MM excerpt: phane

[ferratus]

Fun thing about them: As they're not solo monsters, you can add weaker versions of the PCs as time duplicates. Even more fun: The phane gets a heap of flavour, if it isn't killed on 0 hp, but instead vanishes, just to re-appear later. If one stops to think that flavourful abilities have to be anchored in the statblock, it's easy to "script" fun scenes. 4E already focuses on more linked encounters - a second phane arriving mid-battle (representing a time-stream duplicate) is basically made for the system.

You know, I have an idea for this encounter. A couple of adventures before this encounter, tell the party members that had a strange dream where they fought themselves. Give a generic description of the battle and perhaps feature a major magical item you plan to give them.

Then when you fight the Phane, he summons up duplicates of the party as they were a few levels ago. If the PC's don't get the hint and still use lethal damage and kill one of their doubles, you can take the character sheet away and force them to go back to where they were a couple of level ago to retrieve the body. Time paradoxes are fun.

Not something I'd want to see in official rules mind you, but a DM could have a lot of fun creating that ability and building an encounter around it.

 

[Benimoto]

Kamikaze -- i find tons of creatures seem to have lost 'the cool' so just house rule them back

It's think it's part of the 3.x to 4e difference in terms of encounter design. 'The cool' is now distributed among the 3-5 different types of monsters that are in a standard encounter instead of all concentrated in one monster.

I think that's nice because A) You can better customize what kind of challenge an encounter brings by changing out specific creatures. B) With 'the cool' spread out a little, the challenge becomes a little more even, rather than the swingy combats people describe above.

In general I think the Phane looks good. I wish they'd actually show us a whole encounter for one of the previews instead of just one monster at a time.

 

[Lensman]

It's damage output seems very low in my opinion and with his massive hitpoints I wonder if combats will be very long and dragged out against it.

 

[Gargazon]

It's think it's part of the 3.x to 4e difference in terms of encounter design. 'The cool' is now distributed among the 3-5 different types of monsters that are in a standard encounter instead of all concentrated in one monster.

I think that's nice because A) You can better customize what kind of challenge an encounter brings by changing out specific creatures. B) With 'the cool' spread out a little, the challenge becomes a little more even, rather than the swingy combats people describe above.

In general I think the Phane looks good. I wish they'd actually show us a whole encounter for one of the previews instead of just one monster at a time.

I agree. People seem to be making the mistake of looking at the monster as acting in a single creature vs. party of four situation, like in 3.5, but that's not how it's designed. This Phane would, by itself, be a challenge for two 26th level characters, not four. Four characters would kick its ass in no time.

Also, I like that it's effects are only status+damage, as if it was any worse and the monster was still fighting with three other monsters helping, all of them also dealing status+damage, some DMs could be quickly overwhelmed. The Phane's attacks keep the flavour of a time-manipulating beast, and also help to stop you being overwhelmed whenever you're using it in an equal encounter.

 

[humble minion]

I'm with some of the other posters here - - to me this seems like the bad side effect of the 'no save or die effects' philosophy.

Yes, it absolutely stinks to lose levels, or ability points, or die outright, or AGE...but I think that you kick a lot of the dramatic tension right out the window when you do things like this.

"Look out, Egaddz! It's a Phane!!! If he manages to strike any of us with his epic dread power, we will be briefly penalized! And what is more, we will APPEAR TO BE OLD...until it wears off"

I am not, in any way, intending to suggest that the first-failed-save-loses way that high-level/epic combat played out in 3.x was a good or desirable thing. It wasn't.

But this post is spot on.

There is nothing EPIC about the phane. It is not frightening. It is not profound in any way. It is a 26th-level creature cannot affect the wider world in any truly significant way. The only way this 26th-level creature can threaten the kingdom or provoke an apocalypse is by hitting people, one at a time. It is an orc with bigger numbers in its stat block.

Oh, and it makes you look old, for a little while. Ooh, scary.

Go on, this creature was meant to be created as a living weapon in the primeval war between deific entities. It basically defines epic. It's the sort of thing campaigns are built around. But just try to extract from its stat block anything resembling a plot hook. I dare you.

It's just so damn shallow.

 

[AllisterH]

It's damage output seems very low in my opinion and with his massive hitpoints I wonder if combats will be very long and dragged out against it.

What do you consider to long a combat?

I've noticed this as a valid fear but I'm wondering if people are equating 3e length of a round as the 4E length of a round. The loss of iterative attacks by itself will cut down the length of time a round takes in 4E so even from the getgo, at high levels, the 4E combat round should run faster in real world time.

 

[Deverash]

You know, I have an idea for this encounter. A couple of adventures before this encounter, tell the party members that had a strange dream where they fought themselves. Give a generic description of the battle and perhaps feature a major magical item you plan to give them.

