The updated Behir can now sustain with a free action (and inflicts 10 points of damage instead of 15). This answers the question for this specific instance, but all the general issues about creatures that take more than one turn per round remain.
Behir problem from MM2
- Thread starter jester_gl
- Start date
keterys
First Post
It's probably actually a bit strong now (30 auto damage, plus its other abilities), unless you do have stun end of next turn powers. If you do, then it gets hopelessly thrashed.
But, still a notable design improvement. Just need to have it end most 'next turn' effects at the end of its turn instead of its enemies, and it'd be good.
But, still a notable design improvement. Just need to have it end most 'next turn' effects at the end of its turn instead of its enemies, and it'd be good.
eamon
Explorer
@sfedi: I'm not sure I understand how you propose to deal with ongoing damage and/or daze.
You seem to be suggesting that it is effected about as much as would be fair for a single monster, in general - but that's tricky both technically and because for a group of monsters, you can daze them all, or give them all ongoing damage, so just limiting daze/ ongoing damage entirely is rather more powerful than a group of monsters would be.
In any case, I'm not sure exactly what it is you're suggesting...
You seem to be suggesting that it is effected about as much as would be fair for a single monster, in general - but that's tricky both technically and because for a group of monsters, you can daze them all, or give them all ongoing damage, so just limiting daze/ ongoing damage entirely is rather more powerful than a group of monsters would be.
In any case, I'm not sure exactly what it is you're suggesting...
Thanks for the interest
The main point of what I'm saying is:
"We can treat ongoing damage in a way that makes Expected Damage from a power more easily estimated"
Ok, now I'm the one that don't understand
I'll try to answer what I think you are saying:
1) Yes, group of similar monsters would be more powerful, but as a previous poster already noted, this is in fact a problem the current system has: similar monsters are less powerful than different ones.
This is because saving effects don't stack.
2) Yes, it's not the same to apply these rules to ongoing damage than to a condition like Daze.
For example:
Krusk has two "5 ongoing damage (save ends)" effects on him.
On Krusk's turn, he'll receive 10 damage, and at the end he'll make two saving throws, one for each "5 ongoing damage (save ends)" effect.
Krusk effectively suffers twice with a condition that affects him twice.
Ellan has two "dazed (save ends)" effects on him.
On Ellan's turn, he'll be dazed, and at the end he'll make two saving throws, on for each "dazed (save ends)" effect.
Even if he saves from one, he's still dazed from the other. So he must save from both to get rid of being dazed in the following rounds.
Kruk suffers the dazed condition as the maximum duration of the two effects.
There is no clear comparison between the two cases, if Ellan's case is a much double" than Kruk's case.
3) What I'm saying is nice for damage estimation, which is useful for designing monsters.
Which is not the same as saying that the current system is bad.
The current system ahs a nice effect: it forces you to spread damage, which is more fun at the table.
I hope I was clear.
Ok, forget the above post, I thought you were talking about ongoing and dazed effects ON PCS.
Now, let me answer you on the correct context:
You CAN daze a group of monsters, but not at the cost of a single use of a power.
So Dazing a Solo or an Elite, is much more cheaper than Dazing an equivalent group of monsters.
That's why we need something to make them less vulnerable to those conditions. Not entirely, but some.
One way, as the rules propose it to give them a bonus to saving throws.
That's ok, that works with save end conditions.
But it's unfair to ongoing damage.
Because the monster already has more hit points to compensate, so if you make it easier for the Solo or Elite to save aginst it, then it becomes useless against them.
Even then, it still leaves them more vulnerable to conditions that last for only one round.
I'm not sure I've answered your question. I had some problems understanding it.
Now, let me answer you on the correct context:
Yes, you are right, it's very tricky because it's not the same.
You CAN daze a group of monsters, but not at the cost of a single use of a power.
So Dazing a Solo or an Elite, is much more cheaper than Dazing an equivalent group of monsters.
That's why we need something to make them less vulnerable to those conditions. Not entirely, but some.
One way, as the rules propose it to give them a bonus to saving throws.
That's ok, that works with save end conditions.
But it's unfair to ongoing damage.
Because the monster already has more hit points to compensate, so if you make it easier for the Solo or Elite to save aginst it, then it becomes useless against them.
Even then, it still leaves them more vulnerable to conditions that last for only one round.
