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<blockquote data-quote="Elric" data-source="post: 4752120" data-attributes="member: 1139">This is a separate issue from the main point of this thread, but I'd worry that your changes to increase solos' action ratio would make them too powerful (edit: looking at the book, the Adult White Dragon does look pretty weak; still, these changes would substantially increase its power).&nbsp; In particular, solos have higher defenses and four at heroic (five at paragon/epic) times the HP of normal monsters.&nbsp; A solo is still essentially as powerful until the end of a fight (besides using its action points and having to recharge powers).&nbsp; By comparison the players get weaker over the course of a combat, using up encounter and daily powers and switching to at-wills.In a normal combat, the players can and will focus fire, so the monsters lose offense over time as they are killed off, while the players have more ways to prevent the monsters from focusing fire and have healing surge triggers, which enables them to have &quot;group hit points&quot; in a way that monsters do not.&nbsp; So a solo should have lower damage capabilities than a group of 5 normal monsters.&nbsp; If a solo started out with the damage capabilities of close to 5 normal monsters of its level, it could easily be too strong.&nbsp; While some effects are stronger in an encounter against solos than normal monsters (Lead the Attack, for example, in addition to the debuffs that this thread is mainly concerned with), other effects are weaker (Area attacks).&nbsp; At level 9, the White Dragon's level, debuffs are less of a problem than they'll become- I don't think there are any encounter stun powers in the heroic tier, for exampleNow, I think that it would have made sense for D&amp;D solos to be designed with slightly fewer HP and greater offense.&nbsp; However, given their high HP, you have to be careful with how strong you make their offenses.&nbsp; Edit: after having made this comment, I spotted the Adamantine Dragon MM2 preview (<a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20090413" target="_blank">http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20090413</a>), and it looks both significantly better offensively and weaker defensively than the comparable solo 22 soldier Red Dragon.&nbsp; Its defenses are lower and its HP are four times that of a normal monster's, not the 5 in PH for paragon/epic solos.&nbsp; So if this is a trend, WotC is already redesigning solos in this way (no &quot;outs&quot;, though).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Elric, post: 4752120, member: 1139"] This is a separate issue from the main point of this thread, but I'd worry that your changes to increase solos' action ratio would make them too powerful (edit: looking at the book, the Adult White Dragon does look pretty weak; still, these changes would substantially increase its power). In particular, solos have higher defenses and four at heroic (five at paragon/epic) times the HP of normal monsters. A solo is still essentially as powerful until the end of a fight (besides using its action points and having to recharge powers). By comparison the players get weaker over the course of a combat, using up encounter and daily powers and switching to at-wills. In a normal combat, the players can and will focus fire, so the monsters lose offense over time as they are killed off, while the players have more ways to prevent the monsters from focusing fire and have healing surge triggers, which enables them to have "group hit points" in a way that monsters do not. So a solo should have lower damage capabilities than a group of 5 normal monsters. If a solo started out with the damage capabilities of close to 5 normal monsters of its level, it could easily be too strong. While some effects are stronger in an encounter against solos than normal monsters (Lead the Attack, for example, in addition to the debuffs that this thread is mainly concerned with), other effects are weaker (Area attacks). At level 9, the White Dragon's level, debuffs are less of a problem than they'll become- I don't think there are any encounter stun powers in the heroic tier, for example Now, I think that it would have made sense for D&D solos to be designed with slightly fewer HP and greater offense. However, given their high HP, you have to be careful with how strong you make their offenses. Edit: after having made this comment, I spotted the Adamantine Dragon MM2 preview ([url]http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20090413[/url]), and it looks both significantly better offensively and weaker defensively than the comparable solo 22 soldier Red Dragon. Its defenses are lower and its HP are four times that of a normal monster's, not the 5 in PH for paragon/epic solos. So if this is a trend, WotC is already redesigning solos in this way (no "outs", though). [/QUOTE]

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