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This is a separate issue from the main point of this thread, but I'd worry that your changes to increase solos' action ratio would make them too powerful (edit: looking at the book, the Adult White Dragon does look pretty weak; still, these changes would substantially increase its power). In particular, solos have higher defenses and four at heroic (five at paragon/epic) times the HP of normal monsters. A solo is still essentially as powerful until the end of a fight (besides using its action points and having to recharge powers). By comparison the players get weaker over the course of a combat, using up encounter and daily powers and switching to at-wills.
In a normal combat, the players can and will focus fire, so the monsters lose offense over time as they are killed off, while the players have more ways to prevent the monsters from focusing fire and have healing surge triggers, which enables them to have "group hit points" in a way that monsters do not. So a solo should have lower damage capabilities than a group of 5 normal monsters. If a solo started out with the damage capabilities of close to 5 normal monsters of its level, it could easily be too strong.
I've been using my action ratio inspired design philosophy for just a few weeks now and only run one actual encounter for my party, and two independent playtests I've run for myself, but so far my experience hasn't shown them to be too powerful. I believe MM solos suffer in two ways that makes them a problem at the gaming table.
1.) They're boring
2.) They're not a challenge
The second is basically a subset of the first. They just don't do enough to be interesting or a challenge, this is what gives people the impression that solo encounters are uninteresting "grinds" that everyone wants to be over as soon as possible. They're a lot like the 3.5 edition fighter focused exclusively on getting the highest AC possible, sure he's hard to kill but he's about as threatening as a tortoise. In a word: Boring. Some people have proposed reducing this feeling of "grind" by reducing solo hp, and while that will reduce the feeling of "grind" it doesn't make the solo any more interesting it just reduces the amount of time the solo has to be boring. That's a compounding one bad design with another, essentially diluting the solo making him less potent, and therefore even less challenging or interesting.
I instead propose the opposite: concentrate the solo, make him more effective, give him more to do. Of course its possible to go overboard in this regard and make the solo too powerful, however I actually think that's hard to do. 4e has such an elasticity of challenge, PCs are resilient, resourceful and have powers enough to last themselves through the challenge. For example when I ran Jaxia, the solo I discussed in the other thread, she had an action ratio of 5:3, she could actually do more than the PC party in a given round, but at no point did I think we were in danger of a TPK. I thought I did a good job challenging my party.
I take the position that a majority of daily powers are written to be better against a solo than regular monster. This contributes to my players expending them only during the various challenging encounters, especially solos. At 7th level where my PCs were when this encounter took place each PC had three encounter powers and two dailies, not even a full compliment of powers compared to the higher tiers and yet the encounter was over in four rounds, a few dailies were spent and most people were just expending their last encounters when the solo was put down.
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While some effects are stronger in an encounter against solos than normal monsters (Lead the Attack, for example, in addition to the debuffs that this thread is mainly concerned with), other effects are weaker (Area attacks). At level 9, the White Dragon's level, debuffs are less of a problem than they'll become- I don't think there are any encounter stun powers in the heroic tier, for example
Now, I think that it would have made sense for D&D solos to be designed with slightly fewer HP and greater offense. However, given their high HP, you have to be careful with how strong you make their offenses. Edit: after having made this comment, I spotted the Adamantine Dragon MM2 preview (Monster Manual 2 Excerpts: Adamantine Dragon), and it looks both significantly better offensively and weaker defensively than the comparable solo 22 soldier Red Dragon. Its defenses are lower and its HP are four times that of a normal monster's, not the 5 in PH for paragon/epic solos. So if this is a trend, WotC is already redesigning solos in this way (no "outs", though).
While I think that outs are important, as we continue this discussion I'm leaning more towards saying they're not required, and especially advocating against any universal power for all solos, if for no other reason than a lack of variety leads to boring encounters, with cookie cutter monsters.
