Do monster roles in 4E help with encounter design? How about this encounter?

My understanding is that monsters in 4E come with a role attached. Artillery, Brute, Striker, Minion, Solo. I was trying to design a 3.5 encounter where an ettin has a big sack full of centipedes, and I wanted to get more synergy between the ettin and the swarm. So I thought, "Can one of them act as a striker? Should I make it a bunch of individual centipedes who will go down in one hit (ie minions) instead of a swarm? Should I add some kind of artillery component for a really good encounter?"

Am I thinking about this in the right way? Does the concept of roles really help make better encounters? Or should I just think about it in terms of "the swarm attacks Fort, so I should put in a monster that attacks Will," or "the swarm hits the wizard and the ettin hits the fighter, so I should put in something that fights clerics."

The ettin seems very brute-ish (without checking the MM). A typical high-damage threat that needs to be blocked by a Defender.

The centipede swarm is more controller-ish. It attacks anyone sting close. This will punish the defender that tries to stand and block the ettin.
Overall, this is an encounter tricky for melee characters, but which allows interesting used for ranged and control attacks. Knocking the swarm and ettin apart is one choice that seems attractive.

Also, 2 monsters is a little low for a 4e encounter. You might wish to add some skirmishers or artillery - maybe a and of goblins (thematically matches the other critters). This makes things more interesting for the other characters.

I don't think the monster roles help all that much. Monster role correlates poorly to what the monster actually does. Sure, soldiers and brutes are generally pretty clear cut.

But let's look at other monsters. Controllers sometimes hit stuff in melee and then have an aura or something or their controllerness. Other controllers will throw out status effects at range. Some skirmishers will run around and fight at range. Others are mobile melee combatants. Other times skimirsher just seems to be the default monster type and, while not especially tough, will still be take hits and serve as the sole melee component. Even artillery monsters sometimes have similarly high melee damage stuff.

Having a decent mix of engagement ranges and the ability to attack different defenses is nice.

I'm going to agree with Noumenon. While in some specific cases the monster roles help, I think in the end they're far too clumsy to really make good use of.

Noumenon said:

Does the concept of roles really help make better encounters?

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Yes, it does. It provides a shortcut to figuring out monsters that work well together.

Or should I just think about it in terms of "the swarm attacks Fort, so I should put in a monster that attacks Will," or "the swarm hits the wizard and the ettin hits the fighter, so I should put in something that fights clerics."

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That's not really what monster roles are about.

Monster roles work more-or-less like character roles. You have soldiers, who are straight-forward melee guys with a defensive focus, and brutes who have an offensive focus. Skirmishers move around the battlefield, and often serve as the "default" monster role. Lurkers sneak around, waiting for the right moment to strike, often bypassing the party's defensive line. Artillery deal buttloads of damage from range, and controllers mess with the PCs. Some monsters are also designated "leader" in addition to their main role, these are monsters that have a beneficial effect on the other monsters in the encounter. The Leader stuff tends to be relatively minor in comparison to its other abilities.

For a leader example, look at the kobold wyrmpriest, which is a level 3 Artillery (Leader). It has three significant abilities, two of which serve the Artillery role (Energy Orb: ranged energy attack; and Dragon Breath: a close energy attack it can use once per encounter). and one which serves the Leader role (Incite Faith: nearby kobolds get 5 more hp and can shift 1 square).

The role differences don't really have much to do with which defenses are attacked, though someone did some statistics work on the MM and showed that controllers more often attacked Will or something like that. Instead, compare the monster encounter to a PC party. A party full of wizards won't work very well, because their foes would be able to get to them and tear them apart. Similarly, a party full of fighters wouldn't be able to deal with some of the stranger stuff.

Similarly, a group of monsters become more efficient if you use different monsters with abilities that synergize with one another. A group of four archers (artillery) won't do much against the PCs, because the PCs will be able to get to them easily, and artillery is soft. A group of four grunts (soldiers) won't be able to do much either, because grunts are generally better at taking damage than dishing it out - it would be a long fight, but one heavily in favor of the PCs. But if you use two grunts and two archers, using the grunts to keep the PCs away from the archers while the archers rain down arrows from afar - now we're talking.

