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I'm about to use some Myconids, from MM2 in an adventure.
But I fail to see how could they effectively work together.
Myconid Rotpriest
The Rotpriest's best attacks work best in melee or amid enemies.
Yet it has two other abilities that work best far from enemies and adjacent to allies.
Myconid Sovereign
As a Controller, it's only good power is a rechargable blast.
Not of much use behind the front line (when not recharged, obviously)
I mean, he can't reliably be on the back and remain useful as a Controller.
Commanding Spores, a Leader power, is absolutely weak: a Standard action for an allie's shift.
So, he should stay behind, but he rarely can attack (50% of the time) and the other half of the time he does weak leader stuff.
Myconid Guard
He doesn't have a Soldier's AC.
His Encounter power doesn't encourage been side by side with allies. Which is counterproductive for a Soldier (specially to synergize with the rotpriest).
He's at-will attack fails to do Soldiery stuff.
Anyone used them? How was your experience?
Should they be tweaked?
How useful/strong is Roots of the Colony?
Hang on here, just because a monster attack is weak doesn't mean the monster won't use it.
I sense you're looking at your monsters with a player's eye - looking to pick the best deals out of a big selection.
Well, if you do, don't.
The monster "powers" are there to be used, not to be disregarded as "not good enough". Think of it as showcasing the monster through its attacks. The goal isn't necessarily to do well, the goal is to confront the players with a large selection of sometimes-whacky attack forms.
Most monsters are supposed to be not "good enough" - they just don't know it.
Your job as DM is to create fun for your players - not to play all monsters optimally. In other words, it's perfectly fine for a monster with a fungus for a brain to use all its powers, even the sorry-ass weak ones.
If your players are steamrolling the Myconids; don't bother optimizing each and every foe; instead simply combine the next two encounters into a single one (perhaps by disregarding any "these foes don't call for backup" text in the adventure)!
Most monsters are supposed to be not "good enough" - they just don't know it.
Your job as DM is to create fun for your players - not to play all monsters optimally. In other words, it's perfectly fine for a monster with a fungus for a brain to use all its powers, even the sorry-ass weak ones.
Thats absolutely right. Sometimes the players have the most fun when the monsters are blundering about in an enthusiastic but ultimately disorganised way, reacting to whatever grabs their attention at the time instead of having an orderly or effective plan of attack.
Its also worth remembering that some creatures will have set preconceptions of "how to hunt", usually animals, these creatures will try and apply those methods to PCs even when that might not be wise.
Think of lions stalking gazelle in the savannah. Now think of lions stalking PCs in the savannah. The lions will try and use the same tactics but the encounter won't go the way the lions are expecting.
I think the myconids could work pretty well together. The guards and rotpriests get into melee, use their close attacks whenever a decent opportunity arises, and use Roots of the Colony to distribute the damage done by the PCs, so that all of the myconids stay up longer and can keep whacking at the party.
The sovereign hangs back, uses its rechargeable attack whenever it can, and absorbs some damage when necessary with Roots of the Colony.
Make it feel like the party is beating up on a whole network of mushrooms, rather than just a group of individuals.
Roots of the Colony is pretty nasty since it effectively means when you fight Myconids its practically as if they had one giant hit point pool. Thus 5 myconids will ALL stand until the very end of the encounter, doubling their action economy roughly.
I think the reason the other Myconid powers are not SUPER incredible is just this, if they were the shroomheads would be scary tough to beat at all.
Even so consider a Rotpriest. He stands behind the lines and uses Sacrifice for the Colony to absorb the damage dealt to the guards in front of him. Then he regenerates. If he dies he lifebursts and pumps the guards back up by 10 HP each. His melee/close powers are decent so if he happens to be on the front lines he can easily hold his own.
The guards can either simply fight melee style and spread out damage amongst them or if the opportunity arises jump into the middle of the party and drop pacification spores to rob the party of attacks. Even when surrounded they will be hard to take down due to Roots of the Colony.
The sovereign isn't worth a huge amount in combat, though his dazing power is handy. Commanding Spores is a weak power certainly but it gives him something to do every round and if he can shift guards into ideal position to use pacification spores it isn't all that bad.
Overall the mushroom men are fairly weak monsters, but I would suggest using mass numbers of them against a bit higher level PCs and see what happens. Collectively they'll have loads of HP and even with their weak defenses it will be a tough attrition battle for the party.
Alternatively a small number of them used vs lower level PCs (1st or 2nd level) should be fun too as the party will hit often but the shrooms will continue to fight hard.
Overall these fights devolve into the party doing massive amounts of damage and the shrooms just taking it and coming back for more. Its fun.
Roots of the Colony is pretty nasty since it effectively means when you fight Myconids its practically as if they had one giant hit point pool. Thus 5 myconids will ALL stand until the very end of the encounter, doubling their action economy roughly.
Yes, I'm aware of that.
But I'm not sure how that translates mechanically.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
I think the reason the other Myconid powers are not SUPER incredible is just this, if they were the shroomheads would be scary tough to beat at all.
