[High level monsters and powers] What can Graz'zt actually do?

[ricardo440]

How many Balors can the Demon Prince summon into Warterdeep and how often?
Well enough to make a fun memorable encounter and often enough that the PCs need to get off their behinds and sort out your plot.

I think a few people have missed the plot a bit the rules governing monsters.

Those green boxes are for a monster in combat. You can put all of them on a single page, nice an easy for the GM.
Most monsters (99%) will be met in an encounter and die or never be seen again after it.

But what you want is the 1% that is left. The vampire lord who runs the Castle, the Necromancer who is raising the undead army... and you want to know what he can do out of combat.

Well I see no conflict here. but its place is now in the ADVENTURE not in the Monster description. By defining they rate at which the necromancer can Raise dead you are essentially defining the plot of the Adventure. The same with his other abilities. They are all valid things for you to flesh out IF YOU NEED TO. but most of the time you will not. On the few occasions when you DO need to flesh out the monster for the Adventure itself then there is nothing stopping you.

You can write Necromancer of Death knows all rituals up to level 12 and these rituals of level 13-20 and also these 2 special Plot rituals.
He has spies in city X
He has zombie and skeleton minions. He can send these encounter groups out to fight people...

But all of this stuff belongs in the adventure and not in the green box. The green box is for when the PCs have fought past his legions, entered his sanctum and it is time for the final showdown (preferably a rooftop one).


This is not really different to Previous editions either to be fair. In the MM there were rules for Vampires. In Expedition to Castle Ravensloft there are Strahd's combat abilities and then details of what he can and can't do in his realm. There is no reason why 4th ed adventures can't have the same.

 

[TheLordWinter]

There is also very very little in the game or the rules that helps you answer the question, "why?" In fact, the designers very nearly said that "why?" is a bad question, that the answer to it is never fun and that anyone who thinks it is an important question is not their target audience and should go to hell. (In short, the design philosophy of 4e is, "it's just a game, there is no why. Now roll your d20 and do d6+stat mod+enhancement." At least that's what I thought the whole point of their "the rules are not the physics of the game world" design philosophy was.

I'm really curious to hear what you think specifically points towards not answering player questions in the game. Also, there seems to be a growing theme throughout this thread that as the DM, it is your responsibility to say "No, there aren't rules for it, so not for you." From super-powerful scrying rituals to ancient sages to learning about a unique creature's abilities outside of combat, the general mood seems to be that "If it isn't written, you'll never know."

Where on Earth is that coming from? Cause seriously, I've got the new Dungeon Master's Guide open, in front of me, and it ain't what I'm seeing. It's on page 28, right there: "As often as possible, take what the players give you and build on it. If they do something unexpected, run with it. Take it and weave it back into your story without railroading them into a fixed plotline." (DMG, 28)

So let's take the whimsical example we've had already, and Orcus is gating 1,000 Balors into Waterdeep (a number which is whimsically unnecessary, but for the sake of the example let's roll with it). Your adventure is about the PCs traveling to Thanatos and fighting Orcus in revenge for destroying the city. However instead, the PCs wanna stop his ability to gate in Balors. Totally different direction. How could they do so when you haven't come up with the very mechanics of his ability to gate? Improvise. Perhaps they need to recover a special magical relic or destroy an avatar or sacrifice a goat. Whatever it is, doesn't it fall, more importantly, to your creativity rather than what the Rules As Written demand he can and cannot do? If you say "Yes, there is a way to stop Orcus from gating Balors/Scrying on You/Being Quite to Unpleasantly Ugly" then take it and run with it. It's the direction your players want to go, so find the adventure where they're looking.

If I might toss out one last quote, from Chaosium's brilliant Call of Cthulhu d100 roleplaying game:
"Introducing higher and higher potency materials reduces the chance for roleplaying. The effect of more powerful weapons or deadlier magics is progressively to isolate the owners from the events of the adventures and the ordinary challenges of play, and paradoxically to limit the range of responses players... feel safe in contemplating." (CoC, 121)
This applies to DMs too - if Orcus can gate 1d20 Balors anywhere, why would he ever simply hit anything with his wand? Why send Doresain and his ghouls to collect information about the PCs when he has "See everything the characters do Ritual" right in his stat block? By removing these things, it opens up new possibilities, particularly in how DMs and Players alike approach this. It's new - Orcus in some games can scry on characters from afar through his bubbling cauldron of Doom, while in others he must send his ghoul agents to scour the land for any trance of the characters, while in another he simply is so proud and malicious that he presumes no lowly mortals could ever interfere with his schemes. It's up to you, the DM, on what their capabilities are, and so long as you stick with the same capacities each time. It falls to the players, and how they choose to try and deal with this threat, and to he DM to respond and roll with the punches of each new and unexpected twist the players throw into his story.

Much like 2nd edition, 4th doesn't give you everything. It doesn't care whether Orcus can tie a very fine knot or whether Asmodeus has skill focus (bluff), these aren't important details. The players will never know that these skills are there, they'll simply see the *effect* in the game, not the pure numbers behind the screen. What this edition, from what I've seen, is trying to do is strip away the unnecessary - if the players will never know that Asmodeus has skill focus (bluff) and gets a +20 divine bonus to bluff, even if the net result is that his bluff check is 40 higher than they can reasonably sense motive through, why give him those things and not simply say he's got a total bluff check of everything combined and not worry about the sources?

