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How do you make Liches interesting?
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5555636" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Well, I think the idea was to make it so that boss monsters weren't just nuked by the party alpha-strike in round one or negated by some rather involved lawerly spell-casting combos, yes. OTOH if you're playing in a group which is fairly optimized and was pushing some of the more unbalanced options like lock-down specialists and super crit-fishing dual dagger wielding ranger builds then yeah, you could pretty much trash Orcus in a couple rounds. So one might say PHB1/MM1 vintage 4e (at high paragon and above anyway) sort of failed with that aim. </p><p></p><p>Some of the worst offending stuff has been subsequently nerfed, MM3 (and to an extent MM2) solos have been designed quite a bit better. At this point yeah, epic solos might last 5 rounds against a group of expert players.</p><p></p><p>OTOH at lower levels I think you're much more likely to run into the longer and more drawn out fights. Less so now than before because low level PCs are a bit stronger and low level solos have dropped a hefty chunk in the defenses department. They also put out more damage and like other lower level monsters you don't have to drastically overlevel them anymore to make them threatening.</p><p></p><p>So you can both be correct, just at different points in the game. I think you'd find today that a low level solo will usually last something like 8 rounds, maybe less, maybe more. Still depends somewhat on the party level of optimization. </p><p></p><p>Personally I think this is one of the reasons you do see limited numbers of epic monsters. A level 5 party is not going to vary all that much. You can drop a fairly stock heroic tier solo on them and the variation won't be all that bad unless you have really extreme groups on either end (and really it is more tactics than skill with build options at low levels). At level 25 OTOH you're going to see a MUCH larger variation. A striker built by a player with no particular concern for optimization might be doing 100 points of damage on an attack routine that the highly optimized player is doing 250 or 300 points on, not to mention stacking on multiple other effects. It is a LOT harder to simply design a solo for that level group and have it come out useful to all tables OOTB. I suspect this is one of the issues with epic monster support. It takes a lot of time and energy to do it well.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5555636, member: 82106"] Well, I think the idea was to make it so that boss monsters weren't just nuked by the party alpha-strike in round one or negated by some rather involved lawerly spell-casting combos, yes. OTOH if you're playing in a group which is fairly optimized and was pushing some of the more unbalanced options like lock-down specialists and super crit-fishing dual dagger wielding ranger builds then yeah, you could pretty much trash Orcus in a couple rounds. So one might say PHB1/MM1 vintage 4e (at high paragon and above anyway) sort of failed with that aim. Some of the worst offending stuff has been subsequently nerfed, MM3 (and to an extent MM2) solos have been designed quite a bit better. At this point yeah, epic solos might last 5 rounds against a group of expert players. OTOH at lower levels I think you're much more likely to run into the longer and more drawn out fights. Less so now than before because low level PCs are a bit stronger and low level solos have dropped a hefty chunk in the defenses department. They also put out more damage and like other lower level monsters you don't have to drastically overlevel them anymore to make them threatening. So you can both be correct, just at different points in the game. I think you'd find today that a low level solo will usually last something like 8 rounds, maybe less, maybe more. Still depends somewhat on the party level of optimization. Personally I think this is one of the reasons you do see limited numbers of epic monsters. A level 5 party is not going to vary all that much. You can drop a fairly stock heroic tier solo on them and the variation won't be all that bad unless you have really extreme groups on either end (and really it is more tactics than skill with build options at low levels). At level 25 OTOH you're going to see a MUCH larger variation. A striker built by a player with no particular concern for optimization might be doing 100 points of damage on an attack routine that the highly optimized player is doing 250 or 300 points on, not to mention stacking on multiple other effects. It is a LOT harder to simply design a solo for that level group and have it come out useful to all tables OOTB. I suspect this is one of the issues with epic monster support. It takes a lot of time and energy to do it well. [/QUOTE]
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How do you make Liches interesting?
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