D&D 4E Adding powers to elites and solos (4E)

[NewJeffCT]

As a person who primarily DMs, I loved that 4E made things easier on the DM in terms of building encounters.

I felt that once my 3.5E game got past the level 9/10 range, it felt like a second job to me just to build an encounter that was challenging and unique. I had a big group of gamers and the gist of the campaign was that they were going up against an evil cabal of clerics and wizards who followed the deity of slavery and tyranny. So, in order to make the BBEG of each encounter different, I had to delve into different prestige classes (mystic theurge, arch-mage, etc) or oddball races, or templates, or look through every spell in the Spell Compendium to give them different spells that still felt like they were followers of this deity. And, of course, the BBEG would have to have melee support (guards) and lower level casters (apprentices) for counter-spellling and/or dispelling in order to make it a good encounter. I got to be very good at this, and most of those level 10-18 encounters were ones where the PCs got knocked around, beaten up, thrashed within a millimeter of death, but barely pulled through in the end. The BBEG would still have good options to use 6-7-8 rounds into the combat, right up to the very end.

Cut to 4E. As I said, I loved that encounters were a lot easier to build. I’m guessing that it took me well under 10% of the time it took me to build 3.5E encounters. However, even a tough Solo bad guy would end up being boring for me to run. Round 1 would be Daily Power, Action Point, Recharge Power; Round 2 would be Daily or Encounter Power, Action Point, and then At-Will Power (or Recharge Power if it recharged); Then, after Round 2, the bad guy is stuck doing At-Wills while hoping his Recharge Power recharges. When the combat went on for 5-6-7 more rounds, it got to be kind of boring for me as a DM. Maybe the bad guy has an Immediate Reaction or Interrupt, but there wouldn’t be more than that.

So, if I wanted to tweak 4E monsters without having to build entire PCs as bad guys, I was wondering how these changes would affect things:

1) Each Elite monster gets an additional at-will power of equivalent level. That way, a bad guy with a “fire” based at-will isn’t completely nerfed if the PCs have some fire resistance. Each elite would also get an additional encounter power of equivalent level as well, for basically the same reason.
2) Each Solo monster gets the Elite extras, plus one more at-will of equivalent level, and one more encounter or recharge power of equivalent level. I would also add in that once the Solo gets Bloodied, they also get a bonus to their Recharge power roll or rolls (either for the next round, or for the remainder of the encounter…). This way, I would at least have more options and potential options down the road.
3) I’ve already typically added an immediate reaction or interrupt to most Solo monsters (and some Elites), just so they’re not totally helpless if hit with a status effect or cornered or similar. It had not really affected the outcomes of combats.


Are my ideas okay? Overpowered? Any other suggestions?

 

[pemerton]

My main experience with elites and solos (especially solos!) is that their problem is not variety but action economy. Giving them more at-wills won't give them more actions. I recently ran an encounter with an MV-style purple worm (I built a 19th level worm that combined most of the featurse of both the MV monsters): it could use a Move Action to "barrel through" and attack multiple targets; it had a good suite of minor action attacks, in conjunction with a bonus minor action when bloodied; and it had the ability to use immediate actions even when subject to action denial.

But the fact that it wasn't just strict immunity to effects also meant that the players could make sensible choices to mitigate some of this (such as spreading out to avoid all being barelled through). I had two elite fang titan drakes in the same encounter (a bit of a "hollow earth" vibe), and it worked pretty nicely against 6 PCs.

Another solo I used was a Vecna-cultist who had an at-will minor action ability that let him steal thought's from his enemies, robbing them of encounter and daily powers and giving him a bonus action point - and he then had the ability to use action points to shed conditions. That worked pretty nicely too.

So I guess my suggestion would be - if you want to make your solos more interesting, look for fun ways to improve their action economy. (Calastryx, from MV2, is another good example of this.)

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'm definitely a fan of giving out Immediate Reactions (often stolen from other monsters) and stuff that kicks in if they get any kind of action denial to Elites and Solos. I don't find it overpowered and depending on the level of control your party of PCs can lay down, often it is downright necessary.

I had a fairly control-heavy group in my last campaign that was also particularly fond of proning, which became rather annoying. I set up a solo with a huge brute, like the Cave Troll from LotR, where if he were "proned" would fall on and crush nearby PCs (ha!), and if he were stunned, at the start of his turn he would just shift a bunch of squares, trampling and windmilling his way through PC ranks (making attacks against anything he passed or went through). I also gave him some nice minor action attacks.

It was pretty fun for me, and the first time where I felt like I made a boss fight that could still threaten them while they were laying down their control. It didn't nullify their tactical choices, but it certainly changed how they approached the rest of that fight, and made some of their own moves dangerous to themselves.

Another good example of this was the encounter with Lividius at the end of Reavers of Harkenwold (I think it's now in the online Compendium). He's pretty well-built for dealing with being dazed and stunned, though again, I had to beef him up for my group and add some minions.

One thing I've had issues with though was overloading my monsters with stuff that I would then forget to use. I'm brutal for not remembering Immediate Actions in particular. I think it's largely a screen size issue - I use a netbook as a DM screen with Power2ool and if I make the stat block too big, it doesn't all fit on the screen at once. The joys of crappy 1024x600 resolution!