The second is basically a subset of the first. They just don't do enough to be interesting or a challenge, this is what gives people the impression that solo encounters are uninteresting "grinds" that everyone wants to be over as soon as possible.
I agree that as a whole, MM solos are too boring. Adding actions would make most solos more interesting and is essential to making some solos usable (Hydras!).
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I instead propose the opposite: concentrate the solo, make him more effective, give him more to do. Of course its possible to go overboard in this regard and make the solo too powerful, however I actually think that's hard to do. 4e has such an elasticity of challenge, PCs are resilient, resourceful and have powers enough to last themselves through the challenge. For example when I ran Jaxia, the solo I discussed in the other thread, she had an action ratio of 5:3, she could actually do more than the PC party in a given round, but at no point did I think we were in danger of a TPK. I thought I did a good job challenging my party.
I believe you had 6 PCs. So that's 6 level 7 PCs against a level 10 solo, roughly a level +2 encounter. If the players still have the ability to use all of their dailies, this should be a challenging but not a "danger of TPK" difficulty fight, if the monster is built appropriately for level 10. When you're designing a solo, you're going to compensate for overall greater action percentage and the result you got indicates that you pretty much got it right as a level 10 encounter.
I highly doubt the White Dragon with the changes you've envisioned would even come close to TPKing a level 9 party that had its full resources available. However, would it be more dangerous than a typical level 9 encounter? I think that's the relevant standard. By the book, I'd say "less dangerous", but that doesn't mean that you couldn't have overshot a little. Difficult terrain aura that it ignores, a minor action attack that pushes, with a rechargable version that hits multiple enemies, and greater resistance to save ends effects is quite a bit.
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While I think that outs are important, as we continue this discussion I'm leaning more towards saying they're not required, and especially advocating against any universal power for all solos, if for no other reason than a lack of variety leads to boring encounters, with cookie cutter monsters.
The alternative I think it is relevant to compare "universal power for all solos" to is "using existing published solos, the vast majority of whom have no 'outs', without adding any outs whatsoever." I'm not going to dispute that if solos were designed with similarly useful, flavorful outs as fit them individually, things would be better than if you added one out to all solos. If that's a realistic alternative for a DM to do him (or her)-self, he or she doesn't need any universal power and it can be left at that.
There's one more thing to keep in mind when doing math for a solo. The damage a solo does per round is not actually meant to be equal to five monsters. It's less. The game designers assume monsters will be dying over the 10 rounds of combat. They also assume most players concentrate their damage to take out one monster at a time. A solo's staying power is what makes a solo dangerous. They are alive and dishing out their full damage for the entire combat. While a group of 5 monsters will have 5 damage dealers in the beginning and slowly drop off as combat continues. So when you stun a solo you are preventing the avg monsters that are alive in a randomly chosen round of combat which is actually 3 monsters.
There's one more thing to keep in mind when doing math for a solo. The damage a solo does per round is not actually meant to be equal to five monsters. It's less. The game designers assume monsters will be dying over the 10 rounds of combat. They also assume most players concentrate their damage to take out one monster at a time. A solo's staying power is what makes a solo dangerous. They are alive and dishing out their full damage for the entire combat. While a group of 5 monsters will have 5 damage dealers in the beginning and slowly drop off as combat continues. So when you stun a solo you are preventing the avg monsters that are alive in a randomly chosen round of combat which is actually 3 monsters.
This is a good point; I get to it in the post Morgan_Scott quotes at the top of this page, but I never really updated the main post to reflect it. This is a reason why you definitely don't want status effects to be so weak as to be 1/5 of a normal monster's average duration against a solo, since a status effect that hurts offense used on a whole combat of normal monsters would be stronger than one used on a solo (and there aren't many 'status effects' that affect defense much more greatly when used on a solo than a regular monster- you need something like Lead the Attack, which isn't a condition at all).
