What 3.5 feats would you use to duplicate 4E's monster roles?

[Celebrim]

Fix'd it for you.

This is the version of toughness used at my table.

Toughness [General]
You can take a hit.
Benefit: You gain a number of hit points equal to 3 + your base fortitude save bonus. When your base fortitude save bonus improves, so does the number of hit points granted by this feat.

Not so much for chumps any more.

Also, I understand Pathfinder made a similar sort of improvement, but I haven't seen it yet to evaluate it. (UPDATE: Googled it. I like mine better.)

 

[Dandu]

At level 20, a tough character will have something in the neighborhood of 300 HP (assuming they put points and items into Con). Your feat will grant 15 hit points on top of that. It's less bad that normal Toughness, but still not a good choice for a brute.

Now, feats such as Power Attack, Leap Attack, Shock Trooper, and Combat Brute would work better. If they have good natural weapons, Multiattack. Pounce wouldn't hurt either.

 

[Noumenon]

Hense, in 3e you build 'strong fighters', 'smart fighters', 'cunning fighters', 'finesse fighters', 'tough fighters', or 'charismatic fighters' with trees that enhance their attribute strength and concept.

Ah, I see how that works now! With the prereqs of "Str 13" for one tree, "Dex 13" and "Int 13" for the others. Woulda been clearer if there were a "Con 13" tough fighter, and "Cha 13" swashbuckler. And then I associate Improved Feint so strongly with rogues that it feels sneaky, not smart, and doesn't feel related to Improved Trip, which is for stronger types. But I see what they were going for now.

Where as, I see Powerful Charge as a 'skirmisher' role, although really I can see it justified for 'lurkers', 'skirmishers', and 'brutes'.

Gosh, I'm really confused about skirmishers. I had looked up "hyena" and "kobold skirmisher" in the MM as examples and thought skirmisher meant "pack attacker," but it really doesn't. When I look at more examples it seems what they really all have is rogue abilities -- +1d6 damage with combat advantage and shifting. So what's a lurker then?

Powerful Charge isn't wrong for a brute, but it only gets to use it once. My impression of lurkers is they attack, sneak off, and attack again. They would definitely get more use out of the charge feat then. Too bad nothing incorporeal actually deals damage.

is 'striker' any more realistic of a concept that 'smart tactician'?

Well, it is now, because people have developed the concept of a striker so that you can answer the question "Is this the kind of weapon or feat a striker would use?" If you intend a monster to be a smart tactician it's not so clear what it's actually going to do.

I'm still struggling to understand your thinking here. Lightning Reflexes is not what I'd normally consider an optimal feat for monster construction. Many monsters have good reflex saves to begin with, and Reflex is generally considered the least essential save in 3.X. If you are going to pick a save booster, Iron Will is almost always the better choice unless the monster is immune to mind effecting spells, in which case Great Fortitude would be better.

Well, you got my intention, which was to pick the optimizing feat, even though I didn't pick the right ones. In my games, all the monsters die to Fireball, which I dislike. Low Will saves lead to interesting situations like getting charmed or held back by Sanctuary. So I would pick all Lightning Reflexes, except I don't want cookie-cutter monsters.

What I want is for a monster's complete package of AC, HP, Fort, Ref and Will to be weak in just one area so it makes a difference how you choose to engage in it. Like I think Artillery should have all high saves, but low AC and low hit points, so that you're rewarded if you get a melee guy back there. I'm just not sure whether, say, Controllers ought to have high Will.

 

[Celebrim]

Ah, I see how that works now! With the prereqs of "Str 13" for one tree, "Dex 13" and "Int 13" for the others. Woulda been clearer if there were a "Con 13" tough fighter, and "Cha 13" swashbuckler.

I had the same problem with the lack of symmetry, so I made feat trees for being tough and being a heroic/leadership/emotion type fighter.

And then I associate Improved Feint so strongly with rogues that it feels sneaky, not smart...

Being sneaky is a way of being smart. Think of 'sneaky' as a synonym for 'tricky'.

Gosh, I'm really confused about skirmishers. I had looked up "hyena" and "kobold skirmisher" in the MM as examples and thought skirmisher meant "pack attacker," but it really doesn't. When I look at more examples it seems what they really all have is rogue abilities -- +1d6 damage with combat advantage and shifting. So what's a lurker then?

Skirmisher's move. Lurker's hide. Skirmishers get benefits from moving and excel at achieving combat advantage and movement related stuff. Lurkers excel at hiding and attacking from ambush. High level lurkers will have abilities that help them rehide and evade detection (invisibility, creating darkness, teleporting away, etc.)

Powerful Charge isn't wrong for a brute, but it only gets to use it once.

Try not to look at it as an optimization problem. Some creature has a schtick of doing powerful charges (maybe a dire boar). That's 'the concept', not that its a 'brute'.

Well, it is now, because people have developed the concept of a striker so that you can answer the question "Is this the kind of weapon or feat a striker would use?" If you intend a monster to be a smart tactician it's not so clear what it's actually going to do.

