Primitive Screwhead
First Post
I have been working on a hex-crawl wilderness session in order to test out the wilderness portion and expand the game world a bit. In preparation for that I needed a larger pool of monsters to draw from. I have started converting all the 3x SRD monsters into the OLD format and have some ideas for improving the GM side of monster design and encounter design.
First, lets talk abit about 4e. The best aspect of 4e, IMO, was the encounter and monster design paradigm. I could easily drop a set of stats and exploits together and 'skin' it as whatever beasty the group encounters...often on the fly. The key pieces that enabled this were the mechanical categories of Caste {minion, mook, standard, elite, solo, solo+}, the mechanic categories of combat Role {skirmisher, soldier, brute, artillery, controller, leader, lurker}, and the role/race specific exploits.
Combining those aspects a GM could build an interesting and challenging encounter from a handful of Kobolds. It was easy because you were working from concept to mechanics. A brute Elite Kobold had specific ability boosts and exploits.
The current monster development is written in the obverse, mechanics to concept. This means the GM needs a higher level of system mastery to design decent monsters.
The same was true of encounter design. 4e encounter templates were chosen based on the concept {wolf-pack, shield wall, etc} and worked into the types of monsters you need to get the right 'feel' for the combat.
Being the lazy GM, its easier for me to take 3x monsters and apply the 4e categories to develop an OLD encounter.
I highly recommend that, at least in monster generation, you adapt the ideas behind caste/role/exploit tools to build monsters. The resulting combats have a higher level of differentiation that helps even more when the combat values are compressed*.
*[sblock]
What do I mean by compressed combat values?
Most melee monsters have a physical defence of 17 to 21, 4 or 5 dice to attack and deal 3 to 4 dice of damage.
Those stats describe just shy of half of the 743 monsters out of the 3x SRD conversion project and so far appear to be the 'sweet spot' for being able to challenge my playtest group.
The New rules {August} do a very good job of providing diversification with the monsters presented
[/sblock]
Bottom line.. what I would like to have expand monster building guidelines with a set of role-based attribute sets and linked exploits similar in vein to the Marvelous Monsters guide for 4e.
details on that here:
Exploits like:
Artillery: Sure Shot: +1D on attacks against targets with cover
: Piercing Strike: exchange 2 attack dice and ignore 5 points of SOAK
Skirmisher: Expert Flanker: gain +1D to attacks when flanking
Leader: Commanders strike: spend an action and an adjacent ally gains half of your attack dice as a bonus to attack the selected target
{skill dice only count if the ally is using the weapon that the commander has the skill ranks in}
Controller: telekinetic/elemental shove, deal low damage and shove the target 4 squares 'that-away'
Ogre: Me Smash: gain +5 soak in any turn that you successfully hit an enemy with a heavy weapon. This bonus goes away at the start of your turn.
Kobold: Shifty: 1 enemy does not count towards flanking you. {three enemies have to flank in order to gain the +1D flanking bonus}
Dragon: Top of the Food Chain: gain +20 defence against puny humans when carrying ketchup
First, lets talk abit about 4e. The best aspect of 4e, IMO, was the encounter and monster design paradigm. I could easily drop a set of stats and exploits together and 'skin' it as whatever beasty the group encounters...often on the fly. The key pieces that enabled this were the mechanical categories of Caste {minion, mook, standard, elite, solo, solo+}, the mechanic categories of combat Role {skirmisher, soldier, brute, artillery, controller, leader, lurker}, and the role/race specific exploits.
Combining those aspects a GM could build an interesting and challenging encounter from a handful of Kobolds. It was easy because you were working from concept to mechanics. A brute Elite Kobold had specific ability boosts and exploits.
The current monster development is written in the obverse, mechanics to concept. This means the GM needs a higher level of system mastery to design decent monsters.
The same was true of encounter design. 4e encounter templates were chosen based on the concept {wolf-pack, shield wall, etc} and worked into the types of monsters you need to get the right 'feel' for the combat.
Being the lazy GM, its easier for me to take 3x monsters and apply the 4e categories to develop an OLD encounter.
I highly recommend that, at least in monster generation, you adapt the ideas behind caste/role/exploit tools to build monsters. The resulting combats have a higher level of differentiation that helps even more when the combat values are compressed*.
*[sblock]
What do I mean by compressed combat values?
Most melee monsters have a physical defence of 17 to 21, 4 or 5 dice to attack and deal 3 to 4 dice of damage.
Those stats describe just shy of half of the 743 monsters out of the 3x SRD conversion project and so far appear to be the 'sweet spot' for being able to challenge my playtest group.
The New rules {August} do a very good job of providing diversification with the monsters presented
[/sblock]
Bottom line.. what I would like to have expand monster building guidelines with a set of role-based attribute sets and linked exploits similar in vein to the Marvelous Monsters guide for 4e.
details on that here:
Exploits like:
Artillery: Sure Shot: +1D on attacks against targets with cover
: Piercing Strike: exchange 2 attack dice and ignore 5 points of SOAK
Skirmisher: Expert Flanker: gain +1D to attacks when flanking
Leader: Commanders strike: spend an action and an adjacent ally gains half of your attack dice as a bonus to attack the selected target
{skill dice only count if the ally is using the weapon that the commander has the skill ranks in}
Controller: telekinetic/elemental shove, deal low damage and shove the target 4 squares 'that-away'
Ogre: Me Smash: gain +5 soak in any turn that you successfully hit an enemy with a heavy weapon. This bonus goes away at the start of your turn.
Kobold: Shifty: 1 enemy does not count towards flanking you. {three enemies have to flank in order to gain the +1D flanking bonus}
Dragon: Top of the Food Chain: gain +20 defence against puny humans when carrying ketchup
