Solos, Status Effects, and a House Rule

[RangerWickett]

I think part of the balance built into the rules is that solos have higher defenses. So you'll hit less often with your stunning attack, but when you hit, it affects more "monster-rounds" than if you had attacked a standard monster.

I'm considering altering a solo so that, compared to a normal monster, it has x5 HP, normal defenses, and four standard actions per round, plus a move action.

 

[Morgan_Scott82]

@ Morgan_Scott82: Thoughtful post, and I like the powers you gave Klang (nice names too). However, most DMs don't write all their Solo's from scratch. So I think there's a lot of value in what Elric is trying to do, which is create a houserule those DMs can apply to their Solos to help with this issue. Still, I'd love to play as a PC against some of your Solos! They are very flavorful (including the one you posted in the other thread on this topic).

Thanks for the praise. When I wrote both this post and the previous I was talking about designing solos, and how I think the design is the place to address their issues. I recognize that few of the printed solos conform to my recommendations, which is part of why I am so eager to evangelize them in hopes someone at Wizards of the Coast R&D will take my advice to heart (I also wouldn't happen to object if they wanted to hire me, or contract with me to consult on such matters , I wouldn't even have to relocate to their Renton, WA offices since I'm already local...).

I do think the quality of printed solos is slowly improving as the people contributing to the game work with Solos more and get a better handle on their strengths and weaknesses. For example compare Thorn, a solo from Dungeon 160, to an adult white dragon. Assuming the standart party of five, Thorn's action ratio is 4:5, while the White Dragon's is 2:5. Thorn is a better written, more engaging solo. I don't think he goes far enough (niether of them have any outs for example), but it's progress, and hopefully we'll see more progress, and the game will continue to get better for all of us.

While you're right that not all, or even most, DMs custom write their solos. I would of course encourage them to flex their design muscles and create more of their own, since solos are supposed to make for some of the most memorable encounters. By custom building your solos you can help ensure that they're engaging and memorable. However I recognize not all DMs have the time to do that, heck most sessions I'm cramming design into the adventure all the way down to the wire (go ahead just ask my players how many times I've delayed the start of the session by ten minutes so I could figure out treasure parcels). That said, I think you can start with a by the book solo, and spice it up such that it meets some of the design criteria I've talked about with just a little effort. What's more I think that effort will be well worth it.

For example our Adult White Dragon would be a good candidate for some spicing up. As it stands his action ratio is 2:5, and he has no outs. So lets look at the tools we still have to work with. He has four different ways to use his standard action, so anything we did there would be increaed competition for that single scarce resource, but he has no way to use his Minor or immediate actions, and no unique move actions. He has icewalk, so he ignores difficult terrain from ice, but has no way to create difficult terrian, we should do something about that. We think about some dragon-ish, or cold-ish powers and see what comes to mind.

Frostbound Earth Aura 2, the squares within the aura are considered difficult terrain.

Wingback strike (Minor action)
M; +10 vs Fort; 1d6+5 damage and the target is pushed two squares.

Iceshock Stomp (Minor action, recharge 6)
Close Burst 1; +10 vs Fort; 1d10+5 cold damage and the target is pushed three squares.

Font of Arcane Renewal (immediate reaction, when the adult white dragon is effected by a condition that a save can end, recharge 5,6)
The Adult white dragon makes an saving throw.

There we go in ten minutes time we've taken a boring solo with an action ratio of 2:5, and no outs to what I hope would be a more interesting solo with an action ratio of 3.5:5 and a versitile, somewhat reliable out. Its easier than most DMs think to spice up a solo, and the more you do it the easier it gets.

BTW Font of Arcane Renewal would be a good out power for all dragons...

I think with just a little effort, you can mitigate a lot of the challenges with Monster Manual solos in a way that's much more rewarding than a blanket house rule. Not to mention keeping the rules as simple and streamlined as possible.

 

[Elric]

Which is more exciting, making all solos more resistant to all status effects, or giving each solo a custom set of strengths and weaknesses through the judicious use of outs?

One of my favorite priniciples of fourth edition is exception based design, a single simple set of general rules applied all of the time, unless something specific says not to. A house rule making saving throws work differently for solos moves away from this priniciple. I believe having saving throws that work one way most of the time, but a different way of solos is two sets of general rules. All solo's is too general to me, which is one reason I favor specific outs written into monster write ups as specific exceptions.

@ Morgan_Scott82: Thoughtful post, and I like the powers you gave Klang (nice names too). However, most DMs don't write all their Solo's from scratch. So I think there's a lot of value in what Elric is trying to do, which is create a houserule those DMs can apply to their Solos to help with this issue. Still, I'd love to play as a PC against some of your Solos! They are very flavorful (including the one you posted in the other thread on this topic).

