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

[PnPgamer]

in 2e a lvl 1 wizard can finish off an ogre in a 1v1. That is not possible in 5e as the systems are really different.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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. Trying to merge everything back into a single number was dumb, but there it is.

There's no need for CR to equal level, or even be anywhere near it. The idea is that if a single monster is enough exp to make a 'hard' or 'deadly' encounter, whatever it's CR may be relative to the party's level, it's appropriate, and, even if, after adjusting for being outnumbered by a 6+ PC party, it's still at least 'medium,' it shouldn't seem "too easy" to kill.

Maybe the modifier is part of the problem. If you have 6+ PCs, a lone monster's multiplier becomes x1/2. If you budget a single monster to deliver the right amount of exp, it'll be much easier because it's outnumbered. If you try to get it all the way up to 'deadly' in actual difficulty, it'll be giving the PCs a /lot/ of experience points.

 

[Beleriphon]

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 liked the way Solo, Elite, Standard and Minions worked in 4E as well, but lets not forget the lair action of a dragon is one action of a possible seven if its in its lair. A high CR dragon can still get up to six attacks per round. That's nothing to sneeze at. CR is a better measure of how powerful a monster is compared to a particular average party level, which I think is what it tries to measure. The XP budget is actually a better measure of how to gauge an encounter, from what I see.

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.

I think the biggest problem with the idea of Solo Monsters in D&D is that you have give them a stupid number of HP or just have several off turn attacks (or area of effect abilities to use on their turn). The fiction we're trying to model is that the solo monsters is fighting a solo hero. Fafnir isn't brought low by Sigurd and his heroic friends, Beowulf doesn't face Grendel with his band of merry Geats (I suppose he does, but Grendel wrecks his friends' evening pretty badly). That kind of experience can be hard to capture in D&D using turn based on combat, but I personally feel the legendary creature mechanics do a pretty good job of applying that feeling to a single monster vs a group.

 

[Dausuul]

There's no need for CR to equal level, or even be anywhere near it. The idea is that if you a single monster is enough exp to make a 'hard' or 'deadly' encounter, whatever it's CR may be relative to the party's level, it's appropriate, and, if, after adjusting for being outnumbered, if it's still at least 'medium,' it shouldn't seem "too easy" to kill.

There is a reason to draw the distinction. A monster intended to work in groups is likely to deliver all of its damage in a single-target attack, once per round. A monster intended to work solo will have more area and multi-target attacks and off-turn actions, spreading its damage around.

Hence, using a high-CR "group" monster as a solo encounter for a low-level party is likely to be brutally swingy. When an entire round's worth of monster damage lands on the head of one poor PC, that PC is apt to be one-shotted, maybe even killed outright. And conversely, the monster lacks the defenses to handle an entire party unloading on it. That's why the recommendation is not to use monsters with CR much above the party's level. For regular monsters, it's a good guideline.

For solo monsters, however, the guideline needs to change, since solos are designed to offer a more consistent experience when fought alone.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There is a reason to draw the distinction. A monster intended to work in groups is likely to deliver all of its damage in a single-target attack, once per round. A monster intended to work solo will have more area and multi-target attacks and off-turn actions, spreading its damage around.

5e 'Legendary' monsters do go there.

But, a big part of the idea of Bounded Accuracy (apart from being a pendulum swing away from 'big numbers'), was that it would enable the party to encounter monsters of radically different level, meaningfully, by varying the number of monsters, or, to put it the other way, the DM would be able to use the exact same stats for a monster whether it was acting as a lone threat to a very low-level party, or part of a huge mob of similar monsters vs a much higher level party.

Hence, using a high-CR "group" monster as a solo encounter for a low-level party is likely to be brutally swingy.

There's no such thing as a 'group' monster in 5e, just a higher or lower CR one, in an encounter, adjusted for relative numbers. A high-CR monster facing a party is outnumbered, it'll die fast. And, yes, it can do a lot of damage, but it can still miss, so it's a little 'swingy' in the sense of whether (or how many) PCs it'll drop before they finish mopping the floor with it. If it weren't, it wouldn't seem dangerous, it'd just die fast before doing anything significant.

They're just necessary consequences of Fast Combat and Bounded Accuracy.

For solo monsters, however, the guideline needs to change, since solos are designed to offer a more consistent experience when fought alone.

