D&D 4E PEACH: 4e epic solo

Hi,

I've played a few epic games but not many but I love making monsters (I usually churn out about 1-2 a day) but I've never made an epic solo before. I've made one here called Biovaire esentially a continually growing, continually hungry canivorous plant.

It looks solid to me but I'm not convinced. I fear that I may have forgotten something very simple which will turn this into a cakewalk. So what do you guys thinK?

Cheers,

Mat

Edit: there is a grama fart in the biovaire stat block. It should read Creatures attempting to dominate Biovaire find their attempts fail. For Biovaire ignores all dominate effects and in addition.....

Seems a little much, if anything. I mean...immune to everything, (or can take 30 damage to end everything, and everything's removed when she's bloodied), unescapable, with threatening reach, swallow, a crazy strong minor action breath weapon, and minion generation.

Also, are the minions supposed to be able to feed their captives to Biovaire as many times as they like until she succeeds at swallowing them? I mean, the rules on free action attacks do limit things, but basically as long as there's a minion-grabbed target next to her, she gets to make a free action swallow attack every turn (so I provoke on my turn and am grabbed by a minion, it tries to feed me to Biovaire (and she fails to swallow); I make my attacks and end my turn, it's now the minion's turn, it tries to feed me to Bioware (she fails to swallow; maybe I have a good reflex); it ends its turn and it's now Fred the Paladin's turn; the minion tries to feed me to Biovaire...

As written, it just doesn't seem much fun to play--particularly as ranged attackers who don't have a means of attacking without drawing an OA are just hosed from the start, due to the threatening reach and aura.

Hmm.... you make some good points. I think I may have overreacted after having a look at what a group of level 25+ Pc could do. Any solo can easily be chained dazed/stunned/dominated pretty much for the whole fight.

I like that she can remove conditions easily and I don't think any PC should have the power to lock down 5 monsters with any one power. Though I suppose taking 1 point per level is probably a little low. (perhaps it would be better to be able to move those conditions onto her minions)

I think the breathweapon may have been a typo (it was supposed to be an encounter standard).

I do think your right about the threatening reach, but ranged attackers can still fight her without entering the aura. Though I think the aura should probably be scaled down to 5 and the threating reach removed)

And I though you could only make attacks as free actions once per round. That certainly makes the minions broken. I'll give it a tweak and post back a revision.

Thank you for looking over it,

Matt

I don't see why you can't teleport out of that aura, either.

If you don't have line of sight or line of effect outside of the aura, you already cannot teleport out. The only way I see would be for the epic destiny (the name escape me) who can do rituals as standard action.

Personally I think if it had reach 5 it could retain threatening reach. Since you can never be more than 5 square from it, it could always move to you and smack you good.

Feed the mother could be a minor action from the minion, thus preventing endless feeding. And the ability to remove effect could be moved to the minions themselves. I like the idea of Biovaire moving those effect to the minions instead of just making them disappear.

Come My Children needs a range.

I don't understand the domination part of Determined Attacker.

Threatening Reach 10 could be OK, depends on the setup. The thing is going to be nasty, yes, but level 25+ parties are plenty nasty too. As a near-capstone type encounter go for it

The free action thing aside, which is easily fixed, it sounds like it could be pretty interesting. Beatable, but downright nasty. It is basically going to devolve down to whether or not the party can alpha strike the thing to oblivion quickly since anything besides outright damage will be relatively ineffective.

If you change the way she gets rid of conditions so they go to her minions and fix the swallowing attack issue I think it will be tough but good fight. It's essentially a straight forward damage race for the PC"s.

As a player though you would really have to sell me on why a plant is able to stop me from teleporting out of her arua. Even if she is a magical fey creature.

P.S. Is it just me or when you take all her powers and traits into account does she not read more like a controller than a brute?

@Jester

"I don't see why you can't teleport out of that aura, either."

You can't because the aura blocks line of sight and effect (it's there more as a reminder to me then as an additional effect)

I would also give you exp for taking the time to look over my monster, but apparently I have to spread some around first.
@AbdulAlhazred

"The free action thing aside, which is easily fixed, it sounds like it could be pretty interesting. Beatable, but downright nasty. It is basically going to devolve down to whether or not the party can alpha strike the thing to oblivion quickly since anything besides outright damage will be relatively ineffective."

That was sort of what I was aiming for.


@666Sinner666
"As a player though you would really have to sell me on why a plant is able to stop me from teleporting out of her arua. Even if she is a magical fey creature."

Yeah thats probably because with just a stat block it may be hard to see the concept I am aiming for "fluff wise". Imagine a cross between the world tree from "Hothouse" and "Biollante".

Essentially Biovaire is a large plant that covers the surface of an entire planet and is beginning to grow outwards towards other worlds. She maintains her own very brutal ecosystem who eek out an existance along her huge vines. Turning on an devouring them whenever the whim takes her. The stat block represents the "growing heart of this plant" and the minions are just random vines but still part of her body. Players seeking to stop Biovaires threat to the universe as a whole need to destroy this hub though doing so will almost certainly end all life on the planet.

The aura around her is the most active growing part of this planetary plant the hub where the intellegents behind this alien monstrosity resides. Essentially players moving through that aura are forcing their way through a moving sentient jungle trying to restrict them *. Players trying to escape are facing a wall of mile high vines. Growing so rapidly that they have no hope of cutting or burning their way through. (Biovaire likes to play with her food).

*(orginally I was going to make this difficult terrain as well but decided that would be unfair with the threatening reach, though with that removed I might think of putting it back in)

"Is it just me or when you take all her powers and traits into account does she not read more like a controller than a brute?"

Thats a good point but I sort of wanted the damage bonus making a monster a brute gives it.


Anyway attached is the new stat blocks, is that any better?

Madaxemat said:

You can't because the aura blocks line of sight and effect (it's there more as a reminder to me then as an additional effect)

Click to expand...

Oh! Duh, that makes sense!

Madaxemat said:

Essentially Biovaire is a large plant that covers the surface of an entire planet and is beginning to grow outwards towards other worlds. She maintains her own very brutal ecosystem who eek out an existance along her huge vines. Turning on an devouring them whenever the whim takes her. The stat block represents the "growing heart of this plant" and the minions are just random vines but still part of her body.

Click to expand...

Have you considered the option of making the whole battlemat the monster?

"Is it just me or when you take all her powers and traits into account does she not read more like a controller than a brute?"

Thats a good point but I sort of wanted the damage bonus making a monster a brute gives it.

Click to expand...

Beware making a heavy-controlling brute. There is a reason most brutes are damage dealers without tons of control.

Regarding the issue of difficult terrain, etc.

Instead of Difficult Terrain, you could add an effect to the aura such that move actions to Walk or Run are reduced by 2 or 3. This would allow the players to shift but would also evoke Biovaire responding to a move action by growing dense foliage that hinders the players movement.