Victim said:

But let's look at other monsters. Controllers sometimes hit stuff in melee and then have an aura or something or their controllerness. Other controllers will throw out status effects at range.

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It should be noted that the monster role "controller" is not the same as the PC role "controller." The PC role is more about area attacks from afar, some of which also push opponents around or debuff them. The monster role is more about the pushing/debuffing part.

The NPC/monster rules have wizards as artillery, and clerics as controller-leaders. Though I'm a bit suspicious of those since they list the warlock as a skirmisher, when it's definitely more artillery-ish.

Noumenon said:

My understanding is that monsters in 4E come with a role attached. Artillery, Brute, Striker, Minion, Solo. I was trying to design a 3.5 encounter where an ettin has a big sack full of centipedes, and I wanted to get more synergy between the ettin and the swarm. So I thought, "Can one of them act as a striker? Should I make it a bunch of individual centipedes who will go down in one hit (ie minions) instead of a swarm? Should I add some kind of artillery component for a really good encounter?"

Am I thinking about this in the right way? Does the concept of roles really help make better encounters? Or should I just think about it in terms of "the swarm attacks Fort, so I should put in a monster that attacks Will," or "the swarm hits the wizard and the ettin hits the fighter, so I should put in something that fights clerics."

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Monster roles provide a guide for what the monster does in the combat encounter. Brute and soldier are the clearest IMO.

A brute is a big melee combatant with low AC, bunches of hp, and high damage with possibly low accuracy in attacks. They are dangerous up close but the PCs will hit them often.

Soldiers are high AC melee combatants who do less damage but hit often. They are hit less often and therefore last longer, though they are not the massive damage threat that brutes are in melee, so PCs can stand against them and survive getting hit for longer.

Your ettin is generally going to be a brute role, high damage melee but should be an easy target for the PCs to unload on.

The swarm has interesting aspects with certain immunities making melee tougher against them and making it dangerous to be around them. This is sort of controllerish and can force PCs to decide tactically to either suffer while near them or avoid the swarm and allow area effect PC powers to shine.

There is no right or wrong for constructing opponent makeups, the different roles simply provide different combat experiences.

For instance if you change the swarm to multiple minions then you allow everybody who hits one to shine but you take away the swarm hazard area aspect of the combat.

Adding in other combatant roles is not necessary for a good encounter, it just changes the dynamics of the encounter.

Strikers do high damage to single targets, are maneuverable, but are comparatively frail. To turn the ettin into a striker role from a brute give him less hp and a little more speed, perhaps some charging/bull rushing abilities.

To turn the centipedes into strikers make them individuals with good attacks, and good maneuverability (spring attack and high speed is pretty good). They are already comparatively frail in AC and hp so that won't need to be adjusted, though making them minions emphasizes their glass cannon frailness even more.

With a swarm the centipedes are a controller style weapon for the ettin to control the battlefield terrain conditions. With the centipedes as striker minions they are more of a shotgun blast to inflict damage.

Both can make for an interesting encounter experience.

There is no right or wrong for constructing opponent makeups, the different roles simply provide different combat experiences.

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Like for example, if I want to give the PCs "a tough fight to batter their way into the dungeon door," I don't want a brute monster like the ettin. I want a soldier that will give me a long combat. Yet if I go looking in the MM for "monsters with high AC, high to-hit but low damage" -- ie, soldiers -- they're not sorted like that. Or if I want a run-and-gun kind of encounter, I just look for Skirmishers.

For this encounter, with a brute and a controller, instead of a frontal assault I am looking for more of a "setup first, then kill" encounter (pouring out the bag of centipedes takes a round, for one thing). So the kind of monster I need to add is a Lurker. The centipedes might help set the lurker up, too.

Hellcat, Invisible Stalker... how about a Medusa? The Fort save ability is something that would only hit every couple of rounds, that would make it a Lurker. Also its ability to appear like a prisoner for a few rounds would help. Of course I'll give it centipedes for hair instead of snakes.