I think of what I'm doing as adding a property to each solo monster to resist status effects better, and using the exact same property each time. As LuckyAdrastus says, your solos look very flavorful and fun to play against. If you could only choose one resilience solution for every solo, which one would you pick? Now you have a default and if you want to create a solo from scratch or further modify an existing one, you can do that as a specific exception.

@ Elric: For my suggestion (bonus save at start of term vs. ennumerated conditions) you could make the bonus save be only a regular save (10+ to save) so that it isn't too powerful for the Solo. I also don't mind nerfing stunned compared to weakened against a Solo, b/c stunned is much more powerful. Weakened could be included on the list of effects the Solo saves against. Perhaps all Solos could get a power like the one that Morgan_Scott82 suggested for Klang that gives them a rechargeable free action that gives them a bonus save?

Even a bonus save like the one Klang has doesn’t affect the two big issues, though, which are that a solo has no special defenses against until end of next turn effects, and that it will be affected for at least a round by (save ends) effects. A solo is only affected for 1.25 rounds on average by a (Save ends) effect right now; even having it automatically make saving throws would only decrease this to 1.

A bonus save would be handy against RAW Orb Wizards and AV static-save penalty stuff, but I think those abilities should be fixed with a house rule so they aren’t so overpowered, instead of trying to immunize solos from the consequences of static save penalties being so overpowered.

I agree with you that Stunned is much stronger than Weakened against solos. Still, against most solos it’s not 5x as strong. Weakened is not that good, in any case, so not including it in a “condition specific fix” won’t lead to (until end of turn) weaken effects trivializing solo encounters.

As for your original suggestion (as edited), I like the direction you are moving in, but it still seems too complicated:

Solos get a bonus save at the start of the turn.
It also works against powers that last "Until the End of the Turn."
If they make it by less than five points, the power lasts until the end of their turn.
This doesn't work against "Until End of the Turn" effects that came from class features or other non-power sources.

When you put it that way, I see that the first line should read “Solos make saves at the start of their turn instead of the end of their turn”, and the fact that it’s hard to even describe it correctly means that it’s probably too complicated

 

[Elric]

I think part of the balance built into the rules is that solos have higher defenses. So you'll hit less often with your stunning attack, but when you hit, it affects more "monster-rounds" than if you had attacked a standard monster.

I'm considering altering a solo so that, compared to a normal monster, it has x5 HP, normal defenses, and four standard actions per round, plus a move action.

I didn’t mention this because in the context of comparing elites to solos, their defenses should be the same. I should have mentioned this in the context of comparisons to normal monsters, though. The DMG has essentially the same guidelines for increasing defenses for solos and elites (+2 to three defenses), and in the MM they seem to have generally equal defenses by level/role as well. So relative to standard monster, solos have higher defenses and higher “monster equivalents”, but relative to elites, they have higher “monster-equivalents” and the same defenses.

Additionally, even the +2 to defenses and saves elites have over normal monsters isn’t enough to make up for counting as 2 monsters instead of 1 (discounting the separate issue that until end of next turn effects affect both equally, where the save bonus doesn’t help). For example, an elite is hit 40% of the time by a 1.53 round (save ends) effect, while a normal monster is hit 50% of the time by a 1.82 round (save ends) effect. Including the to-hit chance, this gives 1.22 average “monster rounds” for elites and 0.91 for normal monsters.

 

[keterys]

Hmm. Remove the saving throw bonus from solos, then:

Solo creatures auotomatically make all saving throws at the end of their turn.

Whenever a solo is affected by an attack with a duration of one turn or less, it may make an immediate saving throw. If successful any associated conditions or penalties of the attack are removed.

So that would make one turn effects have .45 * 5 = 2.25 times as much effect as normal and save ends would have 1*5 = 5 / (what, 5/3 round normal expectation?) = 3 times as much effect.

So the save ends powers would still be very important for guaranteeing a round of effect, and the solo would have lots of outs against normal penalties. At that point it'd be a lot easier to work on its action economy and it would be far more resistant to things like just stacking a ton of attack penalties on it.

 

[Elric]

Hmm. Remove the saving throw bonus from solos, then:

Solo creatures auotomatically make all saving throws at the end of their turn.

This would really keep Orb Wizards in check Having solos auto-make saves is a large change of the game's existing mechanics, though- maybe too large, since the saving throw bonus for a solo only ends up mattering on one-round effects. It also doesn't decrease the length of save-ends effects on solos that much.

