Monster Manual 2 and Elite/Solo design

[the8bitdeity]

Yeah, the deal was the damage was too low, thus the hydra wasn't threatening.

I don't mean to bash the designers, I know this stuff is hard and it's unrealistic to get it perfect the first. I just think if they know something is wrong, fix it! I don't care if there's a page of errata for every actual page of the book, the most important thing is to try and get it right!

I completely agree. We were told frequent errata would be more frequent with 4e. I have the feeling some bean counting project manager thinks the time involved for errating the MM1 would be too long.

 

[tmatk]

What nasty uproar? The online community will have a few threads about it, but it's a small percentage of sales. Most DMs will likely not even notice the change, and of those that do, many will have DDI subscriptions and get new stuff automatically.

Yes, they'll lose some sales because of this, but I'd be shocked to find out it's anywhere near as bad as those of us reading these threads often think.

You are probably right. I should have said "hopefully they'll do the right thing and release it as a free pdf."

Yes, I know, not going to happen.

 

[James McMurray]

There may be an article or two about it in Dragon, which will leak out slowly in discussion threads. Even barring that, the little we already have been told (80% hp, 150% damage) is enough to quickly and easily get a rough conversion for any MM1 monster. The guideline could stand to be more prominently stated, but why waste the effort updating a book that is unlikely to see many more sales when you can type a sentence and people that care can do it themselves?

 

[the Jester]

Seriously, people, the math's not that hard.

-2 to all defenses... 4/5 hit points... increase damage a fair amount, perhaps by doubling the damage dice the monster deals and leaving the damage bonus the same (e.g. 1d10+7 becomes 2d10+7).

What's all the hubub about? You guys have calculators built in to your computers. If you have trouble with the math, just punch it in!

 

[SlyFlourish]

They could errata it by this point but I don't know that it matters to me. Even with the changes, I generally don't run monsters by the book anymore. I'm addicted to my 75% hp and +1/2 level mod. As a DM I have a lot more fun with monsters and the battles go a lot faster for our group. I'll probably stick to this house rule even with MM2 guys.

The nice thing is I can do this mod with just sticky notes pasted in the book.

 

[Greatwyrm]

It is inevitable that over the course of the design of your game, you will find ways to improve old stuff. Trying to "fix" things in the previous books is a waste of effort and makes the entire system a mess.

"We're playing D&D 4, but only by the rules of the 3rd printing of the PHB I and the fourth printing of the MM 1."

I have a lot of respect for Steve Jackson Games, but if you want to see a good example of this, take a look at the GURPS 3e Errata page. Books that saw a lot of printings, like the Basic Set, Space, and Supers have their own, unique errata for each printing. That'd be a bear to keep track of.

 

[Pale Jackal]

There may be an article or two about it in Dragon, which will leak out slowly in discussion threads. Even barring that, the little we already have been told (80% hp, 150% damage) is enough to quickly and easily get a rough conversion for any MM1 monster. The guideline could stand to be more prominently stated, but why waste the effort updating a book that is unlikely to see many more sales when you can type a sentence and people that care can do it themselves?

-2 to all defenses... 4/5 hit points... increase damage a fair amount, perhaps by doubling the damage dice the monster deals and leaving the damage bonus the same (e.g. 1d10+7 becomes 2d10+7).

Mind pointing out where they said it? Because if that is their suggestion, then that's fine. It'd still be nice if they made it official, though, by including it in the MM1 errata. Personally, I was going to go with 3/4 solo HP and +1/2 lvl + 1 damage bonus, which seems to be roughly a 50% increase in damage, at least for the level 12 green dragon. It's also easier to add 7 damage per attack than multiplying the damage by 150%.

Doubling the damage dice is a nice easy fix too, but seems less precise. The monsters involved also might end up doing less damage during a fight... though it looks okay for most of the monsters, like the Primordial Naga, except maybe the Primordial Hydra, assuming I calculated out its damage per fight under the +1/2 lvl. +1 damage rule.

 

[Elric]

Seriously, people, the math's not that hard.

-2 to all defenses... 4/5 hit points... increase damage a fair amount, perhaps by doubling the damage dice the monster deals and leaving the damage bonus the same (e.g. 1d10+7 becomes 2d10+7).

