D&D 5E Are solo monsters weaker in 5e?

[Ilbranteloth]

I've never in 35 years of playing, run a "boss' monster without the environment and likely tactics the monster would use be a huge factor. While you might run into a normal room with a couple orcs in it and the battle is pretty vanilla, "boss" monsters always have something else around them to impact that battle. In 5e, many of these have lair actions, but regardless if it's an ability or not, very rarely will a boss be in an environment where they don't know the area extremely well and use that to their advantage.

What this means is that I will have a hard time doing the experiment, because the outcome of these battles is less dependent on edition, and more dependent on how you're DMing them and what sort of environment is there.

Agreed, this is one of the challenges. But I think this is one of the areas that people don't always do, and thus the monster is easier to kill.

On the other hand, running the same encounter without those factors using the same monster and party from different editions would potentially highlight that the lair and legendary actions play a bigger part in the 5th edition.

It's hard to do a direct comparison in any event, because a 1st edition lich didn't have lair actions or legendary actions. But I think we can make some sort of comparison.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Collectively, we've been playing all the editions you're wondering about for a long time. They may not have been controlled experiments, but a lot of field-testing has been done, indeed.

Agreed, and in my 35ish years of playing I'd say that they seem to be pretty similar. I've had some single monsters that went down very quickly, and others that just seemed like they wouldn't die in the 5th edition. I didn't keep track of the circumstances enough to be able to explain why.

But there seems to be a fairly large group of people that consistently say they are weaker. In my experience, there's often a big difference between perception and fact. So I'm curious if we can actually quantify that.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Beleriphon]

Meaning, the fact you CAN challenge a party with a single creature is more due to the inherent power rise from levels, than any deliberate "solofication" of a random MM entry.

Without the legendary template on dragons they'd only have three attacks per turn. Its a fair number, but at the levels we're talking about not that impressive. There are other equally high level foes that aren't legendary, the Pit Fiend for example, that really does rely on having other demons around to help fight effectively. High level demons and devils are individually dangerous but they aren't quite on par with an entire group that are equally as a dangerous as they are.

My dragon example isn't a suggestion that you toss a CR17+ dragon at a level 7 party, that's just ridiculous. What I'm suggesting is that a CR17+ dragon is a reasonably dangerous challenge to a party of roughly equivalent level. Most monsters in the MM aren't meant to be used entirely by their lonesome, they're meant to be used in small mixed groups, even single monsters don't mean they are found alone but that you only find one of that specific creature. Again, my ogre example has a direwolf pet or two, maybe it has a mate. Either way it isn't a terribly challenging to a 2nd level party all by itself, other than the fact that it has a reasonable pool of hit points.

Lets take a look a hill giant. By itself it has a pretty good pool of HP, but only has two moderately damaging attacks per round. Against a 5th level party that isn't too much of a challenge, since the party can quickly drop the giant in a few rounds. If you want a more challenging giant encounter you should probably add a few more creatures. If nothing else the encounter rules basically setup that a fifth level party of five members facing a lone hill giant accounts for 10% of their total experience budget.

In comparison if you look at the Ancient Red Dragon (CR 24, 62000 XP for those playing at home) you're looking at 31% of 20th level party of five total XP budget for one day. A deadly encounter for level 20 is 63500 XP total, the dragon there fills that more or less completely. Its a deadly frigging encounter, which seems pretty accurate given what the dragon's can do.

Other creatures require a few more options to get dangerous, but its not true there are no monsters that are dangerous entirely on their own. Or more importantly the ones that are setup for single creature encounters aren't dangerous on their own.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I'm not sure I understand what you are driving at.

Are you comparing solo monsters in 5e with groups of monsters in 5e and suggesting that the CR factors for group size are wrong? If so, you don't need to bring in other editions, it's purely a 5e question.

Or are you saying that combat is easier in 5e than it was in earlier editions? If so, what do you mean by easier? Fewer rounds to kill? If so, then there's no need to do any tests. The answer is "yes, by design".

I'd like to help, but I think I'm missing something here.

Well, I'm basing it off of what other people have been commenting about, not my own opinion.

But the general complaint seems to be that compared to earlier editions, solo monsters are easier to kill. Which does relate to how the CR of a solo monster is calculated within 5th edition.

I haven't had the chance to start testing yet, but for low levels and single monsters, like an ogre, an owlbear, or other low level single monsters it should be fairly easy to test. But the complaint is that the problem is worse at higher levels.

Basically, I'm just saying that the complaint is most likely a mix of opinion (or perception) and fact. I'd like to see if we can determine how much is fact and how much perception.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Books are more likely to have single powerful enemies like a dragon. Dragons are usually solo creatures in books and stories that you must fight alone. Giants are often the same. The idea of a powerful, solitary creature of Legend is very much a construct of fiction and myth. Beowulf versus Grendel. The hobbit and his dwarven allies versus Smaug. King Arthur against a giant troubling the lands. Perseus against Medusa or the Kraken.

