4e Creatures, Not Scary?

[Urizen]

I think part of the problem is that many monsters are supposed to be scary as part of a group, rather than by themselves. Looking at a bunch of not solo monsters and seeing them as weak is ignoring that they're supposed to be part of a larger whole. A scary group of monsters will be greater than the sum of its parts.

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Some of these monsters seem pretty dangerous to me. By itself, the level 24 example lich has regeneration, an autodamage aura over a wide area, a Second Wind (with elite HP!), elite properties (AP, save bonus), can stun, and has a big damage area attack. And it's less than half of a standard encounter. Liches in general have recharge on powers that are normally per encounter.

So in the context of an encounter, a lich seems pretty dangerous. They're usually hard to take out quickly with Regen, extra defense bonuses (compared to other templates), and Second Wind (it's rare for monsters to be able to use healing surges). And that extra time to kill means that lich continues to get its good powers back while the PCs use theirs up, and the aura is inflicting more damage. Now let's add some back up - a lich works well with undead allies themetically, with his necromantic power. And mechancially - the lich has the option to dish out necrotic damage, which isn't going to hurt his undead allies. So his area attacks can be selective essentially. Stunned creatures grant CA, so lich increases the effectiveness of his allies - especially those who gain extra damage with CA or against stunned targets.

So consider the case of the lich stunning the cleric, spending his AP to drop his 6d6+ area power, and then sending some Sword Wraiths or Ghouls in to exploit the vulnerable character. Now the healer and person most likely to be doing the radiant damage needed to stop the enemy regen is taking a bunch of damage and losing his turn - so that damage won't be healed right away! Next turn, there's a decent chance (~56%) the lich will get one of his powers back to use again.

Pure, evil, genius. I Love it.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

The rogue was disintegrated on the first turn by a beholder lich.

I guess there's just a part of me that misses the devastatingly painful creatures. I know that design-wise the new way makes sense, I just miss it a little.

How much fun did that player have the rest of the evening?

DS

 

[Shadowsong666]

Well, i think not all encounters need to be scary to be hard. Sometimes a monster doesn't scare them, but really puts them on a test.

But there are scary monsters.

Last sunday i ran the Dragonlance encounter where Onyx (black dragon) bursts out of a well just to shock them. The players got suprised and only the cleric and ranger could react. But well, their initiative was lower then that of the black dragon.

He cast darkness and used his odem. Most of the players tried to run out of the darkness and got a AoO from the dragon in doing so. Our dwarven battlerager just stayed and fought the dragon. After some attacks from the dragon (and misses from the battlerager) the dragon realised that he isn't really hurting the dwarf in slashing him. So he grabbed the dwarf (everything happining inside the darkness) in one round, moved him over the well next round and as a free action just let him fall.... the rest of the players just heard the dwarf raging, screaming and falling to his death (he was just unconscious and out of the encounter).

After some rounds all players where bloodied and had no idea how to really fight this beast... Onyx gave them the warning and stealthed down the well - letting the darkness fade and the players where shocked. The ultra-tough dwarf dead, the dragon gone unharmed (well, 60 points of damage.. lol) and no clue how to fight him.

Next time they face him - they are one level up, have the blue crystal staff loaded for an effect against the dragon and know what will happen. Maybe they have a better chance of winning. But hell, they are scared of the beast.

Sometimes its not the damage but how you present it or use the environment. I think that storytelling helps making a monster "feal" tough. If thats not good for your team - remember - you are the GM - just adjust.

 

[Raven Crowking]

How much fun did that player have the rest of the evening?

DS

A better metric would be "How much fun did that player have the rest of the campaign"?

Pre-limiting how much the PCs can fail also pre-limits how much they can succeed. It limits the potential for great long-term fun in exchange for meh short-term fun.

IMHO, and IME, of course.


RC

 

[Barastrondo]

A better metric would be "How much fun did that player have the rest of the campaign"?

