Am I missing something in monster design?

[DNH]

It is possible to do some quick monster tweaking without homogeneizing them so much. For that, I'd recommend the following steps.
- For standard monsters, use the original damage expression and add bonus damage equal to one half the monster's level. If the monster is a brute, make the bonus two thirds the monster's level instead.
- Give soldiers a -2 penalty to attack rolls, and brutes a +2 bonus to attack rolls.
- Give Elite monsters a -2 penalty to AC and highest defense.
- For minion monsters, make their damage equal to 4+level/2, or 5+(0.6*level) if they are brutes.
- Skip solo monsters altogether, or be prepared for long, easy (and boring) encounters.

This will give you monsters that are close enough to modern standards to have fun, challenging encounters.

This looks to be sensible and do-able. A question though: will this apply and be valid right through to the early epic tier?

Thanks.

 

[the Jester]

The easiest way to adjust old monsters to be more fun is to double their static damage bonus (triple for brutes), which generally puts their damage in line with what it should be.

If you're short on time, that usually does enough of a job to keep things interesting- although there are plenty of boring monsters out there even so. I find it's much easier to remember and apply this quick change on the fly than trying to reevaluate their defenses, make new powers, etc.- although that's not too hard to do on the fly either if the monsters are simple enough to start with.

 

[keterys]

I like adding half level a lot more than double/triple static.

1) Cause it's what I was doing before they did the errata
2) Cause it's actually the gap between the old math and the new math (Old: 8 + 1/2 level, New: 8 + level)

 

[Psikus]

This looks to be sensible and do-able. A question though: will this apply and be valid right through to the early epic tier?

Thanks.

Yes, it should hold regardless of level. I'd watch out for the following issues, though:
- Early monster manuals have a few monsters whose stats (mostly damage) deviate too much from Dungeon Master's Guide guidelines. Those errors aren't fixed by this kind of tweaking. Thankfully, most of them have been caught by errata.
- For monsters with multiple attacks against a single target, divide the bonus damage accordingly, unless they are Elites/Solos.
- Earlier Elites were very hit or miss. Current design assumes that Elites attack like two regular monsters, usually through double attacks or immediate actions. If an Elite looks weak to you, turn its regular attack into a double attack and call it a day.

 

[superslacker87]

I am playing the ignorant one here, but where did the values you got initially come from? Is there an actual table published by WotC to help facilitate monster creation or adaptation of MM & MM2 creatures?

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

 

[the Jester]

I am playing the ignorant one here, but where did the values you got initially come from? Is there an actual table published by WotC to help facilitate monster creation or adaptation of MM & MM2 creatures?

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

There's an errata doc that replaces the damage by level and stats by monster role charts from pg. 184 (IIRC) in the DMG1.

I want to say it's from... around October? Or July? Or something? I know I've had trouble trying to find it again for someone else on the WotC website; they kind of suck for keeping information organized in an intuitive and findable way.

 

[S'mon]

The best way to convert MM monsters IME is to eyeball their listed average damage, then add some points and/or dice to bring it up to L+8 (etc). I generally use static bonuses for S-M creatures and a mix of dice & static for size L+.

 

[S'mon]

BTW I recommend that Elites average (L+8)x1.5 and Solos average (L+8)x3; WotC seem to have gone over to x2 and x5 which can result in excessive damage output if it's allowed vs single targets.

 

[Aegeri]

I feel like I'm not getting your point. You make it sound like you have to re-design every monster from the ground up, when in reality the difference between "old" and "new" monster numbers is a handful of numerical tweaks.

This isn't actually entirely true, because there are many other very subtle but important distinctions with how recent monsters are built compared with older monsters. Newer monsters outdo their previous counterparts not just in the damage they do, but the powers and abilities they have as well. Newer skirmishers can more reliably move about compared to older ones, recent soldiers tend to have marks as effects and similar.

While you can get away with basic math changes in heroic, by paragon and epic you can put lipstick on MM pigs - but they are still pigs. They need their powers readdressed and fixed as well.

As for the OPs complaints as mentioned in the thread: It doesn't matter what the monsters damage dice are - so long as it's the same average. So if you need 16 average damage, you can do that with a damage expression of d10+10 (or so), or 2d10+5. In the d10+10 case, you front load more damage consistently while the d210+5 is more variable. This actually can have some important - but extremely subtle - gameplay differences. The more "reliable" the monsters damage is, which means the more static bonus that doesn't rely on dice the more chance it can have of dropping a character consistently and similar. At the same time, it's critical hits feel a lot weaker.

So while they ARE by the new maths doing the same average damage, the impact their attacks have feel distinctly different.

Edit:

I wrote a reasonably competent summary of changes in this thread some time back. It's worth noting that I am going to update this thread with far better examples and more of the inner nitty gritty I was talking about. For example many monsters are now designed with effects on powers, such as a soldier who imposes a mark regardless if he hits or misses. On a hit the mark is save ends, but on a miss the mark is simply until the end of the creatures next turn (and such forth). These are much more common and generally consistent across monsters than they were originally. It's one reason other than the higher damage of newer monsters that they perform considerably better.

 

[DNH]

I see there are numerous problems (to put it mildly) with the newly-released online Monster Builder, and I don't have an active DDI sub anyway, but do you guys think I could resolve things that way? I mean, could I use the MB to update the monsters I am using, or else look through the Compendium for alternatives?

Thanks.