The underpowerd powers are not the main issue.
The problem are the mutually exclusive powers.
You can't have a close burst that damages everyone and a power that when you die it heals nearby creatures.
(unless you explicitly desgin a monster that deals lots of damage, but
"compensates" it when it dies, which the Rotmaster is not)
Quote:
Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
Even so consider a Rotpriest. He stands behind the lines and uses Sacrifice for the Colony to absorb the damage dealt to the guards in front of him. Then he regenerates. If he dies he lifebursts and pumps the guards back up by 10 HP each. His melee/close powers are decent so if he happens to be on the front lines he can easily hold his own.
If he stands in the back, he does zero damage to the party.
And he isn't healing or absorbing enough damage to justify that.
At least mathematically I can't see how it adds up.
He even has an at-will close burst 3 power. And he's a brute.
That SCREAMS "get in the middle of the enemies and damage all of them"
Quote:
Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
The guards can either simply fight melee style and spread out damage amongst them or if the opportunity arises jump into the middle of the party and drop pacification spores to rob the party of attacks. Even when surrounded they will be hard to take down due to Roots of the Colony.
Yep, I see that working.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred
The sovereign isn't worth a huge amount in combat, though his dazing power is handy. Commanding Spores is a weak power certainly but it gives him something to do every round and if he can shift guards into ideal position to use pacification spores it isn't all that bad.
Well, I thought that his shift-giving at-will would be handing in repositioning the rotpriest and the guards.
But it doesn't feel strong enough.
Anyone has a practical experience on how these creatures work in real combat?
Maybe I'm underestimating them.
I think the thing about the Myconids is that with a bunch of them together (especially with a Rotpriest), they have a lot of choice as to when each of them dies. So the Rotpriest can start out by wading into melee ahead of the Guards and use decomposing spray for a few turns -- then when the accumulated damage starts to add up, it can fall back to the other 'nids before deliberately sacrificing itself for a Life Burst.
Shift-giving doesn't seem like much, but it's pretty nice for setting up flanks and getting the most out of the other creatures' bursts. I sort of see the Sovereign as mostly standing a few squares back, occasionally darting in to blast Spore Burst when it recharges. It has good AC and Fort, though, so it's not really bad at all in close combat.
I used a smalll mycanoid band who attacked the PCs while they were rampaging through their spore colony under a lake.
They rose up from the ground, and demanded that the PCs stop.
Since no one spoke deep speech, there was a bit of a communication barrier, so the Mycanoids attacked when the PCs didn't stop moving around.
The guards rushed in with their Pacification Spores then started beating on the PCs and rotpriest kept using his Decomposing Spray from a distance.
While describing the rotpriest I said: "The mushroom man sprays a foul smelling, black, necrotic looking liquid at you."
I actually had a PC ask: "Is he peeing on me? Eww..."
__________________ I LOVE being a monster!
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And she said, "What?"
And I said, "I'm a Monster!" <RAWR>
-Ryan Miller
I can see the players weeping at these guys as it doesn't quite matter how much they keep hitting, they can take enormous amounts of damage. Two Rotpriests who can take the full damage from attacks onto themselves and then fall back to regenerate? Nasty. And the 2d10+3 damage from the Rotpriests melee attack is nothing to be sneezed at, especially not at 3rd level.
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The myconid sovereign's recharge is pretty likely, too, at 50%. His melee attack isn't great, but it's not terrible either: I'd say he wants to be fairly close to melee therefore.
Basically, looks like if you have a few of them, they can be quite effective tactically. Daze vs. will in a blast is pretty nasty at level 4, and the damage distribution effect means that it'll be hard for PC's to focus their damage. Even the guards have a daze-like encounter power.
__________________
4e balanced random loot system
- Think item wishlists are devilspawn?
- Dislike the impact of a few bad item picks by the DM on the party?
- Or find it ludicrous that PC's constantly just "happen" to find magic items tailored to their needs?
Try: A simpler treasure system for (mostly) random loot.
3.5 death&dying variant
- Tired of players that won't cure their mortally wounded allies 'cause "he's only at -2"?
- Tired of a dying mechanic which uses anachronistic d10's?
- Tired of a dying mechanic which never kicks into action for high level characters, which tend to go from alive and kicking to instant death before anyone can intervene?
- Tired of horribly complex house rules?
Try: Death & Dying - a better (and simple!) system
Hang on here, just because a monster attack is weak doesn't mean the monster won't use it.
I sense you're looking at your monsters with a player's eye - looking to pick the best deals out of a big selection.
Well, if you do, don't.
Which seems to go against the dnd 4e's philosophy of monster design, which suggests that monsters will not have useless abilities. Instead, they will be designed to properly challenge the PCs and provide an engaging multi-round battle.
So the assumption here is that the DM will run his monsters intelligently and use their powers to the best of his ability. This means that its powers should synergize with their tactics well.
