OOC: Well, everyone is suffering debuffs...
On a d6, debuffs are pretty extreme. Plus the damage. Plus stacking and refreshing for multiple turns, and probably it will just keep stacking with every melee attack. Most of us will die to attrition, even if we do get away.
Higher penalties are for more severe damage rolls, not getting hit multiple times in a row. Plus, several of you have decent-ish defensive skills and/or are a good roll away from boosting them mid-combat, whereas the nautili lack an offensive bonus beyond the slime debuff.
I'm pretty much pinning my hopes on Ochita to somehow remove it all with water magic. Oh, but he's being debuffed too. Cue crit fail.
To be fair, he's kind of been walking around with a serious but not imminent wound for quite a while. I do think I mentioned several turns in advance that it was still a problem.
You couldn't have done 'screw you guys and die' any better way.
As for nuances...
I see *everyone* lost 20-40% HP last round. And we didn't even kill a single enemy.
You did kill one, and you wounded several more. They just happen to be enemies who have more members than can fit in combat right now anyway.
On that note, everyone lost HP because everyone's crowding around the chokepoint, which kind of defeats a lot of its purpose against these enemies. It's not a coincidence that everyone who attacks the nautili gets attacked by a new one slithering in, yet nobody's getting attacked by more than one and none are trying to slip all the way through.
Also, bad rolls. Even with debuffs, it seems unlikely everyone will lose every defensive roll or bungle every spell every round.
My 'slave' should already be attacking. Didn't I order her initiative up to full?
She's unarmed and not a caster. And also not very motivated to help out, though the looming threat of death would obviously fix that.