Design & Dev: Monsters (DRAGONS!)

[HeyJoe]

Sort of off topic, but I don't like the new look for the dragons. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the other colors besides green... but as it stands I think it looks awful with the big, clunky horns.

 

[Zelgadas]

Here's something that all this talk about immediate actions has me wondering: can you ready them? On the most recent D&D Podcast it was mentioned that they were doing some things with initiative order, and readied and delayed actions were specifically mentioned. I'm wondering if they've done away with both and simply now allow you to ready your immediate action for a specific trigger, or until after a specific person has acted. If this were the case, it would allow you to react to things more dynamically and give you more tactical options, but it might preserve your initiative count, thus limiting needless complexity.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Hmmm, maybe most of the encounters in 4e are going to be designed to feel like fights between two groups of creatures, even if it is the PCs against a single monster.

I think that's spot on. 4E has probably an emphasis on multiple opponents - but the iconic dragon fight is only against one dragon, therefore, dragons get upgraded to the power and speed (as in number of actions) to remain viable, without giving him huge devastating attacks to balance the loss of actions (and making him a glass cannon).

It's better to fit the monsters the design paradigm, than the other way round. That's good, and makes dragon more... dragony?

Cheers, LT.

 

[Henry]

I've seen concerns that this example makes dragons MORE complicated to deal with; if anything, it sounds LESS complicated to deal with. Anyone who has really run a dragon to its maximum effectivess (with spells, special abilities, and all) knows what I'm talking about. Dragons often have abilities that aren't even figured into their stat blocks, and if they were done so, they would be far more effective. Y'know that stoneskin, energy resistance, barkskin, etc. That was in the stat block? It just gave that 3rd edition dragon an extra effective 200 hit points and 5 more points of AC, which would have changed the outcome of the whole battle. Ever run a Solar in an epic D&D combat? Those guys should probably go up about 4 or 5 CR points if all their defenses are in place!

Even if the dragon got FIVE extra actions per turn, it's still easier than having to plot out what spells they have, what happens when the Wizard dispels them, etc. All this stuff comes directly from a Dave Noonan design article from last year, where he talks about making a CR 20 red dragon for the dungeon delve at Gencon, and realizing that the stat blocks were just too "busy" for the DMs to easily use.

 

[Henry]

Here's something that all this talk about immediate actions has me wondering: can you ready them?

By their nature, they're "readied" to begin with. You can perform them in response to things, and they take effect immediately, and when used you can't use another immediate action during the next round. Most Immeidate action spells and abilities are in response to something, like the Psion being able to throw up an energy adjustment power as an immediate action and then not get damaged by whatever energy is hitting them.

 

[Cadfan]

If this is a change from the "Attack of Opportunity" nomenclature to a simplified "If you do X to someone, they can do Y as an Immediate Action," then I think I like it. Assuming the game doesn't get filled with millions of these things.

Cleric seems to be more Crusader-ish. Sounds good to me.

We can't derive anything from the size of the numbers because we don't know what level this is.

I don't think we can derive anything about facing or backstabbing. The rogue could just be trying to flank, and he's going to the back because the fighter is in the front.

Wizard cast a spell even though he was on fire. No mention was made of concentration checks. Doesn't mean there wasn't one, but it wasn't brought up.

Large monsters get extra actions. I like this.

No mention was made of a save versus the tail slap pushing effect. Doesn't mean there wasn't one though.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I think you could safely ditch readying and delaying with appropriate definition and scope of immediate actions.

 

[Destil]

a) I think you mean cold effects
b) they are just using 'slowed down' as figurative language... i.e. it was't a serious hp hit.

Cheers

I'm guessing the slow is a side effect of whatever polar ray type effect the wizard used. Sounds like a good ability for a high level wizard: xd6 cold damage, fort save or be slowed for y rounds.

Mabye the slowing aspect is a per encounter ability, but the cold damage is at will? That would be pretty cool, one flexible attack that you have a lot of options with... (freeze a foe solid on a failed save and slowed even on a successful save if you use it as a per day?)

 

[Szatany]

On the AC 49: I can see how a high level fighter could hit this (BAB up to +30 + many bonuses?); I'm more interested in the rogue, who missed--but apparently had a chance to hit. Maybe rogues are better fighters than they used to be?

I think the bab of classes will be altered to fit more into the role. Defenders and strikers will have full BAB (paladins, fighters, rangers, rogues, +30 in the endgame)
Leaders will have 2/3 BAB (clerics, warlords, +20 in the endgame)
Controllers will have 1/3 BAB (wizards and who knows, druids?, will have +10, which will suck royally but then again they won't need it.

 

[Snapdragyn]

However, I would be wary of the potential downsides of monsters being able to do too many things before the party can react, such as the possibility of sending one or more PCs from full hit points into the negatives in a single turn's worth of actions. In 3e, this has happened a couple of times with a DM who liked to make a single initiative roll for his monsters, and liked sending them against the party in big groups.

QFT.

I once had a 2nd level character take 22 javelin attacks before he could even blink. Twenty-two! Thankfully most missed, & he succeeded on his bluff check to fall to the ground 'dead' with 0 hp.


Facing: I prey over the blood of a thousand sacrificial goats that this never comes back into D&D. Played it, hated it with a deep & burning passion which the strongest antibiotics cannot cure.

Something stabs me in the back & I can't even spin around for 6 seconds? It's like every combatant is stumbling around the battlefield with blinders on and polarized magnetic boots strapped to their feet that lock them into facing a single direction. I can imagine how interesting fight scenes in LotR or PotC, for example, would've been with rules like this. *yawn*