The D&D Boss Fight

[angelababy]

At the end of the day a single creature is just a single creature and that's an inherent weakness - it can't spread out nor can it survive partially. While drawing in the necromantic energy, he provides a leader bonus in the form of say, an Aura 5. Any effects that last until the end of the enemy's next turn would end part way through the round when it took its next action, and it will get to save multiple times throughout a round.when they kill the tail, it can no longer attack

 

[TheAngryDM]

I don't really understand the vehement opposition to the idea of a solo creature, but, fortunately, no one is forced to use them. For those that DO want to use them (like myself), there are ways that they can be done and done well and enjoyably. My group seems to enjoy the occasional solo encounter (even without using boss mechanics) and I've had a positive response from lots of others.

Comparing 4E to previous editions really isn't useful in this case. Previous editions lacked solo mechanics because the game wasn't built with a rigorous sense of encounter balance. Even 3.5 had the CR system overlaid AFTER the rules, classes, and monsters were designed (see D&D Podcast 4E preview episodes where Mike Mearls and Dave Noonan talk about the process of testing game balance in 3E with the Genericon Monsters). 4E's standard monster is balanced to appear in groups of five or so. A different mechanic is needed for a creature that can pose a good challenge to a party by itself. Again, contrast this with 3E in which the basic assumption was that one monster against the party (a single CR 5 monster was a good challenge for an entire 5th level party). Thus, all monsters were 'solo' by default in 3E, which is why fractional CRs got added below level 1.

As for the story and flavor of solo monsters, I just don't understand the objection. Can you explain to me why there can't be creatures so powerful that they can take down a full party of adventurers. The iconic dragon encounter is not in which the dragon and his four buddies attack the party. It is when a party is hard pressed to take down a single dragon. And most of the solos fall into this category of uber-powerful creatures: dragons, beholders, gods, primordials, the kraken, etc.

You might not like the idea of the lone goblin that turns out to be a solo (and neither do I, for that matter). But that isn't the only way to have a solo and it certainly needs a story explanation to be consistent with the world. But that is not enough of a reason not to include the option, if you can make the option work mechanically.

As to why my first boss is "just" an ogre? What's my justification. Simply this, ogres are powerful enough that a party doesn't encounter them until eighth or ninth level. So, they are very powerful creatures. I could model that simply by using a ninth level creature in a third level dungeon, but the party would never be able to hit it, the damage would be too high, they would get pasted, and the ogre would eat up so much of the XP budget that he'd have to handle the battle alone anyway. So, I model him as a third level solo instead - he's defeatable, but its a big, rough, climatic fight.

In six levels, when the party fights another ogre and they remember this fight and it shows them how powerful they've become. They had to pull out all the stops just to defeat a single ogre and now they can take down five of the things in a fairly routine battle.

So, in this case, there is a story justification built around the mechanics. Ogres are powerful and a third level party is just not good enough to take one down without a lot of struggle. Their conditions don't effect the creature as well because the skill/magical power/combat prowess just isn't there yet. Its all relative.

Solo's just don't work well in 4e. Sure, you can fix the mechanics - but that's not helping, just making matters worse by encouraging their use: the real problem isn't the mechanics it's the lack of consistency with the rest of D&D. For creatures that are truly unique it's a template that could be used rarely; sparingly - like nails on chalkboard.

Ultimately, I am sure I am misunderstanding this statement most of all. On the one hand, it seems as if you are saying "Solos don't work and fixing them is bad because they are broken." On the other hand, you are saying they lack consistency. If every dragon (except the unique special case, such as a baby or a completely different race of dragons) is a solo, that seems pretty consistent to me. If every beholder is a solo, still consistent. Yes, if a goblin just randomly turns out to (surprise!) be a solo, that's bad - but it is a bad use of the system, it is not a bad system.

 

[Aegeri]

First, I must say one of your core arguments - about the Goblin - is just a gigantic strawman built to support your argument but without being a truly valid example. There are numerous creatures that deserve the term "solo" on purely logical grounds. That they need certain mechanics is just a function of the game, but it is not inherently illogical.

Exactly! That's my point. Solo's should need "special" exemptions to the rules for the meta-game reason that they're solos. Rather, they should make sense as is, and perhaps due to their greater power happen to be appropriate for normal use.