Whenever a solo is affected by an attack with a duration of one turn or less, it may make an immediate saving throw. If successful any associated conditions or penalties of the attack are removed.

So that would make one turn effects have .45 * 5 = 2.25 times as much effect as normal and save ends would have 1*5 = 5 / (what, 5/3 round normal expectation?) = 3 times as much effect.

20/11 is the normal monster round expectation, so this is 2.75 as much effect. This proposal, like my most recent proposal above, has one round effects becoming 45% as effective as they used to be, though you've gone a little further by giving an immediate check to cancel them. That seems like a reasonable number, in general.

Overall, this is getting close to my original proposal (solos make saves at the start of the round and can save against until end of turn effects then), except replacing solos having a "+2 bonus to saves" with a "+0 bonus to saves." Issues of immediate saves vs. saves at the start of your turn aside (and exactly what conditions are covered, since our wordings are slightly different), if you make my original proposal +0 to saves you end up with average of 0.45 rounds for (until end of turn) effects and 0.82 for (save ends) effects.

This is the same ratio of relative effectiveness as for a normal monster, though compared to the RAW status quo one-round effects have taken a bigger hit than (save ends). Also, my proposal here is horribly vulnerable to Orb Wizards and static save penalties, which would have to be HRd before you'd want to implement a fix like this one.

 

[KidSnide]

I do think the quality of printed solos is slowly improving as the people contributing to the game work with Solos more and get a better handle on their strengths and weaknesses. For example compare Thorn, a solo from Dungeon 160, to an adult white dragon. Assuming the standart party of five, Thorn's action ratio is 4:5, while the White Dragon's is 2:5. Thorn is a better written, more engaging solo. I don't think he goes far enough (niether of them have any outs for example), but it's progress, and hopefully we'll see more progress, and the game will continue to get better for all of us.

I tend to agree with the idea that the solution here is probably writing better solo monsters than are found in the MM1, and not writing a general rule that applies to all solo monsters automatically.

Font of Arcane Renewal (immediate reaction, when the adult white dragon is effected by a condition that a save can end, recharge 5,6)
The Adult white dragon makes an saving throw.

There we go in ten minutes time we've taken a boring solo with an action ratio of 2:5, and no outs to what I hope would be a more interesting solo with an action ratio of 3.5:5 and a versitile, somewhat reliable out. Its easier than most DMs think to spice up a solo, and the more you do it the easier it gets.

BTW Font of Arcane Renewal would be a good out power for all dragons...

But the more interesting point in this thread is that good solo design requires "outs" as well as actions. Although every solo shouldn't have the same out capacity, each solo needs something.

The Font of Arcane Renewal shown above is a perfectly reasonable choice. You could also allow a Warden like "save vs. one effect" and, optionally, expand it to include until-the-end-of-X's-next-turn effects. A Warden-like effect has the double-effect of effectively giving an extra action. Immunities (or "resistances") to certain effects, especially Dazed and Stunned, are also a reasonable choice. A solo might also be able to transfer effects to its weaker allies or (even nastier) to its enemies. One could also give solos encounter (or recharge) effects that are "free actions, only usable once per turn". The primary effect is to give another action, but it also reduces Daze vulnerability because the free action isn't impinged. I'm sure others also have good ideas.

-KS

 

[Elric]

For example compare Thorn, a solo from Dungeon 160, to an adult white dragon. Assuming the standart party of five, Thorn's action ratio is 4:5, while the White Dragon's is 2:5. Thorn is a better written, more engaging solo. I don't think he goes far enough (niether of them have any outs for example), but it's progress, and hopefully we'll see more progress, and the game will continue to get better for all of us.

Solo action ratio deserves a separate topic entirely. I will say that solos wouldn’t need as many actions to keep up with players if they weren’t so affected by debuffs.

Font of Arcane Renewal (immediate reaction, when the adult white dragon is effected by a condition that a save can end, recharge 5,6)
The Adult white dragon makes an saving throw.

BTW Font of Arcane Renewal would be a good out power for all dragons...

Would a dragon be able to use this as an immediate reaction to being affected by a Stun/Daze? If not, that’s a problem. The main problem with this kind of fix is that it does nothing for (until end of next turn) effects but severely weakens (save ends) effects. If the Dragon had this power available and uses it, a (save ends) effect lasts an average of 0.25 rounds.

So if the Dragon has this available for even every third (save ends) attack (roughly speaking, it gets hit by one effect it wants to use the power on each round), save-ends attacks end up being less powerful than (until end of next turn) effects. As the former are almost exclusively daily powers and the latter tend to be encounter powers, this would be a strange effect.

