I am the DM who dropped the 11th level warlord dracolich on mlangsdorf's party. This was a MM dracolich downlevelled to 11 using the stone-something dracolich from Draconomicon as a reference for damage values. The warlord template made it worth extra XP (as though there were an extra creature present).
It was not pretty. It really was a fantastic example of the "grind" -- the players were using their powers on just about every turn, the dracolich was running around trying to do interesting things and dropping party members, but it still wound up a dull slugfest. There was no present sense of danger (the longer the fight went on, the more confident the PCs became, as the solo's HP went down), nor was there any sense that taking daring risks would help the group succeed -- sitting back and using your tried-and-true Daily powers was a better option.
Two other observations:
1) His breath weapon recharged 3 rounds in a row. Not only was he laying down the damage -- he had combat advantage and kept pretty much the entire party in stun-lock, dropping two of them. If he had recharged a 4th round, it probably would have been a TPK. Sadly this was the beginning of the fight -- it would have made a great climactic ending, but by the end he was too busy being daze-locked by the paladin. Recharge is a nice mechanic because it minimizes the "state" the DM needs to track, but it can be swingy in extreme situations.
2) The immediate interrupt close blast gaze is sick -- and it causes the PCs to avoid melee, which drags the fight on even more. It should probably be an immediate reaction, and it should definitely have a recharge (even a generous one like recharge 4 5 6 would be better than at-will; although players would probably still avoid striking him even if it were recharge 6). Making this a single-target power would also be good. (I actually messed this up and treated it like an immediate reaction during the fight -- had I done it right, as an immediate interrupt, the party warlord's lead the attack would not have happened and it probably would have been a TPK.)
I read recently that stunning was an "asymmetrical" game-design element in that it is fun for players to stun monsters but NOT fun for players to get stunned themselves. It seems pretty obvious why -- people show up to play, not to sit around being stunned. It seems like a similar rationale might apply to solos -- once stunned they just become a bag of hit points for you to pound on. I've contemplated house rules relating to this but have yet to come up with anything really good.
-- 77IM
