4e Creatures, Not Scary?

[SlyFlourish]

First off, let me assure you that I am a huge fan of 4th edition. I think it's the best thing to happen to me as a DM. My players love it and I love it.

One thing has bothered me for over a year now. Monsters just aren't scary enough.

About a year ago we saw the 4th edition Pit Fiend and there was great drama discussing his apparent lack of power. For weeks I walked around muttering "poor gimpy pit fiend" until long after my wife stopped laughing. The scale is different, people said, and I believed them. Life moved ahead, we started playing 4e and all was grand but something bothered me. Monsters just didn't appear to be that scary.

Today I saw this picture over on a Wizards article:

http://wizards.com/dnd/images/excerpt_og4.jpg

Man, what a great picture. Scary. Who wouldn't wet themselves seeing a lich bursting out of a door right in the middle of your relaxing day of adventure. But when I take the monster manual off the shelf and look at the 24th level Eladrin Lich, I see 3d8+7 damage. That's not going to scare anyone. What happened to a Lich casting Weird and having half the party fail the save? What about those nasty 20d6 Delayed Blast fireballs? 3d8+7 just isn't going to scare any 24th level party.

I know, if you want to scare them, run it a few levels higher but even a 20th level party isn't going to be scared by a single target 3d8+7 blast. That lich isn't going to kill anyone. Not even close.

Skip forward to Orcus, the big baddie in the whole monster manual. Short of his death touch (which isn't likely to recharge in the fight) he dishes out about 3d12+12 damage a hit. Now like the rest of you I'm not a fan of the save or die but aside from that one death touch, he isn't going to be knocking anyone on his or her ass. He just isn't that scary. Annoying maybe, with the 10 / 20 necrotic damage and the dread wraiths, but not really scary.

There are more creatures like this, creatures that used to scare the hell out of people like red great wyrms and beholders that now just dish out a little damage before a powerful party beats them down.

So what do you do to make these iconic monsters more scary?

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well for myself the damage a monster could dish out never made a monster creepy or scary. It was all in how the monster behaved or described. Basically the narrative around it.

 

[Anguirus]

Have you trying running epic level fights? A "mere" 3d8+7 is an average of 20.5 damage, which is about a tenth of an epic-level defender's HP.

In my admittedly limited experience, epic-level monsters start scaring epic-level players right quick.

Plus, a lich is still a lich and a dragon is still a dragon. Play them up. I just ran a fight with a basilisk and no one was petrified because of a bit of luck and the three-saves-to-petrification system, but they still knew what that thing was and sprang upon it with yells of "KILL IT QUICK!" In 3E, someone would have rolled a bad save, been petrified, and the adventure would have come to a crashing halt.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

There is no more rocket tag in 4E, so if that is the scary you're looking for, you're not likely to find it.

 

[The Little Raven]

So what do you do to make these iconic monsters more scary?

See how they function in play rather than how they function in theory, then make the decision on whether they are scary or not.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I've found that one thing that was definitely true of 3E is still true of 4E: When it comes to scariness, the CR or XP budget guidelines have to be adjusted for the type of monster and the type of players.

I can pick something reasonablely close to the suggested balance, and give my players a scary fight--unless the two tactically minded players are there. Then I have to up the capability of the monsters if I want a scary fight that bad. Likewise, I can play a monster with a certain amount of strategic cunning or other options, and it depends on the players at the table how much of a threat this becomes. (And how scared players get is almost always in their imaginations, and not uncommonly a result of that imagination running wild because I deliberately kept something unknown. Nothing is as scary as the unknown, if the players know that you will occasionally throw the kitchen sink at them.)

Heck, this was true of Fantasy Hero when we played that. I gradually increased the power/capabilities/cunning of the monsters. When the player got scared, I quit increasing it for awhile. If I really wanted to scare them, I created a mystery.

Of course, sometimes the players should mop the floor without breaking a sweat. And you should have enough in reserves to make them run occasionally. A lich bursting through the door is not scary. A lich that has been plotting behind the scenes for 8 sessions (with the players suspsecting a powerful hand but not knowing which hand), bursting through the door--may be scary or may be anti-climatic. But even if the latter, it won't be boring.

 

[Vayden]

Not scary? Try using them in play instead of just looking at the stats. My warlord still twitches whenever he sees a rat . . . effing rat swarms . . .

 

[thecasualoblivion]

A lot depends on the DM. I'm the best tactical player at our table, and I'm the DM. My players are deathly afraid of Kobolds, Drakes, Eladrin, Plaguechanged Ghouls, Hags, ect. They've had some seriously traumatic experiences. On the other hand, on saturday I played at an RPGA event on saturday, and joined two other players of my skill level(and two that weren't) in absolutely decimating our poor DM.

 

[Nebulous]

There is no more rocket tag in 4E, so if that is the scary you're looking for, you're not likely to find it.

I would suggest for DMs to tweak monster powers as they see fit. Just don't tell the players it's not 100% per the book. Although if you kill them all in one failed save they'll probably cry foul. The best thing about 4e monster design is about how simple it is and divorced for the character creation rules of 3.x. If it SOUNDS cool, then do it. Just keep balance in mind, so there's an art to it i guess.

 

[Dragonblade]

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.