Simply put, each monster is more or less a 1-trick pony which happens to excel in that one role very well. All abilities should be geared towards making it better at said role, rather than detract from it.
Quote:
Its also worth remembering that some creatures will have set preconceptions of "how to hunt", usually animals, these creatures will try and apply those methods to PCs even when that might not be wise.
Again, that was tossed out of the window in 4e, IIRC.
Which seems to go against the dnd 4e's philosophy of monster design, which suggests that monsters will not have useless abilities. Instead, they will be designed to properly challenge the PCs and provide an engaging multi-round battle.
So the assumption here is that the DM will run his monsters intelligently and use their powers to the best of his ability. This means that its powers should synergize with their tactics well.
Simply put, each monster is more or less a 1-trick pony which happens to excel in that one role very well. All abilities should be geared towards making it better at said role, rather than detract from it.
Well... don't carry this whole notion too far. Monsters are designed to be fun to fight with. That can involve aspects of the monster designed to present interesting tactics to use against the party. It can also involve aspects of the monster that are purely there for "flavor" reasons. Other reasons might include potentially interesting role play opportunities.
Nor were all monsters necessarily designed by someone who is a tactical genius. Some abilities might seem contradictory or ineffective and it could be they ARE, but it could also be they add depth to the monster or give them options that may not be obviously useful in the context where a particular DM used the monster or the situation that an actual party encountered.
I've certainly had any number of monsters which had powers that never came into play or didn't end up being used effectively. Happens in almost any non-trivial encounter to some extent. I wouldn't call them poorly designed monsters. Maybe the DM didn't employ them to their best effect but just as likely those other powers would have been useful against a different party or in a different encounter.
I had myconids as protagonists in a recent re-write of Forge of Fury I ran my players through, and ended up changing many of their abilities. I also created other specialised myconids, such as an artillery build that was able to grant extra actions to minions, as well as a rotpriest variant that commanded fungal shambling mounds. See attached. My myconids could not speak (they communicate with each other through scent) but could understand some sign language they had been taught by nearby orcs (with whom they had some mutually beneficial living arrangements).
I think the thing about the Myconids is that with a bunch of them together (especially with a Rotpriest), they have a lot of choice as to when each of them dies. So the Rotpriest can start out by wading into melee ahead of the Guards and use decomposing spray for a few turns -- then when the accumulated damage starts to add up, it can fall back to the other 'nids before deliberately sacrificing itself for a Life Burst.
Shift-giving doesn't seem like much, but it's pretty nice for setting up flanks and getting the most out of the other creatures' bursts. I sort of see the Sovereign as mostly standing a few squares back, occasionally darting in to blast Spore Burst when it recharges. It has good AC and Fort, though, so it's not really bad at all in close combat.
"They have a lot of choice as to when each of them dies."
This gets to the core of the matter with Myconids, particularly in light of what we read in the Player's Handbook combat rules with respect to rendering creatures unconscious. [1]
Reducing a creature to zero hit points—or less—does not necessarily kill the creature. It may only render them unconscious, at the discretion of the character using the power or ability that did the damage.
In the case of a rotpriest using Sacrifice for the Colony, that woulld be itself, or any other Myconid using Roots of the Colony, i.e., they can choose to render each other unconscious, rather than killing one another.
Since the rotpriest healing power triggers on being reduced to 0 hit points—not dying, but being reduced to 0—the rotpriest can thus remain alive, but unconscious. If there are two or more rotpriests in the encounter, they can, in theory, "see-saw" each other, with the healing burst of one bringing another back to consciousness, albeit with only ten hit points.
A party of adventurers could even "kill" a colony, with most of the damage being distributed through Roots of the Colony, only to discover—after a short rest—that the majority of Myconids were only rendered unconscious, not dead.
—Siran Dunmorgan
[1] I believe it's on page 295, but I'm relying on memory, and could be incorrect as to the page number: I am certain about the rule itself, however.
In the case of a rotpriest using Sacrifice for the Colony, that woulld be itself, or any other Myconid using Roots of the Colony, i.e., they can choose to render each other unconscious, rather than killing one another.
Since the rotpriest healing power triggers on being reduced to 0 hit points—not dying, but being reduced to 0—the rotpriest can thus remain alive, but unconscious. If there are two or more rotpriests in the encounter, they can, in theory, "see-saw" each other, with the healing burst of one bringing another back to consciousness, albeit with only ten hit points.
This is true. Maybe into the margin of the realm of "dirty pool" but it seems definitely within the rules. Worst case its a tactic that won't HURT the Myconids any, lol.
Damn, I wish I still had my old AD&D modules from when I was a kid. I vaguely remember A4 used the myconids in an interesting way (more misunderstood than enemy, with the potential to avoid fighting them if the party cared to try), but it's been so long since I read it.
Oh, and now I can't stop thinking about them. I've got an underground scenario coming up in a few games, if the party stays on the path they're currently on. Anyone got any suggestions for levelling up myconids (or other monsters to add/reskin) for a level 8 party?
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