D&D 4E 4E: BBEG's Redemption?

[AllisterH]

Or, the other situation that comes to mind, because of the dragon fight, which dragged out beyond the point of ridiculous, is that if the characters are 4th level, with 10-20 more hit points each, +2 to hit, bonuses from magical weapons, more powers and so on, will change from a grind, to almost easy. The dragon had a hard time dropping the PCs at first level. With 3 more levels worth of resources, I'm not convinced that it really can, and that thought also makes me sad.

I don't think it's actually supposed to win though.

It's like the CR system in 4E. A CR 20 monster is NOT a threat to a 4 person Level 20 party. It's only supposed to consume 20% of said resources and thus, the party is actually expected to win.

I think the same thing applies to monsters/encounters in 4E. If the XP budget at 1st level is 600xp, the PCs are expected to win as long as the XP total of the creatures doesn't exceed that amount by too much.

To actually have a "oh crap, the PCs will definitely be facing an uphill battle", you probably have to exceed the xp budget by at least one PC's worth of XP if not two (if a 1st level PC contributes 100 xp to the budget, to seriously challenge a 6 person party, you need to budget at least 700-800 xp worth of creatures).

Doubling up would probably result in a TPK situation as basically, you have each party member fighting an elite.

 

[Voss]

To actually have a "oh crap, the PCs will definitely be facing an uphill battle", you probably have to exceed the xp budget by at least one PC's worth of XP if not two (if a 1st level PC contributes 100 xp to the budget, to seriously challenge a 6 person party, you need to budget at least 700-800 xp worth of creatures).

I did some of that, too. 700 xp encounters weren't really more challenging. The one that I tried and let spiral out of control and ended up being roughly 1000 xp, but it was offset by many of the monsters being undead. vulnerable radiant is a huge thing with a cleric in the party.

 

[hong]

I did some of that, too. 700 xp encounters weren't really more challenging. The one that I tried and let spiral out of control and ended up being roughly 1000 xp, but it was offset by many of the monsters being undead. vulnerable radiant is a huge thing with a cleric in the party.

So play the monsters smarter.

 

[Xtian]

Elites... eh. I'm not to keen on them either, particularly with the glimpse of the template (+50% hp and +2 to defenses, was it?) Just making them able to soak more damage doesn't make them interesting. (plus its rather appropriate for what are usually considered soft targets- wizards and the like).

As a side note, I think the formula for turning a monster into an elite is to give 50% HP and +2 defenses, but then add a "fun" extra ability. The released warrior-turned-elite gets an extra attack on one of his powers. Thus, when making elite monsters, DMs should try to add a flavorful and exciting "oomph" to the ability list, both to further distinguish the elite from the normals and to up the "fun" factor of the fight. Personally, I like the philosophy that encourages adapting special monsters with neat additions to the situation, and I think that it is especially relevant for creating BBEGs.

Also, I agree with the analysis that solo fights need more actions in order to compete in a fun way with a party of any normal size. The DDM preview implied that the Ettin gains two actions, because it has two heads. That is the sort of awesomeness that I expect from tough monsters, and I imagine that doubling the number of actions a 3.5 BBEG gets would go a long way to fixing those problems as well.

EDIT: On the topic of how much XP per encounter, a harrowing fight for the PCs seems to be at about 150% of the XP budget, at least for the PCs that we have. Also, the XP budget itself is a little dependant on the monsters you use. In my fan-based playtests, 500-600 XP has been pretty easy, 650-800 has been challenging but not threatening, and higher than that gets into the "it could go either way" category. Unfortunately, those numbers may shift as levels change. Hopefully this isn't the case, since otherwise 4e would not be much of an improvement over the 3.5 CR system.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This makes me happy that I've figured out how to use boss battles in FFZ...

Yes, epic battles should be epic without a host of minions or tremendously over-powered enemies. 4e can hit me with their best on this one.