So far I've been discussing major fixes in the scheme of things. Your two examples so far have been comparatively minor fixes. It's just adding a specific ability or two to each solo. Let me try a proposal in this genre. Solos add the following two abilities:

Immutable Opponent When this creature would be stunned or dominated, if it is not dazed it can make a saving throw. If that saving throw succeeds, it is dazed instead (the effect has its usual duration).

Remarkable Resilience (no action, when this creature suffers an effect that a save can end; encounter). This creature makes a saving throw against the triggering effect.
Special: the first time this creature becomes bloodied in an encounter, this power recharges, and it can use it immediately against an ongoing effect that a save can end.

The first ability is aimed at until end of next turn stun effects in particular. The second ability only deals with save-ends effects, but is limited enough that it shouldn't change the balance between (until end of next turn) and (save ends) effects. Since it doesn't have recharge rolls it won't require much additional tracking. I haven't figured out whether the current wording makes Immutable Opponent take effect before the solo has to decide whether to use Remarkable Resilience, and also haven't thought too much about which order would be desirable

This doesn't deal with the problem of stacking to-hit penalties on solos, and won't prevent a dedicated stunning party from getting several rounds of stun in on a solo, but it should help ensure that solos are a more appropriate challenge, without requiring any major changes.

 

[Elric]

We think about some dragon-ish, or cold-ish powers and see what comes to mind.

Frostbound Earth Aura 2, the squares within the aura are considered difficult terrain.

Wingback strike (Minor action)
M; +10 vs Fort; 1d6+5 damage and the target is pushed two squares.

Iceshock Stomp (Minor action, recharge 6)
Close Burst 1; +10 vs Fort; 1d10+5 cold damage and the target is pushed three squares.

There we go in ten minutes time we've taken a boring solo with an action ratio of 2:5, and no outs to what I hope would be a more interesting solo with an action ratio of 3.5:5 and a versitile, somewhat reliable out. Its easier than most DMs think to spice up a solo, and the more you do it the easier it gets.

This is a separate issue from the main point of this thread, but I'd worry that your changes to increase solos' action ratio would make them too powerful (edit: looking at the book, the Adult White Dragon does look pretty weak; still, these changes would substantially increase its power). In particular, solos have higher defenses and four at heroic (five at paragon/epic) times the HP of normal monsters. A solo is still essentially as powerful until the end of a fight (besides using its action points and having to recharge powers). By comparison the players get weaker over the course of a combat, using up encounter and daily powers and switching to at-wills.

In a normal combat, the players can and will focus fire, so the monsters lose offense over time as they are killed off, while the players have more ways to prevent the monsters from focusing fire and have healing surge triggers, which enables them to have "group hit points" in a way that monsters do not. So a solo should have lower damage capabilities than a group of 5 normal monsters. If a solo started out with the damage capabilities of close to 5 normal monsters of its level, it could easily be too strong.

While some effects are stronger in an encounter against solos than normal monsters (Lead the Attack, for example, in addition to the debuffs that this thread is mainly concerned with), other effects are weaker (Area attacks). At level 9, the White Dragon's level, debuffs are less of a problem than they'll become- I don't think there are any encounter stun powers in the heroic tier, for example

Now, I think that it would have made sense for D&D solos to be designed with slightly fewer HP and greater offense. However, given their high HP, you have to be careful with how strong you make their offenses. Edit: after having made this comment, I spotted the Adamantine Dragon MM2 preview (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20090413), and it looks both significantly better offensively and weaker defensively than the comparable solo 22 soldier Red Dragon. Its defenses are lower and its HP are four times that of a normal monster's, not the 5 in PH for paragon/epic solos. So if this is a trend, WotC is already redesigning solos in this way (no "outs", though).

 

[Neubert]

Another option, just to inject it, is to downgrade effects. Have the solo roll to save against an effect (let's use stunned in this example) in the beginning of it's turn (as you mention). If it saves against the stun, it is downgraded to a daze. However, it gets an new saving throw immediately after to save against the daze. This way, there is a chance it is still stunned, there is a chance it becomes dazed and there is a chance it clears it completely.

Without having done the math, I would guess a +0 or +2 bonus to the save would be most fair.


Another option is to have the solo save right when it is affected (so when a player stuns the solo, it rolls right away - this way you don't have to remember to do saves at the beginning of it's turn). This has the side effect of the players knowing that it isn't stunned (and the next player can use a new power to try and stun), but they will also not get the effect of the stun at all.
I think this should only be the case for conditions such as stun, as it would devaluate ongoing damage (but I think a list of which effects it can do immediate saves against would be best, in order to micro-manage what effects can be stopped).
In order to keep things consistent, the solo would also roll saves at the end of it's turn.