Just my two cents, and I hope this didn't come off as too much of a rant.

 

[James McMurray]

Maybe you don't need the first if you're very creative, but the second one was really a nice thing to have because it made these monster super-capable... but also fallible. If "the devil-king can open a portal to another plane" is something the DM just made up, then how does it work? How can you stop it? Sure, maybe the DM can just create an in-game reason or way to stop it as well, but really the biggest danger of all is how does that stop the DM from abusing the power to railroad the characters?

Impossible. The only way to stop a DM from railroading your character is to not be at the table. No amount of rules for what Graz'zt (or any monster) can do out of combat will stop a DM intent on making sure his story gets told.

If that's your problem, you need to find a new DM or switch to a game system where the DM is truly just a rules referee and not the all powerful man behind the curtain.

 

[evilbob]

I'm really curious to hear what you think specifically points towards not answering player questions in the game. Also, there seems to be a growing theme throughout this thread that as the DM, it is your responsibility to say "No, there aren't rules for it, so not for you."

No: this isn't what I am saying, and I do not believe it's what others are saying.

I am not advocating that just because something doesn't exist, it can't, or that you can't answer player questions, or any of that weird stuff that some folks seem to be reading into these responses. I'm not sure why it's getting folks thrown off, but honestly, we're really coming from the same perspective here: that not having an answer or telling someone "you can't because I said so" is doing a bad job of DMing. We all agree with that, yes?

My point - and others have said it better, so sorry to just rehash - is NOT that you can only say "no" if there are no rules. It's that when there were more rules, it was easier to say yes. It was easier, because there was already a base to build off of - as opposed to having to build from scratch every time. And when the players knew the world they existed in had set rules that were not arbitrary, it was better for them -and- the story. (It's easier to trust a DM when you know they are also following the same rules you are.)

In 4.0 you are MUCH more responsible for creating those "world rules" now. (And my own enigma: why they never mention this in the core books.) This is good for creativity and lack of boundaries, but bad for being completely on your own to decide balance, flavor, mechanics, etc. Which is why 4.0 is so weird, since the "how combat works" rules are SO detailed and SO restrictive - exactly the opposite of the "how the world works" rules, which basically don't exist.

Does that make more sense?

 

[evilbob]

Impossible. The only way to stop a DM from railroading your character is to not be at the table.

This is such a weird argument I'm just not going to touch it. Suffice to say, we probably disagree, but secretly we probably still agree on most aspects of this argument.

 

[Nail]

Slight tangent, but this bugs me too, and I am considering house-ruling raise dead to cost 500 gp the first time it is used on a character, 5,000 gp the second time it is used on a character, and 50,000 gp thereafter. The theory being, the more times a character has died, the more difficult it's going to be to retrieve him from death (to a point).

That's cool.

 

[Nail]

The only way to stop a DM from railroading your character is to not be at the table.

Hmmm. FWIW, I don't think we're talking about "PC Railroading". I think we're talking about "players knowing the DM is using the same rules they are".


<shrug>

Anyway: How 'bout a follow-up question?

"How many (and what type) of non-combat powers would be appropriate to put in the BBEG's stat block? Should they be of the At-Will/Daily variety, or more like rituals, or ...?"

The idea here is to get at what the "out-of-combat" limits of a BBEG should be (since 4e RAW doesn't have such limits).

 

[James McMurray]

This is such a weird argument I'm just not going to touch it. Suffice to say, we probably disagree, but secretly we probably still agree on most aspects of this argument.

To clarify, I'm not saying that all GMs will railroad. Just that if the GM wants to, it's not going to matter what out of combat rules exist for the BBEG in your campaign. A GM has infinite resources at his disposal. if he's determined that your character is going to (for example) turn left, he can

• put an army of ancient dragons to the right if he's blatant
• put a damsel in distress to the left if he's slightly more subtle (and your alignment fits), or
• just not put a right turn at all.

The same holds true for all other "choices" a railroading GM puts before you. If the GM wants to force an outcome he will be able to do it easily by virtue of having infinite power within the game world.

 

[Lizard]

"How many (and what type) of non-combat powers would be appropriate to put in the BBEG's stat block? Should they be of the At-Will/Daily variety, or more like rituals, or ...?"

The idea here is to get at what the "out-of-combat" limits of a BBEG should be (since 4e RAW doesn't have such limits).

I would like to see something like:"Orcus knows, and commonly uses, these rituals: A, B, C. He also has access to a unique ritual, which he sometimes teaches to his most devoted priests: D."

 

[dammitbiscuit]

My point - and others have said it better, so sorry to just rehash - is NOT that you can only say "no" if there are no rules. It's that when there were more rules, it was easier to say yes. It was easier, because there was already a base to build off of - as opposed to having to build from scratch every time. And when the players knew the world they existed in had set rules that were not arbitrary, it was better for them -and- the story. (It's easier to trust a DM when you know they are also following the same rules you are.)

The trouble in 3.5 was that 5 players, most of whom were trying to build decently optimized characters, could become increasingly deadly, skilled, and/or optimized with their PCs. As a 3.5 DM, sometimes I didn't entirely understand what I was supposed to do with certain monsters, or I thought I knew what to do but ended up having the players just stomp the monster flat. In 4e, it tells you what the monster's role is and gives you the tools you need for that combat role.

If the DM and the PCs are using the same rules, the DM will need to have hours of prep time, or else consistently be outplayed and failing to challenge the players properly.