 

[Ferghis]

I don't think your ideas are particularly overpowered. Have at those players.

As a player in a high paragon game, I'm a fan of monsters that have two turns per round, and an immediate action power that it can use between each of its turns.

 

[Jhaelen]

My main experience with elites and solos (especially solos!) is that their problem is not variety but action economy. Giving them more at-wills won't give them more actions.

Exactly what I was going to say
So, your plans for Elites won't increase their power in any significant way. However, adding rechargable powers and increasing the chance to recharge all of their rechargable powers will lilkely result in a significant power-up: The combined effect will be that your solo can use a limited damage expression power every turn. I think that would be a bit much.

If you're looking at monster themes, you'll notice they either use very low recharge probabilities for additional powers or add one-use powers in order to not make a monster stronger.

If you are worried about the effectiveness of solos, you'd fare better with powers triggering off a bunch of different conditions and especially ways to shrug off condition effects.

 

[NewJeffCT]

My main experience with elites and solos (especially solos!) is that their problem is not variety but action economy. Giving them more at-wills won't give them more actions. I recently ran an encounter with an MV-style purple worm (I built a 19th level worm that combined most of the featurse of both the MV monsters): it could use a Move Action to "barrel through" and attack multiple targets; it had a good suite of minor action attacks, in conjunction with a bonus minor action when bloodied; and it had the ability to use immediate actions even when subject to action denial.

But the fact that it wasn't just strict immunity to effects also meant that the players could make sensible choices to mitigate some of this (such as spreading out to avoid all being barelled through). I had two elite fang titan drakes in the same encounter (a bit of a "hollow earth" vibe), and it worked pretty nicely against 6 PCs.

Another solo I used was a Vecna-cultist who had an at-will minor action ability that let him steal thought's from his enemies, robbing them of encounter and daily powers and giving him a bonus action point - and he then had the ability to use action points to shed conditions. That worked pretty nicely too.

So I guess my suggestion would be - if you want to make your solos more interesting, look for fun ways to improve their action economy. (Calastryx, from MV2, is another good example of this.)

Thanks - I had mentioned an extra at-will or two so I just have an extra option when it comes time to do the at-will. That way, it isn't just "At-Will Power X" every round. I can choose between X, Y and Z depending on what is best for the situation - like if you ran up against an arch-mage in older editions, the arch-mage would have several different options each round and could choose what was best for the situation. it was that the arch-mage would be casting two at-wills each round.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Read! Link: http://angrydm.com/2010/04/the-dd-boss-fight-part-1/

Seriously, this guy's monsters turn out to be more fun (through using them in play) than mine. I have a group that's just reaching 4th-level. They were 3rd-level when they took on Bloodknuckles, and it was fast, furious and brutal.

Angry DM did a great analysis. Note that his advice is pre-Monster Vault, but that book (especially the dragon) has some incredibly well-designed solos.

As a person who primarily DMs, I loved that 4E made things easier on the DM in terms of building encounters.

...

Cut to 4E. As I said, I loved that encounters were a lot easier to build. I’m guessing that it took me well under 10% of the time it took me to build 3.5E encounters. However, even a tough Solo bad guy would end up being boring for me to run. Round 1 would be Daily Power, Action Point, Recharge Power; Round 2 would be Daily or Encounter Power, Action Point, and then At-Will Power (or Recharge Power if it recharged); Then, after Round 2, the bad guy is stuck doing At-Wills while hoping his Recharge Power recharges. When the combat went on for 5-6-7 more rounds, it got to be kind of boring for me as a DM. Maybe the bad guy has an Immediate Reaction or Interrupt, but there wouldn’t be more than that.

Sounds like one of those older monsters. Solos are also supposed to change when they get bloodied. (While some solos just do extra damage, that's boring.)

So, if I wanted to tweak 4E monsters without having to build entire PCs as bad guys, I was wondering how these changes would affect things:

1) Each Elite monster gets an additional at-will power of equivalent level. That way, a bad guy with a “fire” based at-will isn’t completely nerfed if the PCs have some fire resistance. Each elite would also get an additional encounter power of equivalent level as well, for basically the same reason.
2) Each Solo monster gets the Elite extras, plus one more at-will of equivalent level, and one more encounter or recharge power of equivalent level. I would also add in that once the Solo gets Bloodied, they also get a bonus to their Recharge power roll or rolls (either for the next round, or for the remainder of the encounter…). This way, I would at least have more options and potential options down the road.
3) I’ve already typically added an immediate reaction or interrupt to most Solo monsters (and some Elites), just so they’re not totally helpless if hit with a status effect or cornered or similar. It had not really affected the outcomes of combats.


Are my ideas okay? Overpowered? Any other suggestions?

For already properly-designed solos, these aren't needed.

1) I agree with this. As long as they're only getting their two at-wills per turn. (Alternatively, you could have the boss ignore fire resistance, like a sorcerer.)

