D&D Solos - just not that threatening

[Leatherhead]

I have to find the stats on this dragon. I am looking at the level 12 green dragon in the MM and it seems to be a completely different creature.

The best solo fight I've run is the specially designed one in Pyramid of Shadows. You know, the one with the multiple actions and the hazard backing it up. That one had my party on the ropes until they (by sheer luck) discovered the monster wasn't immune to the hazard...

OTOH, possibly the worst, most boring solo fight is in that same adventure. Yeah, that's right, the dragon...

So what did you think of the dragon fight in the Thunderspire Labyrinth?

 

[chaotix42]

I've had both great, exciting solo encounters as well as slow, predictable, boring solo encounters - just like regular encounters! Go figure.

The stale encounters featured the solo monster and pretty much nothing else - a shadow hulk in a mostly featureless room. The entertaining encounters had other things going on beside the monster, such as terrain that both sides could take advantage of, or a changing battlefield - fighting a dragon in a crumbling ruin. Unfortunately it seems a lot of the solos in the MM need "window dressing."

In general I think a lot of elites/solos in the MM really missed the mark, like the 17th lvl fomorian soldier, the 11th lvl ogre warhulk, and both versions of the purple worm. It's also strange that so many monsters seem to ignore the DMG's damage guidelines. If you make a monster and don't compare it to its peers in the MM you'll almost always end up with a more dangerous version. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you.

 

[Solodan]

Yea, solos absolutely need some interesting terrain to make it more interesting than an hour of using at-wills. (or the contrast, exploding in a burst of dailies).

 

[Lauberfen]

I think it's already been established that the example in point would need to be re-ran with the dragon acting at full capacity- ongoing 10 can easily be the difference between TPK and easy fight.

So here's an example of a recent success with a boss at the lowliest 1st level.
I was running for a party of three, and I know that if I run the monsters well an encounter a N+3 is dangerous, and players start dying at N+4. So I was heading for around 500XP total.

My theme was lycanthropy, so I took a were rat, (L3 Lurker), and added the savage berserker template. This gave me a nice 300XP elite, with a good dose of HP, and effectively 2 attacks per round, which do ongoing damage. Obviously a boss shouldn't fight alone, so I threw in 9 giant rats for combat advantage.

It went off perfectly- it was pretty challenging- the fighter went unconscious twice, they used up all their healing and powers before they destroyed the beast.

 

[renau1g]

We fought a vampire this past week in Sceptor Tower of Spellgard and the room was relatively featureless... besides the poisoned braziers that caused us to be weakened TENT if we failed a save, but 2 rounds later our PC's had knocked them over and put out the mist. So when the vampire showed up we ended up blowing our dailies (3 strikers, 2 defenders) on it and did 95 damage in round 1, followed by 60-ish in round 2. I think it lasted 4-5 rounds after, the vampires domination wasn't working well, and we had it locked down with our melee defenders while the ranged strikers continued to pelt it from safety.

 

[Bolongo]

So what did you think of the dragon fight in the Thunderspire Labyrinth?

That one worked because
a) he has a Flyby Attack
b) the terrain is set up to favor precisely that tactic (i.e. he can circle around corridors and be out of the party's LoS between his attacks)

And before you ask: the one in Trollhaunt Warrens was reasonably exciting purely because of the Darkness trick. Without that power, he would have just been dead meat.

It'll be a while before we get to the next dragon fight in this series now, hopefully I've learned enough from past mistakes to make it exciting.

 

[Johnnii]

I also thought that solos was kinda weak, and imagined that a Blue Dragon in a dungeon would be a cakewalk. So during the session, as I expected, the PCs had that darned lizard and pinned him down in a corridor. It should've been a win, right?

One player managed to escape alive, the rest of them became "lightly kissed by the lightning" (to quote from the Draconomicon). How could that happen?

Three words: Miss: Half damage.

 

[Johnnii]

I also thought that solos was kinda weak, and imagined that a Blue Dragon in a dungeon would be a cakewalk. So during the session, as I expected, the PCs had that darned lizard and pinned him down in a corridor. It should've been a win, right?

One player managed to escape alive, the rest of them became "lightly kissed by the lightning" (to quote from the Draconomicon). How could that happen?

Three words: Miss: Half damage.

 

[LittleFuzzy]

That one worked because
a) he has a Flyby Attack
b) the terrain is set up to favor precisely that tactic (i.e. he can circle around corridors and be out of the party's LoS between his attacks)

My attempt with him didn't work so well. The rogue got a Staggering Assault off really early in the encounter and absolutely crippled it.

 

[Mithreinmaethor]

Ok, I've complained about solo creatures in the past with my Glave-wielding fighter seeming to eat everything up and my Hospitaler paladin healing everyone for 9 when a creature even thinks about attacking someone.

Tonight we played a dungeon delve with four PCs and the level 12 delve with the green dragon.

The green dragon does 1d8+6 damage on a breath weapon. That just seems crazy to me.

After about eight rounds, it became clear that the players were bored. I was bored. The dragon had 200 hitpoints left. The party had burned encounters and dailies. The dragon wasn't really going to hurt them. It was just boring for everyone. So I started pouring the dragon's hitpoints into damage about 10 at a time. That made things a bit more exciting, but I still left feeling hollow.

D&D 4e monsters just don't seem that threatening - particularly elites and solos who don't really do much more than regular monsters yet count for far more. Every time someone says "they're not meant to be ran solo" I want to claw my eyes out. They're called "solos" for crying out loud.

I'm seriously considering doubling the damage and halving the hitpoints of a lot of the creatures we play. I bet it would make things a lot more exciting and might make battles quite a bit shorter without any loss in drama.

Maybe I'm just not playing it right, but my two biggest problems right now are weak monsters and long battles.

Any other thoughts or solutions to help me out?

Update: Ok, Two things I clearly messed up on. One, the dragon's breath does ongoing 10 which could hurt quite a bit and I don't think I kept up with that. Second, the dragon's bite is quite a bit tougher than the dragon's claw attack with the ongoing 15. I should have done that quite a bit more.

Still, I think things could be greatly improved with monster damage output and speeding up fights. I still want to try my glass cannon modification.

Are you talking about the Level 12 encounter in the "Dungeon Delve" book that was put out recently or something different?

Because if it was from the book that encounter has 5 other creatures besides the Dragon. And a has some terrain effects and other specials. Its a Level 15 encounter and it looks like it could challenge a party of 12th levels.