Why I think you should try 4e (renamed)

[Raven Crowking]

So, again he asks, do people have as much trouble with understanding elites and solos. Both of which are new to 4e?

I take exception to your word choice.

Accepting =/= understanding.


RC

 

[ExploderWizard]

So, again he asks, do people have as much trouble with understanding elites and solos. Both of which are new to 4e?

Elites have always been around in function if not name. As far back as the "for every 30 goblins there will be sub chief with 2HD" days there have been standouts to the typical monster. The status was not as codified and there wasn't an elite template as such but a note stating that the gnoll chieftain gains a extra +2 to hit and damage because he is just that nasty is in the ball park.

Solos are a bit different. The basic concept of a solo seems to be that of a "boss" that has a mountain of hp just so that an entire party can nuke it for multiple rounds with the heavy guns and it keeps on ticking. This aspect is very MMO boss like with the entire party blowing thier big cooldown abilities trying to down the thing before it TPK's the group.

In this light the solo serves as the anti-minion, being bestowed with excessive HP for the express purpose of surviving for a minimum duration even when hit with the PC's best shots. Much like the minion, outside of being a plot device there is no in gameworld reason for the thing to have quite that many hit points.

 

[Hussar]

I think the entire point that I have made several times is that a higher level fighter is supposed to be hitting a lot more often, thats how one measures actual improvement. The fact that the tougher monsters don't go down in one or two hits is a measure of thier skill and danger level.

If Joe the 1st level 1E AD&D fighter is fighting a normal orc in chainmail (AC5) with a STR bonus he scores a hit on a 13. If Joe hits the orc there is fair chance he can put it out of action.

Lets say that Joe is now facing a minotaur also in chain armor (AC5). His chances to hit the minotaur are the same as for the orc. How likely is Joe to win this fight?

Obviously, he's not. Not because he can't hit, but because he dies after the first time the minotaur hits him. In other words, his failure has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the opponent.

However, let's take a more realistic situation and a 7th level fighter (1e AD&D) is fighting a minotaur by himself. A fairly reasonable challenge. It shouldn't kill the fighter, but, it should give him a bit of a run for his money.

He's no longer hitting on 13 though. Now, he's hitting on about a 7 or better, between additional magics, possible potions (like Heroism or Super Heroism) and the fact that his THAC0 has jumped.

Suddenly, he's hitting a whole lot. Meanwhile, our poor minotaur, who does not gain any bonuses to hit, has to contend with the 7th level fighter's negative AC because he's got a +1 or +2 shield and a +1 suit of plate mail and quite possibly a Dex adjustment in there as well.

Because it works both ways. The PC's armor classes do certainly start climbing. Rings of Protection, Cloak of Protection, magic armor and whatnot certainly start to add up in a hurry. Add a couple more points if you allow Full Plate care of Unearthed Arcana.

Suddenly, the PC's rarely being hit, while he's hitting very, very often. The challenges very quickly become a joke. As Ariosto points out, by name level, we're super heroes.

Remember that AD&D core didn't feature crushing critical hits and high impact damage from weapon users (certain magical items in combination being the exception) so a high HP total worked like a combination of vitality and ablative defense.

However, since monsters did not gain any bonuses to their hit points, all their HP came from straight hit dice. As JG Browning has repeatedly pointed out, hit points max out at about 100 for non-unique monsters. The poor minotaur, with his 6d8+6 hit points, should have 30 hit points. The fighter blows through that like tissue paper because he's hitting the majority of his attacks.

A high level fighter hit a lot more often than not because he needed to in order to cut through the ablative defense of the things he was fighting. This is why lower level creatures were effectively minions to the high level fighter.

I disagree. IME, at high levels, the only real challenge to characters became save or die effects. Straight up combat was a joke. The fighters had AC's that were so low (-5 is not that hard to reach, particularly if you played modules) that the monsters were missing far more often than they were hitting, and, when they hit, their damage was so low that it wasn't a real threat.

It became playing on God mode. You blitzed your way through armies because nothing could hit you and you obliterated everything around you.

Ok, that's hyperbole, but, you get the point.

