Critique my monster, please?

[kaomera]

Hey, my players stay out, etc., etc.

I'm working on monsters for this weekend's game, and given that among other things I need to be ready to go in several different directions at once, I'm kind of trying to keep things simple... Unfortunately, I also have a particular miniature I want to get use out of, and that's involving some conversion from elite to standard monster. So I'm not 100% sure if what I've done will work... (My main concern is that is may be underpowered...)

[sblock]
Volcanic Dragon Lavaspewer Level 17 Brute
Large elemental magical beast (dragon, fire) XP 1,600
HP 202; Bloodied 101
AC 29; Fortitude 31; Reflex 28; Will 29
Speed 8, fly 2 (clumsy)
Initiative +13
Perception +14
Darkvision

Standard Actions
m Bite (fire, poison) • At-Will
Attack: Melee 2 (one creature); +21 vs. AC
Hit: 1d10 + 8 damage, and ongoing 10 fire and poison damage (save ends).

C Lava Spray (fire) • Recharge 5 6
Attack: Close Blast 3, two adjacent non-overlapping areas (creatures in the blasts); +18 vs. Fortitude
Hit: 2d10 + 8 fire damage and the target is slowed and blinded (save ends both).

Minor Actions
m Claw (poison) • Recharge 4 5 6
Attack: Melee 2 (one creature); +23 vs. AC
Hit: 1d8 + 7 damage, and the target takes poison damage equal to any ongoing poison damage affecting it, and loses all fire resistance until the end of the dragon’s next turn.

Triggered Actions
C Smoldering Furnace (fire, poison) • Encounter
Trigger: The volcanic dragon is first bloodied in an encounter.
Attack (Immediate Reaction): Close burst 2 (creatures in the burst); +18 vs. Fortitude
Hit: 1d10 + 7 fire damage.
Effect: Each creature in the burst takes ongoing 10 poison damage and is pushed 1 square, and the volcanic dragon's lava spray power recharges.

Str 24 (+15) Dex 21 (+13) Wis 23 (+14)
Con 22 (+14) Int 18 (+12) Cha 20 (+13)
Alignment unaligned Languages Common, Draconic, Primordial

© 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This formatted statistics block has been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools.

So I'm hoping that multiple attacks / multiple targets / ongoing damage will make up for the limited damage expressions, but have I gone too far? Damage on the base monster (Adult Volcanic Dragon) was also fairly low, but it has a number of options for extra attacks and an aura, as it's an Elite. I'm also trying to keep this simpler for me to run, especially as it's going to be a meat-shield (well, magma-shield) out front in the encounter. This is why the aura is gone - I really don't want to have to deal with that, but I may not have compensated enough for that lost damage...
[/sblock]

Any help very much appreciated!

 

[eriktheguy]

Why is claw recharge 4?
Is that to prevent it from being used more than once a round? It's common to just limit a minor action attack to "limit 1/round" in the "usage" field.

 

[kaomera]

Why is claw recharge 4?
Is that to prevent it from being used more than once a round? It's common to just limit a minor action attack to "limit 1/round" in the "usage" field.

It recharges on a 4+, so it should be usable roughly half the time. I wanted to reduce the number of regular attacks it gets, since it's no longer an elite. Also, the PCs have invested in getting themselves some fire resist potions, and while I don't mind countering that somewhat I think it's better to do so less frequently (they should still get the fire resist on some turns because of misses, so maybe I didn't need to bother).

 

[fba827]

i'm not looking too closely at the math, since math is hard.

