Solo Monsters and the Risk of Boredom

[Runestar]

Wasn't there a thread detailing a party's fight with a tarrasque some time back? I thought it highlighted a solo fight's major weakness fairly well - that however you look at it, your party is out-actioning it 5 actions to 1 each round. It appears all too easy to layer multiple status effects and continually disable it while the rest of the PCs beat down on it.

Thus, even a solo BBEG would require additional foes to support it. The 5v1 paradigm did not work in 3e, but I doubt it will fly in 4e either.

 

[Otterscrubber]

Hmm, I wonder how much players would react to monsters rampaging at random hp intervals or enraging when hitting 10% of their max HP?

Might be fun.

From what I can see there are already several monsters, usually solo, that have some nifty ability to chap the heroes when they are bloodied. This sounds a lot like what is being mentioned.

 

[BradfordFerguson]

some of the earlier posters to this thread pissed me off honestly. I'm over it now.

You read WAY to much into Mearls post. You took it to imply some thing he never said, AND THEN you took it two steps further.

Mearls is a good chunk of the reason why 4E is so enjoyable. He really understands the nuts and bolts of game systems (similar to Skip Williams), AND ALSO knows how to make them more fun and cinematic.

I'll take fun & cinematic any day.

Incidently, my players took on a solo undead creature in Keep on the Shadowfell (which they did not have to fight, but felt compelled since two of them follow the Raven Queen). As DM, I thought it was a bit boring/tedious [they caught me off guard so I didn't have interesting elements to keep it fun], but when I asked my players about the fight, they said it was fun.

Now that the subject has been raised, I will keep it in mind.

 

[erik_the_guy]

- Most of his suggestions would make the fight easier for the PCs, but he doesn't mention anything about adjusting encounter difficulty.

Some of the suggestions also helped the dragon. None of the suggestions really gave the players a massive advantage. When the players do something to take advantage of the terrain you don't really need to adjust the difficulty because they deserve the rewards for their actions. If you really feel the terrain supports the players more you don't need a rulebook to up the encounter difficulty, just use a monster a level or two higher.

- None of his suggestions would actually make the fight any more interesting as they're pretty much just 1 round things that won't actually change the overall flow of the fight, but apparently he couldn't even see that simple implication.

If they don't change the overall purpose of the fight, then why are you saying that they make things easier for the PCs in your previous comment. Also, if they are "just 1 round things", they serve the purpose of changing up the flavor of the battle for a little while so that its not just a straightforward slugfest. That was the whole point.

- Apparently we're supposed to take from his post that combat in DnD is boring and we need "set pieces" with special terrain features to fix it. Of course theres no "how to make interesting encounter terrain" anywhere in the DMG.

There is a limited section in the DMG that describes the types of terrain, who they give advantages to, and what happens if you use too much. They don't tell you explicitly how to craft interesting terrain for each encounter, but most DMs are capable of doing that themselves.

- Monsters are supposed to be really stupid and make their lairs as enemy friendly as possible so they can be killed more easily.

This is basically a repeat of your first point, but most of the terrain he described was just the natural stuff you would expect to find in an icy cave. Some of the terrain sounded very hazardous to the PCs, not just the dragon, and the dragon even set up parts of the cave to its advantage.

Regicide... fwiw, Iron Heroes (Mearls) includes extensive information on using zones of various types (all the things mentioned) for making fights more interesting.

I rather imagine he just runs all his games like that.

I do find it interesting that you think the suggestions are just downright not interesting. That's just bizarre to me.

What this guy said.

 

[malacapricornis]

"Professional" players or long term vets may have an entirely different expectation of what makes a fun and interesting fight vs the desires of a newer player base.

I never thought a "Solo" monster was meant literally. Having minions or additional solos or elites of lower levels. Interesting powers like teleportation or phasing, even teleportation of party members, can add some "spice" to the encounters.

 

[LazarusLong42]

Hmm, I wonder how much players would react to monsters rampaging at random hp intervals or enraging when hitting 10% of their max HP?

Might be fun.

Just for the hell of it, I've actually started writing up a WOW-type scripted-ish L30 boss encounter. But for the two things you specifically mention:

Monsters rampaging at random intervals: In 4e, this is the recharge mechanism coupled with a high-damage recharge power.

Enraging at a certain HP %age: In 4e, many many monsters have a specific "when first bloodied" power.

The one thing to remember about creating such a fight is that the players are only going to get one chance. In WOW, the designers can force a raid to perform well because they get a second chance. In D&D, one must assume that the players will not perform optimally, and a TPK is the end of the campaign, not just time to resurrect everyone and try again. A D&D encounter must be more forgiving. The fact that there are no solo encounters in D&D that can remove all of a player's HP in two hits helps with this. And if the solo monster you're using could do that, then tone it down.

 

[Rechan]

Can anyone else not access the article?

 

[AllisterH]

re: Mearls
Er, looking at Iron Heroes, I get the distinct impression Mearls has ALWAYS designed his fights more like an action movie where the environment plays as big a part as does the actual combatants.

re: Encounter Design and Solos
I think what a lot of people might be doing is the following.

They have a level 5 party and it is the climatic encounter with the BBEG (thus a level+4 encounter, namely a 2000 xp budget).

The DM could use a level 9 solo by itself, (white dragon - 2000 xp) but a "better" encounter would be a level 6 solo (blue dragon - 1250 xp) and a couple of level 5/6 monsters to fill out the xp budget.

I'm thinking the latter encounter would be much more satisying and not as well boring as the "let's surround it and slug it out" former scenario. Again, this _IS_ how the MM actually lists all the Solo monster encounters. There isn't one entry where a Solo fights by itself. From the weakest solo (white dragon) to the strongest solo (Orcus), not one entry IIRC recommends a Solo fight by itself.

re: Using at-wills first or at the end.
It doesn't matter the order in which the PCs use encounter/at-will/dailies since it will take the same number of rounds. What it DOES matter is how many round the monster will be at its bloodied state.

Personally, my group has pretty much restricted their big guns to AFTER the monster is bloodied since many of the monsters get more dangerous when bloodied or weaker all of which make their encounter/daily powers more effective.

 

[Ipissimus]

Yup, I gotta agree with Mearls here. Terrain should be a big part of any encounter, Solo critters just make it more important. More powers would also be nice as well but new tactical options by terrain are a great way of doing it.

 

[wedgeski]

Well theres a lot implications, but the first thing is further confirmation that Mearls shouldn't be in the job he's in. He's horrible.

So we've already reached the point where good advice from the designers is being used as evidence they're bad at their job? Hilarious.

A solid article from Mike. Personally I like the idea of scattering artillery around the battlefield that characters with particular skills can decipher and get one-off uses from. That seemed to go down well in many of my 3ed games.

And the dreaded WoW rears its head again: multi-phase fights are also great fun to design in 4E.