 

[Raven Crowking]

However, since monsters did not gain any bonuses to their hit points, all their HP came from straight hit dice. As JG Browning has repeatedly pointed out, hit points max out at about 100 for non-unique monsters. The poor minotaur, with his 6d8+6 hit points, should have 30 hit points. The fighter blows through that like tissue paper because he's hitting the majority of his attacks.

When formulating RCFG, I ran into a similar problem with higher-level play, and decided that RCFG monsters do need bonus hit points for Con simply because PC damage output grows.

Running Retro-Clones, though, didn't cause this problem, nor did I have it when I was running AD&D (1e or 2e).


RC

 

[LostSoul]

We agree. Using minions is a different style of play than prior editions, which was my basic point way back when in this thread when I said that 4e has moved towards a world that exits in relation to the PC approach unlike the players interact with a separate world approach of prior editions and then moved on to using minions as an example of my postulate.

I think that's only true if you look at minions and what they represent in the game world in one way. Look at them another way and it's not true.

 

[Ariosto]

There seems to have been a sort of "arms race" or "new normal" effect going back perhaps to the 1E Unearthed Arcana. (One might even go back to Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes rating Conan as F15 and Elric as F10/MU19.)

I recall that in the 2E era, a lot of folks figured (for reasons beyond me) that a dragon or giant ought to clean the clock of (or at least give a good workout to) a character in the teens of levels. In 3E, it seemed in some quarters (such as Goodman Games modules, IIRC) that every other Tom, Dick and Goblin was packing levels in two or three classes.

 

[AllisterH]

Solos are a bit different. The basic concept of a solo seems to be that of a "boss" that has a mountain of hp just so that an entire party can nuke it for multiple rounds with the heavy guns and it keeps on ticking. This aspect is very MMO boss like with the entire party blowing thier big cooldown abilities trying to down the thing before it TPK's the group.

.

That's half the equation. Simply put, 5 on 1 results in pretty much a dead monster if said monster is a "normal" or "elite" version and is unlucky to go last in the round.

The other half is the simple fact that the PCs have 5 actions to the monster's one (for a normal) and a properly designed solo needs to be able to "cheat" per se by being able to do more with its action compared to the PCs.

 

[ExploderWizard]

That's half the equation. Simply put, 5 on 1 results in pretty much a dead monster if said monster is a "normal" or "elite" version and is unlucky to go last in the round.

The other half is the simple fact that the PCs have 5 actions to the monster's one (for a normal) and a properly designed solo needs to be able to "cheat" per se by being able to do more with its action compared to the PCs.

They cheated a lot in old editions, it was called multiple attacks.

 

[nightwyrm]

May I suggest that we keep mentions of MMOs out of this discussion? Boss monsters are hardly a MMO creation. The idea of a big, badass dude who can take on your whole group of heroes all by himself has been around forever.

Now, how you achieve the effect of such a "solo" boss is the problem. In a system that couples and maintains equal offensive and defensive capabilities, the boss monsters would either die very quickly or starts killing heroes with every blow. The 4e method of addressing this problem is to decouple offense and defense and give the boss much higher defensive capabilities than offensive capabilities. This isn't anything new. CRPGs, comic books, movies etc. all have "bosses" that can take much more than what they can deal out.

 

[ExploderWizard]

May I suggest that we keep mentions of MMOs out of this discussion? Boss monsters are hardly a MMO creation. The idea of a big, badass dude who can take on your whole group of heroes all by himself has been around forever.

Now, how you achieve the effect of such a "solo" boss is the problem. In a system that couples and maintains equal offensive and defensive capabilities, the boss monsters would either die very quickly or starts killing heroes with every blow. The 4e method of addressing this problem is to decouple offense and defense and give the boss much higher defensive capabilities than offensive capabilities. This isn't anything new. CRPGs, comic books, movies etc. all have "bosses" that can take much more than what they can deal out.

I have no problems with big bad guys. Plot device pools of hit points are annoying though. Giving the big bad a large pool of extra HP just to make sure it gets a minimum amount of screen time is kind of lame.

By the way, mentioning that we should leave MMO's out of the discussion then using CRPG's as source of inspiration for the boss concept seems a bit hypocritical.