A similar calculation for elites indicates that they should be roughly 1.7 normal monsters worth of damage or so. If you assume 2 elites with 2.5x normal monster HP, you get that there are 1.5 alive at a typical point in the combat, which means they should have about 2x the offense of a regular monster if you assume you're facing 3 regular monsters; then roughly scale this down for a 2x HP elite.
With this assumption, it's pretty clear that save ends effects used on elites aren't that much stronger than normal monsters when accounting for the save bonus and higher defenses (1-round effects are comparatively stronger, but not that much stronger). Still, solos have substantially more firepower than elites, but no higher defenses, and no higher saves.
This does suggest, though, that a smaller rather than larger fix could be appropriate.
Previously my idea for a specific stun-fix was:
Immutable Opponent When this creature would be stunned or dominated, if it is not dazed it can make a saving throw. If that saving throw succeeds, it is dazed instead (the effect has its usual duration).
You could probably add some further penalty beyond dazed and leave a stun on a solo still comparable "monster-offense equivalents prevented" than on an elite. -2 to hit on top of Dazed seem about right?
Of course, if the adamantine dragon preview is an indication, the balance of solos may end up shifting towards more offense, less defense, in which case a solo might be more like 4x offense (and have lower defenses to compensate), which would substantially strengthen stun effects, since they take away more monster offense and are more likely to hit the monster's lower AC in general.
I agree that as a whole, MM solos are too boring. Adding actions would make most solos more interesting and is essential to making some solos usable (Hydras!).
My solution for Dragons was to give them an arcane or divine Class Template. Not just because solos are boring, but also because Dragons in 4E have no magic to them. They are just big bricks with several attacks.
I think that adding a functional template or class template to a solo might help out in this regard.
__________________ The first sign of a broken rule is when someone suggests that the way to stop it is by readying an action.
My houserule for this problem is going to be a bit simpler.
Any condition that prevents a creature from taking any actions on a solo will get an immediate save. It does not matter if the condition normally gets a save or not. If it is a "lasts until the end of the next turn" type of condition, it still gets an immediate save.
This is only for conditions that decrease actions to zero. To my knowledge, that would include Petrified and Stunned only.
It would not affect Weakened or Dazed or any other condition where the creature can still take one or more actions.
The save is not modified by anything. 10 or better, the solo saves. 9 or worse, the solo does not save.
I have no problem with PCs ganging up on a solo and getting an action advantage. But, the action advantage cannot be taking the solo to zero actions without a save.
__________________ The first sign of a broken rule is when someone suggests that the way to stop it is by readying an action.
I kind of like the idea about 2 saves a round the solo has, and each one can possible degrade a condition to one step lower. Maybe getting rid of the +5 bonus to +2 would help balance that. And they would get saves vs. conditions that don't normally allow a save.
I haven't used solos much yet, but i've already decided to bump down their hp and probably add in an additional encounter power to surprise the PCs.
One of my favorite priniciples of fourth edition is exception based design, a single simple set of general rules applied all of the time, unless something specific says not to. A house rule making saving throws work differently for solos moves away from this priniciple. I believe having saving throws that work one way most of the time, but a different way of solos is two sets of general rules. All solo's is too general to me, which is one reason I favor specific outs written into monster write ups as specific exceptions.
Morgan, you have a good point here too. I'm sure as 4e evolves the designers (and DMs) will continue to find better ways of doing things. I guess what i foresee happening is that solos in the MM2 and MM3 will be flat out more INTERESTING than any solo in the MM1. So, I guess the simplest solution would be just to "borrow" ideas from the new critters and slap them onto the old ones. Unless one just feels to constrained to use them as is.
Of course, if the adamantine dragon preview is an indication, the balance of solos may end up shifting towards more offense, less defense, in which case a solo might be more like 4x offense (and have lower defenses to compensate), which would substantially strengthen stun effects, since they take away more monster offense and are more likely to hit the monster's lower AC in general.