I think Voadam helped me "get" how you use roles to design an encounter. If I just had a controller-based combat with wizards, then for variety I would make the ettin encounter an assault. I'd make the centipedes into minions and emphasize the striker nature of the ettin with Power Attack or a high crit weapon (maybe a glaive to reach over the centipede minions). For an extra monster there I'd use a skirmisher because there'd be no one to protect the artillery. Maybe a will-o-wisp.

Or I could use both the ettin and the centipedes to protect some artillery. I guess I'd have to make up a humanoid archer or wizard. That's almost three different encounter designs with one basic concept. I think the roles concept is really useful the way you guys are using it.

What if monsters had just one variant. To use the old standby say you had a monster entry for kobold.

In the monster manual it gave rates of increase and decrease for various things within the roles.

Brute gets more HP, striker gets more attacks, whatever.

Then for whatever monster you have you can adjust them to the role you need at the time for them to perform without having to have a detailed kobold sycophant, erm striker listed in the book.

Then you could tailor the encounters by having any monster be of any type or role, and the XP budget would also be in the role calculation guide to allow you proper encounter design.

I haven't designed any encounter yet really so if this is the case as it stand then sorry for wasting space. But it would make more sense to have a system to allow for taking the basic monster and scaling it to whatever role as well as give it -5 ro +5 level adjustments so you could create strange types of encounter with synergies.

What does anyone think?

this would also mean that is there was only 50 monsters listed in the MM, you would then alternately say with 5 roles an a range of 10 levels that the MM would contain 5*11*5=275 monsters. That would mean the books could have only 50 pages and get more monsters into them.

For each monster you could have abilities that are listed for the variant roles and levels.

You could fit a whole lot more into a book with less effort that way since the core system has a foundation or base for monster design right? Otherwise they could at least put the same number of monsters in less pages and lower cost to increase sales. I don't know how Orcus would end up a minion, but that would be left for a DM to decide if he/she wants to scale down the level of him and apply the proper, for lack of a better word than what was used previously, template for the role desired for the encounter.

Or have I totally lost my mind in this idea?

Staffan said:

It should be noted that the monster role "controller" is not the same as the PC role "controller." The PC role is more about area attacks from afar, some of which also push opponents around or debuff them. The monster role is more about the pushing/debuffing part.

The NPC/monster rules have wizards as artillery, and clerics as controller-leaders. Though I'm a bit suspicious of those since they list the warlock as a skirmisher, when it's definitely more artillery-ish.

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Well, yeah. But let's look at some example controllers:

The succubus is a controller. She generally wants to find an isolated PC (preferably a high damage one), kiss him, and then stay close for bodyguarding while using her Dominate power at range to screw the other characters.

Similarly, the Briar Witch Dryad throws Briar Cages at PCs from range to injure them and interfere with their movement as her bread and butter attack, while helping out with her auras.

On the other hand, let's look at a Battle Briar. It wants to run into a group of enemies to pin them them and hit them with melee attacks or its point blank burst.

Stormrage Shamblers are also melee monsters that give up some HP/defenses for better point blank area/aura stuff.

So if I'm working up an encounter, the way I use those two types of controllers is completely different. Comparable substitutes are completely different. A good melee beast like a Wartroll (Soldier) can fill in for a Battle Briar. On the other hand, if I want to sub in something for a BWD, then I'm probably going to be looking for something hit from range. The controller role isn't telling me a whole lot of useful information.

And things get more complicated when you look at interactions between monsters in an encounter. If somebody has an aura that adds regeneration to nearby undead, then the toughness boost will make other roles able to serve as good tanks - as long as they're undead. The keywords on the monster become more important than the role.

Victim said:

let's look at some example controllers:

The succubus is a controller. She generally wants to find an isolated PC (preferably a high damage one), kiss him, and then stay close for bodyguarding while using her Dominate power at range to screw the other characters.

Similarly, the Briar Witch Dryad throws Briar Cages at PCs from range to injure them and interfere with their movement as her bread and butter attack, while helping out with her auras.

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Justanobody, how could you generate those two controllers just by scaling a "controller" factor up and down? If there was only one thing you could do to make a creature a controller (like giving it a flaming burst) then there'd really only be one kind of controller, with lots of different body types.