Monsters As Encounters

Over here I posted the idea of an "encounter monster," in other words, a creature that would work better as a multi-layered scene, rather than a simple straight-up fight.

I'll re-post the example, using a sea serpent here.

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For instance, if the serpent was trying to sink the ship and get at the gooey center of humanoids inside, the approach would be something like this:

STAGE 1: THE SURPRISE ROUND (building suspense)
Give astute PC's the chance to notice something is going to happen. Perhaps a Spot check to notice a large spreading shadow in the water, or a Knowledge (nature) check to figure out why fish are flopping out of water onto the deck, or a random Wisdom check to get a "bad feeling" -- giving each PC something, or at least the group one or two big things. If they roll well (beating a fairly arbitrary DC, set to about a 60% chance of failure, give or take 10-20% for the specialized characters who SHOULD notice something weird about the ocean, or the landlubbers who've never seen a wave before), they can be prepared....which means....

STAGE 2: THE STRIKE (sudden attack!)
The boat rocks violently as the serpent plows into it from below. I'd imagine a creature used to sinking ships would habitually attack the ship itself from it's blindest side, rather than try to surface and do anything crazy. Some NPC mooks fall overboard, of course, and the PC's need to roll some saves to avoid tumbling themselves. And by violently I mean *VIOLENTLY*. The ship rises several feet out of the water as the serpent's jaws clench it and it rises up, tossing it around. Based on the Reflex saves of the PC's, they may take damage or fall out of the ship. Being belowdecks offers no real safe hold, since the serpent's teeth are going to rip some holes in that stuff, and the ship is being propelled out of the water. Those belowdecks take some heavy damage if they fail, mild if they succeed, and if they fail particularly badly, they might fall out of the ship. Those abovedecks take some mild damage, and fall out of the ship if they fail (but manage to cling on despite the damage if they succeed). PC's who noticed the approach can gain a bonus on the save by preparing themselves for the collision. In 4e, this probably translates to the serpent's attack vs. the PC's Reflex.

STAGE 3-6ish: SHE'S GOING DOWN! (building horror)
Well, the ship is in the jaws of a serpent, now, as is noticed by anyone who made their Reflex save (those who didn't might still be too disoriented). Said serpent is going to be breaking it up even more, thrashing it around like a shark on a hunk of meat, serrating and sawing. NOW we roll some initiative, and we have a few events, such as...
* round 3: Water is rushing into the ship, and it's going down fast. PC's belowdecks must make difficult Swim checks to escape from the tangled wreckage and squealing NPC redshirts. Those above need to make Balance checks or Reflex saves to avoid collapsing rigging and tilting angles. On the serpent's turn, it attempts to shatter the ship even more, forcing those who haven't escaped it (or been thrown from it) to make another save as it's tail comes crashing down.
* round 4: Redshirts are being scooped up at the perimeter The PC's get a few opportunities to save them, stabbing the creature in the eyes or swimming very agilely to grab them. Perhaps they need to choose between saving an NPC and grabbing a sinking chest of gold coins. That serpent can swallow quite a few NPC's in a given turn. A clever PC with enough emotional distance might even be able to see what the serpent is doing, circling the group, herding everyone closer together, it's coils tightening....
* round 5: The PC's are directly confronted by an NPC adversary who actively tries to push them into the maw of the beast. The PC's need to make Strength checks and Swim checks to push the goon out of the way, or can use good ol' fashioned stabbin'.
* round 6: The commotion has attracted scavengers. A minor aquatic menace (sahagin? barracuda? sharks? some sort of bird?) show up in the aftermath of the carnage, joining the serpent in picking off the soft n' tasties.

This ends whenever the PC's begin to get bored of it, or when I feel I've abused them enough, or when they do something clever or amazingly successful that helps them avoid some of these complications.

STAGE 7: THE RUSH (life or death!)
Remember in Blue Planet when the whales work together to herd sardines into the center and then rush up in the middle, consuming tons of them all at once? Imagine that, but replace the sardines with that ship full of NPC's! Assuming the PC's didn't do anything crazy horrible to the sea serpent or to escape (totally possible, with a clever group and a well-prepared spellcaster), it feeds. Rising up under the PC's requires the most difficult save yet, but if they've been clever, they can get substantial bonuses. If worst comes to worst, they are swallowed and then killed within a round or three (giant monsters almost never kill you as soon as they eat you, right?). Otherwise, they survive, perhaps drive off the serpent, and live to see the next sunset...but after that, they've gotta deal with being adrift in the ocean, with the scavengers still around...