I don't agree. "Is this the kind of action that is smart, tricky, and skillful?' is just as easy of a question to answer as your question. Actually, my question maybe easier, because by your own admission in this thread you haven't nearly as well developed of a concept of what 'strikers' and 'skirmishers' are as you are claiming above.

In my games, all the monsters die to Fireball, which I dislike.

????

Only at very very low levels of play. Fireball is a very weak spell. It only does average 35 points of damage at 10th level, and half that on save. CR 10 monsters generally have between 100-250 hit points with 140 being about average, so its going to take ALOT of fireballs to take one down. It's very suboptimal against things with evasion or fire resistance, which can render it useless. Really, I'm surprised you've had much problems with evocation, as in 3.X evocation is fairly weak.

 

[Noumenon]

Skirmishers get benefits from moving and excel at achieving combat advantage and movement related stuff.

Which should've been easy for me to remember since I've seen the Skirmish ability on the Scout class.

by your own admission in this thread you haven't nearly as well developed of a concept of what 'strikers' and 'skirmishers' are as you are claiming above.

"Striker" is very well developed, as are defender, controller, and leader, because they're PC roles and a lot of education was done. What's confusing me is the monster roles and which one "striker" maps onto. I'm starting to think it doesn't, that the monster team really doesn't work the same way as the PC team. Comparing lurkers and strikers is like asking "Is the safety like a receiver or a running back?"

Really, I'm surprised you've had much problems with evocation, as in 3.X evocation is fairly weak.

I was surprised too, since I had read that kind of thing here before I started DMing. But one solo monster is the worst case for Fireball -- it shines against multiple weaker monsters with lower hitpoints and saves. If you run an 8th-level adventure like Cave of the Spiders, where most of the encounters are EL 8 built out of CR 4s, you'll see that 25 damage will take down almost every monster in the place. If they all fail their save, they all go down. All the encounters I planned in my earlier thread about monster roles ended up sucking because having several different weaker monsters let Fireball wipe out everything but the hill giant.

Also, in play you compare evocation to the other PCs, not to other wizard spells. It takes a full attack or a crit to match 25-35 damage to even one monster, much less four. I played two games at GenCon this year and both featured a round where a wizard Fireballed several targets for 50 damage total followed by a rogue shooting a shortbow for 1d6 + 1. Stinking Cloud may be stronger than Fireball, but at least it has niche protection so it doesn't mock the damage output of the other PCs. Not a fan of Fireball. When I play wizards I try not to use it, but they're all pathetic in combat unless I do.

 

[Dandu]

Fireball is only good against mooks without reflex saves, spell resistance, good hp, or evasion. This covers some encounters and monsters, but leaves out quite a few. Fire resistance is common as you level up, as is SR. Brutes will have lots of HP, and there will be enemies with good reflex saves and/or evasion.

I have experience in this field. In addition, a lot of my fellow optimizers at Brilliant Gameologists tend to rank Fireball low as far as power goes.

 

[Voadam]

Lurkers do more damage and are more fragile and dependent upon surprise. They are big ambush hitters. Feats designed to enhance or boost stealth (skill focus) and sneak attack styles (Improved sneak attack from Traps and Treachery) would be appropriate.

Skirmishers are light infantry, they are mobile and do light hit and run attacks well but they stay in the fight more than lurkers. They are easier to squish than soldiers but can get around control issues much better than soldiers. Feats like the spring attack chain would be appropriate.

Brutes are tough but inaccurate and hit hard. Stuff like Toughness/improved toughness, Great Fortitude, and power attack are good choices.

Soldiers are tough and do decent but not spectacular damage. Focus on defensive feats.

Artillery are squishy ranged damage, so point blank shot chain or metamagic feats are appropriate.

Controllers are about imposing conditions so spell/ability focus and area metamagics are appropriate.

Leaders boost others in various ways, usually something like area metamagics will be appropriate.

Elites are tougher and stronger than normal monsters, so things like improved toughness, weapon focus, the +2 to a save feats, are all appropriate, and they should generally have more HD and more feats to go with them.

Solos take on everybody at once and are tough enough to do so. Quicken spell-like ability and area of effect metamagics are good one as are the elite feats. Solos need to take on multiple opponents at once so they need to be tough enough to handle multiple attacks on them and catch multiple opponents in a single round.

 

[Celebrim]

I was surprised too, since I had read that kind of thing here before I started DMing. But one solo monster is the worst case for Fireball -- it shines against multiple weaker monsters with lower hitpoints and saves. If you run an 8th-level adventure like Cave of the Spiders, where most of the encounters are EL 8 built out of CR 4s, you'll see that 25 damage will take down almost every monster in the place. If they all fail their save, they all go down. All the encounters I planned in my earlier thread about monster roles ended up sucking because having several different weaker monsters let Fireball wipe out everything but the hill giant.