Many of them already do. A dragon doesn't need special justification why you should be terrified of it: It's a damn dragon. Why is Iron-tongue who commands every Kobold from the Fire Mountains or Skullsplitter the fierce Orc Barbarian also a solo, with comparative resistance? Because these individuals don't lead entire armies by themselves unless they are unique and special.

Just like your PC is unique and entirely special compared to most other NPCs in the world, so too are the elite/solo unique and special compared to the general mass of monsters in the world.

I couldn't agree more! The way I see it, a solo encounter (barring exceptions) just doesn't work well for the same length as a normal encounter does.

I absolutely, 100% categorically state that this is completely wrong. I cannot disagree more strongly with this statement in words over the internet. Before MM3, I might have agreed with this but now that solo design has been moving a certain way and with the new damage - solos are a fun, threatening and SHORT encounter. One reason that solos were no fun before is huge amounts of grind with constant lockdowns.

It either took forever to kill, doing very little damage in the process leading to a boring fight or it didn't do anything because of daze/stun/dominate lockdowns. Now that solos have the guts to solve the second problem and the damage to solve the first, they are more fun and take less time. Why is this? Because a solo of the parties level or around two levels higher produces a fun fight.

You don't need to go overboard on the EL to make them relevant.

I'd rather have a combat that ends in 3 rounds of heart pounding action than 10 rounds of grind.

Ter-Soth for example is a 28th level brute that I used against a level 28 party. The fight lasted four rounds and was utterly intense. Ter-Soth was hard to lock down with conditions and dealt huge amounts of damage accurately. At the end, the three melee classes had a huge amount of healing surges taken off them, one was unconscious and the others had 15 and 30 HP respectively. He also took big chunks out of both ranged party members.

Total time (real time) of the fight was a mere 35 minutes. If that's not an absolute success when you combine new damage, a lower level (less missing) and guaranteed action economy (how solos are being designed now more and more, see the young black dragon as an example) I don't know what is.

The variety of abilities should suffice to define a monster. Yet solo's have been imbued with a variety of abilities that aren't reflected in their description or fluff whatsoever. An epic character would find it hard to get a constant +5 save bonus - yet a low-level humanoid solo has somehow achieved the same thing. The whole mechanical construction of a 4e solo is jarring, and should rarely exist.

This isn't even true and is easily disproved. Open your PHB, turn to the description of Dwarves. Oh look, as a racial feature they get a +5 bonus to saves against poison. It is limited, but it does show that getting high saving throw bonuses isn't exactly uncommon for even low level characters. It is possible with feats to get bonuses quite high as well - particularly against specific conditions.

All solos get +5 to saves because in the end they need it. One effect on a solo deals 5x the effect (because it's one roll to effectively hit 5 monsters simultaneously). So they need the resistance to reduce the power of save ends effects. In the end though, nearly every solo in 4E is defined by what it actually does on its stat block, making this particular point a rather irrelevant curiosity. The purple worm and dracolich have +5 saves in the MM, but it doesn't make them suddenly equal to truly excellently designed solos like Lolth, Allabah, Oublivae, Vecna (so much potential here), Demogorgon, Elminster (I hate the character, but the stat block is glorious) and similar. For that matter even decently designed MM solos like the Ancient White Dragon are good examples.

In the end a solo monster IS defined by its stat block. Most of the solos that are really good are good because of their powers and abilities. The +5 saves does little to save a poor stat block.

Which brings me to the next thing you say...Which is as it should be. And that's what's wrong with 4e solos. They're so focused on making the mechanics "work" that they're losing sight of the bigger picture - the flavor.

Considering that all solos are made or break on how good their mechanics gel to produce a good fight, I just can't see what point you're trying to make here. Flavor and similar is the DMs job, the stat blocks job is to make that fun.

The fact that all the monsters they encounter that happen to be alone happen to share a set of features (a template - the solo template) that no normal monster or PC could achieve through the usual means of gaining power, and that this template is so consistent across all creatures even when the fluff has no similarity whatsoever and ensures that these loners are handily resilient without actually being overpowering is like having a string of deus ex machina moments.

I can't even comprehend how you think this argument is valid. Different solos vary widely in abilities and how they function. There are multiple turn solos, there are single initiative "nova" solos, there are those that rely on zones and ranged attacks, there are solos that simply beat the ever loving snot out of PCs. The difference between a Kraken, Demogorgon, Lolth, Elminster, Allabah and similar are massive. There is no denying those creatures play nowhere near the same - despite being all solos.

