Truly Solo Encounter

[Saagael]

I'm setting up an encounter for my group that I would like to be a truly solo encounter. I know that solo monsters are not intended to be used alone, but I'm pretty sure I can solve this problem. The group is made of 6 players, and is pretty damage heavy. So far they've made quick work of nearly all solo encounters I've thrown at them, and would like the challenge them a bit with this one. I've attached PDFs of the monsters to this post. They are not finalized, and would like to add several more powers to the solo monster "Living Winter". The monster is essentially a huge ice elemental, and for the encounter, I'd like to have the elemental sit still most of the fight and use its power to control the terrain and keep players from focus firing on it.

Ice Spike and Wall of Ice will keep give the players other targets during the fight, and use up some of their actions every round, especially once the monster becomes bloodied. It'll also use its walls to block off party members, so healing will be tough if they let the walls lock them down. Lastly, to make sure the players don't get entirely bogged down by all the walls and ice spikes, there will be a skill challenge aspect to the fight that will do damage to the elemental, while failing will deal damage to the player.

So I'm wondering if anyone has run an encounter like this, or has ideas to make the monster better at the "battlefield control" aspect. There will be patches of difficult terrain, and the outer wall of the room will be lined with sharp icicles for pushing fun. Lastly, I want to add a few powers for when the elemental is bloodied, making the combat more fast paced. I'm thinking at that point it will forgo its passing attack style and turn to a more in-your-face style.

EDIT: Updated the PDFs with a revised version of both monsters.

EDIT (4-20-10): Updated the monsters again. Added a power to summon shardlings, fixed a typo in the powers, changed the shardling's attack to give cold vulnerability, and reduced the shardling's resist.

 

[Talysian]

Wow I like it.. not sure how it would play out but... man that looks like it would be fun!

 

[eriktheguy]

Nice, you seem to have mastered many of the elements of making solo monsters truly solo, including hitting 3+ players per turn, spawning monsters, and breaking up the party.
Can I suggest giving the ice spike the 'made of ice' property, to make it vulnerable to fire?
Also, the ice spike spell seems a little powerful for casting multiple times per turn. I would suggest either letting people escape from the restrain as though it were a grab, or limiting the spell by making it recharge 3, or once per turn. Currently the creature can restrain 4 targets a turn while bloodied in addition to making 3 slam attacks, and those targets cannot escape without attacking the spike (standard action) only to be restrained again next turn.
Is the winter supposed to be able to slide restrained targets? You might want to allow or disallow this depending on your original intent.
Also, the shardling's "made of ice" power has no effect, because ANY damage it takes kills it, fire or not. The power should say "if the shardling is hit by a spell with the fire keyword", or you could simply change the resistance to "resist 30: all but fire". As it stands, less than 30 fire damage will be ignored by the shardling.
Also, the Icicle explosion power says that it recharges and is used upon death. It doesn't have any other trigger, so I don't see why it needs to be recharged. Perhaps another trigger would be to allow the power to be activated when the Living winter first becomes bloodied? Is this what you intended originally? If you intended it to be used as a standard action during the fight, rename it as such, and you can still allow it to be used as an immediate reaction upon dieing.

 

[Saagael]

Nice, you seem to have mastered many of the elements of making solo monsters truly solo, including hitting 3+ players per turn, spawning monsters, and breaking up the party.

Thanks! So far they've breezed through most of my "tough" encounters, so I'm trying to switch things up.

Can I suggest giving the ice spike the 'made of ice' property, to make it vulnerable to fire?

The players do so much damage at this level that doing 15 damage is almost a guarantee. I don't know if I mentioned it, but the party is level 13.

Also, the ice spike spell seems a little powerful for casting multiple times per turn. I would suggest either letting people escape from the restrain as though it were a grab, or limiting the spell by making it recharge 3, or once per turn. Currently the creature can restrain 4 targets a turn while bloodied in addition to making 3 slam attacks, and those targets cannot escape without attacking the spike (standard action) only to be restrained again next turn.

I meant for the power to be used only once per turn, like any other minor action attacks solos have. The reason I don't want the players to break out of it like a grab is so that someone has to use their standard action attack, and NOT have it be on the bad guy. Even restrained, the target of the attack can easily break out with an at-will. It's part of the overall idea of reducing the attacks directly against the Living Winter.

