyone to work together. This becomes infinitely more true and more difficult when dealing with a large raid with more than one group of people. One basic principle however, in killing mob is that if everyone kills the same thing then it will die very fast and not have a chance to do much damage. But how to coordinate this when you may have a pull with multiple mobs, sometimes even with the same name? The answer is simple. You choose ONE tank (should be someone responsible) to select each target in order and initiate the attack on it. Everyone sets up a hotkey to assist that person (ex: /assist Grunthos) This tank should have a hotkey to announce when he has acquired a new target (for example /shout Please ASSIST me in killing %t ). When the tank calls for assist everyone hits their hotkey and they will all be attacking the same mob. Mob dies. Rinse. repeat. A very simple and very effective concept. It can be taken one step further as well and that is known as focus tanking.

Section 6B [Focus Tanking] – Focus tanking is a variant of main assist, in that it uses a single tank as the focus for all people to assist. It is different in one respect in that the focus tank – usually a high level warrior Paladin or SK, also endeavors to take keep all the aggro from the mob focused on himself. (if you will forgive me I will use himself in the neutral sense – no offense to any of the many excellent female tanks please). The reason for this is that with hard hitting mobs it is nearly impossible for healers to keep everyone alive when the mobs are bouncing from player to player constantly. Whereas if the mob stays on one person its very easy for a couple of clerics to keep the tank alive against even the toughest of foes. This also takes advantage that there is a HUGE difference in the amount of damage a tank with higher AC will take compared to a ranger or rogue. The method used to accomplish this is very easy in theory and only a little bit harder in practice. Basically the focus tank attacks first and everyone holds off a while to allow him to build aggro. This may seem inefficient at first but it really is not. The best way to control this process is for the Focus Tank to establish hotkeys to the effect of “Gaining Aggro on %t – do NOT touch it!!!” and then “Please ASSIST me in killing %t now” to let people know what the tank is doing and when its time for them to pitch in.

Section 6C [Offtanking] – Offtanking is the practice of using an extra tank to keep a mob from running wild through the camp while a raid is killing a different mob. The Offtank is usually picked from the same classes as main assist / focus tank (warrior Pally SK) and must have a designated healer to keep him alive. Generally the offtank will have to be someone with good judgement that can pick up on which mob the focus tank is on and quickly gain aggro on the additional mobs. The offtank will typically have a message like “/shout I am OFFTANKING %t – do NOT assist me!!!!” to let people know there is an add, that they have it covered, and that everyone can just go about doing their job helping the main tank kill the main mob. Some people use an entire offtank group, or even run the offtank as a second primary assist just for different groups alltogether. All of the methods work, but the one *I* like the best is the single offtank working unassisted.

Section 6D [Chain Healing] – Sometimes your raid may have to fight mobs that hit so hard and fast that you will need multiple healers on the primary assist to keep him alive. There are a couple way to make this work. One is to have all the healers just spam the tank with smaller heals, but this is hardly mana efficient. The best way to ensure that the cleric’s mana is used to its full effect is to have them complete heal in a rotation using shouted messages to keep the rotation going. For instance lets say we have 5 Clerics, Surus, Fattybearr, Darianne, Selinaa and Melbasset. They are in a healign rotation on Grunthos as listed above. Once battle has been initiated Surus will hit his hotkey and CH Grunthos. The hotkey should be something like this: “ /shout Complete Heal INC to %t in 10 seconds – Fattybearr is next”. Fattybearr will then use her hotkey saying “/shout Complete Heal INC to %t in 10 Seconds – Darianne is next” This reapeats all the way through Melbasset who will have a message saying “/shout Complete Heal INC to %t – Surus is next” which will restart the cycle. This will allow time for the spells to cycle and the clerics to conserve a little mana. I’ve even seen people use tanks in rotations like this for REALLY hard mobs – basically they use level 55 or higher warriors, have them activate their defensive discipline, and when it gets to the end of its run that tank backs off and another comes in taunting. This is only necessary for the REALLY tough mobs like Velktor.

Section 6E [Chain Pulling and Splitting Pulls] – One thing that you may want to do in many cases if kill things that stand in groups too tight to prevent getting aggro on multiple mobs, which may be very tough and/or unmezzable. In these cases it is wise to use a monk warrior combination to “split pull” or “chain pull” basically you have the monk do an FD split and have the warrior use an arrow to peel off whatever mob is last left standing over the monk when they start walking back to their normal locations. This helps in that until the monk re-logs or the mob dies the monk retains some amount of aggro. Using a low aggro pull like arrows decreases the chances of extra mobs coming to join the party. It will take the warrior a few tries to get used to when to pull and when not to so he will want to stand out of aggro range of the camp to do it and use caution. If he accidentally bites off more than the raid can chew he can stand and die.

Section 6F [For the Greater Good] – One thing that kills a raid more surely than anything else is someone who gets aggro accidentally or pulls too many mobs panicing and running back to the camp with a massive train. Not only is this a good way for someone to get kicked off a raid it can also cause major problems and delays and wreck the morale of a raid. The best thing for this person to do in these situations is to get a LOC, stand and die, and feed the loc to the raid leader who should then endeavor to recover the corpse. Likewise a good raid leader will NEVER abandon a raid until all corpses have been recovered by one method or another. If this means hiring a necro to summon every last one then so be it. The most important things you can do if you get wiped out is to make calm quick decisions and begin the recovery process as soon as possible. Likewise, a raid leader should have plans in place for if things go wrong, such as those who can feign death while everyone else keeps the mobs busy while the clerics camp. I recommend having a tank and bard camp with the clerics as well to try and help with anything that arises when the monks say the area is clear and its ok to log back in.