Behir problem from MM2

[jester_gl]

Anyone tried to use a behir from MM2. I think he might be a compulsive chewer.

Devour (standard; recharges when no creature is affected by this
power)
Reach 3; +19 vs. Reflex; 2d8 + 6 damage, and a Medium or
smaller target is swallowed. A swallowed target is grabbed
and restrained. (blablabla) Sustain Minor: The behir sustains the grab, and the target takes 15 damage.

Lightning Reflexes
The behir acts three times in a round, on initiative counts 30,
20, and 10. It cannot delay or ready actions. On each turn, it has
a standard action instead of the normal allotment of actions. It

can use one immediate action between each pair of turns.

Sustain minor when you only have a standard action might be hard. So how would you rule it? His first action every turn is the sustain? Or does he chew on the grabbed target and does nothing else?

[keterys]

I suspect it'd actually be more interesting if it could only sustain a round later, rather than each turn... but yes, if it wants to sustain it can do so three times per round, and doing so eats up all of the Behir's actions.

[sfedi]

As keterys said.

Although this would eat all of his actions, it's DPR would be at it maximum.

A swallowed character could receive upto 45 damage per round.

[Larrin]

We fought a Behir (reskinned and leveled down a little) as the BBEG of the campaign we just finished. The first time led the DM misread and sustained the grab (15 dmg) and took an action each turn. WAY too powerful. Along with its aura of dmg and the fact we were confined to a 8x8 room our party lost three members, a fourth was unconscious and my warden wasn't really able to do much to stop him, despite probably going to last anouther 8 rounds against him...

2nd time, DM ruled if you don't sustain the grab, he had to spit you out on that turn, and the the minor action took up the whole turn. His main tactic was to swallow and just chew for the 45 damage a round. His main mistake was swallowing my warden, whom after damage reduction from armor and regen from stone guardian form was quite happy sitting inside the beast taking only 25 damage total out of all three turns and taking pot shots from inside it, while the party took him to task with no reprecussions. After the third time I went bloodied->not bloodied, he spat me out, since i still had two more healing powers to use, and went after the cleric. That was more brutal, and we almost lost her before the invokers sword of vengance killed him on an imediate interupt.

I would say the 2nd time my DM had it right: You can sustain each turn for the 15dmg, but thats all you do that turn. I'm not sure if not sustaining means you spit them out if you've already sustained that round, but thats a judgement call. Frankly it was a nasty beast, if he hadn't wasted his time digesting me, our group may have lost another 3 PC's.

Certainly don't make the mistake of letting him sustain and take a standard action on one turn.....thats death to the party.

[keterys]

That said, I think removing the sustain line and adding 'The target takes 15 damage at the end of each of its turns, if it has not escaped.' would be reasonable and more enjoyable.

[Skallgrim]

Originally Posted by keterys

That said, I think removing the sustain line and adding 'The target takes 15 damage at the end of each of its turns, if it has not escaped.' would be reasonable and more enjoyable.

I don't know. I think the mental image I get of the Behir struggling to keep down a wriggling Warden is worth the use of the Standard Actions.

Requiring the sustain means that a Behir can't just run away while pummelling you with its gizzard. It only gets to nom on you if it stands there with your upper half in its mouth. If it wants to run away, you have to be dead in its belly or free to go. I see each of the sustains as the behir forcing a little more of you down its throat, but it can't quite manage to swallow you whole until you stop kicking.

I do have to admit that, on the other hand, the image of a behir galloping away with a mostly swallowed gnome while the party pursues is funny, especially if you cue up "Yakkity Sax".

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, this has been discussed a bit before. Nobody is sure if the Behir has to sustain on every one of its turns or not. I think technically by RAW it does, but there are some slight contradictions there. Even if it does have to sustain with every action the 15 damage a turn is well worth it for the DM! lol. Nasty critter.

[Nikosandros]

I think that this specific problem is just one instance of a more general issue. It seems to me that the rules are lacking with regards with creatures that act multiple times in a single round.

Besides maintaining powers, others doubts that I have are:

1) What happens to such a creature when it is dazed?

2) How many times can it act in a surprise round?