I'd run most encounters with Behemoth Creatures like this, where it's actually a series of saves and skill checks rather than attack rolls. In this creature's eyes, the PC's are almost Mooks, after all.

For stats, I'd basically need some sort of attack rating for the DC of the saves it forces, some sort of damage rating (that I can halve for being behind a ship, or double for being swallowed, etc), specific hp and AC and actions (we don't need it's whole AC, just the AC for stabbing it in the eye), how to escape it's gullet, maybe a swim speed, a strength rating, how it "rammed" the ship....

Or, being the fast-and-loose DM I am, I'd just make it up with percentage chances to succeed on a d20 roll, calling DC's out of the aether to provoke the PC response I want. Though I'd certainly feel better if I had those things to back me up when the PC's start complaining that it was too tough.

Of course, if the PC's were high level (serpent wrestlin' level) or were really clever (dark spot under the ship?! QUICK, TELEPORT US OUT OF HERE!), they'd get off scott free, or be able to take on the beast more directly. But it'd be a lot less cinematically satisfying...

....though I admit, entirely, that there is a lot of videogame influence behind the "Encounter Monster" way of doing things.
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The logic of it is that some monsters (like the sea serpent in the example) are really not direct challenges to the PC's in the same way that, say, a goblin or a troll is. Rather, the monster creates conditions that the PC's must overcome (one of which is, of course, the monster itself). In general terms, the PC's aren't able to affect the monster directly, but must deal with its effects and its agenda somehow (usually, to preserve their own hide).

D&D can get a bit too wrapped up in the statblock-o-philia sometimes, but this violates that and lets you think about the encounter in a different way. The monster is not a sack of hp and fangs. It's more of a force of nature, an environmental effect, than a discrete critter.

So this thread is for discussing some useful stuff to distill out of this concept, for poking it and prodding it and seeing what we could all find useful from it.

Let's get us some discussion going!

Let's start with....

frankthedm said:

this requires a rule set that accepts the notion of damaging specific areas and one that is willing to tell a PC "No, you cant cut through the scales at these points."

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The general way I'd do this is by giving the creature an actual AC value in line with it's immense size and power. It's huge, it's scales are draconic, you're not likely to pierce it with a sword, let it have a huge AC of 40-something or whatever.

But I would give equally huge bonuses to those players who manage to exploit it's "weak points" -- those points at which you CAN hit the monster.

I would make being able to exploit the weak point at first, a character challenge. Say a steady archer wants to try and shoot the sea serpent in the eye from the hull of the sinking ship. On his turn, he declares his intention, but I'm going to put some barriers in the way. For instance:

-- The ship is tilting wildly and is unsteady. To be able to get a good shot off, make a Balance check (maybe giving him about a 30% chance of success). If you fail, you don't loose your turn, but you can't get steady enough to fire your arrow. If you succeed, next step:

-- We'll treat this something like a striking something on a character, since you're striking something "on" the serpent (it's eye). Take the serpent's Dex modifier, and the size modifier of the eye itself (small? a 4' diameter eye?) to get the eye's AC. Hit THAT AC, and you can do normal damage.

In other words, it's not telling a character "no they can't," in my mind. It's about saying "okay, if you want to try and hurt this thing, you're going to need to jump through a few hoops to do it." Those "hoops" are usually going to be skill checks and saves.

What I want to know is how one would go about hunting down this monstrosity after my Ahabized players decide they want revenge against it for devouring half their number and leaving the rest stranded for days (before being rescued by mermaids, of course).

I think this variety of encounter design is especially appropriate for xbox hueg monsters, since letting characters interact with these giant dynamic setpieces is infinitely more engaging than having them repeatedly stab some poor tarresque in it's legs.

Alternatively, some weak points (especially in the case of a sea serpents' tentacles) can be considered monsters in their own right. The can come with individual stat blocks for HP and AC, but actions limited by what the main creature is capable of (unless they are independent somehow).

Now for conditions of the ship itself, those can either be actions of the creature, or a kind of terrain condition. As an example: When using it's tentacles in a grapple against a vessel, it can impose attack penalties and arcane spell failure chances to it's occupants dependent on how many tentacles it uses for that purpose. Or as a special action it can require balance checks for the players to avoid losing their actions.

Of course, if this is developed for 4e you'd have different tools to work with (hazards and whatnot), but the basic idea shouldn't change much.

Kamikaze Midget said:

-- We'll treat this something like a striking something on a character, since you're striking something "on" the serpent (it's eye). Take the serpent's Dex modifier, and the size modifier of the eye itself (small? a 4' diameter eye?) to get the eye's AC. Hit THAT AC, and you can do normal damage.

