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CR and Encounter Difficulty: Is It Consistently Wrong?
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<blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 6480255" data-attributes="member: 54710"><p>That's important. I ran a solo dragon encounter during the playtest with 9 PCs and the legendary rules that showed up in one of the on-line articles, and I built a lot of custom solo monsters for 4e. Here's my quick and dirty formula for good solo play:</p><p></p><p>a) Make sure that the creature has enough legendary actions that it can go frequently in the round. For my dragon, I gave it 6 legendary actions, which meant that the initiative count went: dragon's main action; 3 PCs; dragon takes 3 legendary actions; 3 PCs; dragon takes 3 legendary actions; 3 PCs.</p><p></p><p>b) Make sure that the solo has a good mixture of terrifying attacks that hit everyone who isn't giving up tactical advantage for safety and single target attacks that let you pour the punishment onto a single PC. You want the solo to have a good mixture of hurting everyone, hitting back regularly and occasionally concentrating fire to take out a single PC (usually a PC who just did something effective and didn't get out of the way). When calculating damage, take into account the type of resistances and defensive magics that the PCs are likely to take.</p><p></p><p>c) Increase the hit points to last however many rounds you want. Due to the large number of PCs I was facing, I quadrupled the hit points.</p><p></p><p>d) Tweak the saving throws so the solo succeeds meaningfully more often than it fails, but not so often that it never has to use legendary resistance. You want it set up so the PCs feel like they are making progress if they force the solo has to use a legendary resistance, but you don't want the solo to burn through all that resistance in the first couple rounds and then get slaughtered by endless status effects. The level and make up of your PC party will have a big effect on this, and it's a little tricky to get this right. Don't forget that your solo is making a tactical decision about whether to use legendary resistance, so don't be afraid about letting your casters win on some "lesser" spells so the solo can save at least one legendary resistance to defend against a truly debilitating effect. That's part of giving your players a sense of progress.</p><p></p><p>(My dragon had good saving throws, magic resistance <em>and </em>legendary resistance. It was definitely too much.)</p><p></p><p>e) Tweak the AC so the martial characters aren't at a major advantage or disadvantage when compared to the casters. In general, it's more fun if the PCs hit fairly often but have a massive pile of hit points to run through than if they hit infrequently but have a more manageable pile of hit points. But at the same time, the casters will be at least partially dependent on the saving throw management above, so you don't want a situation where the melee characters are the only ones whittling through the hp.</p><p></p><p>-KS</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="KidSnide, post: 6480255, member: 54710"] That's important. I ran a solo dragon encounter during the playtest with 9 PCs and the legendary rules that showed up in one of the on-line articles, and I built a lot of custom solo monsters for 4e. Here's my quick and dirty formula for good solo play: a) Make sure that the creature has enough legendary actions that it can go frequently in the round. For my dragon, I gave it 6 legendary actions, which meant that the initiative count went: dragon's main action; 3 PCs; dragon takes 3 legendary actions; 3 PCs; dragon takes 3 legendary actions; 3 PCs. b) Make sure that the solo has a good mixture of terrifying attacks that hit everyone who isn't giving up tactical advantage for safety and single target attacks that let you pour the punishment onto a single PC. You want the solo to have a good mixture of hurting everyone, hitting back regularly and occasionally concentrating fire to take out a single PC (usually a PC who just did something effective and didn't get out of the way). When calculating damage, take into account the type of resistances and defensive magics that the PCs are likely to take. c) Increase the hit points to last however many rounds you want. Due to the large number of PCs I was facing, I quadrupled the hit points. d) Tweak the saving throws so the solo succeeds meaningfully more often than it fails, but not so often that it never has to use legendary resistance. You want it set up so the PCs feel like they are making progress if they force the solo has to use a legendary resistance, but you don't want the solo to burn through all that resistance in the first couple rounds and then get slaughtered by endless status effects. The level and make up of your PC party will have a big effect on this, and it's a little tricky to get this right. Don't forget that your solo is making a tactical decision about whether to use legendary resistance, so don't be afraid about letting your casters win on some "lesser" spells so the solo can save at least one legendary resistance to defend against a truly debilitating effect. That's part of giving your players a sense of progress. (My dragon had good saving throws, magic resistance [I]and [/I]legendary resistance. It was definitely too much.) e) Tweak the AC so the martial characters aren't at a major advantage or disadvantage when compared to the casters. In general, it's more fun if the PCs hit fairly often but have a massive pile of hit points to run through than if they hit infrequently but have a more manageable pile of hit points. But at the same time, the casters will be at least partially dependent on the saving throw management above, so you don't want a situation where the melee characters are the only ones whittling through the hp. -KS [/QUOTE]
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