I'm not sure I've answered your question. I had some problems understanding it.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Different powers are going to work better or worse against different classes of monsters. Ongoing damage perhaps doesn't work so well vs Solos, but its one of the very FEW advantages Solos have. Actually they have a number of other advantages in theory, its just that conditions and action economy negate them all. As it is the +5 to saves that Solos have isn't enough. By 15th level a decent orbizard basically obsoletes Solos even with the +5. In fact even with the recent nerf the problem really has only been barely moderated a bit.
Well, the orbizard shouldn't matter in the design of Elites and Solos, that's something that should be fixed on it's own.
If a class/build/combo/whatever is unbalanced, I won't change all the other aspects of the game to make up for it.
Having said that, you are right the powers work differently on Elites and Solos, some work better, some work worse.
But the question is: Is it balanced? How?
I'm not sure about the answers to the above questions.
If a class/build/combo/whatever is unbalanced, I won't change all the other aspects of the game to make up for it.
Having said that, you are right the powers work differently on Elites and Solos, some work better, some work worse.
But the question is: Is it balanced? How?
I'm not sure about the answers to the above questions.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Well... It isn't entirely balanced in my experience. Solos work pretty well at heroic tier, but once you get up into paragon things start going downhill. They DEFINITELY are not workable as truly solo monsters at that point, they are just more like really hefty Elites.
As for the lockdown thing. Orbizard is the best example but you don't actually need to be one to do lockdowns. Its tougher for other classes to do and relies more on having a lot of items, but you can do it. The nerf may have put a pretty big dent in that though since several of the best items are no longer good options. I guess someone would have to go through and see. My feeling on lockdown is that orbizard itself is alive and well but now is much more unique. I agree its not terribly great to design Solos around orb wizards and its a broken build, but at the same time you pretty much have to since they aren't going away. I really doubt WotC is going to errata save penalties and that is the only way to really solve the problem.
eamon
Explorer
Yeah. I'm not sure we should be fixing that, though: it's somewhat inherent in the setup: if you have just one single point of failure, one vulnerable point to attack, you can expect trouble when people find and abuse it. It rubs me the wrong way to have to implement effects (etc.) differently for solo on principle. Perhaps we should, I don't have the answers here, but that does mean that you're basically saying that stuff that works well against single targets happens not to work very well at all if that single target is a solo. As is, save-ends effects seem to work pretty well for a behir; he's affected potentially for multiple of his rounds, but he saves much more quickly, so it's not a lockdown kind of effect.
More problematic are the effects which impose some penalty until the attackers next turn; such powers are generally intended to be weaker than save-ends effects, but will actually be more powerful do to the Behirs unusual hyperactivity. But... how bad is that?
There's a cost to all these fixes. The game works well with a group of monsters. A very very simple fix is just to accept that solo's are a tricky proposition and not to expect them to be a very reliable threat (sometimes, sure, but it's really dependent on circumstances) and have solo's backed up by others rather than changing quite a few fundamental mechanics.
Just to be completely inconsistent
, I'll say that I can well imagine using various specific ideas proposed here individually on specific solos, just to spice things up. So, the ideas are useful, but I think it'd be better to keep them as distinguishing gravy for some creatures rather than a system-wide fix. And if you think about it, that's not unlike what's been happening with solo's all along, and hopefully more of it will happen with newer MM's. Some have specific resistance to daze and stun, some have peculiar initiative trick (the behir, say) to balance the "action economy, etc...Now, ongoing damage specifically:
Personally, I'm definitely against stacking ongoing damage. Yes, it makes accounting for damage output easier, but not by much. Overlapping ongoing damage (i.e. multiple effects, multiple saves but no stacking) still has a bit of an advantage, but not the full amount: this is good both because it discourages pile-on play (i.e. you can have "extra" damaging powers with an incentive to spread the damage around rather than focus fire), and because when you do focus fire, the extra benefit the extra ongoing damage grants is least when the player rolls poorly (i.e, if he's not saving anyhow, then the extra ongoing has no effect; the damage per round is capped), so that reduces swinginess.
If ongoing damage just becomes yet another way to deal damage, you remove that tactical element. So, the complexity of accounting for ongoing damage isn't so much a weakness as a strength: it's a real tactical element encouraging the damage dealer to weigh various tactics against each other (focus fire vs. slightly higher damage total).
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