Is the winter supposed to be able to slide restrained targets? You might want to allow or disallow this depending on your original intent.

Restrained targets can be slid, so anyone stuck in a spike or a wall won't be slide by the aura. Nor will the wall slide a creature stuck in a spike, though that has no negative effect, since they'd already be restrained.

Also, the shardling's "made of ice" power has no effect, because ANY damage it takes kills it, fire or not. The power should say "if the shardling is hit by a spell with the fire keyword", or you could simply change the resistance to "resist 30: all but fire". As it stands, less than 30 fire damage will be ignored by the shardling.

Good catch. Either of your fixes work, as that's how I intend to use them. Basically, I want them to only be killed by fire powers (this group has several) without the players resorting to encounter/dailies.

Also, the Icicle explosion power says that it recharges and is used upon death. It doesn't have any other trigger, so I don't see why it needs to be recharged. Perhaps another trigger would be to allow the power to be activated when the Living winter first becomes bloodied? Is this what you intended originally? If you intended it to be used as a standard action during the fight, rename it as such, and you can still allow it to be used as an immediate reaction upon dieing.

It was meant to be used upon reaching bloodied, and again at death. Still getting used to the Monster Builder format, and forgot that.

 

[keterys]

The on bloodied and death powers should just happen (you can just overwite the text to 'when bloodied and again when reduced to 0 hp'), not be an immediate reaction. It might also be worthwhile to separate out the shardlings from that - who cares if 4 show up after it's already dead? And if 4 show up when it gets bloodied, they may actually die before they even get a chance to act.

I'd actually be tempted to have Ice Spike create a shardling adjacent to the target (as a hit, miss, or effect - compelling benefits to each option) instead so you get a steady supply of them and it gives another thing to hit, right next to the person who got spiked.

I'd personally do resist 20 or 25, not 30, but you know your group's damage potential better. Having minions not be killed by incidental damage is certainly good, but having an encounter power potentially bounce off one is a little meh.

Anyhow, fun and evocative in general.

 

[Saagael]

The on bloodied and death powers should just happen (you can just overwite the text to 'when bloodied and again when reduced to 0 hp'), not be an immediate reaction. It might also be worthwhile to separate out the shardlings from that - who cares if 4 show up after it's already dead? And if 4 show up when it gets bloodied, they may actually die before they even get a chance to act.

I'll change the power to just happen. I should have caught that, but thanks. The shardlings will act right after the Living Winter, so they'll get at least one turn.

I'd actually be tempted to have Ice Spike create a shardling adjacent to the target (as a hit, miss, or effect - compelling benefits to each option) instead so you get a steady supply of them and it gives another thing to hit, right next to the person who got spiked.

Is that instead of restraining the target? I've tried the "endlessly spawning minions" tactic during a solo encounter, and it's not turned out too well for my group, since they like to deal lots of damage to single targets.

I'd personally do resist 20 or 25, not 30, but you know your group's damage potential better. Having minions not be killed by incidental damage is certainly good, but having an encounter power potentially bounce off one is a little meh.

Everyone in the group can deal about 20 damage with an at will, give or take 5 points (the fighter can do about 25 damage, the druid can do about 15). I'm intending for this to be a kind of gimmick, and the players have been stockpiling Alchemist Fires for a few levels; I'm guessing they'll use them here

 

[eriktheguy]

Thanks! So far they've breezed through most of my "tough" encounters, so I'm trying to switch things up.


The players do so much damage at this level that doing 15 damage is almost a guarantee. I don't know if I mentioned it, but the party is level 13.


I meant for the power to be used only once per turn, like any other minor action attacks solos have. The reason I don't want the players to break out of it like a grab is so that someone has to use their standard action attack, and NOT have it be on the bad guy. Even restrained, the target of the attack can easily break out with an at-will. It's part of the overall idea of reducing the attacks directly against the Living Winter.

If it is only once per turn, then requiring the spike to be destroyed is fine. I was more worried about the creature spamming it.