This guess was right: WotC has changed the way they design solo monsters in general with MM2. See: D&D Alumni: Demogorgon.
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In your own version of this challenge, you might play these two as originally presented, or you might reconfigure Orcus closer to the newer solo monster design tenets: give him 20% fewer hit points, -2 defenses, but also increase his damage output by 50% when bloodied.
I don't have MM2 to know exactly how they've implemented this, but it seems like solos are becoming roughly 4x the offense and 4x the defense of a normal monster, rather than 3x the offense and 5x the defense. Since status effects tend to affect monster offense much more than monster defense, this change means that status effects become stronger when used on solos than they were for MM1 solos. I don't know if they've started giving monsters "outs"; besides multi-headed monsters, which already had something like this built in, have they added "outs" to solos?
The game designers assume monsters will be dying over the 10 rounds of combat.
However, what people's gaming experience is also showing is that solo's are often more vulnerable to the numerous effects a party puts out.
In a group of 5 monsters, a wizard might stun 2 of them, but 3 go on. With a solo, you can rack up save penalties, conditions, and the like to debilitate them for a number of rounds.
My houserule for this problem is going to be a bit simpler.
Any condition that prevents a creature from taking any actions on a solo will get an immediate save. It does not matter if the condition normally gets a save or not. If it is a "lasts until the end of the next turn" type of condition, it still gets an immediate save.
I like this. It seems to accomplish much of what Elric's house rule does, but IMO, it's simpler. Less to remember. Though I would apply it to any condition. I'm perfectly okay with a solo being harder to knock prone, for example.
I like this. It seems to accomplish much of what Elric's house rule does, but IMO, it's simpler. Less to remember. Though I would apply it to any condition. I'm perfectly okay with a solo being harder to knock prone, for example.
Extending Karinsdad's rule to any condition is the "deity rule" with a reduced chance of making the save. It avoids the problem of making solos too hard to affect, since it's less generous to the solo than the deity rules.
Once you make it a "save that isn't modified by anything", you could easily pick the target on a d20 roll, since "save that isn't modified by anything" is no different "a roll with a 55% chance of success." You could adjust it to 11+ to shake an effect off for a true 50/50, and so forth.
"Condition" would include marks, but wouldn't include, say, a -2 to hit from Enfeebling Strike, or other "until end of next turn" debuffs (e.g., Ranger's Armor Splinter).
This could interact a little strangely with the different marking abilities. For example, a Paladin who marks a solo successfully can keep it marked every round without needing to mark it again, and can use the mark as a minor action, so he could potentially attempt a mark twice in a round at the beginning of combat. By comparison, a Fighter marks the target of his attack, so he won't generally be able to mark twice in a round, and has to re-mark every round.
However, what people's gaming experience is also showing is that solo's are often more vulnerable to the numerous effects a party puts out.
In a group of 5 monsters, a wizard might stun 2 of them, but 3 go on. With a solo, you can rack up save penalties, conditions, and the like to debilitate them for a number of rounds.
This is true, but I'm not sure why it's relevant to this thread. From a purely descriptive perspective, MM solos clearly do not do as much damage as 5 normal monsters.
The point of this thread is how to modify solos so status effects aren't as strong against them. The question is: "How can solos be modified so that status effects aren't too strong against them?" Given that status effects used on solos compared to normal monsters have a comparatively larger impact on solo offense than solo defense, you want to balance status effects by knowing how many normal monster-rounds a round of offense from a solo is worth. That answer isn't 5 in the MM, and the reason it isn't 5 is that, status conditions aside, a solo with the durability of 5 normal monsters and the offense of 5 normal monsters would be stronger than 5 normal monsters (and it doesn't seem the designers thought about the status conditions problem).
Indeed, if solo monsters had 5x the offense of normal monsters to compensate for the fact that status conditions affect them more, this would be a reason to combine a weakening of status conditions used against solos with a weakening of solo offense. You wouldn't want to say "solos have stronger offenses than we might otherwise want them to have in order to balance the great effectiveness of status conditions used against them" and then say "solos are too vulnerable to status effects; let's change that!" in isolation.
