Ecology of the Deathknight up

[Geron Raveneye]

What strikes me as funny is the fact that, in its conception, the Death Knight looks like it was meant to be the undead evil fallen paladin. 9d10 hit points, AC 0 with light armor, Strength 18(00), fights with a sword, and has a lot of spells and spell-like abilities at his beck and call that kinda oppose the paladin's. Aura of Fear, Detect Magic and Invisibility, the various Power Words instead of healing and curing, Fireball as nasty variant of unholy fire, riding a Nightmare instead of a Warhorse, and able to call in demonic men-at-arms with a75% chance of the gate opening.

That's what bothers me a bit about the whole "monster roles" concept, when applied to pretty unique monsters like the Death Knight. Standardizing is a nice method of getting a grip on stuff like orcs, zombies and kobolds...but monsters that have their own flavour from the start get a bit short-changed by stuffing them in a category, in my opinion. There should always be some room for "exceptions to the rule" for special stuff...that's where the Sense of Wonder for monsters comes from, not from discovering a good monster type/monster role combo for each and every thing in all the monster handbooks out there. Otherwise, that grid will just become the "new" CR, complete with warts, problems and incompatibilities.

 

[Jhaelen]

My hope would be that they handle death knights like dragons - they're a one man army, capable of a number of effects, attacks, and moves each round. You should be able to have a single death knight enter a room where the heroes are located, and the heroes should freak out - without any minions present.

Well, they mentioned the death knight in the latest podcast, their role is 'Elite soldiers'. I guess, dragons are 'Elite something', too

 

[The Little Raven]

See, the problem with that is, even dragons can't do what you're saying. Everyone is limited to one standard action and a move action or one full attack. So, the dragon can either spell, breath or melee in any given round.

Uh, have you read the combat example article with the dragon? It has the dragon performing something like 6 actions in a single round, most of which are free attacks on particular people. Dragons are being designed specifically to replace multiple monsters.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

See, the problem with that is, even dragons can't do what you're saying. Everyone is limited to one standard action and a move action or one full attack. So, the dragon can either spell, breath or melee in any given round.

He's talking about 4e dragons, which indeed will be able to do many actions per round. For example (you need a D&D Insider account to see the full article):

On the dragon’s turn, the first thing it does is burst out in an inferno of flame, searing every PC within 25 feet—a free action. Then, with a standard action, it slashes out at the fighter and the cleric with its two front claws (even though they’re both 20 feet away). As another free action, it uses its tail to slap the rogue, who was trying to sneak up behind it, and pushes her back 10 feet. It’s getting angry at the wizard, so it uses a special ability to take another standard action: it spits a ball of fire at the wizard, setting him on fire. It has a move action left, which it uses to fly into a better position for its breath weapon. That ends the dragon’s turn.

So clearly dragons will be able to many actions per turn. Sure, some of them may be conditional (on the Monsters podcast, Mearls said that the dragon can do a tail slap as an immediate action when it's flanked), but they still will be able to do much more than just the Standard-Move-Swift actions.

 

[Exen Trik]

So clearly dragons will be able to many actions per turn. Sure, some of them may be conditional (on the Monsters podcast, Mearls said that the dragon can do a tail slap as an immediate action when it's flanked), but they still will be able to do much more than just the Standard-Move-Swift actions.

!

I get it now! The 4e combat design assumes that the PC party faces off against a near equal party of opponents, not against one big bad. So, to make dragons balanced they treat them almost as if they were multiple enemies, using multiple actions per turn and filling a number of roles at once.

I like it!