Does Anyone Ever 'Recast' Monster Roles?

[Mengu]

Yeah I've done this too, for instance at low heroic they fought an ice demon as a solo, at high heroic they fought them as elites in a few encounters, once with two ice demons and a few minotarus, and another time with one ice demon and one demon solo. At mid paragon they will likely see them as standard creatures, I'll probably include a couple of them in an encounter, and at epic they might see them as minions, probably 6 or so of them. Puts things in perspective I think, gives the PC's a sense of growth and accomplishment.

 

[Destil]

Yep. 3rd level party of three fought a solo 5th level eleven assassin (profession, not class) at 3rd level who fled when she was bloodied (wasn't expecting resistance). Then fought her and some minions and she again fled at 4th (five member party at that point). Finally tracked down her home base and allies at 10th and fought her as an 11th level elite along with 3 other high-heroic elites, a swarm of undead minions and a 9th level standard.

Worked great.

I always joke that you can use this progression to fight anything at any level:
Solo -> Elite -> Standard -> Minion -> Solo Swarm -> Elite Swarm -> Standard Swarm -> Minion Swarm

 

[pemerton]

Does anyone find it weird that recast monsters have noticeably different skill bonuses?

Good question (but I've used up all my XP rations for today). I was thinking about this just last week, when I was rebuilding Spiretop Drakes as minions to introduce into some city encounters I'm likely to be running for 11th level PCs. (Although in this case it's not literally a skill bonus, but rather an attack vs Ref to snatch an item from a PC.)

I don't find it weird, because I don't regard the mechanical numbers as correlating in any one-to-one way with changes in PC or NPC prowess. Spiretop Drakes snatch stuff, and they snatch stuff from Demonskin Adepts just as much as from mere sorcerers. At the point at which a Spiretop Drake can't snatch stuff from someone (say, if that person was a Demigod) then Spiretop Drake's dont appear as anything other than scenery.

But I know some people take a diffrent view of the mechanical numbers, and so might find it weirder than I do. Stepping down the trained bonuses, or removing them altogether, might be an easy shortcut if you're such a person.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Good question (but I've used up all my XP rations for today). I was thinking about this just last week, when I was rebuilding Spiretop Drakes as minions to introduce into some city encounters I'm likely to be running for 11th level PCs. (Although in this case it's not literally a skill bonus, but rather an attack vs Ref to snatch an item from a PC.)

I don't mind how combat bonuses change so much, because those bonuses are only part of a monster's 'combat skill,' so to speak. If I look at the whole combat skill -- bonuses, HP, damage, etc. -- a monster's combat skill stays consistent regardless of its level. (In theory, at least.)

But I know some people take a diffrent view of the mechanical numbers, and so might find it weirder than I do. Stepping down the trained bonuses, or removing them altogether, might be an easy shortcut if you're such a person.

I was actually thinking of assigning my monsters an 'absolute' level to derive their half-level skill bonus from. It would probably be the level at which a given monster is a standard.

My players'll probably never know the difference, but hey, I get to have my kicks too!

 

[pemerton]

The reason I compared a Spiretop Drake's attack to your skill example is because it's not just about overall combat effectiveness - those drakes have an attack which, on a hit vs Reflex, lets them snatch an item from the target - so it's functionally much closer to a Thievery skill check than to an attack. (I think it also does 1 hp of damage on a hit - which really is just as irrelevant at 1st as at 11th level.)

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I also believe the "recast" idea is the intend of all those rules and I would sign any of the statement above.

I would like to see this concept in a fifth edition. And I really hoped, that the designers would explain it that way in a monster builders guide...

It would also be a great helpful, if there were monster books, that made use of this progression:
elite orc - standard orc - minion orc... all with the same xp value (level 1 - level 5 - level 13) (usually monsters should not be solofied)
This way, you would be able to have a great range to use such a monster and players would really notice how much more powerful they become...

Actually this was a thing, where the first MM was better than the monster vault. It actually has some of those standard - minion progressions...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Eh, my feeling is that skill bonuses will RARELY be an issue. If you're minionizing monsters there's little reason for them to do much in the way of using skills. They might do an AA, or throw a heal check on an ally, but it is hard to see why any of those things should get harder, and it doesn't matter much if they get easier in general.

As for more interesting monsters where you may scale to elite or standard, why not keep them interesting?

 

[keterys]

Well, if you use the xp-level comparison, you could do the following for skills (but note it should probably apply to a lot of existing monsters too):

Solo: +5
Elite: +2
Standard: +0
Minion: -4

And adjust relative.

 

[eamon]

Wow, recasting in 3e? I'm shudder to imagine all the number crunching, but how did you do it?

Organically. Initially, I used the same stats.

Then you notice that for support creatures, you really need only a few abilities, ideally ones that help their allies even when seriously outlevelled - so you'd simplify their spell list and make three bullet points do A then B then C (in 3e this would be stuff like flanking, spells with no save, buffs, aid another, or game-changers that may almost never work, but even if they do only 5% of the time pose a risk). By doing that, you can get creatures that remain threatening even to PC's 10 level higher than they are.

Then you notice things die in one attack, so I (basically) made minions - no rolled damage, any damage over a threshold kills em, and a variant of iterated attack to discourage completely ignoring them.

But yeah, there was a lot of number crunching, which is much less work in 4e. I wouldn't exaggerate though; you get proficient with it, and you reuse stuff, so it's not like you're spending hours each session either.

I think the trickiest part is actually making the recast monsters feel the same. I tried to do that by explaining mechanical changes as intentional changes in tactics; just recasting a solo as a minion without explanation comes across as jarring to me. I'd definitely encourage thinking about an explanation for the mechanical changes, it makes the whole campaign feel so much more real if there's a reason the old solo can suddenly hit so much higher AC's and lost his aura, millions of attacks etc. And that's really campaign dependant.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it is pretty rare to have a solo pulled all the way out to minion. It implies that said solo wasn't all that unique since presumably you'll be using a bunch of them, and I'm not sure why I'd use a solo that was rather common. I guess it is POSSIBLE, just seems like a very corner case. At that point I'd think most of the explanation is more "Oh, one of those, quick kill it! Oh, splat, he didn't even get to use his tentacles..."

Maybe solo -> elite -> standard is more where you have to watch it. Luckily the difference there shouldn't seem so jarring in general. Maybe you have a simplified version of a nasty signature power they used when they were more significant, at which point the explanation is mostly "eh, you pretty much brush off the worst of that now that you're umptieth level".