Restrained targets can be slid, so anyone stuck in a spike or a wall won't be slide by the aura. Nor will the wall slide a creature stuck in a spike, though that has no negative effect, since they'd already be restrained.


Good catch. Either of your fixes work, as that's how I intend to use them. Basically, I want them to only be killed by fire powers (this group has several) without the players resorting to encounter/dailies.



It was meant to be used upon reaching bloodied, and again at death. Still getting used to the Monster Builder format, and forgot that.

Overall it seems like quite a challenge. Would it break the "truly solo" rules if the creature started the combat with 4 of the minions already in place? It also helps if you create some pits and such for the monster to slide players into, that's devious. I think the encounter will involve your players spending a few turns at a time setting up and getting into position, then spending one turn novaing. It should be a blast.

 

[Mesh Hong]

Its a cool idea (pun intended).

Initial thoughts:

1: You say you have a 6 PC group that deals high damage? Then I would strongly suggest that you increase the creatures HPs back to about 825 HPs (MM1 levels).

- My group are 6 strong with 3 strikers and even MM1 HPs arn't really enough, before now in important fights I have actually increased the amount of HPs a creature had just to give it a chance to use all its powers!

2: It is my belief that a true solo acts more than once in a round, I would probably try to design a level 17 important solo on the basis of acting twice a round. (Yours as an example on initiative +13 and +3 - one roll)

- Creatures that act twice are more interesting, more unpredictable and more dangerous.

3: I don't think the Solo is doing enough damage, and even though it can attack 3 creatures with one attack it lacks the capability to focus fire on its main threat.

Admittedly you have given it a +15 damage rating rather than the +7 or 8 I would expect so it is doing reasonable damage. But I would consider giving it a recharge power, or only while bloodied attack that is single target big damage.

4: Summoning minions is a great thing for a Solo to do, but I would separate it from the Icicle Explosion power. Making it a move action with a recharge where it can summon 4 shardlings inside a burst 3 might make it a bit more interesting. Maybe when it is bloodied have it summon a tougher Ice Shard that is a level 17 brute, that would make the encounter a bit more interesting.

Anyway these are just my quick thoughts, I hope they help or give you a few ideas.

 

[Saagael]

Thanks for the advice Mesh! I've tweaked with the monsters and posted them back up in the original post, so you can see what I did. I added several "when bloodied" powers, along with making it act twice per round and doing a bit more damage overall with its powers. The reason it had the +15 to damage was because I tend to use the "-20% hp, +half level damage" method with most solos.

I get what you mean about increasing HP, and I was thinking about it, but this encounter isn't meant to drain the PCs entirely, since after this they have to go up against a nasty white dragon after this one. I think with two turns per round, this monster will do quite a bit of damage to the whole group (focus firing is overrated for a solo IMO, since it usually ends up focus firing on the defender, which in this group is a Battlerager fighter, and a shielding swordmage).

I'll rethink the minion summoning for this fight. I might just have throw a few minions whenever the party starts setting up for a nova, just to make them change their minds.

 

[Amaroq]

Saagael, I love this! I tried to give you XP for it, but I've given you XP too recently.

I do think you've done a fantastic job of encapsulating "what makes a Solo tick", enough so that this oughta be required reading! Your thought process in developing it may be worth a blog entry somewhere, if you have one.

I'll rethink the minion summoning for this fight. I might just have throw a few minions whenever the party starts setting up for a nova, just to make them change their minds.

I definitely liked the minion summoning during the fight: I've used that to very good effect for Elite Controller and Solo monsters. I think its a key part of "making sure the BBEG doesn't get pasted right away". The update I'd make is that, to accomplish this does take minions that can seriously harass or annoy - a simple 8 hit points may not be "enough" to accomplish that.

I've had better luck with minions that inflict status, move the heroes, etc. What about the minions doing a flat 3 cold plus ongoing 5 cold and slowed (save ends); special: a second hit with this attack leaves the creature immobilized (save ends; aftereffect slowed); a third hit with this attack leaves the creature petrified (save ends; aftereffect immobilized as before).

You might also give them a power that lets them drag immobilized or petrified creatures, for added terror.

Under that set, one minion, alone, hardly worth worrying about ... but three or four minions on the board would be a serious problem requiring immediate attention.