Monster Makeover: Shademaw

[Aegeri]

I was actually quite impressed with this article on upgrading a MV black dragon into epic tier. For one because it's something that is actually in epic tier and second because it's nicely designed (as most MV dragons are frankly). Actually both of the tutorials have been fantastic articles and I wonder if we'll see more. The advice in the article is invaluable as well for the emphasis on terrain. I cannot tell you how important terrain is to a solo fight in epic tier. Your choice of terrain matters almost as much as the solos powers.

It has inspired me to hit my books and give the ancient dragon treatment to a metallic dragon (probably Gold). Just to add some of my own comments onto the article with my own examples. Especially because building many of the non-MV dragons from scratch is more difficult - especially without just copying mechanics from the existing ones too much.

 

[Colmarr]

The article is by Mike Shea, which is fitting given he's been pushing Epic 4e more than anyone else I know.

Some of the ideas in the article seem overpowered, but I've never seen Epic in play, so I could be way off base.

Overall, I agree it's a very good article and much appreciated.

 

[Aegeri]

The article is by Mike Shea, which is fitting given he's been pushing Epic 4e more than anyone else I know.

Clearly, I am failing then.

Here I was thinking the entire forum was sick of me and epic tier...

Some of the ideas in the article seem overpowered, but I've never seen Epic in play, so I could be way off base.

Believe it or not, those things are actually pretty reasonable. Bear in mind that PCs at epic level have numerous powers, epic destinies to restore them from death and can really take a considerable amount of punishment. Challenging epic parties requires a combination of terrain, well designed monsters and consideration of what they actually can (and can't) do.

 

[Colmarr]

Clearly, I am failing then.

Lol. "More than anyone else I know who's not an ENworld regular"

But seriously, he's self-published a book about running Epic tier....

Believe it or not, those things are actually pretty reasonable.

Oh, I believe you, which is why I hedged my concern.

It's things like the 'push 4 and knock prone' attack that made me pause, because with a little luck it has the capacity to reduce a melee combatant to charging for the entire encounter.

 

[Aegeri]

Which is ironically what charging builds by epic want to do anyway (and charging is currently the main way of doing damage in the current metagame as well). That power is pretty normal though for a defensive kind of power.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

push 1 + knock prone works perfectly against chargers...

You don´t have to use all squares of pushing... push 4 is reasonable considering that there are powers, items and traits that reduce pushing anyway...

 

[Riastlin]

I agree, the article is fantastic AND its in front of the pay wall. I wonder if this will be an ongoing theme with the tutorials or if they are using this as a means to try to entice more subscribers (i.e. give people a taste and then later push them behind the wall). In any event, still a great article and particularly great to see it coming from a "new" DDi author. Obviously Mike has written tons on 4ed but as far as I can recall this is his first foray into DDi.

As to the powers, yeah they seem powerful, but then my group is also only level 11 at the moment. Even at 11 though I've seen them pull out an amazing amount of healing and damage in short order and that's before you consider the increased healing amounts, extra healing words, and death recoveries the PCs will get by level 26, so I can certainly see this as being necessary. Plus, consider that a well prepared party will likely have a decent amount of acid resistance spread amongst them if they are going off to fight a black dragon.

I think the best part of the tutorial was the almost standard "know your party" bit. Sure, it seems obvious, but its also something that's easy to forget when you are in a hurry to create an encounter and just want to plug and play. If your party doesn't have a way to resist acid for some reason, then you likely would need to make some tweaks.

At any rate, I really liked both tutorials a lot and am hoping for more in the future.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Thank you all for the kind words! The intent is to do a series of Monster Makeovers to revamp older iconic beasts using new named variations. I have two more I'm working on now.

If you like more monsters like this and of this power, check out Robert J. Schwalb's epic tier monsters on his website:

Brain Collectors & Mercanes

Lost Monsters: Mu Spore

Lost Monsters: Hagunemnon

Lost Monsters: Mithral Golem

 

[MrMyth]

Interesting article, and the attention to epic tier is not undeserved. That said, I'd rather see updates for material prior to MM3/Monster Vault, since the monsters in those are already pretty well done. Earlier solos and other options are where work is really needed, and some iconic updates would be especially nice.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it would be nice to see a series of updates like that to MrMyth. Take a group of monsters that haven't been updated to MM3 standards, give some new ideas for how to use them, updated stats, maybe some interesting chrome to go with them (some thematic terrain/terrain powers/items/treasures/whatever). Dungeon could then do an adventure based on the same material to go with it.

I think this would especially do epic tier some good. Even a couple of example mini-adventures for epic would provide a lot of useful ideas and show the way for a lot of DMs. Include a lot of commentary on tweaking things, etc. Show it all in action. This article is great. Hope maybe there will be a short adventure to go with it and illustrate things.