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I'm not sure how much I like this, as it opens up the whole 'called shot' can of worms. Representing a hard to reach soft spot with high AC would seem to do the job well enough, but getting the main body to show itself can be a separate challenge. Probably by getting defeating a number of tentacles.

The key to an "encounter monster" seems to be that you don't play the monster just as a single creature.
An encounter monster consists of multiple effects, some of which are monsters, some of them are enviromental effects, hazards or traps.

So, the underground Tentacled Monster that wants to escape the Hellmouth consists of the following aspects:
1) Enviromental Effect: Earth Shaking
2) Hazard/Traps: Poisonous Fumes
3) Spell Effect: If you get to close to its Eye Tentacle, you will be overcome by its evil overmind and be dominated.
4) Monsters: Tentacles of the monster that attack the heroes. Kill them to have them retreat back to the Hellmouth, but you won't kill the monster itself.

To beat the monster, you have to travel about the shaking ground, survive the poisonous fumes, resist the spell effects, and severe enough tentacles. Perhaps even that is not enough, and you need to bring the McGuffin into the right spot / Complete the Dark Ritual of Banishing Tentacled Monsters.

Awesome thread, KM!

I favor treating different parts of the critter as different monsters rather than using a called shot model. This gets around the question of how many actions or action equivalents the big critter gets. Defeating the different parts could have different effects, like blinding the serpent, for instance. As an alternate example, players could defeat the UberKraken encounter by disabling 6 tentacles of UberKraken - or better still, disabling 6 tentacles causes the head to appear, moving things along to the next phase of the fight.

If a supplement on this topic with examples were to be published, I would buy it yesterday.

I love this, but for me, I can't think of any good well, encounter monsters. I see the sea serpent sure, but I just can't think of proper monsters/situations for it.

Rechan said:

I love this, but for me, I can't think of any good well, encounter monsters. I see the sea serpent sure, but I just can't think of proper monsters/situations for it.

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I can think of many... but for the most part, they need to be created or at least highly reinterpreted for the role. Anything particularly large or able to somehow blur the line between battlefield and beast can make a good encounter monster. But in in history, mythology and even classical fiction there aren't many things like that besides the aquatic monsters: giant squids, sea serpents, hydras and whales (I'm looking at you, Moby Dick!). It's not like the Terrasque is a typical size of beast you'd find in those pages, and even creatures such as dragons don't make a habit of, say, landing on a castle and shaking it down. (Hmm...)


Anyways, here's a brainstorm of a few different kind of encounter monsters, by theme:

Monsters:There's a creature that is really, really, really big, and it has eaten you. Yes, this is basically Monstro from Pinocchio, but he isn't prone to coughing up it's food from a bit of smoke: the only way out is brute force. And it has a very good immune system.

Enchantments: Lot's of ways to go with this, here's some fun ones: A castle built with the functionality of a golem, with a great treasure and a stone metal heart held deep within it's deadly walls; a summoning gone awry, having fused an angry and powerful elemental to a dimensional gate, that now is calling forth creatures and imbuing the energy of the Tempest itself into the surrounding area; an arcane spell of ice that somehow became enduring, sentient, enormous, and now animates all it holds within it's icy grasp: only melting every square inch of its effect will stop it.

Nature: Rather than facing off against a number of Treants or other plantlike creatures, what if the forest itself were animated, sentient, and hostile? Not just the trees, but also the shrubs, grass, leaves, and the mulch on the ground, with a cursed grove in center of the forest that must be found and destroyed. Or imagine a single living plant having been animated in the matter of a Treant, but it's size is on the scale of Pando.

Undead: A powerful sentient necromantic artifact is damaged in the battlefield of a recent long and bloody war, and it's subsequent release of power it not only reanimates every slain soldier, but does so as a single interconnected vile creature, with the bloody ground as its body, and the thousand corpses as it's weapons and armor defending it's artifact heart.


In summary: Encounter monsters can be things that are simply huge, things that control the terrain, things that are the terrain, and things that are fusions of so many other things it may as well be terrain.


-PS: KM, check your mail

Singing Smurf said:

Awesome thread, KM!

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Ditto.

Singing Smurf said:

If a supplement on this topic with examples were to be published, I would buy it yesterday.

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Psst. If you know the secrets of time travel, please PM me. I have some investing I need to do.

Yes, yes, very cool. I'm liking this lots.

Hrm, the Hellmouth concept is great too. Would work in conjunction with a Far Realms incursion too.

I'm just going to sit here and let everyone else do the hard work, because, well, you guys rock!