Discussing 4e Subsystems: Elites, Solos, Minions, and Monster XP

[WhatGravitas]

I agree that solos should have more than just Bloodied - they should be something like the Skull Lord.

The problem is that some elites already run under the "bloodied = funky stuff happens" paradigm, which makes sense, considering that they count as two creatures (hence the mid-point of bloodied). Solos, however, have to pull the weight of five equivalently levelled creatures and only get a singular trigger - and giving them more attacks (double attacks) isn't really engaging.

The new brown dragon preview does that much better than a lot of MM solos, because it has an at-will immediate reaction, meaning the Solo critter is highly active all the time.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

Nice analysis.

Monster XP. I like the new monster XP system better than 3e's system. 3e had a couple of glaring problems, in my opinion, and CR/EL was one of them.

Elites. No problems here, except that they sometimes drag on too long.

MInions. I don't like the minion rules at all. They are the epitome of a game that has no self-consistency. The rules for minions inside of combat are completely different from the rules outside of combat (if they weren't, minions couldn't survive broken arms, short falls, etc., which makes no sense). But that argument has been hashed to death. The designers chose to go with a philosophy that sacrifices self-consistent world-building for the sake of combat playability (they would say "combat fun"). It's not a decision I would have made, so I don't like minions as implemented here. There were and are better ways to do it. Enough said.

Solos. Same problem as elites, only moreso. They're boring. There aren't any climactic moments. It's a grind. Instead of "ZOMG Gorgoldand can do how much damage to me?" it's a slow, meticulous grind. That said, I haven't played at high enough levels yet to really have a solid opinion here, but that's what it looks like from the low levels.

 

[Allister]

Solos. Same problem as elites, only moreso. They're boring. There aren't any climactic moments. It's a grind. Instead of "ZOMG Gorgoldand can do how much damage to me?" it's a slow, meticulous grind. That said, I haven't played at high enough levels yet to really have a solid opinion here, but that's what it looks like from the low levels.

Er, that's kind of the problem that Stalker0 was talking about. A DM wants a climatic battle with a single opponent so it needs to be tough enough to survive 5 creatures attacking it at once, yet previously toughness tracked with power and thus, said creature if it actually got to go first, would obliterate the party.

It was either Feast or Famine which I think is a problem.

That said, I'm curious about something...

What do you consider "too long" for combat against the BBEG?

In terms of number of rounds and in actual real-life time, how long should the climatic battle be?

 

[Ycore Rixle]

Er, that's kind of the problem that Stalker0 was talking about. A DM wants a climatic battle with a single opponent so it needs to be tough enough to survive 5 creatures attacking it at once, yet previously toughness tracked with power and thus, said creature if it actually got to go first, would obliterate the party.

Yep, I agree with him. Definitely mixed results on the solo. Making them tougher was a good goal. I think in some cases they have been made too tough without enough oomph to match, so it's like the party is just sitting there, plinking arrows at it (or even "Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt!") until the big lug falls. There's not much tension because the BBEG doesn't really have a lot of firepower, just a lot of toughness.

That said, I'm curious about something...

What do you consider "too long" for combat against the BBEG?

In terms of number of rounds and in actual real-life time, how long should the climatic battle be?

Well, like a lot of people, my first thought would be that it's "too long" if the players or the DM get bored. Of course, there are a lot of things that a good group can do to keep combat interesting, everything from great narration and descriptions to dynamic terrain to monologues to cut scenes. As a general rule of thumb, I don't want the climactic scene to take more than, say, 20 or 25% of the session in real time. So an hour, hour-and-a-half would be my rough idea.

But that's very rough. I've DM'd and played in 4-hour combats and enjoyed them. I've also been bored silly by 30-minute encounters. I think a few things added to monster design for solos would help:

1. More threat ability. This doesn't have to mean hit points and death. It could mean interesting curses or conditions that last outside of combat, like you've been partially banished to another plane so until the curse is removed you have a 1 in 6 chance of not acting in a round, standing mute when you're trying Diplomacy or something else in a skill check, or something similar.