I don't think WotC should necessarily errata all of the MM1 solos to correspond to the new solo guidelines, though including a (free) detailed discussion of how their basic guidelines changed (so you can change the MM1 numbers yourself) would be nice. The Fen Hydra would still be a very bad solo if it had -20% HP, -2 to all defenses, and, say, +40% damage. That's a sign it should definitely receive errata.

I have a lot of respect for Steve Jackson Games, but if you want to see a good example of this, take a look at the GURPS 3e Errata page. Books that saw a lot of printings, like the Basic Set, Space, and Supers have their own, unique errata for each printing. That'd be a bear to keep track of.

Mutants and Masterminds updates their rulebooks to correspond to known errata on new printings and issues new versions of errata accordingly. At the moment, there’s the original book, the 2nd/3rd printings, and the most recent printings, which include all known errata for earlier printings. So that’s only 3 errata files to worry about. It certainly seems superior to the potential alternative of not updating new printings with known errata.

As long as the errata are (reverse) cumulative (which it will be if you don’t make new mistakes when updating the book for new printings); when you add something to the 2nd printing errata, you add it to the 1st printing errata as well. So it just means updating more errata documents.

Mind pointing out where they said it? Because if that is their suggestion, then that's fine. It'd still be nice if they made it official, though, by including it in the MM1 errata. Personally, I was going to go with 3/4 solo HP and +1/2 lvl + 1 damage bonus, which seems to be roughly a 50% increase in damage, at least for the level 12 green dragon. It's also easier to add 7 damage per attack than multiplying the damage by 150%.

My original post quotes and links to a column saying that redesigning Orcus in accord with MM2’s solo guidelines would reduce his HP by 20%, give him -2 defenses, and increase his damage while bloodied by 50%. I think this set of changes would generally make solos too weak, as if you assume that the solo is bloodied half the time, this is only +25% damage, which would balance -20% HP fine, but not -2 to defenses on top of that. +40% damage seems more appropriate.

 

[Pale Jackal]

My original post quotes and links to a column saying that redesigning Orcus in accord with MM2’s solo guidelines would reduce his HP by 20%, give him -2 defenses, and increase his damage while bloodied by 50%. I think this set of changes would generally make solos too weak, as if you assume that the solo is bloodied half the time, this is only +25% damage, which would balance -20% HP fine, but not -2 to defenses on top of that. +40% damage seems more appropriate.

Thanks. I agree that those changes as written (+50% bloodied) seem insufficient.

Doubling the damage dice is a nice easy fix too, but seems less precise. The monsters involved also might end up doing less damage during a fight... though it looks okay for most of the monsters, like the Primordial Naga, except maybe the Primordial Hydra, assuming I calculated out its damage per fight under the +1/2 lvl. +1 damage rule.

Actually, according to my fix, the Primordial Hydra would do about an extra 200 damage per fight (~750 vrs. ~540), assuming 50% chance to hit, no OAs, and a 7.5 round fight since there's -25% HP involved. Primordial Naga, Adult Red Dragon, and I think Young Solo Blue seemed to work out well... so maybe the Primordial Hydra's an exception, and the Ancient Black Dragon seems to do an extra, say, 120 damage per fight, but its acid damage is kind of a pain to estimate, so I'm not sure how much the base value is.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

They could errata it by this point but I don't know that it matters to me. Even with the changes, I generally don't run monsters by the book anymore. I'm addicted to my 75% hp and +1/2 level mod. As a DM I have a lot more fun with monsters and the battles go a lot faster for our group. I'll probably stick to this house rule even with MM2 guys.

The nice thing is I can do this mod with just sticky notes pasted in the book.

I think if it was just this to fix, they could relatively easily do it. Still most people would probably miss it.

But the "new, improved Hydra" does a lot more than just change some damage values and defenses. It gets a different set of abilities so that it becomes more interesting as a Solo.

That is more than the typical errata of "oh, we forget 3 skill points and forget to maximize the first hit die of the NPC".
It is: "Oh, this guy isn't actually a Wizard, instead he gets these 9 new spell-like abilities". (To phrase it in 3.x terms.) It is, essentially, a new monster.

It is not "Oh, the door hinges of this product line do corrode unusually fast, we'' fix that soon" it is "Well, we discovered that a Diesel middle motor will give us a better performance."