Ahh... that.

IMO, the problem you are seeing there isn't so much fireball as it is the ability of the CR/EL system to calculate the actual challenge involved.

The CR/EL system basically asserts that one CR X monster is equal in power to two monsters with CR X - 2. That's possibly valid when the CR is relatively high, or when CR X - 2 is approximately equal to the average character level, and in a few other narrow cases but it's not a valid assertion otherwise.

The fireball example you mention is one case of many. The basic problem is when the CR of the foe gets to be character level - 4 or greater, the ability of the creature to threaten the PC's starts decreasing exponentially. For example, according to the system, an encounter with 32 orcs is a EL 9 encounter and roughly equivalent in threat to a single CR 9 monster. This might be true if the average character level is 1, because 32 somewhat threatening attacks might equal 1 truly lethal one. But if the average character level is 9 then the orcs will be lucky to do more than scratch the party before being wiped out. For a 9th level party, the true threat represented by 32 orcs is closer to the threat represented by a single CR 5 monster. This is obviously a vastly different evaluation than rating them equivalent to a CR 9 monster, but in play is closer to what you experience.

Similarly, if you build a EL 8 challenge out of CR 4 monsters, the book will tell you that you should use 4. But if you do, in practice this is closer to an EL 6 challenge for an 8th level party; not a cake walk necessarily, but neither is it something you expect to consume alot of party resources. To build a balanced encounter for an 8th level party out of CR 4 monsters, you usually have to use more like 16, which the book rates as a ridiculous EL 12 encounter (signficant chance of a TPK) but in practice usually works pretty well.

You may have noticed here that the math I'm recommending is that 2 CR X monsters = 1 CR X + 1 monster. Keep in mind though that I'm only recommending this for monsters that are much lower level than the party and do not have level independent powers. If you do something like take non-humanoid CR 5 monsters and throw 16 of them at a level 8 party thinking that you are doing a EL 9 challenge, don't be surprised that it creates a TPK. As the monster CR gets closer to party level, the official math works better and better.

Also, in play you compare evocation to the other PCs, not to other wizard spells. It takes a full attack or a crit to match 25-35 damage to even one monster, much less four. I played two games at GenCon this year and both featured a round where a wizard Fireballed several targets for 50 damage total followed by a rogue shooting a shortbow for 1d6 + 1.

Well, rogues that aren't doing sneak attack damage usually are not combat monsters and 50 damage is unusually high for a 10d fireball unless its empowered or something. Generally speaking, at upper levels of play, if the rogue can't sneak attack, the rogue probably should be casting fireball or some such (via a wand of fireballs and sufficiently high UMD skill) or otherwise have a plan for dealing with the problem. I've seen a rogue in my game with rapid shot, high initiative, and a flaming shortbow that would have matched the fireball with something like 1d6+1d6+3d6+3 x2, which, as far as single target is concerned is as bad as getting hit by a fireball. In fact, I've had much bigger problems with archers having an easy answer for every tactical problem than I've had with evocation. If the wizard is capable of doing 50 damage with his fireballs on a regular basis, and the rogue isn't capable of doing something nearly as impressive it sounds to me more like bad contingency planning on the part of the rogue player as much as anything else.

 

[Dandu]

Brutes are tough but inaccurate and hit hard. Stuff like Toughness/improved toughness, Great Fortitude, and power attack are good choices.

Do I really need to point out how the bolded part is wrong?

Also, in play you compare evocation to the other PCs, not to other wizard spells. It takes a full attack or a crit to match 25-35 damage to even one monster, much less four. I played two games at GenCon this year and both featured a round where a wizard Fireballed several targets for 50 damage total followed by a rogue shooting a shortbow for 1d6 + 1.

What level was this? Because many melee builds can do 50 damage consistently at around level 10.

 

[Celebrim]

I glanced at the adventure that you linked to and its heavily gimped by another problem in the CR/EL system, and that is it vastly overestimates the power level granted by NPC classes. The official rules tell you that the CR of an NPC class is level - 1. If that were even remotely true, then a 20th level warrior would be equivalent to a CR 19 monster. In fact, if you stat one up and compare it to monsters of various CR's, you find its nowhere close to that tough. The actual threat represented by a 20th level NPC classed humanoid is closer to level / 2. So a 20th level warrior is more like CR 10.

So you are going up against alot of NPC classed humanoids, which is about the worst case scenario for the official CR/EL system. It rates the bugbear warrior 3's as CR 4, where I would rate them closer to CR 3. Frankly, I think most of the challenges are EL 5 rather than EL 9.

Plus you've got essentially a bunch of 'lurkers' in a static position. Pretty much everything in that adventure prefers to start a fight from ambush, and they are in terrain that doesn't favor an ambush mentality. It's really bad use of forces, especially if the inhabitants don't try to make an organized defense (and even if they did, the narrow corridors would prevent them from making use of there numbers).

It's no wonder you got frustrated by that.