Tweaking Elite and Solo Mobs

[thc1967]

After several weeks of playing 4e, my players gave me some feedback on the fights. They like the "normal" monsters just fine. They find the bigger ones - the elites and solos - "boring". I get quotes like, "Oh my gawd that fight took sooooooooooo long!" And it did.

So as a one-off, I did some thinking about how to tweak the "boss" monsters to solve the dual problem they're telling me about. I want the fight to be shorter and less boring.

To make the fights shorter, I intend to cut Elite and Solo HP, and all values derived or depending on them, in half. If the monster has a heal, that gets cut in half too.

To make the fights less "boring", I intend to do two things. For Elites, I'll increase their attack bonuses by 1 across the board, and for Solos, 2. For both, I'll increase the damage dice for all attacks by one size.

I'll probably need to cut the experience rewards for both, too. Something around the 66% to 75% range seems right.

Anyway, that's what I hope to go with for the next session. I'd appreciate your thoughts and alternatives.

Thanks!

 

[Anthony Jackson]

The problem with bumping attack and chopping defense is that this means offensive debuffs, particularly Stun, become even more powerful than they already were. Also, if you reduce the xp, that just means you need to use a higher level Solo if you actually want a solo.

Much of the problem here is that fighting a single monster is inherently not all that interesting, because there are so few tactical choices -- basically, you all spread out and unload on it with your best attacks, until it dies. Making solos interesting requires adding additional distractions, such as minions, traps, princesses to rescue, etc.

 

[keterys]

Cutting an elite's hp in half means that it will die with only slightly more difficulty than a normal... that will make it extremely difficult for an elite to compare to two normals. You're reducing the XP so I guess that can work out, but I'm not sure you wouldn't just be better off using actual normals, just higher level (+2 and +3 for instance)

Curious: How long are these fights taking? What did they fight?

 

[thc1967]

Well, the most painful fight so far was the "big" fight for the last dungeon. They fought a handful of "normals" and an elite about the equivalent of an Orc Bloodrager (Level 7 Elite Brute). The party was 2nd level at the time and hadn't expended any daily attacks yet.

They took out the normals first then everyone ganged up on the Bloodrager. From the time they were on the Bloodrager only, it took over an hour to resolve the encounter. They were actually hitting pretty well; it's defenses are pretty low. But it took *forever* for them to burn through 194 + 48 = 242 hit points to finally kill the thing.

 

[keterys]

Well, the bloodrager being so much higher level than them meant that it probably got to trigger its counterattack a lot... and its 'I heal 10 when I hit' a bloodied target potentially, too. I have used bloodragers against a level 7 and level 11 party with no problems...

But yeah, it has more hit points than a level 2 Solo would. I could see that being a problem.

Hmmhmm.

 

[thc1967]

Eh, it's not a solo. It's supposed to be Elite. It's also 600xp, which means that with a few "normal" level 2 mobs, it should be in the right spot for the "big" encounter of the night (1100-1200 xp).

I think my players would acutally prefer a shorter fight where the bad guys knock one or two of them down (but not dead, obviously) over a longer fight where they're never in much danger, thus my proposed changes.