3) How often does it sustain continuing damage?

4) How often can it make saving throws?

[sfedi]

Originally Posted by Nikosandros

I think that this specific problem is just one instance of a more general issue. It seems to me that the rules are lacking with regards with creatures that act multiple times in a single round.

Precisely.

But, in fact, there IS a guideline.
Which can be deduced from the desing of Elites and Solos.
They should replace two or five monsters respectively.

So you when you have to decide how to handle them, you must keep in mind that you must keep the monster challenging as two or five monsters.

So, it's damage output, hit points, etc can be somewhat easily determined.

The problem comes with the action economy.

Because some monsters have single attacks that have a damage potential equivalent to two standard monster attacks. Yet some compensate with Immediate actions, or multiple attacks.

Originally Posted by Nikosandros

1) What happens to such a creature when it is dazed?

This should cancel 1 standard monster worth of attacks. Aproximately.
So it really depends on each monster and how it works. Because each monster decides how to have multiple standard monster worth of attacks differently.

For example, in the case of Elites that have two attacks as a Standard action, I wouldn't rule any differently. If correctly used, the Daze could cancel both attacks, it not, it can't cancel anything.
Yet, with this ruling, the Dazed condition for this particular monster is a little more effective.

Originally Posted by Nikosandros

2) How many times can it act in a surprise round?

Good point here.
But I think this is an issue for skirmishers and lurkers mostly.

In the case of elite monsters with ranged attacks that are equivalent of two standard monster attacks, this seems not to be much of a problem.

In the case of an Elite that has Threatening Reach (which is normally used as an "this monster has an extra attack"), charging or moving close to or in the middle of the party, should suffice.

Other monsters are more trickier.

Originally Posted by Nikosandros

3) How often does it sustain continuing damage?

This should be easier to handle, just keep it's DPR equal to it's equivalent monsters DPR.

Originally Posted by Nikosandros

4) How often can it make saving throws?

This is more of an issue.
I'm houseruling that Solos, for example, don't get it's bonus for ongoing damage. They already have lots of hitpoints.

Solos that act two times in a turn shouldn't have a saving throw bonus either, they are making two of them, which is roughly equivalent to a +5.

The Behir, which acts three times ina turn, it's totally broken in this aspect.
He shouldn't have a +5 bonus, since it will have 3 different opportunities to get rid of the effect.

[jester_gl]

I think it would have been clearer if it would have been sustain standard. Even if that sustain minor took only one of his action each turn, I don't really see how he could breath lightning or bite someone else with someone in his mouth.

I see that the way to go against him (or against multiple attack per round monster in general) is to trigger anything you have that grant resistance all.

Word of advice: Don't bite more than you can chew.

[Nikosandros]

The updated Behir can now sustain with a free action (and inflicts 10 points of damage instead of 15). This answers the question for this specific instance, but all the general issues about creatures that take more than one turn per round remain.

[keterys]

It's probably actually a bit strong now (30 auto damage, plus its other abilities), unless you do have stun end of next turn powers. If you do, then it gets hopelessly thrashed.

But, still a notable design improvement. Just need to have it end most 'next turn' effects at the end of its turn instead of its enemies, and it'd be good.

[eamon]

@sfedi: I'm not sure I understand how you propose to deal with ongoing damage and/or daze.

You seem to be suggesting that it is effected about as much as would be fair for a single monster, in general - but that's tricky both technically and because for a group of monsters, you can daze them all, or give them all ongoing damage, so just limiting daze/ ongoing damage entirely is rather more powerful than a group of monsters would be.

In any case, I'm not sure exactly what it is you're suggesting...

[sfedi]

Originally Posted by eamon

@sfedi: I'm not sure I understand how you propose to deal with ongoing damage and/or daze.

Thanks for the interest

The main point of what I'm saying is:
"We can treat ongoing damage in a way that makes Expected Damage from a power more easily estimated"

Originally Posted by eamon

You seem to be suggesting that it is effected about as much as would be fair for a single monster, in general - but that's tricky both technically and because for a group of monsters, you can daze them all, or give them all ongoing damage, so just limiting daze/ ongoing damage entirely is rather more powerful than a group of monsters would be.