2. Explicitly state their terrain-altering abilities and describe the effects. People have been using flavor text to collapse roofs of caverns for almost forty years. Instead of explicitly stating that the flavor text has no combat effect, how about explicitily stating what those (really cool) combat effects are? I'd love to see a dragon that could collapse a cavern on the adventurers by sweeping its tail through the supporting stalactite-stalagmite columns.

3. Minion rules for players. I'm serious. I'm not sure how... but the idea intrigues me. ("My henchman... no!")

 

[malraux]

I will say that for my BBEG in my current adventure thread, I plan on it being a Green Dragon. But I plan to vary the fight such that once the GD hits bloodied, he runs through a planar weakness into the feywild, such that the second half of the fight takes place in an entirely different situation from the first half. I'm still working on the exact details, but that should work well.

 

[FireLance]

I also don't like the way that powers that deal automatic damage and damage on a miss interact with minions. I'm personally thinking of introducing the idea of a minion hit point pool. Basically, all the minions in an encounter have a collective pool of hit points, say 6 hp + 2 hp/level for each minion. Whenever a minion takes damage, the damage is taken off the hit point pool. An attack that hits also removes the hit minion as normal, but attacks that deal automatic damage do not remove affected minions until the hit point pool is reduced to 0. Once that happens, powers that deal damage on a miss also remove affected minions. I think the net result of this will be that minions have more survivability in the earlier rounds of the encounter, but will start dropping like flies later. Overall, I don't think this will be a bad thing.

 

[vagabundo]

Love the articles, you should post them on the EN blog as well.

My own idea's on 'fixing' solos, in easy to digest bullet point form:

- Solos should be BBEG's or mini-BBEG's and should be treated with the respect that they deserve and should be given the guts of a session or at least two hours.

- They should be their own set of mini-encounters, for an elder red dragon I would want the fight to go on for a few hours game-time, probably over a small number of locations.

- To keep the fun levels up the encounter design would have to change at least once, probably more. I'm taking inspiration here from computer games and the BBEG fights, specifically Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4. Both had awesome BBEG fights and even though some were slugs fest they were always interesting.

- I believe solos should be even more wedded to the plots and story line than other monsters/NPCs. So breaks in the combat for dialogue and plot revelations are appropriate: "Luke, I am your father!!!".

Even with the above rules of thumb I wouldn't be adverse to throwing a solo or two into random encounter table, just so my players don't get too comfortable or me either, for that matter.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'll write more later when I have time, but I wanted to mention one of the problems that I've found.

Specifically, more solos need ways of getting away from fighter lockdowns. The fighter class ability is one of the main causes of un dynamic fights that I've run to date.

Cheers

 

[Rel]

MInions. I don't like the minion rules at all. They are the epitome of a game that has no self-consistency. The rules for minions inside of combat are completely different from the rules outside of combat (if they weren't, minions couldn't survive broken arms, short falls, etc., which makes no sense). But that argument has been hashed to death. The designers chose to go with a philosophy that sacrifices self-consistent world-building for the sake of combat playability (they would say "combat fun"). It's not a decision I would have made, so I don't like minions as implemented here. There were and are better ways to do it. Enough said.

Actually I'd take this a step further and suggest that minions not only act differently in combat vs. outside combat, but also that they act differently against "Heroes" vs. "non heroes".

So for example, the Goblin Raiders who are terrorizing the townsfolk don't fall to a single slingstone from the guardsman but they would against the PC's because they are a cut above the average person. Conversely, the Captain of the Guard might be a "Hero" in his own right and treat the Goblin Raiders as the Minions that they are.

I would agree that this isn't entirely realistic (and sometimes I place a premium on realism) but it is very cinematic. I mean, how many movies have we seen where the thugs totally terrorize the common townsfolk but fall easily to the intrepid hero?

 

[Cadfan]

The fact that the minions terrorize the town's guards but die easily to the PCs isn't the problem. That's been around for years. All you need to make that happen in 3e is level 1 guards, level 4 mooks, and level 7 pcs.

People's complaint is about the underlying mechanics regarding the mechanical way that the minions fall to the pcs and not the guards. They say they're complaining about the former, but they're just confused.