Running Epic Tier Campaigns

I'm curious to hear what custom solos people use to get around the problem of condition lock.

Here was my recent one.

Ability

Alter Ego (Recharge 6) - move action.

You create a duplicate of yours within 10 squares. It has your current damage but none of the conditions affecting you. It can take a full set of actions immediately upon its creation and takes damage and conditions separately from the original.

At the start of your next turn, you can choose to remove either the original or the duplicate. The remaining creature continues to act as normal.



So with this guy, my solo got extra actions, extra durability, and could sometimes shake of conditions. But at other times my players were able to stun and daze both...and they got their rounds of fun. It was a very effective ability.

Stalker0 said:

I'm curious to hear what custom solos people use to get around the problem of condition lock.

Click to expand...

C Abyssal Rent (no action; at-will) • Acid, Cold, Fire, Necrotic, Poison
Use at end the end of Orcus' turn when he is stunned or is controlled in anyway by another creature.
Burst 20; +38 vs Fortitude; 5d12 + 25 all targets make a death save. For each failed death save Orcus heals 150 hp.

My last one part of my souped up Orcus for my first campaign's finale. I was running an add half level to damage house rule.

Stalker0 said:

I'm curious to hear what custom solos people use to get around the problem of condition lock.

Here was my recent one.

Ability

Alter Ego (Recharge 6) - move action.

You create a duplicate of yours within 10 squares. It has your current damage but none of the conditions affecting you. It can take a full set of actions immediately upon its creation and takes damage and conditions separately from the original.

At the start of your next turn, you can choose to remove either the original or the duplicate. The remaining creature continues to act as normal.



So with this guy, my solo got extra actions, extra durability, and could sometimes shake of conditions. But at other times my players were able to stun and daze both...and they got their rounds of fun. It was a very effective ability.

Click to expand...

I have tried a few different things.
1) Solos getting an immediate save as soon as affected by a condition.
- That proved way to powerful, especially since it still had a bonus at first. Later I removed the bonus on the extra save, and it was better, but still way too powerful. It was very hard to stick anything on solos.
2) Solos were getting no action rechargable powers that could remove one condition affecting them. Pretty decent too, but it felt somewhat wrong, for me. This one is still on the table though, in combination with something else.
3) Solo takes damage (no action) in order to remove a conditions - While solos do have a lot of hit points, I found the cost too high, in the long run.
4) Solos shed all conditions when bloodied - Not good enough. I still saw solos getting raped, especially at late paragon and epic levels.
5) Currently, my solos have 2 turns per round, and thus get two saves (only at +2, not +5) against conditions (and ongoing damage), and "end of next turn" only last until after the next turn of the solo. So, in short, you can affect my solos, just not for long. So far, I like it. Works well, at least for me. I still haven't evaluated in plenum though, so no clue what the players think.

Jack99 said:

I have tried a few different things.
1) Solos getting an immediate save as soon as affected by a condition.
- That proved way to powerful, especially since it still had a bonus at first. Later I removed the bonus on the extra save, and it was better, but still way too powerful. It was very hard to stick anything on solos.

Click to expand...

Consider this though: Should 1 attack roll instantly disable 5 monsters worth of experience? How many powers in 4E with one roll can disable every single monster on the board (the answer is none, not even destructive salutation can do that!). If it's very hard to stick status effects onto a solo that's a good thing, it's 5 monsters and therefore it should take far more overall "firepower" being sunk into it to get conditions to stick.

I've been playing with a rule very similar to this for a while on some solo monsters and I find that it works very well. It means that 100% of the encounters XP isn't trivially locked down every round by 1 stun or daze power.

If you think about, with a +5 bonus the solo gets a 20% chance of being affected by one status effect. It's 5 monsters. So 5 monsters equivalently having a 20% chance of being affected by one status effect seems perfectly fair to me. If you throw 5 at it you're likely to get one to stick and that seems perfectly fair to me. Five attack rolls having a good chance of stunning/dazing five monsters seems to be the way it should work.