In any case, I'm not sure exactly what it is you're suggesting...

Ok, now I'm the one that don't understand

I'll try to answer what I think you are saying:

1) Yes, group of similar monsters would be more powerful, but as a previous poster already noted, this is in fact a problem the current system has: similar monsters are less powerful than different ones.
This is because saving effects don't stack.

2) Yes, it's not the same to apply these rules to ongoing damage than to a condition like Daze.

For example:

Krusk has two "5 ongoing damage (save ends)" effects on him.
On Krusk's turn, he'll receive 10 damage, and at the end he'll make two saving throws, one for each "5 ongoing damage (save ends)" effect.
Krusk effectively suffers twice with a condition that affects him twice.

Ellan has two "dazed (save ends)" effects on him.
On Ellan's turn, he'll be dazed, and at the end he'll make two saving throws, on for each "dazed (save ends)" effect.
Even if he saves from one, he's still dazed from the other. So he must save from both to get rid of being dazed in the following rounds.
Kruk suffers the dazed condition as the maximum duration of the two effects.

There is no clear comparison between the two cases, if Ellan's case is a much double" than Kruk's case.

3) What I'm saying is nice for damage estimation, which is useful for designing monsters.
Which is not the same as saying that the current system is bad.
The current system ahs a nice effect: it forces you to spread damage, which is more fun at the table.

I hope I was clear.

[sfedi]

Ok, forget the above post, I thought you were talking about ongoing and dazed effects ON PCS.

Now, let me answer you on the correct context:

Originally Posted by eamon

You seem to be suggesting that it is effected about as much as would be fair for a single monster, in general - but that's tricky both technically and because for a group of monsters, you can daze them all, or give them all ongoing damage, so just limiting daze/ ongoing damage entirely is rather more powerful than a group of monsters would be.

In any case, I'm not sure exactly what it is you're suggesting...

Yes, you are right, it's very tricky because it's not the same.

You CAN daze a group of monsters, but not at the cost of a single use of a power.
So Dazing a Solo or an Elite, is much more cheaper than Dazing an equivalent group of monsters.
That's why we need something to make them less vulnerable to those conditions. Not entirely, but some.

One way, as the rules propose it to give them a bonus to saving throws.
That's ok, that works with save end conditions.

But it's unfair to ongoing damage.

Because the monster already has more hit points to compensate, so if you make it easier for the Solo or Elite to save aginst it, then it becomes useless against them.

Even then, it still leaves them more vulnerable to conditions that last for only one round.

I'm not sure I've answered your question. I had some problems understanding it.

[AbdulAlhazred]

Originally Posted by sfedi

Ok, forget the above post, I thought you were talking about ongoing and dazed effects ON PCS.

Now, let me answer you on the correct context:


Yes, you are right, it's very tricky because it's not the same.

You CAN daze a group of monsters, but not at the cost of a single use of a power.
So Dazing a Solo or an Elite, is much more cheaper than Dazing an equivalent group of monsters.
That's why we need something to make them less vulnerable to those conditions. Not entirely, but some.

One way, as the rules propose it to give them a bonus to saving throws.
That's ok, that works with save end conditions.

But it's unfair to ongoing damage.

Because the monster already has more hit points to compensate, so if you make it easier for the Solo or Elite to save aginst it, then it becomes useless against them.

Even then, it still leaves them more vulnerable to conditions that last for only one round.

I'm not sure I've answered your question. I had some problems understanding it.

Different powers are going to work better or worse against different classes of monsters. Ongoing damage perhaps doesn't work so well vs Solos, but its one of the very FEW advantages Solos have. Actually they have a number of other advantages in theory, its just that conditions and action economy negate them all. As it is the +5 to saves that Solos have isn't enough. By 15th level a decent orbizard basically obsoletes Solos even with the +5. In fact even with the recent nerf the problem really has only been barely moderated a bit.

[sfedi]

Well, the orbizard shouldn't matter in the design of Elites and Solos, that's something that should be fixed on it's own.

If a class/build/combo/whatever is unbalanced, I won't change all the other aspects of the game to make up for it.