The only common features of them is a general resistance to being constantly stun/daze locked to varying degrees. They all have a solid amount of HP, which is just required frankly, 2 APs and a +5 bonus to save. Nothing else makes them consistent with one another in a way that is "dues ex machina" at all.

It's just too much nonsense, too much coincidence that gets repeated and repeated and repeated until the only possible response is to not think about it and just roll the damn dice because the fantasy of it isn't internally consistent anyhow.

Your argument doesn't make any sense, because aside from a few common features none of the solos I've listed have very much in common mechanically at all. They all do the same thing in widely different ways. PCs are not getting deja-vu here - except perhaps for dragons. Dragons have the flaw of being too overly mechanically similar to one another. If the Black Dragon is any indication though, this could be ending.

A typical solo encounter from the perspective of a PC

This is the strawman I mentioned at the beginning of my post. It's just a completely silly and made up situation designed to make the rules for solos more ridiculous than they really are.

Try the same thing with a red dragon, or a hulking 9 foot orc warchief who leads an entire band of thousands of warriors to see how many DMs actually use solos.

Solo's just don't work well in 4e.

Nonsense. None of your arguments support this conclusion period. Since MM3 and just the changing of design away from stun/daze lock being a viable tactics solos are finally coming into their own. I've had a lot of successful, fun and intense solo fights recently. The game has finally figured out that it is okay to make solos resistant to things if it means they do stuff, don't need to be obscenely high level to last long enough to do something and will ultimately be more fun.

Sure, you can fix the mechanics - but that's not helping, just making matters worse by encouraging their use

Like most of your arguments, this just entirely fails to make any sense as an argument IMO. If their mechanics are solid and allow them to accomplish what they actually should be doing: Challenging 5 PCs that is not making the situation "worse" by any means.

For creatures that are truly unique it's a template that could be used rarely; sparingly - like nails on chalkboard.

According to the compendium there are 4059 creatures in 4th edition. Of these, 385 are solos (it's 384 in the compendium, a cookie to the first person to tell me where the extra is from!). That's a pretty small percentage of the overall number of monsters in 4E. So this is not a very strong argument from the facts at all. In fact I'd like to point out that MM3 and Demonomicon were not very solo heavy. Both books added a lot of regular standard monsters - particularly at paragon and epic (where they are desperately needed).

So they are moving away from publishing a lot of solos, like Catastrophic dragons being elites as an example. When they do, they're publishing better quality and more interesting solos. Yes, they are built to a template, but the few fixed things solos get doesn't change that you can build different kinds of fun and entertaining solos if you put your mind to it.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

...a cookie to the first person to tell me where the extra is from!).

Tiamat, maybe? She doesn't appear because her stat block messes with the codes, I've heard.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

just remember, hits and misses can be perceived the same in 4e... a blow on th armor...

in ADnD solos attacking more often would be no problem at all, as an attack was the one effective strike in a one minute round.

In 3.5 it was no problem as high level creatures could reach an impressive amount of attacks in just 6 seconds

in 4e it is suddenly a problem now? Especially when PCs also have powers that will allow them a number of attacks in a single round (and action points etc)

You could also use a standard level +8 monster instead of a solo. as a result you have a long encounter that will just take longer to resolve, but in fact may present an equal threat. (For your convenience, have a round against a solo take 30 secs per turn and describe some easy parries in between and an attack of a PC be the one attack in 30 secs that can penetrate the defenses...)

edit: also you may notice that there are just no standard solo goblins, and fomorians are all elite... and all dragons are solo... maybe it was not just randomly assigned

 

[RHGreen]

Each creature is meant to be equal to 4 creatures, so why not cut up the creature into 4 parts as if they are 4 creatures. Each part has its own initiative, Hit Points, defenses, attacks. When you kill a part it simply disables that part and any further hits are pointless. Area attacks could hit all parts. Psychic attacks could just effect the head - simulating that the creature is only partially effected, such as sleep causing grogginess, etc.

Each part has its own small move that becomes disabled slowing the creature down.

Just a quick example off the top of my head.

Example:

DRAGON

Head

--Bite
--Breath Weapon
--Spell
--Move 2
--Disabled(-2 to all rolls)

Front Claws

--Claw Attack
--Grab (Grabbed target moves with the dragon in a adjecent square of the dragon' choice)
--Move 3

Rear End

-- Kick
-- Tail Swipe
--Move 3

Wings

--Buffet (Thunderwave)
--Move 2
--Vulnerable Fire 5
**Disabled (Cannot Fly)

 

[TheAngryDM]

For those who like The Boss Fight system, there are two new articles available. The first includes a red dragon but also codifies the sort of official final version of the system that I am using. The second is a blog carnival started by a friend of mine inviting folks to come up with thier own boss monsters that we will provide links to.