It depends on the villain. As someone that comes to the game from books, I very much expect a single powerful creature like a dragon to hold its own alone. I would also like giants to provide a very potent challenge solo, though that hasn't been the case for ages. A powerful solo monster of legend providing a powerful enemy alone is very much a product of fiction that video games have incorporated.

Good point, but you also highlight that in a lot of those fictional encounters it's a solo hero against a solo monster. Which happens to be a good fit for video games.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Mistwell]

No my dear Mistwell, insulting my intelligence by suggesting I perhaps forgot all I'm talking about is something you get called out on.

Woah dude, that's taking things way too far. My suggesting maybe you forgot something is not insulting your intelligence. If you have an issue with me, please message me privately, or report it to a mod. Regardless, you didn't reply to my point. If you didn't forget, then why did you say Legendary creatures don't break the in-game restrictions when they do, and why did you say they don't get to act several times to balance the action economy when they do?

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Hiya!

Well, upon thinking about stories, myths, etc, [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] and [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] are correct. There are 'lots' of stories about single 'boss monster' fights in the end, as they mentioned. I guess what I was thinking about was D&D and AD&D 1e/2e adventure modules. Of the official published modules, I can't really come up with any where the PC's faced off against a single boss-monster type. Hmmm....

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The module B4, The Lost City ...the original one had a very bottom level where the PC's could face off against "Zargon" (iirc), who was a unique monster. A case might be made for Oonga from the Isle of the Ape module...but I can't remember if there are any of those other "little oonga-apes" around him. Oh, maybe the red dragon in the dungeon/cave in another Basic D&D module, Horror on the Hill. Hmmm....Lost Caverns of Tsojacanth has potential for a face off against the vampire chick...Derlena? Drelna? Something like that.

But that's all I can think of at the moment. Maybe there's more. I'm not including ones where the 'boss monster' is very likely to summon or otherwise 'have minions available'. I guess I'll have to concede there there are more adventures with "boss monsters" in them than I had originally though.

Er...however... ...I'd also like to point out that most of the boss-monsters I listed and can think of are all unique individuals or creatures. So there is still no real "solo" monster category in 5e, from what I can see. There are monsters that can fit that bill and hold there own, as I said, but I'd wager that to make them a "true, boss-monster", the DM is going to modify them to suit the story. So doing up an analysis of X PC's vs. Y Solo Monsters isn't going to work just from that standpoint.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Those are the ones that came to mind with me, along with Tomb of Horrors and the three individual monsters in White Plume Mountain. The thing to remember here that it's not really a complaint about 'boss' monsters, but solo monsters in general. There are a lot of examples in Keep on the Borderlands alone along that line. They tend to be things like ogres, trolls, minotaurs, owlbears and the like.

As you increase in levels, things get more complicated.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Endur]

Orc, Bugbear, Ogre, Troll, Hill Giant would be solos I would choose.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But the general complaint seems to be that compared to earlier editions, solo monsters are easier to kill. Which does relate to how the CR of a solo monster is calculated within 5th edition.

Not to contradict that opinion, but 5e came to the drawing board with a mandate for faster combat. Faster combat will mean that things die faster, and 'faster' conflates to 'easier' pretty, well, easily. So, yeah, boss monsters are 'easier' to kill in 5e (they die faster in service to faster combat). But, so are regular monsters. So are popcorn monsters. So, for that matter, are PCs.

 

[Dausuul]

Books are more likely to have single powerful enemies like a dragon. Dragons are usually solo creatures in books and stories that you must fight alone. Giants are often the same. The idea of a powerful, solitary creature of Legend is very much a construct of fiction and myth. Beowulf versus Grendel. The hobbit and his dwarven allies versus Smaug. King Arthur against a giant troubling the lands. Perseus against Medusa or the Kraken.

It depends on the villain. As someone that comes to the game from books, I very much expect a single powerful creature like a dragon to hold its own alone. I would also like giants to provide a very potent challenge solo, though that hasn't been the case for ages. A powerful solo monster of legend providing a powerful enemy alone is very much a product of fiction that video games have incorporated.

Agreed. If 5E can't provide "solo monsters" that pose a real challenge, then the game is failing to deliver on an important element of the high fantasy genre. A dragon should be able to take on a party of PCs, without relying on lair defenses or a bunch of minions to do it.

Obviously, such a monster's CR will be way higher than any individual PC's level. There is no way around this. The problem is that CR is trying to do two things at once - measure a monster's power, and determine what level the party should be to face it - and those goals are not compatible, since a monster designed to go one-against-five at Level X will be much more powerful than a monster designed to go five-against-five at Level X. This is why 4E had minions, standard monsters, elites, and solos; trying to merge everything back into a single number was dumb, but there it is.

I have so far fought only one solo combat in 5E, and it's hard to say whether it "worked" - it was a gang of 15th-level PCs with a lot of weird custom magic items against an ancient black dragon. We eventually killed it using clever tricks and some of those weird items rather than our regular class mechanics. As a final battle for the campaign, it was a rousing success; but I wouldn't say it could be used as evidence that the rules are working, since the rules made up a rather small part of it.