5) Currently, my solos have 2 turns per round, and thus get two saves (only at +2, not +5) against conditions (and ongoing damage), and "end of next turn" only last until after the next turn of the solo. So, in short, you can affect my solos, just not for long. So far, I like it. Works well, at least for me. I still haven't evaluated in plenum though, so no clue what the players think.

Click to expand...

Many of my solos if they don't do point 1 will have multiple turns. Instead of being dazed, dominated or similar, they lose their next turn in the initiative order. This I find works extremely well and reduces the "one stun and dump" factor that epic combat sometimes has.

Aegeri said:

Consider this though: Should 1 attack roll instantly disable 5 monsters worth of experience? How many powers in 4E with one roll can disable every single monster on the board (the answer is none, not even destructive salutation can do that!). If it's very hard to stick status effects onto a solo that's a good thing, it's 5 monsters and therefore it should take far more overall "firepower" being sunk into it to get conditions to stick.

I've been playing with a rule very similar to this for a while on some solo monsters and I find that it works very well. It means that 100% of the encounters XP isn't trivially locked down every round by 1 stun or daze power.

If you think about, with a +5 bonus the solo gets a 20% chance of being affected by one status effect. It's 5 monsters. So 5 monsters equivalently having a 20% chance of being affected by one status effect seems perfectly fair to me. If you throw 5 at it you're likely to get one to stick and that seems perfectly fair to me. Five attack rolls having a good chance of stunning/dazing five monsters seems to be the way it should work.

Click to expand...

I won't dispute your theory. It was exactly the same logic that led me to start to give such a power to my solos, more than a year ago. I just found it unbalanced my solos too much vis-a-vis my players. Maybe they (my players) aren't as optimized or focused on stun-lock as yours? Not sure why we arrive at different results.

I like the idea of giving each class of solos a different way to handle locking conditions.

For instance, if a solo has 2 or more heads it probably has 2 or more turns. A humanoid solo will tend to have extra saves or some contingency power that goes off when locked down. An immortal solo is likely to be simply immune to some or all locking conditions. An elemental solo is most likely to have some aura that keeps working (or intensifies!) when the solo is locked down.

The only standard is that ALL solos have a method that either prevents, inhibits, or punishes locking conditions. The more I can come up with, the better!

Stalker0 said:

I will completely agree with this one.

To me, the main culprit is ongoing damage. Resistances often completely negate ongoing damage, which for many monsters is main source of their power.

A simple houserule I may institute in my next game is this:

1) Resistances are halfed against ongoing damage.

Click to expand...

Why not go even simpler and just treat all the damage from ongoing damage as the result of a single attack, from the point of view of resistance? So if you take ongoing 5 fire damage and have resist 5 fire, you take no damage the first round but five damage thereafter, once the fire has overcome your resistance. If you have resist 10 fire, it takes two rounds for the fire to overcome your resistance, etc.

Pseudopsyche said:

Why not go even simpler and just treat all the damage from ongoing damage as the result of a single attack, from the point of view of resistance? So if you take ongoing 5 fire damage and have resist 5 fire, you take no damage the first round but five damage thereafter, once the fire has overcome your resistance. If you have resist 10 fire, it takes two rounds for the fire to overcome your resistance, etc.

Click to expand...

That's another good way to do it. The only issue is that you have to remember how much of your resistance you've used each round when you get that ongoing damage, which can be a pain, but otherwise its a perfect fine way to go.

Jack99 said:

I won't dispute your theory. It was exactly the same logic that led me to start to give such a power to my solos, more than a year ago. I just found it unbalanced my solos too much vis-a-vis my players. Maybe they (my players) aren't as optimized or focused on stun-lock as yours? Not sure why we arrive at different results.

Click to expand...

There are a couple of things I should note in that I use a mixture of different mechanics for solos, but I do have a common rule:

1) Most solos are specifically resistant against the daze, dominate, stun and unconscious conditions. These are the conditions that make a solo fight immensely trivial, so they're the ones I give special consideration towards. Solos are not immune to any other condition and don't make saves against other "until the end of X turn" conditions. It's important to remember that this is where the true flaw in 4E solos is: until end of next turn conditions absolutely wreck them. It's not your regular save ends powers that are screwing them entirely. Noting that this is an end of turn save, not immediately and I don't always give them an immediate saving throw. It depends on the monster and the goal it has in mind (see below).