From the previews and the suggestion on modifying Orcus in the article I linked above, it doesn't seem like solos are being designed with the offense of 5 normal monsters in MM2 either. The new standard seems roughly 4x the offense and 4x the durability of a normal monster.
Extending Karinsdad's rule to any condition is the "deity rule" with a reduced chance of making the save. It avoids the problem of making solos too hard to affect, since it's less generous to the solo than the deity rules.
It is less generous, that's true, since past the first initial round.
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Once you make it a "save that isn't modified by anything", you could easily pick the target on a d20 roll, since "save that isn't modified by anything" is no different "a roll with a 55% chance of success." You could adjust it to 11+ to shake an effect off for a true 50/50, and so forth.
True, and I was considering changing solo saves to say, +4 and having them apply to every roll... which I would do if I thought it wasn't excessive. I could do say, +2 to the "immediate" save and then +5 to all other normal saves, but I prefer the simplicity of "10+" saves though, like any other [non-solo, non-elite] save.
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"Condition" would include marks, but wouldn't include, say, a -2 to hit from Enfeebling Strike, or other "until end of next turn" debuffs (e.g., Ranger's Armor Splinter).
Specifically, I meant any of the PHB p. 277 conditions. Daze, sleep, stun, prone, restrained... and whatever else is there.
Well since the MM2 just came out, it might be helpful to look at the new mechanics for solos that have helped with this.
1) Saves at the beginning of the turn and end. The Copper Dragon for example can make saves against immobilized, restrained, and the like at the beginning and end of his turn. The PH2 errated saving throws so that if you make multiple ones in the same round it doesn't accelerate harmful effects (aka the weirdness of hobgoblins being potential more vulnerable to sleep).
2) Multiple turns in one round. This is a new mechanic that basically allows a creature multiple chances to shake off effects simply by having more than one turn per round. However, you can accelerate conditions (like sleep) with all the saving throws.
Both of this effects do not help with "until the end of your turn" effects many PCs have, which I was surprised about. To me those are quite common effects, and it seems strange that at higher levels they can become stronger than save ends effects.
Yeah, increasingly I am thinking that 'end of your next turn' should be replaced by 'end of its next turn' - which in turn just gets replaced by something like "Stunned" or "Dazed" without a listed duration, and have that go away whenever you get a save against it automatically. That way (save ends) is _never_ a disadvantage.
The downside of doing that is when you do a condition to get combat advantage for an ally, you'd potentially want to do initiative shennanigans to make it work. Bleah.
It is less generous, that's true, since past the first initial round.
Huh? The reason the deity rules are more generous to the monster is that the solo's +5 bonus to saves applied on its immediate save to end a condition, and also that it can make those immediate saves against ongoing damage (an immediate save against ongoing damage is excessive; ongoing damage is arguably weaker against solos than normal monsters in the first place because of their save bonus).
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Specifically, I meant any of the PHB p. 277 conditions. Daze, sleep, stun, prone, restrained... and whatever else is there.
Right. Marked is a PH pg 277 condition, which is why I mentioned the strange effects a "deity-type rule" has on marks.
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Originally Posted by Stalker0
Well since the MM2 just came out, it might be helpful to look at the new mechanics for solos that have helped with this.
This reveals a general problem with applying "one-size fits all" solutions as WotC changes monster design. If WotC takes steps over time to give solos more "outs", then it's not clear whether you'd want to still apply your original fix to the new solos that were designed with “outs” in mind. You could apply the fix to, say, just pre-MM2 solos, but there are clearly MM2 solos that weren’t given significant outs. At that point, you’re getting into the judgment calls that you’d try to avoid with a “one size fits all” rule.