This is entirely true. But at the same time there's no getting around the fact that a game session in which a player is not having fun, even if the rest of the campaign evens out as a clear positive, is still not a very good session for that player. Obviously, you can't please all the people all of the time, but you should be trying to make sure that the players are having fun every session they come to. If the rogue's player has fun the session he's disintegrated, awesome, you're on to something. If he's not having fun even though everyone else is, that's still not an admirable game session. As always, it really depends on knowing your players.

The argument of whether monsters are scary or not is a fun one. I for one tend to agree with the idea that save-or-die or level drain critters were traditionally scary for pretty metagame reasons: you were afraid of the effect, less so the specific critter. To put it one way, it was the difference between being afraid of vampires in general, or being afraid of Dave's vampires. Between being afraid of kobolds, or being afraid of Tucker's kobolds.

One of the things I really enjoy about 4e is the attitude that leads to reskinning: that "brute" is more important than "monstrous humanoid" when determining stats, so it's really easy to hotwire a minotaur stat block to make a new ogre marauder, or to swipe a wraith's power to glom onto a lich. It makes metagaming a little trickier from a player's perspective, and should optimally lead to more Tucker's kobold-isms: where it's not that you fought vampires, it's that Count Rugose and his court were freaking terrifying.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If fun could be measured on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rather have the occasional 1 to get the occasional 10 than just hover around 5 all the time. Even if that means that I spend the rest of one session crafting a new PC, or have to wait until the DM can bring my new PC into the action.

YMMV.

 

[darkseraphim]

Rust monsters that swallow items then basically spit them back out; protests against save or die poison monsters; protests against level draining monsters ...

Lots of players don't really want scary monsters, in a game mechanics sense. They want monsters that sound scary that roll over and give nice lewts.

 

[Barastrondo]

If fun could be measured on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rather have the occasional 1 to get the occasional 10 than just hover around 5 all the time. Even if that means that I spend the rest of one session crafting a new PC, or have to wait until the DM can bring my new PC into the action.

YMMV.

Absolutely. I just think that, given the general tendency of people to be posting from a game master's perspective around here, it never hurts to reiterate "yeah, but just make sure that your players agree." Particularly as you get older and your life fills up with stuff, it's entirely reasonable for someone to say "I can only game once every other week: I don't care if you don't think you can do a 10 without risking a 1, I really don't want half of this month's gaming to be a 1, ever."

And as you say, the mileage, she varies.

 

[Jack Colby]

But these monsters were never "scary" in prior editions. I think a lot of people mistakenly equate player aversion to debilitating meta-game mechanics like level drain to in-game "fear" of a monster.

My players were never afraid of a vampire any more in prior editions, than they were in this edition. They just didn't want their characters to be screwed over by level drain. Did that make them "afraid" of the vampire? Not really. Same thing with beholders. My players weren't scared of beholders, so much as they were afraid that a single failed die roll would kill their entire evening of D&D. And when you drive over an hour to a buddy's house to play D&D only to have your game night end in the first round of combat because you got turned to stone with a single failed die roll, that is BAD game design. Period.

Heavy-handed and bad game mechanics like level drain would more often than not turn what should be a compelling and creepy vampire encounter into some bizarre and unfun meta-game version of tag. A game rule induced aversion to getting touched that never succeeded in mimicking any vampire encounter ever seen in fantasy literature or cinema. It was uniquely D&D player behavior superficially influenced by bad game rules. It would be parody, but there is nothing funny about removing a level that took you 13 sessions to earn, but only a single hit to lose.

Couldn't disagree more with your entire post. Level drain was a good design element and it did indeed inspire fear. See, the idea is to avoid combat with such things whenever possible, not rush into it expecting you will survive, then blaming the game design when something bad happens. I'm not saying the modern way is bad, just that it is a totally different game from older D&D, and along with that, a different design philosophy. Apples and oranges, really.

 

[Henry]

I do have to say I've seen some scared PLAYERS face off against level-draining undead. Admittedly, the "scared" turned to "disappointed" when the drain actually happened. The trick is in the fear and anticipation, not in the actual doing. I never saw a group of PCs move more stealthily and carefully than around a castle with randomly patrolling spectre guards, back in 2nd edition D&D.