Having said that, you are right the powers work differently on Elites and Solos, some work better, some work worse.
But the question is: Is it balanced? How?

I'm not sure about the answers to the above questions.

[AbdulAlhazred]

Originally Posted by sfedi

Well, the orbizard shouldn't matter in the design of Elites and Solos, that's something that should be fixed on it's own.

If a class/build/combo/whatever is unbalanced, I won't change all the other aspects of the game to make up for it.

Having said that, you are right the powers work differently on Elites and Solos, some work better, some work worse.
But the question is: Is it balanced? How?

I'm not sure about the answers to the above questions.

Well... It isn't entirely balanced in my experience. Solos work pretty well at heroic tier, but once you get up into paragon things start going downhill. They DEFINITELY are not workable as truly solo monsters at that point, they are just more like really hefty Elites.

As for the lockdown thing. Orbizard is the best example but you don't actually need to be one to do lockdowns. Its tougher for other classes to do and relies more on having a lot of items, but you can do it. The nerf may have put a pretty big dent in that though since several of the best items are no longer good options. I guess someone would have to go through and see. My feeling on lockdown is that orbizard itself is alive and well but now is much more unique. I agree its not terribly great to design Solos around orb wizards and its a broken build, but at the same time you pretty much have to since they aren't going away. I really doubt WotC is going to errata save penalties and that is the only way to really solve the problem.

[sfedi]

Couldn't you just rule that only one penalty applies?
(i.e. no penalty stacks with another)

[eamon]

Originally Posted by AbdulAlhazred

Well... It isn't entirely balanced in my experience. Solos work pretty well at heroic tier, but once you get up into paragon things start going downhill. They DEFINITELY are not workable as truly solo monsters at that point, they are just more like really hefty Elites.

Yeah. I'm not sure we should be fixing that, though: it's somewhat inherent in the setup: if you have just one single point of failure, one vulnerable point to attack, you can expect trouble when people find and abuse it. It rubs me the wrong way to have to implement effects (etc.) differently for solo on principle. Perhaps we should, I don't have the answers here, but that does mean that you're basically saying that stuff that works well against single targets happens not to work very well at all if that single target is a solo. As is, save-ends effects seem to work pretty well for a behir; he's affected potentially for multiple of his rounds, but he saves much more quickly, so it's not a lockdown kind of effect.

More problematic are the effects which impose some penalty until the attackers next turn; such powers are generally intended to be weaker than save-ends effects, but will actually be more powerful do to the Behirs unusual hyperactivity. But... how bad is that?

There's a cost to all these fixes. The game works well with a group of monsters. A very very simple fix is just to accept that solo's are a tricky proposition and not to expect them to be a very reliable threat (sometimes, sure, but it's really dependent on circumstances) and have solo's backed up by others rather than changing quite a few fundamental mechanics.

Just to be completely inconsistent :-), I'll say that I can well imagine using various specific ideas proposed here individually on specific solos, just to spice things up. So, the ideas are useful, but I think it'd be better to keep them as distinguishing gravy for some creatures rather than a system-wide fix. And if you think about it, that's not unlike what's been happening with solo's all along, and hopefully more of it will happen with newer MM's. Some have specific resistance to daze and stun, some have peculiar initiative trick (the behir, say) to balance the "action economy, etc...


Now, ongoing damage specifically:
Personally, I'm definitely against stacking ongoing damage. Yes, it makes accounting for damage output easier, but not by much. Overlapping ongoing damage (i.e. multiple effects, multiple saves but no stacking) still has a bit of an advantage, but not the full amount: this is good both because it discourages pile-on play (i.e. you can have "extra" damaging powers with an incentive to spread the damage around rather than focus fire), and because when you do focus fire, the extra benefit the extra ongoing damage grants is least when the player rolls poorly (i.e, if he's not saving anyhow, then the extra ongoing has no effect; the damage per round is capped), so that reduces swinginess.

If ongoing damage just becomes yet another way to deal damage, you remove that tactical element. So, the complexity of accounting for ongoing damage isn't so much a weakness as a strength: it's a real tactical element encouraging the damage dealer to weigh various tactics against each other (focus fire vs. slightly higher damage total).