2) At this point, you're getting too complicated. Most solos already have multiple at-wills (and can of course use multiple at-wills per turn), do you really need to be choosing between four at-wills? That induces combat paralysis in the DM.

The bonus to recharge ability is nice, but some monsters already get "better" recharge powers when bloodied and so won't need this.

3) I think a dazed creature cannot use an immediate action (nor can they if stunned or dominated). But see the Monster Vault beholder and dragon for fixes that work within the rules. (Or Angry DM for new rules that work.)

If for some reason you don't have the Monster Vault:
A) Buy it. Sell your MM1.
B) Take a look at Calastryx on this page: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4pr/20110606

 

[S'mon]

Off-turn stuff is definitely the key to a good Solo IME. Auras and Ongoing Damage often create excessive book-keeping with standard monsters, but both work really well with Solos, along with Interrupts and Opportunity Actions (but be careful with OAs, they can get chintzy in excess). MV-dragon type attacks on Init+10, or acting on 2 or 3 separate init counts each round, also work well. And MV Action Recovery so they're not crippled by stunlock etc.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The beholder has a nice trick up its sleeve. It's Random Eye Ray attack, which triggers at the start of each opponent's turn (if they're within 5 squares), is classified as No Action, and none of its eye rays provoke opportunity attacks.

As long as the beholder is conscious, the attack goes off. Even if it's stunned. Or dominated. Much like Action Recovery and Instinctive Attack, it is "nerfed" but not completely shut down when it's actions are denied.

In the MM3, there's "Epic Resilience" which gives monsters an additional save at the start of their turn (again, No Action) and in at least some cases, they can save against effects that don't normally allow a save (eg an effect that immobilizes a creature for 1 turn, which is murder on a skirmisher).

 

[Sunseeker]

When I build BBEGs in 4e, I love me some riders, debuffs, and effects that trigger on the basis that your foe is debuffed, it's like having multiple powers without having multiple powers.

EX: At will: he does something like 2d6 damage and gives you a penalty to will(save ends).
-If you already have the penalty, he instead does 4d6 damage and you are *shaken(or other fitting condition)* and the penalty to will increase to -4 and now applies to your save.
-If your existing penalty exceeds your will mod this attack does no damage and instead dominates you, each turn you make a basic attack against a target of the BBEGs choosing.

What's nice about this sort of setup is that it gives my BBEG wants and needs. Singular powers with one-time effects don't do that. My BBEG has weakened the mind of a target, making him more susceptible to his power, thus my BBEG wants to keep attacking that target. Which gives him very nice interactions with marks, the BBEG will take the hit if it means a shot at dominating a player.

In this particular case, his entire power suite was designed to emphasize the fact that he was trying more to dominate than kill you, as he felt the players would make great servants of his god, or at least tasty snacks. He had knockbacks, teleports and various forms of evasion to get out of player CC.

I'm a tolerant DM, but I am not when it comes to stunlock, so I'm either going to jump the gun and give my mobs a lot of tools to get out of stunlock, or I'm going to be very heavy handed with the players when they start trying it. It's one reason I play 4e over previous editions, while stunlock is possible, it is generally something a group has to optimize for. It is not something that comes naturally.

Another trick I like with my BBEG is to make them affect(and thusly be reliant) on the things around them, objects, minions, you name it. I had a necromancer who was creating a zombie army in the bottom of an old shipwreck(on shore). His attacks did little damage to the players(1d6+4 or something pathetic like that), but he had a minor to animate two zombies to fight for him, and whenever he damaged the players, it healed the zombies(who were quite the vicious little buggers).
Then when he became bloodied, he activated all his zombies and merged with them, gaining their health(10 per zombie, and he had about 20) and increased physical defenses, he could no longer cast, but he was the size of a bus and hit like one too if you were within his reach 2. The added knockback and proneing he could do in that form left my players quite scattered, it was a lot of fun. The players didn't know this, so when they thought it was a good idea to focus-fire the boss and ignore the zombies, they were surprised to find that left the boss with quite a lot of health!


I don't like giving my bag-guys a lot of powers, it's a pain to read.
I like giving them special powers that do special things, making themes for them that accomplish all that stuff you want to do, without having to make a bunch of "this is the power I use to get out of this" and "this is the power I use to avoid that". It just gets messy.

One thing I really agree with you on, and I experienced this with a very rules-lawyery player, is that 3.X has been around so long, and some folks know it so well, that there's really no room at all for creativity. If anything even remotely resembles the DM having gotten creative with health or statistics or spells or abilities of a creature, you get called on it. I enjoy that 4e allows for more suspension of disbelief in regard to the fact that the BBEG can do that...because he's the BBEG! He's the magically-empowered servant of an extra-planar being of pure chaos. So he's got powers that do crazy stuff that reflects that? Of course he does! Or the master of illusion can create illusionary clones of himself to distract and defeat players? He sure can! There's no questions of "well what prestige class is he?" there's no "Well he's a humanoid whose a rogue so he can only have d6/level health!" there's no "what spell was that he just used, it's not in my big-book-o-spells!" It just is because it is. They have those powers because those powers are an extension of what they are. Not because they took the right class or specialized in the right school.