You can find both at The Angry DM: D&D 4E Advice with Attitude |

 

[eamon]

To those that don't understand my objections to solo's:

You're focusing on the fact that it is possible to balance solo's mechanically. As I said, this is not the issue and indeed clearly possible. Also, the boss monster concept looks well executed from a mechanical point of view - enough variety, combats that don't take forever, etc.

My complaint rests with the fact not that its impossible to make up mechanics that are balanced - it is that for many creatures any such mechanics inevitable become largely dissociated from the flavor and thereby unfortunately turn the game largely into rollplay rather than roleplay. Not necessarily all solo's suffer from this schism, but most currently printed solos do - and newer style solo's such as MM3 or this boss monster can make that schism even wider.

If I see two monsters of similar fluff-fighting-style and power, I expect similar mechanics. If mechanics are similar, I expect the fluff-fighting-style to be similar. Doing otherwise renders the fluff irrelevant; at the table people will speak of it less and when writing up characters they will focus less on it. I see this in happening my 4e games to some extent already.

The problem isn't that the solo mechanics are bad - its that the fluff to back it up is usually nonexistant. The mechanics of solo's are so similar, that means the creatures in-game descriptions of their capabilities are necessarily going to be more similar that a solo ogre would be to a standard ogre - yet that's odd, because there's usually no in-game reason for that distinction. Finally it's instinctively obvious to anyone playing the game that the reasons are purely metagame.

Having purely meta-game reasons pushed in your face like that degrades from the drama of the situation.

If you place a single, confident looking hobgoblin in front of the PC's, do you expect your players to use ongoing damage powers as eagerly as usual? It's going to be utterly obvious to everyone if not immediately then very quickly that this is a solo and then in the minds of the player's they will not be fighting a hobgoblin - but a solo; and that means they'll expect the save bonus even if they've no means of knowing of it. They'll expect more attacks a round without in-game motivation. They'll expect more hitpoints that usual for a creature of its defenses. Once things like boss-monsters and new-style solos become standard, they'll expect things like stun's and dazes to end earlier than they should or work only incompletely.

Solos teach players to ignore in-game logic and consistency and focus on the meta-game. They're not good for the game if overused, and the current focus of the solo discussions here and the solo developments by wizards and TheAngryDM are risky because they focus solely on fixing mechanics without regard for in-game consistency and logic - and thus may lead DM's to do the same.

So, I'm not saying that better mechanics are necessarily a problem, I'm saying that we shouldn't lose sight of the forest for the trees. The game I'm playing should deserve the name D&D rather than d20. Most solo mechanics don't make sense in-game, and it's a problem to me at the very least.
So

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Did you notice, that there usually are no solo goblins?

Did you notice, that in most cases solo or elite were not just randomly assigned?

There are creatures which exist in solo and non solo iterations, but most of those are supported by fluff.

Dragons - all are solo in MM 1 and 2
Fomorians - all are elite
Beholder - solo

So many monsters that you expect to find alone, maybe with some minions, are solos.

The "one goblin is solo, many goblins are minons" problem seldom happens. Only when you have very powerful or special goblins... you will find a solo in between, but even then, it is likely that it is just an elite variation.

You could as well level the goblin up 4 levels. Same result, but most surely more boring.

edit: just looked it up: only one goblin solo in the enire compendium. From the Forgooten Realms campaign setting, a named shaman.

There are mechanics which you could use without fluff, to make a goblin a solo but in the books, you won´t find one.

In a different thread i suggested a different approach: Level 9 creatures encountered by a level one party are all solos of level 1.
(Maybe make yourself a solo on the fly: take a -8 penalty to all defenses and attacks and attack 4 times... you attack recklessly neglecting your defenses against lesser foes as they will fall under your rain of blows)

 

[eamon]

You're not actually addressing the concerns I voiced and I believe we're rehashing old ground. As mentioned in I believe all of my previous posts, not all solos are problematic, and at least one of your example (dragons) I specifically mention as a good example of a good fit - no disagreement there. And I fully support the notion that mechanically the boss monster works very well.