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Originally Posted by keterys
Yeah, increasingly I am thinking that 'end of your next turn' should be replaced by 'end of its next turn' - which in turn just gets replaced by something like "Stunned" or "Dazed" without a listed duration, and have that go away whenever you get a save against it automatically. That way (save ends) is _never_ a disadvantage.
The downside of doing that is when you do a condition to get combat advantage for an ally, you'd potentially want to do initiative shennanigans to make it work. Bleah.
There are some abilities that are “until the end of your next turn” where only you benefit from the ability. For example, Daggermaster PP’s Dagger Advantage feature. These abilities clearly need to stay until end of your next turn, so you’d have to make special exceptions here.
Huh? The reason the deity rules are more generous to the monster is that the solo's +5 bonus to saves applied on its immediate save to end a condition, and also that it can make those immediate saves against ongoing damage (an immediate save against ongoing damage is excessive; ongoing damage is arguably weaker against solos than normal monsters in the first place because of their save bonus).
Sorry, posted before my thoughts were complete. I'm not sure what you mean by diety rules (at first I thought you mean your own solution), but the immediate save rules would not have the +5 bonus. I agree it should not apply to ongoing damage. Similarly, I don't think it should apply to marks.
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Right. Marked is a PH pg 277 condition, which is why I mentioned the strange effects a "deity-type rule" has on marks.
Ah. So is there any problem with wording it as, "A solo gets an immediate save [without its +5 bonus] versus any condition, except versus Marks."
I didnt read EVERY post in this thread, but I want to give a personnal exemple of "too strong" powers against solos.
I'm playing a pally, stricker one (Dragonslaying fullblade +2) and I fought against one young red dragon when I was lvl 8 with one mage and one rogue of the same level. The mage did sleep, used the orb power and the dragon missed his saving throws... with only Martyr's Retribution power I did around 140 dmg one shot, 20 more and the dragon had to do his save against death. We searched for something that would say that the dragon is immune to sleep or something, but it wasnt.
A level 1 daily power which can totally own a solo isn't balanced at all. So I agree to do something agaisnt the effects that a save can end, but not against "until end of next turn" effects. Though I dont know what should be done, maybe immunity to any effects that render helpless and something else but again, I'm not a pro and we juste got into the 4th edition.
Sorry, posted before my thoughts were complete. I'm not sure what you mean by diety rules (at first I thought you mean your own solution), but the immediate save rules would not have the +5 bonus. I agree it should not apply to ongoing damage. Similarly, I don't think it should apply to marks.
The deity rules are special rules used for deities, high level solos like Tiamat or Vecna. Among other things, deities get an immediate save to end ongoing damage or any condition placed on them.
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Ah. So is there any problem with wording it as, "A solo gets an immediate save [without its +5 bonus] versus any condition, except versus Marks."
That seems pretty good. It's clear what is or isn't covered; on PH page 277, covered; not on page 277, not covered. You might want Attack penalties to be covered as well, but you can't have everything. In return, this doesn't affect "grants combat advantage" type effects or ongoing damage.
You'd need to clarify what happens if a solo gets hit by, say, 5 ongoing damage and weakened (save ends both). Presumably you'd want the save to only end the weakened condition. You'd also want to clarify what happens if a solo suffers multiple conditions at once; I could see going with either "make a save against each" or "make one save against both."
Since it's an immediate save, you'd need to specify how this interacts with the Orb of Imposition- does it happen before a player can use the Orb, or after (of course, as mentioned in my initial post, the Orb deserves a house rule reducing its power and if you use the one I suggest there, this question doesn't arise). Lastly, because this is a actual save, regular save penalties apply to it, which is thematically reasonable. Like the Orb of Imposition, you have to watch out for the AV static save penalty items (Cunning Weapons, Phrenic Crown, Earthroot Staff etc.), which are too powerful, deserve a house rule whether you're using this fix or not, and reduce the efficacy of this fix.
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