All solos above paragon tier in my games can save those conditions at the end of their turn, regardless if they are save ends effects or not. Some will simply automatically end these effects.

2) Different mechanisms

A) Some solos will save the instant the condition is applied. Common examples are dragons and other non-multiple turn solos.

B) Multiple turn solos lose their next activation. Depending on the solo multiple daze and stun conditions may or may not stack (2 activations, usually they never stack, 3 or more activations they often will stack).

C) Multiple standard attack solos lose an attack off their standard action. Jerusha for example loses 1 attack from elemental barrage per stun, dominate and daze condition imposed on her, but otherwise is unaffected. Given she attacks up to five times with it while bloodied, she can put out a considerable amount of damage with that power. This is based off the "many headed" power from the Hydra.

D) Dual brained monsters, like an ettin, molydeus and similar (this is in reference to elites actually) automatically end any daze or stun effect imposed on them at the end of their turn. Solo dual brained creatures with multiple turns default to B.

E) Some solos will impose the condition on allies with them in the fight, meaning the solo cannot be locked down unless its allies are killed first.

F) In very rare cases, some solos are simply outright immune to stun or treat these conditions differently. An example in one of my upcoming campaigns is a creature that treats the daze condition as losing its move action and the stun condition reduces it to a single standard action and without an immediate action.

The overall effect is that I try to really mix up the solo mechanics a lot, either with instant saves, but others will be affected by conditions differently and such forth. The goal isn't to make the PCs feel their powers are useless all of the time, but instead to ensure that daze, dominate and stun cease being epic level equivalents of 3.X "Save or die" powers (or in some cases, it doesn't matter either way like destructive salutation). A solo fight where it actually acts and does things is far better than the following:

Hit (or miss) with stun power until end of next turn and AP -> Dump powers, next turn, AP -> Dump powers, next turn, AP -> Dump powers -> next turn AP -> Dump powers, next turn, monster does utterly nothing, next turn AP -> dump powers -> back to character that stunned the solo round one.

If the above was boring just to read imagine playing that. With careful use of powers you will never ever ever be damaged for any reason except by an aura or no-action trigger.

The one exception I have though to what I wrote above are deities, demon lords and other "level 30+" creatures. They are basically your "end game" creatures and deserve to have a power level in excess of other solos or creatures. Unlike my normal solo rules, they can make a save against every condition imposed upon them (except for marks, which I view as a special exception to this). They are suitably powerful being the level they are and given that 30th level PCs are utterly brutal on many levels, this works out pretty good. It's only a mechanic I'll use once or twice a campaign as well, making the final ultimate encounter of the game especially high stakes against PCs at the very height of their power.

Edit: On resisting elemental damage as I like to mix up mechanics, one of my upcoming epic solos Lilith has an aura "Strength to Weakness" (yes I love my long power names sometimes). It's an aura 5, it turns all resistances in the aura into vulnerabilities of the same time and amount. That will give them something to think about

I don't really mind resistance to elemental damage though in general. I think the key thing to do in any encounter is to mix up your monsters and damage types. If you have a mono-damage group, don't be afraid to give them ways around resistances, impose vulnerabilities or similar.

So I have continued with my epic game last weekend and had a major engagement, ending the drama with the ship. The encounter with the molydeus ended in an interesting manner, with the creature tearing some chunks out of various characters and generally being a pain. Overall they handled the rest of the encounter well and then we moved onto the capstone of this particular part of the game: Jerusha.

Jerusha is basically a sorcerer corrupted by a daemon lord and "empowered" by the creatures vile energies. She can summon massive bolts of random elemental energy to send at her foes with ease, so her basic concept is a multiple attack "standard action" like a hydra. When dazed and stunned she loses attacks from her elemental barrage, reducing how many attacks she can make overall. This also has the effect of eliminating any issue with being "stun locked", so it ensures she has a definite set of actions that she can use every round. Reliability of actions turns out to be very important for how a solo works!

