Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5265202" data-attributes="member: 78116">The maths wasn't really wrong, because solo monsters are supposed to be five monsters. The maths of the original monsters, for example their "excessive" HP are caused because after paragon tier they gained x5 HP to their base total. That's basically like adding five monsters to one in terms of HP. It's not getting it wrong, it's doing things a bit too literally. Now solo monsters get a x4 multiplier regardless of their level.This again goes to explain why I don't see much of a problem with many of the original MM heroic solos, they aren't terribly crippled by later changes. Paragon and Epic MM solos might as well be free experience - with the possible exception of some Dragons. The adult and ancient white dragons for example are brutes that have +5 vs. AC and +3 vs. NADs standard (EG MM3 maths). They also do enough damage that other than HP, defenses and poor action economy they do a pretty decent job. On the other hand some creatures aren't as lucky, like the Adult Black dragon, whom is basically designed to be missed a huge proportion of the time. Compounding this it is unable to deal real damage either - a long grindy combat is the result.Really there was nothing inherently wrong with the maths - though that is outdated now - where solos absolutely failed was powers. They simply could not do enough to warrant them being five monsters. The worst solos in 4E are still from the original MM because of this flaw. The Purple Worm is the biggest joke in all of 4E easily and the Dracolich isn't far behind. I can't think of two worse solos in all of 4E than them.In many ways that's exactly what happened. MM creatures are flawed in maths, but only because later changes decided that having extra HP, defenses and similar wasn't required. The "maths" that builds the original solos is fine, because it builds all the other normal monsters and is just multiplied by 5. Later changes to accuracy and damage were really things that occur at paragon and epic. If you read my responses, I've been careful to constantly stress where MM creatures fail is in paragon and epic - the two tiers IMO Wizards didn't have the best grips on until recently.Let's have a look at what I actually wrote, the key argument that I have continued to argue since the first post I made in the discussion.Now we've got my argument correct, let's continue.You mean like my emphasis again and again that this is a problem that occurs in paragon and epic tier, where MM solos don't have the power design to cope with high level parties? I do believe I've constantly made that point. If you look at every example I've picked out of the original MM, all of them are paragon and above. Purple Worms, Dracolich, Orcus and such forth. These are the broken solos, because unlike MM2 and MM3 solos they have not kept up with PCs in terms of powers. Compare Orcus with Demogorgon, Tiamat or Lolth. Who do you think makes a better fight? Compare the original Orcus with the, somewhat better, Orcus empowered from E3. The design differences are night and day.If you've never played paragon and epic I can see why you might think MM solos might work. But they don't. PCs at paragon and epic - unoptimized can tear solo monsters apart piece by piece. They have tons of powers and options at these levels, their HP is high and they pack plenty of healing. A creature that is a bag of HP and overly high for its level defenses doesn't keep up - this is what wizards realized. The biggest difference - aside from maths - is in power design. Powers can make or break any solo in all of 4th edition.To be honest, this to me should read "people who have run paragon and epic games", as I've emphasized a lot now (though unfortunately not as much in my previous post as I should have). This is where the flaws in solos, which admittedly isn't all on the shoulders of the outdated maths and power design of MM creatures, all comes into effect the most.When I started running 4E, I defended MM solos quite routinely just saying people needed to figure out how to use them correctly. But the more I've run paragon and epic games the more I've seen the core flaws in solos. MM2 and MM3 address many of the core flaws in them, to the point where we're really only left with "Until end of your next turn" lockdowns. MM2 solos have the powers to be competitive, once you give them MM3 damage expressions especially. MM3 creatures are just fantastically designed in powers and deal great damage. MM creatures are now behind in the most fundamental ways possible - especially when it begins to matter in paragon and epic tier. The more paragon and epic tier I ran, the more I realized that I couldn't make MM solos challenging anymore at all and MM2 solos were functionally better. I am not a DM who believes in planet bowling ball. When you fight a red dragon in my campaigns, you fight it on the broken, crumbling side of a volcano with the lava and magma rapidly oozing up to greet the combatants. Plumes of smoke block line of sight and hazardous terrain makes staying in melee difficult. This though doesn't help a creature that doesn't have the powers or actions to routinely make use of it. Once "locked down" where is all the effort into that terrain going? Powers make a huge difference and combined with new damage, the overall effect is pretty dramatic. A "MM3"ized Red Dragon in the same situation does a much better job than the original in the MM. One will make an intense and exciting battle, while the other may not be able to have the actions to genuinely threaten the party in the end. Noting my example here is ironically flawed, because the MM Red Dragon actually isn't that bad equivalently - it falls behind mostly on power design.I've run 6 campaigns in 4E thus far, 2 that "finished", one is about to and 2 I had to abandon due to the group, time and other factors. I've run 3 games into epic, 4 into paragon and ended 2 at heroic. The difference in PCs power between heroic -> paragon -> epic is the "hidden" maths that the designers didn't account for (this is where I begin responding to Philosopher again). I've now got running a paragon and epic encounter down now, especially with the new maths but even before that I developed ways of making those encounters challenging. I always lamented though that by epic a "solo" of roughly around the PCs level was useless. Of course now it isn't - with the caveat again that I allow solos to save the action denial conditions even if they are "until end of next turn". But again, to summarize my entire argument the "hidden" problem in MM solos is power design. The designers maths was fine, what they got wrong was how powers should scale in general. Again, I bring up Orcus, the Purple Worm and the Dracolich. All of them don't have enough actions from their powers to genuinely challenge a party of five PCs. Their powers design just doesn't take these things into account properly. Even the better paragon/epic solo monsters suffer similarly, like the Ancient White Dragon (albeit as I noted earlier, he has both MM3 like attacks and damage! Is he the holy prophet of the future in the original MM?). Just not enough actions against a party with a lot of out of turn attacks, many multiple attack powers and similar. The overall point is that if you use a solo, don't go looking in the MM first over the better designed solos that follow.</blockquote>

Verification