Then when you fight the Phane, he summons up duplicates of the party as they were a few levels ago. If the PC's don't get the hint and still use lethal damage and kill one of their doubles, you can take the character sheet away and force them to go back to where they were a couple of level ago to retrieve the body. Time paradoxes are fun.

Not something I'd want to see in official rules mind you, but a DM could have a lot of fun creating that ability and building an encounter around it.

That's an awesome idea. If/when I ever run a game to epic levels, I'm definately using that.

 

[Gargazon]

I am not, in any way, intending to suggest that the first-failed-save-loses way that high-level/epic combat played out in 3.x was a good or desirable thing. It wasn't.

But this post is spot on.

There is nothing EPIC about the phane. It is not frightening. It is not profound in any way. It is a 26th-level creature cannot affect the wider world in any truly significant way. The only way this 26th-level creature can threaten the kingdom or provoke an apocalypse is by hitting people, one at a time. It is an orc with bigger numbers in its stat block.

Oh, and it makes you look old, for a little while. Ooh, scary.

Go on, this creature was meant to be created as a living weapon in the primeval war between deific entities. It basically defines epic. It's the sort of thing campaigns are built around. But just try to extract from its stat block anything resembling a plot hook. I dare you.

It's just so damn shallow.

This creature IS Epic. If you sent a party of paragon heroes against it not only would they not be able to hit the ghastly abomination, they'd barely do any damage as the thing transforms them all into old men and women slowly and painfully. The original Phane, as far as I know, didn't have a 'Nuke City' spell, so why should this one? Also, this thing could easily tear apart a city - it wouldn't do it quickly, but time is no object to it, so it doesn't matter.

And the fluff has plenty of plot hooks - the Phane is working for a higher authority, such as a some kind of Lich Archmage, who seeks to make time his plaything through experimentation on how these creatures function. Or a pair of Phane are attacking astral vessels out of boredom - one of which the PCs are riding on.

 

[Voss]

Battles I think will be a multi round affair where everyone gets to do their stuff and feels like they actually made a contribution to the actual battle itself.

Hmm. Well, I have to admit I like the 4e tactics, and what you can do in a battle far more than I liked it in 1st, 2nd or 3rd, even just based on the small sample of available info. But... I do think that solos and elites would be just as interesting without the HP inflation. They can do neat things, which is great. But the extra hit points don't add to the interesting dimension the combat- they just artficially extend it, and whats worse, is it largely *feels* artificial (with what I've tried out). It particularly stands out when compared with the damage dealing capability of things with equal levels, including themselves- this thing is going to pound on itself for, what, 24+ rounds to kill itself? That just feels wrong, and dreadfully boring.

I'm seriously considering pushing elites down to normal hit point and defense levels and solos down to 'elite' levels. The interesting abilities will stay just as interesting, but there will be less of the 'miss/miss/miss/hit, ok, it hits bob again' 'miss/miss/hit/miss, Ok it hits bob again, someone use a healing power on him', & etc that solo battles feel like. (Or as PC levels go up, just the daily, encounter and action point nova followed by beating on it until it dies, 7 rounds later).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Hmm. Well, I have to admit I like the 4e tactics, and what you can do in a battle far more than I liked it in 1st, 2nd or 3rd, even just based on the small sample of available info. But... I do think that solos and elites would be just as interesting without the HP inflation. They can do neat things, which is great. But the extra hit points don't add to the interesting dimension the combat- they just artficially extend it, and whats worse, is it largely *feels* artificial (with what I've tried out). It particularly stands out when compared with the damage dealing capability of things with equal levels, including themselves- this thing is going to pound on itself for, what, 24+ rounds to kill itself? That just feels wrong, and dreadfully boring.

I'm seriously considering pushing elites down to normal hit point and defense levels and solos down to 'elite' levels. The interesting abilities will stay just as interesting, but there will be less of the 'miss/miss/miss/hit, ok, it hits bob again' 'miss/miss/hit/miss, Ok it hits bob again, someone use a healing power on him', & etc that solo battles feel like. (Or as PC levels go up, just the daily, encounter and action point nova followed by beating on it until it dies, 7 rounds later).

I think it was Mike Mearls who wrote in his blog about a monster that he changed a bit differently then usual - he reduced the monsters HP, and instead increased its damage. That would make the combat "swingier", but the overall numeric balance stays the same. You could use this as an approach to handle Elite and Solo monsters.

For my Iron Heroes campaign, I wrote up a Minion, Elite and Solo template. In the Elite template, I either double hit point, or increase both hit points and damage by 50 %. (from a purely statistical point of view, these do not end up equal. The latter version is a little more powerful. But it's close enough for me).

Transposed to 4E, Elites could grant only 1/2 the normal extra HP, but also increase damage by 50 %. Solos probably should grant the full hit points and the 50 % damage increase.

Both approaches only work in games without a significant number of save or die effects. Once they enter the equation, hit points can be bypassed, and damage becomes king.