The idea is that bounded accuracy will keep things fairly consistent (in 5e, attacks hit more often than not, fairly consistently) over many combats, but, since combats are short, within any given combat, there's not time for the law of large numbers to make that consistency manifest. The only way you'll get consistent solos is to undermine 5e's Fast Combat mandate, and that'd be a significant re-tooling, even for a game as open to tinkering as 5e.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Think I'm going to side with [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION] here. If I want a lower-level party to encounter a single creature to battle, not even a "boss" or "solo", it does seem more difficult in 5E to make such an encounter challenging or interesting, and I think it's due to bounded accuracy. In older editions, an encounter against a "level appropriate" creature often lasted longer by virtue of players simply missing more often. It was pretty easy to make a creature more challenging by simply bumping it's AC a bit, especially in 1E.

It doesn't matter what tactics or actions the creature has if they die before their first or second turn. In my current game, this is exacerbated by having two monks who often make multiple stunning fist attempts on their turn. Due to bounded accuracy, the odds are much better the creature is going to fail one of those saves. So even if a creature doesn't go down quickly, it's just standing around taking no actions.

Plus, I don't want to feel obligated by the system to always rely on the creature being challenging by virtue of it being smart tactically, always having advantageous environments to fight in, or always travelling around with buddies for cannon fodder. Sometimes you want a monster to be tough and scary by virtue of the fact that it's a tough, scary monster.

Personally, for those sorts of situations, I've done what was mentioned up-thread and increased hit points to 75 or 100%. Sometimes even that's not enough.

On the other hand, combats with the party facing multiple bad guys, especially of mixed types, I've found pretty fun and quick moving in 5E.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If I want a lower-level party to encounter a single creature to battle, not even a "boss" or "solo", it does seem more difficult in 5E to make such an encounter challenging or interesting, and I think it's due to bounded accuracy.

Creating a challenging, let alone interesting, D&D encounter has generally been more art than science through most of the game's history, anyway, whether it involved one monster, a few, or many.

Bounded Accuracy does seem to favor the side with numeric superiority, so, sure, it might well be that lone monster encounters tend to flop out on the 'not as challenging as expected' tail of the curve more often (and large encounters on the 'more challenging than expected one), because of that.
Something to be aware of when running the encounter.

 

[Hussar]

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.

/snip

What do you mean by a "real challenge" though? A significant chance of killing a PC? Something that will munch through a fair amount of PC resources, but, won't likely kill anyone? What?

And that's the problem that I see. People want a solitary monster to be a "real challenge". But, 5e monsters aren't built like that. That was a specifically 3e thing where a single monster of a given CR was a challenge for 4 PC's of equivalent level. That meant that 3e monsters were built to take a LOT of punishment and deal a lot of damage. A 3e troll is CR 5, can pump out 50(ish) points of damage in a single round. Not likely, true, but it can. And, any time it hits with both claws, it's averaging 34 points of damage plus a bit. A 5e troll does 36 points, max. And, note, the 3e troll is far better off focus firing - it has no reason not to drop all its attacks on a single target. The 5e troll, it doesn't matter, it still does the same damage whether it's to a single target or multiple.

I think the real issue here is that people are trying to compare how monsters worked in 3e, where the baseline was for very small encounters - typically 1-3 monsters. Look at 3e modules and the overwhelming majority of encounters are with 1-3 monsters. 5e plays a lot more like earlier D&D (and 4e for that matter) where the baseline is to use a lot more monsters in an encounter.

 

[Tony Vargas]

People want a solitary monster to be a "real challenge". But, 5e monsters aren't built like that. That was a specifically 3e thing where a single monster of a given CR was a challenge for 4 PC's of equivalent level.

According to the 5e encounter guidelines a same-CR-as-level monster would be a 'medium' challenge for a party of 4. Maybe 'medium' doesn't equate to 'real' (even in 3e, a basic same-CR-as-level encounter was supposed to be more a 'speedbump.').

I think the real issue here is that people are trying to compare how monsters worked in 3e, where the baseline was for very small encounters - typically 1-3 monsters.

The 5e guidelines give a lone monster facing a party of 3-5 a x1 multiplier to determine difficulty. That sure sounds like a baseline.

5e plays a lot more like earlier D&D where the baseline is to use a lot more monsters in an encounter.

There weren't exactly encounter guidelines, at all, prior to 3e. Maybe some DMs or modules or wandering monster tables tended towards large encounters, maybe some tended towards small ones. I can't say I remember a strong tendency either way.

 

[Mistwell]

You can tweak a normal creature to be a legendary creature, and they make for decent solos. I think I am going to try that tonight with some sort of mutated giant squid. It just takes work. I wish there were a lot more legendary creatures (and lairs) to choose from, at different CR levels, to use as templates.