D&D 5E I think I am going to stop using solo monsters.

[dave2008]

People have taken the idea of "action economy" way too far. It's important to understand how much of a force multiplier it is; but the multiplier, while large, is finite, and the DM's resources are infinite. Sufficiently high numbers can counter any number of actions and absorb any amount of DPR.

Can your PCs dish out 200 points of damage a round? Give the monster 1000 hit points. Can they apply three save-or-lose effects per round at DC 19? Give the monster +10 in the relevant saving throws and 6 shots of Legendary Resistance. On offense, you don't have to keep piling on legendary actions, just crank up the damage on the actions the monster already has, until it's dishing out roughly one PC worth of hit points every round. Once you get a feel for what your party can do, you know what it takes to give them a fight; you just have to be willing to do it.

This knowledge brought to you by the broken bodies of PCs who went up against solo monsters in my campaigns.

I'mm not sure what you mean. The point of a revised action economy for solos is that it is more fun. I, and my group, find it more exciting if the dragon can act throughout the round instead of just once. For us, it isn't about difficulty, but enjoyment.

Also, it is not fun (for us) to simply make the monsters strength react to the abilities of group. Now, I have done that at times, but it generally breaks our immersion if we I treat monsters that way.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

This is not a problem with the 5e engine. CR is not meant to accurately provision for 8 PC parties. It's not a linear progression, that's for sure.

 

[Imaculata]

Just approach CR's as if building an encounter for two parties, because thats basically what an 8-man party is.

 

[Ratskinner]

The major problem with this method is that you need to make each target worth attacking, which means it needs enough HP to divert a few attacks away from the main creature, but few enough that people would still want to bother attacking them. If you just stat up that each limb has 50 hit points, and don't bother to change the HP on its main body, then everyone will attack its body and it will die just as easily as always.

I know that's the way it worked for a few corner-case Old-school monsters, but I wouldn't do it that way. So long as any part remains functional, the creature lives. I'm not even sure I'd have a body to attack, because the extremities always give it cover. If I did: Wanna swing at the heart? Fine, you suffer Opportunity Attacks from both forelimbs, the wings, and a bite.* All KO-ing a part does is take it out of the attack lineup. (Heck, the head might count as a flying creature that you can't reach with your sword.)

*in my head I'm thinking dragon...'cause D&D

When this sort of topic comes up in the forums, it always comes with two caveats: 1) You're sticking to the challenge guidelines in the book; and, 2) Any new monster being created will still follow the general guidelines of the system. If you don't care about following those two limitations, then you can easily run solo monsters, by giving them way more HP than the book suggests or using monsters that are significantly higher level.

meh...I'm not too sold on the encounter guidelines as written. Which I'm fine with, 5e seems a lot more forgiving in that regard than recent editions, IMO. Its one of the things I like about it (reminds me of 2e, but with less experience necessary to do the "eyeball" method). However, if you're into that sort of thing, there's no reason you couldn't make the Solo creature "squad form" with the encounter guidelines.

I am a little unclear yet on how I'd run movement for the thing, though. My current best thought is that the solo-squad shares a movement pool in howevermany chunks and each sub-critter can use one on its turn.

 

[Reynard]

last night we played and the party came upon the intellect devourer encounter. I changed things up a little: there were 2 oculus swarms from Tome of Beasts and only 6 intellect devourers. The story was that the swarms attacked the halfling farmstead first with the intellect devourers following along for an opportunity for easy pickings. Using a the wizard PCs familiar the part was able to scout ahead and know something was up so they were on their guard but had no idea what was laying in wait for them.

(I actually signaled undead as a red herring using open, empty graves. Some might consider this bad form but I think surpring the assumptions of long time players is often worth it.)

The oculus swarms attacked first and they were both terrifying and effective. Front line fighters went immediately blinded and confused and other characters did everything they could to stay out of the swarms. The intellect devourers not so much: they were sneaking up on the party but were seen early enough the dragonborn sorcerer was able to kill all but 2 with a well placed fireball. The often inept (by dice luck) Battle Master fighter displayed unusual skill and dispatched the remaining ones before they could do any damage. From there is was a game of attrition and healing potentially torn out eyeballs until the swarms died.

It was a good fight -- fun and scary for the PCs. Multiple opponents helped, as did choosing opponents the PCs themselves wanted to stay away from.

 

[iserith]

(I actually signaled undead as a red herring using open, empty graves. Some might consider this bad form but I think surpring the assumptions of long time players is often worth it.)

What was the actual reason for the open graves?

It was a good fight -- fun and scary for the PCs. Multiple opponents helped, as did choosing opponents the PCs themselves wanted to stay away from.

By the numbers, this is a Deadly encounter for 8x 5th-level PCs, assuming the terrain didn't favor the PCs in any specific way. Per the DMG, "A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat."

Do you think that expectation held true here?

 

[Reynard]

What was the actual reason for the open graves?

The oculus swarms did not kill the halflings, just pulled out their eyeballs and sent them into madness. So the family patriarch was preparing for the inevitable when the IDs came along and inhabited everyone.

By the numbers, this is a Deadly encounter for 8x 5th-level PCs, assuming the terrain didn't favor the PCs in any specific way. Per the DMG, "A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat."

Do you think that expectation held true here?

Pretty much. They did not actually suffer any major losses but only because some characters chose to use abilities specifically to keep other characters from being permanently blinded. I will say I find it weird that in the encounter calculators it takes numbers enemies into account for multipliers but not numbers of PCs. The force multiplier of a bigger party is very significant.

One other thing to say is that since ToB is a 3rd party supplement, there is no telling whether the creatures in it are appropriately CRed. There's more art than science in that process anyway, I would guess, and then it gets coupled with the encounter difficulty calculations being wonky. Again, it just seems like keeping enemy groups big and diverse and going be feel rather than math makes more sense.

Next session they start a large party dungeon exploration. That should be interesting in itself.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The oculus swarms did not kill the halflings, just pulled out their eyeballs and sent them into madness. So the family patriarch was preparing for the inevitable when the IDs came along and inhabited everyone.




Pretty much. They did not actually suffer any major losses but only because some characters chose to use abilities specifically to keep other characters from being permanently blinded. I will say I find it weird that in the encounter calculators it takes numbers enemies into account for multipliers but not numbers of PCs. The force multiplier of a bigger party is very significant.

One other thing to say is that since ToB is a 3rd party supplement, there is no telling whether the creatures in it are appropriately CRed. There's more art than science in that process anyway, I would guess, and then it gets coupled with the encounter difficulty calculations being wonky. Again, it just seems like keeping enemy groups big and diverse and going be feel rather than math makes more sense.

Next session they start a large party dungeon exploration. That should be interesting in itself.

There's no guarantee the MM "official" CRs work properly, and some evidence that they don't.

While I am usually a WotC-only DM, I took a look at ToB yesterday, and it looks great. I have no idea if the CRs in there are consistent with the MM ones, or even internally consistent, but the MM CRs aren't internally consistent, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

As long as a fight is fun. The ToB monsters look pretty fun. What do you (all) think of them?

Sent from my LG-D852 using EN World mobile app

 

[Corwin]

I loves my Tomes of Beasts!

 

[Reynard]

The ToB monsters look pretty fun. What do you (all) think of them?

Terrifying fun! I used the nightgarm too and that was fun. "It does WHAT?"