A general summary of her powers:

Elemental Barrage: Is a "random" elemental attack, either acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder damage or inflict all (multiple energy types) and different effects. She can impose a -2 penalty to attacks, deafen, slide targets and similar. This has three attacks attached to it and can be used as a melee basic attack (like a sorcerers channeling power).

Rending Thunder: Is an area or burst attack (her choice, this is a bit of a theme from her elemental barrage if you notice). Targets fort, does thunder damage and against a deafened creature imposes a stiff penalty onto fortitude.

Hurl Through the Abyss: This power is a close burst 2. Any enemy hit gets removed from play until they save. When they save they end up prone, taking ongoing damage and dazed (save ends all). This is used to remove the defender or melee characters clustering around her for a round so she can shuffle off elsewhere.

Elemental Resilience: A basic power that lets her save whenever an effect is placed upon her.

Chaos Chain: This power deals damage, imposes daze and disallows the spending of action points. It creates a small minion that inflicts damage and disabled action points. The minions destruction recharges the power, making it very nasty.

Out of Phase: This gave her two initiatives, one at highest rolled +10 and another at lowest rolled -10. Effectively meaning she starts each round and ends each round. This also meant at the end of each round she gets effectively 2 standard actions to really take it to the PCs. This had the effect of "swinging" combat one way and then the other - making for a very interesting battle!

Drowning Chaos: This power activates when bloodied, turning churning elemental stuff into a vile liquid that surrounds and "drowns" PCs. Basically makes them fight as if they are underwater and makes life difficult.

Empower: This is actually to make her variable resistance count for more, by inflicting elemental damage on the melee PCs weapon attacks.

Twisted Space: A teleport that leaves a damaging zone where she was, used to escape melee characters.

As well as Jerusha there were two heralds of colorless fire and a cacodemon. The Cacodemon was designed as a skill challenge, with the PCs putting him into an intelligent magic item made from the soul of a man who could bind demons for a living. This worked out very well in the end and so did most other things in the encounter.

Turn 1 Jerusha came out swinging, turning the Cleric into a burning pillar and then giving a good Rending Thunder on most of the party. The PCs responded with two critical hits (!) up front on her doing over 200 damage! The heralds came in for support, dealing some damage and moving into the PCs (blocking the Barbarians route to Jerusha). Further spells were flung around, but ultimately it ended with Jerusha in the middle of the party and pretty damaged.

Her next turn was devastating, starting with twisted space to teleport and then Chaos chains hitting much of the party. She dropped numerous PCs and then summoned Ter-Soth (the Cacodemon) into the battle. On his turn he possessed the Barbarian and whacked the Cleric with a charging howling strike. He saved spilling the cacodemon out into a deadly mist.

The PCs then realized they needed to remove the Heralds of colorless fire, seeing as they had less HP and would be able to rampage around at whim. The next turns were a collection of attempts to bind the demon, being knocked unconscious and the PCs just clinging on to a narrow victory by the end. Key to this was binding away the Cacodemon and keeping him there, as he was quite a disruption to the PCs plans (being a trap, he couldn't be affected by powers so they needed other ways to deal with it). Appropriately, the Barbarian scored a critical hit against Jerusha to finish her evil off at around 5.

For an EL + 4 encounter (EL 33) it lasted a solid 2 hours - that's more than fair for such a complex encounter with a high EL. Such an encounter before would have had to be much higher EL wise and last easily a whole session (4 hours). It would have been terribly grindy and nowhere near as challenging. As it was the main reason it took two hours was two of the players were absent, so people playing other characters outside their turn slowed things down a lot. Otherwise I think it would have gone even faster.

This really was my genuine "capstone" test of the new maths. It's pretty conclusive to me now that the new maths make for more challenging encounters. All without needing to rely on purely bull mechanics like repeatedly having to stun every PC in an encounter to ensure a monster survives.

Once I play through my next encounters this week, which do some fairly trippy things I will post some more and detail the encounters (creatures) entirely.