But two quick flavor things...

your immediate reaction, you may want to make it 'free action' trigger: The volcanic dragon is first bloodied in an encounter. Though it's fairly inconsequential since the creature doesn't have other immediate actions it could take, it however DOES ensure that it can do this power even if dazed or stunned or other conditions that the PCs might throw down and that it would work if the creature gets bloodied on its own turn due to ongoing damage or OAs (since no immediate actions when dazed/stunned/etc, and no immediate actions on own turn, but as a free action it's still possible in either situation).

and secondly... 'cause I am a sucker for giving boosts or penalties based on damage type. how about either
Cold Sensitive: When hit by cold damage, loses the ability to fly until end of it's next turn (this is helpful if the PCs don't have much flight of their own but cold powers at their disposal)
or
Magma Skin: When hit by fire damage (after damage is resolved) the dragon gains temporary hit points equal to half the fire damage (or a flat 20 temp hp if you don't want to calculate on the fly; this temp hp would represent the fire crusting onto his skin making it a little thicker). (but hopefully the PCs won't be flinging fire at the magma creature to begin with... or, when it happens once, they won't do it again )

 

[Aramax]

OK my group is TOTALY min-maxed so my slightly jaundiced view says damage looks a little light

 

[kaomera]

Yeah, I missed that on the immediate reaction, easy enough to fix. One thing, though - doesn't a triggered free action go off like an interrupt? It's not a real problem here, since I know how I want it to work, but I want the power to go off after the attack that bloodies it (in case of conditions, etc.)

And I think I'm going to raise all of the damage values by 2 or 3 points. The PCs have access to resist 5 all from Spirit of Athas, so multiple smaller attacks actually do less...

 

[eriktheguy]

Good point, I hadn't noticed the non elite-ness.
That said, this creature will probably pop off about 3 fire attacks per encounter That can be defended by the potions: lavaspray, furnace, lavaspray
If the dragon only uses its claw on lavaspray turns, it can effectively render the potions useless for one target (the potions don't help with the bit attack what with the riding poison damage type).
This is all just nitpicking though. The monster is balanced for its type, and being a simple standard monster might even go down before it makes one attack.

 

[ScorpiusRisk]

Since it's a standard monster, and you want to keep it simple, I'd get rid of the claw attack all together, and boost the bite attack. This damage is too low for a brute post MM3.

I'd bump the the bite to 2d10+12, and keep the ongoing damage.

I's bump the Lava spray to 2d12+14, since it recharges on 5.

I think I might drop the poison damage all together. Is that supposed to represent the danger of the volcanic ash?

The claw already does basic damage to help get around fire resistance. Then I'd take 'lose fire resistance' from the claw, make it a (save ends) and tack it onto Smoldering Furnace. Now it's the players job to track, you have one less thing to do, and something really cool happens on you're only once ability.

 

[kaomera]

Well, I got to use this thing yesterday. It was an interesting situation since the Shaman's player couldn't make it. IMO the PCs took up a much more aggressive strategy without the Spirit of Athas and tons of thps to hide behind... In any case, I chose not to modify the first encounter (as it had a bunch of stuff going on and I didn't want to mess anything up) and instead lower the challenge of the 2nd, which turned out to be this guy (who should be a Drake not a Dragon as I'm running Dark Sun, oops...) and his Azer artillery buddy, minus the two elementals who otherwise would have shown up on turn 3 from behind the group...

I had bumped the bite up to 1d10+11, plus the ongoing, which wasn't huge but it also got to use the claw twice which I had bumped up to 1d8+9. The repeat on ongoing poison damage from the claw never got to go off, but I think it did it's job as it made the PCs that much less interested in getting into the clouds of poison smog over in one section of the room. It also got to lava spray twice thanks to Smoldering Furnace, but I was never able to get all 4 PCs in the blasts at once. The Azer did get everyone in his encounter power, dazing or slowing them all within a zone of difficult terrain that did fire damage, but only by dropping it on top of the Drake.

Both monsters went down pretty quick after that, but it really should have been an easy fight for 13th level PCs and the Ardent did have to use both of his minor-action heals to keep anyone from getting bloodied. Ideally I would have thrown one of the elementals in, that would have made it much more of a significant encounter, but I had time constraints to worry about at that point, and I think this guy did a good job of faking the players out and making them think that he was much more dangerous than he really was.

 

[the Jester]

Well I am certainly late to this party!

For the record, part of the reason your encounter was so easy was your damage- it was too low. For a level 17 brute, average damage should be 31- somewhere around 2d10+10 plus ongoing 10 for this guy.

Sorry I was too late to help out.